Abstract In addition to plurality, creole plural morphemes impart an additional meaning of definiteness or specificity to the nominal expressions they mark. As of yet, there is no precise characterization either empirical or theoretical of the semantic/pragmatic dimensions they convey. Furthermore, the question of whether this added meaning is largely fixed across distinct creoles and plural morphemes, or subject to variations has never been examined. With the goal of bringing new insights intothese questions, this paper reports the results of a comparativestudy of the properties of two creole plural morphemes in two distinct French-lexifier creoles, Haitian Creole (HC) and Mauritian Creole (MC). Besides relying on native speaker intuitions, a detailed comparative qualitative and quantitative study of the uses of these plural morphemes was conducted in a textual corpus in two adaptations of the story of the Little Prince by Antoine De St Exupery, in Haitian Creole and in Mauritian Creole respectively. The results of this comparative investigation clearly demonstrate that the use of plural morphemes in the two creoles, though similarin a number of respects, also differ quite systematically. We observe that the distinctions noted closely mirror the uses of the singular definite marker ‘la’ bv’ also argued to subtly diverge in these two creoles (Wespel 2008, Deprez 2016, in preparation). The paper analyzes this mirroring effect as a consequence of the positions that the plural morphemes come to occupy in the nominal structure and of the way the structure building operations are constrained in the different creoles. Concretely it is argued that the plural morphemes come to derivationally occupy the position of definite articles in each of the languages, and that this derivational process is obligatory in Haitian Creole due to the pronominal nature of its plural morpheme, but remains optional in Mauritian.

中文翻译：

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毛里求斯和海地克里奥尔人的多元性和确定性

摘要除了复数形式以外，克里奥尔语的复数语素还为其标记的名义表达赋予了确定性或特异性的附加含义。到目前为止，无论是经验上还是理论上，它们所传达的语义/语用维度都没有精确的描述。此外，这种附加含义在很大程度上是固定在不同的克里奥尔语和复数词素上，还是易变的问题从未被研究过。为了给这些问题提供新的见解，本文报道了两个不同的法语词汇克里奥尔语（海地克里奥尔语（HC）和毛里求斯克里奥尔语（MC））中两个克里奥尔语复数形态的比较研究结果。除了依靠母语使用者的直觉之外，在文本语料库中，对Antoine De St Exupery创作的《小王子》故事进行了两次改编，分别在海地克里奥尔语和毛里求斯克里奥尔语中对这些复数词素的用法进行了详细的比较定性和定量研究。这项比较研究的结果清楚地表明，尽管在许多方面都相似，但在两个克里奥尔语中使用多个词素也有很大的系统差异。我们观察到，这些区别紧密地反映了单数定额标记“ la” bv的用法，后者也巧妙地分散了这两个克里奥尔语（Wespel 2008，Deprez 2016，准备中）。由于多个语素在名义结构中占据的位置以及结构构建操作在不同克里奥尔语中的约束方式，本文分析了这种镜像效应。具体而言，有人认为复数语素在每种语言中都以导数形式占据定冠词的位置，并且由于其复数词素的代名词性质，这种衍生过程在海地克里奥尔语中是必须的，但在毛里求斯语中仍然是可选的。