Why does syntactic regularization during creole formation frequently result in SVO (Subject-Verb-Object) word order, even when the substrate languages exhibit different dominant word orders?

💡 Explanation

Grammaticalization explains the prevalence of SVO in creoles. The semantic bleaching of function words favors direct mapping of agent-action-patient, because SVO order readily reflects this. Therefore, creoles tend toward SVO, rather than retaining the complexities of substrate languages or relying solely on a lexifier’s structure.

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