Salikoko S. Mufwene
Frank J. McLoraine Distinguished Service Professor. Department of Linguistics, Humanities Collegiate Division
Professor, Committee on Evolutionary Biology; Affiliate, Dept. of Comparative Human Development and the Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture.
Wieboldt 411
1050 E. 59th Street
Chicago, IL 60637
Office: (773) 702-8531
http://humanities.uchicago.edu/faculty/mufwene
s-mufwene@uchicago.edu
Mr. Mufwene currently works on language evolution, focusing on language speciation (including the emergence of creole language varieties, of African-American English, and of indigenized Englishes), on the phylogenetic emergence of language, and on colonization, globalization, and the vitality of languages (including language birth and death). He has also researched structural aspects of Gullah, of Caribbean English creoles (chiefly Jamaican and Guyanese Creoles), and of African American English, as well as the morphosyntax of Bantu (especially Kituba, Lingala, and Kiyansi). He was trained in lexical semantics and lexicography (the focus of his earliest scholarship), in syntax, and in language contact. He has been at Chicago since January 1992.
Education
- Ph.D., University of Chicago, 1979
Recent Publications
- Population Movements and Contacts in Language Evolution 1
- Créoles: de nouvelles variétés indo-européennes
- GRAMMATICIZATION IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF CREOLES
- The Comparability of New-Dialect Formation and Creole Development
- Myths of Globalization: What African Demolinguistics Reveals
- How Languages Die
- CLS42(2006)-Language Endangerment: An Embarrassment for Linguistics
- Race, Racialism, and the Study of Language Evolution in America
- Les continua créoles, linguistiques, et langagiers
- Globalization and Myth of Killer Languages
- Language Evolution: the Population Genetics Way
- Pourquoi le Cap-Vert a-t-il développé un créole mais pas le Brésil ?
- An interview withCallalooon the Development of Creoles and Language Evolution
- Globalization and Global English - IAWE 2004
- Language Birth and Death
- Genetic Linguistics and Genetic Creolistics
- Competition and Selection in Language Evolution
- What Do Creoles and Pidgins Tell Us About the Evolution of Language?
- On The "Ebonics" Debate
- Colonization, Globalization, and the Future of Languages in the Twenty-first Century
- The Flow of Highway Traffic and Language Evolution
- Creolization is a Social, not a Structural, Process
- Language Endangerment: What Have Pride and Prestige Got to do With it?
- Lost Tongues and the Politics of Language Endangerment (featured at Fathom, online learning source)
- Languages Don't Kill Languages; Speakers Do (featured at UChicago alumni magazine)
- The Evolution of English
- Ebonics and Standard English
- Pidgins and Creoles: An Overview
- Creoles, Pidgins and the Evolution of Languages (featured at Fathom, online learning source)
- Bantu Contact Languages