Linguistic simplicity and complexity : why do languages undress? / by John H. McWhorter.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

McWhorter, John H.

Series:

Language contact and bilingualism ; 1.

Language contact and bilingualism, 2190-698X ; 1

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Complexity (Linguistics).

Second language acquisition.

Languages in contact.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (352 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Berlin ; New York : De Gruyter Mouton, 2011.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

In John McWhorter's Defining Creole anthology of 2005, his collected articles conveyed the following theme: His hypothesis that creole languages are definable not just in the sociohistorical sense, but in the grammatical sense. His publications since the 1990's have argued that all languages of the world that lack a certain three traits together are creoles (i.e. born as pidgins a few hundred years ago and fleshed out into real languages). He also argued that in light of their pidgin birth, such languages are less grammatically complex than others, as the result of their recent birth as pidgins. These two claims have been highly controversial among creolists as well as other linguists. In this volume, Linguistic Simplicity and Complexity, McWhorter gathers articles he has written since then, in the wake of responses from a wide range of creolists and linguists. These articles represent a considerable divergence in direction from his earlier work.

Contents:

Front matter

Acknowledgments

Contents

Abbreviations

Introduction The creole litmus test and the NCSL challenge

I Creole exceptionalism

Introduction to Section I

Chapter 1 The creole prototype revisited and revised

Chapter 2 Comparative complexity: What the creolist learns from Cantonese and Kabardian

Chapter 3 Reconstructing creole: Has "Creole Exceptionalism" been seriously engaged?

II Creole complexity

Introduction to Section II

Chapter 4 Oh, nɔɔ!: Emergent pragmatic marking from a bewilderingly multifunctional word

Chapter 5 Hither and thither in Saramaccan Creole

Chapter 6 Complexity hotspot: The copula in Saramaccan

III Exceptional language change elsewhere

Introduction to Section III

Chapter 7 Why does a language undress? The Riau Indonesian problem

Chapter 8 Affixless in Austronesian: Why Flores is a puzzle and what to do about it

Chapter 9 A brief for the Celtic hypothesis: English in Box 5?

References

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9786613396341

9781283396349

1283396343

9781934078402

1934078409

OCLC:

743693610