The present paper aims to study the item i in Kriol, the Portuguese-related creole of
Guinea-Bissau. More specifically, i is 3SG subject pronoun and also functions as
copula in individual-level predication. As a pronoun, i may also occur as resumptive
to topic-comment structures. On the basis of the striking similarity between copular
clauses with i and topic-comment structures with resumptive i, I will argue that the
pronoun i and the copula i are not simple homophones, but represent two different
syntactic functions of the very same item. I assume that the copula i derives from the
resumptive pronoun i in topic-comment structures. This kind of grammaticalization of
the pronoun into a copula, also known as copularization, is well documented in a
number of languages.
The main goal of the paper will be to reconstruct the path of
grammaticalization of the copula i and to provide a syntactic account of it. I will
follow Lohndal (2009) in assuming that this kind of grammaticalization, motivated by
the ambiguity caused by certain topic-comment structures with resumptive pronoun,
corresponds to an economy-oriented structural change: the pronoun shifts from the
specifier to the head of the predication phrase (PredP). This shift is part of the type of
structural changes described as copula cycle (see e.g. van Gelderen 2004, 2008, 2009,
2011, 2015; Lohndal 2009). Given that 3SG i is arguably a subject clitic and cannot
sit in the specifier of PredP, I will argue, on the basis of Kihm’s (2007) paper, that in
the proto-creole that gave rise to Kriol and the other Upper Guinea creoles there was
a 3SG nonclitic pronoun *ele. It occurred as resumptive to topic-comment structures
and was later reanalysed as a copula.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio
