Multilingualism in Linguistic History: Creolization and Indigenization

Mufwene, Salikoko S.

doi:10.1002/9780470756997.ch18

Cited by 9 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 30 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…<LINK "mak-r27"> While the endangerment of 'indigenous' languages may be read as potentially catastrophic by some linguists, from an Africanist perspective, the spread of the urban vernaculars reflects the extent to which African speakers are creatively adapting to new urban contexts. This underscores the importance of sociolinguistic frameworks which would be able to capture the nuances of the local contexts An attrition framework may not be relevant (Mufwene 2001(Mufwene , 2002(Mufwene , 2004. The issue of language <LINK "mak-r73"> endangerment raises fundamental problems about the underlying notions of language, and the relative importance being attached to speakers as opposed to the languages themselves.…”

Section: Lexicography In Applied Linguistics In Africamentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Western perspectives in applied linguistics in Africa

Makoni

Meinhof

2004

AILA

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The aim of this article is to analyze the nature of the historical and contemporary social contexts within which applied linguistics in Africa emerged, and is currently practiced. The article examines the challenges ‘local’ applied Linguistics in Africa is confronted with as it tries to amplify applied linguistic programs emanating from Europe and North America. The article argues that seemingly progressive applied linguistic projects interconnect in consolidating a western view of Africa in postcolonial Africa. In this way these projects end up mirroring the very theories which they seek to challenge.

show abstract

Section: Lexicography In Applied Linguistics In Africamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We would like to argue that the endangerment of language does not necessarily mean the endangerment of the speakers of those languages. Indeed the creative adaptation by urban African speakers may enhance rather than reduce their chances of survival (Mufwene 2004). …”

Section: Lexicography In Applied Linguistics In Africamentioning

confidence: 99%

Western perspectives in applied linguistics in Africa

Makoni

Meinhof

2004

AILA

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Therefore, the development of Creole languages cannot be reduced to some theoretically well‐defined set of sui generis developmental processes that would apply in the development of all Creoles and of Creoles only, or whose application would result in a special typological class (a ‘Creole’ typology) identifiable on strictly structural grounds. Along with Mufwene (2001: 138, 2004: 460, etc.) and others, I believe that, given all available evidence thus far, ‘creolization’ is a (too) loose cover term for a variety of sociohistorical processes that does not correspond to any well‐defined combination of linguistic developmental processes that would apply in exactly the formation of the languages known as ‘Creoles’.…”

Section: Background and Objectivesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Let's first clarify and problematize the sort of ‘Creole genesis’ definition that seems to implicitly underlie the claim in (1), and the unspoken corollary assumptions about the ontology of ‘Creole genesis’. Singler (1996: 196) tentatively defines Creole genesis as ‘the creation of a language different from the lexifier language’ while stressing, along with Mufwene (2001: 131) and many others, that ‘the principal agents of [Caribbean Creole] genesis would have been African‐born adults’ (but see Mufwene 2004 for a more nuanced position whereby both children and adults participate in Creole formation, as argued in DeGraff 2002).…”

Section: Whence ‘Creole Genesis’?mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Language Acquisition in Creolization and, Thus, Language Change: Some Cartesian‐ Uniformitarian Boundary Conditions

DeGraff¹

2009

Language and Linguist. Compass

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

1 Background and Objectives 1.1 Terminological and conceptual preliminaries: 'Creoles', 'Creole genesis', 'Creolization', etc. 1.2 Uniformitarian boundary conditions 1.3 Cartesian boundary conditions 1.4 Some landmarks for navigating through the many detours of this long essay 2 Whence 'Creole Genesis'?2.1 Making constructive use of the distinction and relation between 'I-languages' and 'E-languages' 2.1.1 The ontological priority of I-languages (and innovations therein) 2.1.2 'E-creoles' vs. 'I-creoles' 2.1.3 Findings about E-creoles and I-creoles complement each other 2.1.4 I-languages as 'linguistic fingerprints': no two idiolects are identical 2.1.5 Abrupt 'innovations' precede gradual 'spread' 2.2 Deconstructing 'gradualism' 2.2.1 Gradual 'change' in E-language reduces to abrupt steps in I-languages 2.2.2 Gradualism in acquisition, in creolization and in age-grading effects 2.2.3 The roles of children and adults vis-à-vis innovations and the spread thereof 2.3 On the formation of 'I-creoles' via parameter-(re)setting in I-languages -as in other cases of language change 2.3.1 'Poverty of the stimulus' arguments and 'the logical problem of language acquisition' 2. AbstractThis essay prescribes some broad 'Cartesian-Uniformitarian' boundary conditions for linguistic hypotheses about Creole formation. These conditions make constructive connections between Creole studies, historical linguistics and language-acquisition research. Here 'Cartesian' has a mentalist sense, as in Chomsky (1966): I consider the formation of so-called 'Creole' languages to be ultimately reducible to the creation, in certain sociohistorical contexts, of certain idiolects (i.e., individual internal, or 'I-', languages) in the minds of the 'first "Creole" speakers'. To avoid circularity, my use of the term 'Creole' in the phrase 'first "Creole" speakers' combines some of its original ethno-historical senses: I use the word 'Creole', in this particular context, to refer to the non-indigenous people of African or European descent that were born and raised in the colonial New World, in opposition to those that were born and raised in the Old Worlds of Africa and Europe. The term 'Uniformitarian' evokes Neogrammarian approaches to language change, as advocated, for example, by Osthoff and Brugmann (1878) and Paul (1890). It summarizes my fundamental working assumption that no sui generis or exceptional linguistic processes need to be postulated in order to explain the creation of these languages that have come to be labeled 'Creole': these languages were created by the same psycholinguistic mechanisms that are responsible for the creation of (I-)languages, and for linguistic diachronic patterns, everywhere else. Therefore, 'Creole' languages cannot be distinguished a priori from non-'Creole' languages on any linguistic-theoretical criteria -and 'Creole' languages can be genetically classified by the Comparative Method, on a par with non-'Creole' languages. Such assumptions go against popular claims about Creole genesis such as those ...

show abstract

Sla and the Emergence of Creoles

Mufwene

2010

Stud Second Lang Acquis

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Although the emergence of creoles presupposes naturalistic SLA, current SLA scholarship does not shed much light on the development of creoles with regard to the population-internal mechanisms that produce normalization and autonomization from the creoles’ lexifiers. This is largely due to the fact that research on SLA is focused on individuals rather than on communities of speakers producing their own separate norms, whereas genetic creolistics deals precisely with this particular aspect of language change and speciation. It is not enough to prove that transfer from the first to the second language is possible and can evolve into substrate influence on the emergent vernaculars—transfer is not ineluctable and varies from one learner to another. Additionally, how and why particular features of some speakers spread to a whole population (or to parts thereof), whereas others do not, must be accounted for. Consistent with colonial socioeconomic history, the gradual emergence of creoles suggests a complex evolution that cannot be accounted for with simplistic invocations of either interlanguage or relexification. This article presents limitations in the cross-pollination that has been expected from genetic creolistics and research on SLA.

show abstract

Multilingualism in Linguistic History: Creolization and Indigenization

Cited by 9 publications

References 30 publications

Western perspectives in applied linguistics in Africa

Western perspectives in applied linguistics in Africa

Language Acquisition in Creolization and, Thus, Language Change: Some Cartesian‐ Uniformitarian Boundary Conditions

Sla and the Emergence of Creoles

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About