The Emergence of Hybrid Grammars

Enoch Oladé Aboh is Professor of Linguistics at Universiteit van Amsterdam. His publications include The Morphosyntax of Complement-head Sequences (2004). In 2012 he was awarded the renowned one-year NIAS fellowship, and in 2003 he obtained the prestigious Dutch Science Foundation (NWO) five-year vidi grant to study the relation between information structure and syntax.

• 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.

'Enoch Oladé Aboh's book is a tour de force as it weaves together painstakingly documented history, novel and reliable empirical bases and elegant theoretical analyses in order to draw a fascinating and often profoundly satisfying scenario of creole formation. Such a scenario will enliven and enlighten current debates in creole studies. Aboh raises the bar by many notches - way above the quality level of most other hypotheses on the market. This book is a delight as it takes us up close and personal to the theater of creole formation, from Africa to the Americas … original and insightful … This book is a refreshing contribution to creole studies and beyond, with many enriching insights for linguistic theory and for theories of language contact and language change writ large. Bravo!' Michel DeGraff, Massachusetts Institute of Technology