Focus and Grammatical Relations in Creole Languages
Focus and Grammatical Relations in Creole Languages

Author: Francis Byrne

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 1993-10-28

Total Pages: 347

ISBN-13: 9027276943

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The volume has as its topic, not only the types of formal constructions and devices which creole languages syntactically utilize to achieve constituent focus, but also, in a much broader sense, the many other phenomena and processes found in these languages which serve to highlight sentence-level elements. The book is organized into five sections: 1. verb focus, predicate clefting and predicate doubling; 2. focus and anti-focus; 3. focus and pronominals; 4. discourse patterning; 5. grammatical relations.

Grammatical Relations in a Radical Creole
Grammatical Relations in a Radical Creole

Author: Francis Byrne

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 1987-01-01

Total Pages: 309

ISBN-13: 9027279012

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With English and Portuguese as parent languages; the significant lexical retention of African languages; and the relative isolation of its speakers, Saramaccan has always stood out among Creole languages. Yet despite its obvious interest Saramaccan received little in the way of scholarly study. This groundbraking monograph dispels the mystery surrounding Saramaccan and provides strong evidence for a new approach to Creole origins. The study is carried out within the government-binding framework. The author shows how Saramaccan comes close to demonstrating what constitues the irreducible minimum of building blocks with which a language can be constructed, and the types of structure which must develop under such conditions. In this work Frank Byrne combines the outcome of patient and persevering fieldwork with a firm grasp of current theoretical issues and provides us with the insights into the nature of universal grammar of which a Creole like Saramaccan is potentially capable.

Noun Phrases in Creole Languages
Noun Phrases in Creole Languages

Author: Marlyse Baptista

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 520

ISBN-13: 9789027252531

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This volume offers a thorough examination of the syntactic, semantic, pragmatic and discourse properties of noun phrases in a wide variety of creole (and non-creole) languages including Cape Verdean Creole, Santome, Papiamentu, Guinea-Bissau Creole, Mindanao Chabacano, Réunionnais Creole, Lesser Antillean, Haitian Creole, Mauritian Creole, Seychellois, Sranan, Jamaican Creole, Berbice Dutch Creole and African American English. Comparative studies also consider the determiner systems of Middle and Modern French, European Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, Spanish, Ewe, Fon and Gun. This compilation of 16 chapters brings together descriptive, theoretical, diachronic and synchronic studies that focus on the structure and interpretation of bare nouns in creoles. The contributions demonstrate the variety and complex nature of determiner systems in creoles and their widespread use of bare nouns in comparison to their source languages. This volume is evidence of the relevance of creole languages to theories of language creation, language change and linguistic theory in general.

The Nubi Language of Uganda
The Nubi Language of Uganda

Author: Ineke Wellens

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2017-07-03

Total Pages: 464

ISBN-13: 9047416228

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This volume provides a detailed description of the Nubi language of Uganda, including more than one thousand examples and several texts. It also digs into history to reconstruct the development and growth of this most fascinating Arabic creole.

The Morphosyntax of Reiteration in Creole and Non-Creole Languages
The Morphosyntax of Reiteration in Creole and Non-Creole Languages

Author: Enoch Oladé Aboh

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 9027252661

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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.

Development and Structures of Creole Languages
Development and Structures of Creole Languages

Author: Francis Byrne

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 1991

Total Pages: 233

ISBN-13: 9027252297

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This collection of original essays is intended to both celebrate Derek Bickerton's sixty-fifth birthday and honor his long and eminent career. Each author included in the volume is a noted scholar who has distinguished him/herself in some area of linguistics and has professionally or personally interacted with Bickerton and been influenced by his work. While the papers make independent thematic contributions, they also discuss, augment, present alternatives to, or are inspired in some way by Bickerton's seminal ideas or penetrating analyses. The book is organized into 5 sections, each a reflection of a major research period in Bickerton's career: Section 1: Identifying Creoles; Section 2: Language Variation; Section 3: Creole Processes; Section 4: Creole Syntax and Semantics; Section 5: Serial Verbs.

Language Change and Language Contact in Pidgins and Creoles
Language Change and Language Contact in Pidgins and Creoles

Author: John McWhorter

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2000-05-15

Total Pages: 514

ISBN-13: 902729948X

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This book collects a selection of fifteen papers presented at three meetings of the Society for Pidgin and Creole Linguistics in 1996 and 1997. The focus is on papers which approach issues in creole studies with novel perspectives, address understudied pidgin and creole varieties, or compellingly argue for controversial positions. The papers demonstrate how pidgins and creoles shed light on issues such as verb movement, contact-induced language change and its gradations, discourse management via tense-aspect particles, language genesis, substratal transfer, and Universal Grammar, and cover a wide range of contact languages, ranging from English- and French-based creoles through Portuguese creoles of Africa and Asia, Sango, Popular Brazilian Portuguese, West African Pidgin Englishes, and Hawaiian Creole English.

Creole Formation as Language Contact
Creole Formation as Language Contact

Author: Bettina Migge

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2003-01-01

Total Pages: 170

ISBN-13: 9789027252470

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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.