Une perspective non-créoliste de la complexité des créoles: Une analyse comparative de la complexité cachée en créole haïtien et en vietnamien

Abstract

Creole complexity has been a controversial area of research, especially since John McWhorter’s claim that Creole languages have 'the world’s simplest grammars.' Much research in this area focuses on the presence or absence of grammatical markers, thus leaving out other aspects contributing to linguistic complexity. Walter Bisang argued that there are two sides of complexity: overt and hidden, which reflect the motivations of explicitness and economy, respectively. The aim of this paper is to apply Bisang’s framework, which he used to analyze complexity of East and mainland Southeast Asian (EMSEA) languages, to examine and compare hidden complexity in Haitian Creole (HC) and Vietnamese (VN), an EMSEA language, thus vindicating the state of Creole complexity.