Complex Processes in New Languages

Erscheinungsjahr 2009
ISBN: 978-90-272-5257-9
Verlag: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Buch, Englisch, Band 35, 409 Seiten, Format (B × H): 164 mm x 245 mm, Gewicht: 895 g

Reihe: Creole Language Library

In recent years, there has been a new interest in evaluating ‘complex’ structures in languages. The implications of such studies are varied, e.g., the distinction between supposedly more complex and less complex languages, how complexity relates to human knowledge of language, and the role of the reduction or increase of complexity in language change and creolization. This book focuses on the latter issue, but the conclusions presented here hold of typological ‘complexity’ in general. The chapters in this book show that the notion of complexity as conceived of in linguistics mainly centres on the outer manifestations of language (e.g., numbers of affixes). This exercise is useful in establishing the patterning of languages in terms of their degrees of analyticity or synthesis, but it fails to address the properties of the inner rules of these grammars, and how these relate to the computational system that governs the human language capacity. Put simply, issues of complexity should not be equated with the complexity observed in surface patterns of grammars alone.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Aboh, Enoch O.

Smith, Norval

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Einzelne Sprachen & Sprachfamilien
• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Historische & Vergleichende Sprachwissenschaft, Sprachtypologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Sprachkontaktforschung

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Table of contents

Acknowledgments

vii
Simplicity, simplification, complexity and complexification: Where have the interfaces gone?
Enoch O. Aboh and Norval Smith

1–25
Part I. Morpho-phonology

Initial vowel agglutination in the Gulf of Guinea creoles
Tjerk Hagemeijer

29–50
Simplification of a complex part of grammar or not? What happened to KiKoongo nouns in Saramaccan?
Norval Smith

51–73
Reducing phonological complexity and grammatical opaqueness: Old Tibetan as a lingua franca and the development of the modern Tibetan varieties
Bettina Zeisler

75–95
Part II. Verbal morphology

Verb allomorphy and the syntax of phases
Tonjes Veenstra

99–113
The invisible hand in creole genesis: Reanalysis in the formation of Berbice Dutch
Silvia Kouwenberg

115–158
Complexification or regularization of paradigms: The case of prepositional verbs in Solomon Islands Pijin
Christine Jourdan

159–170
Part III. Nominals

The Mauritian Creole determiner system: A historical overview
Diana Guillemin

173–200
Demonstratives in Afrikaans and Cape Dutch Pidgin: A first attempt
Hans den Besten

201–219
Part IV. The selection of features in complex morphology

Contact, complexification and change in Mindanao Chabacano structure
Anthony P. Grant

223–241
Morphosyntactic finiteness as increased complexity in a mixed negation system
Peter Slomanson

243–264
Contact language formation in evolutionary terms
Umberto Ansaldo

265–289
Part V. Evaluating simplification and complexification

Economy, innovation and degrees of complexity in creole formation
Marlyse Baptista

293–315
Competition and selection: That’s all!
Enoch O. Aboh

317–344
Complexity and the age of languages
Umberto Ansaldo and Sebastian Nordhoff

345–363
Part VI. Postscript

Restructuring, hybridization, and complexity in language evolution
Salikoko S. Mufwene

367–400
Language index

401–403
Subject index

405–409