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| | {{dambigbox|the type of language|creole}} |
| | A '''creole''' is a type of ''[[contact language]]'', i.e. one that has emerged as a result of at least two groups of speakers with no common language needing to [[communication|communicate]]. Many emerged as the victims of [[slavery]] were thrown together on [[plantation]]s in the [[Caribbean]] and elsewhere in the [[Americas]]; others have come about through [[migration]] and [[trade]]. The precise definition of ''creole'' is controversial, but usually it is described as a ''[[native language|nativised]] [[pidgin (language)|pidgin]]'', i.e. a language that has become as sophisticated as any other due to children [[language acquisition|acquiring]] it as a [[first language acquisition|first language]]. Creoles are studied within the cross-disciplinary field of [[creolistics]], which involves research from [[linguistics]] and [[anthropology]], among others, because the creation of a creole invariably involves cross-[[culture|cultural]] contact.<ref>Siegel (2005: 141).</ref> Well-researched examples of creoles include [[Hawaiian Creole|Hawaiian 'Pidgin']] (actually a creole), [[Haitian Creole]], [[Sranan language|Sranan]] (spoken in [[Suriname]]) and [[Jamaican Creole]]. |
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| A '''creole language''', or just '''creole''', is a well-defined and stable [[language]] that originated from a non-trivial combination of two or more languages, typically with many distinctive features that are not inherited from either parent. All creole languages evolved from [[pidgin]]s, usually those that have become the native language of a community. They are studied within the cross-disciplinary field of [[creolistics]], which involves research from [[linguistics]] and [[anthropology]], among others.
| | Disagreements exist over what languages or varieties can be labelled a 'creole' and what the 'life cycle' of these varieties is (e.g. 'Is a pidgin a necessary prerequisite for a creole to form?' 'Does creole genesis usually lead to a ''post-creole continuum'', in which varieties differ relative to the broadest forms of the creole and the language(s) from which most vocabulary is derived?'). The language from which most vocabulary originates is known as the ''lexifier'' language; however, the grammar of creoles comes from elsewhere, and accounts of this ''creolisation'' phenomenon, in which grammatical structures emerge which are absent in any preceding pidgin, are varied and controversial.<ref>Siegel (2008: 3-7).</ref> For example, the ''[[language bioprogram hypothesis]]'' (LBH)<ref>e.g. Bickerton (1984).</ref> of [[Derek Bickerton]] claims that creole genesis supports ideas about the nature of language associated with [[Noam Chomsky]]; as creole [[generative grammar|grammar]]s are remarkably similar across the world,<ref>Sebba (1997: 70-72).</ref> this reflects the existence of an [[innatism|innate]] faculty for language. Bickerton does, however, go further than most creolists in explaining creole genesis as being largely biologically-based, and the LBH has been strongly critiqued.<ref>e.g Siegel (2008: 8; 66-78; 91-104; 133-134).</ref> Other controversial theories, such as ''[[relexification]]'',<ref>e.g. Lefebvre (1998, 2004).</ref> form part of current enquiry but as yet there is no widely-accepted account of creole genesis that satisfactorily explains most of the data. |
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| ==History of the concept==
| | Some linguists have suggested that English is a creole of Anglo-Saxon and Norman French, but this view is not generally accepted. |
| ===Colonial origins===
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| The term ''creole'' comes from [[Portuguese language|Portuguese]] ''crioulo'', via [[Spanish language|Spanish]] ''criollo'' and [[French language|French]] ''créole''. The Portuguese word ''crioulo'' is derived from the verb ''criar'' (to raise/to create), with a [[Affix|suffix]] of debated origin. The term was coined in the 16th century during the great expansion in European maritime power and trade and the establishment of European colonies in the [[Americas]], in Africa, and along the coast of South and Southeast Asia up to the Philippines, China, India and [[Japan]], and in Oceania.
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| 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.
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| ===Historical neglect===
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| Because of the generally low status of the Creole people in the eyes of European colonial powers, creole languages have generally been regarded as "degenerate," or at best as rudimentary "[[dialect]]s" of one of their parent languages. This view, incidentally, is the reason why "creole" has come to be used in opposition to "language," rather than a qualifier for it, so that one would say "a French creole" (rather than "a French-based creole language"), or "the Papiamentu creole" (rather than "the Papiamentu creole language").
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| This prejudice was compounded by the instability of the [[colonialism|colonial system]], which led to the disappearance of many creole languages due to dispersion or assimilation of their speech communities. Another factor that may have contributed to the longtime neglect of creole languages is that they do not fit the "tree model" for the evolution of languages, which was adopted by linguists in the 19th century and is still the foundation of the [[comparative method]]. In this model, languages may evolve, split, or die out - but cannot ever merge.
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| ===Recognition and renaissance===
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| Since the middle of the 20th century, linguists have promulgated the idea that creole languages are in no way inferior to other languages, and that those earlier labels are as inappropriate as saying that [[French language|French]] is a "degenerate [[Latin language|Latin]]" or a "[[Spanish language|Spanish]] dialect". Linguists now use the term "creole language" for any language that is formed from multiple languages by the same mechanism, without geographic restrictions or ethnic implications.
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| As a consequence of these social, political, and academic changes, Creole languages have experienced a revival in recent decades. They are increasingly and more openly being used in literature and in media, and many of their speakers are quite fond and proud of them. They are now studied by linguists as languages on their own; many have been standardized, and are now taught in local schools and universities abroad.
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| ==Development of a creole language==
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| All creoles start as [[pidgin]]s, 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 [[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.
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| However, if a pidgin manages to be learned by the children of a community as a native language, it usually becomes fixed and acquires a more complex grammar, with fixed phonology, syntax, morphology, and syntactic embedding. The syntax and morphology of such languages may often have local innovations not obviously derived from any of the parent languages.
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| Pidgins can become full languages in only a single [[generation]]. This does not mean that they always do. [[Tok Pisin]], for example, was born as a pidgin and became a stable language after about 90 years.
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| Once formed, creoles can remain as a sort of second, local standard, like the [[Capeverdean Crioulo languages|Capeverdean Creole]]. Some creoles, like [[Papiamentu]] and [[Tok Pisin]], have obtained recognition as official languages. On the other hand, some creoles have been gradually ''[[decreolization|decreolized]]'' through contact with the modern form of the language from which they originally drew much of their vocabulary. [[Jamaican English]], for example, exists on a [[post-creole speech continuum|continuum]] of dialects, from the broadest 'patois' (Jamaican creole) to a variety very similar to [[standard English]]. This decreolization is one theory put forward to explain the development of [[African American Vernacular English]] in the [[United States]].
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| ==Classification of creoles==
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| ===''Whose creole?''===
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| By definition, a creole is the result of the imposition of the vocabulary of one or more languages onto the grammatical structure of two or more languages, usually with radical morphological changes and a syntax which is not obviously borrowed from the parent tongues. The parent tongues may themselves be creoles or [[pidgin]]s that have disappeared before they could be documented.
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| 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 heated disputes, where social prejudices and political considerations may predominate.
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| ===Substrate and superstrate===
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| The terms ''substrate'' and ''superstrate'' are often used to label the parent languages of a creole. However, the meaning of these terms is only reasonably well-defined in [[language replacement]] events, when the native speakers of a certain language (the substrate) are somehow compelled to learn another language (the superstrate). The outcome of such an event is that people will be speaking 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 language|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.
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| However, these terms are not as meaningful for creoles, in which the new language is not imposed, but largely fabricated by the very same people for which it will become the mother tongue. Thus those terms often end up being applied according to geographic or historical criteria; for example, the native language is taken to be the substrate, while the colonizers' is the superstrate. However this criterion runs into trouble for languages like [[Papiamentu]], where none of the parent languages was native to the region.
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| Some linguists may arbitrarily assign different weights to different features. For instance, they may designate as superstrate the parent language whose grammatical structure is more similar to that of the creole; or, alternatively, the parent which most contributed to the lexicon, or whose contribution happened earlier in time. Needless to say, these different views lead to different classifications, and sometimes to heated disputes.
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| ==General features==
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| Study of creole languages around the world (in particular by Derek Bickerton) has suggested that they display remarkable similarities in [[grammar]] and are developed uniformly from pidgins in a single generation, lending support to the theory of a [[universal grammar|Universal Grammar]]; critics, however, argue that his examples are largely drawn from creoles derived from [[Europe]]an languages, and that non-European-based creoles such as [[Nubi language|Nubi]] or [[Sango language|Sango]] display fewer similarities.
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| Bickerton opposed the previous [[monogenetic theory of pidgins]] according to which, most European-based pidgins and creoles came from Mediterranean [[lingua franca]] via a "broken Portuguese" [[relexification]] in the slave factories of Western Africa.
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| Even considering only creoles from European languages, the similarities in [[grammar|grammatical]] structure are striking, especially considering that they evolved in communities which were isolated from one another. For example, these creoles tend to have similar usage patterns for definite and indefinite [[article (grammar)|article]]s, and similar movement rules for [[phrase]] structures even when the parent languages do not.
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| ==See also== | | ==See also== |
| *[[Nicaraguan Sign Language]] | | *[[Creolistics]] |
| *[http://www.english.uga.edu/%7Espcl/home.html Society for Pidgin and Creole Linguistics (SPCL)] | | *[[Pidgin (language)]] |
| *[http://www.umac.mo/fsh/dp/acblpe/ Association for Portuguese and Spanish Lexically Based Creoles (ACBLPE)]
| | *[[Lingua franca]] |
| *[http://creoles.free.fr/ Groupe Européen de Recherches en Langues Créoles] | | *[[Contact language]] |
| *[http://malavoi.martinique.univ-ag.fr/Recherch.html Groupe d'Etude et de Recherche en Espace Créolophone (GEREC)]
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| *[http://www.unb.br/il/liv/crioul/textos/abecs.htm Associação Brasileira de Estudos Crioulos e Similares (ABECS)]
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| *[http://www.scl-online.net/ Society for Caribbean Linguistics (SCL)]
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| *[[Basic English]] for what is essentially an artificial English-based creole language | |
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| ==Dictionary==
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| * [http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/translation/Creole/ Creole Dictionary] from [http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/ Webster's Dictionary]
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| ==References== | | ==Footnotes== |
| *{{cite book | author=Bickerton, Derek | title=Roots of Language |
| | {{reflist|2}}[[Category:Suggestion Bot Tag]] |
| publisher=Karoma Publishers | year=1981|id=ISBN 0-89720-044-6}}
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| *{{cite journal | author=Bickerton, Derek | year=1983 | title=Creole Languages | journal=Scientific American| volume=249(8) | pages=116-122}}
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| *{{cite book | editor=Hymes, D. H | title=Pidginization and Creolization of Languages| publisher=Cambridge University Press| year=1971|}}
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| *{{cite book | author=Sebba, Mark | title=Contact Languages: Pidgins and Creoles |
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| publisher=MacMillan| year=1997|id=ISBN 0-333-63024-6}}
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