Kofi Yakpo

List of John Benjamins publications for which Kofi Yakpo plays a role.

Journal

This study analyzes the borrowing of Dutch reciprocal pronouns in a corpus of primary field data of Sranan, Sarnami, and Surinamese Javanese, three languages of Suriname. The expression of reciprocity in relevant African and Asian substrates of the languages under study is also presented and… read more
Yakpo, Kofi 2024 Chapter 6. Lost siblings: Areal forces in the divergence of Krio and PichiPredication in African Languages, Essegbey, James and Enoch O. Aboh (eds.), pp. 154–188 | Chapter
The two related English-lexifier creole languages Krio (Sierra Leone) and Pichi (Equatorial Guinea) have diverged due to differing contact ecologies since their split in the 19th century. Krio is spoken alongside its lexifier English as well as Atlantic and Mande adstrates. Pichi is spoken… read more
Yakpo, Kofi 2020 Sociolinguistic characteristics of the English-lexifier contact languages of West AfricaAdvances in Contact Linguistics: In honour of Pieter Muysken, Smith, Norval, Tonjes Veenstra and Enoch O. Aboh (eds.), pp. 61–84 | Chapter
This chapter provides a comparison of key sociolinguistic characteristics of Nigerian Pidgin, Cameroon Pidgin, Ghanaian Pidgin English, Pichi (Equatorial Guinea) and Krio (Sierra Leone). In the past few decades, these African English-lexifier contact languages (AECs) have seen an exponential… read more
This article provides a comparative analysis of the suppletive allomorphy of two personal pronouns in the five African English-lexifier Creoles (AECs) Krio (Sierra Leone), Pichi (Equatorial Guinea), Ghanaian Pidgin English, Nigerian Pidgin, and Cameroon Pidgin. The alternation of the 3sg object… read more
Yakpo, Kofi 2018 Negation in Pichi (Equatorial Guinea): The case for areal convergenceNegation and Negative Concord: The view from Creoles, Déprez, Viviane and Fabiola Henri (eds.), pp. 103–124 | Chapter
This chapter provides a detailed overview of negation in Pichi, the English-lexifier Creole spoken by the people of the island of Bioko (Equatorial Guinea). Pichi negation patterns align closely with areal negation patterns found across a broad swath of West Africa. Like the vast majority of… read more
The Afro-Caribbean English-lexifier Creoles (AECs) exhibit fascinating combinations of disparate typological characteristics. I present a model of post-formative (“post-creolization”) contact and change and provide a comprehensive inventory of contact constellations in Africa and the Caribbean.… read more
John Singler’s principle of the homogeneity of the substrate can account for the shape of locative structures in the Afro-Caribbean English-lexifier Creoles (AECs). These are modelled on typologically highly uniform substrate and adstrate structures across a broad swath of West and Central Africa.… read more
Yakpo, Kofi and Pieter Muysken 2014 Language change in a multiple contact setting: The case of Sarnami (Suriname)Pidgins and Creoles beyond Africa-Europe Encounters, Buchstaller, Isabelle, Anders Holmberg and Mohammad Almoaily (eds.), pp. 101–140 | Article
The South American nation of Suriname features a situation of multiple language contact in which speakers use various languages in changing constellations, and often simultaneously. Sarnami (Surinamese Hindustani) shows traces of koineization of various Indian languages, and the effects of… read more
Yakpo, Kofi 2012 Reiteration in Pichi: Forms, functions and areal-typological perspectives*The Morphosyntax of Reiteration in Creole and Non-Creole Languages, Aboh, Enoch O., Norval Smith and Anne Zribi-Hertz (eds.), pp. 251–284 | Article
Pichi, an Afro-Caribbean English-lexifier Creole spoken on the island of Bioko, Equatorial Guinea, features four types of reiteration. Amongst them, reduplication and repetition can be distinguished on formal and semantic grounds. Reduplication is a derivational operation consisting of… read more