Linguistic simplicity and complexity : why do languages undress? / / by John H. McWhorter

• Autore: McWhorter John H
• Pubblicazione: Berlin ; ; New York, : De Gruyter Mouton, 2011
• Edizione: 1st ed.
• Descrizione fisica: 1 online resource (352 p.)
• Disciplina: 417/.22
• Soggetto topico: Complexity (Linguistics); Second language acquisition; Languages in contact
• Soggetto non controllato: Linguistics (Typologists), Sociolinguistics, Anthropological Linguistics, Language Contact, Dialects, Historical Linguistics
• Classificazione: EE 1650
• Note generali: Description based upon print version of record.
• Nota di bibliografia: Includes bibliographical references and index.
• Nota di contenuto: Front matter -- Acknowledgments -- Contents -- Abbreviations -- Introduction The creole litmus test and the NCSL challenge -- I Creole exceptionalism -- Introduction to Section I -- Chapter 1 The creole prototype revisited and revised -- Chapter 2 Comparative complexity: What the creolist learns from Cantonese and Kabardian -- Chapter 3 Reconstructing creole: Has "Creole Exceptionalism" been seriously engaged? -- II Creole complexity -- Introduction to Section II -- Chapter 4 Oh, nɔɔ!: Emergent pragmatic marking from a bewilderingly multifunctional word -- Chapter 5 Hither and thither in Saramaccan Creole -- Chapter 6 Complexity hotspot: The copula in Saramaccan -- III Exceptional language change elsewhere -- Introduction to Section III -- Chapter 7 Why does a language undress? The Riau Indonesian problem -- Chapter 8 Affixless in Austronesian: Why Flores is a puzzle and what to do about it -- Chapter 9 A brief for the Celtic hypothesis: English in Box 5? -- References -- Index
• Sommario/riassunto: In John McWhorter's Defining Creole anthology of 2005, his collected articles conveyed the following theme: His hypothesis that creole languages are definable not just in the sociohistorical sense, but in the grammatical sense. His publications since the 1990's have argued that all languages of the world that lack a certain three traits together are creoles (i.e. born as pidgins a few hundred years ago and fleshed out into real languages). He also argued that in light of their pidgin birth, such languages are less grammatically complex than others, as the result of their recent birth as pidgins. These two claims have been highly controversial among creolists as well as other linguists. In this volume, Linguistic Simplicity and Complexity, McWhorter gathers articles he has written since then, in the wake of responses from a wide range of creolists and linguists. These articles represent a considerable divergence in direction from his earlier work.
• Titolo autorizzato: Linguistic simplicity and complexity
• ISBN: 1-283-39634-3; 9786613396341; 1-934078-40-9
• Formato: Materiale a stampa
• Livello bibliografico: Monografia
• Lingua di pubblicazione: Inglese
• Record Nr.: 9910818326903321
• Lo trovi qui: Univ. Federico II
• Serie: Language contact and bilingualism ; ; 1.