Inheritance and Innovation in a Colonial Language

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Inheritance and Innovation in a Colonial Language

Towards a Usage-Based Account of French Guianese Creole

Language: reference and general Language: history and general works Sociolinguistics Historical and comparative linguistics

Authors: William Jennings, Stefan Pfander

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Collection: Social Sciences

Language: English

Published by: Palgrave Macmillan

Published on: 21st December 2017

Format: LCP-protected ePub

Size: 358 Kb

ISBN: 9783319619521


Book Overview

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.

Open Access

Chapter 3 is published open access under a CC BY 4.0 license.

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