The Role of Relexification in Creole Genesis

Abstract

This article describes the research program of Lefebvre, Lumsden, and their associates concerning the hypothesis that relexification plays a central role in creole genesis. The methodology of the program is presented along with a brief illustration of the data that has been used to test the hypothesis. A final section discusses the gratuitous attack on this program published in Singler (1996). On inspection, it turns out that some of Singler's objections are so vague as to be incoherent. Others are shown to derive from his unfortunate propensity to attribute "claims" to Lefebvre and Lumsden's research that are not made by the authors themselves and from his insistence that this research in particular should meet methodological standards that are obviously unreasonable. In fact, there is solid support for the hypothesis that relexification plays a central role in the genesis of creole languages.

Trans-Atlantic patterns: the relexification of locative constructions in Sranan

“…The latter phenomenon has been referred to in the literature (with varying degrees of overlap in meaning) by terms like "calquing" (Haugen 1950), "metatypy" (Ross 1996(Ross , 2001, "pattern transfer" (Heath 1984), "grammatical replication" (Heine and Kuteva 2003, 2010, "pattern replication" (Matras 2009), "rule borrowing" (Boretzky 1993), "apparent grammaticalization" (Bruyn 1996) and last but not least "relexification (of patterns)" (e.g. Lefebvre 1993Lefebvre , 1998Lumsden 1999;Migge 2003;Muysken 1981Muysken , 1997Voorhoeve 1973).…”

The morphologization of an Arabic creole

“…These persons were supported by and the agents of, the government of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, nominally under the control of the Ottoman empire. By 1870 Schweinfurth (1918), who surveyed the westerly quadrant of the southern Sudan (Mahmud 1983, Owens 1990 reports that there were trading camps established every fifteen miles. There had already by this time developed a quadripartite social organization in the southern Sudan.…”

“…First of all it should be clear from Section 1.3, as well as the descriptive Section 3, that one very important strand of creole studies, that which traces the influence of substratal languages on an emerging creole in terms of transfer (Siegel 2008) or relexification (Lefebvre 1999, Lumsden 1999, will be of little direct relevance. Whether one can or should interpret transfer theory as transfer from the superstrate language Arabic is a plausible perspective but not one I will examine here.…”