Theories of morphology and theories of creole emergence: the inner connection

Creole languages have long been considered to be morphologically challenged languages in comparison to their lexifiers. The present paper opposes such a view. It argues that the significant difference between creoles and their lexifiers as far as inflectional morphology is concerned is not a matter of richness, a dimension where inequalities are real but not dramatic, but it has much more to do with the overall predictability of the system, a distinction which only morphological models sharing the Word and Paradigm (WP) theoretical framework are equiped to state in a meaningful way. This is shown by comparing parts of the verbal inflections of European Portuguese and Portuguese-related Guinea-Bissau and Casamance Kriyol for the two dimensions of richness and predictability, using Paradigm Function Morphology (PFM) as a descriptive model. The second claim of the paper is that there exists a connection between models of inflectional morphology and models of creole emergence in terms of conceptual and empirical plausibility. In particular, to the extent that wp models are cognitively more realistic than their competitors, the Second Language Acquisition (SLA) model of creole emergence can be shown to win the prize for psychological and historical plausibility.