Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-p9bg8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T19:07:17.241Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

10 - Perspectives on Creole Formation

from Part Two - Contact, Emergence, and Language Classification

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 June 2022

By
Enoch O. Aboh  and
Michel DeGraff
Edited by
Salikoko Mufwene  and
Anna Maria Escobar
Salikoko Mufwene
Affiliation:
University of Chicago
Anna Maria Escobar
Affiliation:
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Get access

Summary

This paper is another argument in favor of a uniformitarian approach to Creole languages, analyzed on a par with non-Creole languages. We take a critical look at competing hypotheses about the formation of Creole languages and any resulting typology. We document and analyze the shortcomings of these hypotheses in terms of methodical and theoretical flaws, lack of empirical coverage, and socio-historical implausibility. Then, we present our own proposal for a “Null Theory of Creole Formation” whereby the term “Creole” can only have socio-historical, and definitely not linguistic-structural, significance. In this “Null Theory,” the individual-level cognitive processes that underlie the formation of grammatical structures in Creole languages (via the acquisition of both native and non-native languages, by children and adults, respectively) are exactly on a par with their counterparts in the formation of non-Creole languages. So there isn’t, and couldn’t be, any sui generis “Creole typology.” We conclude with some guidelines toward a fully uniformitarian and theoretically constructive framework for the study of Creole languages and their formation – a framework that can also help us understand the formation of new language varieties that do not go by the label “Creole.”

Keywords

Creole formationUniformitarianismCreole ExceptionalismUniversal Grammarlanguage acquisitionlanguage changecompetition and selectionphylogenetics
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Language Contact
Volume 2: Multilingualism in Population Structure
 , pp. 257 - 282
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Aboh, Enoch O. 2006a. Complementation in Saramaccan and Gungbe: The case of C-type modal particles. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 24.1.1–55.Google Scholar
Aboh, Enoch O. 2006b. The role of the syntax-semantics interface in language transfer. In L2 acquisition and creole genesis: Dialogues, ed. by Lefebvre, Claire, White, Lydia, & Jourdan, Christine, 221–52. Amsterdam: J. Benjamins Pub. Co.Google Scholar
Aboh, Enoch O. 2009. Competition and selection. That’s all! In Complex process in new languages, ed. by Aboh, Enoch O. and Smith, Norval, 317–44. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Aboh, Enoch O. 2015. The emergence of hybrid grammars. Language contact and change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Aboh, Enoch O. 2016. Creole distinctiveness: A dead end. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 31.400–18.Google Scholar
Aboh, Enoch O. & Ansaldo, Umberto. 2007. The role of typology in language creation: A descriptive take. In Deconstructing creole, ed. by Ansaldo, U., Mathew, S. M, & Lim, L., 39–66. Amsterdam: Benjamins.Google Scholar
Aboh, Enoch & DeGraff, Michel. 2014. Some notes on nominal phrases in Haitian Creole and in Gùngbè: A trans-Atlantic Sprachbund perspective. In Language contact and language change: Grammatical structure encounters the fluidity of language, ed. by Afarli, Tor & Mæhlum, Brit, 203–36. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.Google Scholar
Aboh, Enoch & DeGraff, Michel. 2016. A null theory of Creole formation based on Universal Grammar. In The Oxford handbook of universal grammar, ed. by Roberts, Ian, 401–58. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Alleyne, Mervyn C. 1980. Comparative Afro-American: A historical-comparative study of English-based Afro-American dialects of the N ew World. Ann Arbor, MI: Karoma Publishers.Google Scholar
Anonymous. 1811. Idylles et chansons, ou essais de poësie créole par un habitant d’Hayti. Philadelphia, PA: Imprimerie de J. Edwards.Google Scholar
Bakker, Peter. 2003. Pidgin inflectional morphology and its implications for creole morphology. In Yearbook of morphology 2002, ed. by Booij, Geert & van Marle, Jaap, 3–33. New York: Kluwer Academic Publishers.Google Scholar
Bakker, Peter. 2016. You got Gungbe, but we got the numbers. Feature pools show that creoles are still typologically distinct. Journal of Pidgin & Creole Languages 31.2.419–35.Google Scholar
Bakker, Peter, Daval-Markussen, Aymeric, Parkvall, Mikael, & Plag, Ingo. 2011. Creoles are typologically distinct from non-creoles. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 26.1.5–42.Google Scholar
Bakker, Peter & Parkvall, Mikael. 2005. Reduplication in pidgins and creoles. In Studies on reduplication, ed. by Hurch, Bernhard, 511–31. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Bickerton, Derek. 1973. The nature of a creole continuum. Language 49.641–69.Google Scholar
Bickerton, Derek. 1981. Roots of language. Ann Arbor, MI: Karoma.Google Scholar
Bickerton, Derek. 1984. The language bioprogram hypothesis. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 7.2.173–203.Google Scholar
Bickerton, Derek. 1988. Creole languages and the Bioprogram. In Linguistics: The Cambridge survey, vol. 2, ed. by Newmeyer, Frederic, 268–84. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bickerton, Derek. 1990. Language and species. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Bickerton, Derek. 1996. The origins of variations in Guyanese. In Towards a social science of language: Papers in honor of William Labov, ed. by In Guy, Gregory, Feagin, Crawford, Schiffrin, Deborah, & Baugh, John, 311–27. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Bickerton, Derek. 1999. How to acquire language without positive evidence: What acquisitionists can learn from Creoles. In DeGraff 1999c, 49–74.Google Scholar
Bickerton, Derek. 2008. Bastard tongues: A trail-blazing linguist finds clues to our common humanity in the world’s lowliest languages. New York: Hill and Wang.Google Scholar
Blasi, Damian, Michaelis, Susanne, & Haspelmath, Martin. 2017. Grammars are robustly transmitted even during the emergence of creole languages. Nature Human Behavior 1 10.723–29.Google Scholar
Bunsen, Christian Karl Josias. 1854. Outlines of the philosophy of universal history applied to language and religion. London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans.Google Scholar
Chaudenson, Robert. 2001. Creolization of language and culture. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Daval-Markussen, Aymeric & Bakker, Peter. 2012. Explorations in creole research with phylogenetic tools. In Visualization of linguistic patterns and uncovering language history from multilingual resources: Proceedings of the European Association of Computational Linguistics 2012 Joint Workshop, ed. by Butt, Miriam, Carpendale, Sheelagh, & Penn, Gerald, 89–97. Stroudsburg, PA: Association for Computational Linguistics.Google Scholar
DeGraff, Michel. 1999a. Creolization, language change and language acquisition: A prolegomenon. In DeGraff 1999c, 1–46.Google Scholar
DeGraff, Michel. 1999b. Creolization, language change and language acquisition: An epilogue. In DeGraff 1999c, 473–543.Google Scholar
DeGraff, Michel (ed.). 1999c. Language creation and language change. Creolization, diachrony and development. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
DeGraff, Michel. 2001a. Morphology in Creole genesis. Linguistics and ideology. In Ken Hale: A life in language, ed. by Kenstowicz, Michael, 53–121. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
DeGraff, Michel. 2001b. On the origins of Creole: A Cartesian critique of Neo-Darwinian linguistics. Linguistic Typology 5.2/3.213–310.Google Scholar
DeGraff, Michel. 2002. Relexification: A re-evaluation. Anthropological Linguistics 44.4.321–414.Google Scholar
DeGraff, Michel. 2005a. Linguists’ most dangerous myth. The fallacy of Creole Exceptionalism. Language in Society 34.4.533–91.Google Scholar
DeGraff, Michel. 2005b. Word order and morphology in “creolization” and beyond. In The Oxford handbook of comparative syntax, ed. by Cinque, Guglielmo & Kayne, Richard, 293–372. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
DeGraff, Michel. 2007. Kreyòl Ayisyen, or Haitian Creole. In Holm & Patrick 2007, 101–26.Google Scholar
DeGraff, Michel. 2009. Language acquisition in creolization and, thus, language change: Some Cartesian-Uniformitarian boundary conditions. Language ¾ Linguistic Compass 3/4.888–971.Google Scholar
DeGraff, Michel, Berwick, Robert, & Bass, Trevor. forthcoming. Language acquisition and computational phylogenetics: Creole languages and family values. In Oxford handbook of historical and diachronic syntax, ed. by Paola Crima & Giuseppe Longobardi. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Dryer, Matthew & Haspelmath, Martin (eds.). 2011. The world atlas of language structures online. Munich: Max Planck Digital Library. Available at http://wals.info/, accessed February 9, 2017.Google Scholar
Ducœurjoly, S.-J. 1802. Manuel des habitans de Saint-Domingue, 2 vol. Paris: Lenoir.Google Scholar
Dunn, Michael, Levinson, Stephen C., Lindström, Eva, Reesink, Ger, & Terrill, Angela. 2008. Structural phylogeny in historical linguistics: Methodological explorations applied in Island Melanesia. Language 84.4.710–59.Google Scholar
Fattier, Dominique. 1998. Contribution à l’étude de la genèse d’un créole: l’atlas linguistique d’Haïti, cartes et commentaires, 6 vols. PhD dissertation, Université de Provence. (Distributed by Presses Universitaires du SeptentriFrancelleneuve d’Ascq, France.)Google Scholar
Fon Sing, Guillaume. 2017. Creoles are not typologically distinct from non-Creoles. Language Ecology 1.44–74.Google Scholar
Fon Sing, Guillaume & Leoue, Jean. 2012. Creoles are not typologically distinct from non-creoles. Paper presented at the Ninth Creolistics Workshop: Contact languages in a global context: Past and present, Aarhus University, April 11–13, 2012.Google Scholar
Frei, Henri. 1929. La grammaire des fautes: introduction à la linguistique fonctionnelle. Geneva: Slatkine.Google Scholar
Goodman, Morris. 1964. A comparative study of Creole French dialects. The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar
Gougenheim, Georges. 1929. Étude sur les périphrases verbales de la langue française. Paris: Les Belles Lettres.Google Scholar
Holm, John. 2000. An introduction to pidgins and creoles. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Holm, John. 2007. Introduction. In Holm & Patrick 2007, v–xi.Google Scholar
Holm, John. 2008. Creolization and the fate of inflections. In Aspects of language contact. New theoretical, methodological and empirical findings with special focus on romancisation processes, ed. by Stolz, Thomas, Bakker, Dik, & Paloma, Rosa Salas, 299–324. Berlin: Mouton.Google Scholar
Holm, John & Patrick, Peter. 2007. Comparative creole syntax: Parallel outlines of 18 creole grammars (Westminster Creolistics Series, 7). London: Battlebridge Publications.Google Scholar
Hulk, Aafke & Müller, Natasha. 2000. Bilingual first language acquisition at the interface between syntax and pragmatics. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 3.3.227–44.Google Scholar
Kegl, Judy, Senghas, Anne, & Coppola, Marie. 1999. Creation through contact: Sign language emergence and sign language change in Nicaragua. In DeGraff 1999c, 179–237.Google Scholar
Kouwenberg, Silvia. 2010. Creole studies and linguistic typology: Part 2. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 25.2.359–80.Google Scholar
Kouwenberg, Silvia & Singler, John Victor. 2020. Are creoles a special type of language? Methodological issues in new approaches to an old question. In Advances in contact linguistics: In honour of Pieter Muysken, ed. by Smith, Norval, Veenstra, Tonjes, and Aboh, Enoch O., 107–60. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Kroch, Anthony. 1989. Reflexes of grammar in patterns of language change. Language Variation and Change 1.199–244.Google Scholar
Kroch, Anthony, Taylor, Ann, & Ringe, Donald. 2000. The Middle English verb-second constraint: A case study in language contact and language change. In Textual parameters in older languages, ed. by Herring, Susan, van Reneen, Pieter, & Schøsler, Lene, 353–91. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Lalla, Barbara & D’Costa, Jean (eds.). 1989. Voices in exile: Jamaican texts of the 18th and 19th centuries. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press.Google Scholar
Lang, Jürgen. 2007. Portuguais crioulo, espagnol criollo et français créole en tant que termes désignant les langues: les premiers témoignages de l’Ouest africain. Creolica. Available at www.creolica.net/article-63.html, accessed February 9, 2017.Google Scholar
Lang, Jürgen, Holm, John, Rougé, Jean-Louis, & Soares, Maria João (eds.). 2006. Cabo Verde. Origens da sua sociedade e do seu crioulo. Tübingen: Narr.Google Scholar
Lefebvre, Claire. 2006. Creole genesis and the acquisition of grammar: The case of Haitian Creole. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Luís, Ana. 2008. Tense marking and inflectional morphology in Indo-Portuguese creoles. In Roots of creole structures: Weighing the contribution of substrates and superstrates, ed. by Michaelis, Susanne, 83–121. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
McWhorter, John H. 1998. Identifying the creole prototype: Vindicating a typological class. Language 74.4.788–818.Google Scholar
McWhorter, John H. 2001. The world’s simplest grammars are creole grammars. Linguistic Typology 5.2/3.125–66.Google Scholar
McWhorter, John H. 2011. Linguistic simplicity and complexity: Why do languages undress? Boston, MA: De Gruyter Mouton.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meillet, Antoine. 1958. Linguistique historique et linguistique générale, vol. 1. Paris: Honoré Champion.Google Scholar
Moreau de Saint-Méry, M.L.E. 1797. Description topographique, physique, civile, politique et historique de la partie française de l’isle de Saint Domingue, 3 vols. Philadelphia, PA: Chez l’auteur.Google Scholar
Mufwene, Salikoko S. 1989. La créolisation en bantou: les cas du kituba, du lingala urbain, et du swahili du Shaba. Etudes Créoles 12.74–106.Google Scholar
Mufwene, Salikoko S. 1997. Jargons, pidgins, creoles, and koines: What are they? In The structure and status of pidgins and creoles, ed. by Spears, Arthur & Winford, Donald, 35–70. Amsterdam: J. Benjamins.Google Scholar
Mufwene, Salikoko S. 2000. Creolization is a social, not a structural, process. In Degrees of restructuring in creole languages, ed. by Neumann-Holzschuh, Ingrid & Schneider, Edgar, 65–84. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Mufwene, Salikoko S. 2001. The ecology of language evolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Mufwene, Salikoko S. 2008. Language evolution: Contact, competition and change. London: Continuum.Google Scholar
Mufwene, Salikoko S. 2010. Second language acquisition and the emergence of creoles. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 32.1–42.Google Scholar
Müller, Natasha. 1998. Transfer in bilingual first language acquisition. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 1.151–71.Google Scholar
Müller, Natasha & Hulk, Aafke. 2001. Cross-linguistic influence in bilingual first language acquisition: Italian and French as recipient languages. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 4.1.1–21.Google Scholar
Muysken, Pieter. 1981. Half-way between Quechua and Spanish: The case for relexification. In Historicity and variation in Creole Studies, ed. by Highfield, Arnold & Valdman, Albert, 52–78. Ann Arbor, MI: Karoma.Google Scholar
Muysken, Pieter & Smith, Norval (eds.). 1986. Substrata vs. universals in Creole genesis: Papers from the Amsterdam Creole Workshop, April 1985. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Newport, Elissa. 1999. Reduced input in the acquisition of signed languages: Contributions to the study of creolization. In DeGraff 1999c, 161–78.Google Scholar
Nichols, Johana. 2006. The comparative method as heuristic. In The comparative method reviewed: Regularity and irregularity in language change, ed. by Durie, Mark & Ross, Malcolm, 39–71. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Nichols, Johana & Warnow, Tandy. 2008. Tutorial on computational linguistic phylogeny. Language and Linguistics Compass 2.5.760–820.Google Scholar
Notley, Anna, van der Linden, Elisabeth, & Hulk, Aafke. 2007. Cross-linguistic influence in bilingual children: The case of dislocation. In Romance languages and linguistic theory 2005, ed. by Baauw, S., Drijkoningen, F., & Pinto, M., 229–59. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Palmié, Stephan. 2006. Creolization and its discontents. Annual Review of Anthropology 35.433–56.Google Scholar
Parkvall, Mikael. 2008. The simplicity of creoles in a cross-linguistic perspective. In Language complexity: Typology, contact, change, ed. by Miestamo, Matti, Sinnemäki, Kaius, & Karlsson, Fred, 265–85. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Pub. Co.Google Scholar
Pelleprat, Pierre. 1665. Relation des missions des PP. de la Compagnie de Jésus dans les îles et dans la terre ferme de l’Amérique Méridionale. Paris: Cramoisy & Cramoisy.Google Scholar
Plag, Ingo. 2008a. Creoles as interlanguages: Inflectional morphology. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 23.1.114–35.Google Scholar
Plag, Ingo. 2008b. Creoles as interlanguages: Syntactic structures. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 23.2.307–28.Google Scholar
Plag, Ingo. 2009. Creoles as interlanguages: Word-formation. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 24.2.339–62.Google Scholar
Rizzi, Luigi. 1997. The fine structure of the left periphery. In Elements of grammar, ed. by Haegeman, Liliane, 281–337. Dordrecht: Kluwer.Google Scholar
Roberts, Peter. 2008. Roots of Caribbean identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Roberts, Sarah Julianne. 1999. The TMA system of Hawaiian Creole and diffusion. In Creole genesis, attitudes and discourse: Studies celebrating Charlene J. Sato, ed. by Rickford, John & Romaine, Suzanne, 45–70. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Siegel, Jeff. 2008. The emergence of pidgin and creole languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Sylvain, Suzanne. 1936. Le créole haïtien: morphologie et syntaxe. Wetteren: De Meester.Google Scholar
Stewart, Charles. 2007. Creolization: History, ethnography, theory. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press.Google Scholar
Taylor, Douglas. 1956. Language contact in the West Indies. Word 12.399–414.Google Scholar
Thomason, Sarah (ed.). 1997. Contact languages: A wider perspective. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Pub. Co.Google Scholar
Thomason, Sarah & Kaufman, Terrence. 1988. Language contact, creolization, and genetic linguistics. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Velupillai, Viveka. 2015. Pidgins, creoles and mixed languges: An introduction. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.Google Scholar
Weinreich, Uriel. 1958. On the compatibility of genetic relationship and convergent development. Word 14.374–9.Google Scholar
Wichmann, Søren & Saunders, Arpiar. 2007. How to use typological databases in historical linguistic research. Diachronica 24.2.373–404.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×