Elaborative stages of SLA and creole formation

4. The elaboration of creole grammar.

Scholars have traditionally referred to the elaborative stages of creole formation as “creolization”, which Hymes (1971:84) described as “that complex process of sociolinguistic change comprising expansion in inner form, with convergence, in the context of extension in use.” Unfortunately, researchers have used the term “creolization” in so many different senses that its usefulness is now in question. Moreover, the term implies some unitary process of change that is quite at odds with the diversity and complexities of change involved in creole formation. I will therefore refer to the elaboration of creole grammar as “restructuring,” in the sense intended by researchers in first and second language acquisition.

With respect to first language acquisition, van Buren (1996:190) defines restructuring as “discarding old grammars for new ones.” He adds, “As soon as new relevant data are encountered, the current grammar is restructured to accommodate the new input” Referring to SLA, Lalleman (1996:31) defines it as “the process of imposing organization and structure upon the information that has been acquired” [as new input is encountered – DW]. Note that this is very different from the sense in which creolists sometimes use the term, viz, to refer to restructuring of the lexifier language. This implies that creole creators began with the lexifier, modifying it over time. For the same reason, restructuring should not be equated with terms like “basilectalization” (Mufwene ???), which may be more appropriately used to refer to the gradual changes we observe in the community language over time, than to the processes that lead to such changes.

It is important once more to emphasize that the process of creole formation is both an individual and a community phenomenon. The restructuring process goes on primarily in individual learners’ attempts to construct and expand their IL system. The innovations introduced by these learners then become available for selection as part of the community’s language. Consequently, creole formation must be seen as a product both of individual grammar construction (I-language), and of the spread of features across individual grammars, yielding a shared community vernacular (E-language). Our focus here is primarily on the first of these, the ways in which individuals create I-languages.

Let us first deal briefly with the role of superstrate input in the expansion of creole grammar, before we examine the role played by substrate influence and internal innovation in that process. We will also consider the similarities between SLA and creole formation in the way these factors come into play in the elaboration of learners’ IL systems.

4.1. Restructuring, target language and superstrate input.

The claim made by Chaudenson and others to the effect that creoles “began” as second language varieties (i.e., close replicas) of the superstrate and gradually diverged from them appears to be accurate, if we compare the starting point of the contact situation with its eventual outcome. But, from the perspective of the act of creole creation itself, this claim appears to be somewhat misleading. If, as we argued earlier, every individual’s acquisition of a TL begins with a highly reduced system – a basic variety, then it makes more sense to say that such reduced systems were the true starting point of creole formation, just as they are for SLA. The nature of the continuing input in each case would then determine the nature of the outcome. Moreover, one has to distinguish the available input from the kinds of intake individual learners incorporate into their developing IL systems.

Distinctions such as these may help resolve some of the controversy regarding the role of the superstrate in creole formation. For instance, the long standing controversy concerning the true “target” in creole formation stems in part from the tendency to equate “target” only with the superstrate, in a way analogous to more usual SLA. Such a position may be a quite reasonable one to take for some cases of creole formation. As noted earlier, in some cases, first and/or second language varieties of the superstrate became consolidated among a significant portion of the population, and continued to be available as targets of acquisition. Hence the resulting creoles were closely akin to dialects of the superstrates, as noted earlier for Barbados and Reunion.

But in other cases, such targets were either not available, or changed drastically over time. For example, in the case of Hawai‘i Creole English, there appears to be agreement that the primary input came from Hawai‘i Pidgin English, many of the characteristics of which persist in the creole. In this case, expansion of pidgin into creole involved use of L1 strategies by learners of Chinese, Portuguese and other languages. Hence there is ample evidence of substrate influence from these languages on HCE (Siegel 2000). On the other hand, the evidence from Haitian Creole suggests that many of its features are modeled on regional French dialects, though various kinds of simplification and reanalysis have occurred. At the same time, the gradual loss of access to such regional dialects, and the continuing process of SLA by succeeding generations of Africans in Haiti, created the conditions for significant substratum influence to affect the evolution of HC.

The circumstances in which Surinamese creoles like Sranan Tongo arose are somewhat different from both of the scenarios just discussed, though they resemble the HCE case more. The very early withdrawal of the vast majority of English-speaking planters and their slaves within roughly thirty years of the colony’s inception in 1651 meant that the major input to new arrivals from Africa after 1680 came from pidginized or highly changed second language varieties of English (Migge 1998). Hence, in elaborating early creole grammar, individual learners had to draw heavily on their L1 knowledge as well as the internal resources of the IL system itself. This in part explains why the Surinamese creoles diverge so radically from their original English sources. In short, what distinguishes Haiti from Suriname seems to be the continued availability of lexifier language models (including close approximations acquired by many Africans) in the former colony, by contrast with the early withdrawal of such models in Suriname.

For reasons such as these, we must be cautious about the notion that creoles like Sranan Tongo, or for that matter Haitian Creole, are instances of targeted SLA in the usual sense of that term. Such a designation implies that the creators of creoles were not only targeting (native varieties of) French, English, etc., but had adequate access to them. As Arends (1995), Baker (1990), Singler (1990) and others have argued, such assumptions are questionable. It would seem instead that most slaves who were transported to these colonies, especially at the height of the plantation system, were attempting to learn an already established contact variety quite distinct from the lexifier languages.

In many if not most cases of creole formation, the nature and types of superstrate input changed over time, as successive waves of new learners created their own L2 versions of existing targets. In such cases, if we were to freeze the contact situation at different points in time, we would find quite different scenarios, with different targets, and hence differences in the superstrate-derived input. This presumably is what led Baker (1990) to argue that, in the formation of many creoles and “expanded” pidgins, the true target was not the superstrate, but the emergent contact variety itself. From the perspective taken here, this position is not incompatible with the view that creoles were always the result of second language acquisition.

4.2. Restructuring and substrate input in creole formation.

The less creole creators could continue to draw on superstrate input as they elaborated their new language, the more they relied on L1 knowledge. The role of L1 or substrate influence in creole formation has been convincingly demonstrated in many recent studies. In the case of the Surinamese creoles, studies by Arends (1986), McWhorter (1992), Sebba (1987) and Smith (1996) have argued for Kwa, especially Gbe, substrate influence on serial verb constructions. Research by Bruyn (1994) points to influence from Gbe (and to some extent Kikongo) on complex prepositional phrases in Sranan. Finally, Migge has argued for Gbe influence on various Paamaka constructions, including “give”-type SVC’s (1998), attributive (property) predication (2000) and the copula system (to appear). There are many similar studies that argue convincingly for significant substrate input to creole formation.

Strong syntactic parallels like these led Sylvain (1936) to assert that Haitian Creole was a language with Ewe grammar and French words, thugh that claim has been called into question (Chaudenson 2002). More recently, Lefebvre, Lumsden and their associates have argued that most of Haitian Creole grammar derives more or less directly from Gbe languages such as Fongbe (Lefebvre & Lumsden 1994). Their “Relexification Hypothesis” of HC genesis has been challenged for (among other things) its failure to take account of all substrate inputs as well as the significant contribution of provincial French dialects to the formation of HC (Chaudenson 2002).

Still, the evidence presented by studies like these suggests that, in general, creoles do preserve elements of substrate grammar in varying degrees, though they hardly replicate such elements exactly.

4.3. Restructuring and internal developments.

The elaboration of early creole grammar, like that of developing interlanguage and expanding pidgins, involves innovations driven by tendencies already present in the developing system. For instance, Kouwenberg (1996), while acknowledging Kalabari (Eastern Ijo) as the source of several aspects of Berbice Dutch grammar, also points to several others that cannot be attribute to either Ijo or Dutch influence. These include invariant SVO order, preverbal auxiliaries and negative marker, predicate cleft, and a serial verb construction in which a verb “say” introduces complement clauses. Migge (2003) also discusses several aspects of the copula system of Paamaka which appear to be innovations in the creole, though much the system seems to be modeled on that of the Gbe substrates.

Innovative features like these appear to arise from processes of internal restructuring similar to those found in developing IL and in the elaboration of pidgins. In all cases, speakers exploit intake from both L1 and L2 sources to expand their grammar, and this often leads to new structures peculiar to the developing I-language. Such tendencies can be seen at work even in “prototypical” pidgins, as we saw in the case of Russenorsk earlier. Developments of a similar kind will be discussed below, in relation to the emergence of TMA and other functional categories in creoles.

The overview of creole formation that we have given so far makes it clear that this process was a complex one, involving a variety of linguistic inputs and strategies of restructuring. In the following sections, I examine these strategies in more detail.

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