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Migge, Bettina
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Migge, Bettina
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Migge, Bettina
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- PublicationIntroduction to volume 1 & 2: Pidgin and Creole Genesis and TypologyEver since Pidgins and Creoles (P/Cs) came to scholarly attention in the nineteenth century, questions about how they developed and how they compare with other languages have dominated research and debates. This interest has resulted in several theories that try to account for the linguistic and extra - linguistic mechanisms that gave rise to these contact languages, and work that aims to demonstrate the relationships between P/Cs.
229 - PublicationGuest Column: Mediating Creoles: Language Practices on a YouTube showThis paper explore language practices on an Eastern Maroon YouTube show in order to gain insights into new mediated practices and language change among younger people's language use.
74 - PublicationOn the emergence of new language varieties: The case of the Eastern Maroon Creole in French GuianaIt then appears that Creoles, like other languages, have considerable internal complexity. This complexity seems to have emerged due to different kinds of processes of contact. However, to date little is known about the sociolinguistic structure of any one Creole and the social and linguistic processes that contributed to its emergence and maintenance. The aim of this paper is to investigate these issues in relation to the Eastern Maroon Creoles (EMCs) of Suriname and French Guiana. The discussion suggests that contrary to common assumptions, the speakers of these Creoles traditionally recognize a range of social and regional or ethnic varieties. In addition, new varieties and practices continue to emerge most likely spurred by the social changes that have been affecting these communities in the last 30 years.
147 - PublicationIntegrating local languages and cultures into the education system of French Guiana: A discussion of current programs and initiativesIn this paper we present and critically assess three programs that are currently running in French Guiana. They aim to integrate local languages and cultures into the local education system that is otherwise identical to that of Metropolitan France. We discuss and compare their emergence, development and the premises, assumptions and approaches on which they are based. The paper argues that while all three initiatives make an important contribution towards questioning the educational monopoly of French and towards adapting the education system to the local context, their impact current ly remains limited. This is in large part due to a lack of a concerted will on the part of the education system to undertake far-reaching change and program-inherent problems.
191 - PublicationTracing the origin of modality in the creoles of SurinameThe present paper attempts to shed light on the origin of creole TMA systems by investigating the emergence of two subsystems of modality in the creoles of Suriname. The investigation is based on a comparative linguistic analysis of modality in three maroon creoles and six Gbe varieties, and on a preliminary investigation of early historical documents (Goury 2003). The aim is to determine the role of the Gbe languages in the formation of these creol es and to show how input from both European and African sources, aided by universal principles of contact - induced change and language - internal change, shaped the grammar of these creoles. The paper suggests that many aspects of the creole modality system h ave their source in Gbe languages. At the same time, it is clear that they are in no way exact (or in some cases even close) replicas of the Gbe modality systems.
376 - PublicationReview: Muysken, P. and Smith, N. (eds.) Surviving the Middle Passage: The West Africa-Surinam Sprachbund, Berlin: Walter de GruyterCreole genesis has occupied pride of place in research on creole languages, and both the creoles of Suriname and investigations into the survivals from African languages have figured prominently in these lively debates. So why another book? The contributors’ original motivation was to rehabilitate the substrate hypothesis of creole genesis because they felt that it had received “an unnecessarily bad press” (p. 11), mostly due to problematic research practice. Three goals guided the research program that culminated in this edited volume. First, drawing on research from a variety of perspectives and research agendas, the book aims to bring new evidence to existing controversies about cross-linguistic effects. Second, it explores alternatives to the classic relexification scenario. Third, in conceptualizing the creoles of Suriname and the Gbe languages of Benin as “a Trans-Atlantic area or Sprachbund” (p. 8), it contributes to current research about linguistic areas. The team posits that Africanisms were the result of adstratal, rather than substratal influence because the initial formation of creoles took place rapidly and was followed by a prolonged process of bilingualism.
53 - PublicationThe Role of Discursive Information in Analyzing Multilingual PracticesTwo broad lines of research have developed on code alternation or code-switching. One line focuses on structural issues related mostly to intra-sentential code-mixing and is based in formal syntactic and psycholinguistic approaches to language. The other line of research focuses on identifying the types of code-switching patterns, their social functions and meanings and the social motivations for code-switching. It applies methods of discourse and conversation analysis. Despite similar goals, these lines of investigation have proceeded separately without much cross-fertilization. The aim of this paper is to critically examine the main tenets of these approaches in the light of data from one contact setting involving related languages and to highlight ways in which the two approaches might complement each other. It argues that since code-switching is an important meaning making resource, analysis of its functions should precede analysis of structural issues as the latter impact on the structure of code-switching practices
272 - PublicationReview: Pidgins and creoles beyond Africa-Europe encounters. Buchstaller, I., Holmberg, A., Almoaily, M. (eds.). Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2014Research on contact languages and language contact has been on the rise since the publication of Thomason and Kaufman (1988) and growing interest in (linguistic) hybridity. Despite definitive advances, research has nevertheless proceeded on a narrow empirical base focusing on European-influenced contexts in the Atlantic region due to researchers’ restricted linguistic competences and limited research agendas, and traditions that privilege structural linguistic issues of a language from a diachronic perspective.
215 - PublicationFunctions and uses of now in the speech of newcomers to IrelandThe last roughly twenty years have seen a steady rise in research on varieties of English as spoken in Ireland. One line of research that has been particularly fruitful is the corpus-based investigation of pragmatic aspects of varieties of Irish English. While early work in this area dealt with hedging phenomena, more recent research has explored a range of issues such as politeness strategies and relational work in different interactional contexts, the uses, meanings and functions of silence and mitigation, vocatives, different types of questions and discourse markers.
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