Editing Creole language (section)

==Creole genesis==
There are a variety of theories on the origin of creole languages, all of which attempt to explain the similarities among them. {{Harvcoltxt|Arends|Muysken|Smith|1995}} outline a fourfold classification of explanations regarding creole genesis:
# Theories focusing on European input
# Theories focusing on non-European input
# Gradualist and developmental hypotheses
# Universalist approaches

In addition to the precise mechanism of creole genesis, a more general debate has developed whether creole languages are characterized by different mechanisms than traditional languages (which is McWhorter's 2018 main point)<ref>{{Cite book |title=The Creole Debate |last=McWhorter |first=John |publisher= Cambridge University Press |year=2018| location=Cambridge |pages=3}}</ref> or whether in that regard creole languages develop by the same mechanisms as any other languages (e.g. DeGraff 2001).<ref>{{Cite journal |last=DeGraff |first=Michael |date=2001 |title=On the origin of creoles |journal=Linguistic Typology}}</ref>

===Theories focusing on European input===
====Monogenetic theory of pidgins and creoles====
The [[monogenetic theory of pidgins]] and creoles hypothesizes that all Atlantic creoles derived from a single [[Mediterranean Lingua Franca]], via a West African Pidgin Portuguese of the seventeenth century, [[relexification|relexified]] in the so-called "slave [[Factory (trading post)|factories]]"{{explain |date= January 2021}} of Western Africa that were the source of the [[Atlantic slave trade]]. This theory was originally formulated by [[Hugo Schuchardt]] in the late nineteenth century and popularized in the late 1950s and early 1960s by Taylor,<ref>such as in {{Harvcoltxt|Taylor|1977}}</ref> Whinnom,<ref>{{Harvcoltxt|Whinnom|1956}}, {{Harvcoltxt|Whinnom|1965}}</ref> Thompson,<ref>{{Harvcoltxt|Thompson|1961}}</ref> and Stewart.<ref>{{Harvcoltxt|Stewart|1962}}</ref> However, this hypothesis is now not widely accepted, since it relies on all creole-speaking slave populations being based on the same Portuguese-based creole, despite no to very little historical exposure to Portuguese for many of these populations, no strong direct evidence for this claim, and with Portuguese leaving almost no trace on the lexicon of most of them, with the similarities in grammar explainable by analogous processes of loss of inflection and grammatical forms not common to European and West African languages. For example, {{Harvcoltxt|Bickerton|1977}} points out that relexification postulates too many improbabilities and that it is unlikely that a language "could be disseminated round the entire tropical zone, to peoples of widely differing language background, and still preserve a virtually complete identity in its grammatical structure wherever it took root, despite considerable changes in its phonology and virtually complete changes in its lexicon".<ref>{{Harvcoltxt|Bickerton|1977|p=62}}</ref>

====Domestic origin hypothesis====
Proposed by {{Harvcoltxt|Hancock |1985}} for the origin of English-based creoles of the West Indies, the domestic origin hypothesis argues that, towards the end of the 16th century, English-speaking traders began to settle in the Gambia and [[Sierra Leone]] rivers as well as in neighboring areas such as the Bullom and Sherbro coasts. These settlers intermarried with the local population leading to mixed populations, and, as a result of this intermarriage, an English pidgin was created. This pidgin was learned by slaves in slave depots, who later on took it to the West Indies and formed one component of the emerging English creoles.

====European dialect origin hypothesis====
The [[French-based creole languages|French creoles]] are the foremost candidates to being the outcome of "normal" [[language change|linguistic change]] and their [[creoleness]] to be sociohistoric in nature and relative to their colonial origin.<ref>There are some similarities in this line of thinking with [[Ian F. Hancock|Hancock's]] domestic origin hypothesis.</ref> Within this theoretical framework, a [[French-based creole languages|French creole]] is a language [[phylogenetic]]ally based on [[French language|French]], more specifically on a 17th-century [[Koiné language|koiné]] French extant in [[Paris]], the French Atlantic harbors, and the nascent French colonies. Supporters of this hypothesis suggest that the non-Creole French dialects still spoken in many parts of the Americas share mutual descent from this single koiné. These dialects are found in [[Canada]] (mostly in [[Québec]] and in [[Acadian]] communities), [[Louisiana]], [[Saint-Barthélemy]] and as [[Language isolate|isolates]] in other parts of the Americas.<ref>Wittmann (1983, 1995, 2001), {{Harvcoltxt|Fournier|1998}}, {{Harvcoltxt|Fournier|Wittmann|1995}}; cf. the article on Quebec French and the History of Quebec French</ref> Approaches under this hypothesis are compatible with [[gradualism]] in [[Language change|change]] and models of [[#Imperfect L2 learning|imperfect language transmission]] in koiné genesis.

====Foreigner talk and baby talk====
The Foreigner Talk (FT) hypothesis argues that a pidgin or creole language forms when native speakers attempt to simplify their language in order to address speakers who do not know their language at all. Because of the similarities found in this type of speech and speech directed to a small child, it is also sometimes called [[baby talk]].<ref>See, for example, {{Harvcoltxt|Ferguson|1971}}</ref>

{{Harvcoltxt|Arends|Muysken|Smith|1995}} suggest that four different processes are involved in creating Foreigner Talk:
* Accommodation
* Imitation
* Telegraphic condensation
* Conventions

This could explain why creole languages have much in common, while avoiding a monogenetic model. However, {{Harvcoltxt|Hinnenkamp|1984}}, in analyzing German Foreigner Talk, claims that it is too inconsistent and unpredictable to provide any model for language learning.

While the simplification of input was supposed to account for creoles' simple grammar, commentators have raised a number of criticisms of this explanation:<ref>{{Harvcoltxt|Wardhaugh|2002|p=73}}</ref>
# There are a great many grammatical similarities amongst pidgins and creoles despite having very different [[lexifier]] languages.<!-- That is actually a fiercely debated point, see elsewhere in the article -->
# Grammatical simplification can be explained by other processes, i.e. the innate grammar of [[Derek Bickerton|Bickerton's]] [[language bioprogram theory]].<!-- This theory is highly controversial and presupposes the acceptance of some form of psychological nativism – which most non-Chomskyan linguists reject -->
# Speakers of a creole's lexifier language often fail to understand, without learning the language, the grammar of a pidgin or creole.
# Pidgins are more often used amongst speakers of different substrate languages than between such speakers and those of the lexifier language.

Another problem with the FT explanation is its potential circularity. {{Harvcoltxt|Bloomfield|1933}} points out that FT is often based on the imitation of the incorrect speech of the non-natives, that is the pidgin.<!-- Non-native speech is not necessarily pidgin at all! --> Therefore, one may be mistaken in assuming that the former gave rise to the latter.

====Imperfect L2 learning====
The imperfect L2 ([[second language]]) learning hypothesis claims that pidgins are primarily the result of the imperfect L2 learning of the dominant lexifier language by the slaves. Research on naturalistic L2 processes has revealed a number of features of "interlanguage systems" that are also seen in pidgins and creoles:
* invariant verb forms derived from the infinitive or the least marked finite verb form;
* loss of determiners or use of demonstrative pronouns, adjectives or adverbs as determiners;
* placement of a negative particle in preverbal position;
* use of adverbs to express [[modality (natural language)|modality]];
* fixed single word order with no inversion in questions;
* reduced or absent nominal plural marking.

Imperfect L2 learning is compatible with other approaches, notably the European dialect origin hypothesis and the universalist models of language transmission.<ref>Based on 19th-century intuitions, approaches underlying the imperfect L2 learning hypothesis have been followed up in the works of {{Harvcoltxt|Schumann|1978}}, {{Harvcoltxt|Anderson|1983}}, {{Harvcoltxt|Seuren|Wekker|1986}}, {{Harvcoltxt|Arends|Muysken|Smith|1995}}, {{Harvcoltxt|Geeslin|2002}}, {{Harvcoltxt|Hamilton|Coslett|2008}}.</ref>

===Theories focusing on non-European input===
Theories focusing on the substrate, or non-European, languages attribute similarities amongst creoles to the similarities of African substrate languages. These features are often assumed to be transferred from the substrate language to the creole or to be preserved invariant from the substrate language in the creole through a process of [[relexification]]: the substrate language replaces the native [[lexical items]] with lexical material from the superstrate language while retaining the native grammatical categories.<ref>See the article on [[relexification]] for a discussion of the controversy surrounding the retaining of substrate grammatical features through relexification.</ref> The problem with this explanation is that the postulated substrate languages differ amongst themselves and with creoles in meaningful ways. {{Harvcoltxt|Bickerton|1981}} argues that the number and diversity of African languages and the paucity of a historical record on creole genesis makes determining lexical correspondences a matter of chance. {{Harvcoltxt|Dillard|1970}} coined the term "cafeteria principle" to refer to the practice of arbitrarily attributing features of creoles to the influence of substrate African languages or assorted substandard dialects of European languages.

For a representative debate on this issue, see the contributions to {{Harvcoltxt|Mufwene|1993}}; for a more recent view, {{Harvcoltxt|Parkvall |2000}}.

Because of the sociohistoric similarities amongst many (but by no means all) of the creoles, the [[Atlantic slave trade]] and the plantation system of the European colonies have been emphasized as factors by linguists such as {{Harvcoltxt|McWhorter|1999}}.

===Gradualist and developmental hypotheses===
One class of creoles might start as [[pidgin]]s, rudimentary second languages improvised for use between speakers of two or more non-intelligible native languages. Keith Whinnom (in {{Harvcoltxt|Hymes|1971}}) suggests that pidgins need three languages to form, with one (the superstrate) being clearly dominant over the others. The lexicon of a pidgin is usually small and drawn from the vocabularies of its speakers, in varying proportions. Morphological details like word [[inflection]]s, which usually take years to learn, are omitted; the syntax is kept very simple, usually based on strict word order. In this initial stage, all aspects of the speech – syntax, lexicon, and pronunciation – tend to be quite variable, especially with regard to the speaker's background.

If a pidgin manages to be learned by the children of a community as a native language, it may become fixed and acquire a more complex grammar, with fixed phonology, syntax, morphology, and syntactic embedding. Pidgins can become full languages in only a single [[generation]]. "Creolization" is this second stage where the pidgin language develops into a fully developed native language. The vocabulary, too, will develop to contain more and more items according to a rationale of lexical enrichment.<ref>{{Harvcoltxt|Wardhaugh|2002|pp=56–57}}</ref>

===Universalist approaches===
{{Further|Universal grammar}}
[[linguistic universal|Universalist]] models stress the intervention of specific general processes during the transmission of language from generation to generation and from speaker to speaker. The process invoked varies: a general tendency towards [[semantic]] [[transparency (linguistic)|transparency]], first-[[language learning]] driven by universal process, or a general process of [[discourse]] [[organization]]. [[Derek Bickerton|Bickerton's]] [[language bioprogram theory]], proposed in the 1980s, remains the main universalist theory.<ref>
See {{Harvcoltxt|Bickerton|1981}}, {{Harvcoltxt|Bickerton|1983}}, {{Harvcoltxt|Bickerton|1984}}, {{Harvcoltxt|Bickerton|1988}}, and {{Harvcoltxt|Bickerton|1991}}
</ref>
Bickerton claims that creoles are inventions of the children growing up on newly founded [[plantations]]. Around them, they only heard pidgins spoken, without enough structure to function as [[natural language]]s; and the children used their own [[innate]] linguistic capacities to transform the pidgin input into a full-fledged language. The alleged common features of all creoles would then stem from those innate abilities being universal.