Linguistic Simplicity and Complexity
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John H. McWhorter
About this book
In John McWhorter’s Defining Creole anthology of 2005, his collected articles conveyed the following theme: His hypothesis that creole languages are definable not just in the sociohistorical sense, but in the grammatical sense. His publications since the 1990s have argued that all languages of the world that lack a certain three traits together are creoles (i.e. born as pidgins a few hundred years ago and fleshed out into real languages). He also argued that in light of their pidgin birth, such languages are less grammatically complex than others, as the result of their recent birth as pidgins. These two claims have been highly controversial among creolists as well as other linguists.
In this volume, Linguistic Simplicity and Complexity, McWhorter gathers articles he has written since then, in the wake of responses from a wide range of creolists and linguists. These articles represent a considerable divergence in direction from his earlier work.
- Written by a leading expert on the study of creole languages who is the prominent author of several books (including a New York Times bestseller) and of numerous articles in major US newspapers
- The volume takes a unique approach by presenting the author's response to the reactions of fellow researchers to his controversial hypotheses about pidgins and creoles from the 1990s and 2000s
- The book represents cutting-edge research in language contact studies by one of the youngest and most prominent scientists working in the field today
Author / Editor information
John H. McWhorter, New York, USA
Supplementary Materials
Topics
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Frontmatter
I -
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Acknowledgments
V -
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Contents
VII -
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Abbreviations
IX -
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Introduction The creole litmus test and the NCSL challenge
1 - I Creole exceptionalism
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Introduction to Section I
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Chapter 1 The creole prototype revisited and revised
29 -
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Chapter 2 Comparative complexity: What the creolist learns from Cantonese and Kabardian
63 -
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Chapter 3 Reconstructing creole: Has “Creole Exceptionalism” been seriously engaged?
103 - II Creole complexity
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Introduction to Section II
121 -
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Chapter 4 Oh, nɔɔ!: Emergent pragmatic marking from a bewilderingly multifunctional word
125 -
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Chapter 5 Hither and thither in Saramaccan Creole
149 -
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Chapter 6 Complexity hotspot: The copula in Saramaccan
183 - III Exceptional language change elsewhere
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Introduction to Section III
203 -
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Chapter 7 Why does a language undress? The Riau Indonesian problem
207 -
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Chapter 8 Affixless in Austronesian: Why Flores is a puzzle and what to do about it
223 -
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Chapter 9 A brief for the Celtic hypothesis: English in Box 5?
261 -
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References
297 -
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Index
319
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