The Emergence of Hybrid Grammars
Language Contact and Change

This account of language acquisition in a multilingual context explains how hybrid grammars develop and can result in language change.

Enoch Oladé Aboh (Author)

9780521150224, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 9 May 2019

364 pages, 4 b/w illus. 3 maps 19 tables
23 x 15.3 x 2.3 cm, 0.5 kg

'… this book's central ideas should be enthusiastically received by the contact linguistics community, and are likely to be both implemented and elaborated upon with rewarding results … the author brings detailed understanding and penetrating analysis … I believe readers concerned with the question of how contact languages come to be will find this volume rewards a close reading, and will come away with numerous ideas for their own research …' David Douglas Robertson, LINGUIST List

Children are extremely gifted in acquiring their native languages, but languages nevertheless change over time. Why does this paradox exist? In this study of creole languages, Enoch Oladé Aboh addresses this question, arguing that language acquisition requires contact between different linguistic sub-systems that feed into the hybrid grammars that learners develop. There is no qualitative difference between a child learning their language in a multilingual environment and a child raised in a monolingual environment. In both situations, children learn to master multiple linguistic sub-systems that are in contact and may be combined to produce new variants. These new variants are part of the inputs for subsequent learners. Contributing to the debate on language acquisition and change, Aboh shows that language learning is always imperfect: learners' motivation is not to replicate the target language faithfully but to develop a system close enough to the target that guarantees successful communication and group membership.

Foreword Salikoko S. Mufwene
1. Introduction
2. The agents of creole formation: geopolitics and cultural aspects of the Slave Coast
3. The emergence of creoles: a review of some current hypotheses
4. Competition and selection
5. The role of vulnerable interfaces in language change: the case of the D-system
6. The emergence of the clause left periphery
7. The emergence of serial verb constructions
8. Conclusions: some final remarks on hybrid grammars, the creole prototype, and language acquisition and change.

Subject Areas: Grammar, syntax & morphology [CFK], Language acquisition [CFDC], Sociolinguistics [CFB]