Marlyse Baptista

Testing the role of convergence in language acquisition, with implications for creole genesis

The main objective of this paper is to test experimentally the role of convergence in language acquisition (second language acquisition specifically), with implications for creole genesis. Although there is ample evidence that similar features in languages in contact are enhanced both in second language acquisition and the creation of new languages, scholars are rarely explicit about the exact nature of that similarity and have not been in a position to observe convergence in progress. Our experiment is unique on two fronts as it is the first to use an artificial language to test the convergence hypothesis by making it observable, and it is also the first experimental study to clarify the notion of similarity by varying the levels and types of similarity that are expressed. We report an experiment with 94 English-speaking adults, designed to test how language learners acquire a new language in which the form and function (meaning) of linguistic items are either similar to or distinct from those in their L1. A miniature artificial language was created that included morphological elements to express negation and pluralization. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: congruent (form and function of novel grammatical morphemes were highly similar to those in English), reversed (negative grammatical morpheme was highly similar to that of English plural, and plural grammatical morpheme was highly similar to that of English negation), and novel (form and function were highly dissimilar to those of English). For each task, scores were entered into a one-way ANOVA with condition as the between-subjects factor. Participants in the congruent condition performed best, indicating that features that converge across form and function are learned most fully. More surprisingly, results showed that participants in the reversed condition acquired the language more readily than those in the novel condition, contrary to expectation. This experiment contributes to a more fine-grained understanding of what degree of similarity promotes acquisition and language creation and provides evidence that form-function mapping promotes learning over form or function alone; crucially, the study challenges the received assumption that acquiring features that are totally novel may be easier than acquiring “reversed” features whose form maps onto L1 but whose function is distinct from it.

Parallel Trajectories of Genetic and Linguistic Admixture in a Genetically Admixed Creole Population

Joint analyses of genes and languages, both of which are transmitted in populations by descent with modification-genes vertically by Mendels laws, language via combinations of vertical, oblique, and horizontal processes [1-4]-provide an informative approach for human evolutionary studies [5-10]. Although gene-language analyses have employed extensive data on individual genetic variation [11-23], their linguistic data have not considered corresponding long-recognized [24] variability in individual speech patterns, or idiolects. Genetically admixed populations that speak creole languages show high genetic and idiolectal variation-genetic variation owing to heterogeneity in ancestry within admixed groups [25, 26] and idiolectal variation owing to recent language formation from differentiated sources [27-31]. To examine cotransmission of genetic and linguistic variation within populations, we collected genetic markers and speech recordings in the admixed creole-speaking population of Cape Verde, whose Kriolu language traces to West African languages and Portuguese [29, 32-35] and whose genetic ancestry has individual variation in European and continental African contributions [36-39]. In parallel with the combined Portuguese and West African origin of Kriolu, we find that genetic admixture in Cape Verde varies on an axis separating Iberian and Senegambian populations. We observe, analogously to vertical genetic transmission, transmission of idiolect from parents to offspring, as idiolect is predicted by parental birthplace, even after controlling for shared parent-child birthplaces. Further, African genetic admixture correlates with an index tabulating idiolectal features with likely African origins. These results suggest that Cape Verdean genetic and linguistic admixture have followed parallel evolutionary trajectories, with cotransmission of genetic and linguistic variation.

Cape Verdean Creole

Cape Verdean Creole (henceforth CVC) is spoken in Cape Verde, an archipelago located in the Atlantic off the northwestern coast of Africa. The archipelago played a critical role in the slave trade from the 15th to the 19th centuries. The examination of the creole that emerged from the contact between African slaves and Portuguese settlers reveals how grammatical and lexical elements from the source languages have interacted and blended their properties at a morphophonological, syntactic, and lexical levels. Such a study provides valuable insights into the cognitive processes at play when languages come abruptly into contact.