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In the following we present the Krio pronomina system as reflected by our Krio corpus. You can access the corpus from the TypeCraft Portal of Language In the list of Krio texts you find texts owned by Beatrice Owusua Nyampong and by the TypeCraft project. The latter corpus is a further development of the Nyampong corpus. You can access the individual corpora by following the link to the Nyampong or TypeCraft user page.
Contents
The distribution of nouns and pronouns
in the TypeCraft Krio corpus.
Personal, Possessive and Reflexive Pronouns
| Person/Number | Pronoun | possessive Pronoun | reflexive Pronouns |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1SG | a, mi | mi | misɛf* |
| 2SG | yu | yu | yusɛf |
| 3SG | i, am* | in | insɛf |
| 1PL | wi | wi | |
| 2PL | una | una | |
| 3pl | dem | dɛn |
- am is used when the 3SG takes the position of the object in a sentence. As a subject it will be referred to as I for masculine, feminine and neutral.
The 1SG form misɛf is not attested in our corpus. But the following dialog taken from the Wikipedia articel Krio Language [1] shows the form in use:
- Kushe. - "Hello."
- Kushe-o. - "Hello."
- Wetin na yu nem? - "What is your name?"
- Mi nem Jemz. - "My name is James."
- Usai yu kɔmɔt? - "Where do you come from?"
- A kɔmɔt Estinz. - "I come from Hastings."
- Us wok yu de du? - "What work do you do?"
- Mi na ticha. - "I am a teacher."
- Na us skul yu de tich? - "At what school do you teach?"
- I de tich na Prins ɔv Welz. - "I teach at Prince of Wales."
- Mi gladi fɔ mit yu. - "I am happy to meet you."
- Misɛf gladi fɔ mit yu. - "I myself am happy to meet you."
- OK, a de go naw. - "OK, I am going now."
- Ɔrayt, wi go tok bak. - "Alright, we will talk again."
In some cases, as the 2PL, we show two forms which seem to be orthographic variants.
Demonstrative Pronouns
| Number | NEAR SPEAKER | REMOTE |
|---|---|---|
| SINGULAR | dis | dat |
| PLURAL | dɛn | di |
Relative Pronouns
| RELATION | KRIO | ENGLISH |
|---|---|---|
| Person | we | who, whom, which |
| Object, event | wetin* | what |
- wetin appears in equal parts as a relational pronoun and as an indefinite pronoun. As a relational pronoun it refers back to an event that occurred or to an object earlier in the sentence.