Creativity at the edge of chaos: an emergentist generative perspective on contact morphosyntax

It is uncontroversial that language contact has effects on language systems. In this talk, I will focus on morphosyntax and (mostly) on contact varieties spoken in southern Africa to make the argument that ‘contact morphosyntax’ offers a particularly clear window on the way in which humans create language structure – not only during child language acquisition, but also where older humans engage in language acquisition, and where humans generally are linguistically creative. Appealing to the complex adaptive systems notion of ‘the edge of chaos’ and an emergentist generative perspective, I show that structural edges are privileged “entry points” for innovation, and so also for variation and, potentially, change.

Theresa Biberauer is a South African researcher and teacher who is based at the University of Cambridge, and affiliated with two South African universities (Stellenbosch and Western Cape, the Center for Syntax, Semantics and Phonology at KU Leuven  (Belgium) and the NegLaB project at Goethe Universität (Frankfurt, Germany). Her research centres on morphosyntax, with acquisition, variation and change being three larger areas of interest. Empirically, the typically only very partially documented varieties used in contact contexts constitute the language systems she is most intrigued and inspired by.