[Lingtyp] SLE 2025 Workshop: Morphological boundaries in Creole languages

Thu Oct 10 20:50:06 UTC 2024

Dear all,

Ana Luís and I are organizing a workshop on morphological boundaries in 
Creole languages for the next annual meeting of the Societas Linguistica 
Europaea, which will be held in Bordeaux (France) in August 2025. Please 
find the CfP below.

Best wishes,

Susanne and Ana

******************

*Workshop title: Morphological boundaries in Creole languages*

Date: 26 August 2025 – 29 August 2025
Location: Bordeaux, France
Contact: Ana Luís aluis at fl.uc.pt; Susanne Maria Michaelis 
susanne.michaelis at uni-leipzig.de
Web Site: https://societaslinguistica.eu/sle2025/workshop-proposals/ 
<https://societaslinguistica.eu/sle2025/workshop-proposals/>

Call Deadline: 10 November 2024

*Workshop organisers*

Ana R. Luís (University of Coimbra) and Susanne Maria Michaelis (Leipzig 
University
& MPI-EVA, Leipzig)

*Keywords:*affixes, words, clitics, inflection, word-formation, Creoles

*Submission Guidelines*

Provisional abstracts (300-word, excluding references) for 20-minute 
presentations should be submitted by *10 November 2024* to 
aluis at fl.uc.pt and susanne.michaelis at uni-leipzig.de. We will inform all 
presenters of a preliminary acceptance of their abstracts before the 
workshop proposal is submitted to the SLE by 20 November 2024. If the 
workshop proposal is accepted, presenters will be asked to submit a 
500-word abstract in EasyChair by 15 January 2025.

*Workshop description*

Early research on Creole languages, often influenced by theories of 
pidginization and
simplification, generally emphasized syntactic and phonological 
features, while
morphological structures were perceived as minimal or even absent in 
many Creoles.
This view posited that Creoles developed under conditions of rapid 
language formation,
which favored a reduction in morphological complexity. As a result, the 
idea that
Creoles are largely analytic or isolating languages lacking inflectional 
marking remains
widespread in Creole studies (e.g., McWhorter 1998, 2005; Thomason 2001; 
Parkvall
2008; Daval-Markussen 2013; Siegel et al. 2014; Velupillai 2015).

However, more recent research has challenged this oversimplified 
perspective,
recognizing that Creole morphology is more complex and diverse than 
previously
thought (Kihm 2003; Plag 2003, 2008; Luís 2015, 2018). For instance, it 
has been
shown that many Creole languages retain certain morphemes from their 
lexifier
languages, albeit often in modified forms. In Haitian Creole, for 
example, some
derivational affixes are preserved from French but reanalyzed or 
recombined in novel
ways. This suggests that, rather than undergoing wholesale reduction, 
Creole languages
have been shaped by more intricate processes of retention, adaptation, 
and innovation.

A key factor in understanding the morphological structures of Creole 
languages lies in
the role of spelling conventions, which are often poorly adapted to 
mirror primarily
spoken languages. Researchers may be misled into believing that 
grammatical markers
separated by spaces are free forms ("words"), while those written 
together with their
hosts must be bound forms (“affixes”/“clitics”). These orthographic 
assumptions also
tend to obscure linguistic change, such as reanalysis and 
grammaticalization, reinforcing
the oversimplified idea that Creole languages are inherently analytic 
and lack
morphological richness. It is crucial to move beyond superficial 
orthographic cues.

Not only do the existing written records often not reflect the 
complexities of spoken
forms, but the lack of oral corpora and high-quality transcriptions also 
remains a
significant obstacle in the study of Creole morphological boundaries. By 
prioritizing the
collection and annotation of oral data and refining analytical criteria, 
we can move
beyond these limitations and more effectively challenge the "simplicity" 
narrative,
which inaccurately portrays Creole languages as morphologically 
impoverished.

Recent research has also emphasized the importance of accounting for 
lexifier and
substrate biases in comparative studies of Creole languages (Michaelis 
2020). When
genealogical and areal biases are carefully controlled, and the spectrum 
of Creole
languages is broadened beyond the traditionally studied varieties, 
researchers can more
accurately analyze morphological boundaries. Comparative methods, which 
rely on
systematic comparisons across languages, are particularly useful in this 
context as they
help avoid overgeneralizations.

Against this background, the workshop aims to bring together scholars 
investigating
various morphological processes in genealogically diverse Creole languages,
particularly with regard to their relationships with lexifiers and 
substrates. The
workshop will foster discussions that reassess the distinction between 
free forms and
bound forms in Creole morphology, exploring the complexities of 
morphological
evolution and language change in these contact settings. We invite 
contributions on how
processes such as grammaticalization, reanalysis, and innovation shape the
morphological structure of Creole languages and how these processes can 
be understood
in the broader context of contact linguistics and morphological theory.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Free forms and bound forms in Creole morphology and the distinction 
between
words, affixes and clitics;
• Criteria for identifying morphological boundaries based on spoken corpora;
• Reanalysis and innovation in Creole morphology;
• Synchrony and diachrony in Creole morphology, including processes of
grammaticalization;
• The impact of language contact on Creole morphology in multilingual 
contexts;
• Comparative studies involving multiple Creoles as well as comparisons 
between
Creoles and their contributing lexifiers or substrates;
• The role of corpora in Creole studies: building, sharing, and 
utilizing spoken
data for morphological analysis;
• Best practices for transcribing and annotating Creoles to capture the 
nuances of
the spoken language.

*References*
Daval-Markussen, Aymeric. 2013. First steps towards a typological 
profile of creoles.
/Acta Linguistica Hafniensia/ 45.2: 274-295.

Kihm, Alain. 2003. Inflectional categories in creole languages. In Plag, 
Ingo. (ed).
/Phonology and Morphology in Creole Languages/. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 333-363.

Luís, Ana R. 2015. Rethinking Creole Morphology. /Word Structure/ 8:2. 
Guest-edited
Issue.

Luís, Ana R. 2018. Morphological Theory and Creole Languages. In 
Audring, Jenny &
Masini, Francesca. (eds). /The Oxford Handbook of Morphological Theory,/ 
455-475.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.

McWhorter, John H. 1998. Identifying the creole prototype: Vindicating a 
typological
class. /Language/ 788-818.

McWhorter, John H. 2005. /Defining creole./ Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Michaelis, S. M. 2020. Avoiding bias in comparative Creole studies: 
Stratification by
lexifier and substrate. /Isogloss/ 6.8. doi:10.5565/rev/isogloss.100.

Parkvall, Mikael. 2008. The simplicity of creoles in a cross-linguistic 
perspective. In
Miestamo, Matti et al. (eds). /Language Complexity: Typology, contact, 
change/, 265-
285. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Plag, Ingo. 2003. (ed). /Phonology and Morphology in Creole Languages/. 
Tübingen:
Niemeyer.

Plag, Ingo. 2008. Creoles as interlanguages: inflectional morphology. 
/Journal of Pidgin
and Creole Languages /23.1: 109-130.

Siegel, Jeff, Benedikt Szmrecsanyi, and Bernd Kortmann. 2014. Measuring 
analyticity
and syntheticity in creoles. /Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages/ 
29.1: 49-85.

Velupillai, Viveka. 2015. /Pidgin, creoles and mixed languages: An 
introduction/,
Amsterdam: Benjamins.

-- 

Susanne Maria Michaelis

DFG-AHRC Project CrossMoGram

Leipzig University Institute for Romance Studies

Beethovenstrasse 15

04107 Leipzig

https://www.philol.uni-leipzig.de/en/institut-fuer-romanistik/institut/profil/romanische-sprachwissenschaft-mit-den-schwerpunkten-hispanistik-und-lusitanistik/crossmogram

https://www.uni-leipzig.de/personenprofil/mitarbeiter/dr-susanne-michaelis

Guest

Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution

Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology

Deutscher Platz 6

04103 Leipzig

https://www.eva.mpg.de/linguistic-and-cultural-evolution/staff/susanne-michaelis/
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