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McWhorter 1998
McWhorter 1998
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IDENTIFYINGTHE CREOLEPROTOTYPE:
VINDICATINGA TYPOLOGICALCLASS
JOHN H. MCWHORTER
Universityof California,Berkeley
An increasinglyinfluentialcurrentin creole studies considersthereto have been no appreciable
break in transmissionor simplificationin the birth of creole languages, instead treatingcreoles
as gradual,relatively nondisruptivedevelopments of their lexifiers amidst conditions of heavy
languagecontact. Centralto this superstratistview is the claim thatcreole is a sociohistorical,but
not synchronic,term.This articleoutlinesthreefeatureswhich in fact rendercreoles synchronically
distinguishablefrom other languages, all three of them clear results of a break in transmission
followed by a development period too brief for the traits to be undone as they have been in
older languages. It is also shown that an expanded data set reveals flaws in the sociohistorical
argumentationbehind the superstratistframework.*
789
slaves spoke not creoles, but close approximations of the lexifier, non-nativecompetence leading to only relatively slight reduction.l
As small farmswere convertedto large plantations,Africanslave gangs were gradually expanded.Chaudensonsupposes that as this influx mounted,new slaves gradually
came to be exposed less to whites' native varietyof the lexifier thanto slaves' approximations thereof, this becoming their primarymodel. Developing an approximationof
this approximation,these new slaves in turnservedas a model for subsequentlyimported
slaves. Under this scenario, plantationcreoles were the end result of a series of such
'approximationsof approximations'.
Crucially, Chaudensondoes not consider this series of approximationsto have resulted in a variety appreciablyremoved, in any taxonomic sense, from the lexifier. In
particular,he claims that there was no break in transmissionof the lexifier, merely a
gradual 'transformation'thereof. This eliminates any pidgin stage, which in most
models constitutes a critical genetic discontinuationbetween lexifier and creole. This
motivatesthe second keystone of the superstratistmodel, that not only did early slaves
speak relatively close approximationsof the lexifier, but even creoles are simply
varieties of their lexifiers (Chaudenson1979, 1992, Mufwene 1996a:124).
To supportthis claim, superstratistshave rightly criticizedthe tendency to compare
creoles with standardvarieties of their lexifiers, calling attention to the models for
creole constructionsin now-obscure regional dialects spoken by the white colonists.
Scholars in this vein are highly chary of appeals to substrateinfluence. Mufwene is
slightly less absolute than Chaudenson,but has been consistently skeptical of most
substratistarguments(1990, 1994d). Indeed, the 'founders'referredto by the founder
principleare in essence the whites, with substratalinfluence largely restrictedto cases
of convergence with the lexifier (1996a:114-22).2
Taken alone, the above two positions would merely indicate a healthy difference in
perspective among creolists. The model is doubtless a useful check on the excesses of
various schools of creolist thought.For instance,the HaitianCreole futureconstruction
m pu ale 'I will go' appearsless radical a departurefrom Frenchwhen we recall that
regional Frenchesinclude the constructionje suis pour aller. Similarly,overt habitual
markingin Gullah English Creole (ee blant si i brera 'she sees her brother'[Hancock
1987:288]) is less plausiblytreatedas a calque on West Africanhabitualmarkerswhen
we note sentences like 'e do b'long smawken'cigars in the English of Cornwall(Hancock 1994:104).
1 It is clear
from his general discussions that Chaudensonrefers to relatively full acquisition,moderated
only slightly by paradigmaticreductions,overgeneralization,and preferencefor analyticover syntheticconstructions. He usually brings nonstandardregional dialects to bear for comparison, arguing that the only
thing distinguishing creoles from these is a minor disruptionin transmissionvia non-nativeapproximation.
in a creole exceeds
However, a majorweaknessin his argumentis thatwhere the reductionor reinterpretation
the boundariesof suchrelativelyintacttransmission,he refersinsteadto foreignertalkvarietiesfor comparison
(e.g. Chaudenson 1992:161). The problem here is that these, unlike regional dialects, are clearly cases of
severely incompleteacquisition,leadingto the questionof whatdistinguishedthe slaves' francais approximatif from pidgin or creole French. (Cf. Baker 1996, McWhorter& Parkvall 1998.)
2 Chaudenson allows the term CREOLE
somewhat more validity than Mufwene does, but concurs with
Mufwene in considering creoles to differ only slightly from regional dialects and ordinarycontact varieties
(1992:136).
This is why we can consider that the compositional and fundamentalfeatures of creolization are less
linguistic structuresthemselves (which are found, FOR THE MOST PART [emphasismine], often in basic
outline and sometimeseven in identicalform, in marginalor approximativeFrenchvarietiesin America
or Africa) than in the autonomizationof these usages in new systems. [translationmine]
790
791
relatively shorthistory, which have emerged from various situationsof languagecontact (usually, more
than two languages), and which are native languages of a given community. (Corne 1995:121)
spoken languages that were created via rapid adoption as a lingua franca by slave
populationsfive hundredyears ago or less. Note thatthe definitionmakes no reference
to linguistic structureat this point, to avoid circularity.The languages:
1. Ndjuka English Creole is spoken in the interiorof Surinameby descendantsof
African slaves who escaped from coastal plantationsin the 1700s. It is an offshoot of
the morefamous SrananEnglishCreole, which formedin the mid-to-late1600s. Ndjuka
will serve our purposesbettersince it is less profoundlyimpactedthan Srananby three
centuries of contact with Dutch, the official language of Suriname.Data source: Huttar & Huttar1994.
2. Tok Pisin English Creole of Papua New Guinea is often called a 'pidgin', but
is now widely spoken natively, and even adults had long structurallyelaboratedit to
a degreerenderingits inclusionin the pidgincategoryrathervacuous.It tracesultimately
to a pidgin spoken by Australianaborigines(Baker 1993), which was later expanded
by Melanesians workingunderthe English in various commercialactivities in, among
many other locations, New Guinea (Keesing 1988). Tok Pisin in one of a group of
closely relateddialectswhich Goulden(1990) suggests be called Bislamic Creole (others being Bislama, Solomon Islands Pijin, and Torres Strait Broken). Data source:
Wurm & Muhlhausler1985.
3. Saramaccan English Creole is spokenin the interiorof Surinameby descendants
of African slaves who escaped from coastal plantationsin the late 1600s. It is the
productof the partialrelexificationof early SrananEnglishCreole by Portuguese,when
PortugueseJewishimmigrantsboughtSranan-speakingslaves from the residentEnglish
(Goodman1987:375-82, McWhorter1996a:462-70). Data source:studyby the author.
4. Haitian French Creole is the CaribbeanFrenchCreole least affected by French,
with 90 percent of Haiti monolingualin it. It was developed by African slaves in the
late 1600s. Data source: Michel DeGraff, p.c.
5. St. Lucian French Creole is one dialect of the Antillean FrenchCreole spoken
on variousCaribbeanislands includingMartiniqueand Guadeloupe.Antilleanemerged
on the latter two islands in the late 1600s among African plantationslaves, and was
disseminatedto the others via intercolonialpopulationmovements. Data source: Carrington 1984.
6. Mauritian French Creole is the vernacularlingua francain Mauritius,developed
by West African, Bantu, and Malagasy plantationslaves startingin the early 1700s
(Baker & Come 1982). Data source: Philip Baker, p.c.
7. Fa D'Ambu (or Annobonese) PortugueseCreole is a dialect of Gulf of Guinea
PortugueseCreole, spoken on the island of Annobon off of the west coast of Africa
(the other dialects are Sao Tomense, Principense, and Angolar). Its progenitor, Sao
Tomense PortugueseCreole, emerged on Sao Tome amidst Portuguese-Africanmarriages, and was adaptedas a plantationlingua francaby African slaves (Ferraz1979).
Data source: Post 1992, 1995.
8. Negerhollands Dutch Creole, recently extinctbut well documented,was spoken
in the Virgin Islands, having developed among African plantation slaves in the late
1600s. Data source: Stolz 1986.
792
cemetery
Inflectionalaffixes have been analyzedas one end of a dine of increasinggrammaticalization. The pathwayfrom lexical item to inflectionalaffix entails, in part,an increasing
degree of categoricality of expression, or OBLIGATORINESS
(Lehmann 1985:307-9).
In
this light, it is significant that when languages called creole have inflectional affixes,
these tend to be only weakly obligatory-affixation is in general a marginalaspect of
the grammar.For example, Negerhollandshad one inflection, the plural markersini
(< sende 'they'), whose expressionwas largely optional.5There were conditionsupon
4 The predicate markeri (as well as the famous irrealis markerbai) are not analyzable as inflectional,
given that other items may intervenebetween them and a following constituent(i.e. man i bin kam 'the man
came').
S In its Hoogkreolsvariety,spoken with and by Europeansand leaning more towardsDutch, Negerhollands
acquired some additional inflections such as the Dutch -en/-s plural, etc. I refer strictly to the basilectal
variety.
793
its expression, but their looseness is demonstratedin 2, where syntactic and semantic
context is held constant between two sentences.
(2) NegerhollandsDutch Creole
a. Ham a
jak si kabritasini a saban.
he
PL to savanna
794
with a high tone on a verb's final syllable (ima 'I show', imd 'I showed'). This is true
of all eight sample languages above.
These two uses of tone are rare in creoles first because both are relatively opaque
to non-nativelearners.Like inflections, they requirea subtlety of perceptionunlikely
to develop amidst the rapid, utilitarianacquisitiontypical of settings which give birth
to a contact language. At the same time, both featuresonly emerge independentlyvia
gradualevolution.
It must be clear that there are other uses of tone to which one or both of these
descriptions does not apply, and which therefore occur quite readily in creoles. For
example, where a lexifier uses stress in functions that parallel common uses of tone,
tone language speakershave often substitutedtone-basedpatternsfor the stress-based
ones-a substitutionbased on an immediate and naturalreinterpretation.Papiamentu
Spanish Creole, for instance, has tonally distinguishedminimalpairs reflecting stressbased contrastsin Spanish, such as papa 'father'vs. papa 'the pope' (Munteanu1996:
185). Saramaccanhas a handful of tonally distinguishedlexical pairs reflecting what
were stress differences in English and Portuguese.For example, kadi'call' is derived
from English call, while kai 'to fall' is derived from Portuguesecair; bigi 'begin' is
derived from begin while bigi is derived from big. Tone language speakersmay also
apply some uses of tone to a creole independentlyof stress patternsin the lexifier; for
example, in many English-basedcreoles of the Caribbeanand West Africa, tone plays
a largely suprasegmentalbut vital role, most likely a West African influence (Carter
1987).
However, the tonal contrastof monosyllabic lexical items could not be based on a
reinterpretationof a stress pattern,because all lexical monosyllablesin stresslanguages
carry stress. Moreover, where stress is used syntactically (other than to express contrastivefocus), it is in morphosyntacticcontrastssuch as the Italianparlo 'I speak' vs.
parlo 'he spoke', which would be precluded from reinterpretationas tonal by the
abovementionedloss of inflectionalaffixes in pidginization.7Thus these two particular
uses of tone could only come into a creole from a tonal lexifier, and since, as noted,
their relative opacity would impede their survival amidst emergency acquisition,their
appearancein creoles is virtuallyprohibited.
It is well documented,for example, that stress-languagespeakerstend to eliminate
a lexifier's tone in transformingit into a pidgin or creole. One example is the absence
of tone in FanakaloZulu Pidgin/Creole,the productof contactbetween tonal Zulu and
stress-basedEnglish.
More germane,however, is whetherspeakersof TONALlanguageswould retainsuch
features,since our claim is thatthe eliminationof such featuresis prototypicalof creole
genesis in all contexts. As it happens, in all of the cases known where tone language
speakerstransformeda tonal lexifier into a creole, the learners'native languageswere
closely relatedto the lexifier. This naturallymade even the more idiosyncraticuses of
7 An exception here is Papiamentu,which has retainedthe Iberianmorphosyntacticallyindicatedinfinitive,
reinterpretingthe Iberianstressedinfinitive marker-ar as an -a with high tone, as in tapd 'to cover' vs. tdpa
'cover!' (Munteanu1996:185). This is one of manyexamplesof usuallyhigh Spanishinfluencein Papiamentu
grammarwhich renderit much closer to its lexifier than, for example, Ndjuka is to English, and have led
many creolists to classify it as a semi-creole (this term is situatedwithin the central argumentof this paper
in ?3.4). Otherexamplesincludeits retentionof an adjectivalpastparticiple,a presentparticiple,andremnants
of the Spanish gender system (Romer 1983:90, Munteanu 1996). These features are due to unusuallyhigh
contact between whites and blacks, as well as heavy Spanish-Papiamentubilingualism,in colonial Cura9ao
(Holm 1989:314).
795
tone in the lexifier easier to perceive and retainthan they would have been to learners
speaking languages more distantlyrelatedto the lexifier.
Yet even in these cases, the learners have starkly reduced the lexifier's tonal
system. Consider Kituba, a creole variety of the Kimanianga dialect of Kikongo.
Kwa, Mande, and West Atlantic language speakers were among its originators in
the late 1800s, but speakers of Kikongo dialects also played a prime role, and they
have since, along with speakers of other closely related Bantu languages of the
region, been its main stabilizers (Samarin 1990). Despite most of Kituba's speakers
speaking languages closely related to KimaniangaKikongo, Mufwene (1997b:176)
notes that 'Kituba has a predominantlyphonological tone or accent system, instead
of the lexical and/or grammaticaltone system attested in ethnic Kikongo and in
most Bantu languages', and that 'moreover, unlike in ethnic Kikongo, tone alone
may not be used for tense/mood/aspect distinctions'. Another example is Sango,
based on a reduction of the Ubangian language Ngbandi partly by West Africans
and Kituba speakers, but also by speakers of closely related sisters of Ngbandi,
which have continued to be spoken alongside it throughoutthe twentieth century.
Lexical tone in Sango is limited to a dozen or so pairs (Helma Pasch, p.c.), and
tonal morphosyntacticcontrasts are very few (Pasch 1996:223).
If tonal systems are reduced to this extent even by speakers of closely related
tone languages, then we can reasonably suppose that such systems would be even
further reduced by speakers of more distantly related tone languages. Data on the
fate of inflection in contact languages support this indirectly but strongly: even
when all of the groups in a contact situation speak highly inflected languages, a
pidgin or creole resulting from this contact nevertheless usually has little or no
inflection. For example, the Native Americans who most used Chinook Jargon all
spoke fearsomely inflected languages, and yet the pidgin was completely analytic,
even in creole varieties which developed (Grant 1996); Mobilian Jargon was nearly
devoid of inflection despite being developed by speakersof highly inflected Muskogean languages (Drechsel 1997).
As to the time requiredfor internaldevelopment,the use of tone alone to distinguish
identical monosyllabic lexical items generally results from phonetic or morphological
erosion (Hombertet al. 1979). In the Tibeto-Burmanlanguage Jingpho, for example,
in one stage final consonants condition contrastingtonal distinctions on preceding
consonants, but erode in a later stage, leaving the tones to carry the contrastiveload
alone.
(3) Jingpho (Hock 1991:98)
Easterndialect Southerndialect
shah
sha
shafi
sha
lah
la
lai
la
la
la
It is therefore predictable that in the rare cases where we encounter such a
contrast in the creoles in our sample, the contrast can be shown not to have
existed when the language emerged, but to have resulted from subsequent internal
developments. In Saramaccan, da with high tone is 'to give' while da with low
tone is 'to be'. However, da 'to be' developed from an original ddti 'that' with
high tone, and only lost this high tone as the result of reanalysis as a copular item,
796
the lowering of tone following the loss of stress typical of items reanalyzed as
copular (McWhorter 1997a:93-103).
Similarly,the use of tone to encode syntacticcontrastsis also a derivedphenomenon,
generally resulting from the erosion of affixes and particles. In the GrassfieldsBantu
language Fe3fe3, the possessive markeris simply a high tone which is assigned to the
vowel to the left, as in the underlyingns 2' 'teeth of', which surfaces as nse ? This
is historically derived from an erstwhile particle which has left behind its high tone,
as is visible in its close, more conservativerelative Mankon,in which the possessum
is followed by a particle with high tone m (Hyman & Tadadjeu 1976).
Thus it follows thatwhere Saramaccanhas a few uses of tone to encode morphosyntactic contrasts,they are relativelyrecent developments,traceableto diachronicevolution of original constructionsin which tone was of no contrastiveimport. In modern
Saramaccan,a is the third person pronoun while a, with high tone, is the predicate
negator (Kofi a waka 'Kofi does not walk'). However, historical analysis reveals that
in the original grammar,the negatorwas nda;with no high-tone a contrastingwith the
low-tone pronouna. The negatora resultedfrom the fusion of a precedingpronouna
and a following negatornadin topic-commentconstructions(McWhorter1996c).
(4) STAGE1
STAGE2
STAGE3
Kofi a waka.
Kofi, a na waka
Kofi, a waka
'Kofi doesn't walk.'
'Kofi, he doesn't
'Kofi, he doesn't
walk'
walk'
a waka 'he walks' a waka 'he walks' a waka 'he walks'
Thus the modem tonal contrastbetween the pronouna and the negator a is a recent
development,in a grammarwithin which lexically and syntacticallycontrastiveuse of
tone is distinctly marginal-there are no tonal syntactic contraststhat are not readily
analyzable as recent internaldevelopmentsratherthan original endowments.8
We see, then, thatthe structurallikenesses between languagesknown as creoles and
Chinese (or Kwa languages, etc.) do not constitute a case against creole as a valid
linguistic class. On the contrary,the comparisonof so-called creoles and Chineseposes
a question:are therelanguages otherthan the ones known as creoles which make little
or no use of inflectionalaffixationANDlittle or no use of tone to contrastmonosyllables
or encode syntax? This question has not been addressedby any scholar claiming that
creole is merely a sociohistoricalterm.
In fact, languages of this type other than those known as creoles are rare, certain
Mon-Khmerand Polynesian languages being among the few exceptions. Even these,
however, are readily distinguishablefrom languages called creoles.
2.3. DERIVATION.
Mon-Khmer languages, for example, display rich paradigms of
In Papiamentu,the tone on ta varies with its function:as a presentmarkerit has fixed high tone (Bunchi
td kome 'Bunchi is eating'); as a presentativemarkerin emphatic constructionsit has fixed low tone (Ta
Bunchi td kome 'It's Bunchi who is eating'); while as a copula it takes the tone opposite to that of the
following syllable (Sidneytd kontentu'Sidney is happy' but Sidneyta mdlu 'Sidney is bad') (Romer 1996:
479-85). All three reflexes are derived from the same etymon, estd, however, and the intimate semantic,
syntactic, and diachronicrelationshipbetween copulas, present and progressive markers,and presentative
morphemesis well documented(e.g. Holm 1980, Luo 1991, McWhorter1992b). Indeed, Papiamentuis one
of many languages, regular and creole, in which one etymon encodes two or all three of these functions.
Thus it can be argued that these tonal behaviors serve to distinguish different uses of what is in effect a
single item in the grammar.Given that the dissimilationfrom the following syllable is a generaltonal rule in
Papiamento,the fixed tonal reflexes aremost likely evolutionarydevelopmentsalong the lines of Saramaccan
examples.
797
Mon-Khmerderivationalaffixation is highly irregularsemantically.Rules for the semanticcontributionof these affixes arerules of thumbat best; assuminga single original
meaning for such affixes, semantic drift over time has created endless idiosyncratic
lexicalizations. Chrau of South Vietnam has a causative prefix ta-. Its meaning is
relativelyclear when affixed to pu 'to suck' to createta-pu 'to suckle', but the meaning
has clearly narrowedin cases such as pang 'to close' versus ta-pang 'to close unintentionally' (Thomas 1971:152-53). This, however, is a relatively minor departurefrom
the core meaning comparedto, for example, the fate of the Khmer reciprocalprefix
pro-, used as in pro-cam 'to wait for one another', from cam 'to wait'. As often as
not, the reciprocal meaning is all but unrecoverable:kan is 'to hold', pra-kan is 'to
discriminate'(Ehrman1972:60). JennerandPou (1982:xl) declarethe originalfunction
of the Khmerprefix k- to be beyond grasp: often used to create an animate (/-meei/
'to be inferiorin status', /-kmeei/ 'child'), it is also extended to substances(/-tih/ 'to
exude', /-ktih/ 'coconut milk'), and even to vessels containing substances (/-dlia)/
'poundin a mortar',/-kdiian/ 'large mortar')(Jenner& Pou 1982:xxxix-xl). In Palauang of Burma, the causative prefix is pan-, whose contributionis transparentin panvah 'to make larger' from vah 'to be extensive', or pan-an 'to shorten' from nem'to
be short'. Much more abstract,however, is the progressionfrom sok 'to be untidy' to
pan-S ok 'to interruptbusy people' (Milne 1921:73-74).
Inflection is generallymarginalin Polynesianlanguages, and they do not have tone;
however, they are quite unlike any creole in their derivation,which is evolved much
like that in Mon-Khmer.In one of many examples, in EasternFijian,va'a is the causative prefix,as in vuli-ca 'to learn'andva 'a-vuli-ca 'to teach' (Dixon 1988:50).However,
it takes a certain metaphoricalimaginationto process its use as an adverbializeras in
levu 'big' vs. va'a-levu 'greatly' (109), and the causative semantics are quite lost in
its equally frequentusage as general intensifier, as in taro-ga 'to ask' vs. va'a-taroga 'to ask manytimes' (51). (Manyanalysesof Polynesiantreatderivationalmorphemes
as separate particles; this, as well as analytic derivationalprocesses in many other
languages, is of course immaterialto my semantic observationshere.)
In contrast,in languagesknown as creoles, derivationis generallysemanticallytransparent; the evolved idiosyncrasy in languages like Khmer, Palauang, and Fijian is
unknown. For example, the semantic contributionof the few derivationalaffixes in
Tok Pisin is quite regular(Muhlhausler1985b:599,609-10, 625-26), as inpasin from
'fashion', which rendersa constituentabstract.
(5) Tok Pisin -pasin (from Muhlhausler1985b:625)
gut 'good'
gutpasin 'virtue'
isi 'slow'
isipasin 'slowness'
prout 'proud' proutpasin'pride'
pait 'fight'
paitpasin 'warfare'
Haitianis similar,where the inversive prefix de-, to take one of variousexamples, with
few exceptions transformsa word into its precise opposite.
(6) Haitian FrenchCreole de- (from Brousseau et al. 1989:9)
de-pasyate 'to be impatient'
pasyate 'to be patient'
de-rcspckte 'to insult'
respekte 'to respect'
grese 'to put on weight' de-grese 'to lose weight'
mare 'to tie'
de-mare 'to untie'
Indeed,the facts arethusin all of oureight samplelanguages:the above two, plus Ndjuka
(Huttar& Huttar1994:538-39), Saramaccan,St. Lucian(Carrington1984:49-50), Mau-
798
799
800
NEG
water he seem
801
common. While SrananEnglish Creole has been the lingua francaof Surinamefor over
three centuriesnow, the English in fact controlledthe colony for a mere sixteen years,
from 1651 to 1667, when the Dutch took over. More to the point, it was the Dutch
who establisheda thrivingsugarplantationsystem there. Under the English, Suriname
was firmly ensconced in what Chaudenson has termed the
SOCIETE D'HABITATION
stage:
b. Sranan
Tja en go na a bigi presi, tja en go na ini.
carryhim go LOC the big place carryhim go LOC inside
The correspondencesextend to vast lists of idiosyncraticdeparturesfrom vowel harmony (e.g. both have naki for knock,dagu for dog, etc.), a batteryof identicalidiosyncratic grammaticalizations,and an entire paradigmof innovatedinterrogativemarkers
(see Smith 1987:98 and McWhorter1996b:4-6 for details).
The presence of early Sranan in Jamaica is crucial to dating the emergence of
Sranan, because slaves were brought to Jamaica from Suriname in 1671 (Bilby
1983:60). Given that Maroon Spirit Language had already stabilized the abovementioned departuresfrom vowel harmony, grammaticalizeditems, and paradigm
of interrogatives,it is sure to have existed in Suriname long before 1671. In order
to give the variety enough time to have gelled to such an extent, we are forced
to place the birth of the Sranan well back into the 1660s at the very least. To both
do this and place the birth of the language on plantations,we would have to place
its birth after the Dutch arrival in 1667, since only they established plantations.
But the MSL system certainly needed more than a mere four years to develop, and
this thus places the birth of Sranan in the English period, in the early 1660s or
before, on their small farms.
The thirdindicationthatSrananexisted even long before 1667 comes fromthe history
of its sister creole, Saramaccan.These two creoles correspond so intimately on all
levels thattherecan be no doubtas to theircommon origin.The sentencein 9 combines
several idiosyncraticcorrespondencesbetween them which, along with many others,
are discussed in more detail in McWhorter1996a:463-70.
802
ANT eat
it
noo?
noo?
then
'Which chief knew that I ate it, then?'
Odi and undi stem from an original 'which-this', part of an interrogativeparadigm
unknownin the Caribbeanoutside of the Surinamecreoles and, significantly,Maroon
Spirit Language.1'The use of taki (> tadain Saramaccan)as complementizerand the
conventionalizationof now as 'then' are similarly unique to Surinamecreoles. Most
strikingis the epenthetic[m], which appearsonly between a closed class of verbs with a
final nasalizedvowel and a following phoneticallybrief vowel-initialitem. The specific
conditioningof this [m] varies slightly among the three main Surinamecreoles (Voorhoeve 1985, Kouwenberg 1987, Huttar& Huttar1994:591-92), but its appearanceis
unknownoutside Suriname.The list of other similarcorrespondencesis vast, including
specific interactionsbetween copulas, adjectives, and reduplication(Winford 1997:
291-95), idiosyncraticuses of copular items and oblique pronouns,and a numberof
highly particularchoices of etymon in various grammaticalfunctions.
It is significant, then, that Saramaccanultimately traces back to the 1660s. While
fundamentallyan English-basedcreole, Saramaccanhas a heavy Portuguesecomponent
in its lexicon. This resulted from the partialrelexification of an early form of Sranan
by Portuguese,when Portugueseplanterswho emigratedto Surinamebought Srananspeaking slaves from the English in the 1660s and 1670s (Goodman 1987:375-82,
Smith 1987).12 Once again, a particularsociohistorical window reveals a historical
'footprint'from Sranan.By 1675, the English, making way for the Dutch, had withdrawnall but fifty aged slaves from Surname (Arends 1995:238). This means that for
Srananto have been broughtto the Portugueseplantations,as the vast correspondences
between Srananand Saramaccanrequireto have happened,it must have been between
the Dutch takeoverin 1667 and before 1675, by which time almost all English slaves
were gone or bought. It thus follows that Srananalreadyexisted by this time.
All the evidence points to Srananhaving already emerged in the 1660s, on small
farms amidst heavy black-white contact. Once again, the superstratistpredictionthat
early slaves spoke close approximationsof their lexifiers fails.
Furtherexamples include LouisianaFrenchCreole, which is explicitly documented
in the mid-1700s, at which time even the few large farmsin the region had only twenty
slaves, most slaveholders having only one or two: in other words, a classic socI?TE
D'HABITATION(Klingler 1992:56-57, Speedy 1995:102). Meanwhile, all evidence suggests that PalenqueroSpanish Creole developed among slaves living in extensive and
intimate contact with Spaniards(Bottcher 1995:38-40). For one, the creole has been
n This paradigmis also found vestigially in SierraLeone Krio (McWhorter1998), which I have traced
to a line of developmentwhich began as Sranan,was exportedto Jamaicaas MaroonSpirit Language,and
was then broughtto SierraLeone with transplantedJamaicanmaroonsin 1800 to become Krio.
12There are contemporaryaccounts of a mixed English-Portuguesepidgin spoken on Portugueseplantations, called Djutongo in one (Goodman 1987:377-82). A word list in this Djutongo (Smith 1987:125-28)
confirms that this was indeed the precursorto Saramaccan(see McWhorter 1996a:469, 488 for further
discussion). Meanwhile, Smith (1987) demonstratesthat systemically, the Portugueselexicon in Saramaccan
has been phonologically reinterpretedaccordingto differentrules than the English-basedcomponent.This
shows that Saramaccanis indeed an encounterbetween two separatelystabilized contact languages.
803
widely arguedto have been based upon a Portuguesepidgin or creole which the original
slaves broughtwith them from Sao Tome (Schwegler 1993:670-71, McWhorter1995a:
229-31), eliminating the possibility that they developed Palenquerofrom the ground
up withinthe colony itself. Second, its speakersare documentedto have spokenSpanish
alongside the creole from an early date (Bickerton& Escalante 1970:255, Schwegler
1996:26-28). The creole English of Pitcairndeveloped on a tiny island amidst nine
English speakers and nineteen Polynesians. Hawaiian Creole English was createdby
children who were not only surroundedby an indigenized but full variety of English,
but were even being educated in English as they created it (Roberts 1998). In short,
the historical record clearly shows that despite the initial plausibility of the idea that
creoles would not have yet existed before blacks outnumberedwhites in European
overseas colonies, they in fact did.
At this writing, this question is a significant conundrumin creole studies, and has
been addressedin variousways. Hancock(1969, 1987), Cassidy(1980) andMcWhorter
(199Sb) have argued that a single English-basedcreole was transplantedthroughout
the Caribbean,ratherthan a new one emerging independentlyin each major colony;
Parkvall(1995) makes a similar argumentfor French Caribbeancreoles. This would
mean that slaves importedfrom a previously established colony would have spoken
the creole varietythathad developed there,even before demographicdisproportionhad
set in in the new colony. Other evidence suggests that creoles existed in the preplantationphaseeven of colonies establishedso early thatno plantationcolonies existed
yet to transplanta creole from (McWhorter1996b, 1998). Forthis reason,amongothers,
some analysts have argued that the English creoles of the Caribbeanstem ultimately
from a single English pidgin ancestorborn on the West African coast (Hancock 1969,
1986, McWhorter 1996b, 1998). Meanwhile, Klingler (1992:56-57) and Parkvall
(1995) supposethatcreolistsmay have simply overestimatedthe degreeof demographic
disproportionnecessary to produce a creole, proposing that creoles may well have
simply emerged on small farms.
Whateveranalysis one chooses, the fact remainsthat the keystone superstratistcontention, that slaves on early plantationsspoke not creoles but simply non-native but
close approximationsof their lexifiers, is contradictedby an overwhelmingvolume of
evidence.
3.2. ASSUMPrION
2: Even creoles are simply varieties of their lexifiers. This superstratist assertion is based on two claims. One is that creoles would look much less
divergent from their lexifiers if more consistently comparedto the regional varieties
actuallyspokenby colonists, ratherthanstandardvarieties.The second is thatno pidginization occurredduringthe emergenceof the creole, and that the traditionalconception
of creoles as expansionsof erstwhilepidgins is mistaken.To the extentthatChaudenson
acknowledges any divergence between regional lexifier varieties and creoles, he supposes that this was due to the fact that the slaves were exposed to a koine of regional
dialects ratherthan only one, and to relatively nondisruptiveSECOND-LANGUAGE
'APPROXIMATION'.
Mufwene (1996b) adds that the creole may have diverged furtherfrom
the lexifier when lexifier featuresgrammaticalizedin ways they had not in the lexifier
itself.
Of course, viewed broadly, whether one calls a creole a variety of its lexifier or a
new languageis a matterof perspective,inherentlyunamenableto any absolutemetric.
However, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion thatthe superstratistdepictionof creoles
as mere varietiesof theirlexifiers requiresa highly selective presentationof data.When
804
the creole data are viewed more liberally, the superstratistclaim takes on a different
perspective.
3.2.1. LANGUAGE
VERSUSSENTENCE.
Generally favoring exposition over example,
805
creoles that it has even been argued that creoles are outrightrelexifications of West
African languages (e.g. Lefebvre 1993). While most creolists have been skepticalthat
transferhas played a role quite this dominantin creole genesis, the very fact that such
analyses have been proposed strongly questions the marginal,or at best convergent,
impact superstratistsclaim substratelanguages to have had on plantationcreoles.
Otherfeaturesspecifically suggest that English was pidginized,not simply transmitted. For example, the internaldevelopmentof the copulana entailsthat Srananemerged
with no expressed copula. Eliminationof the copula is a diagnosticfeatureof pidgins,
whose source in interruptedtransmissionof a lexifier is uncontroversial.
These realitiesareunclearin superstratistargumentswhich, demonstratedvia isolated
sentences like Mauritianzot ti pe ale, risk misleading the uninitiatedinto supposing
that such sentences are even reasonablyrepresentativeof creole grammarsas a whole.
Certainly,nothing strictly rules out a scholar insisting that even in view of the data I
have shown, Srananis a varietyof English. Clearly,however, with these datapresented,
such an insistence takes on a certainlight. When actually seen in the context of whole
grammarsof a representativerange of creoles, the approximationmechanismis in fact
only applicablevia tenuous, ad hoc extension, and as Baker (1996) crucially observes,
this leaves no distinction between approximationand pidginization as traditionally
conceived.
The only sustained superstratistacknowledgmentof Sranan is Mufwene (1996a:
94-96), who argues for Surinameas an unusual case, leaving the superstratistmodel
generally intact.He proposes thatbecause of the brevity of the English tenurein Suriname (1651-1667), slaves there had unusually little exposure to English and thus
developed a variety unusuallydivergentfrom it.
We must recall, however, that these slaves workedon small farmsalongside whites,
and that the superstratistmodel stipulatesthat they would have developed non-native
but relatively viable English. Mufwene would appearto imply that sixteen years was
not long enough for the slaves to do so, but without a principledjustification, it is
unclear why.
In any case, there is other evidence that Srananis not an unusualcase. Othercreoles
just as tenuously treatedas varieties of their lexifiers have arisenin more conventional
circumstances,when speakers of the lexifier were available for over a century. Fa
D'Ambu is one of four closely related varieties of Gulf of Guinea PortugueseCreole
(Holm 1989:277). Example 12 is a sample (Post 1995:203).
(12) Se amu bila-oio tela-mu Ambu. Amu na xonse pe-mu-syi
CONJ I
NEG know father-my-DEM
open-eye land-my Annobon I
pali mu-f.
Se
amu sxa
ma mavida
ku
me-mu.
wear-NEG
806
807
surmise that these marriageswere significant in the developmentof the creole is supportedby the firm documentationof the emergence of Portuguesecreoles from similar
intermarriagesin Asia.
Thus regarding the claim that creoles are simply varieties of their lexifiers, Fa
D'Ambu and its sister dialects are not only just as dire as Srananlinguistically, but
also sociohistorically.Mufwene's strategyof setting aside Srananas the result of unusuallybrief exposureto a lexifier is inapplicablein the Gulf of Guinea,wherePortuguese
speakers were available as planters and even husbands in extenso. Again, examples
continue, anotherbeing Tayo French Creole of Caledonia, quite clearly the result of
the severe reductionof Frenchfollowed by a reinterpretationthereofdeeply influenced
by substrateinterferencefrom Melanesian languages. It was created not via a brief
encounterwith French,but amidstunions between Melanesianwomen who spoke nonnative, but by no means pidginized, French,and Melanesianmen, all living in a settlement with French-speakingmissionaries(Corne 1995). We are forced to conclude not
only that many creoles do not lend themselves to treatmentas simply varietiesof their
lexifiers, but also thatthis was unrelatedto whethertheir creators'exposureto Europeans was brief or prolonged.
3.2.2. THEAPPROXIMATION
MECHANISM.
Even the fundamental conviction behind the
'creoles as mere dialects' idea, that a creole could plausiblyhave developed gradually
from a lexifier via a series of incrementalapproximations,is questionable.Typical of
superstratistarguments,Chaudenson'sdemonstrations(1992:156-67) of how approximation would produce a creole are outlined less in citation and diagramthan in text
block, tending to spare linguistic demonstrationin favor of extended sociohistorical
extrapolation(Baker 1996:117). When we get down to cases and attempta sustained
linguistic engagementwith the approximationscenario,we find thatit is in fact difficult
to generate a creole without a break in transmission.
Chaudensonclaims for example that the absence of inflection in creoles is traceable
to regional dialects in which inflectional paradigmswere much more eroded than in
European standards(1992:158-62). The point that vernacularFrench dialects have
often radicallyreducedthe numberof inflectionsin the presenttense -er verbparadigm,
for example, is well taken,and demonstratesthe tendencyfor such erosions to proceed
more rapidly in colloquial varieties relatively unconstrainedby prescriptiveimpulses
(cf. Kroch 1978). Table 1 illustratesthis point.
ENGLISH
I talk
you talk
he talks
we talk
you (pl.) talk
they talk
STANDARD FRENCH
COLLOQUIALFRENCH
je parle
je pare [parl]
tu parles
tu parles [parl]
il parle
il parle [parl]
nous parlons
on parle [parl]
vous parlez
vous parlez [parle]
ils parlent
ils parlent[parl]
TABLE1. Comparisonof -er verb present tense paradigms.
HAITIAN CREOLE
m pale
ou pale
li pale
nu pale
nu pale
zot pale
808
(Watkins 1962, Hock 1991:220-22). Indeed, what the regional French dialects offer
is a source for overgeneralizationof the thirdperson singular-but this is exactly what
Frenchcreoles did NOTdo. A searchfor a regionalFrenchthat used only the infinitive
would be similarly futile.
However, overgeneralizationof the infinitive is a diagnostic of pidginization.Note,
for example,thatan unequivocallypidginizedFrench,Tay Bai of Vietnam,overgeneralizes the infinitive, not the thirdperson singular(Toi napas savoir monsieur aller ou?
'You don't know where the man went?' [Schuchardt1888, cited in Holm 1989:360]).
This suggests that there was indeed a break in the transmissionof French in the birth
of Haitian Creole. A similar case is zero copula in French creoles. Regional French
speakers have never omitted the copula: *je 0 pecheur or *Moi (regional [mwe]) 0
pecheur 'I am a fisherman'.On the otherhand,zero copulais diagnosticof pidginization
(Ferguson 1971, Ferguson & Debose 1977, Foley 1988:165).
In addition to these problems, the approximationscenario is even less plausible
when appliedto Europeanlanguageswhich, even in regionalvarieties, are more richly
inflected than French.To be sure, it is tempting(albeit, as we have seen, mistaken)to
view French-basedcreoles as a mere step beyond reducedparadigmslike those in Table
1, but approximationproponentshave neglectedthe fact thattherewere no such levelled
paradigmsas sources for creoles lexified by more richly inflected varieties. Table 2
contains an example from PalenqueroSpanish Creole (Colombian Spanish based on
Lipski 1994:213-14; Palenquerodata from Schwegler 1998:256).
COLOMBIANSPANISH
ENGLISH
(PACIFIC COAST)
PALENQUERO
I walk
you walk
he walks
we walk
i kamina
yo camino
vos caminas
bo kamina
el camina
ele kamina
nosotros
suto/ma hende kamina
caminamos
ustedes caminais
utere kamina
you (pl.) walk
ellos caminan
ane kamina
they walk
TABLE2. Verbal paradigmsin Spanish and Palenquero.
809
810
(albeit both weakly obligatory [Armin Schwegler, p.c.]), but also the Spanish gerundive marker -ando and adjectival participial marker -ao (albeit the latter weakly
productive [Friedemann & Patino 1983:135-36]). A related phenomenon occurs
when a single substratelanguage had a disproportionateimpact on a creole at its
origin: Gbe speakers were so numerous in early colonial Surinamethat Saramaccan
retains some tone sandhi patternsdirectly inheritedfrom Fongbe, including one that
could be interpretedas a syntactic marker:tone sandhi is blocked between verb
and object.
Slight differences in 'creoleness' of this sort, however, are of minimal theoretical
import. Nubi Arabic Creole, Guinea-BissauPortugueseCreole, and Palenquerohave
clearly reduced,and then restructured,their lexifiers to the extremedegree that defines
creoles as distinct and interestinglanguages.Othercontactvarietieshave reducedtheir
lexifiers so much less extremelythanNdjukaor Haitianthatthey standout as intermediate cases, traditionally called SEMI-CREOLES.Afrikaans is a classic case, having reduced
The creole prototype, however, contains exactly the criteria in question. Afrikaans,
for example, has significantly reduced the inflectional affix paradigms of Dutch,
but inflection neverthelessplays a robustrole in its grammar.Furthermore,it retains
Dutch's derivational morphology in much of its evolved idiosyncrasy. In contrast,
Negerhollands Dutch Creole had virtually no inflectional affixes, and what derivational morphology it had was semantically regular. For precisely this reason, we
can confidently classify Afrikaans as a semi-creole, in contrastto the Dutch creole
Negerhollands.
Along these same lines, we can resolve a long-standing ambiguity over the
classification of Bantu-based contact languages like Kituba, Lingala, and Shaba
Swahili. Nida and Fehderau(1970:147-48) classify Kituba as a pidgin and Lingala
and Shaba Swahili as koines (152-53). Holm (1989:552-55) considers none of
them pidgins, treating all three as intermediatebetween dialect and pidgin. Meanwhile, Mufwene once approachedthe first two along the lines of Holm but considered
Shaba Swahili to be a regular language (1986b:146-47, 1989). Of late, under the
founder principle, he instead rejects any notion of gradient creoleness among these
languages (1997a:46-47), proposing for instance sources for the direct inheritance
of Kituba features from KimaniangaKikongo ratherthan treatingthem as pidginizations thereof (1994c). As the result of these conflicting analyses, the Bantu-based
contact varieties hover at the edges of most creolist discussion; meanwhile, linguists
outside of creole studies are often perplexed that Lingala, in particular,is even
treated as a creole at all.
With our creole prototypeidentified, we can resolve this conundrum.In all three of
these varieties, the affix paradigmsof the lexifier are slightly reduced, as are tonal
distinctionswhere the lexifier had any (Swahili is not tonal). However, the grammars
of all three bristle with allomorphicaffix paradigms,and Kituba and Lingala retain
lexically and syntacticallycontrastiveusage of tone (note Lingala's tonally indicated
subjunctive):
(13) Kituba
Mboma na Kanmkikele ba-nduku... tuika ya bo
Mboma and Kaniki coP PL-friend
811
vand-akab-ana.
'Mboma and Kaniki have been friends since they were children.'
(Holm 1989:558, p.c. from Mufwene)
(14) Lingala
nzoto.
Petelo a-yok-i
molungi. A-ke-i na ebale mpo a-sokol-a
Peter he-perceive-PFheat
he-go-pFto river for he-wash-suBJbody
'Peter felt hot. He went to the river to wash himself.'
(Holm 1989:560, p.c. from Mufwene)
(PF = perfective, SUBJ = subjunctive)
mungu a-ri-ku-kubar-i-a
njo i-le
tuu.
he-pAsT-you-grant-APP-FNcoP CL-DEMjust
The creole prototypedevelopedherereadilyclassifies these as semi-creoles,in comparison to Ndjukaor Haitian.Instructiveis a directcomparisonof Lingalawith its lexifier,
rarein the literature,in a samplefew would considerunrepresentative.(Mufwene 1994c
has independentlynoted thatthe degree of pidginizationin Lingalais noticeablylight.)
(16) a. Bobangi
Ngai, na-ko-ke o mboka no-tonga ndako.
Me I-FuT-goto village iNF-buildhouse
(Dzokanga 1979:6, cited in Samarin 1990:63)
b. Lingala
Ngai, na-ko-kendana mboka ko-tonga ndako.
me I-FUT-go PREP village INF-buildhouse
(Mufwene, p.c.)
812
Some of the discomfortwith the notion of semi-creoleis traceableto Bickerton'sproposalof a mathematically calculable 'pidginizationindex' (1984:176-78), rankingcreoles accordingto degree of lexifier breakdown. While Singler (1986) convincingly showed that the formula made too many false predictionsto be
maintained,this simply demonstratedthat the inherent messiness of sociohistory does not yield to rigid
mathematicalformulas. Bickerton's central insight was correct.
813
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Departmentof Linguistics
University of California,Berkeley
Berkeley, CA 94720-2650
[johnmcw@socrates.berkeley.edu]