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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. 211–242

Building grammar in the early stages of development of French Creoles

Insights from Second Language Acquisition

This chapter contributes to the research on naturalistic adult Second Language Acquisition (SLA) and the understanding of the early stages of Creole grammar formation. The two sets of data discussed here relate to the acquisition of French as a second language (FSL), and the acquisition of French related Creoles (FRC). Studying developmental sequences in these two acquisition contexts helps understand the internal reconstruction of grammar development in FRC. Despite various methodological challenges (e.g., scarcity and the linguistic nature of the FRC data, how comparable FSL and FRC are, given their respective ecologies), this comparative approach suggests that the linguistic factors that produce pre-basic and basic varieties in SLA are equally at work in the development of creole languages.

Keywords: French related Creoles, French as a second language, basic variety, developmental sequence, internal reconstruction
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.SLA and Creole language development
    • 2.1Creole language development as SLA: Previous work
      • 2.1.1Mufwene and SLA research
      • 2.1.2Aboh’s rejection of Creoles as interlanguages
    • 2.2What is at stake in the current debate on Creole development and SLA?
  • 3.Analyzing early creolization in FRC
    • 3.1The external ecology of FRC
    • 3.2Early texts in FRC
    • 3.3A historical account of the development of FRC grammar
  • 4.Rationale
    • 4.1A functionalist account of the development of grammar in SLA
      • 4.1.1Stages in L2 acquisition
      • 4.1.2The pre -Basic Variety (pre-BV) in SLA: Properties and constraints
      • 4.1.3The Basic Variety (BV) in SLA: Properties and constraints
    • 4.2Grammatical categories and phrasal constraints in early SLA
    • 4.3A tertium comparationis: Comparing and contrasting early FSL and FRC data
    • 4.4Research questions
  • 5.The FSL informants
  • 6.Aspects of the development of early grammar in FSL
    • 6.1Verb forms at early stages of FSL
      • 6.1.1Basic verb forms: VØ and/or Ve
      • 6.1.2The semantics of VØ and Ve in pre-basic and basic learner varieties
      • 6.1.3Summary
    • 6.2Negation in FSL
    • 6.3 Il y a and se (“There is”) in FSL
      • 6.3.1Il y a (“There is”)
      • 6.3.2 C’est (“It is”)
      • 6.3.3Summary
  • 7.Aspects of the building of grammar in FRC
    • 7.1Verb forms in FRC
      • a.Atlantic Ocean FRC
      • b.Indian Ocean FRC
      • 7.1.1Summary
    • 7.2Negation in FRC
      • a.Atlantic Ocean FRC
      • b.Indian Ocean FRC
      • 7.2.1Summary
    • 7.3 Il y a and C’est (‘There is’) in FRC
      • a.Atlantic Ocean FRC
      • b.Indian Ocean FRC
      • 7.3.1Summary
  • 8.Discussion
  • Acknowledgement
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 12 October 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/coll.59.9ver
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