Valency, transitivity and multifunctionality in Cameroon Pidgin English

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Cameroon Pidgin English (CPE), a primarily English-based language with over 2 million speakers, is aliving artefact of England's colonial history in West Africa. Existing research focuses on its structure andsociolinguistics, but until recently detailed lexical analysis has been impossible. Recent and forthcomingdigital datasets yield the opportunity for such analyses. This project uses corpus data to examinepolysemous CPE verbs and their patterns of transitivity, placing these patterns in a crosslinguisticcontext. Examining the relationships between senses of these verbs and the processes by which theyarose will shed light on patterns of language change and variation in a multilingual environment. Asthere is relatively little information about the historical origins of CPE, this research will contribute totheories of language formation and change in contact environments and will benefit scholars of creoletypology, semantics and the socio-historic complexity of West Africa.