LD4 creoles

LD4 : Creole formation as second language acquisition 

PIs: Olivier Bonami & Alain Kihm (Laboratoire de Linguistique Formelle)

Members: Guillaume Fon Sing (LLF), Fabiola Henri (LLF), Jean-Léonard Léonard (LPP)

External collaborators: J. Léoué (Clillac, U. Paris Diderot), Ana R. Luís (U. de Coimbra), J.-L. Rougé (LLL, U. d'Orléans), E. Schang (LLL, U. d’Orléans), T. Veenstra (ZAS Berlin), D. Véronique (U. de Provence)

Description

The goal of this work package is the empirical confirmation of the hypothesis that processes of untutored second language acquisition play a significant role in Creole. This hypothesis is plausible and conceptually appealing (Andersen 1983 ; Véronique 1994 ; Becker & Veenstra 2004 ; Plag 2008), but empirical confirmation is far from trivial, because little relevant evidence is available: one can not observe speakers of Creoles in formation, and the relevant historical record is sparse. We address the issue from three different angles:

  • Studying the influence of statistically prevalent properties of lexifiers on the structure of Creole languages.
  • Constructing inventories of properties of Creole languages that are not predictable from their source languages, in order to be able to test whether these properties have parallels in L2 learner varieties.
  • Collecting and studying ancient documents that give crucial evidence on older stages of Creole languages, and which constitute the only piece of direct evidence of Creoles in formation.

Publications 2012-2013

Henri, F. (2012). Attenuative verbal reduplication in Mauritian: a morpho-semantic approach, In The Morphosyntax of Reiteration in Creole and Non-Creole Languages, Aboh, E., Smith, N. and Zribi-Hertz, A. (eds.) Benjamins, Creole Language Library. Amsterdam.

Kihm, A. & Rougé, J.-L. (2013). Língua de Preto, the Basic Variety at the root of West African Portuguese Creoles : A contribution to the theory of pidgin/creole formation as second-language acquisition, Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 28(2), 203-298.

 

Communications 2012-2013

Bonami, O., Henri, F. & Luís, A. (2012). Tracing the origins of inflectional morphology in Creoles, Nineth Creolistics Workshop, Aarhus, Danemark.

Bonami, O. & Henri, F. (2012). Predicting article agglutination in Mauritian, FACS III, University of Lisbon. Portugal, novembre 2012

Fon Sing, G.(2012), « Grammatisation et grammaticalisation du créole mauricien : réflexion et contribution aux ouvrages de standardisation », Colloque du Comité International des Etudes Créoles (CIEC), 5-9 novembre 2012, University of Mauritius, Réduit, Ile Maurice.

Fon Sing, G.(2013). « De l’émergence de certains marqueurs en créole mauricien », XXVIIe Congrès international de linguistique et de philologie romanes (CILPR), Laboratoire ATILF (CNRS/Université de Lorraine) / Société de linguistique romane, 15-20 juillet 2013, Nancy.

Fon Sing, G. & Leoue, J.(2012). « Creoles are NOT typologically distinct from non-creoles », paper presented at the Ninth Creolistics Workshop 'Contact languages in a global context: past and present', Aarhus University, Denmark, 11-13 April 2012.

Henri, F. & Kihm, A. The morphology of TMA in Mauritian and Kriyol, Workshop Portuguese-based Creoles in perspective, University of Coimbra. Portugal.