Towards a New Model of Creole Genesis

Towards a New Model of Creole Genesis PDF Author: John H. McWhorter
Publisher: Peter Lang Gmbh, Internationaler Verlag Der Wissenschaften
ISBN: 9780820433127
Category : Creole dialects
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Creolists have established that many processes determine the structure of Caribbean creole languages, including innate linguistic universals, West African retentions, and certain patterns of simplification. Towards a New Model of Creole Genesis presents a method of uniting these strands into a single model of creole genesis. This discussion is primarily illustrated via Saramaccan Creole English, spoken in Suriname and combining elements from English, Portuguese, Dutch, and a range of African languages. An extensive evaluation of Derek Bickerton's Language Bioprogram Hypothesis is also presented. Increasing evidence is offered that Saramaccan and other Caribbean English creoles ultimately trace back to a single pidgin ancestor which emerged on the West African coast.

Towards a New Model of Creole Genesis

Towards a New Model of Creole Genesis PDF Author: John H. McWhorter
Publisher: Peter Lang Gmbh, Internationaler Verlag Der Wissenschaften
ISBN: 9780820433127
Category : Creole dialects
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Creolists have established that many processes determine the structure of Caribbean creole languages, including innate linguistic universals, West African retentions, and certain patterns of simplification. Towards a New Model of Creole Genesis presents a method of uniting these strands into a single model of creole genesis. This discussion is primarily illustrated via Saramaccan Creole English, spoken in Suriname and combining elements from English, Portuguese, Dutch, and a range of African languages. An extensive evaluation of Derek Bickerton's Language Bioprogram Hypothesis is also presented. Increasing evidence is offered that Saramaccan and other Caribbean English creoles ultimately trace back to a single pidgin ancestor which emerged on the West African coast.

Towards a New Model of Genesis

Towards a New Model of Genesis PDF Author: John Hamilton McWhorter
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Creole dialects
Languages : en
Pages : 412

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Book Description


Defining Creole

Defining Creole PDF Author: John H. McWhorter
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780195347234
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 444

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Book Description
A conventional wisdom among creolists is that creole is a sociohistorical term only: that creole languages share a particular history entailing adults rapidly acquiring a language usually under conditions of subordination, but that structurally they are indistinguishable from other languages. The articles by John H. McWhorter collected in this volume demonstrate that this is in fact untrue. Creole languages, while complex and nuanced as all human languages are, are delineable from older languages as the result of their having come into existence only a few centuries ago. Then adults learn a language under untutored conditions, they abbreviate its structure, focusing upon features vital to communication and shaving away most of the features useless to communication that bedevil those acquiring the language non-natively. When they utilize their rendition of the language consistently enough to create a brand-new one, this new creation naturally evinces evidence of its youth: specifically, a much lower degree of the random accretions typical in older languages, which only develop over vast periods of time. The articles constitute a case for this thesis based on both broad, cross-creole ranges of data and focused expositions referring to single creole languages. The book presents a general case for a theory of language contact and creolization in which not only transfer from source languages but also structural reduction plays a central role, based on facts whose marginality of address in creole studies has arisen from issues sociopolitical as well as scientific. For several decades the very definition of the term creole has been elusive even among creole specialists. This book attempts to forge a path beyond the inter- and intra-disciplinary misunderstandings and stalemates that have resulted from this, and to demonstrate the place that creoles might occupy in other linguistic subfields, including typology, language contact, and syntactic theory.

The Missing Spanish Creoles

The Missing Spanish Creoles PDF Author: John McWhorter
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520219996
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 294

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Book Description
A controversial new analysis of the development of New World creole languages among slaves. Mc Whorter makes a vast amount of new data available in his book, and posits that New World creole languages developed in West Africa, not on the plantations in the New World.

L2 Acquisition and Creole Genesis

L2 Acquisition and Creole Genesis PDF Author: Claire Lefebvre
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027285241
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 450

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Book Description
In this volume, second language (L2) acquisition researchers and creolists engage in a dialogue, focusing on processes at work in L2 acquisition and creole genesis. The volume opens with an overview of the relationship between L2 acquisition and pidgins/creoles (Siegel). The first group of papers addresses current language contact at a societal or an individual level (Smith; Terrill and Dunn; Bruhn de Garavito and Atoche; Liceras et al.; Müller). The second section focuses on processes characterizing various stages of L2 acquisition and creole genesis: relexification and transfer from the L1 and their role in the initial state (Sprouse; Schwartz; Kouwenberg; Aboh; Ionin). Chapters in the third section discuss processes involved in developing grammars, namely, reanalysis and restructuring (Sánchez; Brousseau and Nikiema; Steele and Brousseau). The final section concentrates on fossilization and the end state (Cornips and Hulk; Montrul; Lardiere). Between them, the chapters cover lexical, morphological, phonological, semantic and syntactic properties of interlanguage grammars and creole grammars.

Creole Genesis, Attitudes and Discourse

Creole Genesis, Attitudes and Discourse PDF Author: John R. Rickford
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027299498
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 430

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Book Description
This collection in honor of creolist Charlene Junko Sato (1951–1996) brings together contributions by leading specialists in pidgin-creole studies in three primary areas: Pidgin-Creole Genesis and Development; Attitudes and Education, and Creole Discourse and Literature. The varieties covered come from English, French and Spanish lexical bases and from places as far apart as Africa, Australia, Hawaii, and the Caribbean. Editors Rickford and Romaine introduce each of the papers and provide a biography and bibliography of Sato. A short story and poems in Hawaiian Creole, Sato’s native language and the variety which was the focus of her research and writing, round out the collection.

Creole Discourse

Creole Discourse PDF Author: Susanne Mühleisen
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027296332
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 349

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Book Description
Creole languages are characteristically associated with a negative image. How has this prestige been formed? And is it as static as the diglossic situation in many anglo-creolophone societies seems to suggest? This volume examines socio-historical and epistemological factors in the prestige formation of Caribbean English-Lexicon Creoles and subjects their classification as a (socio)linguistic type to scrutiny and critical debate. In its analysis of rich empirical data this study also demonstrates that the uses, functions and negotiations of Creole within particular social and linguistic practices have shifted considerably. Rather than limiting its scope to one "national" speech community, the discussion focusses on changes of the social meaning of Creole in various discursive fields, such as inter generational changes of Creole use in the London Diaspora, diachronic changes of Creole representation in written texts, and diachronic changes of Creole representation in translation. The study employs a discourse analytical approach drawing on linguistic models as well as Foucauldian theory.

Creole Formation as Language Contact

Creole Formation as Language Contact PDF Author: Bettina Migge
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027296596
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 165

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Book Description
The research on the formation of (radical) creoles has seen an unprecedented intensification and diversification in the last 20 years. This book discusses, illustrates, and evaluates current research on creole formation based on an in-depth investigation of the processes and mechanisms that contributed to the emergence of the morphosyntactic system of the creoles of Suriname. The study draws on a rich corpus of a) natural conversational and elicited synchronic linguistic data from the Eastern Maroon Creole (EMC) and its main African substrate language, Gbe, b) published diachronic data from the EMC’s sister-language Sranan Tongo, and c) information on the early history of Suriname coming from socio-historical investigations. It suggests that mechanisms of deliberate and contact-induced change also involved in borrowing and particularly shift situations led to the initial formation of the creoles of Suriname while language-internal change played a role in their subsequent development.

Hawai'i Creole English

Hawai'i Creole English PDF Author: V. Velupillai
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230505856
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
Are there common specific patterns in the Tense-Mood-Aspect systems of Creoles? Do Creoles constitute a structural type of language? This in-depth synchronic description of the Tense-Mood-Aspect system of contemporary Hawai'i Creole English, is a language-internal analysis based on extensive first-hand data, both written and spoken. The language variety has been used as a basis for major linguistic hypotheses - a strength of this book is the use of a language-independent typological framework, placing the system in a cross-linguistic perspective.

The Routledge Handbook of Pidgin and Creole Languages

The Routledge Handbook of Pidgin and Creole Languages PDF Author: Umberto Ansaldo
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000221482
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 538

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Book Description
The Routledge Handbook of Pidgin and Creole Languages offers a state-of-the-art collection of original contributions in the area of Pidgin and Creole studies. Providing unique and equal coverage of nearly all parts of the world where such languages are found, as well as situating each area within a rich socio-historical context, this book presents fresh and diverse interdisciplinary perspectives from leading voices in the field. Divided into three sections, its analysis covers: Space and place – areal perspective on pidgin and creole languages Usage, function and power – sociolinguistic and artistic perspectives on pidgins and creoles, creoles as sociocultural phenomena Framing of the study of pidgin and creole languages – history of the field, interdisciplinary connections Demonstrating how fundamentally human and natural these communication systems are, how rich in expressive power and sophisticated in their complexity, The Routledge Handbook of Pidgin and Creole Languages is an essential reference for anyone with an interest in this area.