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In the process of creole genesis the loss of Romance reflexives caused a functional gap. The goal of this paper is to examine with the help of a corpus containing written and oral data how today's speakers of Mauritian and Seychelles Creole express the functional category of reflexivity. I distinguish between true reflexivity and pseudo-reflexivity. In cases of true reflexivity the reflexive marker represents an argument and there is referential identity with the subject referent. In cases of pseudo-reflexivity, the reflexive marker does not represent an argument and has become part of the lexical entry (lexikalische Pseudoreflexivität, Oesterreicher e.g. 1996, endoreflexive verbs, Haspelmath 1987). While in French the reflexive clitic is used in both cases (e.g. s'inviter- "to invite oneself" vs. s'asseoir- "to sit down") one finds a functionally motivated distinction in Mauritian and Seychelles Creole: only true reflexivity finds a morphological correlate. It can be expressed by two techniques:
technique 1: verb+possessive pronoun+body word, e.g. Seychelles Creole
Gouvernman pou osi donn led finansyel (...) pour dimoun kapab anplwa
zot lekor.
(corpus Kriegel 1996)
"The government will give financial help to people who can employ themselves."
technique 2: verb+object pronoun+ intensifier (optional), e.g. Mauritian Creole
Li anferm li-mem dan enn geto. (corpus Kriegel 1996)
"He locks himself up in a ghetto.."
In Seychelles Creole, technique 1 is grammaticalized and technique 2 is of lesser importance, while in Mauritian Creole the opposite is the case: technique 1 is limited to contexts in which the verb expresses a physical action, while technique 2 is productive.
Verbs that are pseudo-reflexive in French do not take any morphological marking in Mauritian and Seychelles Creole. However, there exist two exceptions to the formal separation between reflexivity and pseudo-reflexivity:
First, in French, some verbs take a reflexive marker which does not represent an argument but which is, nevertheless, of functional relevance because it makes a semantic difference (e.g. se conduire- "to behave (oneself)" vs. conduire - "to drive (a car)"). Like in French, in Mauritian and Seychelles Creole the reflexive marker is used in order to express a difference in meaning.
Second, in the group of the true reflexive verbs the sub-group of the verbs of grooming or body care (Kemmer 1993) often do not take any morphological marker of reflexivity (like in English). This phenomenon can be explained with Haiman's economy principle (Haiman 1983). As it is the expected case that one performs those actions on oneself (e.g. to dress, to wash, to shave etc.), there is often no morphological marking in creole languages.
In addition to the detailed study of Mauritian and Seychelles Creole I will also look briefly at French-based Creoles of the Caribbean.
In summary, morphological substance is lost during the process of creolization. In accordance with the economy principle it is only replaced if a concrete referent must be expressed or if ambiguity must be avoided.
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