Based on a detailed study of creole languages, this book contributes to the debate on language acquisition and change by showing that language acquisition requires contact between different linguistic sub-systems that feed into the hybrid grammars that learners develop. Competition between these grammars may eventually result in language change.

Enoch Oladé Aboh is Professor of Linguistics at Universiteit van Amsterdam. His publications include The Morphosyntax of Complement-head Sequences (2004). In 2012 he was awarded the renowned one-year NIAS fellowship, and in 2003 he obtained the prestigious Dutch Science Foundation (NWO) five-year vidi grant to study the relation between information structure and syntax.

Foreword Salikoko S. Mufwene; 1. Introduction; 2. The agents of creole formation: geopolitics and cultural aspects of the Slave Coast; 3. The emergence of creoles: a review of some current hypotheses; 4. Competition and selection; 5. The role of vulnerable interfaces in language change: the case of the D-system; 6. The emergence of the clause left periphery; 7. The emergence of serial verb constructions; 8. Conclusions: some final remarks on hybrid grammars, the creole prototype, and language acquisition and change.