Full Description
Uniformitarianism is the widely held assumption that, in languages, changes in the past must have been subject to the same constraints as changes in the present. This volume, led by two of the most eminent scholars in language contact, brings together an international team of authors to shed new light on Uniformitarianism in historical linguistics. Applying the Uniformitarian Principle to creole and pidgin languages, as well as other languages, the chapters show that, contrary to the received doctrine, the former group of languages did not emerge in an exceptional way. Covering a typologically and geographically broad range of languages, and focusing on different contact ecologies in Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean, the book also dispels common misconceptions about what Uniformitarianism is. It shows how similar processes in different ecosystems result in different linguistic patterns, which don't require exceptional linguistic explanations in terms of creolization, pidginization, simplification, or incomplete acquisition.
Contents
1. Uniformitarianism in Language Speciation: An Introduction; Salikoko S. Mufwene and Enoch O. Aboh; 2. The Emergence of Creoles and Pidgins: Some Ecological Perspectives; Salikoko S. Mufwene; 3. Brokers on the Move: Encounters between Europeans and Africans in the Portuguese Seaborne Empire (1425-1521); Konstanze Jungbluth; 4. Why no French Creole nor Pidgin Developed in West Africa: An Ethnographic-Historical Account of Population Contacts and Language Practices from the Early 17th to the Early 20th Centuries; Cécile B. Vigouroux; 5. The Ecology of Language Evolution: A Comparative View of Jewish Languages and Creoles; Ilil Baum; 6. Another Piece of the Puzzle: Afro-Veracruz Spanish and the Spanish Creole Debate; Sandro Sessarego; 7. Uniformitarianism and the Social Ecology of Anguilla's Homestead Period; Don E. Walicek; 8. A Uniformitarian Lens on Creole Languages: On Universal Creolization; Marlyse Baptista; 9. The Evolution of Copula Systems in West African Pidgin: A Uniformitarian Perspective; Kofi Yakpo; 10. Determiner-Noun Fusion in Haitian Creole: A Statistical Learning Perspective; Chi Dat Lam (Daniel); 11. Uniformitarianism and the Emergence of the Brazilian Variety of Portuguese; Esmeralda Vailati Negrão and Evani Viotti; 12. Recombination, Feature Pool, and Population Structure: Three Factors Bearing on 'Grammaticalization'; Enoch O. Aboh; Subject Index; Language Index; Author Index.
