Mixing and semantic transparency in the genesis of Yilan Japanese

Abstract In this short piece, the so-called ‘Yilan Creole’ spoken in Yilan County, Taiwan (Republic of China) is reanalysed in light of contemporary discussions on mixing and the transparency principle as factors behind the genesis of languages. I argue that there is evidence to conceive the emergence of this vernacular as a case of Atayal+Japanese language mixing (rather than creolisation), whereby a large amount of lexicon, e.g. nouns, verbs, and particles, have been retained maintaining not only their original phonological form, but operating in the original Atayal way, within an all-encompassing Japanese grammar skeleton. In addition, a discussion on the transparency principle as a key factor in the genesis of this mixed language is brought into focus.