Creole Prototype Research Articles

Creole typology is analytic typology

Abstract This paper reviews a number of specific features typical of analytic languages, in an attempt to investigate whether Creole languages can indeed be grouped, at least structurally, with other languages of the analytic (or isolating) type. Based on Sybesma et al. (forthcoming), a study of the nature of analyticity, we select eight features which constitute rather obvious structural parallels between two unrelated groups, namely Sinitic and Kwa. In terms of Creole languages, these eight features can be also clearly located within the APiCS (Michaelis et al. 2013). Contrary to works like Bakker et al. (2011) which argue for the existence of a “Creole Prototype”, our results show that Creole languages do not cluster with each other against other non-Creole languages. Instead, various Creoles clearly owe their grammatical profile to the languages that dominate the typological environment in which they are formed.

Do Creoles conform to typological patterns? Habitual marking in Palenquero

AbstractIt is widely debated whether creole languages form a typological class; however, crosslinguistic generalizations from functional typology are seldom tested in creoles. Typological studies report a strong crosslinguistic tendency for asymmetries in habitual grammatical expressions across the present and past temporal reference domains (Bybee, 1994:245–8; Bybee, Perkins, & Pagliuca, 1994:151–60). This study analyzes two linguistic variants, preverbal asé and zero, which compete for habitual marking in Palenquero Creole (Colombia). I ask here: To what degree does the linguistic patterning of these forms conform to the crosslinguistic tendency? Results show that, despite Palenquero having widely cited creole features (e.g., preverbal markers and bare verb stems), the asymmetrical expression, distribution, and relative ordering of forms in the variable contexts closely align with crosslinguistic predictions for habituals, thus giving convincing evidence of typological markedness and not a Creole Prototype.

Why noncompositional derivation isn’t boring

Why noncompositional derivation isn’t boring

Tying up loose ends

Since the introduction of the Creole Prototype hypothesis in 1998, much of the controversy it has occasioned has centered on a question as to whether it is scientifically appropriate to reconstruct creoles as born as pidgins, rather than as results of only moderately transformational second-language acquisition or as simply mixtures of ‘features’ from assorted languages coming together. This paper first outlines traits in creoles that reveal their origin in pidgins. Then, the paper refines the characterization of the Creole Prototype’s three features, regarding inflectional morphology, tone, and compositionality of derivation-root combinations. The inflectional component is refined to incorporate Booij’s (1993) distinction between contextual and inherent inflection and Kihm’s (2003) proposal that inflectional morphology can be either bound or free. The tonal stipulation is refined in view of traits of Mon-Khmer phonology that distinguish these languages from creoles despite their analyticity, and the grammatical uses of tone in some creoles such as Papiamentu and Principense. Finally, for the derivational component, an account is proposed for the noncompositionality of reduplicated forms that have been observed in many creoles. The conclusion is that there remains a synchronic characterization possible only in languages recently born from pidgins, and impossible of older (i.e. most) languages.

Quantifying superstrate and substrate influence

To quantify the degree to which the structure of superstrate and substrate languages influence that of a creole, this paper compares the nearly 100 grammatical features of Guiné-Bissau Creole Portuguese surveyed in Baptista, Mello, & Suzuki (2007) with the corresponding structures in Balanta (one of the creole’s substrate/adstrate languages) and Portuguese (its superstrate), proceeding from one area of syntax to another. However, tables summarizing the presence or absence of features in each of the three languages are not organized by area of syntax but rather by the patterns of the features’ presence or absence in the three languages, allowing a quantification of the various patterns of influence, e.g. the percentage of cases in which a feature is found in the creole only, in the creole and its superstrate only, in the creole and its substrate only, or in all three. These percentages are then discussed regarding what support they might lend to the various hypotheses purporting to explain the sources of creole language structures: the influence of superstrate and substrate languages, universals, creole-internal innovations, and the convergence of all or some of these. The issue of Balanta being both a substrate and an adstrate language with many speakers bilingual in the creole is also discussed, as is the dated bias in the very grammatical categories chosen for the survey, which assumes an Atlantic creole prototype based on ‘Kwa’ rather than West Atlantic languages, the Niger-Congo subfamily to which Balanta belongs.

Identifying the Creole Prototype: Vindicating a Typological Class

Identifying the Creole Prototype: Vindicating a Typological Class