World-wide comparative evidence for calquing valency patterns in creoles (original) (raw)

This paper examines substrate influence in the formation of creole languages through a world-wide comparative analysis of valency patterns. By analyzing data from various construction types, including ditransitive, weather, experiencer, and motion constructions, it illustrates how creoles predominantly reflect the valency and semantic patterns of their substrates rather than their lexifiers. The findings support the notion that during the creolization process, the structural patterns in creole languages have been systematically calqued from pre-existing substrate languages.