1839 – Trilingual Chinese–Malay–English text – Malay was the lingua franca across the Strait of Malacca, including the coasts of the Malay Peninsula (now in Malaysia) and the eastern coast of Sumatra (now in Indonesia), and has been established as a native language of part of western coastal Sarawak and West Kalimantan in Borneo.
A lingua franca (/ˌlɪŋɡwəˈfræŋkə/(listen); lit.'Frankish tongue'; for plurals see § Usage notes), also known as a bridge language, common language, trade language, auxiliary language, vehicular language, or link language, is a language or dialect systematically used to make communication possible between groups of people who do not share a native language or dialect, particularly when it is a third language that is distinct from both of the speakers' native languages.
Lingua francas have developed around the world throughout human
history, sometimes for commercial reasons (so-called "trade languages"
facilitated trade), but also for cultural, religious, diplomatic and
administrative convenience, and as a means of exchanging information
between scientists and other scholars of different nationalities. The term is taken from the medieval Mediterranean Lingua Franca, an Italian-based pidgin language used especially by traders in the Mediterranean Basin from the 11th to the 19th centuries. A world language – a language spoken internationally and by many people – is a language that may function as a global lingua franca.
Characteristics
Any language regularly used for communication between people who do not share a native language is a lingua franca. Lingua franca is a functional term, independent of any linguistic history or language structure.
Pidgins are therefore lingua francas; creoles and arguably mixed languages
may similarly be used for communication between language groups. But
lingua franca is equally applicable to a non-creole language native to
one nation (often a colonial power) learned as a second language and used for communication between diverse language communities in a colony or former colony.
Lingua francas are often pre-existing languages with native
speakers, but they can also be pidgin or creole languages developed for
that specific region or context. Pidgin languages are rapidly developed
and simplified combinations of two or more established languages, while
creoles are generally viewed as pidgins that have evolved into fully
complex languages in the course of adaptation by subsequent generations.
Pre-existing lingua francas such as French are used to facilitate
intercommunication in large-scale trade or political matters, while
pidgins and creoles often arise out of colonial situations and a
specific need for communication between colonists and indigenous
peoples. Pre-existing lingua francas are generally widespread, highly developed languages with many native speakers. Conversely, pidgin languages are very simplified means of
communication, containing loose structuring, few grammatical rules, and
possessing few or no native speakers. Creole languages are more
developed than their ancestral pidgins, utilizing more complex
structure, grammar, and vocabulary, as well as having substantial
communities of native speakers.
Whereas a vernacular language is the native language of a specific geographical community, a lingua franca is used beyond the boundaries of its original community, for trade, religious, political, or academic reasons. For example, English is a vernacular in the United Kingdom but it is used as a lingua franca in the Philippines, alongside Filipino. Arabic, French, Mandarin Chinese, and Russian serve similar purposes as industrial and educational lingua francas across regional and national boundaries.
Even though they are used as bridge languages, international auxiliary languages such as Esperanto have not had a great degree of adoption, so they are not described as lingua francas.
Etymology
The term "lingua franca" derives from Mediterranean Lingua Franca (also known as Sabir), the pidgin language that people around the Levant and the eastern Mediterranean Sea used as the main language of commerce and diplomacy from late medieval times to the 18th century, most notably during the Renaissance era.
During that period, a simplified version of mainly Italian in the
eastern and Spanish in the western Mediterranean that incorporated many loan words from Greek, the Slavic languages, Arabic, and Turkish came to be widely used as the "lingua franca" of the region, although some scholars claim that the Mediterranean Lingua Franca was just poorly used Italian.
In Lingua Franca (the specific language), lingua is from the Italian for "a language." Franca is related to Greek Φρᾰ́γκοι (Phránkoi) and Arabic إِفْرَنْجِي (ʾifranjiyy) as well as the equivalent Italian—in all three cases, the literal sense is "Frankish", leading to the direct translation: "language of the Franks". During the late Byzantine Empire, "Franks" was a term that applied to all Western Europeans.
Through changes of the term in literature, "lingua franca" has
come to be interpreted as a general term for pidgins, creoles, and some
or all forms of vehicular languages. This transition in meaning has been
attributed to the idea that pidgin languages only became widely known
from the 16th century on due to European colonization of continents such
as The Americas, Africa, and Asia. During this time, the need for a
term to address these pidgin languages arose, hence the shift in the
meaning of Lingua Franca from a single proper noun to a common noun
encompassing a large class of pidgin languages.
As recently as the late 20th century, some restricted the use of the generic term to mean only mixed languages that are used as vehicular languages, its original meaning.
Douglas Harper's Online Etymology Dictionary states that the term "Lingua Franca" (as the name of the particular language) was first recorded in English during the 1670s,
although an even earlier example of the use of it in English is
attested from 1632, where it is also referred to as "Bastard Spanish".
Usage notes
The
term is well established in its naturalization to English, which is why
major dictionaries do not italicize it as a "foreign" term.
Its plurals in English are lingua francas and linguae francae, with the former being first-listed or only-listed in major dictionaries.
The use of lingua francas has existed since antiquity. Latin and Koine Greek were the lingua francas of the Roman Empire and the Hellenistic culture. Akkadian (died out during Classical antiquity) and then Aramaic remained the common languages of a large part of Western Asia from several earlier empires.
The majority of pre-colonial North American nations communicated internationally using Hand Talk. Also called Prairie Sign Language, Plains Indian Sign Language, or First Nations Sign Language, this language functioned predominately—and still continues to function—as a second language within most of the (now historical) countries of the Great Plains, from Newe Segobia in the West to Anishinaabewaki in the East, down into what are now the northern states of Mexico and up into Cree Country stopping before Denendeh. The relationship remains unknown between Hand Talk and other manual Indigenous languages like Keresan Sign Language and Plateau Sign Language, the latter of which is now extinct (though Ktunaxa Sign Language is still spoken). Although unrelated, perhaps Inuit Sign Language played and continues to play a similar role across Inuit Nunangat and the various Inuitdialects. The original Hand Talk is found across Indian Country in pockets, but it has also been employed to create new or revive old languages, such as with Oneida Sign Language.
Rough territorial extent of Hand Talk (in purple) within the US and Canada
Sogdian was used to facilitate trade between those who spoke different languages along the Silk Road, which is why native speakers of Sogdian were employed as translators in Tang China. The Sogdians also ended up circulating spiritual beliefs and texts, including those of Buddhism and Christianity, thanks to their ability to communicate to many people in the region through their native language.
The Hindustani language (Hindi-Urdu) is the lingua franca of Pakistan and Northern India. Many Indian states have adopted the Three-language formula
in which students in Hindi-speaking states are taught: "(a) Hindi (with
Sanskrit as part of the composite course); (b) Urdu or any other modern
Indian language and (c) English or any other modern European language."
The order in non-Hindi speaking states is: "(a) the regional language;
(b) Hindi; (c) Urdu or any other modern Indian language excluding (a)
and (b); and (d) English or any other modern European language." Hindi has also emerged as a lingua franca for the locals of Arunachal Pradesh, a linguistically diverse state in Northeast India. It is estimated that 90 percent of the state's population knows Hindi.
Indonesian – a standardized form of the Malay language understood across the Malay world including Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei, originating from a variant spoken in Riau – is the official language and a lingua franca in Indonesia, although Javanese
has more native speakers. Still, Indonesian is the sole official
language and is spoken throughout the country even though it is the
first language of a very small minority of Indonesians.
Regions where English is a majority native language
Regions where English is official but not a majority native language
Swahili developed as a lingua franca between several Bantu-speaking tribal groups on the east coast of Africa with heavy influence from Arabic. The earliest examples of writing in Swahili are from 1711.
In the early 19th century the use of Swahili as a lingua franca moved
inland with the Arabic ivory and slave traders. It was eventually
adopted by Europeans as well during periods of colonization in the area.
German colonizers used it as the language of administration in German East Africa, later becoming Tanganyika, which influenced the choice to use it as a national language in what is now independent Tanzania. Swahili
(known to natives as Kiswahili) is currently one of the national
languages and it is taught in schools and universities in several East
African countries, thus prompting it to be regarded as a modern-day
lingua franca by many people in the region. Several Pan-African
writers and politicians have unsuccessfully called for Swahili to
become the lingua franca of Africa as a means of unifying the African
continent and overcoming the legacy of colonialism.
When the United Kingdom became a colonial power, English served as the lingua franca of the colonies of the British Empire. In the post-colonial period, some of the newly created nations which had multiple indigenous languages opted to continue using English as one of their official languages. A couple of examples of these nations are Ghana and South Africa.
Although not spoken as a first language by most African French speakers, French is a lingua franca in most Western and Central African countries and an official language of many, a remnant of French and Belgiancolonialism. These African countries and others are members of the Francophonie.
International Sign, though a pidgin language, is present at most significant international gatherings, from which interpretations of national sign languages are given, such as in LSF, ASL, BSL, Libras, or Auslan. International Sign, or IS and formerly Gestuno, interpreters can be found at many European Union parliamentary or committee sittings, during certain United Nations affaires, conducting international sporting events like the Deaflympics, in all World Federation of the Deaf
functions, and across similar settings. The language has few set
internal grammatical rules, instead co-opting national vocabularies of
the speaker and audience, and modifying the words to bridge linguistic
gaps, with heavy use of gesture and classifiers.
Hausa
can also be seen as a lingua franca because it is the language of
communication between speakers of different languages in Northern Nigeria and other West African countries, including the northern region of Ghana.
Arabic was used as a lingua franca across the Islamic empires, whose sizes necessitated the need for a common language.
In Djibouti and parts of Eritrea, both of which are countries where multiple official languages are spoken, Arabic has emerged as a lingua franca in part thanks to the population of the region being predominantly Muslim and Arabic playing a crucial role in the religion of Islam. In addition, after having fled from Eritrea due to ongoing warfare
and gone to some of the nearby Arab countries, Eritrean emigrants are
contributing to Arabic becoming a lingua franca in the region by coming
back to their homelands having picked up the Arabic language.
In Qatar,
the medical community is primarily made up of workers from countries
without English as a native language. In medical practices and
hospitals, nurses typically communicate with other professionals in
English as a lingua franca.
This occurrence has led to interest in researching the consequences and
affordances of the medical community communicating in a lingua franca.
A Guadeloupe Creole sign stating Lévé pié aw / Ni ti moun ka joué la!, meaning "Slow down / Children are 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 over ten million native speakers, followed by Tok Pisin with about 4 million, most of whom are second-language speakers.
The lexicon
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. 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 Frenchcréole, which is cognate with the Spanish termcriollo and Portuguesecrioulo, 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.
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.
Haitian Creole in use at car rental counter in the United States
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.
There is controversy about the extent to which creolization influenced the evolution of African-American Vernacular English (AAVE). In the American education system, as well as in the past, the use of the word ebonics to refer to AAVE 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 Papiamento),
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 creole languages
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 than 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 all Atlantic creoles 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 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, 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".
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.
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.
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 of demonstrative pronouns, adjectives or adverbs as determiners;
placement of a negative particle in preverbal position;
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
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 semantictransparency, first-language learning driven by universal process, or a general process of discourseorganization. Bickerton'slanguage 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,[58] 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:
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, and transparentderivation. 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 MagouaFrench 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 RiauIndonesian. 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.
This section reads like a review rather than an encyclopedic description of the subject. Please help improve this article to make it neutral in tone and meet Wikipedia's quality standards.(April 2021)
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.
Additional resources
Ansaldo, Matthews & Lim (2007)
critically assesses the proposal that creole languages exist as a
homogeneous structural type with shared and/ or peculiar origins.
A major milestone has been breached in the quest for fusion energy.
For
the first time, a fusion reaction has achieved a record 1.3 megajoule
energy output – and for the first time, exceeding energy absorbed by the
fuel used to trigger it.
Although there's still some way to go, the result represents a
significant improvement on previous yields: eight times greater than
experiments conducted just a few months prior, and 25 times greater than
experiments conducted in 2018. It's a huge achievement.
Physicists at the National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory will be submitting a paper for peer review.
"This
result is a historic step forward for inertial confinement fusion
research, opening a fundamentally new regime for exploration and the
advancement of our critical national security missions. It is also a
testament to the innovation, ingenuity, commitment and grit of this team
and the many researchers in this field over the decades who have
steadfastly pursued this goal," said Kim Budil, director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
"For
me, it demonstrates one of the most important roles of the national
labs – our relentless commitment to tackling the biggest and most
important scientific grand challenges and finding solutions where others
might be dissuaded by the obstacles."
Inertial confinement fusion
involves creating something like a tiny star. It starts with a capsule
of fuel, consisting of deuterium and tritium – heavier isotopes of
hydrogen. This fuel capsule is placed in a hollow gold chamber about the
size of a pencil eraser called a hohlraum.
Then, 192 high-powered
laser beams are blasted at the hohlraum, where they are converted into
X-rays. These X-rays implode the fuel capsule, heating and compressing
it to conditions comparable to those in the center of a star –
temperatures in excess of 100 million degrees Celsius (180 million
Fahrenheit) and pressures greater than 100 billion Earth atmospheres –
turning the fuel capsule into a tiny blob of plasma.
And, just as
hydrogen fuses into heavier elements in the heart of a main-sequence
star, so too does the deuterium and tritium in the fuel capsule. The
whole process takes place in just a few billionths of a second. The goal
is to achieve ignition – a point at which the energy generated by the
fusion process exceeds the total energy input.
The experiment, conducted on 8 August, fell just
short of that mark; the input from the lasers was 1.9 megajoules. But
it's still tremendously exciting, because according to the team's
measurements, the fuel capsule absorbed over five times less energy than
it generated in the fusion process.
This, the team said, is the
result of painstaking work refining the experiment, including the design
of the hohlraum and capsule, improved laser precision, new diagnostic
tools, and design changes to increase the speed of the implosion of the
capsule, which transfers more energy to the plasma hotspot in which
fusion takes place.
"Gaining experimental access to thermonuclear
burn in the laboratory is the culmination of decades of scientific and
technological work stretching across nearly 50 years," said Thomas Mason, director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory.
"This
enables experiments that will check theory and simulation in the high
energy density regime more rigorously than ever possible before and will
enable fundamental achievements in applied science and engineering."
The
team plans to conduct follow-up experiments to see if they can
replicate their result, and to study the process in greater detail. The
result also opens up new avenues for experimental research.
The
physicists also hope to work out how to further increase energy
efficiency. A lot of energy is lost when the laser light is converted
into X-rays inside the hohlraum; a large proportion of the laser light
instead goes into heating the hohlraum walls. Solving this problem will
take us another significant step closer to fusion energy.
In the meantime, though, the researchers are tremendously excited.
"Achieving
ignition in a laboratory remains one of the scientific grand challenges
of this era and this result is a momentous step forward towards
achieving that goal," said physicist Johan Frenje of MIT's Plasma Science and Fusion Center.
"It
also enables the exploration of a fundamentally new regime that is
extremely difficult to access experimentally, furthering our
understanding of the processes of fusion ignition and burn, which is
critical for validating and enhancing our simulation tools in support of
the stockpile stewardship.
"In addition, the result is historic
as it represents the culmination of many decades of hard work,
innovation and ingenuity, team work on a large scale, and relentless
focus on the ultimate goal."
listen); lit. 'Frankish tongue'; for plurals see § Usage notes), also known as a bridge language, common language, trade language, auxiliary language, vehicular language, or link language, is a language or dialect systematically used to make communication possible between groups of people who do not share a native language or dialect, particularly when it is a third language that is distinct from both of the speakers' native languages.
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