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Looking Beyond Decreolization as an Explanatory Model of Language Change in Creole-Speaking Communities
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- Source: Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages, Volume 14, Issue 1, Jan 1999, p. 93 - 119
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Abstract
This paper discusses internally-motivated change as a largely ignored factor in understanding diachrony in creole languages: that is, externally-motivated models — and the most popular of these is certainly decreolization and the related concept of the creole continuum — have been nearly exclusively relied upon by creolists to explain phenomena associated with language variation and change in creole-speaking communities, particularly among the Atlantic English-derived creoles. This paper presents one alternative to viewing variation data derived from creole speakers as solely a function of decreolization. It raises issues associated with (and explores alternatives to) that singular view of diachrony.
© 1999 John Benjamins Publishing Company