RT info:eu-repo/semantics/article T1 La sencillez en las gramáticas de los criollos nuevos A1 Lang, Jürgen A2 Ediciones Universidad de Valladolid K1 Filología hispánica AB The question this paper tries to answer is: In what sense may the grammars of languages newly created by creolization rightly be characterized as being 'simple'. Without pretending to be exhaustive, we distinguish and illustrate four types of 'simplicity' which use to be found in the grammars of such languages: poverty of means (i.e. of grammatical distinctions), regularity, use of the same grammatical word in different syntactic categories, and economical use of marked forms. The presence of these types of simplicity in newly created creoles can easily be explaned by the very circumstances in which creoles emerge. Poverty of means is bound to be rapidly overcome, and should perhaps not be regarded as simplicity. The three remaining general principles of construction and use may characterize new creoles for a longer period. It is emphasized that these findings do not exclude the possibility of the presence of any specific linguistic feature in some newly formed creole, nor the possibility of some old languages being simpler (in the sense the term has been used here) than some newly created creoles. Innovating speakers of older languages are free to strive for simplicity. SN 0213-053X YR 2013 FD 2013 LK http://uvadoc.uva.es/handle/10324/19542 UL http://uvadoc.uva.es/handle/10324/19542 LA spa NO Anuario de lingüística hispánica, 2013, N.29, pags.57-73 DS UVaDOC RD 28-mar-2024