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Language Acquisition in Creolization And, Thus, Language Change: Some Cartesian- Uniformitarian Boundary Conditions See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/220531633 Language Acquisition in Creolization and, Thus, Language Change: Some Cartesian- Uniformitarian Boundary Conditions Article in Language and Linguistics Compass · July 2009 DOI: 10.1111/j.1749-818X.2009.00135.x · Source: DBLP CITATIONS READS 26 78 1 author: Michel DeGraff MIT 37 PUBLICATIONS 467 CITATIONS SEE PROFILE All content following this page was uploaded by Michel DeGraff on 27 August 2019. The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file. Language and Linguistics Compass 3/4 (2009): 888–971, 10.1111/j.1749-818x.2009.00135.x CreolizationMichelBlackwellOxford,LNCOLanguage1749-818x©Journal13510.1111/j.1749-818x.2009.00135.xMarch0888???971???Original 2009 2009DeGraff UKThecompilationArticle Publishing and isAuthor Language Linguistic © Ltd 2009 Change Compass Blackwell Publishing Ltd Language Acquisition in Creolization and, Thus, Language Change: Some Cartesian- Uniformitarian Boundary Conditions Michel DeGraff* MIT Linguistics & Philosophy Content Abstract 1 Background and Objectives 1.1 Terminological and conceptual preliminaries: ‘Creoles’, ‘Creole genesis’, ‘Creolization’, etc. 1.2 Uniformitarian boundary conditions 1.3 Cartesian boundary conditions 1.4 Some landmarks for navigating through the many detours of this long essay 2 Whence ‘Creole Genesis’? 2.1 Making constructive use of the distinction and relation between ‘I-languages’ and ‘E-languages’ 2.1.1 The ontological priority of I-languages (and innovations therein) 2.1.2 ‘E-creoles’ vs. ‘I-creoles’ 2.1.3 Findings about E-creoles and I-creoles complement each other 2.1.4 I-languages as ‘linguistic fingerprints’: no two idiolects are identical 2.1.5 Abrupt ‘innovations’ precede gradual ‘spread’ 2.2 Deconstructing ‘gradualism’ 2.2.1 Gradual ‘change’ in E-language reduces to abrupt steps in I-languages 2.2.2 Gradualism in acquisition, in creolization and in age-grading effects 2.2.3 The roles of children and adults vis-à-vis innovations and the spread thereof 2.3 On the formation of ‘I-creoles’ via parameter-(re)setting in I-languages – as in other cases of language change 2.3.1 ‘Poverty of the stimulus’ arguments and ‘the logical problem of language acquisition’ 2.3.2 ‘Poverty of the stimulus’ in the colonial Caribbean: a ‘sharp break in transmission’? 2.3.3 English ‘out-creoles’ Haitian Creole 2.3.4 Caribbean Creoles are genetically related to European languages according to the Comparative Method 2.3.5 Nonlinguistic confounds in the application of the Comparative Method to Creole languages © 2009 The Author Journal Compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd Creolization is Language Change 889 2.3.6 ‘Break in transmission’: a (non)criterion in Creole formation – redux 2.3.7 Was the formation of Caribbean Creoles radically more rapid than the formation of Romance languages? 3 On Time Machines and Other Expediments for Creolists 3.1 Do creolists really need time machines? 3.2 Uniformitarian expediments 3.2.1 Sign-language emergence vs. Caribbean Creole formation 3.2.2 What can Sign-language emergence teach us about Creole formation? 4 Integrating Both Second- and First-language Acquisition in Creole-formation Scenarios 4.1 Creole formation as creation of ‘systèmes où tout se tient’ 4.2 Creole (i.e., Caribbean-born) children ‘created’ the first Caribbean ‘Creole’ I-languages 4.2.1 The first ‘Creole languages’ were the I-languages of the first ‘Cre- ole’ children 4.2.2 Creole children’s role in the homogenization of colonial (Proto-)Creole dialects 4.2.3 Creole children’s innovations 4.3 Both adults and children ‘created’ Caribbean Creoles, each in their own way: an L2A–L1A cascade 4.4 Creoles as ‘conventionalized interlanguages of an early stage’? 4.4.1 ‘Interphrasal information exchange’ in contemporary Creoles 4.4.2 ‘Interphrasal information exchange’ in the early stages of Haitian Creole and in other Creole languages 4.4.3 The argumentation for the ‘Creoles as early interlanguages’ hypothesis is empirically and theoretically inconsistent 4.4.4 ‘Local simplicity’ in Creole and non-Creole formation 5 Envoi Acknowledgements/Notes References Abstract This essay prescribes some broad ‘Cartesian-Uniformitarian’ boundary conditions for linguistic hypotheses about Creole formation. These conditions make constructive connections between Creole studies, historical linguistics and language-acquisition research. Here ‘Cartesian’ has a mentalist sense, as in Chom- sky (1966): I consider the formation of so-called ‘Creole’ languages to be ulti- mately reducible to the creation, in certain sociohistorical contexts, of certain idiolects (i.e., individual internal, or ‘I-’, languages) in the minds of the ‘first “Creole” speakers’. To avoid circularity, my use of the term ‘Creole’ in the phrase ‘first “Creole” speakers’ combines some of its original ethno-historical senses: I use the word ‘Creole’, in this particular context, to refer to the non-indigenous people of African or European descent that were born and raised in the colonial New World, in opposition to those that were born and raised in the Old Worlds of Africa and Europe. The term ‘Uniformitarian’ evokes Neogrammarian © 2009 The Author Language and Linguistics Compass 3/4 (2009): 888–971, 10.1111/j.1749-818x.2009.00135.x Journal Compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd 890 Michel DeGraff approaches to language change, as advocated, for example, by Osthoff and Brugmann (1878) and Paul (1890). It summarizes my fundamental working assumption that no sui generis or exceptional linguistic processes need to be postulated in order to explain the creation of these languages that have come to be labeled ‘Creole’: these languages were created by the same psycholinguistic mechanisms that are responsible for the creation of (I-)languages, and for linguistic diachronic patterns, everywhere else. Therefore, ‘Creole’ languages cannot be distinguished a priori from non-‘Creole’ languages on any linguistic-theoretical criteria – and ‘Creole’ languages can be genetically classified by the Comparative Method, on a par with non-‘Creole’ languages. Such assumptions go against popular claims about Creole genesis such as those in, for example, Thomason and Kaufman (1988), Lefebvre (1998) and Bickerton (1999). In establishing these Cartesian-Uniformitarian guidelines, I correct category mistakes that fail to distinguish explanations that apply to I-languages from explanations that apply to E(xternal)-languages and other social-group phenomena that I-languages are implicated in. One such category mistake concerns the ontology and time course of innovations in specific I-languages vs. their spread across populations of I-languages and into E-language communal norms. Then I investigate the possible – and impossible – contributions of first-language acquisition and second-language acquisition to ‘creolization’. In particular, I take my cues from: (i) studies of language- and dialect-contact situations where children and adults seem to play observably distinct roles; and (ii) recent discoveries about instances of Sign Language acquisition and creation where the Primary Linguistic Data seem remarkably restricted. As for elucidating the limits on the restructuring capacities of children and adults, and their respective contributions to language creation and change, it is episte- mologically safer to investigate instances of diachronic development that are more recent than the now unobservable early stages of ‘creolization’. Throughout this essay, I use the term ‘creolization’ strictly as an a-theoretical abbreviation for the longer phrase ‘development of these languages that, for sociohistorical reasons, have been labeled “Creole” ’. In the perspective sketched here, creoliza- tion is just another instance of language change – or ‘language evolution’, in Mufwene’s (2001, 2008) sense – the investigation of which is to shed light on Universal Grammar. 1. Background and Objectives 1.1. TERMINOLOGICAL AND CONCEPTUAL PRELIMINARIES: ‘CREOLES’, ‘CREOLE GENESIS’, ‘CREOLIZATION’, ETC. What sorts of ‘Creole genesis’ hypotheses can, or cannot, be derived within a linguistic-theoretical framework that, contrary to widespread assumptions in Creole studies (see DeGraff 2005a,b,c), does not a priori posit any exceptional developmental patterns or psycholinguistic processes on the part of whoever ‘created’ these languages we call ‘Creoles’? This is the main question that will concern me in this essay. Although I will be able to sketch only a few epistemological and theoretical preliminaries © 2009 The Author Language and Linguistics Compass 3/4 (2009): 888–971, 10.1111/j.1749-818x.2009.00135.x Journal Compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd Creolization is Language Change 891 toward a satisfactory answer, these preliminaries should at the very least help clarify the meanings of oft-used terms such as ‘Creole languages’, ‘Creole genesis’, ‘creolization’, etc., and their epistemological status vis-à- vis linguistic theory and theories of language change.1 Such clarification is also meant to establish some basic boundary conditions for linguistic hypotheses about Creole formation, and, in so doing, contribute to con- structive conversations between creolists, historical linguists and language- acquisition researchers – conversations that integrate Creole studies into mainstream linguistic-theoretical research. As envisaged in this essay, these conversations will evolve within a perforce broad, yet productive, set of methodological
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