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Competition and selection

That’s all!
  • Enoch O. Aboh
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Complex Processes in New Languages
This chapter is in the book Complex Processes in New Languages

Abstract

This paper demonstrates that the notion of simplicity as often used in creole studies is completely irrelevant to the understanding of the structure, as well as the genesis, of creole languages. This is because creole languages are linguistic hybrids in the biological sense. They emerge from the recombination of linguistic features from different languages. Given this perspective, it appears that what could be of some relevance to the study of language change is rather the notion of complexity. Within the framework of Competition and Selection as proposed in Mufwene (2001ff.), and adopted in this paper, creole languages develop opaque syntactic and semantic features. These could not have arisen solely in the context of their source languages. Accordingly, the common claim that creoles are simplified versions of their sources is a fallacy, just as it would be to claim in biology that hybrids are genetically simplified children of their parents.

Abstract

This paper demonstrates that the notion of simplicity as often used in creole studies is completely irrelevant to the understanding of the structure, as well as the genesis, of creole languages. This is because creole languages are linguistic hybrids in the biological sense. They emerge from the recombination of linguistic features from different languages. Given this perspective, it appears that what could be of some relevance to the study of language change is rather the notion of complexity. Within the framework of Competition and Selection as proposed in Mufwene (2001ff.), and adopted in this paper, creole languages develop opaque syntactic and semantic features. These could not have arisen solely in the context of their source languages. Accordingly, the common claim that creoles are simplified versions of their sources is a fallacy, just as it would be to claim in biology that hybrids are genetically simplified children of their parents.

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Acknowledgments vii
  4. Simplicity, simplification, complexity and complexification 1
  5. Part I. Morpho-phonology
  6. Initial vowel agglutination in the Gulf of Guinea creoles 29
  7. Simplification of a complex part of grammar or not? 51
  8. Reducing phonological complexity and grammatical opaqueness 75
  9. Part II. Verbal morphology
  10. Verb allomorphy and the syntax of phases 99
  11. The invisible hand in creole genesis 115
  12. Complexification or regularization of paradigms 159
  13. Part III. Nominals
  14. The Mauritian Creole determiner system 173
  15. Demonstratives in Afrikaans and Cape Dutch Pidgin 201
  16. Part IV. The selection of features in complex morphology
  17. Contact, complexification and change in Mindanao Chabacano structure 223
  18. Morphosyntactic finiteness as increased complexity in a mixed negation system 243
  19. Contact language formation in evolutionary terms 265
  20. Part V. Evaluating simplification and complexification
  21. Economy, innovation and degrees of complexity in creole formation 293
  22. Competition and selection 317
  23. Complexity and the age of languages 345
  24. Part VI. Postscript
  25. Restructuring, hybridization, and complexity in language evolution 367
  26. Language index 401
  27. Subject index 405
https://doi.org/10.1075/cll.35.20abo

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Acknowledgments vii
  4. Simplicity, simplification, complexity and complexification 1
  5. Part I. Morpho-phonology
  6. Initial vowel agglutination in the Gulf of Guinea creoles 29
  7. Simplification of a complex part of grammar or not? 51
  8. Reducing phonological complexity and grammatical opaqueness 75
  9. Part II. Verbal morphology
  10. Verb allomorphy and the syntax of phases 99
  11. The invisible hand in creole genesis 115
  12. Complexification or regularization of paradigms 159
  13. Part III. Nominals
  14. The Mauritian Creole determiner system 173
  15. Demonstratives in Afrikaans and Cape Dutch Pidgin 201
  16. Part IV. The selection of features in complex morphology
  17. Contact, complexification and change in Mindanao Chabacano structure 223
  18. Morphosyntactic finiteness as increased complexity in a mixed negation system 243
  19. Contact language formation in evolutionary terms 265
  20. Part V. Evaluating simplification and complexification
  21. Economy, innovation and degrees of complexity in creole formation 293
  22. Competition and selection 317
  23. Complexity and the age of languages 345
  24. Part VI. Postscript
  25. Restructuring, hybridization, and complexity in language evolution 367
  26. Language index 401
  27. Subject index 405
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