Library Catalog
Amazon cover image
Image from Amazon.com

Linguistic Simplicity and Complexity : Why Do Languages Undress? / John H. McWhorter.

By: Material type: TextTextSeries: Language Contact and Bilingualism [LCB] ; 1Publisher: Berlin ; Boston : De Gruyter Mouton, [2011]Copyright date: ©2011Description: 1 online resource (332 p.)Content type:
Media type:
Carrier type:
ISBN:
  • 9781934078372
  • 9781934078402
Subject(s): DDC classification:
  • 417.22 22
Other classification:
  • online - DeGruyter
Online resources: Available additional physical forms:
  • Issued also in print.
Contents:
Frontmatter -- 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
Summary: 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 1990s 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.
Holdings
Item type Current library Call number URL Status Notes Barcode
eBook eBook Biblioteca "Angelicum" Pont. Univ. S.Tommaso d'Aquino Nuvola online online - DeGruyter (Browse shelf(Opens below)) Online access Not for loan (Accesso limitato) Accesso per gli utenti autorizzati / Access for authorized users (dgr)9781934078402

Frontmatter -- 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

restricted access online access with authorization star

http://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_16ec

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 1990s 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.

Issued also in print.

Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.

In English.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 28. Feb 2023)