Papers by Susanne Maria Michaelis
Brockmeyer eBooks, 1996
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Societies of strangers do not speak less complex languages, 2023
Many recent proposals claim that languages adapt to their environments. The linguistic niche hypo... more Many recent proposals claim that languages adapt to their environments. The linguistic niche hypothesis claims that languages with numerous native speakers and substantial proportions of nonnative speakers (societies of strangers) tend to lose grammatical distinctions. In contrast, languages in small, isolated communities should maintain or expand their grammatical markers. Here, we test these claims using a global dataset of grammatical structures, Grambank. We model the impact of the number of native speakers, the proportion of nonnative speakers, the number of linguistic neighbors, and the status of a language on grammatical complexity while controlling for spatial and phylogenetic autocorrelation. We deconstruct "grammatical complexity" into two separate dimensions: how much morphology a language has ("fusion") and the amount of information obligatorily encoded in the grammar ("informativity"). We find several instances of weak positive associations but no inverse correlations between grammatical complexity and sociodemographic factors. Our findings cast doubt on the widespread claim that grammatical complexity is shaped by the sociolinguistic environment.
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Language Variation - European Perspectives VI
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LINCOM Europa, 1996
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This paper shows that in the domain of valency, creole languages show a substantial amount of con... more This paper shows that in the domain of valency, creole languages show a substantial amount of constructional calquing from their substrates. In all four construction types considered (ditransitive constructions, weather constructions, experiencer constructions, and motion constructions), one can demonstrate recurrent matches between substrate and creole structures (contrasting with lexifier structures) in different regions of the world and with different substrates.
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Cite as Michaelis, Susanne Maria & Maurer, Philippe & Haspelmath, Martin & Huber, Magnus (eds.) 2... more Cite as Michaelis, Susanne Maria & Maurer, Philippe & Haspelmath, Martin & Huber, Magnus (eds.) 2013. Atlas of Pidgin and Creole Language Structures Online. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. (Available online at https://apics-online.info)
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In this paper, we argue that the ditransitive constructions in creole languages worldwide are bes... more In this paper, we argue that the ditransitive constructions in creole languages worldwide are best explained on the basis of influence from substrate languages in Africa and the Pacific region.
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Inflectional morphology has been a key ingredient in assessing complexity in creole languages. It... more Inflectional morphology has been a key ingredient in assessing complexity in creole languages. It has been claimed that synchronically creoles strikingly show a lack of inflectional morphology, thus giving rise to morphologically extremely simplified languages. (McWhorter 2001, Good 2012, Duval-Markussen 2014, Siegel et al. 2014). In this paper, I will challenge this view by drawing on data of the Atlas of Pidgin and Creole Language Structures (Michaelis et al. 2013). I will consider the following morpheme types: tense-aspect markers, case markers, and definite articles: (1) Ternate Chabacano (Spanish-based, Philippines; Sippola 2013) Ta yudá éle su marído IPFV help 3SG 3.SG.POSS husband 'She helps her husband.' (2) Korlai (Portuguese-based, India; Clements 2013) Pedru su kadz tidoy kadz Pedru su Pedru GEN house both house Pedru GEN 'Pedru's house' 'both of Pedru's houses' (3) Haitian Creole (French-based, Caribbean; Fattier 2013) kay la avyon an ti fi a house DET plane DET little girl DET 'the house' 'the plane' 'the little girl' The main misconception which has given rise to the idea that creoles lack inflectional morphology is the fact that scholars have implicitly or explicitly based themselves exclusively on spelling conventions in deciding whether a morpheme is an affix or a free morpheme (see e.g. Siegel et al. 2014). But the imperfective marker, the genitive case marker, and the definite article written as separate words in the cited examples above can be interpreted as affixes. I will consider two criteria for affixhood: (i) uninterruptibility and (ii) morphonological idiosyncrasies. In example (1) from Ternate Chabacano, nothing can intervene between the imperfective marker ta and the verb stem. The same holds for the genitive case marker su and the possessor in example (2) from Korlai. In example (3) from Haitian Creole, the definite article shows morphonological variation depending on the phonological shape of its host: la, an, a. Instances of tense-aspect affixes are abundant in the creole languages in APiCS, and affixed case markers and definite articles also occur repeatedly. Thus, I argue that creoles have lost most of their lexifiers' inflectional marking, but have gained at the same time a considerable degree of complex morphology through unusual accelerated grammaticalization processes.
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Sign Multilingualism, 2019
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The atlas of pidgin and creole language structures, 2013
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The atlas of pidgin and creole language structures, 2013
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The atlas of pidgin and creole language structures, 2013
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Typological Studies in Language, 2008
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The world atlas of language structures, 2005
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Journal of Language Contact, 2009
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Papers by Susanne Maria Michaelis