Michel DeGraff born in Haiti in 1963, is Associate Professor of Linguistics at MIT. He obtained his Ph.D. in 1992 at the University of Pennsylvania with a dissertation entitled Creole Grammars and the Acquisition of Syntax: The Case of Haitian Creole. His research interests and scholarly publications mostly concern the morphology, syntax and semantics of “Creole” languages, with focus on his native Haitian Creole. DeGraff is also interested in the joint study of linguistic creolization, language change and language acquisition and how such study may help elucidate the mental bases of language development in individual speakers and across “generations” of speakers. This is the topic of the volume he edited, entitled Language Creation and Language Change: Creolization, Diachrony, and Development (MIT Press, 1999). This volume is part of a long-term project documenting why "Creole" languages cannot be distinguished in any fundamental way from other languages on structural or developmental grounds (see DeGraff's 2003 article “Against Creole Exceptionalism,” in Language 79 and the references therein). From this non-exceptionalist perspective, the synchronic and diachronic properties of individual “Creole” languages can in principle shed light on the universal human language faculty, without any sui-generis stipulation about a “Creole typology” or about “Creole genesis.”

"Creolization" is Acquisition | LSA.223
MW 2:55-4:35
Three Week Course | Second Session