Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dzt6s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T09:38:38.795Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Colonization, population contacts, and the emergence of new language varieties: A response to Peter Trudgill

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 March 2008

SALIKOKO S. MUFWENE
SALIKOKO S. MUFWENE
Affiliation:
University of Chicago, Department of Linguistics, 1010 E 59th Street, Chicago, IL 60637 USA, [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Peter Trudgill's account of new-dialect formation is uniformitarian, a position I have embraced explicitly since Mufwene 2001. In Mufwene 2006, I show how similar the mechanisms involved are to those that account for the emergence of creoles, the basic difference lying in the composition of the contact setting's feature pool (see also below). The position I defend is even less moderate, as I argue that in the history of humankind language speciation has basically been a consequence of how internal variation within a language has been affected by migrations of its speakers and additionally by the different contacts the relevant populations have had among themselves (Trudgill's position) and with speakers of other languages in their new, colonial ecologies (Mufwene 2005, 2007, 2008). The reader should not be surprised to see in this response comments that are primarily intended to support and complement the position of the target article.

Type
DISCUSSION
Information
Language in Society , Volume 37 , Issue 2 , April 2008 , pp. 254 - 259
Copyright
© 2008 Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Bickerton, Derek (1981). Roots of language. Ann Arbor, MI: Karoma.
Chaudenson, Robert (2001). Creolization of language and culture. London: Routledge.
DeGraff, Michel (1999). Creolization, language change, and language acquisition: A prolegomenon. In Michel DeGraff (ed.) Language creation and language change: Creolization, diachrony, and development, 1–46. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
DeGraff, Michel (2003). Against creole exceptionalism. Discussion note. Language 79:391–410.Google Scholar
Keller, Rudi (1994). On language change: The invisible hand in language. London: Routledge.
Labov, William (2001). Principles of linguistic change: Social factors. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Mufwene, Salikoko S. (2001). The ecology of language evolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRef
Mufwene, Salikoko S. (2005). Créoles, écologie sociale, évolution linguistique. Paris: L'Harmattan.
Mufwene, Salikoko S. (2006). “New-dialect formation” is as gradual as “creole-development”: A response to Trudgill (2004). World Englishes 25:177–86.Google Scholar
Mufwene, Salikoko S. (2007). Population movements and contacts: Competition, selection, and language evolution. Journal of Language Contact 1:63–91.Google Scholar
Mufwene, Salikoko S. (2008). Language evolution: Contact, competition, and change. London: Continuum.
Trudgill, Peter (1986). Dialects in contact. New York: Blackwell.
Trudgill, Peter (2004). New-dialect formation: The inevitability of colonial Englishes. Oxford: Oxford University Press.