Part of
Complex Processes in New LanguagesEdited by Enoch O. Aboh and Norval Smith
[Creole Language Library 35] 2009
► pp. 317–344
Edited by Enoch O. Aboh and Norval Smith
[Creole Language Library 35] 2009
► pp. 317–344
Competition and selection
That’s all!
This paper demonstrates that the notion of simplicity as often used in creole studies is completely irrelevant to the understanding of the structure, as well as the genesis, of creole languages. This is because creole languages are linguistic hybrids in the biological sense. They emerge from the recombination of linguistic features from different languages. Given this perspective, it appears that what could be of some relevance to the study of language change is rather the notion of complexity. Within the framework of Competition and Selection as proposed in Mufwene (2001ff.), and adopted in this paper, creole languages develop opaque syntactic and semantic features. These could not have arisen solely in the context of their source languages. Accordingly, the common claim that creoles are simplified versions of their sources is a fallacy, just as it would be to claim in biology that hybrids are genetically simplified children of their parents.
Cited by
Cited by 21 other publications
Aboh, Enoch O.
2017. Population factors, multilingualism and the emergence of grammar. In Language Contact in Africa and the African Diaspora in the Americas [Creole Language Library, 53], ► pp. 23 ff. 
2019. Pourquoi parlons-nous tous un créole ? Le changement linguistique à travers le prisme de la créolistique. Faits de Langues 49:1 ► pp. 25 ff.
2019. Our creolized tongues. In Language Contact, Continuity and Change in the Genesis of Modern Hebrew [Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, 256], ► pp. 287 ff.
2020. Lessons From Neuro-(a)-Typical Brains: Universal Multilingualism, Code-Mixing, Recombination, and Executive Functions. Frontiers in Psychology 11
Aboh, Enoch O. & Michel DeGraff
2014. Some notes on bare noun phrases in Haitian Creole and Gùngbè: A transatlantic Sprachbund perspective. In The Sociolinguistics of Grammar [Studies in Language Companion Series, 154], ► pp. 203 ff.
Axelsen, Jacob Bock & Susanna Manrubia
2014. River density and landscape roughness are universal determinants of linguistic diversity. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 281:1784 ► pp. 20133029 ff.
Bakker, Peter
2017. Chapter 2. Key concepts in the history of creole studies. In Creole Studies – Phylogenetic Approaches, ► pp. 5 ff.
Baptista, Marlyse
2016. Creole formation and L2 acquisition. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 31:2 ► pp. 361 ff.
2017. Competition and selection in creole genesis. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 32:1 ► pp. 138 ff.
Goldshtein, Yonatan
2017. Chapter 9. The simple emerging from the complex. In Creole Studies – Phylogenetic Approaches, ► pp. 193 ff.
Herbert, Marjorie & Acrisio Pires
2020. Bilingualism and Code-Blending Among Deaf ASL-English Bilinguals. In New Trends in Language Acquisition Within the Generative Perspective [Studies in Theoretical Psycholinguistics, 49], ► pp. 99 ff.
Manfredi, Stefano & Fida Bizri
2019. Arabic-based pidgins and creoles. In The Routledge Handbook of Arabic Sociolinguistics, ► pp. 134 ff.
Mufwene, Salikoko S.
2010. SLA AND THE EMERGENCE OF CREOLES. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 32:3 ► pp. 359 ff.
2014. Language ecology, language evolution, and the actuation question. In The Sociolinguistics of Grammar [Studies in Language Companion Series, 154], ► pp. 13 ff.
2020. Genetic Creolistics as Part of Evolutionary Linguistics. In The Handbook of Historical Linguistics, ► pp. 393 ff.
O'Shannessy, Carmel
2021. Conventionalized creativity in the emergence of a mixed language – A case study of Light Warlpiri. In Variation Rolls the Dice [Contact Language Library, 59], ► pp. 81 ff.
O'Shannessy, Carmel & Lucinda Davidson
2020. Language Contact and Change through Child First Language Acquisition. In The Handbook of Language Contact, ► pp. 67 ff.
O’Shannessy, Carmel
2021. How ordinary child language acquisition processes can lead to the unusual outcome of a mixed language. International Journal of Bilingualism 25:2 ► pp. 458 ff.
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