Brigham Young University BYU ScholarsArchive All Theses and Dissertations 2017-03-01 Creole Genesis and Universality: Case, Word Order, and Agreement Gerald Taylor Snow Brigham Young University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd Part of the Linguistics Commons BYU ScholarsArchive Citation Snow, Gerald Taylor, "Creole Genesis and Universality: Case, Word Order, and Agreement" (2017). All Theses and Dissertations. 6338. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/6338 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by BYU ScholarsArchive. It has been accepted for inclusion in All Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of BYU ScholarsArchive. For more information, please contact
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[email protected]. Creole Genesis and Universality: Case, Word Order, and Agreement Gerald Taylor Snow A thesis submitted to the faculty of Brigham Young University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Deryle W. Lonsdale, Chair Dallin D. Oaks Heather Willson-Sturman Department of Linguistics and English Language Brigham Young University Copyright © 2017 Gerald Taylor Snow All Rights Reserved ABSTRACT Creole Genesis and Universality: Case, Word Order, and Agreement Gerald Taylor Snow Department of Linguistics and English Language, BYU Master of Arts The genesis of creole languages is important to the field of linguistics for at least two reasons. As newly emerging languages, creoles provide a unique window on the human language faculty and on the development of language generally (Veenstra 2008). They also offer insight into what are arguably universal linguistic structures. Two opposing theories have been in contention in the literature with respect to creole genesis: (1) that creoles owe their origin to the lexifier and substrate languages of their speech community and to other environmental influences (McWhorter 1997); and alternatively, (2) that universal innate linguistic structures or principles are the generative source of creole grammar (Bickerton 1981).