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Deconstructing Creole is a collection of studies aimed at critically assessing the idea of creole languages as a homogeneous structural type with shared and peculiar patterns of genesis. Following up on the critical discussion of notions of 'creole exceptionalism' as historical and ideological constructs, this volume tests the basic assumptions that underlie current attempts to present 'creole structure' as a special type, from typological as well as sociohistorical perspectives. The sum of the findings presented here suggests that careful empirical investigation of input varieties and contact environments can explain the structural output without recourse to an exceptional genesis scenario. Echoing calls to dissolve the notion of 'creolization' as a special diachronic process, this volume proposes that theoretically grounded approaches to the notions of simplicity, complexity, transmission, etc. do not warrant considering so-called 'creole' languages as a special synchronic type.
Politeness and Face in Caribbean Creoles is the first collection to focus on socio-pragmatic issues in the Caribbean context, including the socio-cultural rules and principles underlying strategic language use. While the Caribbean has long been recognized as a rich and interesting site where cultural continuities meet with new "creolized" or innovative practices, questions of politeness practices, constructions of personhood, or the notion of face have so far been neglected in linguistic research on Caribbean Creoles. Drawing on linguistic politeness theory and Goffman's concept of face, eleven mostly fieldwork-based innovative contributions critically examine a range of topics, such as ritual insults, strategic use of "bad language", kiss-teeth, the performance of homophobic threats, greetings, address forms, advice-giving, socialization and discourse, parent-child discourse, register choice and communicative repertoire in the Caribbean context.
Language and music are connected in manyways. As social and cultural practices, they have been intertwined inmultiple ways. Musical and linguistic practices are often intertwined toexpress distinct and complex identities, attitudes, ideologies, social rolesand political views. Spaces characterized by migration, contact,multilingualism, and colonial inequalities, are particularly interestingfor the study of the intersections between language and music. This volume is the first book-lengthaccount of contact languages and music. It offers a stimulating collectionof contributions on different territories, multiple musical genres andtopics, and various methodological approaches. The chapters address myriadtopics such as nationality, ethnicity, identity, gender, migration anddiaspora.
This book introduces formal grammar theories that play a role in current linguistic theorizing (Phrase Structure Grammar, Transformational Grammar/Government & Binding, Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar, Lexical Functional Grammar, Categorial Grammar, Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar, Construction Grammar, Tree Adjoining Grammar). The key assumptions are explained and it is shown how the respective theory treats arguments and adjuncts, the active/passive alternation, local reorderings, verb placement, and fronting of constituents over long distances. The analyses are explained with German as the object language. The second part of the book compares these approaches with respect to ...
This book presents evidence in support of the hypothesis that Ship English of the early Atlantic colonial period was a distinct variety with characteristic features. It is motivated by the recognition that late-seventeenth and early-eighteenth century sailors’ speech was potentially an influential variety in nascent creoles and English varieties of the Caribbean, yet few academic studies have attempted to define the characteristics of this speech. Therefore, the two principal aims of this study were, firstly, to outline the socio-demographics of the maritime communities and examine how variant linguistic features may have developed and spread among these communities, and, secondly, to gene...
This timely volume moves away considerably from traditional topics investigated in studies of multilingualism and linguistic identity to propose new analytical approaches that investigate postcolonial societies from the standpoint of their specific internal structures. The book uses postcolonial multilingual societies as gateways into complex webs of identity construction and group boundary definition, the interplay and functions of oral (indigenous) and written (foreign) languages in multilingual communities, the birth of new diaspora generations at home and abroad, the redefinitions of gender roles, and the impact of linguistic identities on the different nation states focused upon in the ...
Drawing on examples from a wide range of languages and social settings, The Routledge Handbook of Sociolinguistics Around the World was originally the first single-volume collection surveying the current research trends in international sociolinguistics. This new edition has been comprehensively updated and significantly expanded, and now includes more than 50 chapters written by leading authorities and a brand-new substantial introduction by John Edwards. Coverage has been expanded regionally and there is a critical focus on Indigenous languages. This handbook remains a key tool to help widen the perspective on sociolinguistics to readers interested in the field. Divided into sections cover...
This book traces the precise origin of the early English lexical and lexico-phonetic influences in Sranan, an English-based creole spoken in Suriname. Sranan contains "fossilised" linguistic remnants of an early English colonial period. The book discusses whether Sranan’s English influence(s) originated from a single dialect from the general London area, as proposed by Norval Smith in 1987, or whether we are dealing with a composite of dialectal features from all over England. The book introduces a novel replicable methodology for linguistic reconstructions, which combines statistics (in the form of binomial probability), English dialect geography (via use of Orton’s et. al., 1962–1971, Survey of English Dialects, which focuses on traditional regional English dialects across England and Wales), and 17th-century English migration history (compiled from The Complete Book of Emigrants: 1607–1660,The Bristol Registers of Servants Sent to Foreign Plantations, 1654–1686, Virtual Jamestown, Virginia Center for Digital History, and Colonial State Papers secured from the British History Online databases, among other relevant historical sources).
Yesterday’s Words: Contemporary, Current and Future Lexicography reflects the main issues of scholarly discussion in the fields of historical lexicography and lexicology including the historiography of lexicography. The state-of-the-art volume offers a wide range of contributions in five chapters. After the editors’ introduction to Yesterday’s Words, the chapter Dictionaries and Dictionary-Makers of Former Ages concentrates on historical lexicography, including both the main lexicographical works in English and German and dictionaries of minority languages such as Frisian, Welsh, Irish and Scots. The Vocabulary of the Past discusses historical lexicological and etymological issues such...
This book examines the question of whether languages can differ in grammatical complexity and, if so, how relative complexity differences might be measured. The volume differs from others devoted to the question of complexity in language in that the authors all approach the problem from the point of view of formal grammatical theory, psycholinguistics, or neurolinguistics. Chapters investigate a number of key issues in grammatical complexity, taking phonological, morphological, syntactic, and semantic considerations into account. These include what is often called the 'trade-off problem', namely whether complexity in one grammatical component is necessarily balanced by simplicity in another;...