Creole Formation Research Articles

The handbook of pidgin and creole studies (review)

Reviewed by: The handbook of pidgin and creole studies Marlyse Baptista The handbook of pidgin and creole studies. Ed. by Silvia Kouwenberg and John Victor Singler. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2008. Pp. v, 688. ISBN 9780631229025. $54.95. This handbook reflects the state of the art in creole studies and through a collection of twenty-six chapters captures the main insights that creolists have achieved in recent years with regard to the nature of creole languages, their linguistic properties, genesis, and development. It also highlights the large questions that remain central to the field in the areas of grammatical theory, historical linguistics, and sociolinguistics. Two core issues that this volume targets are how exactly substrates, lexifiers, and universal forces interact and contribute to the emergence of a new creole, and what the precise mechanisms involved in creole genesis are. Later in this review I evaluate the extent to which these two main lines of inquiry are adequately addressed in the volume. [End Page 918] The handbook is divided into five parts. Part 1, ‘Properties of pidgins and creoles’, surveys dominant linguistic properties of pidgins and creoles in the core domains of syntax (Don Winford), syntax/discourse interface and variability (Miriam Meyerhoff), morphology (Terry Crowley), and phonology (Norval S. H. Smith). In addition, structural differences between pidgins and creoles (Peter Bakker) and non-Indo-European pidgins and creoles (Kees Versteegh) are investigated. Part 2, ‘Perspectives on pidgin/creole genesis’, reveals how diverse perspectives on creoles have each contributed to enhancing our understanding of how they emerge and develop. The chapters in this section examine how the study of second language acquisition (Jeff Siegel), the language bioprogram hypothesis (Tonjes Veenstra), historical linguistics (Sarah G. Thomason), contact linguistics (Rajend Mesthrie), multilingualism (Pieter Muysken), population demographics (JacquesArends), and sociohistorical (John Victor Singler) and cultural (Christine Jourdan) contexts can all help us piece together the various factors involved in pidgin and creole formation. The common objective of the chapters in Part 3, ‘Pidgins/creoles and linguistic explanation’, is to provide explanatory frameworks for the linguistic properties that creoles display. Such explanations center around the process of grammaticalization (Adrienne Bruyn) or unmarked/default settings (Alain Kihm). These two chapters, which focus on morphosyntax, are complemented by one addressing semantic structure, in which the range of meaning of lexemes is investigated, regardless of their origin (George Huttar). Finally, the chapter on variation and change in pidgins and creoles views sociolinguistic studies as key to producing detailed comparisons of diverse speech communities (Peter L. Patrick). In a spirit of inclusion and comprehensiveness, Part 4, ‘Pidgins/creoles and kindred languages’, compares pidgins and creoles to kindred languages like signed languages (Judy Kegl), African American English (Arthur K. Spears), and the small cluster of Spanish-based creoles spoken in the Caribbean (John M. Lipski). Finally, Part 5, ‘Pidgins/creoles in society’, addresses the use of pidgins and creoles in distinct societal domains. The first chapter in this section examines the role of discourse (Geneviève Escure) in shaping creole reality and highlights the key role speakers play in the dynamic of communication. The late Dennis Craig reports on the status of pidgins and creoles in education and weighs the benefits of using them as languages of instruction. This chapter, which also addresses language policy, overlaps with Hubert Devonish’s study, which lays out the necessary steps in language planning for creolophone societies while showing that the status of creoles is interconnected with creole nationhood and statehood. In the last chapter of Part 5, Hélène Buzelin and Lise Winer provide a thorough historical overview of literary representations of French-lexicon and English-lexicon creole languages in the Caribbean, underlining the growing international acclaim of creole fiction and poetry as well as the current limitations of writing in creole. In their introduction, the editors attribute the recent developments in creole linguistics to three main events that generated interest...

Second Language Acquisition and Syntactic Theory in the 21st Century

Syntactic theory has played a role in second language acquisition (SLA) research since the early 1980s, when the principles and parameters model of generative grammar was implemented. However, it was the so-called functional parameterization hypothesis together with the debate on whether second language learners activated new features or switched their value that led to detailed and in-depth analyses of the syntactic properties of many different nonnative grammars. In the last 10 years, with the minimalist program as background, these analyses have diverted more and more from looking at those syntactic properties that argued for or against the various versions of the UG-access versus non-UG-access debate (UG for Universal Grammar) and have more recently delved into the status of nonnative grammars in the cognitive science field. Thus, using features (i.e., gender, case, verb, and determiner) as the basic units and paying special attention to the quality of input as well as to processing principles and constraints, nonnative grammars have been compared to the language contact paradigms that underlie subsequent bilingualism, child SLA, creole formation, and diachronic change. Taking Chomsky's I-language/E-language construct as the framework, this article provides a review of these recent developments in SLA research.

Language Acquisition in Creolization and, Thus, Language Change: Some Cartesian‐ Uniformitarian Boundary Conditions

This essay prescribes some broad ‘Cartesian-Uniformitarian’ boundary conditions for linguistic hypotheses about Creole formation. These conditions make constructive connections between Creole studies, historical linguistics and language-acquisition research. Here ‘Cartesian’ has a mentalist sense, as in Chomsky (1966): I consider the formation of so-called ‘Creole’ languages to be ultimately reducible to the creation, in certain sociohistorical contexts, of certain idiolects (i.e., individual internal, or ‘I-’, languages) in the minds of the ‘first “Creole” speakers’. To avoid circularity, my use of the term ‘Creole’ in the phrase ‘first “Creole” speakers’ combines some of its original ethno-historical senses: I use the word ‘Creole’, in this particular context, to refer to the non-indigenous people of African or European descent that were born and raised in the colonial New World, in opposition to those that were born and raised in the Old Worlds of Africa and Europe. The term ‘Uniformitarian’ evokes Neogrammarian approaches to language change, as advocated, for example, by Osthoff and Brugmann (1878) and Paul (1890). It summarizes my fundamental working assumption that no sui generis or exceptional linguistic processes need to be postulated in order to explain the creation of these languages that have come to be labeled ‘Creole’: these languages were created by the same psycholinguistic mechanisms that are responsible for the creation of (I-)languages, and for linguistic diachronic patterns, everywhere else. Therefore, ‘Creole’ languages cannot be distinguished a priori from non-‘Creole’ languages on any linguistic-theoretical criteria – and ‘Creole’ languages can be genetically classified by the Comparative Method, on a par with non-‘Creole’ languages. Such assumptions go against popular claims about Creole genesis such as those in, for example, Thomason and Kaufman (1988), Lefebvre (1998) and Bickerton (1999). In establishing these Cartesian-Uniformitarian guidelines, I correct category mistakes that fail to distinguish explanations that apply to I-languages from explanations that apply to E(xternal)-languages and other social-group phenomena that I-languages are implicated in. One such category mistake concerns the ontology and time course of innovations in specific I-languages vs. their spread across populations of I-languages and into E-language communal norms. Then I investigate the possible – and impossible – contributions of first-language acquisition and second-language acquisition to ‘creolization’. In particular, I take my cues from: (i) studies of language- and dialect-contact situations where children and adults seem to play observably distinct roles; and (ii) recent discoveries about instances of Sign Language acquisition and creation where the Primary Linguistic Data seem remarkably restricted. As for elucidating the limits on the restructuring capacities of children and adults, and their respective contributions to language creation and change, it is epistemologically safer to investigate instances of diachronic development that are more recent than the now unobservable early stages of ‘creolization’. Throughout this essay, I use the term ‘creolization’ strictly as an a-theoretical abbreviation for the longer phrase ‘development of these languages that, for sociohistorical reasons, have been labeled “Creole” ’. In the perspective sketched here, creolization is just another instance of language change – or ‘language evolution’, in Mufwene's (2001, 2008) sense – the investigation of which is to shed light on Universal Grammar.

Creoles and interlanguages, conclusions and research desiderata: a reply to Plag

This article responds to Ingo Plag’s recent (2008) columns in the Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages in which creoles are discussed as ‘conventionalized interlanguages of an early stage’ with consideration of inflectional morphology and syntax. Here it is argued that Plag’s traditional conception of transfer coupled with his uncritical acceptance of Pienemann’s (1998, 2005) Processability Theory as a theory of interlanguage development make it difficult to offer a rigorous assessment of the basic claim. This article offers several critiques of Plag’s argumentation and claims that Schwartz & Sprouse’s (1996) Full Transfer/Full Access model offers accounts that are at least as satisfactory as those offered by Processability Theory. Nevertheless, while embracing Plag’s Interlanguage Hypothesis, this article calls for quantitatively and qualitatively more ambitious studies of both interlanguage development and creole formation, based on typologically driven constellations of L1s/substrates and the Target Languages/lexifiers.

A Creole origin for Barlovento Spanish? A linguistic and sociohistorical inquiry

ABSTRACTMcWhorter challenges the validity of the limited access model for creole formation, noting that “the mainland Spanish colonies put in question a model which is crucial to current creole genesis.” His thesis is that in the Spanish mainland colonies the disproportion between the Black and White populations was enough for the emergence of a creole language. This article focuses on one colony, Venezuela, and argues that Africans there had as much access to Spanish as they did in islands such as Cuba. Based on this fact, the relevant linguistic evidence is analyzed. The most important contribution of this study is the discussion of the Spanish crown's monopolization of the slave trade, which kept the Black/White ratio relatively low in certain Spanish colonies until the end of the 18th century. Until now, this part of the puzzle has been absent in the discussion of the missing Spanish creoles.

Processes of Creole Formation and Related Contact-Induced Language Change

AbstractIn this paper, I explore the relationship between creole formation and other outcomes of contact induced change and argue that in many respects the comparisons that earlier scholars made between the two have a sound basis in terms of the processes of change that produced such outcomes. I focus my attention only on those aspects of creole formation that result from the kind of cross-linguistic influence that has been referred to variously as 'substratum influence.' I argue that such influence is part of a more general type of contact-induced change that is brought about by imposition, a transfer type that manifests itself in a wide variety of contact situations not traditionally treated as involving the creation of creoles. I illustrate the workings of imposition in a variety of contact situations, including those that involve second language acquisition (including creole formation), and those that involve language attrition. I discuss two linguistic models that have been proposed for the description and analysis of such phenomena in creole formation, namely, Lefebvre's (1998) Relexification model, and Myers-Scotton's (2002) Abstract Level Structure model. I argue that these models are compatible with the view of imposition proposed here, and shed some light on the mechanisms underlying this transfer type, and how they produce the kinds of contact phenomena found in creole formation, as well as in cases of language attrition. I further argue that these mechanisms are essentially psycholinguistic in nature, and can best be understood in the context of psycholinguistic models of bilingual speech production. Finally, I suggest how insights from such models can clarify our understanding of how imposition produces the kinds of convergence phenomena we find in creoles and related outcomes of contact-induced change.

Language contact in Amazonia, and: Dynamics of language contact: English and immigrant languages (review)

Reviewed by: Language contact in Amazonia by Alexandra Aikhenvald, and: Dynamics of language contact: English and immigrant languages by Michael Clyne Donald Winford Language contact in Amazonia. By Alexandra Aikhenvald. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Pp. 398. ISBN 019925785X. $180 (Hb). Dynamics of language contact: English and immigrant languages. By Michael Clyne. (Cambridge approaches to language contact.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Pp. 298. ISBN 0521786487. $34.99. The field of contact linguistics has grown tremendously within the last five decades, since Uriel Weinreich (1953) made the first attempt to classify different types of contact-induced change and the processes underlying them. But the study of language contact goes much further back in time, to late nineteenth-century studies of dialect contact and the formation of pidgins and creoles (Müller 1875, Paul 1886, Schmidt 1872, Schuchardt 1882). Other lines of research on language-contact phenomena included work on the dynamics of language maintenance and shift in immigrant and other multilingual communities, the linguistic and social characteristics of code-switching, and the nature of bilinguals’ linguistic competence and cognition. These studies laid the foundation for current investigations of a broad range of language-contact phenomena, spanning several subdisciplines, each of which has its own theoretical framework and has spawned a vast literature of its own. The field now embraces bilingualism, code-switching, pidgin and creole languages, bilingual mixed languages, language shift, and language attrition and death. The very diversity of the phenomena and of the frameworks that have been used to explain them has made it very difficult to integrate all approaches into a coherent and comprehensive model of contact-induced change. For the most part, the different fields of inquiry proceed more or less independently of one another. As Clyne notes, ‘language contact is a multidimensional, multidisciplinary field … involving interrelationships between the structural, linguistic, sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic’ (1). Yet little progress has been made toward integrating all of these approaches. This led van Coetsem to observe: ‘Contact linguistics still lacks an adequate conceptual basis on which a synthesis can be built that is theoretically well-founded’ (2000:39). The components of such a unified framework include the accurate description and classification of contact-induced changes, the constraints and principles governing such changes, the role of the social context in determining the outcomes of language contact, the role of psycholinguistic factors, and so on. Moreover, there are practical problems involved in distinguishing changes due to contact from those due to internal causation, and the need to distinguish similarities that are due to genetic inheritance, chance, or parallel development. The two books that are the subject of this review provide ample testimony both to the diversity of contact phenomena and to the problem of incorporating such diversity into a coherent descriptive framework. Each, in its own way, offers insight into the more general principles and factors that shape the outcomes of language contact. I first present a brief overview of each book and the kinds of contact phenomena they deal with and then evaluate their contributions to the field of contact linguistics by examining a number of themes and issues that are central to the field. 1. Dynamics of language contact Michael Clyne’s book takes an in-depth look at the contact between various immigrant languages and English in Australia, exploring [End Page 401] ways in which mutual influence among them has led to various kinds of contact phenomena, including changes in the immigrant languages. The focus of this study is the linguistic behavior of plurilingual (bi- and trilingual) speakers, the patterns of code-switching and code mixture they display, and the varying degrees of convergence with English among the immigrant languages. These languages belong to various families, and include German and Dutch, Italian and Spanish, Hungarian and Croatian, and Chinese and Vietnamese. Looking at these languages allows C to document how varying degrees of typological distance between English and the other languages make for differences in the outcomes of the contact. The comparison of data from bilingual as well as trilingual speakers also provides insight into the different effects that knowledge of two as opposed to one language other than English can have on plurilingual behavior. The study...

Gbe and other West African sources of Suriname creole semantic structures

This paper reports on ongoing research on the role of various kinds of potential substrate languages in the development of the semantic structures of Ndyuka (Eastern Suriname Creole). A set of 100 senses of noun, verb, and other lexemes in Ndyuka were compared with senses of corresponding lexemes in three kinds of languages of the former Slave Coast and Gold Coast areas, and immediately adjoining hinterland: (a) Gbe languages; (b) other Kwa languages, specifically Akan and Ga; (c) non-Kwa Niger-Congo languages. The results of this process provide some evidence for the importance of the Gbe languages in the formation of the Suriname creoles, but also for the importance of other languages, and for the areal nature of some of the collocations studied, rendering specific identification of a single substrate source impossible and inappropriate. These results not only provide information about the role of Gbe and other languages in the formation of Ndyuka, but also give evidence for effects of substrate languages spoken by late arrivals some time after the “founders” of a given creole-speaking society. The conclusions are extrapolated beyond Suriname to creole genesis generally.

<i>Creole formation as language contact : The case of the Suriname Creoles</i> (review)

<i>Creole formation as language contact : The case of the Suriname Creoles</i> (review)

Creole Formation as Language Contact: The Case of the Suriname Creoles (review)

Reviewed by: Creole formation as language contact: The case of the Suriname creoles by Bettina Migge G. Tucker Childs Creole formation as language contact: The case of the Suriname creoles. By Bettina Migge. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2003. Pp. 151. ISBN 1588113973. $126 (Hb). The Suriname creoles Bettina Migge treats are typologically ‘radical’. They arose suddenly and remained in relative isolation from their lexifier, not the case with most other creoles. Furthermore and perhaps complementarily, they have retained much more of their African-ness than other contact varieties outside the African context. Thus, these Suriname creoles serve as an important test case for determining the origin of creole structures. What makes this book so useful to the task is the clarity of presentation, the soundness of its argumentation, and the fullness of its documentation. The varieties of interest here are those spoken today by the descendants of the Maroons, Africans who fled their enslavement on European lowland plantations of Suriname in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. They established their own (covert) communities high in the hills or far upstream from those who sought their recapture. One present-day outgrowth from what M calls Surinamese Plantation Creole, the variety of those early plantations, is Sranan Tongo, the variety of the slaves who didn’t get away, now the lingua franca of Suriname. The other creoles are spoken today in relatively isolated pockets where the Maroons originally established their havens. For those familiar with creolistics, particularly its preoccupation with creole origins, this book is a welcome antidote to the paltry sociohistorical research and top-heavy theory-driven research programs often found there. M spells out her goals, her methodology, and her findings without much ado. Her research is thoroughly documented and presented with great evenness. She stands within the current thinking about creoles—that they are just another contact phenomenon—and uses a familiar typological framework within which to situate her study. Ch. 1 introduces the goal of the study, to understand creole formation, and sets forth M’s approach, indicating the weaknesses in other approaches. Ch. 2, ‘Current research on creole formation’, reviews the literature and ends with a blueprint of her methodology. Ch. 3, ‘The context of creole formation in Suriname’, begins the core of the study, providing a sociohistorical context for the formation of the Suriname creoles. Ch. 4 discusses the superstrate side of the equation, the nature of the English input, how English was simplified in the context of the plantation creole’s birth. For those wanting to understand how creoles are formed, M presents many detailed examples, including stative verbs and the copula, serial verbs, and locational phrases. The next two chapters discuss the other side of the input, how African structures also made their way into the creoles. Ch. 5 looks at lexical retentions from Gbe, which is not as interesting as Ch. 6, which considers structural ones. M finds few lexical retentions but many more in the way of retention or projection of Gbe structural and semantic properties. Speakers reinterpreted the reduced English input in terms of their own abstract structures, and if there was enough similarity, they shoehorned the English forms into pre-existent systems. Ch. 7 compares present-day forms with what historical evidence exists, finding that attested language-internal processes have been at work producing synchronic forms. Besides summarizing the study, Ch. 8 considers the findings in terms of current theories, finding most satisfying those that base themselves on L2 acquisition. G. Tucker Childs Portland State University Copyright © 2006 Linguistic Society of America

Review of Migge (2003): Creole formation as language contact

Review of Migge (2003): Creole formation as language contact

Review of Migge (2003): Creole Formation as Language Contact. The case of the Suriname Creoles

Bettina Migge (2003): Creole Formation as Language Contact. The case of the Suriname Creoles

NEW DIRECTIONS IN PIDGIN AND CREOLE STUDIES

This chapter introduces the reader to the areas of previous investigation in creole studies, while outlining new directions the field is taking. The first section shows that, although the chief areas of interest have essentially remained the same for the past few decades, methodologies have changed toward a more comprehensive multilayered approach aimed at a better understanding of how individual creole languages emerge, evolve and function. The second section focuses particularly on cognitive processes involved in creole formation, such as restructuring, relexification, reanalysis, and dialectal leveling. In the third and last section, I critically evaluate the current state of affairs and point out potential obstacles and promising interdisciplinary trends.

Regularizing Unpredictable Variation: The Roles of Adult and Child Learners in Language Formation and Change

In this article we investigate what learners acquire when their input contains inconsistent grammatical morphemes such as those present in pidgins and incipient creoles. In particular, we ask if learners acquire variability veridically or if they change it, making the language more regular as they learn it. In Experiment 1 we taught adult participants an artificial language containing unpredictable variation in 1 grammatical feature. We manipulated the amount of inconsistency and the meaning of the inconsistent item. Postexposure testing showed that participants learned the language, including the variable item, despite the presence of inconsistency. However, their use of variable items reflected their input. Participants exposed to consistent patterns produced consistent patterns, and participants exposed to inconsistency reproduced that inconsistency; they did not make the language more consistent. The meaning of the inconsistent item had no effect. In Experiment 2 we taught adults and 5- to 7-year-old children a similar artificial language. As in Experiment 1, the adults did not regularize the language. However, many children did regularize the language, imposing patterns that were not the same as their input. These results suggest that children and adults do not learn from variable input in the same way. Moreover, they suggest that children may play a unique and important role in creole formation by regularizing grammatical patterns.

Review of Migge (2003): Creole Formation as Language Contact: The Case of the Suriname Creoles

Review of Migge (2003): Creole Formation as Language Contact: The Case of the Suriname Creoles

PARAMETER SETTING IN LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

PARAMETER SETTING IN LANGUAGE ACQUISITION. Dalila Ayoun. New York: Continuum, 2003. Pp. x + 212. $110.00 cloth.This book presents an overview of the parameter setting theory of learnability in first (L1) and second (L2) language acquisition within the generative linguistic framework. It also attempts to challenge and refine common assumptions underlying the model. The book comprises five central chapters as well as short introductory and concluding chapters. The introductory chapter summarizes the general aim of the book and the specific aims of the chapters to follow. In chapter 2, Ayoun presents historical background on the concept of parameter throughout different versions of generative linguistics and distinguishes the standard notion of parameter from the notions of associated clusters of structures, microparameters (referring to structures), and macroparameters (which apply to a family of typologically different languages). This chapter also reviews the concept of parameter setting for language changes, creole formation, computational linguistics, and neurolinguistics, ending with a brief discussion of Universal Grammar and the Critical Period Hypothesis. In brief, this chapter argues that the parameter setting approach is a model worthy of further development and refinement, capable of explaining and predicting a wide range of phenomena in linguistic theory and its applications despite misunderstandings and lack of clarity in the field.

Creole Formation as Language Contact

Creole Formation as Language Contact

PROCESSES OF LANGUAGE CONTACT: STUDIES FROM AUSTRALIA AND THE SOUTH PACIFIC. Jeff Siegel (Ed.). Saint-Laurent, Canada: Fides, 2000. Pp. xvi + 320. $34.95 paper.

The present volume highlights studies of languages created by contact-induced language change in Australia and the Pacific. Editor Jeff Siegel identifies six processes involved in the formation of pidgins, creoles, and other such language contact varieties: reanalysis, simplification, leveling, diffusion, language shift, and depidginization/decreolization. The process of reanalysis is the focus of four chapters: “The Role of Australian Aboriginal Language in the Formation of Australian Pidgin Grammar: Transitive Verbs and Adjectives” by Koch; “‘Predicate Marking' in Bislama” by Crowley; “Predicting Substrate Influence: Tense-Modality-Aspect Marking in Tayo” by Siegel, Sandeman, and Corne; “My Nephew Is My Aunt: Features and Transformation of Kinship Terminology in Solomon Islands Pijin” by Jourdan; and “Na pa kekan, na person: The Evolution of Tayo Negatives” by Corne.

LANGUAGE CREATION AND LANGUAGE CHANGE: CREOLIZATION, DIACHRONY, AND DEVELOPMENT. Michel DeGraff (Ed.). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999. Pp. 586. $65.00 cloth.

Editor Michel DeGraff provides us with a thought-provoking collection of studies that address topics involving language acquisition, creole formation, language change, and the connections between the three phenomena. One of the main goals of the volume is to arrive at a better understanding of the interaction between the “extraordinary external factors” surrounding the formation of pidgins and creoles and the “ordinary internal factors” involving U(niversal) G(rammar)–constrained language invention (p. 11), a UG-type repackaging of Thomason's ordinary-processes–extraordinary-results take on language mixture. The underlying theme DeGraff uses to connect the varied contributions is, in fact, UG: “This volume is seeking the right ‘version of universalist influence interpreted as constraints on the formal structure of creoles, in fact of natural language'” (p. 17). In characterizing the processes of pidginization and creolization, DeGraff chooses a narrow definition, that of the plantation situation (p. 2), thus disregarding interethnic pidgins and creoles (e.g., Hiri Motu and Tok Pisin in Papua New Guinea) and fort creoles (e.g., many of the Portuguese-based creoles). Although DeGraff does not point this out, he does mention other biases of the book: (a) it focuses only on morphosyntax from a generative UG-like focus; (b) it largely neglects variationist and quantitative approaches; (c) it does not explore the connection between UG and all-purpose cognitive structures (except Newport; see below); and (d) it considers only a subset of creoles that emerged from contact with European colonizers.

Langues créoles et origine du langage : état de la question.

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.