Cognitive creolistics and semantic primes: A phylogenetic network analysis

This study presents a semantics-driven lexical comparison of 20 creole languages and five European lexifier languages. Breaking new ground into understanding creole semantics, it utilizes insights from both cognitive semantics (in particular, the Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach) and phylogenetic approaches to linguistics comparisons. We provide an extensive study of label-meaning correlations as a way of exploring the relationship between word labels and word meanings across creoles and lexifiers. We conclude that creoles are not simply “versions” of their lexifier languages, and that it is misleading to say that creoles are “based” on European languages in their basic lexicalsemantic configuration. At the same time, we find that creoles do relate more closely to their historical lexifiers than to other creoles, and that the lexicalsemantic perspective adds a new dimension to the typology of creoles, nuancing the pictures from grammar-based comparisons.