Article Title：Implications of abstract grammatical structure: Two targets in Creole formation
Abstract：
This paper argues that the motivation for structure in creole formation comes from the innate architecture of language competence and production. In this architecture, the lexical and the grammatical subsystems of language are related, but supported differently. At the level of the mental lexicon, abstract entries (lemmas) underlie morphemes, but lemmas project content morphemes differently than grammatical morphemes. While the abstract frames that grammatical morphemes will fill are present at this level (referred to in lemmas supporting content morphemes) the grammatical morphemes are not salient until the level of the Formulator. The Formulator assembles surface-level constituents based on directions it receives from lemmas. This view of abstract configurations in language supports the claim that there are two initial targets in creole formation. These targets are: (1) input from substrates as a target for the grammatical (morphosyntactic) frame of utterances, and (2) superstrate input as another target for most of the content morphemes that appear in the creole as lexical elements or that are reconfigured to fill requirements of the grammatical frame. Thus, the overall claim is that the initial form of a creole is constrained by universally-present blueprinting of how linguistic elements are related and how they become available.
Keywords: creole structuring; creole targets; language production; abstract linguistics structure; innate architecture of language
DOI: 10.1075/jpcl.16.2.02mye
Source：JOURNAL OF PIDGIN AND CREOLE LANGUAGES
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