Affiliation:
1. Institute of Linguistics, Academia Sinica
Abstract
Abstract
In multilingual Taiwan, a language variety spoken in I-Lan County of northeastern Taiwan has been dubbed ‘Yilan
Creole’ and analyzed as a creole by scholars because it contains features from Japanese and Austronesian languages. This article
revisits the question of whether it is indeed a creole. I scrutinize its sociohistorical background as well as aspects of its
lexicon and grammar, which I compare with those of Japanese and (Squliq) Atayal to provide a solid foundation for assessing its
creole status. I conclude that ‘Yilan Creole’ is by no means a creole.
Publisher
John Benjamins Publishing Company
Subject
Linguistics and Language,Language and Linguistics
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