The quest for non-European creoles

Abstract

Abstract Kukama has been classified firstly, as a Tupi-Guarani language, secondly, as a language that has undergone massive contact-induced change, and thirdly, as a creole. These different positions are surveyed against definitions of mixed languages and creoles, and properties of Tupi-Guarani languages. We focus especially on its possible status as a creole language, as there is a need among creolists to expand the range of creoles with a broad set of lexifiers and substrates, especially after recent research has revealed a typological profile for creoles. With typological, historical and historical-comparative arguments, it is concluded that the original grammatical system of Kukama was strongly reduced, and subsequently innovated and expanded with mostly Tupi-Guarani roots, a process parallel to that gone through by accepted creoles. As is commonly the case in creoles, very little beyond the lexicon is inherited from its lexifier, a language close to Tupinamba. However, the Kukama language does not quite fit two proposals for creole prototypes, perhaps because the processes of loss and innovation took place in a much more remote past than for identified creoles. In this paper, it will be discussed whether Kukama is a language that defies classification within the current typology of contact languages, or whether it is deviant within current family classifications.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 39 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.