African Caribbean English Creole (ACEC) is a cluster of some forty varieties and 150 million speakers that arose from contact between African languages and English. Based on field data from across West Africa and the Caribbean, this line of research involves typological comparison, quantitative analyses, and sociolinguistic research on varieties as diverse as Nigerian Pidgin, Jamaican Creole, and Ndyuka. The findings challenge many assumptions about language change — including claims that creoles are structurally different from other languages. Rather, a shared history, multilingual contact, and powerful social dynamics have shaped the unique characteristics of ACEC.
How do linguistic, cognitive, and social factors shape prosody once tone and stress languages come into contact? Acoustic, phonological, and sociolinguistic analyses of African and Afro-diasporan contact languages of the Americas reveal striking areal patterns: tone prevails in creoles and colonial languages of Africa, and it persists in isolated areas of the Americas; stress dominates elsewhere in the Americas but hybrid systems have emerged in specific social settings. Further work is now extending to lesser-known varieties of Kiswahili, while parallel research has explored neurological aspects of tone production.
Indian diaspora languages remain understudied, yet they offer unique insights into multilingual contact. Based on field data and grammatical description, this research strand examines features of Sarnami (Suriname), Bhojpuri (Mauritius), and Khatri (India); the latter through PhD research by Antonia Alvares. Comparison with data from languages like Gujarati, Mauritian Creole, Sranan, and Dutch, has allowed for a fine-grained understanding of how multilingual speakers drive change across related and unrelated languages.
Pichi is a variety of African Caribbean English Creole spoken on the island of Bioko, Equatorial Guinea. Closely related to Krio (Sierra Leone) and West African Pidgin, and historically linked to Caribbean creoles, Pichi has developed a distinct character through contact with Spanish and the Bantu language Bube. This work has produced descriptive and sociolinguistic accounts based on primary data, including a reference grammar. The result is a detailed portrait of a previously undescribed language at the crossroads of African, American, and European linguistic ecologies.
Mabia (Gur) languages are spoken by millions across West Africa, yet many have not been described in detail. Extensive fieldwork in Ghana has resulted in PhD grammars of Likpakpaln (also known as Konkomba) by Abraham Kwesi Bisilki and of Buli by Darius Adjong, complemented by typological and comparative studies in co-authored publications. This line of research contributes to the documentation of a major African language family while offering new insights into the structural properties of its member languages.
In many societies, speakers routinely draw on two or more languages in everyday speech. This research theme investigates such practices through natural conversations recorded in Suriname, Equatorial Guinea, and Angola. Code-switching emerges as the normal way of communicating, as speakers weave elements from Sranan, Sarnami and Dutch, or Lingala, Portuguese and French into a coherent whole. The results suggest that boundaries between vastly different languages can be surprisingly fuzzy, broadening the empirical and theoretical foundations of the field.
Lingala is Central Africa's largest language, yet its presence in Angola has barely been studied. Drawing on linguistic biographies, participant observation, social network analysis, and structural description, this line of inquiry examines the social functions of Lingala, the attitudes and ideologies surrounding it, and how it interacts with Kikongo, Kimbundu, Portuguese, and French. As the only African language still gaining new speakers in Angola, Lingala offers a window into the spread of lingua francas amid rapid social change on the continent.