Substrate And Adstrate

This volume provides a large-scale, in-depth analysis of locative structures in Nigerian Pidgin and Ghanaian Pidgin English and compares those structures to locatives in their lexifier, substrate, and adstrate languages. The work draws on new research methods for investigating substrate and adstrate influence in semantics and creole genesis.

Since creole languages draw their properties from both their substrate and superstrate sources, the typological classification of creoles has long been a major issue for creolists, typologists, and linguists in general. Several contradictory proposals have been put forward in the literature. For example, creole languages typologically pair with their superstrate languages (Chaudenson 2003), with their substrate languages (Lefebvre 1998), or even, creole languages are alike (Bickerton 1984) such that they constitute a definable typological class (McWhorter 1998). This book contains 25 chapters bearing on detailed comparisons of some 30 creoles and their substrate languages. As the substrate languages of these creoles are typologically different, the detailed investigation of substrate features in the creoles leads to a particular answer to the question of how creoles should be classified typologically. The bulk of the data show that creoles reproduce the typological features of their substrate languages. This argues that creoles cannot be claimed to constitute a definable typological class."

Language Contact in Africa and the African Diaspora in the Americas brings together the original research of nineteen leading scholars on language contact and pidgin/creole genesis. In recent decades, increasing attention has been paid to the role of historical, cultural and demographic factors in language contact situations. John Victor Singler’s body of work, a model of what such a research paradigm should look like, strikes a careful balance between sociohistorical and linguistic analysis. The case studies in this volume present investigations into the sociohistorical matrix of language contact and critical insights into the sociolinguistic consequences of language contact within Africa and the African Diaspora. Additionally, they contribute to ongoing debates about pidgin/creole genesis and language contact by examining and comparing analyses and linguistic outcomes of particular sociohistorical and cultural contexts, and considering less-studied factors such as speaker agency and identity in the emergence, nativization, and stabilization of contact varieties.

The Routledge Handbook of Language Contact provides an overview of the state of the art of current research in contact linguistics. Presenting contact linguistics as an established field of investigation in its own right and featuring 26 chapters, this handbook brings together a broad range of approaches to contact linguistics, including: experimental and observational approaches and formal theories; a focus on social and cognitive factors that impact the outcome of language contact situations and bilingual language processing; the emergence of new languages and speech varieties in contact situations, and contact linguistic phenomena in urban speech and linguistic landscapes. With contributions from an international range of leading and emerging scholars in their fields, the four sections of this text deal with methodological and theoretical approaches, the factors that condition and shape language contact, the impact of language contact on individuals, and language change, repertoires and formation. This handbook is an essential reference for anyone with an interest in language contact in particular regions of the world, including Anatolia, Eastern Polynesia, the Balkans, Asia, Melanesia, North America, and West Africa.

Open publication> The Languages and Linguistics ofEurope: A Comprehensive Guideis part of the multi-volume reference work on the languages and linguistics of the continents of the world. The book supplies profiles of the language families of Europe, including the sign languages. It also discusses the areal typology, paying attention to the Standard Average European, Balkan, Baltic and Mediterranean convergence areas. Separate chapters deal with the old and new minority languages and with non-standard varieties. A major focus is language politics and policies, including discussions of the special status of English, the relation between language and the church, language and the school, and standardization. The history of European linguistics is another focus as is the history of multilingual European 'empires' and their dissolution. The volume is especially geared towards a graduate and advanced undergraduatereadership. It has been designed such that it can be used, as a whole or in parts, as a textbook, the first of its kind, for graduate programmes with a focus on the linguistic (and linguistics) landscape of Europe.

Yiddish has so far been mostly described as a linear, genetic descendant of German. This volume makes a case for the mixed character of the idiom and the formative role of the Slavic component in its creation and development.

Cameroon Pidgin English (CPE) is an English-lexified Atlantic expanded pidgin/creole spoken in some form by an estimated 50% of Cameroon’s population, primarily in the anglophone west regions, but also in urban centres throughout the country. Primarily a spoken language, CPE enjoys a vigorous oral presence in Cameroon, and the linguistic examples illustrating this description are drawn from a spoken corpus consisting of a range of text types, including oral narratives, radio broadcasts and spontaneous conversation. The authors’ typologically-framed investigation of the features of the language, from its phonetics, phonology and lexicon to its syntax and discourse structure, allows the reader a clear view of the linguistic character of CPE, offering a comprehensive description of the language that will be of interest to creolists as well as linguists interested in African languages, contact linguistics and comparative linguistics.

This is a new contribution to a theory of reiteration in natural languages, with a special focus on creoles. Reiteration is meant to denote any situation where the same form occurs (at least) twice within the boundaries of some linguistic domain. By including two case studies bearing on Hebrew and Breton alongside five chapters on creole languages (Surinam creole, Haitian, Mauritian, São Tomé and Pitchi), this volume brings counter-evidence to the claim that reiteration phenomena are particularly typical of creoles. And by exploring the syntax of reiteration alongside its morphology, the authors are led to challenge the 'iconic' theory of 'reduplication' proposed in several other studies of similar phenomena. This volume will be relevant for creole studies, but also for readers more generally interested in language universals and the architecture of grammars.