A Comprehensive and Comparative Grammar of English Creoles

A Comprehensive and Comparative Grammar of English Creoles
Author: Anand Syea
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 325
Release: 2023-11-27
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1000996824

A Comprehensive and Comparative Grammar of English Creoles provides a detailed, comprehensive description of the morphology, grammar, and syntax of a selected number of English creoles, including those spoken on both sides of the Atlantic and the Pacific. This book: • Focuses on a number of traditional grammatical categories to provide a comprehensive description and discussion of these languages; • Identifies not only how creoles differ from their lexifier, but also how they differ from one another; • Provides effective comparative descriptions to enable an insightful understanding of language evolution. This book will be ideal supplementary reading for students and researchers of linguistics, and will particularly appeal to those with an interest in descriptive linguistics, historical linguistics, World Englishes, contact and creole linguistics, and language policy and planning.

French Creoles

French Creoles
Author: Anand Syea
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 520
Release: 2017-01-06
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 131538857X

French Creoles: A Comprehensive and Comparative Grammar is the first complete reference to present the morphology, grammar and syntax of a representative selection of French Creoles in one volume. The book is organised to promote a thorough understanding of the grammar of French Creoles and presents its complexities in a concise and readable form. An extensive index, cross-referencing and a generous use of headings provides readers with immediate access to the information they require. The varieties included within the volume provide a representative collection of French Creoles from the Indian, Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, including: Mauritian Creole, Seychelles Creole, Reunion Creole (where relevant), Haitian Creole, Martinique Creole, Guadeloupe Creole, Guyanese French Creole, Karipuna, St. Lucia Creole, Louisiana Creole and Tayo. By providing a comprehensive description of a range of French Creoles in a clear and non-technical manner, this grammar is the ideal reference for all linguists and researchers with an interest in Creole studies and in French, descriptive and historical linguistics.

A grammar of Pichi

A grammar of Pichi
Author: Kofi Yakpo
Publisher: Language Science Press
Total Pages: 645
Release:
Genre:
ISBN: 3961101337

Pichi is an Afro-Caribbean English-lexifier Creole spoken on the island of Bioko, Equatorial Guinea. It is an offshoot of 19th century Krio (Sierra Leone) and shares many characteristics with West African relatives like Nigerian Pidgin, Cameroon Pidgin, and Ghanaian Pidgin English, as well as with the English-lexifier creoles of the insular and continental Caribbean. This comprehensive description presents a detailed analysis of the grammar and phonology of Pichi. It also includes a collection of texts and wordlists. Pichi features a nominative-accusative alignment, SVO word order, adjective-noun order, prenominal determiners, and prepositions. The language has a seven-vowel system and twenty-two consonant phonemes. Pichi has a two-tone system with tonal minimal pairs, morphological tone, and tonal processes. The morphological structure is largely isolating. Pichi has a rich system of tense-aspect-mood marking, an indicative-subjunctive opposition, and a complex copular system with several suppletive forms. Many features align Pichi with the Atlantic-Congo languages spoken in the West African littoral zone. At the same time, characteristics like the prenominal position of adjectives and determiners show a typological overlap with its lexifier English, while extensive contact with Spanish has left an imprint on the lexicon and grammar as well.

A Grammar of Berbice Dutch Creole

A Grammar of Berbice Dutch Creole
Author: Silvia Kouwenberg
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
Total Pages: 713
Release: 2011-07-22
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 3110885700

The series builds an extensive collection of high quality descriptions of languages around the world. Each volume offers a comprehensive grammatical description of a single language together with fully analyzed sample texts and, if appropriate, a word list and other relevant information which is available on the language in question. There are no restrictions as to language family or area, and although special attention is paid to hitherto undescribed languages, new and valuable treatments of better known languages are also included. No theoretical model is imposed on the authors; the only criterion is a high standard of scientific quality. To discuss your book idea or submit a proposal, please contact Birgit Sievert.

A Grammar of Saramaccan Creole

A Grammar of Saramaccan Creole
Author: John McWhorter
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
Total Pages: 264
Release: 2012-10-30
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 311027826X

Saramaccan has been central to various debates regarding the origin and nature of creole languages. Being the most removed of all English-based creoles from European language structure in terms of phonology, morphology and syntax, it has been seen as one of the most extreme instantiations of the creolization process. This is the first full-length description of Saramaccan. The grammar documents, in particular, a valence-sensitive system of indicating movement and direction via serial verb constructions, hitherto overlooked amidst the generalized phenomenon of serialization itself.

Predication in Caribbean English Creoles

Predication in Caribbean English Creoles
Author: Donald Winford
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 428
Release: 1993-01-01
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9027252319

This is the first major study of the conservative or basilectal English creoles of the Anglophone Caribbean since Bailey's (1966) and Bickerton's (1975) descriptions of Jamaican and Guyanese Creole respectively. The book offers a comprehensive, unified treatment of the core areas of CEC predication, including the verb complex, auxiliary ordering, voice and valency, copular and attributive predication, serial verb constructions and complementation. Particularly note-worthy is its utilization of an extremely rich data base and a variety of sources to provide an up-to-date, state of the art account of predicate structures in CEC. The book presents new analyses of several areas of CEC syntax, including such phenonema as passivization, serialization and complementation, which have not been thoroughly analyzed, if at all, in the previous literature. The areas covered in the book involve a wide range of grammatical phenomena centering around the various sub-classes of verb and their subcategorization. The book consists of an introduction, a conclusion, and six chapters, each of which explores some aspect of the behavior of verbs (or verb-like predicators) and the constructions in which they occur. The book is intended to be a pre-theoretical account of the facts of CEC predication. However, to further elucidate the workings of the grammar and add some degree of explicitness to the description, the author also presents more formal analyses of the grammatical phenomena, employing the framework of Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar (GPSG).

Pidgins and Creoles: Volume 1, Theory and Structure

Pidgins and Creoles: Volume 1, Theory and Structure
Author: John A. Holm
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 284
Release: 1988-05-05
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 9780521271080

This first volume of Holm's major survey of pidgins and creoles provides an up-to-date and readable introduction to a field of study that has become established only in the past few decades. Written for both students and general readers with a basic knowledge of linguistics, the book's original perspective will also attract specialists in the field seeking a broad overview of the linguistic relationships among these languages. Creolized, or restructured versions of English, French, Spanish, Dutch, Portugese, and other languages arose during European colonial expansion. These resulted in such creoles as Jamaican, Haitian, Papiamentu, and some one hundred others, as well as such semi-creoles as Afrikaans, non-standard Brazilian Portugese, Papiamentu, and American Black English. Scholars have tended to work on particular language varieties in relative isolation, making comparative research into the genesis, development, and structure of creoles difficult. In writing this book, Holm draws on broad studies of many languages to make clear how far-reaching creoles'similarities are and to challenge current linguistic theories on creoles and pidgins. The emphasis of this volume is largely empirical rather than descriptive. Its core is a comparative study of creoles based on European languages in Africa and the Caribbean that demonstrates the striking similarities among the languages in terms of their lexical semantics, phonology, and syntax. A forthcoming volume provides a socio-historic overview of variety development and text examples, with translations, of the restructured languages.

Verb Phrase Patterns in Black English and Creole

Verb Phrase Patterns in Black English and Creole
Author: Walter F. Edwards
Publisher:
Total Pages: 325
Release: 1991
Genre: Black English
ISBN: 9780814322765

This is the first book to present an in-depth examination and comparison of grammatical phenomena in both Black English and New World English-lexicon Creoles. The volume's concentration on verb phrase patterns adds focus and coherence to the discussion. The contributors include highly respected scholars and very promising younger scholars who have already made their presence felt. Most of the contributors are also native speakers of the languages they describe. Their insights, therefore, are drawn from an extremely rich data base of scholarship, personal experience, and intuition. The book provides a comprehensive treatment of several areas of predication in Black English and Creole, namely the copula system, modality, features of the tense/aspect system, and passivization. Several essays devote attention specifically to the relationships between Black English and Creole verb phrase patterns, including two classic essays that link the study of Black English to that of New World Creoles. The balance of the essays present original analyses of various aspects of predication and explore theoretical issues that have received little attention in the literature. Verb Phrase Patterns in Black English and Creole provides insight not only into areas of Black English and Creole grammar but also goes on to establish a basis for further research on these varieties, forging a link between the past and the future.

Abridged Handbook of Grenadian Creole English and French Names

Abridged Handbook of Grenadian Creole English and French Names
Author: Thomas R. Chase
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Total Pages: 229
Release: 2018-01-30
Genre: Reference
ISBN: 154621688X

The handbook includes elements of Grenadian folklore, proverbs, and sayings. Much more work needs to be done in those areas. In fact, the proverbs and sayings are already the object of a separate publication that is well underway. A special section on French names and their meanings has also been included for primary school pupils and teachers, as well as foreigners to our shores. It deals with the names of places, people, patois nicknames, and French-sounding names. Keywords, key expressions, or entries in the lexeme section and in other sections of the book are in bold type. Some of these terms may also be noted by an asterisk. The part of speech of the terms is noted, their pronunciation where deemed necessary for this particular publication, the origin of the term, and their meaning in SE/GCE. As a general rule, the most popular meanings of terms are in descending order of importance. The cultural and folkloric values of certain entries are noted in an effort to document such information and/or beliefs. Synonyms, antonyms, and cross references are given due prominence to show the richness of the language. Omitted from this work are terms considered to be too vulgar in nature, particularly the wealth of those referring to human sexual organs and expletives. A comparative grammar section juxtaposes grammatical similarities and differences between SE and GCE. It is a scratching of the surface and is intended to show, first of all, that GCE has a grammar of its own, where traditionally certain linguistic performances were and may still be seen or written off as errors. In fact, they may be standard grammatical features of GCE and Creole English. This section explores as well the nature and origin of some of the syntactic structures used by Grenadians with a view to facilitate the transition from SE to GCE, or vice versa.