4 - Lexicosemantics

Summary

Introduction

This and the following chapters on phonology (5) and syntax (6) compare a number of Creoles of various lexical bases by linguistic level. These Creoles share many features on all three levels which are not found in their lexical source languages. These similarities are discussed at some length because of their importance as evidence for various theories purporting to explain their origins, principally the monogenetic versus poly genetic theories (2.10), and universalist (2.12) versus substratist theories (2.13). Although some of the evidence used in these debates has been from phonology (e.g. Boretzky 1983), the most obvious linguistic level on which to seek features common to Creoles of differing lexical bases has been syntax. The level of lexicon, which can be used to establish the similarity of languages in more traditional groupings, is not an obvious area in which to seek similarities among languages which have different vocabularies. In the early contact situations, the original pidgins and then the Creoles that grew out of them had to use vocabulary that came primarily from the lexical source languages in order to serve their first function as bridges for communication. In the Atlantic colonies the Europeans spoke the language of political, economic and social power and the Africans, who had no such power in their state of slavery, had to do most of the linguistic accommodating.