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

Creolistics investigates the relative creoleness of languages suspected to be creoles, what Schneider (1990) calls "the cline of creoleness." No consensus exists among creolists as to whether the nature of creoleness is prototypical or merely evidence indicative of a set of recognizable phenomena seen in association with little inherent unity and no underlying single cause.

"Creole", a sociohistoric concept

Creoleness is at the heart of the controversy with John McWhorter^[1] and Mikael Parkvall^[2] opposing Henri Wittmann (1999) and Michel DeGraff.^[3] In McWhorter's definition, creoleness is a matter of degree, in that prototypical creoles exhibit all three of the traits he proposes to diagnose creoleness, whereas less prototypical ones depart somewhat from the prototype. Along these lines, McWhorter defines Haitian Creole, exhibiting all three traits, as "the most creole of creoles."^[4] A creole like Palenquero, on the other hand, would be less prototypical, given the presence of inflection to mark plural, past, gerund, and participle forms.^[5] Objections to the McWhorter-Parkvall hypotheses point out that the typological parameters of creoleness (little or no inflection, little or no tone, transparent derivation) can be found in languages such as Manding, Sooninke and Magoua French which are not considered creoles. Wittmann and DeGraff come to the conclusion that efforts to conceive a yardstick for measuring creoleness in any scientifically meaningful way have failed so far.^[6] DeGraff & Walicek (2005) discuss creolistics in relation to colonialist ideologies, rejecting the notion that Creoles can be responsibly defined in terms of specific grammatical characteristics. They discuss the history of linguistics and nineteenth-century work that argues for the consideration of the sociohistorical contexts in which Creole languages emerged.

"Creole", a genuine linguistic concept

On the other hand, McWhorter points out that in languages such as Bambara, essentially a dialect of Manding, there is ample non-transparent derivation, and that there is no reason to suppose that this would be absent in close relatives such as Mandinka itself.^[7] Moreover, he also observes that Soninke has what all linguists would analyze as inflections, and that current lexicography of Soninke is too elementary for it to be stated with authority that it does not have non-transparent derivation.^[8] Meanwhile, Magoua French, as described by Henri Wittmann, retains some indication of grammatical gender, which qualifies as inflection, and it also retains non-transparent derivation.^[9] Michel DeGraff's argument has been that Haitian Creole retains non-transparent derivation from French.

To the defense of DeGraff and Wittmann it must be said that McWhorter's 2005 book is a collection of previously published papers and that it contains nothing on "defining creole", Manding, Sooninke or Magoua that wasn't already known when DeGraff and Wittmann published their critiques as can be seen from their published debate (see list at the end of [1]). As it is, McWhorter's book does not offer anything new by the way of analysis of Manding, Soninke, or Magoua that wasn't already debated on in his exchange with Wittmann on Creolist.[2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] The issues in question are, at this point, unresolved as to sustaining McWhorter's hypotheses in any significant way though DeGraff's 2005 contribution addresses their weaknesses as far as Haitian Creole is concerned adding new evidence against. The only conclusion possibly so far as the typological differences between Manding, Soninke, Magoua and Haitian are concerned is that their comparative data do not confirm McWhorter's yardstick approach to defining creole.

Proposed synthesis

The answer might be that creoleness is better described and referred to as a syndrome. In some cases, the modified source language might be the substrate language when warranted by a homogeneous substrate (John Singler 1988). In other cases, the modified source language clearly is what creolists identify as the superstrate language (Wittmann 2001); and in still other cases, no single source language might be identifiable (DeGraff 2001). The same approach must be applied to identifying indiviual features as inherited or non-inherited and to distilling the defining grounds which separate creole languages from mixed languages such as Michif, especially when relexification is somehow claimed to be a moving factor (Wittmann 1973, Singler 1996, Wittmann & Fournier 1996, DeGraff 2002).

The answer might also be, however, that creole languages (i.e. like Haitian Creole) are indeed a unique in terms of the perspective that they offer on the human language competence in terms of the nature of their grammars though there have been no new responses to the counter-claims of DeGraff and Wittmann that would warrant the reopening of the debate as for now. However, Ansaldo, Matthews, & Lim (2007) critically assesses the proposal that creole languages exist as a homogeneous structural type with shared and/ or peculiar origins.^[10]

Though the call for a sane approach to creolistics goes back to Givón (1979), the first unbiased overview of the scientifically meaningful characteristics of creole languages must go to the credit of Arends, Muysken & Smith (1995). In their account of approaches to creole genesis, they group theories into four categories:

• Theories focusing on the European input
• Theories focusing on the non-European input
• Gradualist and developmental hyptheses
• Universalist approaches

and confine Pidgins and Mixed languages into separate chapters outside this scheme whether relexification come into the picture or not.

References

1. ^ As in McWhorter (1998)
2. ^ Parkvall (2001)
3. ^ As in Degraff (2003) and Degraff (2005)
4. ^ McWhorter (1998:809)
5. ^ McWhorter (2000).
6. ^ Wittmann (1999), DeGraff (2003). Gil (2001) comes to the same conclusion for Riau Indonesian. Muysken & Law (2001) have adduced evidence as to creole languages which respond unexpectedly to one of McWhorter's three features (for example, inflectional morphology in Berbice Dutch Creole, tone in Papiamentu). Mufwene (2000) and Wittmann (2001) have argued further 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.
7. ^ McWhorter (2005:16)
8. ^ McWhorter (2005:35, 369)
9. ^ Wittmann (1996, 1998) as interpreted by Parkvall (2000).
10. ^ Deconstructing Creole (2007)

Bibliography

• Ansaldo, Umberto, Stephen Matthews, & Lisa Lim (2007). "Deconstructing Creole". Amsterdam: Benjamins.
• Arends, Jacques, Pieter Muysken, & Norval Smith (1995). Pidgins and creoles: An introduction. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
• DeGraff, Michel (2001). On the origin of creoles: A Cartesian critique of Neo-Darwinian linguistics." Linguistic Typology 5:2-3.213-310.[8]
• DeGraff, Michel (2002). "Relexification: A reevaluation." Linguistic Anthropology 44:4.321-414.[9]
• DeGraff, Michel (2003), "Against Creole Exceptionalism", Language 79 (2): 391–410, http://web.mit.edu/linguistics/people/faculty/degraff/degraff-lang-79-02.pdf 
• DeGraff, Michel (2004), "Against Creole Exceptionalism (redux)", Language 80: 834–839, http://web.mit.edu/linguistics/people/faculty/degraff/degraff-lang-80-04.pdf 
• DeGraff, Michel (2005), "Do creole languages constitute an exceptional typological class?", Revue française de linguistique appliquée 10 (1): 11–24 
• Gil, David (2001), "Creoles, Complexity and Riau Indonesian", Linguistic Typology 5: 325–371 
• Givón, Talmy (1979). Prolegomena to any sane creology. Readings in Creole Studies, Ian Hancock (ed.), 3-35.
• McWhorter, John H. (1998), "Identifying the creole prototype: Vindicating a typological class", Language 74 (4): 788–818, doi:10.2307/417003, JSTOR 417003 
• McWhorter, John H. (2000). The Missing Spanish Creoles: recovering the birth of plantation contact languages. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• McWhorter, John H. (2005), Defining Creole, Oxford: Oxford University Press 
• Mufwene, Salikoko (2000), "Creolization is a social, not a structural, process", in Neumann-Holzschuh, Ingrid; Schneider, Edgar, Degrees of restructuring in creole languages, Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 65–84 
• Muysken, Pieter; Law, Paul (2001), "Creole studies: A theoretical linguist’s field guide", Glot International 5 (2): 47–57 
• Parkvall, Mikael (2000), Out of Africa: African influences in Atlantic Creoles, London: Battlebridge 
• Parkvall, Mikael (2001). "Creolistics and the quest for Creoleness: A reply to Claire Lefebvre." Journal of Pidgin & Creole Linguistics 16:1.147-151.
• Schneider, Edgar W. (1990), "The cline of creoleness in English-oriented Creoles and semi-creoles of the Caribbean", English World-Wide 11 (1): 79–113, doi:10.1075/eww.11.1.07sch 
• Singler, John Victor (1988). "The homogeneity of the substrate as a factor in pidgin/creole genesis." Language 64.27-51.
• Singler, John Victor (1996). "Theories of creole genesis, sociohistorical considerations, and the evaluation of evidence: The case of Haitian Creole and the Relexification Hypothesis". Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 11:185-230.
• Wittmann, Henri (1973). "Le joual, c'est-tu un créole?" La Linguistique 9:2.83-93.[10]
• Wittmann, Henri (1996). "La forme phonologique comparée du parler magoua de la région de Trois-Rivières." Mélanges linguistiques, dir. Robert Fournier, 225-43. Trois-Rivières: Presses universitaires de Trois-Rivières (Revue québécoise de linguistique théorique et appliquée 13).[11]
• Wittmann, Henri (1998). "Les créolismes syntaxiques du français magoua parlé aux Trois-Rivières." Français d'Amérique: variation, créolisation, normalisation (Actes du colloque, Université d'Avignon, 8-11 oct.), dir. Patrice Brasseur, 229-48. Avignon: Université d'Avignon, Centre d'études canadiennes.[12]
• Wittmann, Henri (1999). "Prototype as a typological yardstick to creoleness." The Creolist Archives Papers On-line, Stockholms Universitet.[13]
• 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.[14]
• Wittmann, Henri & Robert Fournier (1996). "Contraintes sur la relexification: les limites imposées dans un cadre théorique minimaliste." Mélanges linguistiques, Robert Fournier (ed.), 245-80. Trois-Rivières: Presses universitaires de Trois-Rivières (Revue québécoise de linguistique théorique et appliquée 13).[15]