9. Valency patterns in Seychelles Creole: Where do they come from?

In this article, I argue that with respect to five valency patterns Seychelles Creole clearly mirrors Eastern Bantu substrate patterns. These findings are particularly interesting since the received view on French Indian Ocean creoles has been so far that there has been virtually no significant substrate influence in their grammatical structures. In order to detect substrate influence, I advocate a new methodological approach in creole studies. Thanks to a bulk of typological data on the worldwide distribution of certain grammatical structures, creolists should not restrict themselves to compare one creole language to one or more potential substrate languages, but they should study creole and substrate features in the context of the worldwide distribution of these features. Only if these creole and substrate features turn out to be cross-linguistically unusual are we in a safe position to claim substrate influence.