NationMaster - Encyclopedia: Creole language

A creole language, or simply a creole, is a stable language that originates seemingly as a nativized pidgin.^[1] This understanding of creole genesis culminated in Hall's^[2] notion of the pidgin-creole life cycle. While it is understood that creoles have certain grammatical similarities to each other and, arguably, not languages that they are derived from,^[3] no theory for explaining creole phenomena has been universally accepted. The relationship between pidgins and creoles and their similarities means that the distinction is not clear-cut and the variety of phenomena that arise to create pidgins and creoles are not understood very well.^[4] Likewise, efforts to articulate grammatical features (or sets of features) that are exclusive to creoles have been unsuccessful thus far.^{[citation needed]} Image File history File links Question_book-3. ... This article is about simplified languages. ... Robert A. Hall, CAE, served five terms in the Massachusetts State Senate. ...

History of the concept

The term creole comes from French créole, from Spanish criollo, and probably from Portuguese crioulo, stemming from the verb criar ('to breed') from the Latin creare ('to produce, create').^{[citation needed]} The term was coined in the sixteenth century during the great expansion in European maritime power and trade and the establishment of European colonies in the Americas, Africa, and along the coast of South and Southeast Asia up to the Philippines, China, India, and in Oceania.^{[citation needed]} For other uses, see Latins and Latin (disambiguation). ... World map showing the Americas CIA political map of the Americas in an equal-area projection The Americas are the lands of the New World, consisting of the continents of North America and South America with their associated islands and regions. ... A world map showing the continent of Africa Africa is the worlds second-largest and second most-populous continent, after Asia. ... For other uses, see Asia (disambiguation). ... For other uses, see Oceania (disambiguation). ...

The term "Creole" was originally applied to people born in the colonies to distinguish them from the upper-class European-born immigrants. Originally, therefore, "Creole language" meant the speech of those Creole peoples. The term Creole and its cognates in other languages â€” such as crioulo, criollo, crÃ©ole, kriolu, criol, kreyol, kriulo, kriol, krio, etc. ...

As a consequence of colonial European trade patterns, many creole languages are found in the equatorial belt around the world and in areas with access to the oceans, including the Caribbean as well as the north and east coasts of South America, western Africa and in Mauritius. The majority of creole languages are based on European languages with substrate elements from Africa, although some creoles (such as Sango) show little to no contact with European languages. There is a heated dispute over the extent to which substrate features are significant in the genesis or the description of creole languages.^[5] West Indies redirects here. ... South America South America is a continent crossed by the equator, with most of its area in the Southern Hemisphere. ... A world map showing the continent of Africa Africa is the worlds second-largest and second most-populous continent, after Asia. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... Sango, shown at left in her yÅkai exterminator uniform, and at right in her more casual clothing that she usually wears in the anime series. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ...

According to their external history, four types of creoles have been distinguished: plantation creoles, fort creoles, maroon creoles, and creolized pidgins.^[6] As to their internal history, there are two preconceived assumptions:^{[citation needed]}

Because of the generally low status of the Creole peoples in the eyes of European colonial powers, creole languages have generally been regarded as degenerate, or at best as rudimentary dialects of one of their parent languages. This is the reason why "creole" has come to be used in opposition to "language" rather than a qualifier for it.^[7] Prejudice of this kind was compounded by the inherent instability of the colonial system, leading to the disappearance of creole languages, mainly due to dispersion or assimilation of their speech communities.^{[citation needed]} Another factor that may have contributed to the relative neglect of creole languages in linguistics is that they comfort critics of the 19th century neogrammarian "tree model" for the evolution of languages and their law of the regularity of sound change (such as the earliest advocates of the wave model, Johannes Schmidt and Hugo Schuchardt, the forerunners of modern sociolinguistics).^{[citation needed]} This controversy of the late 19th century profoundly shaped modern approaches to the comparative method in historical linguistics and in creolistics.^{[citation needed]} Since then, linguists have promulgated the idea that creole languages are in no way inferior to other languages and use the term "creole" or "creole language" for any language suspected to have undergone creolization, without geographic restrictions or ethnic prejudice. For dialects of programming languages, see Programming language dialect. ... It has been suggested that Benign colonialism be merged into this article or section. ... The Neogrammarians (also Young Grammarians, German Junggrammatiker) 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. ... Johannes Schmidt (July 29, 1843 - July 4, 1901) was a German linguist. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... Sociolinguistics is the study of the effect of any and all aspects of society, including cultural norms, expectations, and context on the way language is used. ... The comparative method (in comparative linguistics) is a technique used by linguists to demonstrate genetic relationships between languages. ... Historical linguistics (also diachronic linguistics or comparative linguistics) is primarily the study of the ways in which languages change over time. ... Creolistics, or Creology is the scientific study of the so-called creole languages and, as such, is a subfield of linguistics. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into Creole language. ...

As a consequence of these social, political, and academic changes, creole languages have experienced a revival in recent decades.^{[citation needed]} They are increasingly and more openly being used in literature and in media, and their community prestige has improved.^{[citation needed]} They are studied by linguists as languages on their own. Many have already been standardized, and are now taught in local schools and universities abroad.^{[citation needed]}

Classification of creoles

Whose creole?

By the very nature of the subject, the creoleness of a particular creole usually is a matter of dispute. The parent tongues may themselves be creoles or pidgins that have disappeared before they could be documented. This article is about simplified languages. ...

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 the scientific discussion.^{[citation needed]}

Substrate and superstrate

The terms substratum and superstratum are often used to label the source and the target languages of a creole. However, the meaning of these terms is reasonably well-defined only in language replacement events, when the native speakers of a certain language (the substrate) are somehow compelled to abandon that language for another language (the superstrate).^{[citation needed]} The outcome of such an event will be that erstwhile speakers of the substrate will be speaking a version of the superstrate, at least in more formal contexts. The substrate may survive as a second language for informal conversation (as in the case of Venetian and many other European non-official languages). Its influence on the official speech, if detectable at all, is usually limited to pronunciation and a modest number of loanwords. The substrate might even disappear altogether without leaving any trace.^{[citation needed]} This article does not cite any references or sources. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... A superstratum or superstrate is the counterpart to a substratum. ... Look up source in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Translation is an activity comprising the interpretation of the meaning of a text in one language—the source text—and the production of a new, equivalent text in another language—the target text, also called the translation. ... Language shift is the process whereby an entire speech community of a language shifts to speaking another language. ... A sign in Venetian reading Here we also speak Venetian Venetian or Venetan is a Romance language spoken by over five million people,[1] mostly in the Veneto region of Italy. ...

However, these terms are not as meaningful where the new language is distilled from multiple substrata and a homogeneous superstratum.^{[citation needed]} The substratum-superstratum continuum becomes awkward when multiple superstrata must be assumed (such as in Papiamentu), when the substratum cannot be identified, or when the presence or the suvival of substratal evidence is inferred from mere typological analogies.^{[citation needed]} However, facts surrounding the substratum-superstratum opposition cannot be set aside where the substratum as the receding or already replaced source language and the superstratum as the replacing dominant target language can be clearly identified and where the respective contributions to the resulting compromise language can be weighed in a scientifically meaningful way; and this so whether the replacement leads to creole genesis or not.^{[citation needed]} With creole languages, "superstrate" usually means European and "substrate" non-European or African. Papiamento or Papiamentu is the primary language spoken on the Caribbean islands of Aruba, Curaçao and Bonaire. ...

A post-creole continuum is said to come about in a context of decreolization where a creole is subject to pressure from its superstrate language. Speakers of the creole feel compelled to conform their language to superstrate usage introducing large scale variation and hypercorrection. A phase that happens to native languages in a peripheral, especially colonial society that emerge from the previous dominance of a high language imposed by the center. ... Decreolisation is a hypothetical phenomenon whereby over time a creole language reconverges with one of the standard languages from which it originally derived. ... Hypercorrection comprises four linguistic phenomena: an elaborate, prescriptively based correction of common usage, often introduced in an attempt to avoid vulgarity or informality, that results in wording commonly considered clumsier than the usual, colloquial usage. ...

Shared features

Comparing the different creoles in any theory-orientated perpective, whether phylogenetic or purely typological in nature, leads to widely divergent results. The score of similarities will be higher when the comparison is restricted to European-based creoles and excluding non-European-based creoles such as Nubi and Sango. French creoles show closer affinities with Koiné French than with other European-based creoles. The comparative work of Bickerton (1981) argued against the monogenetic theory of pidgins^[8] according to which, most European-based pidgins and creoles hail from a Mediterranean Lingua Franca via a broken Portuguese relexified in the slave factories of Western Africa. The grammars of creole languages often, though not universally, share a number of structural features, even in cases of languages which developed independently. ... Relexification is a term from linguistics used in pidgin and creole studies for the mechanism by which one language changes its lexicon to that of another language. ... A phylogeny (or phylogenesis) is the origin and evolution of a set of organisms, usually of a species. ... The word typology literally means the study of types. ... For other uses, see Europe (disambiguation). ... The Nubi language (also called Ki-Nubi) is a Sudanese Arabic-based creole language spoken in Uganda around Bombo and Kenya around Kibera by the descendants of Emin Pashas Sudanese soldiers, settled there by the British. ... For other uses, see Sango (disambiguation) Sango (also spelt Sangho) is the primary language spoken in the Central African Republic: it has 5 million second-language speakers, but only 400,000 native speakers, mainly in the towns. ... A French creole, more properly French-based creole language, is a creole language with substantial influence from the French language. ... In linguistics, a koinÃ© language (common language) is a standard language or dialect, specifically one that has arisen as a result of language contact much as pidgins or creoles, but where the original dialects are mutually intelligible. ... A creole language, or simply a creole, is a stable language that originates seemingly as a nativized pidgin. ... The introduction to this article provides insufficient context for those unfamiliar with the subject matter. ... The Lingua franca of the Mediterranean or Sabir (know) was a pidgin language used as a Lingua franca in the Mediterranean Basin from the 11th to the 19th century. ... Relexification is a term from linguistics used in pidgin and creole studies for the mechanism by which one language changes its lexicon to that of another language. ... The Atlantic slave trade, also known as the transatlantic slave trade, was the trade of African people supplied to the colonies of the New World that occurred in and around the Atlantic Ocean. ...

Particularly troubling is the evidence that definite articles are predominantly prenominal in English-based creole languages and English whereas they are predominantly postnominal in French creoles and French koinés.^[9] Moreover, as already noted by Whorf (1956), the European languages which gave rise to the colonial creole languages all belong to the same subgroup of Western Indo-European and have highly convergent systems of grammar to the point where they form a homogeneous group of languages Whorf called Standard Average European (SAE) to distinguish them from languages of other grammatical types. French and English are particularly close since English, through extensive borrowing, is typologically closer to French than to other Germanic languages.^{[citation needed]} According to Vennemann (2006), most European languages themselves might even share a common substratum as well as a common superstratum. Definite Article is the title of British comedian Eddie Izzards 1996 performance released on video and CD. The video/DVD and CD performances were both recorded on different nights at the Shaftesbury Theatre in London, England. ... Pre-nominal letters are a title which is placed before the name of a person as distinct from a post-nominal title which is placed after the name. ... An English-based creole language, or English creole for short, is a creole language that was significantly influenced by the English language. ... Post-nominal letters also called Post-nominal initials or Post-nominal titles are letters placed after the name of an individual to indicate that that individual holds a position, educational degree, accreditation, office, or honour. ... A French creole, more properly French-based creole language, is a creole language with substantial influence from the French language. ... In linguistics, a koinÃ© language (common language) is a standard language or dialect, specifically one that has arisen as a result of language contact much as pidgins or creoles, but where the original dialects are mutually intelligible. ... A creole language, or simply a creole, is a stable language that originates seemingly as a nativized pidgin. ... Proto-Indo-European Indo-European studies Indo-European is originally a linguistic term, referring to the Indo-European language family. ... Standard average European (SAE) is a concept introduced by Benjamin Whorf to distinguish Indo-European and especially West Indo-European languages from languages of other grammatical types. ... A creole language, or simply a creole, is a stable language that originates seemingly as a nativized pidgin. ...

Creole genesis

There are a variety of theories on the origin of creole languages, all of which attempt to explain the similarities among them. Arends, Muysken & Smith (1995) outline a fourfold classification of explanations regarding creole genesis: A creole language, or simply a creole, is a stable language that originates seemingly as a nativized pidgin. ...

Theories focusing on European input

The monogenetic theory of pidgins and creoles hypothesizes a single origin for these languages, deriving them through relexification from a West African Pidgin Portuguese of the 17th century and ultimately from the Lingua franca of the Mediterranean. This theory was originally formulated by Hugo Schuchardt in the late 19th century and popularized in the late 1950s and early 1960s by Douglas Taylor,^[10] as well as in Whinnom (1956), Thompson (1961) and Stewart (1962). The introduction to this article provides insufficient context for those unfamiliar with the subject matter. ... Relexification is a term from linguistics used in pidgin and creole studies for the mechanism by which one language changes its lexicon to that of another language. ... The Lingua franca of the Mediterranean or Sabir was a pidgin language used as a Lingua franca in the Mediterranean Basin from the 11th to the 19th century. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... A creole language, or simply a creole, is a stable language that originates seemingly as a nativized pidgin. ... A creole language, or simply a creole, is a stable language that originates seemingly as a nativized pidgin. ... A creole language, or simply a creole, is a stable language that originates seemingly as a nativized pidgin. ...

Proposed by Hancock (1985) for the development of a local form of English in West Africa, 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, which in turn 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. A creole language, or simply a creole, is a stable language that originates seemingly as a nativized pidgin. ...

The French creoles 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 though there are some similarities with Hancock's domestic origin hypothesis.^[11] A French creole, more properly French-based creole language, is a creole language with substantial influence from the French language. ... Language change is the manner in which the phonetic, morphological, semantic, syntactic, and other features of a language are modified over time. ... CrÃ©olitÃ© is a literary movement first developed in the 1980s by Martinican writers Patrick Chamoiseau, Jean BernabÃ© and RaphaÃ«l Confiant. ... Dr. Ian Hancock during a sponsored visit to the U.S. Embassy in Bratislava, Slovakia, January 10â€“14, 2005. ...

The foreigner talk hypothesis (FT) 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 the speech which is usually directed at children, it is also sometimes called baby talk.^[12]

Arends, Muysken & Smith (1995) suggest that four different processes are involved in creating Foreigner Talk: A creole language, or simply a creole, is a stable language that originates seemingly as a nativized pidgin. ...

This could explain why creole languages have much in common, while avoiding a monogenetic model. However, Hinnenkamp (1984), in analyzing German Foreigner Talk, claims that it is too inconsistent and unpredictable to provide any model for language learning. A creole language, or simply a creole, is a stable language that originates seemingly as a nativized pidgin. ...

While the simplification of input was supposed to account for creoles' simple grammar, there are a number of problems with this explanation:^[13]

Another problem with the FT explanation is its potential circularity. Bloomfield (1933) 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. Derek Bickerton (born March 25, 1926) is a linguist and Professor Emeritus at the University of Hawaii, Honolulu. ... A creole language, or simply a creole, is a stable language that originates seemingly as a nativized pidgin. ...

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 during the relexification process.^{[citation needed]} The problem with this explanation is that the postulated substrate languages differ amongst themselves and with creoles in meaningful ways. Bickerton (1981) argues that the number and diversity of African languages and the paucity of a historical record on creole genesis makes determining lexical correspondances a matter of chance. Dillard (1970) 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. A creole language, or simply a creole, is a stable language that originates seemingly as a nativized pidgin. ... A creole language, or simply a creole, is a stable language that originates seemingly as a nativized pidgin. ...

For a representative debate on this issue, see the contributions to Mufwene (1993); for an up-to-date view, Parkvall (2000). A creole language, or simply a creole, is a stable language that originates seemingly as a nativized pidgin. ... A creole language, or simply a creole, is a stable language that originates seemingly as a nativized pidgin. ...

Because of the sociohistoric similarities amongst many (but by no means all), the Atlantic slave trade and the planation system of European colonies have been emphasized by linguists such as McWhorter (1999). The Atlantic slave trade, also known as the transatlantic slave trade, was the trade of African people supplied to the colonies of the New World that occurred in and around the Atlantic Ocean. ... A creole language, or simply a creole, is a stable language that originates seemingly as a nativized pidgin. ...

Gradualist and developmental hypotheses

One class of creoles might start as pidgins, rudimentary second languages improvised for use between speakers of two or more non-intelligible native languages. Keith Whinnom (in Hymes (1971)) 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 inflections, 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. This article is about simplified languages. ... A creole language, or simply a creole, is a stable language that originates seemingly as a nativized pidgin. ... Inflection of the Spanish lexeme for cat, with blue representing the masculine gender, pink representing the feminine gender, grey representing the form used for mixed-gender, and green representing the plural number. ...

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 contain more and more words according to a rational and stable system.^[14] // Traditionally, a generation has been defined as â€œthe average interval of time between the birth of parents and the birth of their offspring. ...

Universalist approaches

Universalist 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 source for the unversalist approach is still Bickerton's^[15] work. His language bioprogram theory 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 languages; and the children used their own innate linguistic capacities to transform the pidgin input into a full-fledged language. In comparative religion, a universalist religion is one that holds itself true for all people; it thus allows all to join, regardless of ethnicity. ... In general, semantics (from the Greek semantikos, or significant meaning, derived from sema, sign) is the study of meaning, in some sense of that term. ... Linguistic transparency is a phrase which is used in multiple, overlapping subjects in the fields of linguistics and the philosophy of language. ... The manner in which a child acquires language is a matter long debated by linguists and child psychologists alike. ... Discourse is a term used in semantics as in discourse analysis, but it also refers to a social conception of discourse, often linked with the work of French philosopher Michel Foucault (1926-1984) and JÃ¼rgen Habermas The Theory of Communicative Action (1985). ... For other uses, see Organization (disambiguation). ... Derek Bickerton (born March 25, 1926) is a linguist and Professor Emeritus at the University of Hawaii, Honolulu. ... A sugarcane plantation at Ribeirão Preto, Brazil, 2005 A plantation is a large tract of monoculture, as a tree plantation, a cotton plantation, a tea plantation or a tobacco plantation. ... In the philosophy of language, a natural language (or ordinary language) is a language that is spoken, written, or signed by humans for general-purpose communication, as distinguished from formal languages (such as computer-programming languages or the languages used in the study of formal logic, especially mathematical logic) and... Look up innate in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

Recent study

The last decade has seen the emergence of some new approaches to creole studies, namely the question of complexity of creoles and the question of whether creoles are "exceptional" languages.

The creole prototype

If creole languages form a group which is different from other languages, they should have a set of features which clearly distinguishes them from "other" languages. Some features have been proposed (by Bickerton^[16] for example), but no uncontestable unique creole features has been put forth so far. Features that are said to be true of all (or most) creole languages are in fact true of all isolating languages.^{[citation needed]} Such features are then necessary but not sufficient to single out creole languages from non-creole isolating languages. Look up necessary in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... In logic, the words necessary and sufficient describe relations that hold between propositions or states of affairs, if one is conditional on the other. ... An isolating language is any language where the vast majority of morphemes are free morphemes and are considered to be full-fledged words, rather than particles that are agglutinated. ...

John McWhorter^[17] has proposed the following list of features to indicate a Creole Prototype: John H. McWhorter (1965- ), African American, was associate professor of linguistics at University of California, Berkeley until 2003, and is now a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute think tank. ...

The hypotheses is that every language with these three features is a creole, and every creole must have these three features.

The creole prototype hypothesis has been attacked from two different perspectives:

Photo of Henri Wittmann in 2002. ... A creole language, or simply a creole, is a stable language that originates seemingly as a nativized pidgin. ... Mande (or Manding) is the name of a group of languages which are spoken in several countries in West Africa, including Mandinka and Bambara. ... The Soninke language (Soninke: Soninkanxaane) is a Mande language spoken by the Soninke people of West Africa. ... Magoua is a particular dialect of basilectal Quebec French spoken in the Trois-RiviÃ¨res area, between Trois-RiviÃ¨res and MaskinongÃ©. Categories: | | ... Map of Indonesia showing Riau province Riau is a province of Indonesia, located in the center of Sumatra island along the Strait of Malacca. ... Berbice Dutch Creole is a Caribbean creole language. ... Look up Tone in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Papiamento or Papiamentu is the primary language spoken on the Caribbean islands of Aruba, Curaçao and Bonaire. ...

Exceptionalism

Building up on this discussion, McWhorter has proposed that "The world's simplest grammars are Creole grammars" (not "Creoles are the simplest languages"). He claims that no non-Creole language will be found which will be less complex than any creole language.^{[citation needed]} To this, David Gil replied that Riau Indonesian is precisely such a language, and that Riau has a simpler grammar than Saramaccan, the language McWhorter uses as a showcase for his theory.^{[citation needed]} The same objections were raised by Wittmann in his 1999 debate with McWhorter.^[18] Saramaccan (autonym: Saamáka) is a creole spoken by about 24,000 people near the Saramaccan and upper Suriname Rivers in Suriname, and 2,000 in French Guiana. ... Events of 2008: (EMILY) Me Lesley and MIley are going to China! This article is about the year. ...

Jeff Good has shown that Saramaccan suprasegmental phonology is quite complex,^[19] though showing that creoles can be complex does not disprove McWhorter's hypothesis; it must be shown that non-Creoles can be as simple or more simple than the Creoles that they are compared to.^[20] In linguistics, prosody refers to intonation, rhythm, and vocal stress in speech. ...

The lack of progress made in defining creoles morphosyntactically has led some scholars to question the value of Creole as a typological class. Robert Chaudenson, Mufwene^[21] and Wittmann have argued that Creole languages are structurally no different from any other language, and that Creole is in fact a sociohistoric concept (and not a linguistic one), encompassing displaced population and slavery.^{[citation needed]} Salikoko Mufwene is Frank J. McLoraine Distinguished Service Professor of linguistics at the University of Chicago. ... Photo of Henri Wittmann in 2002. ...

Thomason & Kaufman (1988) spell out the idea of creole exceptionalism, claiming that creole languages are an instance of non-genetic language change due to the language shift without normal transmission. Gradualists question the abnormal transmission of languages in a creole setting and argue that the processes which lead to today's creole languages are in no way different from the universal patterns of language change.^{[citation needed]} A creole language, or simply a creole, is a stable language that originates seemingly as a nativized pidgin. ...

Given that the concept of creoleness is disputed on both morphosyntactic and evolutionary grounds, the idea of creoles being exceptional in any meaningful way is increasingly questioned, giving rise to publications entitled "Against Creole Exceptionalism"^[22] or "Deconstructing Creole".^[23]. Mufwene (2002) argues that it is only history that prevents us from considering some Romance languages as potential creoles. A creole language, or simply a creole, is a stable language that originates seemingly as a nativized pidgin. ... The Romance languages, also called Romanic languages, are a subfamily of the Italic languages, specifically the descendants of the Vulgar Latin dialects spoken by the common people evolving in different areas after the break-up of the Roman Empire. ...

Encyclopedia > Creole language

Contents

History of the concept

Classification of creoles

Whose creole?

Substrate and superstrate

Shared features

Creole genesis

Theories focusing on European input

Theories focusing on non-European input

Gradualist and developmental hypotheses

Universalist approaches

Recent study

The creole prototype

Exceptionalism

See also

Related articles

Creoles by main parent language

Notes

References

External links