New and Upcoming Titles

Principense
Philippe Maurer, Published May 2009, £24.95, ISBN 978-1-903292-11-2, viii+280 pages, 24 photographs, Princense - English and English - Principense word lists, bibliography, index, and an appendix containing a previously unpublished 19th century sketch of the language.

Philippe Maurer has rescued a critically endangered language from oblivion with this volume, turning Principense – one of the least documented varieties of Afro-Portuguese – into one of the best described creoles of any lexical base. The contents reflect his gift for clear organization and lucid explanation of knotty problems ranging from tone to exotic morphosyntactic structures. He has minutely analyzed an extensive corpus, illustrating his points with over 1,270 Principense sentences and providing a word list as well as a rich collection of texts.This book is one of the finest contributions yet to creole linguistics.

John Holm, Coimbra University.

To access audio files of many of the examples in the book, CLICK HERE.

Simplicity and Complexity
edited by Nicholas Faraclas & Thomas B. Klein, Published July 2009, £24.95, ISBN 978-1-903292-15-0, iv + 220 pages, Introduction, ten chapters (five on phonology, five on morphosyntax), references, index.

This volume is, in a sense, a response to a recent rather extremist view that “the world’s simplest grammars are creole grammars”. It brings together a series of studies of the core levels of language structure (phonology and morphosyntax).

A major merit is that the studies are data-based, ignore the exotic assumptions of creole linguistics and, by the range of coverage and depth of analysis, provide an exceptionally useful additional support to the view that creoles could and should be situated within a general framework of synchronic and contact linguistics, rather than within the shadow of their “lexifier” languages. It thus goes beyond the narrow confines of creole linguistics and provides linguistics in general with a most valuable resource.

Mervyn Alleyne,
University of the West Indies and University of Puerto Rico

Comparative Creole Syntax
edited by John Holm & Peter L Patrick. London: Battlebridge. £24.99, p/b, xii + 404 pages, index, references, ISBN 978-1-903292-01-3 (volume 7 in the Westminster Creolistics series ISSN 1470-3750). Published November 2007.
comparative creole syntax

The concept of this book arose following the success of Holm’s Pidgins and Creoles (CUP, 2 vols, 1988-89). This long awaited volume provides the historical background and grammatical description of eighteen carefully selected creole languages written by leading specialists in this field. It is an essential work of reference for linguistics students while being readily accessible to the wider public. "At last we have a book which shows, virtually at a glance, similarities and differences among a carefully chosen selection of Creoles", (Mervyn Alleyne).