It has long been observed that the modern European languages use more function words compared to earlier inflectional patterns, and this trend seems to have increased even further in creoles and other non-standard varieties. Here we make two arguments: First, we note that the terms synthetic and analytic are based on the “word” concept, which is not well-defined, so that these concepts cannot be used in a synchronic typology. But we can define a notion of “analyticization”, i.e. the replacement of an earlier pattern by a new, more elaborate pattern based on lexical or concrete items. Second, we observe that such analyticizations are particularly common in creole languages (when viewed as continuations of their lexifiers), and we hypothesize that this is due to the extra transparency that is required in situations with many adult second-language speakers.
Bybee, Joan. 2006. “Language Change and Universals.” In Linguistic Universals, ed. by Ricardo Mairal and Juana Gil, 179–194. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Carlier, Anne, Walter De Mulder and Béatrice Lamiroy. 2012. “Introduction: The Pace of Grammaticalization in a Typological Perspective.” Folia Linguistica 46(2). 287–301.
Greenberg, Joseph H.1960. “A Quantitative Approach to the Morphological Typology of Language.” International Journal of American Linguistics 26(3). 178–194.
Haspelmath, Martin. 1999. “Why is Grammaticalization Irreversible?Linguistics 37(6). 1043–1068.
Haspelmath, Martin. 2000. “The Relevance of Extravagance: A Reply to Bart Geurts.” Linguistics 38(4). 789–798.
Haspelmath, Martin. 2010. “Comparative Concepts and Descriptive Categories in Crosslinguistic Studies.” Language 86(3). 663–687.
Haspelmath, Martin. 2011. “The Indeterminacy of Word Segmentation and the Nature of Morphology and Syntax.” Folia Linguistica 45(1). 31–80.
Haspelmath, Martin. 2017. “Revisiting the Anasynthetic Spiral.” In Grammaticalization and Language Typology, ed. by Bernd Heine and Heiko Narrog. (to appear)
Haspelmath, Martin, Matthew S. Dryer, David Gil and Bernard Comrie. 2005. The World Atlas of Language Structures. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Heine, Bernd and Tania Kuteva. 2006. The Changing Languages of Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hinrichs, Uwe. 2004. “Ist das Bulgarische kreolisiertes Altbulgarisch?” In Die europäischen Sprachen auf dem Wege zum analytischen Sprachtyp, ed. by Uwe Hinrichs, 231–242. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.
Holm, John. 2004. Languages in Contact: The Partial Restructuring of Vernaculars. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hopper, Paul J., and Elizabeth C. Traugott. 1993. Grammaticalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Jespersen, Otto. 1894. Progress in Language: With Special Reference to English.
Kortmann, Bernd and Benedikt Szmrecsanyi. 2011. “Parameters of Morphosyntactic Variation in World Englishes: Prospects and Limitations of Searching for Universals.” In Linguistic Universals and Language Variation, ed. by Peter Siemund, 264–290. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.
Lahiri, Aditi2000. “Hierarchical Restructuring in the Creation of Verbal Morphology in Bengali and Germanic: Evidence from Phonology.” In Analogy, Levelling, Markedness: Principles of Change in Phonology and Morphology, ed. by Aditi Lahiri, 71–123. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Lehmann, Christian. 1985. “Grammaticalization: Synchronic Variation and Diachronic Change.” Lingua e Stile 20(3). 303–318.
Lehmann, Christian. 2015[1982]. Thoughts on Grammaticalization. 3rd edition. Berlin: Language Science Press.
Leufkens, Sterre. 2013. “The Transparency of Creoles.” Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 28(2). 323–362.
Lupyan, G. and R. Dale. 2010. “Language Structure Is Partly Determined by Social Structure.” PLoS ONE 5(1). e8559.
Matthews, P. H.1997. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
McWhorter, John H.2001. “The Worlds Simplest Grammars Are Creole Grammars.” Linguistic Typology 5(2–3). 125–166.
McWhorter, John H.2007. Language Interrupted: Signs of Non-Native Acquisition in Standard Language Grammars. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Michaelis, Susanne. 2015. “Inflectional Complexity in Creole Languages: Evidence from the Atlas of Pidgin and Creole Language Structures.” Paper presented at the SLE conference in Leiden, September 2015.
Michaelis, Susanne, Philippe Maurer, Martin Haspelmath and Magnus Huber (eds.). 2013. The Atlas of Pidgin and Creole Language Structures. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (apics-inline.info)
Mufwene, Salikoko S.2001. The Ecology of Language Evolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Plag, Ingo. 2002. “On the Role of Grammaticalization in Creolization.” In Pidgin and Creole Linguistics in the 21st Century, ed. by Glenn Gilbert. New York: Peter Lang.
Reinöhl, Uta and Himmelmann, Nikolaus. 2017. “ “Renewal”: A Figure of Speech or a Process Sui Generis?” Manuscript, University of Cologne.
Sapir, Edward. 1921. Language: An Introduction to the Study of Speech. New York: Harcourt Brace.
Schiering, René, Balthasar Bickel and Kristine A. Hildebrandt. 2010. “The Prosodic Word Is Not Universal, but Emergent.” Journal of Linguistics 46(3). 657–709.
Schlegel, August Wilhelm von. 1818. Observations sur la langue et la littérature provençales. Paris: Librairie grecque-latine-allemande.
Schleicher, August. 1860. Compendium der vergleichenden Grammatik der indogermanischen Sprachen. Weimar: Böhlau.
Seuren, Pieter and Herman Wekker. 1986. “Semantic Transparency as a Factor in Creole Genesis.” In Substrata Versus Universals in Creole Genesis, ed. by Pieter Muysken and Norval Smith, 57–70. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Siegel, Jeff. 2008. The Emergence of Pidgin and Creole Languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Szmrecsanyi, Benedikt. 2009. “Typological Parameters of Intralingual Variability: Grammatical Analyticity Versus Syntheticity in Varieties of English.” Language Variation and Change 21(03). 319–353.
Thomason, Sarah Grey and Terrence Kaufman. 1988. Language Contact, Creolization, and Genetic Linguistics. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Trudgill, Peter. 2011. Sociolinguistic Typology: Social Determinants of Linguistic Complexity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
WALS: Haspelmathet al. (2005).
Cited by (46)
Cited by 46 other publications
Bülow, Lars & Philip C. Vergeiner
2024. Explaining morpho-syntactic variation and change: the case of subjunctive II in the Bavarian dialects of Austria. Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft 43:1 ► pp. 147 ff.
De Knop, Sabine
2024. The Integration of Frequency Dimensions and Lexicalisation Preferences in Contrastive Analysis. In Constructional and Cognitive Explorations of Contrastive Linguistics, ► pp. 89 ff.
Olguín Martínez, Jesus
2024. The interaction of irrealis markers and blocking effects in counterfactual conditionals: theoretical implications. Linguistic Typology
Pastor, Dorian, Agnes Korn & Christian Rammer
2024. Colloquial Persian: Towards a New Rise of Simple Verbs?1. Transactions of the Philological Society 122:1 ► pp. 21 ff.
Sung, Hakyung, Sooyeon Cho & Kristopher Kyle
2024. An Empirical Evaluation of Lexical Diversity Indices in L2 Korean Writing Assessment. Language Assessment Quarterly 21:2 ► pp. 159 ff.
Suárez-Gómez, Cristina & Cristhian Tomàs-Vidal
2024. Adjective comparison in African varieties of English. Research in Corpus Linguistics 12:1 ► pp. 89 ff.
2023. One-Class Learning for AI-Generated Essay Detection. Applied Sciences 13:13 ► pp. 7901 ff.
Uglev, Viktor & Oleg Sychev
2023. Synthesizing Didactic Explanatory Texts in Intelligent Tutoring Systems Based on the Information in Cognitive Maps. In Augmented Intelligence and Intelligent Tutoring Systems [Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 13891], ► pp. 233 ff.
Zhou, Chenliang & Haitao Liu
2023. Lexical diversity as a lens into the classification of Slavic languages: A quantitative typology perspective. Digital Scholarship in the Humanities 38:3 ► pp. 1359 ff.
De Smet, Isabeau, Laura Rosseel & Freek Van de Velde
2022. Are non-native speakers the drivers of morphological simplification? A Wug experiment on the Dutch past tense system. Journal of Language Evolution 7:2 ► pp. 224 ff.
Karaj, David M.
2022. Typological Change Across Registers – the Case of Malaysian. <i>WORD</i> 68:4 ► pp. 395 ff.
Kuzmina, A.A., M.A. Lifshits & V.Y. Kostenko
2022. Methods of Computational Linguistics and Natural Language Processing: Opportunities and Limitations for Personality Psychology Tasks. Journal of Modern Foreign Psychology 11:1 ► pp. 104 ff.
Hausser, Roland
2021. Database Semantics. Cadernos de Linguística 2:1 ► pp. e382 ff.
2020. A Comparative Study of Using Bag-of-Words and Word-Embedding Attributes in the Spoiler Classification of English and Thai Text. In Applied Computing and Information Technology [Studies in Computational Intelligence, 847], ► pp. 81 ff.
Smith, John Charles
2020. Old, Middle, and Modern: Temporality and Typology. In Dynamics of Language Changes, ► pp. 183 ff.
Szmrecsanyi, Benedikt & Laura Rosseel
2020. English Corpus Linguistics. In The Handbook of English Linguistics, ► pp. 29 ff.
Tak, Jin-young
2020. Is Unish Moving toward Becoming a More Analytic Language?: With
Special Reference to Morphological Changes. Journal of Universal Language 21:2 ► pp. 147 ff.
Tantucci, Vittorio & Matteo Di Cristofaro
2020. Entrenchment inhibition: Constructional change and repetitive behaviour can be in competition with large-scale “recompositional” creativity. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory 16:3 ► pp. 547 ff.
Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y.
2018. Areal diffusion and the limits of grammaticalization. In Grammaticalization from a Typological Perspective, ► pp. 337 ff.
Ansaldo, Umberto, Walter Bisang & Pui Yiu Szeto
2018. Grammaticalization in isolating languages and the notion of complexity. In Grammaticalization from a Typological Perspective, ► pp. 219 ff.
Arkadiev, Peter & Timur Maisak
2018. Grammaticalization in the North Caucasian languages. In Grammaticalization from a Typological Perspective, ► pp. 116 ff.
Coupe, Alexander R.
2018. Grammaticalization processes in the languages of South Asia. In Grammaticalization from a Typological Perspective, ► pp. 189 ff.
Dahl, Östen
2018. Grammaticalization in the languages of Europe. In Grammaticalization from a Typological Perspective, ► pp. 79 ff.
Esseesy, Mohssen
2018. Typological features of grammaticalization in Semitic. In Grammaticalization from a Typological Perspective, ► pp. 35 ff.
Haig, Geoffrey
2018. Grammaticalization and inflectionalization in Iranian. In Grammaticalization from a Typological Perspective, ► pp. 57 ff.
Haspelmath, Martin
2018. Revisiting the anasynthetic spiral. In Grammaticalization from a Typological Perspective, ► pp. 97 ff.
Heine, Bernd
2018. Grammaticalization in Africa. In Grammaticalization from a Typological Perspective, ► pp. 16 ff.
Johanson, Lars & Éva Á. Csató
2018. Grammaticalization in Turkic. In Grammaticalization from a Typological Perspective, ► pp. 146 ff.
Klamer, Marian
2018. Typology and grammaticalization in the Papuan languages of Timor, Alor, and Pantar. In Grammaticalization from a Typological Perspective, ► pp. 235 ff.
McWhorter, John H.
2018. Is grammaticalization in creoles different?. In Grammaticalization from a Typological Perspective, ► pp. 394 ff.
Mithun, Marianne
2018. Shaping typology through grammaticalization: North America. In Grammaticalization from a Typological Perspective, ► pp. 309 ff.
Moyse-Faurie, Claire
2018. Grammaticalization in Oceanic languages. In Grammaticalization from a Typological Perspective, ► pp. 282 ff.
Mushin, Ilana
2018. Grammaticalization and typology in Australian Aboriginal languages. In Grammaticalization from a Typological Perspective, ► pp. 263 ff.
Heiko Narrog & Bernd Heine
2018. Introduction. In Grammaticalization from a Typological Perspective, ► pp. 1 ff.
Heiko Narrog & Bernd Heine
2018. Grammaticalization from a Typological Perspective,
Narrog, Heiko, Seongha Rhee & John Whitman
2018. Grammaticalization in Japanese and Korean. In Grammaticalization from a Typological Perspective, ► pp. 166 ff.
Smith, Hiram L.
2018. Addressing questions of grammaticalization in creoles. In Grammaticalization from a Typological Perspective, ► pp. 372 ff.
Zariquiey, Roberto
2018. Diachronic stories of body-part nouns in some language families of South America. In Grammaticalization from a Typological Perspective, ► pp. 350 ff.
Blasi, Damián E., Susanne Maria Michaelis & Martin Haspelmath
2017. Grammars are robustly transmitted even during the emergence of creole languages. Nature Human Behaviour 1:10 ► pp. 723 ff.
2018. List of abbreviations. In Grammaticalization from a Typological Perspective, ► pp. ix ff.
[no author supplied]
2018. Copyright Page. In Grammaticalization from a Typological Perspective, ► pp. iv ff.
[no author supplied]
2018. Series preface. In Grammaticalization from a Typological Perspective, ► pp. vii ff.
[no author supplied]
2018. Preface. In Grammaticalization from a Typological Perspective, ► pp. viii ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 28 december 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.