Presentation Handout

Jonathan Sony

Reasons for creoles: bio-program vs. relexification

Introduction:

Observation:

|Standard British English | Réunionnais Creole |Hawaian Creole |Português de Corlai |
|He walked |Li té march |He been walk |io ti marcha |
|Did he walk? |Li té march? |He been walk? |io ti marcha? |

Even though on different European languages and spread around the world grammatical/syntactical similarities between these creoles, too important, to be accredited to mere randomness. Construction of tense with an auxiliary (based on the past participle of the derived language) rather than affixation, questions formed by simply a shift in the tone of the voice… There are two main theories that opposes to try and bring an answer to this issue:

Creole languages emerged independently the one from the others, and similarities are due to rules of Universal Grammar and children second language acquisition as claimed by Bickerton. (polygenesis theory).

Or all pidgins and creoles emerged from a single proto-pidgin and then diversified, regarding the other languages which it came into contact with. (Monogenesis/ Relexification)

1. The polygenetic hypothesis

Creole as a nativised pidgin

Creole languages are traditionally defined as : “hav[ing] developed from pidgins into full-fledged, complete languages.” Hugo SCHUCHARDT

A primordial ground for the emergence of a Creole is a multilingual community, with a single socially dominant or primary language (the superstrate language) and a number of socially dependent or secondary languages (substrate languages). Prime examples of these would be former slave plantations colonies as in the west-indies or in the Indian Ocean.

Hall (1966) puts forward the notion of the Pidgin-Creole life cycle: "A Creole