Salikoko S Mufwene - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

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Papers by Salikoko S Mufwene

Physics of Life Reviews, Nov 1, 2018

Substrata versus Universals in Creole Genesis

... a verb meaning'to finish'for the COM-PLETIVE, and a GOAL-oriented verb'want&#x... more ... a verb meaning'to finish'for the COM-PLETIVE, and a GOAL-oriented verb'want'or ... Kwa morphemes did not find their way into, particularly, some other New World English creoles, or ... were involved, would have adopted the same mor-pheme for the same kind of complementation. ...

World Englishes – Problems, Properties and Prospects, 2009

This study was made possible by a grant from the National Science Foundation (BNS-8519315).

The subtitle of this essay should not be interpreted in the way suggested by Bickerton (1990, 199... more The subtitle of this essay should not be interpreted in the way suggested by Bickerton (1990, 1995, 2002) or Givon (1998). Creoles can inform our research on the evolution of language not because there is anything empirically exceptional or unusual about the way they emerged (see, e.g., DeGraff 2003, 2005) but because the multitude of facts that we have learned over the past couple of decades about their development has drawn our attention to the kinds of ecological factors that should have informed any sound genetic linguistics (Mufwene 2001, 2005, 2008). Much of recent research has shown that these new language varieties are largely a legacy of 17th and 18th-century European vernaculars spoken in the colonies around the Atlantic and in the Indian Ocean. They have reintegrated, on the model of gene recombination in biology and under the influence of various African substrate languages (and sometimes with elements imported from these), structural materials from diverse varieties of ...

O principal objetivo deste artigo e mostrar que conceitos desenvolvidos originalmente por biologo... more O principal objetivo deste artigo e mostrar que conceitos desenvolvidos originalmente por biologos para organismos e especies em seus habitats naturais podem ser estendidos para explicar o destino das linguas em seus meios ambientes sociais, sobretudo no estudo da evolucao linguistica, que nao tem uma teleologia. As linguas nascem, crescem e morrem, como dizia Schleicher no final do seculo XIX, porem, nao como organismos, mas como especies, no caso, especie parasita ou viral, pois elas so existem no hospedeiro humano. Mostra-se a importância da variacao no interior da lingua, que e uma extrapolacao da populacao de idioletos. Trabalha-se com os conceitos de selecao e competicao, no sentido socioeconomico, de como as linguas sao classificadas no espaco-tempo, em termos de prestigio socioeconomico. Nem sempre uma lingua expulsa outra, ha uma divisao de trabalho, como as linguas francas, usadas principalmente nas regioes em que os invasores europeus dominaram, dificilmente onde eles nao...

African-American English, 2021

Bridging Linguistics and Economics, 2020

Degrees of Restructuring in Creole Languages, 2001

Science, 2008

While Noah Webster may have produced the earliest compendium on American English, the divergence ... more While Noah Webster may have produced the earliest compendium on American English, the divergence from British English dates from much earlier. Long before the publication of Webster's Dictionary in 1806, pronunciation in America and in Britain had begun to differ ([1][1], [2][2]). The Dictionary

Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages, Nov 11, 2003

Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages, 1994

International Journal of the Sociology of Language

Societal multilingualism and multilectalism have been among the leading justifications for langua... more Societal multilingualism and multilectalism have been among the leading justifications for language policies, especially in the Global South, where many of these have failed. I associate the failures with poor choices of official languages and media of education, which are not consistent with the linguistic behaviors of the majority of the citizenry and the socioeconomic structures of the relevant polities. I review some cases of adequate and inadequate policies around the world and explain ecologically some reasons for either their successes or their failures. In a subset of the cases, I assess the results as mixed. My recommendation is of course not to follow the policy of a particular polity simply because it has succeeded there but to also check whether the ecology of its success is similar to that of the new polity. The relevant ecology includes the socioeconomic structure/system and the linguistic practices of the citizenry for whom the policy is intended. Among the issues to ...

Language in Society, 2001

Spoken Soul is a very stimulating book to read, informative and solidly grounded in scholarship f... more Spoken Soul is a very stimulating book to read, informative and solidly grounded in scholarship from several disciplines, including quantitative sociolinguistics, sociology, socioeconomic history, and African American literature. It exemplifies the contribution that linguistic research on African American English (AAE) can make to African American studies. It is also a model for how scholarly findings can be shared with the lay public in a language that is vivid and accessible. Those who are familiar with AAE will appreciate the fact that this vividness is borrowed from the subject matter itself. Thus, the authors demonstrate implicitly that AAE is not an impoverished vernacular, and even scholarly discourse can benefit from it.