Creole language
Encyclopedia
A creole language, or simply a creole, is a stable natural language
developed from the mixing of parent languages; creoles differ from pidgin
s (which are believed by scholars to be necessary precedents of creoles) in that they have been nativized
by children as their primary language, making them have features of natural languages that are normally missing from pidgins.
The vocabulary of a creole language consists of cognate
s from the parent languages, though there are often clear phonetic and semantic shifts. On the other hand, the grammar often has original features but may differ substantially from those of the parent languages. Most often, the vocabulary comes from the dominant group and the grammar from the subordinate group, where such stratification exists. For example, Jamaican Creole features largely English words superimposed on West African grammar. Likewise, Haitian Creole features a French vocabulary superimposed on West African grammar.
. The pidgin-creole life cycle was studied by Hall
in the 1960s.
Creoles share more grammatical similarities with each other than with the languages from which they are phylogenetically derived. However, there is no widely accepted theory that would account for those perceived similarities. Moreover, no grammatical feature has been shown to be specific to creoles.
Many of the creoles known today arose in the last 500 years, as a result of the worldwide expansion in European maritime power and trade in the Age of Discovery
, which led to extensive European colonial empires and an intense slave trade. Like most non-official and minority languages, creoles have generally been regarded as degenerate variants or dialect
s of their parent languages. Because of that prejudice, many of the creoles that arose in the European colonies have become extinct
. However, political and academic changes in recent decades have improved the status of creoles, both as living languages and as object of linguistic study. Some creoles have even been granted the status of official or semi-official language.
Linguists now recognize that creole formation is a universal phenomenon, not limited to the European colonial period, and an important aspect of language evolution (see ). For example, in 1933 Sigmund Feist
postulated a creole origin
for the Germanic languages
.
Other scholars, such as Salikoko Mufwene
, argue that pidgins and creoles arise independently under different circumstances, and that a pidgin need not always precede a creole nor a creole evolve from a pidgin. Pidgins, according to Mufwene, emerged among trade colonies among "users who preserved their native vernaculars for their day-to-day interactions". Creoles, meanwhile, developed in settlement colonies in which speakers of a European language, often indentured servants whose language would be far from the standard in the first place, interacted extensively with non-European slaves, absorbing certain words and features from the slaves' non-European native languages, resulting in a heavily basilectalized version of the original language. These servants and slaves would come to use the creole as an everyday vernacular, rather than merely in situations in which contact with a speaker of the superstrate was necessary.
term creole comes from French
créole, which is cognate with the Spanish
term criollo and Portuguese
crioulo
, all descending from the verb criar ("to breed" or "to raise"), ultimately from Latin
creare ("to produce, create"). The specific sense of the term was coined in the 16th and 17th century, during the great expansion in European maritime power and trade that led to the establishment of European colonies in other continents.
The terms criollo and crioulo were originally qualifiers used throughout the Spanish and Portuguese colonies to distinguish the members of an ethnic group that were born and raised locally from those who immigrated as adults. They were most commonly applied to nationals of the colonial power, e.g. to distinguish españoles criollos
(people born in the colonies from Spanish ancestors) from españoles peninsulares (those born in the Iberian Peninsula, i.e. Spain). However in Brazil
the term was also used to distinguish between negros crioulos (blacks born in Brazil from African slave ancestors) and negros africanos (born in Africa). Over time, the term and its derivatives (Creole, Kreyol
, Kriol
, Krio
, etc.) lost the generic meaning and became the proper name of many distinct ethnic groups that developed locally from immigrant communities. Originally, therefore, the term "creole language" meant the speech of any of those creole peoples
.
, western Africa
, Goa
and along the west coast of India
, and along the coast of Southeast Asia
up to Indonesia
, Macau
, the Philippines
, Malaysia, and Oceania
.
Many of those creoles are now extinct, but others still survive in the Caribbean
, the north and east coasts of South America
(The Guyanas), western Africa
, Australia
(see Australian Kriol language
), and in the Indian Ocean
.
Atlantic Creole
languages are based on European languages with elements from African and possibly Amerind
languages. Indian Ocean
Creole languages are based on European languages with elements from Malagasy
and possibly other Asian languages. There are, however, creoles like Nubi
and Sango
that are derived solely from non-European languages.
, leading to the disappearance of creole languages, mainly due to dispersion or assimilation of their speech communities.
Another factor that may have contributed to the relative neglect of creole languages in linguistics is that they do not fit the 19th century neogrammarian
"tree model" for the evolution of languages, and its postulated regularity of sound changes (such as the earliest advocates of the wave model
, Johannes Schmidt
and Hugo Schuchardt
, the forerunners of modern sociolinguistics
). This controversy of the late 19th century profoundly shaped modern approaches to the comparative method
in historical linguistics
and in creolistics
.
Because of social, political, and academic changes brought on by decolonization in the second half of the 20th century, creole languages have experienced revivals in the past few decades. They are increasingly being used in print and film, and in many cases, their community prestige has improved dramatically. In fact, some have been standardized, and are used in local schools and universities around the world. At the same time, linguists have began to come to the realization that creole languages are in no way inferior to other languages. They now use the term "creole" or "creole language" for any language suspected to have undergone creolization, terms that now imply no geographic restrictions nor ethnic prejudices.
creoles, and creolized pidgins. By the very nature of a creole language, the phylogenetic classification of a particular creole usually is a matter of dispute; especially when the pidgin
precursor and its parent tongues (which may have been other creoles or pidgins) have disappeared before they could be documented.
Phylogenetic classification traditionally relies on inheritance of the lexicon, especially of "core" terms, and of the grammar structure. However, in creoles, the core lexicon often has mixed origin, and the grammar is largely original. For these reasons, the issue of which language is the parent of a creole — that is, whether a language should be classified as a "Portuguese creole" or "English creole", etc. — often has no definitive answer, and can become the topic of long-lasting controversies, where social prejudices and political considerations may interfere with scientific discussion.
and superstrate are often used when two languages interact. However, the meaning of these terms is reasonably well-defined only in second language acquisition
or language replacement
events, when the native speakers of a certain source language (the substrate) are somehow compelled to abandon it for another target language
(the superstrate). The outcome of such an event is that erstwhile speakers of the substrate will use some version of the superstrate, at least in more formal contexts. The substrate may survive as a second language for informal conversation. As demonstrated by the fate of many replaced European languages (such as Etruscan
, Breton
, and Venetian
), the influence of the substrate on the official speech is often limited to pronunciation and a modest number of loanwords. The substrate might even disappear altogether without leaving any trace.
However, there is dispute over the extent to which the terms "substrate" and "superstrate" are applicable to the genesis or the description of creole languages. The language replacement model may not be appropriate in creole formation contexts, where the emerging language is derived from multiple languages without any one of them being imposed as a replacement for any other. The substratum-superstratum distinction becomes awkward when multiple superstrata must be assumed (such as in Papiamentu), when the substratum cannot be identified, or when the presence or the survival of substratal evidence is inferred from mere typological analogies. On the other hand, the distinction may be meaningful when the contributions of each parent language to the resulting creole can be shown to be very unequal, in a scientifically meaningful way. In the literature on Atlantic Creole
s, "superstrate" usually means European and "substrate" non-European or African.
process typically brings about a post-creole speech continuum
characterized by large scale variation and hypercorrection
in the language.
.)
Phylogenetic or typological
comparisons of creole languages have led to divergent conclusions. Similarities are usually higher among creoles derived from related languages, such as the languages of Europe
, than among broader groups that include also creoles based on non-Indo-European languages
(like Nubi or Sango). French-based creoles
in turn are more similar to each other (and to varieties of French) than to other European-based creoles. It was observed, in particular, that definite article
s are mostly prenominal in English-based creole languages
and English whereas they are generally postnominal in French creoles
and in the variety of French
that was exported to the colonies in the 17th and 18th century
. Moreover the European languages which gave rise to the creole languages of European colonies all belong to the same subgroup of Western Indo-European
and have highly convergent grammars; to the point that Whorf joined them into a single Standard Average European
language group. French and English are particularly close, since English, through extensive borrowing, is typologically closer to French than to other Germanic languages. Thus the claimed similarities between creoles may be mere consequences of similar parentage, rather than characteristic features of all creoles.
of pidgins and creoles hypothesizes that they are all derived from a single Mediterranean Lingua Franca
, via a West African Pidgin Portuguese of the 17th century, relexified
in the so-called "slave factories" of Western Africa that were the source of the Atlantic slave trade
. This theory was originally formulated by Hugo Schuchardt
in the late 19th century and popularized in the late 1950s and early 1960s by Taylor, Whinnom, Thompson, and Stewart. However, this hypothesis is no longer actively investigated.
are the foremost candidates to being the outcome of "normal" linguistic change
and their creoleness to be sociohistoric in nature and relative to their colonial origin. Within this theoretical framework, a French creole
is a language phylogenetically based on the French language
, more specifically on a 17th century koiné
French
extant in Paris
, the French Atlantic harbours, and the nascent French colonies. Two descendants of the non-creole colonial koiné are still spoken in Canada
(mostly in Québec
and among the Acadian
people of the Eastern Maritime provinces), the Prairies, Louisiana
, Saint-Barthélemy (leeward portion of the island) and as isolate
s in other parts of the Americas. Approaches under this hypothesis are compatible with gradualism
in change
and models of imperfect language transmission in koiné
genesis.
.
suggest that four different processes are involved in creating Foreigner Talk:
This could explain why creole languages have much in common, while avoiding a monogenetic model. However, , in analyzing German Foreigner Talk, claims that it is too inconsistent and unpredictable to provide any model for language learning.
While the simplification of input was supposed to account for creoles' simple grammar, there are a number of problems with this explanation:
Another problem with the FT explanation is its potential circularity. points out that FT is often based on the imitation of the incorrect speech of the non-natives, that is the pidgin. Therefore one may be mistaken in assuming that the former gave rise to the latter.
) learning hypothesis claims that pidgins are primarily the result of the imperfect L2 learning of the dominant lexifier language by the slaves. Research on naturalistic L2 processes has revealed a number of features of "interlanguage systems" that are also seen in pidgins and creoles:
Imperfect L2 learning is compatible with other approaches, notably the European dialect origin hypothesis and the universalist models of language transmission.
: the substrate language replaces the native lexical items with lexical material from the superstrate language while retaining the native grammatical categories. The problem with this explanation is that the postulated substrate languages differ amongst themselves and with creoles in meaningful ways. argues that the number and diversity of African languages and the paucity of a historical record on creole genesis makes determining lexical correspondences a matter of chance. coined the term "cafeteria principle" to refer to the practice of arbitrarily attributing features of creoles to the influence of substrate African languages or assorted substandard dialects of European languages.
For a representative debate on this issue, see the contributions to ; for a more recent view, .
Because of the sociohistoric similarities amongst many (but by no means all) of the creoles, the Atlantic slave trade
and the plantation system of the European colonies have been emphasized as factors by linguists such as .
s, rudimentary second languages improvised for use between speakers of two or more non-intelligible native languages. Keith Whinnom (in ) suggests that pidgins need three languages to form, with one (the superstrate) being clearly dominant over the others. The lexicon of a pidgin is usually small and drawn from the vocabularies of its speakers, in varying proportions. Morphological details like word inflection
s, which usually take years to learn, are omitted; the syntax is kept very simple, usually based on strict word order. In this initial stage, all aspects of the speech — syntax, lexicon, and pronunciation — tend to be quite variable, especially with regard to the speaker's background.
If a pidgin manages to be learned by the children of a community as a native language, it may become fixed and acquire a more complex grammar, with fixed phonology, syntax, morphology, and syntactic embedding. Pidgins can become full languages in only a single generation
. "Creolization" is this second stage where the pidgin language develops into a fully developed native language. The vocabulary, too, will develop to contain more and more items according to a rationale of lexical enrichment.
models stress the intervention of specific general processes during the transmission of language from generation to generation and from speaker to speaker. The process invoked varies: a general tendency towards semantic transparency
, first language learning driven by universal process, or general process of discourse
organization
. The main universalist theory is still Bickerton's
language bioprogram theory
, proposed in the 1980s. Bickerton claims that creoles are inventions of the children growing up on newly founded plantations. Around them, they only heard pidgins spoken, without enough structure to function as natural language
s; and the children used their own innate linguistic capacities to transform the pidgin input into a full-fledged language. The alleged common features of all creoles would then be the consequence of those innate abilities being universal.
John McWhorter
has proposed the following list of features to indicate a creole prototype:
McWhorter hypothesizes that these three properties exactly characterize a creole. However, the creole prototype hypothesis has been disputed:
The lack of progress made in defining creoles in terms of their morphology and syntax has led scholars such as Robert Chaudenson, Salikoko Mufwene
and Henri Wittmann
to question the value of creole as a typological class; they argue that creoles are structurally no different from any other language, and that creole is a sociohistoric concept — not a linguistic one — encompassing displaced population and slavery.
spell out the idea of creole exceptionalism, claiming that creole languages are an instance of nongenetic language change due to language shift with abnormal transmission. Gradualists question the abnormal transmission of languages in a creole setting and argue that the processes which created today's creole languages are no different from universal patterns of language change.
Given these objections to creole as a concept, articles such as Against Creole Exceptionalism and Deconstructing Creole have arisen which question the idea that creoles are exceptional in any meaningful way. Additionally, argues that some Romance languages are potential creoles but that they are not considered as such by linguists because of a historical bias against such a view.
Natural language
In the philosophy of language, a natural language is any language which arises in an unpremeditated fashion as the result of the innate facility for language possessed by the human intellect. A natural language is typically used for communication, and may be spoken, signed, or written...
developed from the mixing of parent languages; creoles differ from pidgin
Pidgin
A pidgin , or pidgin language, is a simplified language that develops as a means of communication between two or more groups that do not have a language in common. It is most commonly employed in situations such as trade, or where both groups speak languages different from the language of the...
s (which are believed by scholars to be necessary precedents of creoles) in that they have been nativized
Nativization
Nativization is the process whereby a language gains native speakers. This happens necessarily where a second language used by adult parents becomes the native language of their children...
by children as their primary language, making them have features of natural languages that are normally missing from pidgins.
The vocabulary of a creole language consists of cognate
Cognate
In linguistics, cognates are words that have a common etymological origin. This learned term derives from the Latin cognatus . Cognates within the same language are called doublets. Strictly speaking, loanwords from another language are usually not meant by the term, e.g...
s from the parent languages, though there are often clear phonetic and semantic shifts. On the other hand, the grammar often has original features but may differ substantially from those of the parent languages. Most often, the vocabulary comes from the dominant group and the grammar from the subordinate group, where such stratification exists. For example, Jamaican Creole features largely English words superimposed on West African grammar. Likewise, Haitian Creole features a French vocabulary superimposed on West African grammar.
Overview
A creole is believed to arise when a pidgin, developed by adults for use as a second language, becomes the native and primary language of their children — a process known as nativizationNativization
Nativization is the process whereby a language gains native speakers. This happens necessarily where a second language used by adult parents becomes the native language of their children...
. The pidgin-creole life cycle was studied by Hall
Robert A. Hall, Jr.
Robert Anderson Hall, Jr. was an American linguist and specialist in the Romance languages. He was a professor of Linguistics at Cornell University....
in the 1960s.
Creoles share more grammatical similarities with each other than with the languages from which they are phylogenetically derived. However, there is no widely accepted theory that would account for those perceived similarities. Moreover, no grammatical feature has been shown to be specific to creoles.
Many of the creoles known today arose in the last 500 years, as a result of the worldwide expansion in European maritime power and trade in the Age of Discovery
Age of Discovery
The Age of Discovery, also known as the Age of Exploration and the Great Navigations , was a period in history starting in the early 15th century and continuing into the early 17th century during which Europeans engaged in intensive exploration of the world, establishing direct contacts with...
, which led to extensive European colonial empires and an intense slave trade. Like most non-official and minority languages, creoles have generally been regarded as degenerate variants or dialect
Dialect
The term dialect is used in two distinct ways, even by linguists. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors,...
s of their parent languages. Because of that prejudice, many of the creoles that arose in the European colonies have become extinct
Extinct language
An extinct language is a language that no longer has any speakers., or that is no longer in current use. Extinct languages are sometimes contrasted with dead languages, which are still known and used in special contexts in written form, but not as ordinary spoken languages for everyday communication...
. However, political and academic changes in recent decades have improved the status of creoles, both as living languages and as object of linguistic study. Some creoles have even been granted the status of official or semi-official language.
Linguists now recognize that creole formation is a universal phenomenon, not limited to the European colonial period, and an important aspect of language evolution (see ). For example, in 1933 Sigmund Feist
Sigmund Feist
Sigmund Feist was a German Jewish pedagogue and historical linguist. He was the author of the Germanic substrate hypothesis as well as a number of important works concerning Jewish ethnic and racial identity. Feist served as the director of the Jewish Reichenheim Orphanage in Berlin from 1906 to...
postulated a creole origin
Germanic substrate hypothesis
The Germanic substrate hypothesis is an attempt to explain the distinctive nature of the Germanic languages within the context of the Indo-European language family...
for the Germanic languages
Germanic languages
The Germanic languages constitute a sub-branch of the Indo-European language family. The common ancestor of all of the languages in this branch is called Proto-Germanic , which was spoken in approximately the mid-1st millennium BC in Iron Age northern Europe...
.
Other scholars, such as Salikoko Mufwene
Salikoko Mufwene
Salikoko Mufwene is a linguist born in Mbaya-Lareme in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He is the Frank J. McLoraine Distinguished Service Professor of linguistics at the University of Chicago. He has worked extensively on the development of creole languages, as well as on African American...
, argue that pidgins and creoles arise independently under different circumstances, and that a pidgin need not always precede a creole nor a creole evolve from a pidgin. Pidgins, according to Mufwene, emerged among trade colonies among "users who preserved their native vernaculars for their day-to-day interactions". Creoles, meanwhile, developed in settlement colonies in which speakers of a European language, often indentured servants whose language would be far from the standard in the first place, interacted extensively with non-European slaves, absorbing certain words and features from the slaves' non-European native languages, resulting in a heavily basilectalized version of the original language. These servants and slaves would come to use the creole as an everyday vernacular, rather than merely in situations in which contact with a speaker of the superstrate was necessary.
Origin
The EnglishEnglish language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
term creole comes from French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
créole, which is cognate with the Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
term criollo and Portuguese
Portuguese language
Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
crioulo
Crioulo
The Portuguese word crioulo may refer to:* In Brazil, a person of African ancestry* A creole language, especially one of the Portuguese-based creole languages...
, all descending from the verb criar ("to breed" or "to raise"), ultimately from Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
creare ("to produce, create"). The specific sense of the term was coined in the 16th and 17th century, during the great expansion in European maritime power and trade that led to the establishment of European colonies in other continents.
The terms criollo and crioulo were originally qualifiers used throughout the Spanish and Portuguese colonies to distinguish the members of an ethnic group that were born and raised locally from those who immigrated as adults. They were most commonly applied to nationals of the colonial power, e.g. to distinguish españoles criollos
Criollo people
The Criollo class ranked below that of the Iberian Peninsulares, the high-born permanent residence colonists born in Spain. But Criollos were higher status/rank than all other castes—people of mixed descent, Amerindians, and enslaved Africans...
(people born in the colonies from Spanish ancestors) from españoles peninsulares (those born in the Iberian Peninsula, i.e. Spain). However in Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
the term was also used to distinguish between negros crioulos (blacks born in Brazil from African slave ancestors) and negros africanos (born in Africa). Over time, the term and its derivatives (Creole, Kreyol
Kreyol
The word Kreyol may mean:*Liberian Kreyol language*Haitian Creole language *Louisiana Creole language -See also:*Creole peoples*creole language*Kriol *Krio *Kriolu*Criol...
, Kriol
Kriol
The word Kriol could mean one of the following ethnic groups:* Belizean Kriol people or Kriols* Upper Guinea Kriol peopleIt could also mean any of the following Creole languages:* The English-based Australian Kriol language...
, Krio
Krio
Krio may refer to:*Sierra Leone Krio people*Krio language, language of the Sierra Leone Krio people*Krio Dayak people, an ethnic group in West Kalimantan, Indonesia*Krio Dayak language*Keriau River, in West Kalimantan, Indonesia...
, etc.) lost the generic meaning and became the proper name of many distinct ethnic groups that developed locally from immigrant communities. Originally, therefore, the term "creole language" meant the speech of any of those creole peoples
Creole peoples
The term Creole and its cognates in other languages — such as crioulo, criollo, créole, kriolu, criol, kreyol, kreol, kriulo, kriol, krio, etc. — have been applied to people in different countries and epochs, with rather different meanings...
.
Geographic distribution
As a consequence of colonial European trade patterns, most of the known European-based creole languages arose in the equatorial belt around the world and in areas with access to the oceans, including the coastal regions of the AmericasAmericas
The Americas, or America , are lands in the Western hemisphere, also known as the New World. In English, the plural form the Americas is often used to refer to the landmasses of North America and South America with their associated islands and regions, while the singular form America is primarily...
, western Africa
Africa
Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...
, Goa
Goa
Goa , a former Portuguese colony, is India's smallest state by area and the fourth smallest by population. Located in South West India in the region known as the Konkan, it is bounded by the state of Maharashtra to the north, and by Karnataka to the east and south, while the Arabian Sea forms its...
and along the west coast of India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
, and along the coast of Southeast Asia
Asia
Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...
up to Indonesia
Indonesia
Indonesia , officially the Republic of Indonesia , is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 13,000 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an...
, Macau
Macau
Macau , also spelled Macao , is, along with Hong Kong, one of the two special administrative regions of the People's Republic of China...
, the Philippines
Philippines
The Philippines , officially known as the Republic of the Philippines , is a country in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan. West across the South China Sea sits Vietnam...
, Malaysia, and Oceania
Oceania
Oceania is a region centered on the islands of the tropical Pacific Ocean. Conceptions of what constitutes Oceania range from the coral atolls and volcanic islands of the South Pacific to the entire insular region between Asia and the Americas, including Australasia and the Malay Archipelago...
.
Many of those creoles are now extinct, but others still survive in the Caribbean
Caribbean
The Caribbean is a crescent-shaped group of islands more than 2,000 miles long separating the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, to the west and south, from the Atlantic Ocean, to the east and north...
, the north and east coasts of South America
South America
South America is a continent situated in the Western Hemisphere, mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere. The continent is also considered a subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean and on the north and east...
(The Guyanas), western Africa
Africa
Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...
, Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
(see Australian Kriol language
Australian Kriol language
Kriol is an Australian creole language that developed initially in the region of Sydney and Newcastle in New South Wales in the early days of White colonisation, and then moved west and north with White and Black stockmen and others...
), and in the Indian Ocean
Indian Ocean
The Indian Ocean is the third largest of the world's oceanic divisions, covering approximately 20% of the water on the Earth's surface. It is bounded on the north by the Indian Subcontinent and Arabian Peninsula ; on the west by eastern Africa; on the east by Indochina, the Sunda Islands, and...
.
Atlantic Creole
Atlantic Creole
Atlantic Creole is a term used in North America to describe the Charter Generation of slaves during the European colonization of the Americas before 1660. These slaves had cultural roots in Africa, Europe and sometimes the Caribbean. They were of mixed race, primarily descended from European...
languages are based on European languages with elements from African and possibly Amerind
Amerind
Amerind may refer to:* Amerind peoples, neologism for Indigenous peoples of the Americas* Amerind Foundation, a non-profit, museum and archaeological research facility* Amerind languages, putative higher-level language family...
languages. Indian Ocean
Indian Ocean
The Indian Ocean is the third largest of the world's oceanic divisions, covering approximately 20% of the water on the Earth's surface. It is bounded on the north by the Indian Subcontinent and Arabian Peninsula ; on the west by eastern Africa; on the east by Indochina, the Sunda Islands, and...
Creole languages are based on European languages with elements from Malagasy
Malagasy language
Malagasy is the national language of Madagascar, a member of the Austronesian family of languages. Most people in Madagascar speak it as a first language as do some people of Malagasy descent elsewhere.-History:...
and possibly other Asian languages. There are, however, creoles like Nubi
Nubi language
The Nubi language is a Sudanese Arabic-based creole language spoken in Uganda around Bombo, and in Kenya around Kibera, by the descendants of Emin Pasha's Sudanese soldiers who were settled there by the British colonial administration...
and Sango
Sango language
Sango is the primary language spoken in the Central African Republic: it has approximately 1,600,000 second-language speakers, but only about 404,000 native speakers, mainly in the towns.- Classification :...
that are derived solely from non-European languages.
Social and political status
Because of the generally low status of the Creole peoples in the eyes of prior European colonial powers, creole languages have generally been regarded as "degenerate" languages, or at best as rudimentary "dialects" of the politically dominant parent languages. Because of this prejudice, the word "creole" was generally used by linguists in opposition to "language", rather than as a qualifier for it. This prejudice was compounded by the inherent instability of the colonial systemColonialism
Colonialism is the establishment, maintenance, acquisition and expansion of colonies in one territory by people from another territory. It is a process whereby the metropole claims sovereignty over the colony and the social structure, government, and economics of the colony are changed by...
, leading to the disappearance of creole languages, mainly due to dispersion or assimilation of their speech communities.
Another factor that may have contributed to the relative neglect of creole languages in linguistics is that they do not fit the 19th century neogrammarian
Neogrammarian
The Neogrammarians were a German school of linguists, originally at the University of Leipzig, in the late 19th century who proposed the Neogrammarian hypothesis of the regularity of sound change...
"tree model" for the evolution of languages, and its postulated regularity of sound changes (such as the earliest advocates of the wave model
Wave model (linguistics)
In historical linguistics, the wave model or wave theory is a model of language change in which new features of a language spread from a central point in continuously weakening concentric circles, similar to the waves created when a stone is thrown into a body of water. According to the model,...
, Johannes Schmidt
Johannes Schmidt (linguist)
Johannes Friedrich Heinrich Schmidt was a German linguist. He developed the Wellentheorie of language development.-Biography:Schmidt was born in Prenzlau, Province of Brandenburg...
and Hugo Schuchardt
Hugo Schuchardt
Hugo Ernst Mario Schuchardt was an eminent linguist, best known for his work in the Romance languages, the Basque language, and in mixed languages, including pidgins, creoles, and the Lingua franca of the Mediterranean.-In Germany:Schuchardt grew up in Gotha...
, the forerunners of modern sociolinguistics
Sociolinguistics
Sociolinguistics is the descriptive study of the effect of any and all aspects of society, including cultural norms, expectations, and context, on the way language is used, and the effects of language use on society...
). This controversy of the late 19th century profoundly shaped modern approaches to the comparative method
Comparative method
In linguistics, the comparative method is a technique for studying the development of languages by performing a feature-by-feature comparison of two or more languages with common descent from a shared ancestor, as opposed to the method of internal reconstruction, which analyzes the internal...
in historical linguistics
Historical linguistics
Historical linguistics is the study of language change. It has five main concerns:* to describe and account for observed changes in particular languages...
and in creolistics
Creolistics
Creolistics, or Creology, is the scientific study of creole languages and, as such, is a subfield of linguistics. Someone who engages in this study is called a creolist.-Controversy:...
.
Because of social, political, and academic changes brought on by decolonization in the second half of the 20th century, creole languages have experienced revivals in the past few decades. They are increasingly being used in print and film, and in many cases, their community prestige has improved dramatically. In fact, some have been standardized, and are used in local schools and universities around the world. At the same time, linguists have began to come to the realization that creole languages are in no way inferior to other languages. They now use the term "creole" or "creole language" for any language suspected to have undergone creolization, terms that now imply no geographic restrictions nor ethnic prejudices.
Historic classification
According to their external history, four types of creoles have been distinguished: plantation creoles, fort creoles, maroonMaroon (people)
Maroons were runaway slaves in the West Indies, Central America, South America, and North America, who formed independent settlements together...
creoles, and creolized pidgins. By the very nature of a creole language, the phylogenetic classification of a particular creole usually is a matter of dispute; especially when the pidgin
Pidgin
A pidgin , or pidgin language, is a simplified language that develops as a means of communication between two or more groups that do not have a language in common. It is most commonly employed in situations such as trade, or where both groups speak languages different from the language of the...
precursor and its parent tongues (which may have been other creoles or pidgins) have disappeared before they could be documented.
Phylogenetic classification traditionally relies on inheritance of the lexicon, especially of "core" terms, and of the grammar structure. However, in creoles, the core lexicon often has mixed origin, and the grammar is largely original. For these reasons, the issue of which language is the parent of a creole — that is, whether a language should be classified as a "Portuguese creole" or "English creole", etc. — often has no definitive answer, and can become the topic of long-lasting controversies, where social prejudices and political considerations may interfere with scientific discussion.
Substrate and superstrate
The terms substrateSubstratum
In linguistics, a stratum or strate is a language that influences, or is influenced by another through contact. A substratum is a language which has lower power or prestige than another, while a superstratum is the language that has higher power or prestige. Both substratum and superstratum...
and superstrate are often used when two languages interact. However, the meaning of these terms is reasonably well-defined only in second language acquisition
Second language acquisition
Second-language acquisition or second-language learning is the process by which people learn a second language. Second-language acquisition is also the name of the scientific discipline devoted to studying that process...
or language replacement
Language shift
Language shift, sometimes referred to as language transfer or language replacement or assimilation, is the progressive process whereby a speech community of a language shifts to speaking another language. The rate of assimilation is the percentage of individuals with a given mother tongue who speak...
events, when the native speakers of a certain source language (the substrate) are somehow compelled to abandon it for another target language
Target language
Target language may refer to:*Target language, in applied linguistics and language education, the language which a person is learning, also called second language*Target language, in translation, the language to which a source text is translated...
(the superstrate). The outcome of such an event is that erstwhile speakers of the substrate will use some version of the superstrate, at least in more formal contexts. The substrate may survive as a second language for informal conversation. As demonstrated by the fate of many replaced European languages (such as Etruscan
Etruscan language
The Etruscan language was spoken and written by the Etruscan civilization, in what is present-day Italy, in the ancient region of Etruria and in parts of Lombardy, Veneto, and Emilia-Romagna...
, Breton
Breton language
Breton is a Celtic language spoken in Brittany , France. Breton is a Brythonic language, descended from the Celtic British language brought from Great Britain to Armorica by migrating Britons during the Early Middle Ages. Like the other Brythonic languages, Welsh and Cornish, it is classified as...
, and Venetian
Venetian language
Venetian or Venetan is a Romance language spoken as a native language by over two million people, mostly in the Veneto region of Italy, where of five million inhabitants almost all can understand it. It is sometimes spoken and often well understood outside Veneto, in Trentino, Friuli, Venezia...
), the influence of the substrate on the official speech is often limited to pronunciation and a modest number of loanwords. The substrate might even disappear altogether without leaving any trace.
However, there is dispute over the extent to which the terms "substrate" and "superstrate" are applicable to the genesis or the description of creole languages. The language replacement model may not be appropriate in creole formation contexts, where the emerging language is derived from multiple languages without any one of them being imposed as a replacement for any other. The substratum-superstratum distinction becomes awkward when multiple superstrata must be assumed (such as in Papiamentu), when the substratum cannot be identified, or when the presence or the survival of substratal evidence is inferred from mere typological analogies. On the other hand, the distinction may be meaningful when the contributions of each parent language to the resulting creole can be shown to be very unequal, in a scientifically meaningful way. In the literature on Atlantic Creole
Atlantic Creole
Atlantic Creole is a term used in North America to describe the Charter Generation of slaves during the European colonization of the Americas before 1660. These slaves had cultural roots in Africa, Europe and sometimes the Caribbean. They were of mixed race, primarily descended from European...
s, "superstrate" usually means European and "substrate" non-European or African.
Decreolization
Since creole languages rarely attain official status, the speakers of a fully formed creole may eventually feel compelled to conform their speech to one of the parent languages. This decreolizationDecreolization
Decreolization is a hypothetical phenomenon whereby over time a creole language reconverges with one of the standard languages from which it originally derived...
process typically brings about a post-creole speech continuum
Post-creole speech continuum
The Post-creole continuum or simply creole continuum refers to a situation wherein a creole language consists of a spectrum of varieties between those most and least similar to the superstrate language...
characterized by large scale variation and hypercorrection
Hypercorrection
In linguistics or usage, hypercorrection is a non-standard usage that results from the over-application of a perceived rule of grammar or a usage prescription...
in the language.
Shared features
It is commonly assumed a priori that, compared to other languages, creoles have a simpler grammar and more internal variability. However, these notions may be little more than prejudices. (See also language complexityLanguage complexity
It is sometimes said that all human languages are equally complex. This is partially an overcorrection of racialist theories that held that "primitive" people spoke "primitive" languages, but also an implication of Chomskian linguistics, which postulates that all human languages are underlyingly...
.)
Phylogenetic or typological
Linguistic typology
Linguistic typology is a subfield of linguistics that studies and classifies languages according to their structural features. Its aim is to describe and explain the common properties and the structural diversity of the world's languages...
comparisons of creole languages have led to divergent conclusions. Similarities are usually higher among creoles derived from related languages, such as the languages of Europe
Languages of Europe
Most of the languages of Europe belong to Indo-European language family. These are divided into a number of branches, including Romance, Germanic, Balto-Slavic, Greek, and others. The Uralic languages also have a significant presence in Europe, including the national languages Hungarian, Finnish,...
, than among broader groups that include also creoles based on non-Indo-European languages
Indo-European languages
The Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major current languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and South Asia and also historically predominant in Anatolia...
(like Nubi or Sango). French-based creoles
French-based creole languages
A French Creole, or French-based Creole language, is a creole language based on the French language, more specifically on a 17th century koiné French extant in Paris, the French Atlantic harbors, and the nascent French colonies...
in turn are more similar to each other (and to varieties of French) than to other European-based creoles. It was observed, in particular, that definite article
Definite Article
Definite Article is the title of British comedian Eddie Izzard's 1996 performance released on VHS. It was recorded on different nights at the Shaftesbury Theatre...
s are mostly prenominal in English-based creole languages
English-based creole languages
An English-based creole language is a creole language that was significantly influenced by the English language...
and English whereas they are generally postnominal in French creoles
French-based creole languages
A French Creole, or French-based Creole language, is a creole language based on the French language, more specifically on a 17th century koiné French extant in Paris, the French Atlantic harbors, and the nascent French colonies...
and in the variety of French
Quebec French
Quebec French , or Québécois French, is the predominant variety of the French language in Canada, in its formal and informal registers. Quebec French is used in everyday communication, as well as in education, the media, and government....
that was exported to the colonies in the 17th and 18th century
History of Quebec French
Quebec French is substantially different in pronunciation and vocabulary to the French of Europe and that of France's Second Empire colonies in Africa and Asia....
. Moreover the European languages which gave rise to the creole languages of European colonies all belong to the same subgroup of Western Indo-European
Indo-European languages
The Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major current languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and South Asia and also historically predominant in Anatolia...
and have highly convergent grammars; to the point that Whorf joined them into a single Standard Average European
Standard Average European
Standard Average European is a concept introduced by Benjamin Whorf to group the modern, Indo-European languages of Europe in the sense of a Sprachbund.The more central members of the SAE Sprachbund are Romance and West Germanic, i.e...
language group. French and English are particularly close, since English, through extensive borrowing, is typologically closer to French than to other Germanic languages. Thus the claimed similarities between creoles may be mere consequences of similar parentage, rather than characteristic features of all creoles.
Creole genesis
There are a variety of theories on the origin of creole languages, all of which attempt to explain the similarities among them. outline a fourfold classification of explanations regarding creole genesis:- Theories focusing on European input
- Theories focusing on non-European input
- Gradualist and developmental hypotheses
- Universalist approaches
The monogenetic theory of pidgins and creoles
The monogenetic theoryMonogenetic theory of pidgins
According to the theory of monogenesis in its most radical form, all pidgins and creole languages of the world can be ultimately traced back to one linguistic variety. This idea was first formulated by Hugo Schuchardt in the late 19th century and popularized in the late 1950s and early 1960s by and...
of pidgins and creoles hypothesizes that they are all derived from a single Mediterranean Lingua Franca
Mediterranean Lingua Franca
The Mediterranean Lingua Franca or Sabir was a pidgin language used as a lingua franca in the Mediterranean Basin from the 11th to the 19th century.-History:...
, via a West African Pidgin Portuguese of the 17th century, relexified
Relexification
Relexification is a term in linguistics used to describe the mechanism of language change by which one language replaces much or all of its lexicon, including basic vocabulary, with that of another language, without drastic change to its grammar. It is principally used to describe pidgins, creoles,...
in the so-called "slave factories" of Western Africa that were the source of the Atlantic slave trade
Atlantic slave trade
The Atlantic slave trade, also known as the trans-atlantic slave trade, refers to the trade in slaves that took place across the Atlantic ocean from the sixteenth through to the nineteenth centuries...
. This theory was originally formulated by Hugo Schuchardt
Hugo Schuchardt
Hugo Ernst Mario Schuchardt was an eminent linguist, best known for his work in the Romance languages, the Basque language, and in mixed languages, including pidgins, creoles, and the Lingua franca of the Mediterranean.-In Germany:Schuchardt grew up in Gotha...
in the late 19th century and popularized in the late 1950s and early 1960s by Taylor, Whinnom, Thompson, and Stewart. However, this hypothesis is no longer actively investigated.
The domestic origin hypothesis
Proposed by for the origin of English-based creoles of the West Indies, the Domestic Origin Hypothesis argues that, towards the end of the 16th century, English-speaking traders began to settle in the Gambia and Sierra Leone rivers as well as in neighboring areas such as the Bullom and Sherbro coasts. These settlers intermarried with the local population leading to mixed populations, and, as a result of this intermarriage, an English pidgin was created. This pidgin was learned by slaves in slave depots, who later on took it to the West Indies and formed one component of the emerging English creoles.The European dialect origin hypothesis
The French creolesFrench-based creole languages
A French Creole, or French-based Creole language, is a creole language based on the French language, more specifically on a 17th century koiné French extant in Paris, the French Atlantic harbors, and the nascent French colonies...
are the foremost candidates to being the outcome of "normal" linguistic change
Language change
Language change is the phenomenon whereby phonetic, morphological, semantic, syntactic, and other features of language vary over time. The effect on language over time is known as diachronic change. Two linguistic disciplines in particular concern themselves with studying language change:...
and their creoleness to be sociohistoric in nature and relative to their colonial origin. Within this theoretical framework, a French creole
French-based creole languages
A French Creole, or French-based Creole language, is a creole language based on the French language, more specifically on a 17th century koiné French extant in Paris, the French Atlantic harbors, and the nascent French colonies...
is a language phylogenetically based on the French language
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
, more specifically on a 17th century koiné
Koine language
In linguistics, a koiné language is a standard language or dialect that has arisen as a result of contact between two mutually intelligible varieties of the same language. Since the speakers have understood one another from before the advent of the koiné, the koineization process is not as rapid...
French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
extant in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, the French Atlantic harbours, and the nascent French colonies. Two descendants of the non-creole colonial koiné are still spoken in Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
(mostly in Québec
Quebec
Quebec or is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level....
and among the Acadian
Acadian
The Acadians are the descendants of the 17th-century French colonists who settled in Acadia . Acadia was a colony of New France...
people of the Eastern Maritime provinces), the Prairies, Louisiana
Louisiana
Louisiana is a state located in the southern region of the United States of America. Its capital is Baton Rouge and largest city is New Orleans. Louisiana is the only state in the U.S. with political subdivisions termed parishes, which are local governments equivalent to counties...
, Saint-Barthélemy (leeward portion of the island) and as isolate
Isolate
Isolate may refer to:* Genetic isolate, a population of organisms that has little genetic mixing with other organisms of the same species* Isolate , 2007* Isolate , 1992...
s in other parts of the Americas. Approaches under this hypothesis are compatible with gradualism
Gradualism
Gradualism is the belief in or the policy of advancing toward a goal by gradual, often slow stages.-Politics and society:In politics, the concept of gradualism is used to describe the belief that change ought to be brought about in small, discrete increments rather than in abrupt strokes such as...
in change
Language change
Language change is the phenomenon whereby phonetic, morphological, semantic, syntactic, and other features of language vary over time. The effect on language over time is known as diachronic change. Two linguistic disciplines in particular concern themselves with studying language change:...
and models of imperfect language transmission in koiné
Koine language
In linguistics, a koiné language is a standard language or dialect that has arisen as a result of contact between two mutually intelligible varieties of the same language. Since the speakers have understood one another from before the advent of the koiné, the koineization process is not as rapid...
genesis.
Foreigner talk and baby talk
The Foreigner Talk (FT) hypothesis argues that a pidgin or creole language forms when native speakers attempt to simplify their language in order to address speakers who do not know their language at all. Because of the similarities found in this type of speech and speech directed to a small child, it is also sometimes called baby talkBaby talk
Baby talk, also referred to as caretaker speech, infant-directed speech or child-directed speech and informally as "motherese", "parentese", "mommy talk", or "daddy talk" is a nonstandard form of speech used by adults in talking to toddlers and infants.It is usually delivered with a "cooing"...
.
suggest that four different processes are involved in creating Foreigner Talk:
- Accommodation
- Imitation
- Telegraphic condensation
- Conventions
This could explain why creole languages have much in common, while avoiding a monogenetic model. However, , in analyzing German Foreigner Talk, claims that it is too inconsistent and unpredictable to provide any model for language learning.
While the simplification of input was supposed to account for creoles' simple grammar, there are a number of problems with this explanation:
- There are too many grammatical similarities amongst pidgins and creoles despite having very different lexifierLexifierA lexifier is the dominant language of a particular pidgin or creole language that provides the basis for the majority of vocabulary....
languages. - Grammatical simplification can be explained by other processes, i.e. the innate grammar of Bickerton'sDerek BickertonDerek Bickerton is a linguist and Professor Emeritus at the University of Hawaii, Manoa. Based on his work in creole languages in Guyana and Hawaii, he has proposed that the features of creole languages provide powerful insights into the development of language both by individuals and as a...
language bioprogram theoryLanguage bioprogram theoryThe language bioprogram theory or language bioprogram hypothesis is a theory arguing that the structural similarities between different creole languages cannot be solely attributed to their superstrate and substrate languages...
. - Speakers of a creole's lexifier language often fail to understand, without learning the language, the grammar of a pidgin or creole.
- Pidgins are more often used amongst speakers of different substrate languages than between such speakers and those of the lexifier language.
Another problem with the FT explanation is its potential circularity. points out that FT is often based on the imitation of the incorrect speech of the non-natives, that is the pidgin. Therefore one may be mistaken in assuming that the former gave rise to the latter.
Imperfect L2 learning
The imperfect L2 (second languageSecond language
A second language or L2 is any language learned after the first language or mother tongue. Some languages, often called auxiliary languages, are used primarily as second languages or lingua francas ....
) learning hypothesis claims that pidgins are primarily the result of the imperfect L2 learning of the dominant lexifier language by the slaves. Research on naturalistic L2 processes has revealed a number of features of "interlanguage systems" that are also seen in pidgins and creoles:
- invariant verb forms derived from the infinitive or the least marked finite verb form;
- loss of determiners or use as determiners of demonstrative pronouns, adjectives or adverbs;
- placement of a negative particle in preverbal position;
- use of adverbs to express modality;
- fixed single word order with no inversion in questions;
- reduced or absent nominal plural marking.
Imperfect L2 learning is compatible with other approaches, notably the European dialect origin hypothesis and the universalist models of language transmission.
Theories focusing on non-European input
Theories focusing on the substrate, or non-European, languages attribute similarities amongst creoles to the similarities of African substrate languages. These features are often assumed to be transferred from the substrate language to the creole or to be preserved invariant from the substrate language in the creole through a process of relexificationRelexification
Relexification is a term in linguistics used to describe the mechanism of language change by which one language replaces much or all of its lexicon, including basic vocabulary, with that of another language, without drastic change to its grammar. It is principally used to describe pidgins, creoles,...
: the substrate language replaces the native lexical items with lexical material from the superstrate language while retaining the native grammatical categories. The problem with this explanation is that the postulated substrate languages differ amongst themselves and with creoles in meaningful ways. argues that the number and diversity of African languages and the paucity of a historical record on creole genesis makes determining lexical correspondences a matter of chance. coined the term "cafeteria principle" to refer to the practice of arbitrarily attributing features of creoles to the influence of substrate African languages or assorted substandard dialects of European languages.
For a representative debate on this issue, see the contributions to ; for a more recent view, .
Because of the sociohistoric similarities amongst many (but by no means all) of the creoles, the Atlantic slave trade
Atlantic slave trade
The Atlantic slave trade, also known as the trans-atlantic slave trade, refers to the trade in slaves that took place across the Atlantic ocean from the sixteenth through to the nineteenth centuries...
and the plantation system of the European colonies have been emphasized as factors by linguists such as .
Gradualist and developmental hypotheses
One class of creoles might start as pidginPidgin
A pidgin , or pidgin language, is a simplified language that develops as a means of communication between two or more groups that do not have a language in common. It is most commonly employed in situations such as trade, or where both groups speak languages different from the language of the...
s, rudimentary second languages improvised for use between speakers of two or more non-intelligible native languages. Keith Whinnom (in ) suggests that pidgins need three languages to form, with one (the superstrate) being clearly dominant over the others. The lexicon of a pidgin is usually small and drawn from the vocabularies of its speakers, in varying proportions. Morphological details like word inflection
Inflection
In grammar, inflection or inflexion is the modification of a word to express different grammatical categories such as tense, grammatical mood, grammatical voice, aspect, person, number, gender and case...
s, which usually take years to learn, are omitted; the syntax is kept very simple, usually based on strict word order. In this initial stage, all aspects of the speech — syntax, lexicon, and pronunciation — tend to be quite variable, especially with regard to the speaker's background.
If a pidgin manages to be learned by the children of a community as a native language, it may become fixed and acquire a more complex grammar, with fixed phonology, syntax, morphology, and syntactic embedding. Pidgins can become full languages in only a single generation
Generation
Generation , also known as procreation in biological sciences, is the act of producing offspring....
. "Creolization" is this second stage where the pidgin language develops into a fully developed native language. The vocabulary, too, will develop to contain more and more items according to a rationale of lexical enrichment.
Universalist approaches
UniversalistLinguistic universal
A linguistic universal is a pattern that occurs systematically across natural languages, potentially true for all of them. For example, All languages have nouns and verbs, or If a language is spoken, it has consonants and vowels. Research in this area of linguistics is closely tied to the study of...
models stress the intervention of specific general processes during the transmission of language from generation to generation and from speaker to speaker. The process invoked varies: a general tendency towards semantic transparency
Transparency (linguistic)
Linguistic transparency is a phrase which is used in multiple, overlapping subjects in the fields of linguistics and the philosophy of language...
, first language learning driven by universal process, or general process of discourse
Discourse
Discourse generally refers to "written or spoken communication". The following are three more specific definitions:...
organization
Organization
An organization is a social group which distributes tasks for a collective goal. The word itself is derived from the Greek word organon, itself derived from the better-known word ergon - as we know `organ` - and it means a compartment for a particular job.There are a variety of legal types of...
. The main universalist theory is still Bickerton's
Derek Bickerton
Derek Bickerton is a linguist and Professor Emeritus at the University of Hawaii, Manoa. Based on his work in creole languages in Guyana and Hawaii, he has proposed that the features of creole languages provide powerful insights into the development of language both by individuals and as a...
language bioprogram theory
Language bioprogram theory
The language bioprogram theory or language bioprogram hypothesis is a theory arguing that the structural similarities between different creole languages cannot be solely attributed to their superstrate and substrate languages...
, proposed in the 1980s. Bickerton claims that creoles are inventions of the children growing up on newly founded plantations. Around them, they only heard pidgins spoken, without enough structure to function as natural language
Natural language
In the philosophy of language, a natural language is any language which arises in an unpremeditated fashion as the result of the innate facility for language possessed by the human intellect. A natural language is typically used for communication, and may be spoken, signed, or written...
s; and the children used their own innate linguistic capacities to transform the pidgin input into a full-fledged language. The alleged common features of all creoles would then be the consequence of those innate abilities being universal.
Recent study
The last decade has seen the emergence of some new questions about the nature of creoles: in particular, the question of how complex creoles are and the question of whether creoles are indeed "exceptional" languages.The creole prototype
Some features that distinguish creole languages from noncreoles have been proposed (by Bickerton, for example).John McWhorter
John McWhorter
John Hamilton McWhorter V is an American linguist and political commentator. He is the author of a number of books on language and on race relations. His linguistic specialty is creole and the process through which it forms.-Early life:...
has proposed the following list of features to indicate a creole prototype:
- a lack of inflectional morphology (other than at most two or three inflectional affixes),
- a lack of tone on monosyllabic words, and
- a lack of semantically opaque word formation.
McWhorter hypothesizes that these three properties exactly characterize a creole. However, the creole prototype hypothesis has been disputed:
- Henri WittmannHenri WittmannHenri Wittmann is a Canadian linguist from Quebec. He is best known for his work on Quebec French.-Biography:Henri Wittmann was born in Alsace in 1937...
(1999) and David argue that languages such as MandingManding languagesThe Manding languages are a fairly mutually intelligible group of dialects or languages in West Africa, belonging to the Mande languages. Their best-known members are Bambara, the most widely spoken language in Mali; Mandinka, the main language of Gambia; Maninka or Malinké, a major language of...
, SoninkeSoninke languageThe Soninke language is a Mande language spoken by the Soninke people of West Africa. The language has an estimated 1,096,795 speakers, primarily located in Mali, and also in Senegal, Côte d'Ivoire, The Gambia, Mauritania, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea and Ghana...
, Magoua FrenchMagouaMagoua , which may derive from a word in an Algonquian language which means loon, is a particular dialect of basilectal Quebec French spoken in the Trois-Rivières area, between Trois-Rivières and Maskinongé. Long before a military fort was constructed there, Trois-Rivières became in 1615 the...
and Riau IndonesianIndonesian languageIndonesian is the official language of Indonesia. Indonesian is a normative form of the Riau Islands dialect of Malay, an Austronesian language which has been used as a lingua franca in the Indonesian archipelago for centuries....
have all these three features but show none of the sociohistoric traits of creole languages. - Others (see overview in ) have demonstrated creoles that serve as counterexamples to McWhorter's hypothesis — the existence of inflectional morphology in Berbice Dutch Creole, for example, or toneTone (linguistics)Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning—that is, to distinguish or inflect words. All verbal languages use pitch to express emotional and other paralinguistic information, and to convey emphasis, contrast, and other such features in what is called...
in Papiamentu.
Exceptionalism
Building up on this discussion, McWhorter proposed that "the world's simplest grammars are Creole grammars", claiming that every noncreole language's grammar is at least as complex as any creole language's grammar. Gil has replied that Riau Indonesian has a simpler grammar than Saramaccan, the language McWhorter uses as a showcase for his theory. The same objections were raised by Wittmann in his 1999 debate with McWhorter.The lack of progress made in defining creoles in terms of their morphology and syntax has led scholars such as Robert Chaudenson, Salikoko Mufwene
Salikoko Mufwene
Salikoko Mufwene is a linguist born in Mbaya-Lareme in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He is the Frank J. McLoraine Distinguished Service Professor of linguistics at the University of Chicago. He has worked extensively on the development of creole languages, as well as on African American...
and Henri Wittmann
Henri Wittmann
Henri Wittmann is a Canadian linguist from Quebec. He is best known for his work on Quebec French.-Biography:Henri Wittmann was born in Alsace in 1937...
to question the value of creole as a typological class; they argue that creoles are structurally no different from any other language, and that creole is a sociohistoric concept — not a linguistic one — encompassing displaced population and slavery.
spell out the idea of creole exceptionalism, claiming that creole languages are an instance of nongenetic language change due to language shift with abnormal transmission. Gradualists question the abnormal transmission of languages in a creole setting and argue that the processes which created today's creole languages are no different from universal patterns of language change.
Given these objections to creole as a concept, articles such as Against Creole Exceptionalism and Deconstructing Creole have arisen which question the idea that creoles are exceptional in any meaningful way. Additionally, argues that some Romance languages are potential creoles but that they are not considered as such by linguists because of a historical bias against such a view.
Related articles
- CreolisticsCreolisticsCreolistics, or Creology, is the scientific study of creole languages and, as such, is a subfield of linguistics. Someone who engages in this study is called a creolist.-Controversy:...
- GradualismGradualismGradualism is the belief in or the policy of advancing toward a goal by gradual, often slow stages.-Politics and society:In politics, the concept of gradualism is used to describe the belief that change ought to be brought about in small, discrete increments rather than in abrupt strokes such as...
- Language changeLanguage changeLanguage change is the phenomenon whereby phonetic, morphological, semantic, syntactic, and other features of language vary over time. The effect on language over time is known as diachronic change. Two linguistic disciplines in particular concern themselves with studying language change:...
- Language contactLanguage contactLanguage contact occurs when two or more languages or varieties interact. The study of language contact is called contact linguistics.Multilingualism has likely been common throughout much of human history, and today most people in the world are multilingual...
- Lingua francaLingua francaA lingua franca is a language systematically used to make communication possible between people not sharing a mother tongue, in particular when it is a third language, distinct from both mother tongues.-Characteristics:"Lingua franca" is a functionally defined term, independent of the linguistic...
- Mixed languageMixed languageA mixed language is a language that arises through the fusion of two source languages, normally in situations of thorough bilingualism, so that it is not possible to classify the resulting language as belonging to either of the language families that were its source...
- Nicaraguan Sign LanguageNicaraguan Sign LanguageNicaraguan Sign Language is a signed language spontaneously developed by deaf children in a number of schools in western Nicaragua in the 1970s and 1980s...
- RelexificationRelexificationRelexification is a term in linguistics used to describe the mechanism of language change by which one language replaces much or all of its lexicon, including basic vocabulary, with that of another language, without drastic change to its grammar. It is principally used to describe pidgins, creoles,...
- SubstratumSubstratumIn linguistics, a stratum or strate is a language that influences, or is influenced by another through contact. A substratum is a language which has lower power or prestige than another, while a superstratum is the language that has higher power or prestige. Both substratum and superstratum...
- DiglossiaDiglossiaIn linguistics, diglossia refers to a situation in which two dialects or languages are used by a single language community. In addition to the community's everyday or vernacular language variety , a second, highly codified variety is used in certain situations such as literature, formal...
Creoles by main parent language
- Arabic-based creole languagesArabic-based creole languagesAn Arabic-based creole language, or simply Arabic creole is a creole language which was significantly influenced by the Arabic language.The main Arabic creoles are:...
- Chinese-based creole languages
- Dutch-based creole languagesDutch-based creole languagesA Dutch creole is a creole language that has been substantially influenced by the Dutch language.Most Dutch-based creoles originated in Dutch colonies in the Americas and Southeast Asia, after the 17th century expansion of Dutch maritime power...
- English-based creole languagesEnglish-based creole languagesAn English-based creole language is a creole language that was significantly influenced by the English language...
- French-based creole languagesFrench-based creole languagesA French Creole, or French-based Creole language, is a creole language based on the French language, more specifically on a 17th century koiné French extant in Paris, the French Atlantic harbors, and the nascent French colonies...
- German-based creole languagesGerman-based creole languagesA German creole, more properly a German-based creole language, is a creole language with a significant influence from the German language....
- Malay-based creole languagesMalay-based creole languagesThe Malay language, through its history has experienced both pidginization and creolization. This occurred mostly through inter-island trading and interaction where people from various ethnic groups, languages and backgrounds met....
- Ngbandi-based creole languages
- Portuguese-based creole languages
- Spanish-based creole languagesSpanish-based Creole languages-Chavacano:Chavacano is a Spanish-based Creole language and the name of the Six Dialects of Spanish evolved words turned into a Creole language spoken in the Philippines...
Publications
- Wittmann, Henri (1999). "Prototype as a typological yardstick to creoleness." The Creolist Archives Papers On-line, Stockholms Universitet.http://homepage.mac.com/noula/ling/1999a-prototype.html
- Wittmann, Henri (2001). "Lexical diffusion and the glottogenetics of creole French." CreoList debate, parts I-VI, appendixes 1-9. The Linguist List, Eastern Michigan University|Wayne State University
External links
- Society for Pidgin and Creole Linguistics (SPCL)
- Association for Portuguese and Spanish Lexically Based Creoles (ACBLPE)
- Language Varieties Web Site
- Groupe Européen de Recherches en Langues Créoles
- Groupe d'Etude et de Recherche en Espace Créolophone (GEREC)
- Associação Brasileira de Estudos Crioulos e Similares (ABECS)
- Society for Caribbean Linguistics (SCL)
- The Online Dictionary of Language Terminology
- Answer.com: Definition "Creoles"