Current Schedule

Dr. Stéphane Térosier will briefly present George Walkden’s (2019) paper, The many faces of uniformitarianism in linguistics. The presentation will be followed by an open discussion. Join the Reading Group listserv (see homepage) for location and Zoom details.

Anna Gosebrink (University of Cologne) will present research entitled “Multifunctionality in the Demonstrative System of Kununurra Kriol.”

Abstract :

Demonstratives play a central role in NP morphosyntax cross-linguistically (Dixon 2003; Levinson et al. 2018). Yet, studies on the structural properties of demonstratives in Australian Creole languages remain limited. Focusing on Kununurra Kriol, an English-lexified Creole language spoken in the East Kimberley region of Western Australia, this paper presents new data addressing this gap.

Based on data from recent fieldwork, this paper investigates the behaviour of demonstratives in adnominal, pronominal, adverbial contexts as well as in identificational constructions (Diessel 1999; Diessel 2023) to show how individual forms extend across multiple syntactic environments. Overall, the findings point to a flexible and multifunctional system in Kununurra Kriol, in which demonstratives participate in both NP-internal structure and clausal syntax. The study thus highlights the morphosyntactic richness of the system and contributes to typological and theoretical discussions of demonstratives in Creole languages.

Donna Park (University at Buffalo) will briefly present Syea’s (2025) paper, Indo Aryan influence in Mauritian Creole. The presentation will be followed by an open discussion. Join the Reading Group listserv (see homepage) for location and Zoom details.

Felicia Bisnath (Western Norway University of Applied Sciences) will present a recently published (2025) paper with colleagues entitled Deconstructing notions of morphological ‘complexity’: Lessons from creoles and sign languages. The presentation will be followed by an open discussion. Join the Reading Group listserv (see homepage) for location and Zoom details.

Meeting postponed

Christopher Legerme (MIT) will present research entitled “Transitive alternations and the syntax-phonology interface in French Creole”

Abstract:

The verbal morphology of certain French Creoles (e.g., Mauritian and Haitian) is systematically sensitive to transitive alternations; the LONG FORM of a transitive verb is required when its internal argument surfaces preverbally (Henri 2021, forthcoming).

1. Fim        sa            ka         gad*( e )      sou   Netflix. Movie    this        can       watch          on     Netflix. “This Movie can be  watched on Netflix.”  (Haitian Creole)

2. Li          pe            fors*( e )   vann    so          lakaz. 3.SG   PROG     force          sell       3.SG    house”. He is being forced to sell his home.” (Mauritian Creole, Kriegel 1994)

It just so happens that the syntactic “facilitation” needed to support “transitive OV” word orders in the first place varies by language and by verb (see Newman 2020 for “facilitation” effects on A-movement; see Syea 2024 for “transitive OV” in creoles). For example, tense/aspect morphemes suffice for Mauritian Creole in (2), but Haitian Creole speakers strongly prefer that a facilitating morpheme like the modal ka “can” accompany their preverbal argument in this context (1). Still, the morphological requirement associated with transitive OV word orders is consistent in both languages, and the short form of the verb (e.g., gad “watch” or fors “force”) is ruled out here (note that the short form would be fine for the analogous A-bar movement constructions of (1) and (2)). This consistency is interesting because of how differently the alternation between long and short verb forms otherwise plays out across languages: the two forms may be complementary or interchangeable depending on the language and the syntactic or information-structural context. For both Mauritian and Haitian, however, we do also know that the short form can’t be VP-final (Syea 1992, and others). There’s some consensus that the short/long alternation reflects deeper facts about syntactic constituency (van der Wal 2017; van der Wal & Veenstra 2015). In this regard French Creoles are likened to Bantu languages such as Zulu where the analogous conjoint/disjoint alternation may also be “constituency-based”, and the morphologically sparser conjoint forms likewise may not be VP-final (e.g., Halpert 2016: 87–89; cf. van der Wal & Veenstra 2015: 120). It’s also interesting that HC only has ~12 verbs that alternate between long and short forms, while about 70% of Mauritian verbs alternate like this (Henri, forthcoming), and yet both languages can be shown to constrain their verbal morphology in similar ways. 

I will present my ongoing work on argument structure in French Creoles, focusing on constructions that have been analyzed as “passives” or “middles” and their interaction with alternating verb forms. I will argue that, rather than treating “passives” and “middles” (or A/A-bar) as germane to how people categorize verbs (or movement operations), it is more efficient (and much less confusing!) to examine how general (and independent) principles of both locality-constrained syntactic derivation (e.g., Newman 2021, 2024) and phonologically governed morphological realization (e.g., Scheer 2016; Lahrouchi and Ulfsbjorninn 2024) might interact to shape the complex surface patterns. A deeper comparison of French Creole grammars therefore promises insight into how verbs are constructed when morphological paradigms are compact but tightly regulated by the  syntax-phonology interface, revealing their structural commonalities despite superficial differences.

Ingo Plag and Lara Rüter (Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf) will present their (2024) article entitled Measuring the similarity between languages: The case of creoles and non-creoles. The presentation will be followed by an open discussion. Join the Reading Group listserv (see homepage) for location and Zoom details.

Lesia Collard Buresi (Université Paris Cité- Paris 7)

TBA

Websder Corneille (Indiana University)

TBA

Mathilde Dallier (The University of the West Indies)

TBA

Peter Bakker (Aarhus University)

TBA

Invited Speaker: Silvia Kouwenberg (The University of the West Indies)

TBA

Melissa McCarron (University at Buffalo)

TBA