Genetic Descent/Haitian Creole

[Mikael Parkvall]

Regarding the history of Haitian Creole, both Joat Simeon and Larry Trask
recently referred to the classical pidgin-to-creole cycle as the current
majority view of creole development. Indeed, this is how most people have
become used to looking at creoles for at least the past four decades.

However, if only for the record, I thought that I as a creolist should tell
you that this view is now rapidly losing ground in mainstream anglophone
creolistics (Americans are thereby reinventing the view that francophone
creolistics -- whose works they never bothered to read since they're not in
English -- has had for a long time). What many, and perhaps even most,
creolists believe these days is that Haitian et al never passed through any
"pidgin bottleneck" -- the relation of Haitian to French, they have it, is
simply similar to that of French to Latin. End of story.

The debate on this subject is very heated. I personally strongly disagree
with the view sketched above, clinging to the view in which creoles indeed
have a pidgin past, and that this can be demonstrated even in modern
creoles. Things happened to eg French on its way to Haitian that normally
don't happen in "normal" language development.

If you ask me, the reasons for taking this new position are more of a
political nature than anything else ("Pidgins are primitive languages, and
my ancestors surely weren't primitive -- are you trying to say that we
blacks can't learn to master inflexions?").

Anyway, even though I dislike the direction creolistics is taking, I
thought that you as historical linguists should be aware of it, so this is
just for your information.

Mikael Parkvall