Focusing on French creoles, Professor Mufwene shows that the Romance creoles are new Romance vernaculars that diverge from their lexifiers in ways similar to the divergence of the latter from Vulgar Latin. In some ways, the creoles are less divergent from their nonstandard lexifiers than the traditional Romance languages are from theirs, prompting us to factor in the significance of layers of language contact (during their longer history) in shaping the structures of neo-Latin vernaculars in Europe. Their non-rectilinear and non-unilineal evolutions also remind us of the competition that obtained among the numerous neo-Latin vernaculars within their national borders and the particular role of academies in aspiring at linguistic unity and artificially influencing their evolution.

Salikoko Mufwene is the Frank J. McLoraine Distinguished Service Professor of Linguistics and the College at the University of Chicago.