Complex Processes in New Languages

Editors

Enoch Oladé Aboh | University of Amsterdam

Norval Smith | University of Amsterdam

Hardbound – Available

ISBN 9789027252579 | EUR 105.00 | USD 158.00

e-Book –

ISBN 9789027288776 | EUR 105.00 | USD 158.00

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.

[Creole Language Library, 35] 2009. vii, 409 pp.

Publishing status: Available
Published online on 21 January 2010

https://doi.org/10.1075/cll.35

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments | p. vii

Simplicity, simplification, complexity and complexification: Where have the interfaces gone?

Enoch Oladé Aboh and Norval Smith | pp. 1–25

Part I. Morpho-phonology

Initial vowel agglutination in the Gulf of Guinea creoles

Tjerk Hagemeijer | pp. 29–50

Simplification of a complex part of grammar or not? What happened to KiKoongo nouns in Saramaccan?

Norval Smith | pp. 51–73

Reducing phonological complexity and grammatical opaqueness: Old Tibetan as a lingua franca and the development of the modern Tibetan varieties

Bettina Zeisler | pp. 75–95

Part II. Verbal morphology

Verb allomorphy and the syntax of phases

Tonjes Veenstra | pp. 99–113

The invisible hand in creole genesis: Reanalysis in the formation of Berbice Dutch

Silvia Kouwenberg | pp. 115–158

Complexification or regularization of paradigms: The case of prepositional verbs in Solomon Islands Pijin

Christine Jourdan | pp. 159–170

Part III. Nominals

The Mauritian Creole determiner system: A historical overview

Diana Guillemin | pp. 173–200

Demonstratives in Afrikaans and Cape Dutch Pidgin: A first attempt

Hans den Besten | pp. 201–219

Part IV. The selection of features in complex morphology

Contact, complexification and change in Mindanao Chabacano structure

Anthony P. Grant | pp. 223–241

Morphosyntactic finiteness as increased complexity in a mixed negation system

Peter Slomanson | pp. 243–264

Contact language formation in evolutionary terms

Umberto Ansaldo | pp. 265–289

Part V. Evaluating simplification and complexification

Economy, innovation and degrees of complexity in creole formation

Marlyse Baptista | pp. 293–315

Competition and selection: That’s all!

Enoch Oladé Aboh | pp. 317–344

Complexity and the age of languages

Umberto Ansaldo and Sebastian Nordhoff | pp. 345–363

Part VI. Postscript

Restructuring, hybridization, and complexity in language evolution

Salikoko S. Mufwene | pp. 367–400

Language index | pp. 401–403

Subject index | pp. 405–409

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