Do Pidgins develop into Creole? What constitutes Creole?

Reference:

The Handbook of Pidgin and Creole Studies

Edited by Silvia Kouwenberg and John Victor Singler.

Wiley – Blackwell , 2008

The studies that will be presented here  put into question the complexity when referring to the development of Pidgins and Creoles. Also, they tend to take the speaker much more into consideration than previous studies.

The Sociohistorical Context of Creole Genesis

John Victor Singler

In this article, the author defend the idea that Creoles didn’t necessarily originate from Pidgins by exploring the conditions in which Creole languages emerged in the Caribbean, relating them to the social organization changes that took place. 

Arguments: the development of  Creole in the Caribbean, specially French. 

There were two different types of colonial societies, one before sugar and one after sugar. The former one lead to what is called Société d'habitación, and the introduction os Sugar ar an important economic aspect would alter these societies, producing what was called Société de plantación. 

Their characteristics would be:

Société d’habitación:

- More whites than slaves

- engagés, indentured servants who worked with slaves – not necessarily native speakers of the lexifier language.

- Slaves lived with owner and engagés under the same roof – they had more contact.

Meaning – they had access to the lexifier, enough to derive a second language from it.

Because of the “Sugar Revolution”, the situation changed a bit. More slaves had to come to perform in the plantations, there were no more engagés, and slaves would no longer share a household with their masters.

Société de Plantation:

- More slaves than whites

- no engagés. Workforce is entirely African.

- Slaves live among themselves.

Another argument – mortality rate is big and fertility rate is low, the conditions were extremely degrading, meaning there were few people being born into that system, but many being brought from Africa.

“Creolists seem to agree that how long the European portion of the population remained in the majority had a direct bearing on how closely the colony’s vernacular resembled its metropolitan counterpart or some variety thereof” p. 336

What the author is pointing out, then, it that an economic change in how society was organized altered its composition, shifting from a majority of whites to a majority of blacks, which would mean a change in how the colony's language resembled its counterpart. 

He presents to main visions that would explain the process of Creole development. 

1) One view assumes an uninterrupted process of language transmission – Continuity hypothesis, or superstrate as the source of a creole’s properties.

Chaudenson, a theorist, would say that native speakers in French colonies did not speak standard, but a variety which had dialectal features. Hence, the language had gone through a restructuring process before even being spoken to the slaves, who just continued the process themselves when presented to the language .

Local born slaves would be in the middle between the colonizer’s language and newcomers ‘ language.

The same is not true for English colonies, where usually the language was spoken in its standard variety.

The author further discusses the problem of prestige when it comes to this hypothesis. According to Chaudenson, the colonizer’s language would have prestige, hence more people would copy it. 

Singler questions this based on slavery, which is a highly violent and oppressing system, calling attention to the fact that sounding like the oppressor might not have been that great, also, that language is more than just communication, but it is about identity, therefore it seems unlikely that slaves would have enjoyed sounding like their torturers. However, he does speak about the difference between ‘elite’ slaves, who would then speak more likely to their masters, as for having more contact with them.

2) The other view sees the divergence as a consequence of an interruption in language transmission.

What happened with Creole languages was not a development from a prior Pidgin state, but a language shift without normal transmission, which means speakers needed a new language but did not have enough time or access to native language, so the new language arises through “abrupt creolization”, linguistic expansion occurring before linguistic stabilization. Because of these circumstances, it is possible to see the substrate language manifesting itself.

The argument is that when such means of communication are urgently required, there would be no time for the development of a crystalized pidgin form, whereas a language would be necessary.

Formely discussed data seems to agree with this hypothesis, being that in societé d’habitación, slaves would have spoken a variety of French, and the shifting to societé de plantacion would have brought disruption of transmission, creating the conditions for what was called abrupt creolization.

Baker, another theorist,  has a problem with both these theories. He believes they see the lack of ability to acquire the superstrate language as the reason any other language would be derived, taking the relationship between slaves and whites more in consideration than the relationship among slaves themselves. According to him, the latter expresses the greater linguistic need of the situation, and then what we have are people who do not have a language in common.

The solution would be the creation of a medium of interethnic communication ( MIC). 

This view takes speakers as agents, more than the previous ones.

Another question posed by the author is of the similarities between Creole grammars, weather they are enough to continue in defining such a thing as Creole languages altogether. 

According to him, these questions have been being proposed by the academic community since the late 60's, if Creole languages would be more alike than other languages enough to be treated as a group. Some argue that there are as many differences as there are similarities. According to the author, in depth individual grammatical analysis have proven that in fact there are more differences than similarities. Which means that grammar is not the main criteria when it comes to grouping these languages. Usually, Creoles are organized by lexifier and region.