Ndyuka

This study offers what may be the most exhaustive account of a creole language yet written. It belongs to the Descriptive Grammar Series and covers grammar, sound system and vocabulary in depth. Its intended readers include formal and functional linguists, creole specialists, and students of language universals and typology. Judgments from native speakers, including trained native speakers of Ndyuka, are combined with close reading of texts. Over two thousand examples of constructions and forms appear in context, showing the structural and functional features of this highly restructured creole. The authors have worked with the Ndyuka community for over twenty-five years, and the speakers' own intuitions come through throughout. Extensive cross-references, an index of forms and topics, and a detailed table of contents make it easy to test hypotheses about universals, typology and creolization, including clefting, relativization and verb serialization.