Creolization? Or Globalization?

[Ronald Kephart]

John McCreery writes:

>I have mentioned to Ron Kephart that I would like to hear more about
>his work on creolization [...] I'm looking, in particular, for ideas
>that might give me a handle on an always fraught issue here in
>Japan, the relationship of Japanese to English.

John,

Now you're giving me *more* credit than I deserve. My work, really,
has centered on the synchronic description of a particular creole
language (that of Carriacou) and on the desirability of using that
language to enhance the acquisition of literacy amongst Carriacouan
school children.  I can (somewhat nervously) announce that one very
belated outcome of this work is being published, right now, by Peter
Lang. It's my *"Broken English": The Creole Language of Carriacou*.
It's a descriptive grammar (using what I call my Muppet version of
X-bar theory) with what I think is a fairly decent chapter on the
ecology of the language, plus an extensive collection of texts
transcribed from recordings made in the field: folk tales, anecdotes,
snippets of conversation, songs, and (my personal favorite), some
snake lore.

So, I have been following, but not really engaged in, the debates
over the *process* of creolization, debates which can get even
creolists, who are usually pretty nice to each other, in a lather.

One thing seems clear. Creolization implies changes in language
structure, not mere vocabulary borrowing, which (correct me if I'm
wrong) seems to be the case for Japanese and English, nor
code-switching, which (again, someone may correct me) seems to be
going on between Spanish and English in Texas and South Florida.
Creolization seems to give rise to a speech community centered on a
*new* language not mutually intelligible with any of the input
languages.

For example, Kreyòl (Haiti) is not mutually intelligible with either
French nor any of the languages of West Africa that would have been
spoken by its creators. Now, the language I work on does have a
higher degree of intelligibility with English than, say Sranan
(Suriname) or Krio (Sierra Leone). I still maintain that it's a
creole, though, because despite that fact that the surface forms
appear more English, the underlying grammatical organization is still
basically creole. I can illustrate that with a simple sentence like
'They go in the house', which in Carriacouan means 'they have gone
into the house and haven't come back out yet'- clearly not an English
type of tense/aspect configuration.

Anyway, you cite as possible evidence for creolization in Japanese:

>(4) a written language that combines Chinese characters with local
>syllabaries in a manner that clearly suggests a previous process of
>creolization, not unlike that which produced modern English by
>fusing Norman French and Anglo-Saxon.

First, it's not clear to me that a borrowed writing system can be
good evidence for creolization, since writing systems are not part of
the structures of languages. For example the change in spelling from
cniht to knight reflects nothing but a shift in choice of how to
represent the sounds in the word pronounced [kni:xt].  And of course
English itself uses a combination of logographs (1, 2, 3, &, %...)
and (originally) phonological spellings in its writing system.

Second, on a structural level, I don't think most people would argue
that Modern English reflects a process of creolization, although that
argument has been made in the past (C. J. Bailey?). Most might prefer
to call what has happened to English a process of restructuring, and
it's likely I suppose that some of the changes (such as the shift to
SVO word order?) might have been influenced by French, although it
could as well be part of a natural process.

An interesting current debate to watch is the one over whether there
is a "creole language typology" as argued by John McWhorter
("Identifying the creole prototype: Vindicating a typological class."
Language 74:4:788-818).  If there is, this would be good evidence for
some kind of universal process going on, since creole languages
clearly arose in different contact situations involving typologically
different languages. But the jury's out, and I haven't seen anything
recently on the Creole-List.


Ronald Kephart
English & "Foreign" Languages
University of North Florida