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Part of
Variation Rolls the Dice: A worldwide collage in honour of Salikoko S. Mufwene
Edited by Enoch O. Aboh and Cécile B. Vigouroux
[Contact Language Library 59] 2021
► pp. 81–104

Conventionalized creativity in the emergence of a mixed language – A case study of Light Warlpiri

| ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences

Questions of how contact languages are best categorized and how their paths of development are most accurately described remain contentious. Mixed languages or split languages raise many unanswered questions about mechanisms of change in multilingual contexts, and how they lead to specific structural outcomes. An examination of the structure of Light Warlpiri, a mixed language spoken in a Warlpiri community in northern Australia, shows that the main mechanism of change is insertional code-switching where a verbal phrase from one language, Kriol (an English-lexified Creole) is inserted into a string of another language, Warlpiri. The result is a way of speaking that is mixed at every level, and can be categorized as underlyingly Warlpiri with innovative insertions and reanalyses from Kriol.

Keywords: Warlpiri, Light Warlpiri, mixed language, Creole, code-switching
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Theories about mechanisms of a mixed language emerging from code-switching practices
  • 3.Structure of Light Warlpiri
    • 3.1Verbal structure of Light Warlpiri
    • 3.2Nominal structure of Light Warlpiri
      • Ergative case-marking
      • Dative case-marking
    • 3.3Sentence-level syntax and verb-argument structure in Light Warlpiri
  • 4.Light Warlpiri and theories of ML emergence
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 12 October 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/coll.59.04osh
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