Retained inflectional morphology in pidgins: A typological study

It is commonly accepted that the process of pidginization leads to a loss of in-flectional morphology, but this loss is often not total. Lexifier inflections instead follow a cline of reduction: full retention – partial retention – partial lexical-ization – full lexicalization – full loss. This article examines the retention of inflection in 29 languages that reflect a history of pidginization in their devel-opment, comparing the morphological richness of pidgins with their respective lexifiers. The results indicate an asymmetry between the retention of inherent and contextual inflections, such that pidgins express fewer grammatical cate-gories via contextual inflection than do their lexifiers. The authors suggest that this may reflect a role of markedness (semantic relevance) in the preservation of inflection