Abstract
Creole languages are sometimes considered a "laboratory" where language genesis could be observed in vivo. One reason for this belief is that Creoles are the only natural languages now extant, the emergence of which can be dated and localized with some precision because (i) it is recent (a century for some); (ii) it presents (or seems to present) the characters of a "catastrophe" as opposed to the continuous process of change whereby "old" languages like French and English acquired their identities. Another reason is the present currency of a theory which views the origin of language and the formation of Creoles as due to the same cause, viz. the sudden replacement of protolanguage by full human language. This article evaluates the claims of this theory with respect to Creole formation. It shows its main drawback to lie in the fact that full languages were crucially present on the scenes where creole languages emerged, if only as lexicon purveyors, so that no convincing inferences may be drawn from the historical situation in which Creoles appeared to the prehistorical setting where language originated.
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