Creoles or planned languages: Which have the simpler grammar? Review of the doctoral dissertation of Anett Heil

Abstract

We often hear that there are many similarities between creoles and planned languages. Several studies on this topic are available from creolists and interlinguists (Corsetti 1999, Mühlhäusler 1992, Philippe 1991). But these studies are not satisfactory for a thorough understanding of the relationship: we need more detailed work. By approaching the problem from sociolinguistics or general linguistics, one can search for a common basis of the two fields and try to assess the usefulness of interlinguistics and creolistics for general linguistics and other branches of linguistics.