Inheritance and Innovation in a Colonial Language

Towards a Usage-Based Account of French Guianese Creole

• Author(s): William Jennings, Stefan Pfänder,
• Publisher: Springer
• Pages: 240
• ISBN_10: 3319619527
  ISBN_13: 9783319619521
  
• Language: en
• Categories: Language Arts & Disciplines / Linguistics / Sociolinguistics , Foreign Language Study / African Languages , Language Arts & Disciplines / Linguistics / General , Language Arts & Disciplines / Linguistics / Historical & Comparative , Foreign Language Study / General , Language Arts & Disciplines / Reference , Language Arts & Disciplines / General ,

Description:... This book takes a fresh approach to analysing how new languages are created, combining in-depth colonial history and empirical, usage-based linguistics. Focusing on a rarely studied language, the authors employ this dual methodology to reconstruct how multilingual individuals drew on their perception of Romance and West African languages to form French Guianese Creole. In doing so, they facilitate the application of a usage-based approach to language while simultaneously contributing significantly to the debate on creole origins. This innovative volume is sure to appeal to students and scholars of language history, creolisation and languages in contact.
Chapter 3 is published open access under a CC BY 4.0 license.