Archetypal areal features in the African English-lexifier Creoles

Abstract

It seems natural that the languages belonging to the African branch of the family of Afro-Caribbean English-lexifier Creoles and extended Pidgins (AECs) should form part of the convergence movement that typifies the greater West African linguistic area. In this paper, I will focus on several features to show that adstrate transfer from African languages due to widespread multilingualism as well as substrate transfer through language shift to creoles and extended pidgins has indeed been leaving traces in the linguistic systems of the creoles and pidgins. I argue that the AECs, despite them being largely neglected in the discussion, are of great value in the quest to identify cross-cutting areal features in West Africa. The heterogenous origins of these languages from genetically disparate African source languages means that ...