Overview

Uniformitarianism is the widely held assumption that, in the case of languages, structural and other changes in the past must have been triggered and constrained by the same ecological factors as changes in the present. This volume, led by two of the most eminent scholars in language contact, brings together an international team of authors to shed new light on Uniformitarianism in historical linguistics. Applying the Uniformitarian Principle to creoles and pidgins, as well as other languages, the chapters show that, contrary to the received doctrine, the former group of languages did not emerge in an exceptional way. Covering a typologically and geographically broad range of languages, and focusing on different contact ecologies in Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean, the book also dispels common misconceptions about what Uniformitarianism is. It shows how similar processes in different ecosystems result in different linguistic patterns, which don't require exceptional linguistic explanations in terms of creolization, pidginization, simplification, or incomplete acquisition.

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9781009628969

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Salikoko S. Mufwene is the Edward Carson Waller Distinguished Service Professor of Linguistics at the University of Chicago. His notable publications include: The Ecology of Language Evolution (Cambridge University Press, 2001), Language Evolution (Continuum Press, 2008), and Ecological Perspectives on Language Endangerment and Loss (Springer Nature, 2025). He is a fellow of the Linguistic Society of America, the American Philosophical Society, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He also held the Chaire Mondes francophones at the Collège de France in academic year 2023–24. Enoch O. Aboh is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Amsterdam. His research focuses on comparative syntax and language creation and change. His main publications include The Emergence of Hybrid Grammars, (Cambridge University Press, 2015) and The Morphosyntax of Head-Complement Sequences (Oxford University Press, 2004). He is a founding member of the African Linguistics School (ALS).

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