creoles, spec. studying creolization today

[P L Patrick]

It's a good idea.
The problem is [OK, there are several problems, this is first], most of
the situations locatable or recreatable now don't look much like
situations of historical creolization, socially. (Thank God! one might
well add.) Lacking a detailed understanding of what social differences
produce what contrasting outcomes, we thus don't know quite what to
conclude from current studies. Nevertheless, they have been and
continue to be done; classics include Jurgen Meisel's (et al) work from
the 1970s and 80s on Gastarbeiter Deutsch, while current work includes
Carla Hudson's and Elissa Newport's experimental pidgin lab studies
(www.bcs.rochester.edu/bcs/people/students/hudson/hudson.html).
	Another problem is, agreement on what languages are/aren't
creoles -- and what a creole is/isn't -- if it ever existed, seems to
be dissolving in the field. Certain cases that have always been treated
as Creoles are still accepted to be so; others are questioned; or the
whole idea is (claimed to be) rejected. Thus, it isn't clear, again,
what would make a current situation a case of creolization.

	(From Reisman's comments:)
>Study of transitions from Pacific Pidgin to Creole was done
>excellently for New Guinea by Gillian Sankoff. (Roger Keesing's
>excellent study Melanesian and the Oceanic Substrate is also very
>helpful.)
	Sankoff's work in the Pacific is indeed seminal here. Romaine
has argued with it for TP, Keesing had an impact too. Current work
seems to be either on more formal properties of variation (eg Meyerhoff
on the closely- related Bislama, http://www.ling.ed.ac.uk/~mhoff/) or
going back to early historical evidence (Jeff Siegel, Philip Baker).
The reason the Pacific is so important is that creolization was much
more recent, mid-19th C, so records are better and it's not so removed
as to make speculation nearly pointless. (Here I agree with some of
Reisman's strictures.)

>Rickford and Mcwhorter have put the Atlantic situation on the
>beginnings of an objective basis.
	Rickford, McW and many others have done important work. But
there has been objective data and analysis going back a long way!
Antoher view of things is, so much basic descriptive work has been done
since the mid-1980s on so many languages for which it was lacking
before -- back when creolists were busy inventing terminology and
theories-- that the field as a whole is only beginning to catch up
with its facts. (More on the way, see below)
	We are now talking about historical work, not synchronic.

>There has otherwise been little objectivity in this field. Stabs of
>greatness followed by neglect or ignorance. And lots of bias.
	Oh dear. sounds like linguists have been at work...
The problem with the Atlantic is, as indicated, it's all so long ago
and our records are so imperfect. A lot of theorizing and speculation
(the line is a fine one, with spotty data) among creolists has to be
taken with truckloads of salt or plain discounted. In fact, it is among
us. It always surprises me how successful creolists have been, though,
in getting other linguists to believe that we know with certainty
things that in fact we collectively cannot agree on at all. So every
intro linguistics textbook puts out things about, eg the logical
neccesity of prior pidgins, that many of us familiar with the data do
not accept. (Perhaps we once did.) (On abrupt creolization, eg, see
S Thomason and T Kaufman 1989, "Language Contact, Creolization and
Genetic Linguistics", chaps. 5-6. Lots of creolists don't agree with
them either, though.)
	There is nowadays a great deal of data, though, that is giving
a much more solid basis to our reconstructions for the Atlantic.
Jacques Arends and his (ex-)Amsterdam collaborators have done very
important work for Surinam. Knowledge of historical scenarios for
French Caribbean Creoles has taken off (see eg Chris Corne's 1999
volume "From French to Creole. The development of new vernaculars in
the French colonial world"). Excellent textual work on Jamaican was
done by Barbara Lalla and Jean D'Costa in their Language in Exile
(1990) and Voices in Exile (1989). Mikael Parkvall's just-completed
survey of African influences for the Caribbean is also very useful.It
can be found at the Battlebridge Publishers website along with other
influential works.
	(Hungry for data? look for the forthcoming "Comparative Creole
Syntax: Parallel Outlines of 18 Creole Grammars" ed. by John Holm and
myself, http://www.battlebridge.com/Books/ComparativeCreoleSyntax.htm)
	These sorts of questions are discussed on the CreoLIST
(CreoLIST at ling.su.se), run from Parkvall's compendious website:
http://www.ling.su.se/Creole/.
	There will be a session at the upcoming Bristol conference ISB3
(3rd Int'l Symposium on Bilingualism) on "Second language acquisition
and pidginization/creolization", organized by Silvia Kouwenberg and
myself, with papers by Hudson, Siegel, Baker, and others; for anyone
who might be attending, it's #22 on Wed 18th April.
http://www.uwe.ac.uk/facults/les/research/bilingual/frames.html

	--peter p.--

Prof. Peter L. Patrick
Dept. of Language & Linguistics
University of Essex
Wivenhoe Park
COLCHESTER CO4 3SQ
U.K.

Tel: (from within UK) 01206.87.2088
    (from outside UK) +44.1206.87.2088
Fax: (as above)           1206.87.2198
Email: patrickp at essex.ac.uk
Web: http://privatewww.essex.ac.uk/~patrickp