Creole Genesis and the Acquisition of Grammar: The Case of Haitian Creole

by Claire Lefebvre

Overview

This study focuses on the cognitive processes involved in creole genesis: relexification, reanalysis, and direct leveling. The role of these processes is documented by a detailed comparison of Haitian creole with its two major contributing languages, French and Fongbe, to illustrate how mechanisms from source languages show themselves in creole. The author examines the input of adult, as opposed to child, speakers and resolves the problems in the three main approaches, universalist, superstratist and substratist, which have been central to the recent debate on creole development.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521025386
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	03/30/2006
Series:	Cambridge Studies in Linguistics , #88
Pages:	480
Product dimensions:	6.06(w) x 9.02(h) x 1.02(d)

Table of Contents

Preface; List of abbreviations; 1. The problem of creole genesis and linguistic theory; 2. Cognitive processes involved in creole genesis; 3. The research methodology; 4. Functional category lexical entries involved in nominal structure; 5. The preverbal markers encoding relative tense, mood and aspect; 6. Pronouns; 7. Functional category lexical entries involved in the structure of the clause; 8. The determiner and the structure of the clause; 9. The syntactic properties of verbs; 10. Are derivational affixes relexified? 11. The concatenation of words in compounds; 12. Parameters; 13. Evaluation of the hypothesis; 14. Theoretical consequences; Appendices; Notes; References; Indexes.

Editorial Reviews

"...[this book] is a model of careful argumentation, including clear description of the methods and assumptions involved in the underlying research...the book is admittedly written for those with special interest in pidgin and creole languages..." Linguistics

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