Chapter 5
Creole typology I
Comparative overview of creole languages
This chapter provides an overview of structural properties of creole languages based on widely different languages and spoken in a broad geographic range. We discuss phonology, morphology, syntax and lexicon. Phonologically, creoles tend to have average properties. Creoles are generally not endowed with a rich morphological apparatus, for instance contextual inflection is largely absent, but compounding, reduplication and some derivational processes are common. Syntactically, creoles are quite diverse in their nominal structures. Preverbal markers are common in the verb phrase. A relatively fixed constituent order is found in the basic transitive sentence, mostly SVO. These creole properties are compared with a sample of non-creole languages. The results suggest that lexically, creoles seem to be less mixed than European languages.
Article outline
- 5.1Introduction
- 5.2Phonology
- 5.2.1Creole segmental inventories
- 5.2.2Creole phonotactics
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5.2.3Creole suprasegmentals
- 5.2.4Summary of Creole phonology
- 5.3Creole morphology
- 5.3.1Inflectional morphology
- 5.3.2Compounding and derivational morphology, reduplication, compounding, suppletion
- 5.3.3Creole morphology: summary
- 5.4Creole constituent order
- 5.4.1Sentential constituent order
- 5.4.2Verb phrase word order
- 5.4.3Serial verbs
- 5.4.4Ditransitive constructions
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5.4.5Noun phrase word order
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5.4.6Attributive possession
- 5.4.7Predicative possession
- 5.4.8Summary: Creole constituent order
- 5.5The creole lexicon
- 5.5.1The lexicon: Mixedness
- 5.5.2The lexicon: Quantity of roots and words
- 5.5.3Expansion of the lexicon
- 5.5.4Substrate
- 5.6Conclusions
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References
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