Article published In: Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages
Vol. 37:1 (2022) ► pp.189–203
Guest Column
Empiricism or imperialism
The science of Creole Exceptionalism
Published online: 23 March 2022
https://doi.org/10.1075/jpcl.00092.mea
https://doi.org/10.1075/jpcl.00092.mea
Article outline
- Introduction
- Do Creoles constitute a separate typological class?
- Are Creoles simpler than non-Creoles?
- Concluding remarks
References
References (69)
Aboh, Enoch. 2016. Creole
distinctiveness: A dead end. Journal of Pidgin and Creole
Languages 311.400–18.
Aboh, Enoch & Michel DeGraff. 2016. A
null theory of Creole formation based on Universal Grammar. The Oxford Handbook of Universal
Grammar, ed. by I. Roberts, 401–58. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
. 2015. Dimensions
of morphological complexity. Understanding and Measuring Morphological
Complexity, ed. by M. Baerman, D. Brown & G. Corbett, 11–26. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ansaldo, Umberto. 2017. Creole
complexity in sociolinguistic perspective. Language
Sciences 601.26–35.
Ansaldo, Umberto & Stephen Matthews. 2007. Deconstructing
creole: the rationale. Deconstructing Creole, ed.
by U. Ansaldo, S. Matthews & L. Lim, 1–18. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Ansaldo, Umberto, Stephen Matthews & Lisa Lim (eds) 2007. Deconstructing
Creole. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Baerman, Matthew, Dunstan Brown & Greville Corbett. 2015. What
is morphological complexity? Understanding and Measuring Morphological
Complexity, ed. by M. Baerman, D. Brown & G. Corbett, 3–10. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bakker, Peter. 2014. Creolistics:
Back to square one? Journal of Pidgin and Creole
Languages 291.177–94.
Bakker, Peter, Finn Borchsenius, Carsten Levisen & Eeva Sippola. 2017. Creole
Studies – Phylogenetic Approaches Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Bakker, Peter, Aymeric Daval-Markussen, Mikael Parkvall & Ingo Plag. 2011. Creoles
are typologically distinct from non-creoles. Journal of Pidgin and Creole
Languages 261.5–42.
Blasi, DamiÁn, Susanne Michaelis & Martin Haspelmath. 2017. Grammars
are robustly transmitted even during the emergence of creole languages. Nature Human Behaviour
(Letters) 11.723–29.
Booij, Geert. 1996. Inherent
versus contextual inflection and the split morphology hypothesis. Yearbook of
Morphology 1995.1–16.
Bowern, Claire. 2010. Fieldwork
in language contact situations. The Handbook of Language Contact, ed.
by R. Hickey, 340–57. Oxford: Blackwell.
Comrie, Bernard. 2009. Inflectional
morphology and language contact, with special reference to mixed languages. Language Contact
and Contact Languages, ed. by P. Siemund & N. Kintama, 15–32. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Daval-Markussen, Aymeric. 2013. First
steps towards a typological profile of creoles. Acta Linguistica
Hafniensia 451.274–95.
Daval-Markussen, Aymeric, Kristoffer Friis Bøegh & Peter Bakker. 2017. West
African languages and creoles worldwide. Creole Studies – Phylogenetic
Approaches, ed. by P. Bakker, F. Borchsenius, C. Levisen & E. Sippola, 141–74. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
DeGraff, Michel. 2001a. Morphology
in creole genesis: Linguistics and ideology’. Ken Hale: A life in language, ed. by M. Kenstowicz, 53–121. Cambridge (Mass.): MIT Press.
. 2001b. On
the origin of Creoles: A Cartesian critique of ‘neo’ Darwinian linguistics. Linguistic
Typology 2/3.213–310.
. 2005. Linguists’
most dangerous myth: The fallacy of Creole Exceptionalism. Language in
Society 341.533–91.
DeGraff, Michel, Robert Berwick & Trevor Bass. 2013. Modern
phylogenetics and Creole evolution: Creole family values.
Dench, Alan. 1998. Pidgin
Ngurlama: An Indigenous contact language in north western Australia. Journal of Pidgin and
Creole Languages 131.1–61.
Dunn, Michael, Angela Terrill, Ger Reesink, Robert A. Foley & Stephen C. Levinson. 2005. Structural
phylogenetics and the reconstruction of ancient language
history. Science 3091.2072–75.
Fon Sing, Guillaume. 2017. Creoles
are not typologically distinct from non-Creoles. Language
Ecology 11.44–74.
Gardani, Francesco. 2008. Borrowing
of Inflectional Morphemes in Language
Contact Frankfurt: Peter Lang.
Gardani, Francesco, Peter Arkadiev & Nino Amiridze (eds) 2015. Borrowed
Morphology. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Garrett, Paul. 2009. Contact
languages as “endangered languages”: What is there to lose? Journal of Pidgin and Creole
Languages 211.175–90.
Gil, David. 2014. Sign
languages, creoles, and the development of predication. Measuring Grammatical
Complexity, ed. by F. Newmeyer & L. Preston. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Haspelmath, Martin, Matthew Dryer, David Gil & Bernard Comrie. 2005. The
World Atlas of Linguistic Structures Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hawkins, Julie, Colin Hughes & Robert Scotland. 1997. Primary
homology assessment, characters and character
states. Cladistics 121.275–83.
Holm, John & Peter Patrick. 2007. Comparative
Creole Syntax: Parallel Outlines of 18 Creole
Grammars London: Battlebridge Publications.
Kihm, Alain. 2003. Inflectional
categories in creole languages. Phonology and Morphology of Creole
Languages, ed. by I. Plag, 333–64. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag.
Kouwenberg, Sylvia. 2010a. Creole
studies and linguistic typology: Part 1. Journal of Pidgin and Creole
languages 251.173–86.
. 2010b. Creole
studies and linguistic typology: Part 2. Journal of Pidgin and Creole
Languages 251.359–80.
Lefebvre, Claire. 1998. Creole
Genesis and the Acquisition of grammar: The Case of Haitian
Creole Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lupyan, Gary & Rick Dale. 2010. Language
structure is partly determined by social structure. PLoS ONE
5.
Markey, Thomas. 1982. Afrikaans:
Creole or non-creole. Zeitschrift fuer Dialektogie und
Linguistik 21.169–207.
Matras, Yaron. 2001. Language
Contact. Handbook of Pragmatics, ed. by J. Verschueren, J.-O. Ostman, J. Blommaert & C. Bulcaen, 1–14. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Mcwhorter, John. 1998. Identifying
the creole prototype: Vindicating a typological
claim. Language 741.788–818.
Meakins, Felicity. 2019. Morphology. Language
Contact: An International Handbook, ed. by J. Darquennes, J. Salmons & W. Vandenbussche, 63–75. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Meakins, Felicity, Jennifer Green & Myfany Turpin. 2018. Understanding
Linguistic
Fieldwork London: Routledge.
Meakins, Felicity, Xia Hua, Cassandra Algy & Lindell Bromham. 2019. The
birth of a new language does not favour
simplification. Language 951.294–332.
Meakins, Felicity & Sasha Wilmoth. 2020. Overabundance
resulting from language contact: Complex cell-mates in Gurindji Kriol. The Complexities of
Morphology, ed. by P. Arkadiev & F. Gardani, 81–104. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Meyerhoff, Miriam. 2008. Empirical
problems with domain-based notions of “simple”. Social Lives in Language: Celebrating the Work
of Gillian Sankoff, ed. by M. Meyerhoff & N. Nagy, 327–55. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Miestamo, Matti, Kaius SinnemÄki & Faius Karlsson (eds) 2008. Language
Complexity: Typology, Contact, Change. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Mufwene, Salikoko. 1997. Kitúba. Contact
Languages: A Wider Perspective, ed. by S. G. Thomason, 173–208. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
. 2000. Creolization
is a social, not a structural, process. Degrees of Restructuring in Creole
Languages, ed. by I. Neumann-Holzschuh & E. Schneider, 65–83. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Muysken, Pieter. 1988. Are
creoles are special type of language. Linguistics: The Cambridge
Survey, ed. by F. Newmeyer, 285–301. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Myers-Scotton, Carol. 2002. Contact
Linguistics: Bilingual Encounters and Grammatical Outcomes Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press.
Parkvall, Mikael. 2008. The
simplicity of creoles in cross-linguistic perspective. Language Complexity: Typology, Contact,
Change, ed. by M. Miestamo, K. Sinnemäki & F. Karlsson, 265–85. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Parkvall, Mikael, Peter Bakker & John Mcwhorter. 2018. Creoles
and sociolinguistic complexity: Response to Ansaldo. Language
Sciences 661.226–33.
Plag, Ingo. 2003a. Introduction:
The morphology of creole languages. Yearbook of Morphology 2002, ed.
by G. Booij & J. van Marle, 1–2. Alphen aan den Rijn, Netherlands: Kluwer.
Reesink, Ger, Ruth Singer & Michael Dunn. 2009. Explaining
the linguistic diversity of Sahul using population models. PLOS
Biology 7.e1000241.
Roberts, Sarah & Joan Bresnan. 2008. Retained
inflectional morphology in pidgins: A typological study. Linguistic
Typology 121.269–302.
Sapir, Edward. 1921. Language:
An Introduction to the Study of Speech New York: Harcourt Brace and company.
Siegel, Jeff. 2004. Morphological
simplicity in Pidgins and Creoles. Journal of Pidgin and Creole
Languages 191.139–62.
SkirgÅrd, Hedvig. 2020. Multilevel
Dynamics of Language Diversity in
Oceania. PhD Dissertation Canberra: Australian National University.
Taylor, Douglas. 1971. Grammatical
and lexical affinities of Creoles. Pidginization and Creolization of
Languages, ed. by D. Hymes, 293–96. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Cited by (8)
Cited by eight other publications
Bakker, Peter
Bisnath, Felicia, Hannah Lutzenberger, Marah Jaraisy, Rehana Omardeen & Adam Schembri
Rüter, Lara & Ingo Plag
Burgess, Danielle, Joy P. G. Peltier, Sophia Eakins, Wilkinson Daniel Wong Gonzales, Alicia Stevers, Ariana Bancu, Felicia Bisnath, Moira Saltzman & Marlyse Baptista
Hayden, Brian
Kainz, Emma
Meakins, Felicity
2023. Quantifying the language dynamics of bilingual communities. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism 13:1 ► pp. 76 ff.
Meakins, Felicity
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 13 november 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.
