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<p>Dear Jürgen,</p>
<p>Many thanks for this interesting discussion.
</p>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:CEBD3D6B-F47A-4D86-BD41-7B1CABC23C6A@buffalo.edu">
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">It is possible if not likely that some of the clearest examples of innovations of functional categories arise in creole languages. Of interest here would be creoles that have grammaticalized a functional category not present in either the lexifier or any substrate or adstrate language. </pre>
</blockquote>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops:45.8pt 91.6pt 137.4pt 183.2pt
229.0pt 274.8pt 320.6pt 366.4pt 412.2pt 458.0pt 503.8pt 549.6pt
595.4pt 641.2pt 687.0pt 732.8pt"><font size="+3"><span
style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Courier
New";mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">Apparently your interpretation of the
role of contact in creolization seems to be reduced to
scenarios where we can clearly trace a functional category to
either being adopted from the lexifer or imposed by the
substrate. You seem to say that if some grammaticalized
functional category in a creole is purely innovated such a
process shouldn’t be linked to language contact.</span></font></p>
<font size="+3"> </font>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops:45.8pt 91.6pt 137.4pt 183.2pt
229.0pt 274.8pt 320.6pt 366.4pt 412.2pt 458.0pt 503.8pt 549.6pt
595.4pt 641.2pt 687.0pt 732.8pt"><font size="+3"><span
style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Courier
New";mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">But I think that the role of language
contact in creoles cannot be restricted in such a way because
language contact and multilingualism is key throughout every
creolization scenario and beyond: societies where creoles were
created consisted at various times to various degrees of
second/third language users. Therefore, *extra transparency*
is a major driving communicative force in understanding the
functional grammatical make-up of creole languages. It leads
to multiple accelerated functionalization and
grammaticalization processes irrespectively of whether they
continue lexifier/substrate functional categories or show
innovated functional categories (see Michaelis &
Haspelmath 2021, I'm happy to send you the paper if you are
interested).</span><span
style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Courier
New";mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-ansi-language:EN-US"> Therefore, creole cases of innovated
functional categories that you are interested in will </span><span
style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Courier
New";mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-ansi-language:EN-US"><span
style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Courier
New";mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New
Roman"; mso-ansi-language:EN-US">*always* </span>reflect
language contact and should therefore be excluded given your
condition (iv).</span></font> </p>
<p><font size="+3"><span
style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Courier
New";mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-ansi-language:EN-US">There is very little large-scale
comparative *qualitative* work in creole studies (but see e.g.
Gil 2014, Michaelis 2019, Daval-Markussen 2018), but from my
knowledge of the data in WALS and APiCS, it is indeed the case
that instances, such as the innovative indefinite article in
Juba Arabic against both lexifier and substrate patterns
lacking an indefinite article, seem to be rare (see
Daval-Markussen 2018), as you suggest. <br>
</span></font></p>
<p><font size="+3"><span
style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Courier
New";mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-ansi-language:EN-US"><span
style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Courier
New";mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New
Roman"; mso-ansi-language:EN-US">But in my view, this
whole discussion crucially depends on the finegrainedness of
your definition of the functional category in question and
on the criteria for measuring whether a functional category
in </span></span><span
style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Courier
New";mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-ansi-language:EN-US"><span
style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Courier
New";mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New
Roman"; mso-ansi-language:EN-US"><span
style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Courier
New";mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New
Roman"; mso-ansi-language:EN-US"><span
style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Courier
New";mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New
Roman"; mso-ansi-language:EN-US">a given
language/variety </span></span>is</span><span
style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Courier
New";mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New
Roman"; mso-ansi-language:EN-US"> *the same* or *a
different one* compared to its parent/sister languages'
functional categories. What we often see in creoles, is that
grammatical markers expressing functional categories are
inspired by one or more of their parent languages, but are
certainly always innovated to some degree in the creole
itself.</span></span></font></p>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:CEBD3D6B-F47A-4D86-BD41-7B1CABC23C6A@buffalo.edu">
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">Contrast this with the subtype of functional expressions I’m particularly interested in here, such as tense, viewpoint aspect, definiteness, number, and gender, which are typically present in only between a third and two thirds of the samples of the WALS chapters that report on them. My hypothesis is that this difference in variability correlates with the communicative function of the expressions: expressions such as tense, number, and gender are typically (in the great majority of utterances in which they occur) not needed to express part of the speaker’s communicative intention, as the information they contribute is predictable in context. The grammaticalization of such largely redundant expressions apparently serves to reduce the hearer’s inference load. </pre>
</blockquote>
<p>Tense and aspect are both widely grammaticalized in creoles
(largely inspired by substrates). I'm wondering what your
prediction for creoles would be given your "hearer's inference
load approach"? Because what is needed and what is not needed to
express the speaker/signer's communicative intention crucially
depends on the sociolinguistics of the communication setting. I
think of language contact in a much more radical way (something
along the line of Croft 2000): Every speaker/signer has their
ideolect giving rise to multiple layers of variation in all
speech/sign communities, and in this sense language contact is
rampant even in so-called homogeneous speech communities. Your
constraint (iv) says: <br>
</p>
<p>" (iv) there being no obvious contact-based explanation for the
emergence of the expression in question. (Of course one could
define innovation to include contact-based innovation, but I
happen to be specifically interested in innovation of functional
categories in the absence of contact models.)"</p>
<p>I would say that there is no innovation of functional categories
without language contact or contact models in the first place.</p>
<p>Best wishes,</p>
<p>Susanne<br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:CEBD3D6B-F47A-4D86-BD41-7B1CABC23C6A@buffalo.edu">
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">
This gradual pragmatic redundancy is from my perspective a defining feature of the class of expressions in question. Obviously, this doesn’t translate into a simple diagnostic. However, it aligns with relatively advanced degrees of grammaticalization (compared to things such as negation, demonstratives, or modals), and advanced grammaticalization in turn jibes with the primarily metalinguistic function of the expressions in question: they are always backgrounded, never express “at issue” content, and as a result can never be focalized except metalinguistically.
I hope that wasn’t too convoluted ;-)
Thank you in advance for your help! I will post a summary if I receive a sufficient number of responses. — Best — Juergen
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Plant new trees while searching the internet: <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.ecosia.org/">https://www.ecosia.org/</a>
Susanne Maria Michaelis
Universität Leipzig
Institut für Anglistik (IPF 141199)
04081 Leipzig
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://research.uni-leipzig.de/unicodas/susanne-maria-michaelis/">https://research.uni-leipzig.de/unicodas/susanne-maria-michaelis/</a>
Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution
Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
Kahlaische Str. 10
07745 Jena
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.shh.mpg.de/person/42386/25522">http://www.shh.mpg.de/person/42386/25522</a>
Atlas of Pidgin and Creole Language Structures: <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://apics-online.info/">http://apics-online.info/</a>
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