About me
My name is Stéphane Térosier. I am currently a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer at the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics. As of August 2024, I will be joining the Department of Romance Languages and Literature at the University at Buffalo as an Assistant Professor. My main research interests include the syntax of creole languages, especially Martinican creole (of which I am a native speaker). I am also interested in the syntactic and sociolinguistics consequences of the contact between a creole and its lexifier. More generally, my research focuses on syntax and the syntax-semantics and syntax-pragmatics interfaces.
About creoles
Creole languages offer unique insights into certain aspects of language. For example, the process of feature recombination which underlies regular processes of acquisition is simply magnified in the case of creoles due to the greater range of diversity in the input. Creole languages are also subject to a great deal of internal variation, which makes them prime objects for the study of microvariation.
Creoles are also often in contact with the European languages from which they borrowed the bulk of their lexicon. As a result, they are sometimes seen as inferior versions of these European languages. Unfortunately, this sometimes leads to the stigmatization of creole speakers. Worse! Creole speakers themselves may think of their native languages as not being fully developed.
My hope is that my contribution to the study of creole languages will help rehabilitate them in the eyes of their speakers.