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    Deconstructing Creole

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    Volume 73

    Deconstructing CreoleEdited by Umberto Ansaldo, Stephen Matthews and Lisa Lim

    General Editor

    Michael NoonanUniversity of Wisconsin

    Editorial Board Wallace ChafeSanta Barbara

    Ronald W. LangackerSan Diego

    Bernard ComrieLeipzig

    Charles N. LiSanta Barbara

    R.M.W. DixonCanberraAndrew Pawley Canberra

    Matthew S. DryerBuffalo

    Doris L. PayneOregon

    John HaimanSt Paul

    Frans Plank Konstanz

    Kenneth L. HaleCambridge, Mass.Jerrold M. Sadock Chicago

    Assistant Editors

    Spike GildeaUniversity of Oregon

    Suzanne KemmerRice University

    Bernd HeineKln

    Paul J. HopperPittsburgh

    Sandra A. ompsonSanta Barbara

    Andrej A. Kibrik Moscow

    Dan I. SlobinBerkeley

    A companion series to the journal Studies in Language. Volumes in thisseries are functionally and typologically oriented, covering specic topics inlanguage by collecting together data from a wide variety of languages andlanguages typologies.

    Typological Studies in Language (TSL)

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    Deconstructing Creole

    Edited by

    Umberto AnsaldoUniversity of Amsterdam

    Stephen MatthewsUniversity of Hong Kong

    Lisa LimUniversity of Amsterdam

    John Benjamins Publishing Company

    Amsterdam / Philadelphia

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    Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

    Deconstructing creole / edited by Umberto Ansaldo, Stephen Matthews and Lisa Lim. p. cm. -- (Typological studies in language, ISSN - ; )Includes bibliographical references and index.

    . Creole dialects. . Typology (Linguistics) I. Ansaldo, Umberto. II. Matthews, Stephen, -PM .D

    '. --dc (Hb; alk. paper)

    John Benjamins B.V.No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microlm, or anyother means, without written permission from the publisher.

    John Benjamins Publishing Co. P.O. Box Amsterdam e NetherlandsJohn Benjamins North America P.O. Box Philadelphia -

    e paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements ofAmerican National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence ofPaper for Printed Library Materials, z39.48-1984.

    8 TM

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    Table of contents

    Acknowledgments xi

    Deconstructing creole: e rationale 1Umberto Ansaldo & Stephen Matthews

    1 On deconstruction 12 Deconstructing creole 32.1 Creole studies and linguistics 32.2 Introducing the volume 43 History of beliefs 83.1 A brief history of creole ideas 83.2 From the Language Bioprogram to the Creole Prototype 103.3 Creole myths 123.3.1 e myth of simplicity 123.3.2 e myth of decreolization 133.3.3 e myth of exceptional diachrony 134 Final remarks 14

    P 1Typology and grammar

    Typology and grammar: Creole morphology revisited 21 Joseph T. Farquharson

    1 Introduction 212 Word-formation 222.1 Afxation 232.2 Reduplication 242.3 Compounding 252.4 Zero-derivation 263 Transparency 274 Inectional morphology 284.1 Afxational inectional morphology 294.2 Reduplicative inectional morphology 30

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    5 Complex morphology 315.1 Complex morphology as inectional (afxational) morphology? 315.2 Complexity and age 316 Conclusion 34

    e role of typology in language creation : A descriptive take 39Enoch O. Aboh & Umberto Ansaldo

    1 Introduction 392 Contact languages and simple grammars 402.1 Inection and simplication 402.2 e Noun Phrase as a case study for competition and selection 42

    2.3 e Feature Pool 442.4 Simplication again 463 Competition and selection in English, Gbe and the Suriname creoles 473.1 Properties of the noun phrase in English,

    Gungbe and the Suriname creoles 473.2 e function of determiners in the competing languages

    and the emerging creole 503.3 Intertwining syntax and semantics 523.4 Summary 56

    4 Congruence, frequency and replication in Sri Lanka Malay 574.1 Morpheme sources 584.2 Structural features of case in SLM, Sinhala and Tamil 584.3 Functional alignments 604.4 Summary 625 Conclusions 63

    Creoles, complexity and associational semantics 67David Gil

    1 Creoles and complexity 672 Associational semantics 713 Associational semantics and complexity 754 Measuring complexity: e association experiment 794.1 Experimental design 814.2 Running the experiment 865 Results 886 Further questions: Why languages vary and why languages undress 90

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    Admixture and a er : e Chamic languages and the Creole Prototype 109 Anthony P. Grant

    1 e Creole Prototype 1092 Introduction to the Chamic languages 1113 Where the Chamic languages t in genealogically 1124 Inuences on the Chamic languages: Whence and where 1145 Lexical elements of unknown origin in Chamic 1206 Aspects of Chamic typology: Phonology, morphology and syntax 1217 Transfer of fabric in Chamic: e lexicon 1268 How Indochinese Chamic languages got this way:

    e replication of the effects of the Creole Prototype as a dynamicdiachronic process 130

    9 Conclusions 136

    Relexication and pidgin development : e case of Cape Dutch Pidgin 141Hans den Besten

    1 Preliminaries 1412 e CDP sentence: Relexication and stripping (and more) 1422.1 SOV word order and the history of CDP 1422.2 Relexication and stripping 1442.3 Relexication and Pro-drop 1472.4 Negation, temporal anchoring and have and be 1492.5 Looking ahead 1513 CDP DPs: Relexication, stripping and adaptation 1513.1 DP-internal Word Order 1513.2 Petried endings? Nominalizations? 1543.3 Conclusion 1554 CDP PPs 1555 CDP clauses again 1576 Conclusions 159

    P 2Sociohistorical contexts

    Sociohistorical contexts : Transmission and transfer 167 Jeff Siegel

    1 Introduction 167

    2 Transmission of the lexier 1672.1 Break in transmission 1672.2 Normal transmission 1692.2.1 Lack of evidence of a pre-existing pidgin 169

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    Deconstructing Creole

    2.2.2 Existence in some creoles of morphology from the lexier 1722.2.3 Conventional language change 1722.3 Discussion 1753 Transmission of substrate features 1773.1 Language transfer 1773.2 Substrate reinforcement 1854 Associated ideologies 1874.1 e development of post-colonial ideology in the New World 1874.2 Discussion 1914.3 Imperfect learning 1945 Conclusion 195

    e sociolinguistic history of the Peranakans :What it tells us about creolization 203Umberto Ansaldo, Lisa Lim & Salikoko S. Mufwene

    1 Creoles and the notion of creolization 2032 e Peranakan population and the genesis of Baba Malay 2062.1 e non-traumatic birth of the Peranakans 2072.2 Multilingualism and the nature of transmission 2092.3 e Peranakans as privileged British subjects 210

    2.4 Baba Malay features 2122.5 Summary and reections 2183 Final remarks 220

    e complexity that really matters : e role of political economyin creole genesis 227Nicholas Faraclas, Don E. Walicek, Mervyn Alleyne, Wilfredo Geigel & Luis Ortiz

    1 Introduction 2271.1

    Purpose 229

    2 Interaction, not simply access 2292.1 Correlating colonization and types of interaction 2303 Beyond correlation: e descriptive and explanatory power

    of the Matrix of Creolization in relation to key debates in creolistics 2314 Toward a typology of colonization and creolization:

    Political economy and the continua, matrix, and spaceof Afro-Caribbean creolization 234

    4.1 Superstrate economies 239

    4.2 Superstrate ideologies, cultures, and linguistics 2424.3 Superstrate politics 2454.4 Substrate economies 2484.5 Substrate ideologies, cultures, and linguistics 251

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    4.6 Substrate politics 2555 Conclusion: e linguistic outcomes 258

    Creole metaphors in cultural analysis 265Roxy Harris & Ben Rampton

    1 Introduction 2652 Ideologies in creole linguistics 2663 Creole language study and the shi in linguistics 2704 Interaction as a site of transcultural encounter 2734.1 Interactional siting: Ritual and remedial interchanges 276

    4.2 Processes of symbolic evocation: Historical consciousnessin situated code-switching 2785 Conclusion 281

    Index 287

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    Acknowledgments

    Our thanks go to everyone who has supported this project for the past two years. Firstand foremost, we thank the contributors to the volume for agreeing to be part of thegeneral theme, and for their hard work in revising their chapters and reviewing papers,as well as other colleagues who offered their comments and suggestions to improve ourcontributions: Ana Deumert and Daniel Nettle. We are particularly grateful to EnochAboh for the many discussions and suggestions in the course of compiling this volume,and Nick Faraclas for his insightful advice and constant support from the early days ofthe project. We also owe our thanks to Kees Vaes at John Benjamins for his support ofthe project, and to Mickey Noonan, the series editor, for his efficiency and for wantingto include this volume in this series. Finally we wish to express our appreciation toMichelle Li for initial formatting of the papers and Martine van Marsbergen and Patri-cia Leplae for their expeditious handling of the production of this volume.

    UA & SM & LL Amsterdam & Hong Kong, March 2007

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    Deconstructing creolee rationale*

    Umberto Ansaldo* & Stephen Matthews***University of Amsterdam**University of Hong Kong

    1 On deconstruction

    e term deconstruction is notoriously difficult to grasp and has o en been denedin negative terms, i.e. in reference to what it isnot , rather than what it is (e.g. Derrida1985). It is usually accepted that, in deconstructing, we critically analyze texts andconcepts and do not merely engage in a perverse destruction of them. e sense inwhich we (loosely) interpret the deconstruction of creole in this volume is indeed aconstructive one: we engage with the conceptual foundations of the notion of creole(not with the texts themselves), in order to critically assess the present state of ourknowledge. Crucially, the chapters of this book all offer novel constructive approachesas viable alternatives to the conceptual frameworks being questioned. is is in linewith at least one interpretation of deconstruction as consisting essentially of two phas-es: reversal and displacement (Derrida 1981). is is possible because the critical workof much of the creole paradigm (see section 3 below) has already been presented else-where (DeGraff 2001b, 2003, 2005; Mufwene 2001); it is therefore time to move on andshi our perspective towards new horizons in the study of language contact andchange, of which creole studies are part. In doing so, we hope to contribute to a betterintegration of creole studies within the eld of language creation (or genesis), and toraise the general awareness of all it has to offer to the eld of general linguistics.

    An intrinsic aspect of scientic enquiry is the formulation of theories or models ofthe world to help us understand the objects under investigation. In theory building,systems of thoughts are established which can then be shared by all the scientists whosubscribe to, or believe, in a given theory, i.e. those who work towards the advancementof the theory. While Popper (1959) showed us that the way to advance science was to testa theory and discard it as soon as it was found to be inappropriate, what we can observein the case of linguistics (among other disciplines) is how the theory turns into a para-digm in the Kuhnian sense, a Weltanschaung that conditions the individuals within it

    * We thank Hugo Cardoso and Lisa Lim for comments on this chapter.

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    (see section 3.2). Such conditioning expresses itself in the tendency to always work with-in the paradigm for the advancement of the paradigm, rather than seriously consider thecriticism addressed toward it. is behavior, essentially a type of pre-scientic belief(Gray 2004), is o en presented as a positive strategy for the advancement of eory, butcan also be seen as a manifestation of the evocative power that a paradigm can accumu-late (Hinzen 2006). at power is quantiable in terms of the number of active believersa theory may have, the public impact it receives in the form of citations and popularity(converts), as well as the academic weight it carries in terms of publications devoted toand controlled by it. According to Feyerabend (1975), Galileos views prevailed not be-cause of their being scientically sound, but because of his arguing in the right languageof the time (Italian) and because of his having understood the connection between a

    new trend in society and the ideology for representing it (Copernican astronomy vs. oldscholasticism); in other words, he was part of a stronger paradigm.In referring to the term creole as a paradigm, we want to point out that many of

    the orthodox views underlying creole studies are only partly due to appropriate scien-tic enquiry and viable theory-building. Much of the paradigm is constructed andupheld because of the social and political (power-based) dynamics that underlie it,striving for preservation and propagation rather than critical introspection and analy-sis (see DeGraff 2001b, 2005). Perhaps the most powerful force in creating the creoleparadigm within creole studies was Bickertons Language Bioprogram Hypothesis

    (LBH, Bickerton 1981, 1984), which exploited an even more powerful paradigm,namely Chomskys generative enterprise. Note however how, from a strictly generativeperspective, the notion of an LBH not identical to UG is untenable, a point clearly real-ized by Chomsky (e.g. Chomsky 1986, see also e.g. DeGraff 2001a; Rizzi 2001). To thisdate, obviously, it is extremely difficult not to mention Bickerton in talking about cre-oles, notwithstanding the fact that the LBH has systematically been proven wrong(Roberts 1998, 1999, 2000; Siegel 2007). More recently, McWhorter (1998, 2001, 2005)offers a new paradigm, the Creole Proptotype: based on the observation of sharedtypological features, McWhorter describes creoles as simple grammars, i.e. devoid of

    aspects of complexity that allegedly only emerge over time. e popularity of suchmodels is reected in the fact that a number of papers in this volume can be seen ascritical and/ or alternative views on McWhorters latest paradigm and ideas associatedwith it, such as complexity and simplicity.

    e central aspect of our deconstruction is therefore to investigate how much ofthe creole paradigm is what Popper describes as cultural-historical conjecture, andhow much of it is actually empirically sound. As Woody Allens character Harry puts itin the movieDeconstructing Harry , between the Pope and air-conditioning, I take air-conditioning. So do we.

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    Deconstructing creole: e rationale

    2 Deconstructing creole

    2.1 Creole studies and linguistics

    is volume consists of a collection of articles offering novel and critical perspectivesof the fundamental ideas that have dened and supported the notion(s) of creoleuniqueness to this date. It is our hope that, in providing a series of challenges to theideologies and theoretical ideas around which notions of creole are constructed, this volume will offer a comprehensive assessment of the state of the art. e ultimate goalis to overcome the articial dichotomy between creole and non-creole languages, inorder to integrate the study of creolization phenomena into mainstream linguistics, i.e.the study of language variation and language creation.1

    e eld of contact linguistics and creolistics has in recent years developed from arather small, closed circle into an area of interest for linguists in general and, beyondthat, sociologists, historians and anthropologists (Palmi 2006). A milestone in thesedevelopments was omason and Kaufman (1988), who opened up the eld to histori-cal linguistics in particular and treated creoles and contact varieties on a continuumrather than as separate linguistic objects. e follow-up was however slow (though therehave been repeated calls to that effect, cf. e.g. Mufwene 1990), and it was only in 2001,with a special issue ofLinguistic Typologydedicated to the creole debate, that the linguis-

    tic community at large took a serious interest in the integration of studies of creolizationand contact into general linguistic theory. From a typological perspective, once creolesand contact languages become a unied object of study on a par with other subelds oflinguistics, they lose the special status that had been awarded thema priori by tradi-tional creolists. e fundamental idea behind this is that it is not creoles as such thatconstitute a unique type of language warranting a separate eld of enquiry, but rathertheway in which at least some creolists have approached the study of language that is unique.However, in combining careful sociocultural observation, ideological reection, andsynchronic as well as diachronic structural analysis, creolists have much to contribute to

    general linguistics, typically still locked within traditional disciplinary boundaries thatlimit the scope and impact of empirical as well as theoretical observations.Creolists tend to be unlike linguists working in other elds, whether dened in

    terms of language areas, families or topics, who typically do not assume any unique-ness to these languages. Rather, non-creolists typically work on the assumption thattheir work will contribute somehow to the eld of linguistics as a whole (e.g. sign lin-guistics). In the eld of pidgin and creole languages, there seems to be a belief that theobjects of study are unique (as argued by McWhorter, e.g. 2001) and/ or provide aprivileged perspective on language (as argued by Bickerton 1981, 1984). To admit that

    no such uniqueness actually holds would be seen as failure, as much of the discussionposted on the CreoLIST in the early 2000s illustrates (Morrissey 2002). is has re-

    1. A rare example of this is DeGraff (2001a).

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    sulted in pidgin and creole linguistics remaining in the isolation which Bickerton de-nounced as early as 1976 (see also Jourdan 1991). For example, a recent book on gram-mars in contact (Aikhenvald & Dixon 2006: 11) explicitly excludes pidgin and creolelanguages from the scope of its enquiry as a special case.

    e aim of this volume is to present a series of studies that depart from and movebeyond creole exceptionalism (DeGraff 2001b, 2005), i.e. the idea that creoles are spe-cial or abnormal linguistic creations. ere are at least three parallel lines of enquirywhich, together, have supported exceptional accounts of the creation of new grammarsand as such form the creole paradigm:1. Creole grammars are structurally exceptional;2. Creoles develop in an exceptional acquisitional environment;

    3. Creoles are different from languages that have been created long ago.Each of these points can be refuted by careful linguistic and sociohistorical analysis ofthe formation of creole languages (e.g. Arends 2001; DeGraff 2001b, 2003, 2005). Oncethis is achieved, one can dissolve the notion of creole as a particular type of languageand accept the fact that one is looking at products of high-contact environments in spe-cic sociohistorical settings. is answers calls such as that of Muysken (1988) for cleartheoretical grounding of otherwise subjective notions such as simplicity and complex-ity, and of Mufwene (1990) for the reintegration of creole studies into mainstreamlinguistic theory, as these languages have much to contribute to general and historicallinguistic studies, in particular regarding the role of contact in language change andthe signicance of social factors for the nature of language transmission. To date, theimpact that creole languages have had on current linguistic theory falls far short oftheir potential in this regard, largely due to the exceptional status that has been tradi-tionally assigned to them.

    2.2 Introducing the volume2

    e study of creole languages offers many interesting dimensions of enquiry, rangingfrom sociohistorical to structural as well as anthropological domains. What consti-tutes perhaps the most exciting and challenging aspect of the eld, from our point of view, is the possibility of reecting on the creation of a new grammar and its diffusionin a population. Because of their relatively recent formation, in studying creoles, wecan in a sense observe language genesis as it happens. It is in this sense that the lessons

    2. In introducing the chapters in this section, the various contributions are not presented ac-cording to the order in which they actually appear in the volume; the Table of Contents is reali-

    zed to provide clarity in an overview of contributions, as well as orientation for less-initiatedreaders, students, etc. In the spirit of this volume, however, here we discuss the chapters not inlinear order but as part of a narrative. In approaching this volume then, it is up to the individualreader to pick and choose among the chapters either according to the classication provided bythe TOC or along the line of reasoning that follows.

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    Deconstructing creole: e rationale

    learned from the study of creole formation may have a signicant impact on the eldof general linguistics. But in order to do so they have to shed the shell of exceptional-ism they have so far inhabited, and enter a wider world of enquiry. e studies in this volume attempt to do just that: they critically revisit problematic notions or false di-chotomies of the exceptionalist paradigm (see sections 3.1 and 3.3), and they offer newand broader areas of linguistic enquiry within which creole studies can be situated, inparticular linguistic typology and sociolinguistic historiography.

    A central issue in the creation of new languages has revolved around the problem-atic notion of special transmission attributed to creole genesis (Siegel this volume).

    e nature of transmission has o en been described as imperfect or broken in thedevelopment of contact languages such as creoles, mixed languages, etc. However,

    within multilingual speech communities where no standard varieties are imposed onspeakers, we nd acquisitional routines very much like the ones posited for creoles,once again obviating the need for invoking exceptional creole development scenarios.Different interpretations of transmission and transfer and their ideological underpin-nings are the topic discussed by Siegel. He shows how differences between different views of transmission can be seen as involving matters of degree rather than irrecon-cilable positions; crucially, however, the different interpretations carry with them ma- jor ideological consequences in postcolonial societies of the New World. is chaptershows how problematic notions such as that of imperfect transmission need to be re-

    evaluated against current second language acquisition theories as well as current ide-ologies of creolization; in this sense, Siegel suggests, it may be worth shi ing our focusto the role of creativity and agency in new language formation.

    In this connection, it can be shown how an unusually high degree of contact ispresent in the formation of numerous varieties across the globe that do not require anyexceptional account of their genesis; this is the focus of the study by Ansaldo, Lim andMufwene, who show how new languages can emerge in ecologies where no break intransmission, no social violence nor poverty of input are present. In the case of thePeranakan communities of Southeast Asia, a high degree of multilingualism combined

    with informal acquisition as well as the emergence of a new ethnic community pro- vided the right environment for the evolution of a new language characterized by Si-nitic-Malay admixture. Applying a view of acquisition that takes targeted, guided andnormative instruction as normal is historically untenable as these concepts only arisein Western European nation states and are extremely recent historical constructs. Cas-ual, non-normative and o en linguistically heterogenous input in acquisition is thenorm and this is very much the type of scenario that applies to creole ecologies. Ascomprehensively shown by DeGraff (e.g. 2005), arguing that creole speakers are failedtarget learners is ideologically grounded as well as structurally biased (also section 3.3

    below). is bias is the focus of deconstruction in the contribution by Farquharson,who analyzes the historical linguistic currents that lie beneath the perception of creolemorphology as morphologically simple. He shows how more accurate morphologicalanalysis of the Jamaican Creole word-formation process, semantic transparency and

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    inectional morphology may reveal the presence of morphologically complex featuresthat early creolists were unaware of. Farquharson identies a certain reluctance on thepart of some creolists towards a serious engagement with data, and calls for more theo-retically grounded discussions of morphology, time-stability and age of languages.

    It is o en the case that careful structural analysis as well as rigorous application oftheories of language change reveal that emergency strategies or innate programmes (la Bickerton 1981 or McWhorter 1998, 2001) do not need to be invoked to account forcreole grammar. is also resolves the much invoked, but scantily supported, pidgin-to-creole evolutionary scenario, as pidgins are no longer required as thesine qua non for the emergence of creole languages (see Roberts 1998, 1999, 2000; Siegel this vol-ume, to appear). e role of pidgin in language creation is treated by den Besten, who

    argues that in those rare cases where a pidgin is indeed historically attested in theprehistory of a creole the development from one to the other is not necessarily linear.In particular, he shows that Cape Dutch Pidgin can only be taken as one of the contrib-uting languages, alongside other codes available in the contact environment, to thedevelopment of Khoekhoe Afrikaans, and that other languages, such as Dutch, alsocontributed to the development of the new variety. Moreover, den Besten also revisitsdifferent takes on the role of relexication and evaluates their explanatory potential byexposing their limitations in accounting for diachronic processes.

    As we suggested above, in accounting for the creation of new grammars, one can

    show that new grammatical features that emerge in creole and contact languages arederived from a combination of substrate and superstrate features (as in Mufwenes 2001feature pool), as well as general patterns of language change (such as those described in various accounts of grammaticalization, for example). is approach is taken by Abohand Ansaldo, in an evolutionary, typological take on language creation. e authorsargue against a generic metric of complexity by showing that serious typological inves-tigation allows us to understand the input-output relation in language creation. Com-paring the evolution of Surinamese creoles and their input languages, they show how aprocess of feature competition and selection accounts for the structural output. Like-

    wise, based on a typological analysis of Sri Lanka Malay, they show that complex mor-phology can indeed emerge in radical contact environments, as long as the feature poolsupports it. Complexity and simplicity are indeed extremely difficult notions to discussand may be more fruitfully investigated within specic subdomains of grammar. In hischapter, Gil shi s our current understanding of complexity to the eld of associationalsemantics, in order to provide an empirically-based test for the assumed relationshipbetween complexity and age, as understood within the Creole Prototype (McWhorter1998). Gil shows how simplicity in this sense can be found to higher degrees in somenon-creole languages, such as Sundanese and Minangkabau, undermining the idea thatcreoles assuming they share common structural properties may be treated as gener-ally simpler than other languages. is also leads to the conclusion that what appear tobe processes of simplication may simply be random outcomes of language histories,not necessarily related to external factors such as adult second language acquisition.

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    Grant investigates the relationship between language contact and typology further,showing how the former inuences the latter in the evolution of the Chamic languagefamily. He demonstrates that the observed process of apparent simplication can beascribed to the role of a lingua franca in the history of a language family, without invok-ing a specic process of pidginization. While Gil expresses a healthy scepticism regard-ing the reconstruction of external ecologies in absence of appropriate linguistic andhistorical data, Grant shows that where diachronic data is available, typology goes along way toward explaining the outcome of processes of admixture.

    It seems clear that complexity of structure and the age of languages are parame-ters that can only be understood in a relative sense within strict linguistic models (Mus-yken 2001), rather than as universal indicators of language type (Ansaldo & Nordhoff

    forthcoming). In diachronic terms, complexity does not apply cross-linguistically:e problem here becomes immediately evident when one considers that reduc-

    tion and expansion or complexication refer to logical sequences on a classica-tory or taxonomic plane that cannot possibly be directly diachronized let alonemapped onto (empirically insufficiently known) historical processes. (Palmi2006: 445)

    In typological terms, many old languages can be seen as less complex than creolelanguages.

    A more productive idea of complexity can be found outside the structural domain;with this in mind, Faraclas, Walicek, Alleyne, Geigel and Ortiz show what type of com-plexity really matters in understanding language creation and diffusion, in an in-depthinvestigation of the correlation between creole languages and political-economic sys-tems across the Caribbean. e authors convincingly argue for the fact that under-standing the political economy of a community can effectively explain the type ofcreole that emerges in such an environment, showing how differences in political-economic systems are reected in the differential manifestations of African substratalfeatures in Caribbean creole varieties. By doing so, they provide us with a realistic,historically-supported and culturally-nuanced explanation of the distribution of,among others, Spanish creoles (cf. McWhorter 2000).

    All in all, these chapters end up relativizing the notions of complexity and simplic-ity by showing that these are usually somewhat biased notions deriving from subjec-tive or theoretically-specic perspectives, and should be limited to working denitionsfor experimental purposes, within specic sub-domains of linguistic structure.

    e nal chapter can be seen as a sort of epilogue that opens up a whole new direc-tion for future investigation. Harris and Rampton revisit the assumptions behind cre-ole metaphors, discussing the ideological foundations of a range of creole beliefs. Atthe same time, they offer new analytical insights and new empirical domains withinwhich the notion of creole may be signicant, such as the study of interaction in trans-national contexts within sociolinguistic micro-ethnogaphy. As such, they end this vol-

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    ume on a positive, constructive note, by showing how methodologically sound analy-sis of rich creole data, freed from speculative must haves of past creolists assumptions,may pioneer future areas of linguistic enquiry within which creole varieties play a fun-damental role.

    3 History of beliefs

    3.1 A brief history of creole ideas

    e eld of Creole Studies is rightly associated with Western colonial expansion and

    the resulting slave trade, and covers the linguistic history of predominantly the Atlan-tic and Pacic between the 16th and 20th centuries. During the explorations of the17th century, we nd many accounts of contact varieties reported by travellers, mis-sionaries etc.: French mixed with English, Spanish and Dutch in Martinique; Malayo-Portuguese in the East Indies; Delaware Jargon in North America (Holm 1988). Inthese early records, the languages tend to be described as autonomous systems inde-pendent of any lexier. is continues throughout the 18th century with much workdone by Moravian missionaries, especially on Caribbean varieties. At this point, lan-guages such as Greek and Latin were still considered exemplary grammars against

    which to measure other varieties, which were in comparison usually found decient(Holm 1988; Mhlhusler 1995). e discovery of Sanskrit, which was to launch thecomparative enterprise, would exacerbate this trend. It is in the 19th century that wend the rst missionary publications in Creole languages; interestingly, these werecriticized for using a corrupt medium in press. At the same time, there were voices indefense of the autonomy of creole linguistic systems (e.g. Sranan in Greeneld 1830),which stressed that the origins of creoles were similar to those of other languages. eRomantic movement turned the attention of linguists to the people and their dialects,and this reinforced the interest in creoles (French-based varieties in particular).

    As discussed in Meijer and Muysken (1977), ideologies of creole languages fromthe 19th century are closely related to racial assumptions about Black Africans. Forexample, Bertrand-Bocand (1849) implies that a civilization and its language areequally complex, and argues that, to Africans, the intricate morphological propertiesof European languages would be too complicated and would need therefore to be sim-plied in acquiring them. Van Name, a librarian at Yale,3 in Contributions to CreoleGrammar (1870), put forward the rst scientic study of Creoles, which focused onsubstrate languages and the common structural properties of Creoles. Van Name sug-gested the relationship between a pidgin stage and the creole, as well as the idea ofcreolization as rapid language change. He also recognized the innovative character of

    3. It is important to note how the rst creolists were not trained scientists; see section 2.2 andDeGraff (2005).

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    creole languages, rather than merely focusing on structural decay. Along similar linesAdam (1883), a French magistrate in Guinea, traced the rst relationships betweenWest African languages and French Creoles, arguing that creoles are simply non-Euro-pean languages with European lexical inuences. Furthermore, Adam suggested that asimilar analysis could be applied to Romance, which he saw as mixtures of Latin andsubstratal vernaculars.

    On the other hand, the notion of universal tendencies underlying creole structurearose in Coelho (188086), of the Geographical Society of Lisbon. In his view, univer-sal strategies of second language acquisition play a role in emergency situations ofcontact (an early view of creolization along the lines that Bickerton would later devel-op in his LBH). Schuchardt,4 one of the fathers of creolistics, took over Coelhos work

    and was instrumental in elevating creole studies to an academic discipline. Accordingto Meijer and Muysken (1977), with Schuchardt, we see the establishment of creolestudies as separate from the interests of creole communities. With him, the problem-atic genetic position of creoles became obvious, i.e. the fact that, due to their mixedgrammars, they could not be clearly identied along a genetic lineage, as all other lan-guages. Important notions developed by Schuchardt include: (i) pidginization as aprocess involving a simplied contact language that develops to facilitate communica-tion under the inuence of external factors; (ii) pidgin to creole development, in orderfor the slaves to have one medium of inter-linguistic communication; (iii) decreoliza-

    tion and variation with the creole. Additionally, Schuchardt had a keen interest in sub-stratal analysis, not only regarding the role of African languages in Caribbean Creolesbut also for example in respect to the role of Malay in Asian creoles (Meijer & Muysken1977). It was Reinecke, an American settled in Hawaii (1937), who launched the mod-ern eld of Creole Studies, engaging in large-scale classication and documentation ofrestructured languages and describing over 40 different varieties. He focused on socio-linguistic patterns of creolization, introducing distinctions between different types ofCreole societies (e.g. settlers vs. plantation vs. maroon) and the internal relation to thesubstrate varieties as inuential for the restructuring process. Hall (1940) also com-

    pared creoles across different regions and linguistic groupings and pioneered the ideaof spontaneous pidgin creation as well as the pidgin-creole life-cycle.It is difficult not to see the relationship between the ideas of the time and the theo-

    ries developed by the (fore)fathers of creolistics. As noted in Palmi (2006: 444), theconcerted efforts of people like Van Name, Schuchardt and Coelho did eventually con-tribute towards classifying the languages of the subaltern colonial populations and iso-lating them (from the rest of supposedly normal languages) as a theoretically salientanomaly. e (racially-based) idea of Black Africans as simpler is extended to theirlanguages, based on the equation between language, culture and race.5 From then on, tothis day, creole languages have been regarded as somewhat decient from not afford-

    4. End 19th to early 20th century.5. And, simplifying, old = complex > young = simple (cf. Schleicher in DeGraff 2001b: 219).

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    ing the sophistication of European varieties, to being simplied, unmarked or pure in-stantiations of UG. Most recently these assumptions can be seen in the assumption thatcreoles lack a certain type of complexity, typically identied mainly with morphology, asthis was (and is) a central domain of enquiry in the comparative and historical study ofIndo-European languages (a similar prejudice can be found in accounts of non-Indo-European languages, cf. DeGraff 2003: 393; Farquharson this volume). Note that it isfrom the study of Indo-European languages that some of the more robust linguistic the-ories to this date are derived. e violent and inhuman conditions associated to slavery justify the notion of emergency, which is eventually associated with the acquisitionstrategies of slaves, i.e. normal acquisition is denied to them. is corroborates the ne-cessity of simplication. Finally, the Romantic movement and Rosseaus ideas of natural-

    ism lend philosophical material to the idea of the creole universal (Meijer & Muysken1977). What we are le with are the pillars of the creole paradigm, namely (1) the ideaof simplicity, (2) the idea of broken or special transmission, (3) the idea of universalstrategies peculiar to creolization. Notwithstanding the clear ideological bias of thesenotions, and the overt criticism of them in recent literature (see next section), creolistsresearch agendas are still predominantly preoccupied with (1) (3).6

    3.2 From the Language Bioprogram to the Creole Prototype

    Controversial proposals such as Bickertons LBH and McWhorters Creole Prototype(CP) are o en considered to have been particularly thought-provoking in the historyof creole studies. Bickertons LBH was based around four assumptions regarding thecreation of Hawaii Creole English (HCE): (i) rapid formation, (ii) impoverished input,(iii) shared features of creole languages, and (iv) lack of substrate input. As alreadymentioned above, much evidence against these assumptions, both in the formation ofHCE as well as in the linguistic histories of other creole languages, has been put for-ward (see Jourdan 1993 for a brief account; Mather 2006 for a recent take). In particu-lar, work by Roberts (1998, 1999, 2000) and by Siegel (2000, to appear) have shownthat (i) and (ii) do not hold, as HCE emerged gradually over a couple of generationsand from a pidgin that already contained a number of features found in HCE (i.e. itwas not so impoverished). Moreover, (iii) and (iv) have been repeatedly underminedby studies showing that many of the alleged similarities between creole languages areonly supercial in nature, and that real similarities can be accounted for by the similartypologies that inuenced many creole languages (superstrates and substrates; seeMuysken 2001; Aboh & Ansaldo this volume).7 Note also how, from a UG-based the-ory of language, it is logically possible to conceive of but one type of language creation,

    6. As noted in DeGraff (2003), a few exceptions apply among creolists, such as Greeneld(1830), Muysken (1988), Mufwene (2001), who argue for a uniformitarian approach to genesis.7. We, among others (e.g. Siegel to appear), nd it surprising that the LBH is still given somuch air in creole publications (e.g. Mather 2006; Singler 2006).

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    equal for all human beings. It follows that the concept of creolization as a special typeof UG-manifestation is a contradiction in terms (see DeGraff 2001a, b, Rizzi 2001).

    In an attempt to put forward a different type of universalist genesis of all creolelanguages, McWhorter (1998, 2005) identies three traits unique to creole languages(or features that, if found, will identify a language as a creole), which comprise theCreole Prototype (CP), namely: (1) minimal use of inection, (2) lack of tone used tocontrast monosyllables or make grammatical distinctions, and (3) semantically regu-lar derivation. is conjunction of features can only be found in young languages, ac-cording to McWhorter, as older languages tend to accumulate signs of old age anddepart from the CP. In McWhorters sense, creole grammars are therefore simple.Tones, inection and derivational non-compositionality are by-products of language

    change but are not necessary for basic communication asthey are not inherent to UG (McWhorter 2005: 10). erefore, they only grow over time and are an indication ofemergence of complexity.

    ere are at least two problems in the CP. One, as pointed out in Dahl (2004), is thefact that the hypothesis is not falsiable. In discussing pidgins and creoles, he notes that:

    in order to be dened as a creole, a language must have as its primary historicalsource a language which has a sufficiently simplied grammatical structure [apidgin]. No grammatical property of a language can therefore be a counterexam-ple to the thesis that creoles have the worlds simplest grammars, because in orderto be a creole, the language has to originate from an earlier language state whichdid not have that property (a pidgin), and if it has it there are only two logical pos-sibilities: either that stage did not exist, in which case it is not a creole, or theproperty has been acquired later, in which case it is not a counterexample either,since it just means that the language is on its way to losing its creole character.(2004: 111)

    e other problem comes from typological-evolutionary approaches to language crea-tion (Cro 2000; Mufwene 2001). In these approaches, language change, and therefore

    language creation, is approached as a matter of competition and selection of the featuresfrom different languages that are seen as competing in a language contact situation. Assuggested in Ansaldo (2005, to appear), and argued in Ansaldo and Aboh (this volume)and Ansaldo and Nordhoff (forthcoming), the input-output relation can usefully be seenwithin the feature pool-based framework where, assuming we have a proper under-standing of the typological dynamics in competition, we can predict what types of fea-tures will emerge from a given contact ecology. Ansaldo and Nordhoff (forthcoming),based on the analysis of complexity in Sri Lanka Malay, a young language by McWhort-ers standards, note that McWhorter (2005: 317) has a particular explanation for young

    languages with signs of old age: Creoles with a moderate degree of inectionhavelong existed in intimate contact with inected superstratal or adstratal languages. Basedon this intuition, they suggest that we can generalize as follows:

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    duced to a small lexicon; our emphases). e power of the culture = race = languageequation is still alive today, as creole genesis falls outside the scope of the ComparativeMethod, given that creoles are regarded as non-genetic orphans outside the familytree of human languages (see also Mufwene 2001).9 What is worse, in DeGraffs view,is that such myths are still alive today.10

    3.3.2 e myth of decreolizatione prestige that early creolists attribute to the lexier can be further seen in the no-

    tion of decreolization. e basic assumption here is that whenever Creole languagesare spoken alongside their lexier, Creole languages, being impoverished, would natu-rally tend to assimilate back to it (and would otherwise constitute a threat to the pu-

    rity of the lexier). In this respect DeGraff notes how, while all languages undergochange,11 only within creolistics do we nd concepts applying thede- prex (e.g. de-Latinization, de-Africanization do not apply). If language change is assumed to followa number of general tendencies (or universal diachronic patterns), then we should ac-count for these changes as moving towards some same direction, i.e. all languagechange is creation or birth (see Mufwene 2004). e myth of decreolization is alsolinked to the idea of abrupt or broken transmission criticized above (section 2.1) andto the notion of simplicity or simplication (addressed in 2.1 and 3.3).

    3.3.3 e myth of exceptional diachrony If we assume that language is a basic human faculty that develops along the same linesfor all human beings, it is surprising to note how so many different exceptional theo-ries have to be put forward to account for creole genesis. DeGraff sees the idea of strictrelexication (Lefebvre 1998) as supporting the notion that creole creators follow dif-ferent interlanguage strategies than other humans (in particular, they cannot escapetheir native grammars, something untenable within a uniformitarian interpretation ofacquisition). On similar grounds, Bickertons early idea of pidgin as a linguistic fossiland associated notions of rapidity of change are untenable as creole grammars can beshown to fall within developmental patterns typical of regular language change andthere is evidence to suggest that creoles did not develop more rapidly than other lan-guages (see also Mufwene 1996; Ansaldo to appear). A similar critique of the idea ofpidginization as implying specic diachronic patterns common to only one type of

    9. ese views all share the common assumption that the ultimate goal of the slave would beto fully master the lexier (target language); since the outcome of the creole ecology was notfound to be an identical replica of the lexier, the hypothesis had to be put forward to accountfor such failure.10. For example, a recent news item described Haitian Creole as Haitis language of brokenFrench (Gardner 2004).11. Obviously this includes types of change whereby a creole variety changes from basilectal toacrolectal features.

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    people (i.e. the creole speakers) is criticized as dehumanizing and basically neo-Dar-winian (in the negative sense of Darwinism), underlying McWhorters Creole Proto-type (see 3.2 above).

    4 Final remarks

    e only ideologically plausible and empirically grounded difference between creoleand non-creole languages arising from such a deconstruction is, according to DeGraff,a sociohistorical one, a conclusion already put forward in Muysken (1988, 2000), denBesten, Muysken and Smith (1994), and Mufwene (1996, 1998, 2000). Individual

    speakers in contact ecologies, whether in Creole, Romance or Germanic languages,would have made use of the same mental process in the formation of their respectivenew languages. erefore, in the linguistic domain, exceptionalist scenarios that haveled to the construction of the creole paradigm can only be accounted for as ideologicalconstructs that viewed speakers of creole languages as having failed in one way or an-other, in respect to language evolution, language acquisition and language creation.Considering the historical, theoretical and critical reections presented above, we be-lieve it is fair to suggest the following conclusions:a. creole languages do not form a typological or otherwise structurally unique class

    distinguishable from non-creole grammars;b. there is no clear distinction between normal change and creole formation;c. language contact and language creation are ubiquitous; creole grammars are the

    product of the linguistic ecology and general diachronic (or internal) patterns oflanguage;

    d. creole exceptionalism is a set of sociohistorically-rooted dogmas, with founda-tions in (neo-)colonial power relations, not a scientic conclusion based on robustempirical evidence.

    It is thus in sociohistorical terms that we view creole languages as an object of linguis-tic enquiry. Along lines already explored in Ansaldo and Matthews (2001), we assumethat a certain degree of admixture is present in language change at large (Muysken2000) and that creoles are particularly heterogeneous admixtures due to their sociolin-guistic histories of contact and multilingualism. ere is no dichotomy between nor-mal and special transmission here ( omason 1997) as language is seen, in the light ofMufwene (1998), as a communal construct never entirely possessed by a speaker. Ge-netic affiliation will be a matter of counting and quantifying features, ultimately a sta-tistical exercise as shown in omason and Kaufman (1988) for the evolution of the

    English language. Nor does speed of change enter the picture, as acquisition of I-lan-guage can only proceed at one and the same speed (Rizzi 2001), while diffusion of E-languages is correlated with size and type of network (and considerations of frequency

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    and markedness: Cro 2000; Ansaldo to appear; Ansaldo & Nordhoff forthcoming).As we hope to have shown above, and as aptly stated in Palmi (2006: 448):12

    creolization theory is ultimately a mere reex of the very conditions it seeksto denounce and supercede and so, once properly conceptualized, might itselfbe more protably regarded as an object of, rather than a tool for, (anthropologi-cal) enquiry.

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    Typology and grammar

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    Creole morphology revisited*

    Joseph T. FarquharsonUniversity of the West Indies, Mona &Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig

    1 Introduction

    e American linguist Dwight Whitney states that [i]f we desire to understand theforces which are at work in language, we must be willing to examine their operationsin petty and prosaic detail (Whitney 1871: 38). Surprisingly (or not), those who havebased grand theories on the simplicity of creole morphology have not undertakenthorough descriptive studies to see what morphological processes are actually there. Itappears that some researchers over the years have been content with merely repeatingthe slogan that Creoles have little or no morphology without really testing it forthemselves; a situation which has led them to concentrate more on what Creoles lackthan on what they actually possess.

    However, with the work of the past decade or so, e.g. Brousseau, Filipovich andLefebvre (1989), Lefebvre (2002), Kouwenberg and LaCharit (2001a, 2001b, 2004),Plag (2003), Bhatt and Plag (2006), we are coming to realize that the frequently re-peated phrase that Creoles have little or no morphology is seriously awed. Onlycontinued neglect of the data can lead one to say that they have none, and whetherthey have only a little can only be seen in a comparative light. en we will be facedwith the problem of deciding which language should be used as the yardstick. estudies which are now appearing on these languages suggest that the claim must beseen as signaling not a lack on the part of languages designated as Creoles, but thefailure of generations of researchers (driven by popular, non-empirical wisdom) todevote attention to this particular phenomenon (on this point see Muysken 2004:1656). We now know that it is not safe to generalize over Creoles since there is nowcopious counter-evidence to many of the previous claims. For example, Nubi, an Ara-

    * is paper was rst presented under the title Simplicity versus complexity: Issues in the

    study of creole morphology at the Seventh Creolistics Workshop held at the Justus-Liebig Uni- versitt, Gieen, 6-8 April 2006. I would like to thank the participants at that workshop for theirfeedback. I would also like to thank the editors and an anonymous reviewer for their very usefulcomments which have been incorporated as far as possible. Needless to say, all remaining faultsare my own.

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    bic Creole, has retained prexing, sufxing, and compounding patterns from Arabic(Heine 1982).

    It is probable that the sense of lack which was felt in the past was owing to the re-fusal of researchers to explore and engage the data. For example, Bailey (1966) onlydevotes two pages to morphology in her 163-page book on the grammar of JamaicanCreole. As a case in point, even though reduplication was stereotyped as one of thehallmarks of Creole languages, no comprehensive and systematic descriptions of theprocess existed for many Creole languages until the appearance of the volume editedby Kouwenberg (2003) which was devoted to the subject. As far as I am aware, only twosubstantial works (both articles) existed on word-formation in Jamaican Creole priorto the 1990s: Cassidy (1957), DeCamp (1974), and their concentration was on redupli-

    cation. In addition, the lack of descriptions of compounding in Pidgins and Creoles issomewhat at variance with the perception that these languages make extensive use ofthis process as a means of compensating for not having more complex patterns.

    e ramications of the important explorative and descriptive work on the mor-phology of Creoles which has been going on especially over the past two decades canbe neatly summed up in Gils pronouncement that all known isolating languages stillhavesomemorphology afxation, compounding, or other kinds of processes such asreduplication, stem alternation, and so forth (2006: 92). is leads us to one verypoignant question: If we were mistaken about these things is it possible that we could

    be mistaken about other things too?e aim of this chapter is not to join the debate about whether Creole languagesare complex or not with regards to their morphological module (see Aboh & Ansaldo,Gil, this volume). It can be taken as the skeleton for a kind ofDescriptivists Manifesto,calling for a change in our thinking about Creoles in terms of what they lack, or whatwe assume they lack, and a move toward describing how they actually implement par-ticular aspects of Grammar. Some of the issues discussed in this chapter have alreadybeen taken up by various authors such as DeGraff (2001), in response to McWhorter(2001). Most of my examples are drawn from the Atlantic Creoles because those are

    the varieties with which I am most familiar.

    2 Word-formation

    is section is a very brief look at the types of word-formation processes to be foundin Creoles (afxation, reduplication, compounding, and zero-derivation). e treat-ment must not be taken to suggest that all processes appear in all Creoles, but that theprocess named has been reported in some or at least one Creole language.

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    nyamiisha nyamto eat a glutton taakiisha taakto talk a person who talks too much tekiisha tekto take a person who likes to take/ receive singiisha singto sing a person who likes to sing a lot skieriisha skierto scare a very ugly person

    is last feature also renders the afx etymologically opaque since the feminine meaningwhich it inherited from its putative source form only appears in three of the nine formspresented here. Cross-linguistically, it is more common for morphemes designating to get lexicalized into person markers than for those designating to do so.

    Another case of the development of an afxal person marker is attested for Sranan.Van den Berg (2003) presents a convincing analysis based on good documentary evi-dence to show that at least as early as the 1760s Sranan possessed a gender-neutralsufxal person marker-man. e early appearance of this afxational process has im-plications for discussions on how long it takes for natural languages to develop thistype of morphology.

    (4) 18th century Sranan (Van den Berg 2003: 243) gakuman [stutter]V -person stutter konkroman [trick]V -person trickster koliman [cheat]V -person a cheat

    A language may gain a new afx either by borrowing, as in Berbice Dutch j, throughreanalysis of an old afx(-like form), as in Jamaican Creole-iisha, or by converting freemorphemes into bound forms through grammaticalization. e latter, which is gener-ally believed to take a long time to develop is apparently what occurred with Sranan-man. Even though the Sranan case discussed here is a clear case of derivational mor-phology, it also has implications for the correlation between the age of a language andthe morphological patterns it exhibits. is issue is taken up in section 5.2.

    2.2 Reduplicationis section only deals with the derivational use of reduplication. In section 4.2, I will

    mention the inectional use of reduplication in Creoles. It is generally believed thatcontact languages such as Creoles are more likely to utilize iconic processes (see Seuren2001: 430), and since reduplication is widely associated with iconicity, then it is as-sumed that all Creoles will possess this word-formation strategy. For example, Sama-rin (1971) considers reduplication a universal feature of Pidgins and Creoles. However,Bakker has shown that while reduplication is employed as a productive word-forma-

    tion strategy in most Creoles, it is virtually absent in Pidgins (2003a: 37). If the pres-ence of reduplication in Creoles is due to the communicative pressures arising fromthe contact situation, then we would expect that non-expanded Pidgins would make

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    more use of reduplication than Creoles/ expanded Pidgins. However, Bakkers study ofsome thirty non-expanded Pidgins nds it almost absent.

    Most would agree that the reduplication of nouns to denote plurality is iconic,since the increase in form is indicative of more of the same meaning. ere is evidenceto demonstrate that it is not even safe to assume that more iconic patterns will becross-linguistically more frequent. Dryer (2005), working with a sample of 957 lan-guages, found that only 8 of them coded nominal plurality by means of complete redu-plication.1In fact, we cannot even make this generalization over languages designatedas Creoles since Bolle (2003) reports that Seychelles Creole has reduplication of ad- verbs, adjectives, and verbs, but no attested cases of reduplicated nouns, and Velupillai(2003) shows that reduplication as a word-formation device is absent from Hawaii

    Creole English.Moving now to another point, recent research also proves that it is not wise toconclude that Creoles will only possess iconic/marked patterns. For example, take theSaramaccan forms in (5) below. A purely iconic reading would have dictated that moreof the same form would result in more of the same meaning. But here, reduplicationactually results in less of the meaning of the base.

    (5) Saramaccan Creole (Bakker 2003b: 76) geli yellow geli-geli yellow/ yellowish guun green guuun-guuun green/ greenish weti white weti-weti white/ whitish baafu soup baafu-baafu soup/ souplike wata water wata-wata water/ watery

    2.3 Compounding

    In his pioneering book on (the lexicon of) Jamaican Creole, Frederic Cassidy pointsout that [n]ew words are formed in the folk speech by compounding, derivation, back

    formation, and the like, much as in Standard English (1961: 69). Despite this pro-nouncement, derivation and compounding as word-formation processes are not treat-ed by Cassidy. Also we cannot be certain whether the phrase much as in StandardEnglish speaks to the existence of these processes in both languages, or he means thatwith regard to compounding, derivation, and back formation, Jamaican Creole andEnglish exhibit the same behavior. If his intention was the latter, then he would havebeen guilty of helping to propagate the claim that if Creoles have any morphology atall, it is fossilized and identical to one or more of their source languages, especially itslexier. Only recently have we started to see decent descriptions of compounding in

    Creoles such as (Early) Sranan (Braun 2005) and Haitian Creole (Brousseau 1988).1. Note however, that there were languages in Dryers sample which coded nominal plurality bypartial reduplication, but these were treated as languages which employ prexation. Nevertheless,the prexing languages (partial reduplication included) only account for 118 out of 957.

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    An example from Jamaican Creole will serve to demonstrate that compounding inCreoles is a fruitful area of investigation. While English has [V-N]N compounds, itdoes not appear to be really productive, and only a handful of mostly old compoundsreferring to people (e.g. pickpocket ) and objects (e.g.drawbridge) have been construct-ed on this pattern (see Lieber 2005: 378). On the contrary, the process appears to bequite productive in Jamaican Creole forming nouns referring to persons (6a) and tan-gible entities (6b), but also creating action nouns (6c), a property which is lacking inthe English case.

    (6) Jamaican Creole a. P brok-vaibz (break-vibes) a kill-joy chat-mout (chat-mouth) a gossip fala-lain (follow-line) a stranger juk-maka (pierce-horn) a cunning fellow lego-biis (let.go-beast) an unruly person nyam-daag (eat-dog) pej. epithet for a Chinese sok-ngga (suck-nger) one who sucks his nger(s) waak-fut (walk-foot) a pedestrian wash-beli (wash-belly) the last child born

    b. T mad-dem (to mad-me) a type of pudding tai-ed (tie-head) a scarf which is used to tie the head c. A chru-wod (throw-word) a quarrel kot-yai (cut-eye) a look of contempt push-mout (push-mouth) a manner of pointing with the lips ties-mout (taste-mouth) a taste

    2.4 Zero-derivation

    It is very likely that the multifunctionality that exists in several Creoles may be the re-sult of extensive use of zero-derivation (also calledconversion). However, the perva-siveness of this feature is not matched by the number of studies on it. Among the fewwhich exist must be mentioned Brauns (2005) dissertation on word-formation in Ear-ly Sranan which devotes a whole chapter to the subject. In Haitian Creole, zero-deriva-tion derives nouns and adjectives/ participles from verbs. However, there are restric-tions on the type of verb which can form the input for this process: unaccusative verbs(e.g.ale to go), unergative verbs (e.g.kracheto spit), and the intransitive versions of verbs which show a transitive/ intransitive alternation (e.g.bwteto move) (Lefebvre2002: 44). For Papiamentu, Kouwenberg and Murray (1994) state that some monosyl-labic verbs mostly of Dutch origin, but a few from English, undergo zero-derivation to

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    nouns (7). ey explain that this particular pattern of zero-derivation usually createsinstruments, instrumental end-products, events, and a remaining set with miscellane-ous interpretations (Kouwenberg & Murray 1994: 24).

    (7) Papiamentu (Kouwenberg & Murray 1994: 24) borto drill > drill klshto clash > a dispute basto blow > balloon

    3 Transparency

    Before we move on to inectional morphology, we turn briey to a slightly differentbut related matter semantic transparency in Creole morphology. McWhorter (2001:156) argues that the tendency for Creoles to employ compounds where their lexiersuse unitary expressions is a reection of their Pidgin past. However, this argumentexcludes the substratum languages and how they lexicalize these same concepts. As acase in point, while several of the terms for body-parts in the English-lexied Creolesof the Atlantic are unanalyzable expressions copied from their lexiers (e.g. JamaicanCreole fut foot,ed head), we cannot ignore the presence of compound expressionsfor some body-parts which are either not lexicalized in the lexier or are unanalyzablewords. Surely, before one claims pidginization or universals of semantic representa-tion, it is important to see how well these compounds match the structure in substratelanguages and how frequent it is cross-linguistically for languages to employ thesesame strategies for realizing the concept. For example, why did Sranan useaifutu(eye-foot) to designate ankle rather than some other combination? Along those same lineswe can recognize the presence of compounds whose semantics are not that transpar-ent, at least from a European perspective. Jamaican Creole as well as several other At-lantic Creoles (both English- and French-lexied) concatenate an adjectival concept

    with a body-part in order to designate certain human characteristics and emotions (8).It has been pointed out before that this resembles similar patterns in West Africanlanguages such as kn and gbo (see Alleyne 1980: 115116).

    (8) Jamaican Creole def-iez(deaf-ear) deafness, a deaf person haad-bak(hard-back) mature haad-iez(hard-ear) obstinate, obstinacy haad-yai(hard-eye) disobedient, disobedience jrai-yai(dry-eye) audacious lang-beli(long-belly) gluttony, gluttonous lang-got(long-gut) gluttony, gluttonous red-yai(red-eye) jealous, jealousy swiit-mout(sweet-mouth) attering, attery

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    ere is also a view that when morphology does exist in a Creole language it tends tobe semantically transparent (see McWhorter 1998: 797; Seuren 2001). A counter-ex-ample is presented by what Kouwenberg, LaCharit and Gooden (2003) refer to asX-like reduplication in Jamaican Creole (9). ere are several factors which militateagainst viewing this process as transparent. First, the process applies to input that haveno more and no less than two syllables. For monosyllabic bases to be eligible they mustrst undergo phonological alteration via an epenthetic vowel (-i) before they can formthe input for the reduplicative process. e synchronic requirement for this binarity isopaque, although Kouwenberg and LaCharit (2004) hazard a diachronic explanation.Second, the process applies to multiple lexical categories: Adjectives (9a), Nouns (9b),and Verbs (9c). ird, it has been observed that Adjectival bases which undergo this

    type of reduplication have an intensive or attenuated reading. ese two readings arediametrically opposed to each other, since one signals the characteristic presence of afeature while the other suggests that it is only there in bits.

    (9) Jamaican Creole (Kouwenberg et al. 2003: 107) a. bigbig bigi-bigibiggish swiitsweet swiiti-swiitihaving sweet contents yalayellow yala-yalayellowish, yellow-spotted b. bukbook buki-bukibookish, liking to read

    bwaiboy bwayi-bwayiboyish huolhole huoli-huoliperforated, having many holes c. jukto pierce juki-jukiprickly laafto laugh laa-laainclined to laughter

    Consider also the reduplicative pattern in Saramaccan which is exemplied in (10).ese are reduplicated versions of animal names, which have the same meaning as the

    base (in those cases where simplex bases do exist). We do not get the normal plural ormultiplicative interpretation we would expect. In fact, this pattern seems to be re-served for animals, insects which are normally found in large groups.

    (10) Saramaccan (Bakker 2003b: 74) mosimosimouse wasiwasiwasp

    4 Inectional morphology

    It was once the received view that Creoles do not make use of inectional morphology.at view is slowly changing into one which says that they make minimal use of the

    process (cf. McWhorter 1998: 792). While this may be closer to the truth, it should notdeter us from approaching each Creole with an open mind, to see whether or not

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    Also, I submit that the marker of Progressive Aspectde in Jamaican Creole should betreated as afxational since it is obligatory for eventive verbs (12a), cannot receive in-dependent stress, and cannot be separated from the verb by other elements. e last ofthese criteria is illustrated in (12). Separating the Progressive marker from the verbrenders the utterance ungrammatical (12c).

    (12) a. Di piipl-dem *(de) baal. people- bawl e people are crying. b. Di piipl-dem aalwiez de baal. people- always bawl e people are always crying. c. *Di piipl-dem de aalwiez baal. people- always bawl

    In Jamaican Creole the comparative and superlative afxes,-a and -is respectively,which are derived from English appear to be productive, although there are phonotac-tic constraints which apply (13). at this is a case of inection rather than derivationis still up for discussion in the eld of morphology (see Bauer 1983: 40). Booij (2004:365) does point out that inherent inection such as that encoded by comparatives andsuperlatives is probably closer to derivation than contextual inection (e.g. Person,Case), however, seeing that these morphological processes do not change word classand are required by the syntax, then they can be treated as inection.

    (13) a.bad +-aC =bada worse +-isS =badis worst b. nof +-aC =nofa more plentiful +-isS =nos most plentiful

    4.2 Reduplicative inectional morphology

    Bybee, Perkins and Pagliuca (1994: 169172) propose that the employment of redupli-cation for Aspectual purposes commonly exhibits grammaticalization from to , but the grammaticalization process may follow two different sub-paths to the same end point:

    (a) > > > >

    (b) > > > >

    Parkvall (2003: 21) informs us that reduplication is employed for Aspectual purposesin Jamaican Creole, Miskito Coast Creole, St. Kitts Creole, Sranan, Ndyuka, Saramac-

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    can, Krio, Nigeria English Creole, Cameroon English Creole, So Tom PortugueseCreole, Angolar Portuguese Creole, Annobn Portuguese Creole, Berbice Dutch Cre-ole, and Papiamentu. An example of one such use is given in (14) from Jamaican Cre-ole.

    (14) C Dem sing-sing so-tel dem taiyad. -sing until tired ey sang [i.e. continued singing] until they were tired.

    5 Complex morphology

    5.1 Complex morphology as inectional (afxational) morphology?

    McWhorter (2001: 139) states that Saramaccan is simple because it has neitherinectional morphology nor free equivalents such as noun class classiers. is ig-nores morphological processes such as reduplication which we have seen in use inseveral Creoles. ere is noa priori reason why adding an afx to a stem is more com-plex than reduplicating the stem both may have morphophonemic repercussions.

    5.2 Complexity and age

    Close to the end of the nineteenth century Otto Jespersen claimed that simple thingsare pretty o en of quite recent growth (1993 [1894]: 61). is statement is a ttingprecursor of sorts to McWhorter (2001) who believes that Creoles have simple mor-phology because they have not existed long enough in order to develop more complexstructures:

    Let us assume for these purposes that tens of millennia of dri would leave allgrammars existing during that timespan equal in terms of the amount of com-plexity accreted beyond the bounds of the genetic specication for language. isstipulation predicts, then, that one subset of the worlds natural languages, creoles,would differ from the rest of the worlds natural languages in displaying less of thiskind of needless complexity. (2001: 132)

    is idea that complex morphology normally equated with (inectional) afxationalmorphology is the product of age is not novel. Bickerton (1990), who claims thatPidgins and Creoles are reminiscent of human proto-language presents similar argu-

    ments on the correlation between morphology and language development: Protolan-guage will seldom if ever have any kind of inection any -ings, -ss, -eds, any number-or person-agreement, and so on (1990: 126). Also, note Whitney (1871: 46) whoproposes that [e]very formative element, whether prex or sufx, was once an inde-

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    pendent vocable, which rst entered into composition with another vocable, and then,by a succession of changes of form and of meaning...gradually arrived at its nal shapeand ofce. e chief argument presented by these authors is that inectional mor-phology is a product of age in languages. is leads to the implicit conclusion that alanguage with inecting morphology is of necessity old. I will provide evidence later toshow that this thesis is awed, but rst I will take up the matter of language age.

    First, any claim that one language is older than another is a direct appeal to the vagueconcept of E[xternal]-language (see Chomsky 2001). All I[nternal]-languages are equalin age, because each speaker has to construct their own grammar based on experience.

    e baby learning English today has no access to the grammar of Chaucer; the only rawmaterials it has are those in its immediate environment which provide the primary lin-

    guistic data (PLD) it uses to construct its grammar. is is not to deny that many aspectsof grammar remain stable over time and are passed from one generation to the next,rather it stresses the point that in the matter of grammar construction, we cannot see pastour PLD providers. is view nds support in Hale (2007: 33) who argues that:

    It is apparent that language does not change in the same sense as, e.g., the physi-cal structure of the universe. In the latter case, we are dealing with the modication,under a variety of sources, of essentially the same substance over long periods oftime. ere are no discontinuities (though there may be catastrophic events of various types which change gross morphological features in some particularly sa-lient way). By contrast, in the case of language change, we must confront the factthat there is, in a very real sense, a different object (a different grammar) with eachnew generation.

    e confusion exists because of a failure to distinguish between linguistic changewhich we assume to be instantaneous and the diffusion of that change to the rest ofthe speech community, which may take several centuries. A good illustration comesfrom Sri Lanka Malay (SLM) where at least one speaker is using what was once a freepronoun as a cliticized agreement marker.3 None of SLMs adstrate languages is known

    to have a similar structure, thus, contact is an implausible explanation. e examplesin (15) show one speaker carrying out a linguistic operation which is normally said totake centuries to happen. (15c) demonstrates that there is no attested intermediatestage of double marking which can account for the change.

    3. I would like to thank Sebastian Nordhoff for providing these SLM examples which weredrawn from his joint presentation with Umberto Ansaldo, Complexity and the age of languages,presented at the Seventh Creolistics Workshop held at the Justus-Liebig Universitt, Gieen, 6-8April 2006. e anonymous reviewer expressed disquiet with my using one example of change

    without propagation as empirical evidence. at the speaker made consistent use of the form isan indication that it is not a mistake, and its being an invention by this speaker cannot negate thefact that it is a linguistic change, at least in this persons grammar. e change has already takenplace. As I am arguing here, we should not confuse the change itself with its propagation throu-ghout the community.

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    (15) a. Se piisang ara-makang. banana -eat I am eating a banana. b. Piisang s-ara-makang. banana 1 - -eat c. *Se piisang s-ara-makang. banana - -eat

    e presence of languages such as (Mandarin) Chinese, Yoruba, etc. give us enoughproof that old E-languages