Molyé: A Corpus-based Approach to Language Contact in Colonial France
This provides a resource for linguists studying language contact and creolization, though it is incremental as it focuses on data collection rather than new analysis.
The paper tackles the debate over the genetic descent of Creole languages from European languages by introducing the Molyé corpus, an open dataset combining European language variation and early Creole attestations over 400 years, aimed at enabling research on linguistic continuity between colonial contact situations.
Whether or not several Creole languages which developed during the early modern period can be considered genetic descendants of European languages has been the subject of intense debate. This is in large part due to the absence of evidence of intermediate forms. This work introduces a new open corpus, the Molyé corpus, which combines stereotypical representations of three kinds of language variation in Europe with early attestations of French-based Creole languages across a period of 400 years. It is intended to facilitate future research on the continuity between contact situations in Europe and Creolophone (former) colonies.