Road sign in Guadeloupe Creole meaning Slow down. Children are playing here. The literal translation is "Lift your foot [from the accelerator]. There are children playing here".
A creole language, or simply creole, is a stable natural language
that develops from the simplifying and mixing of different languages
into a new one within a fairly brief period of time: often, a pidgin evolved into a full-fledged language. While the concept is similar to that of a mixed or hybrid language,
creoles are often characterized by a tendency to systematize their
inherited grammar (e.g., by eliminating irregularities or regularizing
the conjugation of otherwise irregular verbs). Like any language,
creoles are characterized by a consistent system of grammar, possess large stable vocabularies, and are acquired by children as their native language. These three features distinguish a creole language from a pidgin.
Creolistics, or creology, is the study of creole languages and, as such, is a subfield of linguistics. Someone who engages in this study is called a creolist.
The precise number of creole languages is not known, particularly
as many are poorly attested or documented. About one hundred creole
languages have arisen since 1500. These are predominantly based on
European languages such as English and French due to the European Age of Discovery and the Atlantic slave trade that arose at that time. With the improvements in ship-building and navigation,
traders had to learn to communicate with people around the world, and
the quickest way to do this was to develop a pidgin, or simplified
language suited to the purpose; in turn, full creole languages developed
from these pidgins. In addition to creoles that have European languages
as their base, there are, for example, creoles based on Arabic,
Chinese, and Malay. The creole with the largest number of speakers is Haitian Creole, with almost ten million native speakers, followed by Tok Pisin with about 4 million, most of whom are second-language speakers.
The lexicon
(or, roughly, the base or essential vocabulary – such as "say" but not
"said, tell, told") of a creole language is largely supplied by the
parent languages, particularly that of the most dominant group in the
social context of the creole's construction. However, there are often
clear phonetic and semantic
shifts. On the other hand, the grammar that has evolved often has new
or unique features that differ substantially from those of the parent
languages.
Overview
A
creole is believed to arise when a pidgin, developed by adults for use
as a second language, becomes the native and primary language of their
children – a process known as nativization. The pidgin-creole life cycle was studied by American linguist Robert Hall in the 1960s.
Some linguists, such as Derek Bickerton, posit that creoles share
more grammatical similarities with each other than with the languages
from which they are phylogenetically derived. However, there is no widely accepted theory that would account for those perceived similarities. Moreover, no grammatical feature has been shown to be specific to creoles.
Many of the creoles known today arose in the last 500 years, as a
result of the worldwide expansion of European maritime power and trade
in the Age of Discovery, which led to extensive European colonial empires.
Like most non-official and minority languages, creoles have generally
been regarded in popular opinion as degenerate variants or dialects
of their parent languages. Because of that prejudice, many of the
creoles that arose in the European colonies, having been stigmatized,
have become extinct.
However, political and academic changes in recent decades have improved
the status of creoles, both as living languages and as object of
linguistic study. Some creoles have even been granted the status of official or semi-official languages of particular political territories.
Linguists now recognize that creole formation is a universal
phenomenon, not limited to the European colonial period, and an
important aspect of language evolution (see Vennemann (2003)). For example, in 1933 Sigmund Feist postulated a creole origin for the Germanic languages.
Other scholars, such as Salikoko Mufwene,
argue that pidgins and creoles arise independently under different
circumstances, and that a pidgin need not always precede a creole nor a
creole evolve from a pidgin. Pidgins, according to Mufwene, emerged in
trade colonies among "users who preserved their native vernaculars for
their day-to-day interactions." Creoles, meanwhile, developed in
settlement colonies in which speakers of a European language, often indentured servants whose language would be far from the standard in the first place, interacted extensively with non-European slaves, absorbing certain words and features from the slaves' non-European native languages, resulting in a heavily basilectalized
version of the original language. These servants and slaves would come
to use the creole as an everyday vernacular, rather than merely in
situations in which contact with a speaker of the superstrate was
necessary.
History
Etymology
The English term creole comes from French créole, which is cognate with the Spanish term criollo and Portuguese crioulo, all descending from the verb criar ('to breed' or 'to raise'), all coming from Latin creare ('to produce, create').
The specific sense of the term was coined in the 16th and 17th century,
during the great expansion in European maritime power and trade that
led to the establishment of European colonies in other continents.
The terms criollo and crioulo were originally
qualifiers used throughout the Spanish and Portuguese colonies to
distinguish the members of an ethnic group who were born and raised
locally from those who immigrated as adults. They were most commonly
applied to nationals of the colonial power, e.g. to distinguish españoles criollos (people born in the colonies from Spanish ancestors) from españoles peninsulares (those born in the Iberian Peninsula, i.e. Spain). However, in Brazil the term was also used to distinguish between negros crioulos (blacks born in Brazil from African slave ancestors) and negros africanos (born in Africa). Over time, the term and its derivatives (Creole, Kréol, Kreyol, Kreyòl, Kriol, Krio,
etc.) lost the generic meaning and became the proper name of many
distinct ethnic groups that developed locally from immigrant
communities. Originally, therefore, the term "creole language" meant the
speech of any of those creole peoples.
Geographic distribution
As
a consequence of colonial European trade patterns, most of the known
European-based creole languages arose in coastal areas in the equatorial
belt around the world, including the Americas, western Africa, Goa along the west of India, and along Southeast Asia up to Indonesia, Singapore, Macau, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Malaysia, Mauritius, Reunion, Seychelles and Oceania.
Many of those creoles are now extinct, but others still survive in the Caribbean, the north and east coasts of South America (The Guyanas), western Africa, Australia, and in the Indian Ocean.
Atlantic Creole languages are based on European languages with elements from African and possibly Amerindian languages. Indian Ocean Creole languages are based on European languages with elements from Malagasy and possibly other Asian languages. There are, however, creoles like Nubi and Sango that are derived solely from non-European languages.
Social and political status
Because
of the generally low status of the Creole peoples in the eyes of prior
European colonial powers, creole languages have generally been regarded
as "degenerate" languages, or at best as rudimentary "dialects" of the
politically dominant parent languages. Because of this, the word
"creole" was generally used by linguists in opposition to "language",
rather than as a qualifier for it.
Another factor that may have contributed to the relative neglect
of creole languages in linguistics is that they do not fit the
19th-century neogrammarian
"tree model" for the evolution of languages, and its postulated
regularity of sound changes (these critics including the earliest
advocates of the wave model, Johannes Schmidt and Hugo Schuchardt, the forerunners of modern sociolinguistics). This controversy of the late 19th century profoundly shaped modern approaches to the comparative method in historical linguistics and in creolistics.
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Haitian Creole in use at car rental counter, USA
Because of social, political, and academic changes brought on by
decolonization in the second half of the 20th century, creole languages
have experienced revivals in the past few decades. They are increasingly
being used in print and film, and in many cases, their community
prestige has improved dramatically. In fact, some have been
standardized, and are used in local schools and universities around the
world.
At the same time, linguists have begun to come to the realization that
creole languages are in no way inferior to other languages. They now use
the term "creole" or "creole language" for any language suspected to
have undergone creolization, terms that now imply no geographic restrictions nor ethnic prejudices.
Creolization is widely thought to be a leading influence on the evolution of African-American English
(AAE). The controversy surrounding African-American Vernacular English
(AAVE) in the American education system, as well as the past use of the
word ebonics to refer to it, mirrors the historical negative connotation of the word creole.
Classification
Historic classification
According to their external history, four types of creoles have been distinguished: plantation creoles, fort creoles, maroon creoles, and creolized pidgins. By the very nature of a creole language, the phylogenetic classification of a particular creole usually is a matter of dispute; especially when the pidgin
precursor and its parent tongues (which may have been other creoles or
pidgins) have disappeared before they could be documented.
Phylogenetic classification traditionally relies on inheritance
of the lexicon, especially of "core" terms, and of the grammar
structure. However, in creoles, the core lexicon often has mixed origin,
and the grammar is largely original. For these reasons, the issue of
which language is the parent of a creole – that is, whether a
language should be classified as a "French creole", "Portuguese creole"
or "English creole", etc. – often has no definitive answer, and can
become the topic of long-lasting controversies, where social prejudices
and political considerations may interfere with scientific discussion.
Substrate and superstrate
The terms substrate and superstrate are often used when two languages interact. However, the meaning of these terms is reasonably well-defined only in second language acquisition or language replacement
events, when the native speakers of a certain source language (the
substrate) are somehow compelled to abandon it for another target
language (the superstrate).
The outcome of such an event is that erstwhile speakers of the
substrate will use some version of the superstrate, at least in more
formal contexts. The substrate may survive as a second language for
informal conversation. As demonstrated by the fate of many replaced
European languages (such as Etruscan, Breton, and Venetian),
the influence of the substrate on the official speech is often limited
to pronunciation and a modest number of loanwords. The substrate might
even disappear altogether without leaving any trace.
However, there is dispute over the extent to which the terms
"substrate" and "superstrate" are applicable to the genesis or the
description of creole languages.
The language replacement model may not be appropriate in creole
formation contexts, where the emerging language is derived from multiple
languages without any one of them being imposed as a replacement for
any other. The substratum-superstratum distinction becomes awkward when multiple superstrata must be assumed (such as in Papiamentu),
when the substratum cannot be identified, or when the presence or the
survival of substratal evidence is inferred from mere typological
analogies.
On the other hand, the distinction may be meaningful when the
contributions of each parent language to the resulting creole can be
shown to be very unequal, in a scientifically meaningful way. In the literature on Atlantic Creoles, "superstrate" usually means European and "substrate" non-European or African.
Decreolization
Since
creole languages rarely attain official status, the speakers of a fully
formed creole may eventually feel compelled to conform their speech to
one of the parent languages. This decreolization process typically brings about a post-creole speech continuum characterized by large-scale variation and hypercorrection in the language.
It is generally acknowledged that creoles have a simpler grammar
and more internal variability than older, more established languages. However, these notions are occasionally challenged.
Phylogenetic or typological
comparisons of creole languages have led to divergent conclusions.
Similarities are usually higher among creoles derived from related
languages, such as the languages of Europe, than among broader groups that include also creoles based on non-Indo-European languages (like Nubi or Sango). French-based creoles
in turn are more similar to each other (and to varieties of French)
than to other European-based creoles. It was observed, in particular,
that definite articles are mostly prenominal in English-based creole languages and English whereas they are generally postnominal in French creoles and in the variety of French that was exported to what is now Quebec in the 17th and 18th century.
Moreover, the European languages which gave rise to the creole
languages of European colonies all belong to the same subgroup of
Western Indo-European and have highly convergent grammars; to the point that Whorf joined them into a single Standard Average European language group.
French and English are particularly close, since English, through
extensive borrowing, is typologically closer to French than to other
Germanic languages.
Thus the claimed similarities between creoles may be mere consequences
of similar parentage, rather than characteristic features of all
creoles.
Creole genesis
There are a variety of theories on the origin of creole languages, all of which attempt to explain the similarities among them. 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 in opposition to traditional languages (which is
McWhorter's 2018 main point) or whether in that regard creole languages develop by the same mechanisms as any other languages (e.g. DeGraff 2001).
Theories focusing on European input
Monogenetic theory of pidgins and creoles
The monogenetic theory of pidgins and creoles hypothesizes that they are all derived from a single Mediterranean Lingua Franca, via a West African Pidgin Portuguese of the seventeenth century, relexified in the so-called "slave factories" 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, Whinnom, Thompson, and Stewart. However, this hypothesis is no longer actively investigated, as there are examples of creoles, such as Hezhou, which evidently have nothing to do with the Lingua Franca.
Domestic origin hypothesis
Proposed by 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 creoles are the foremost candidates to being the outcome of "normal" linguistic change and their creoleness to be sociohistoric in nature and relative to their colonial origin. Within this theoretical framework, a French creole is a language phylogenetically based on French, more specifically on a 17th-century koiné French extant in Paris,
the French Atlantic harbours, 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 isolates in other parts of the Americas. Approaches under this hypothesis are compatible with gradualism in change and models of 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.
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, 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:
- There are a great many grammatical similarities amongst pidgins and creoles despite having very different lexifier languages.
- Grammatical simplification can be explained by other processes, i.e. the innate grammar of Bickerton's language bioprogram theory.
- 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. Bloomfield (1933)
points out that FT is often based on the imitation of the incorrect
speech of the non-natives, that is the pidgin. 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 as determiners of demonstrative pronouns, adjectives or adverbs;
- placement of a negative particle in preverbal position;
- use of adverbs to express 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.
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.
The problem with this explanation is that the postulated substrate
languages differ amongst themselves and with creoles in meaningful ways.
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. 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 Mufwene (1993); for a more recent view, 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 McWhorter (1999).
Gradualist and developmental hypotheses
One class of creoles might start as pidgins,
rudimentary second languages improvised for use between speakers of two
or more non-intelligible native languages. Keith Whinnom (in 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 inflections,
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.
Universalist approaches
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, first-language learning driven by universal process, or a general process of discourse organization. Bickerton's language bioprogram theory, proposed in the 1980s, remains the main universalist theory.
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 languages; 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.
Recent studies
The
last decades have seen the emergence of some new questions about the
nature of creoles: in particular, the question of how complex creoles
are and the question of whether creoles are indeed "exceptional"
languages.
Creole prototype
Some features that distinguish creole languages from noncreoles have been proposed (by Bickerton, for example).
John McWhorter has proposed the following list of features to indicate a creole prototype:
- a lack of inflectional morphology (other than at most two or three inflectional affixes),
- a lack of tone on monosyllabic words, and
- a lack of semantically opaque word formation.
McWhorter hypothesizes that these three properties exactly
characterize a creole. However, the creole prototype hypothesis has been
disputed:
- Henri Wittmann (1999) and David Gil (2001) argue that languages such as Manding, Soninke, Magoua French and Riau Indonesian have all these three features but show none of the sociohistoric traits of creole languages.
- Others (see overview in Muysken & Law (2001) ) have demonstrated creoles that serve as counterexamples to McWhorter's hypothesis – the existence of inflectional morphology in Berbice Dutch Creole, for example, or tone in Papiamentu.
Exceptionalism
Building
up on this discussion, McWhorter proposed that "the world's simplest
grammars are Creole grammars", claiming that every noncreole language's
grammar is at least as complex as any creole language's grammar. Gil has replied that Riau Indonesian has a simpler grammar than Saramaccan, the language McWhorter uses as a showcase for his theory. The same objections were raised by Wittmann in his 1999 debate with McWhorter.
The lack of progress made in defining creoles in terms of their morphology and syntax has led scholars such as Robert Chaudenson, Salikoko Mufwene, Michel DeGraff, and Henri Wittmann to question the value of creole as a typological class; they argue that creoles are structurally no different from any other language, and that creole is a sociohistoric concept – not a linguistic one – encompassing displaced populations and slavery.
Thomason & Kaufman (1988)
spell out the idea of creole exceptionalism, claiming that creole
languages are an instance of nongenetic language change due to language
shift with abnormal transmission. Gradualists question the abnormal
transmission of languages in a creole setting and argue that the
processes which created today's creole languages are no different from
universal patterns of language change.
Given these objections to creole as a concept, DeGraff and others question the idea that creoles are exceptional in any meaningful way. Additionally, Mufwene (2002) argues that some Romance languages are potential creoles but that they are not considered as such by linguists because of a historical bias against such a view.
Controversy
Creolistics investigates the relative creoleness of languages suspected to be creoles, what Schneider (1990) calls "the cline of creoleness." No consensus exists among creolists as to whether the nature of creoleness is prototypical
or merely evidence indicative of a set of recognizable phenomena seen
in association with little inherent unity and no underlying single
cause.
"Creole", a sociohistoric concept
Creoleness is at the heart of the controversy with John McWhorter and Mikael Parkvall opposing Henri Wittmann (1999) and Michel DeGraff.
In McWhorter's definition, creoleness is a matter of degree, in that
prototypical creoles exhibit all of the three traits he proposes to
diagnose creoleness: little or no inflection, little or no tone, transparent derivation; In McWhorter's view, less prototypical creoles depart somewhat from this prototype. Along these lines, McWhorter defines Haitian Creole, exhibiting all three traits, as "the most creole of creoles." A creole like Palenquero,
on the other hand, would be less prototypical, given the presence of
inflection to mark plural, past, gerund, and participle forms. Objections to the McWhorter-Parkvall hypotheses point out that these typological parameters of creoleness can be found in languages such as Manding, Sooninke, and Magoua French which are not considered creoles. Wittmann and DeGraff come to the conclusion that efforts to conceive a yardstick for measuring creoleness in any scientifically meaningful way have failed so far. Gil (2001) comes to the same conclusion for Riau Indonesian. Muysken & Law (2001) have adduced evidence as to creole languages which respond unexpectedly to one of McWhorter's three features (for example, inflectional morphology in Berbice Dutch Creole, tone in Papiamentu). Mufwene (2000) and Wittmann (2001)
have argued further that Creole languages are structurally no different
from any other language, and that Creole is in fact a sociohistoric
concept (and not a linguistic one), encompassing displaced population
and slavery. DeGraff & Walicek (2005) discuss creolistics in relation to colonialist
ideologies, rejecting the notion that Creoles can be responsibly
defined in terms of specific grammatical characteristics. They discuss
the history of linguistics and nineteenth-century work that argues for
the consideration of the sociohistorical contexts in which Creole
languages emerged.
"Creole", a genuine linguistic concept
On
the other hand, McWhorter points out that in languages such as Bambara,
essentially a dialect of Manding, there is ample non-transparent
derivation, and that there is no reason to suppose that this would be
absent in close relatives such as Mandinka itself.
Moreover, he also observes that Soninke has what all linguists would
analyze as inflections, and that current lexicography of Soninke is too
elementary for it to be stated with authority that it does not have
non-transparent derivation.
Meanwhile, Magoua French, as described by Henri Wittmann, retains some
indication of grammatical gender, which qualifies as inflection, and it
also retains non-transparent derivation. Michel DeGraff's argument has been that Haitian Creole retains non-transparent derivation from French.
To the defense of DeGraff and Wittmann it must be said that
McWhorter's 2005 book is a collection of previously published papers and
that it contains nothing on "defining creole", Manding, Sooninke or
Magoua that wasn't already known when DeGraff and Wittmann published
their critiques as can be seen from their published debate.
As it is, McWhorter's book does not offer anything new by the way of
analysis of Manding, Soninke, or Magoua that wasn't already debated on
in his exchange with Wittmann on Creolist. The issues in question are,
at this point, unresolved as to sustaining McWhorter's hypotheses in any
significant way though DeGraff's 2005 contribution addresses their
weaknesses as far as Haitian Creole is concerned adding new evidence
against. The only conclusion possibly so far as the typological
differences between Manding, Soninke, Magoua and Haitian are concerned
is that their comparative data do not confirm McWhorter's yardstick
approach to defining creole.
Proposed synthesis
The
answer might be that creoleness is better described and referred to as a
syndrome. In some cases, the modified source language might be the substrate language when warranted by a homogeneous substrate. In other cases, the modified source language clearly is what creolists identify as the superstrate language' and in still other cases, no single source language might be identifiable.
The same approach must be applied to identifying individual features
as inherited or non-inherited and to distilling the defining grounds
which separate creole languages from mixed languages such as Michif, especially when relexification is somehow claimed to be a moving factor.
The answer might also be, however, that creole languages (i.e.
like Haitian Creole) are indeed a unique in terms of the perspective
that they offer on the human language competence in terms of the nature
of their grammars though there have been no new responses to the
counter-claims of DeGraff and Wittmann that would warrant the reopening
of the debate as for now. However, Ansaldo, Matthews & Lim (2007)
critically assesses the proposal that creole languages exist as a
homogeneous structural type with shared and/ or peculiar origins.
Though the call for a sane approach to creolistics goes back to Givón (1979), the first unbiased overview of the scientifically meaningful characteristics of creole languages must go to the credit of Arends, Muysken & Smith (1995) . In their account of approaches to creole genesis, they group theories into four categories:
- Theories focusing on the European input
- Theories focusing on the non-European input
- Gradualist and developmental hypotheses
- Universalist approaches
The authors also confine Pidgins and mixed languages into separate chapters outside this scheme whether or not relexification come into the picture.
