Inheritance and Innovation in a Colonial Language
Towards a Usage-Based Account of French Guianese Creole
William Jennings author Stefan Pfänder author
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Springer International Publishing AG
Published:4th Jun '19
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
This book takes a fresh approach to analysing how new languages are created, combining in-depth colonial history and empirical, usage-based linguistics. Focusing on a rarely studied language, the authors employ this dual methodology to reconstruct how multilingual individuals drew on their perception of Romance and West African languages to form French Guianese Creole. In doing so, they facilitate the application of a usage-based approach to language while simultaneously contributing significantly to the debate on creole origins. This innovative volume is sure to appeal to students and scholars of language history, creolisation and languages in contact.
Chapter 3 is published open access under a CC BY 4.0 license.
“The book is well written, the argumentation is usually clear, the authors have a clear theorical framework, they present a great deal of linguistic data … . This book is probably its best test to date. … In short, this is an interesting book, more historically informed than most works of its kind.” (Peter Bakker, Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages, Vol. 36 (2), 2021)
ISBN: 9783319871974
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: 454g
240 pages
Softcover reprint of the original 1st ed. 2018