Observações sobre o uso dos afixos derivacionais em alguns crioulos de base lexical portuguesa e espanhola

Abstract

In the present study, we examine McWhorter’s (1998; 2005) hypothesis according to which the derivational morphology of creole languages is semantically transparent or “compositional”. We have drawn our data from six Iberoromancebased creoles. To be precise, in this paper we only deal with derivation by means of affixation. Depending on the coexistence of the creoles with the lexifier and/or adstrate languages, they turn out to employ their derivational affixes in quite distinct ways. In the majority of cases, the derivational processes are semantically transparent. However, all the creoles studied here also feature counter-evidence against the postulate of semantic transparency or compositionality