Creoles and language typology

The distinct social origin of creoles, along with pidgins and mixed languages, makes them a source of interest to typologists, given their interest in the cross-linguistic distribution of structural feature values. Typologists, like creolists before them, are interested in issues such as whether creoles have a distinct typological profile and how creoles have been shaped by the processes that led to their formation. However, typologists can also provide important tools to help creolists in answering these questions, in particular enabling them to see properties of creole languages against the general background of cross-linguistic variation in the world. This article examines a number of phenomena in creole languages from a typological perspective, in particular issues of simplification, substrate influence, and superstrate influence.