Summary
Highlights
Leah from De La Salle University comments on the Chavacano language in the Philippines, a Spanish-based Creole that developed from interaction between Spanish speakers and locals. Ansaldo acknowledges Chavacano as a very interesting and well-known variety in the Philippines.
Professor Ansaldo introduces his talk by stating his controversial claim: rethinking the issue of Creole evolution. He identifies "Creole exceptionalism" as the set of theories that argue for the special nature of Creole languages, whether in how they develop or their grammatical features. He suggests current evidence contradicts these ideas.
Ansaldo provides a brief background on Creole languages, noting their development between the 16th and 19th centuries during the transatlantic slave trade. He highlights the role of racist ideologies that underpinned this period, asserting that these ideologies influenced how the languages of enslaved populations were perceived and described by colonial settlers, leading to theories of "imperfect acquisition" or "simplification."
Ansaldo argues that exceptionalist ideas are rooted in white racist ideologies and colonial assumptions of black inferiority, not empirical observation. He points out that classical Creole literature often includes concepts like 'imperfect acquisition,' 'broken transmission,' and 'pigeonization and simplification,' all implying a deficiency in Creole development.
He examines the context in which Creoles evolved, describing them as developing in linguistically diverse environments where West African languages mixed with various colonial languages. These languages had unequal power positions and interacted informally. Typologically, African slaves primarily spoke isolating languages from the Kwa family, while colonial languages were Germanic and Romance. The speaker emphasizes that Creole features can be traced back to either the colonial languages (lexical features) or the substrate languages (grammatical features).
Ansaldo stresses the lack of empirical evidence to support exceptionalist theories. He notes that no Creole language has been longitudinally documented, making claims about 'broken transmission' largely conjectural. He refutes the theory of a simple pidgin-to-Creole development (Derek Bickerton's theory) and states there's no neurolinguistic evidence that morphological richness equates to cognitive complexity. Conversely, there is evidence that grammars are robustly transmitted in Creole settings.
He draws a comparison between Creole formations in the Caribbean and Southeast Asia. Despite similar colonial dynamics and isolating substrate languages in Southeast Asia, there are fewer English-based Creoles. The crucial difference, he argues, is the formal context of English transmission through schools in Southeast Asia, compared to the informal, diverse language interactions in the Caribbean that led to new grammatical systems.
Ansaldo concludes that Creole evolution is not exceptional but is explainable by informal language transmission in highly diverse settings, leading to unique and creative grammatical systems. He calls for a decolonization of Creole studies, acknowledging and moving away from its origins steeped in colonial and racist assumptions. He encourages asking for hard evidence and moving beyond outdated biases in language understanding.
An audience member, Kingsley from the University of Nigeria, raises a question about the ideological implications of using terms like "English Creoles," given that English is mainly a lexifier and contributes less to the underlying structure. Ansaldo agrees, stating it's a continuing legacy of colonial approaches to language classification. He advocates for terms that give Creoles their own identity, like Singlish or Sranan, free from colonial typology.
Kingsley also asks about pidginization and the development of West African pidgins like Nigerian Pidgin. Ansaldo clarifies that many languages containing the word "pidgin" today are not strictly pidgins in the limited, function-specific sense linguists use. He explains that West African pidgins and languages like Tok Pisin have a history where a pidgin contributed alongside other languages to form fully-fledged communication systems.
Ansaldo confirms that there is no direct evidence of a pidgin developing into a Creole language as a linear process. He discusses Derek Bickerton's discredited theory regarding Hawaiian Creole English and how later research by Siegel and Robertson showed that many languages, not just one pidgin, contributed to its formation.
A final question from the audience relates to Irish English and the idea that all Creoles are simply 'languages' (with a capital L), suggesting that a generative perspective could overcome the exceptionalism argument. Ansaldo agrees, referencing Michelle DeGraff's work, which posits a universal linguistic capacity in all humans. He adds that rather than assuming language is transmitted as a whole, we should recognize that across societies, languages are constantly in multilingual interaction, with speakers creatively adapting and reworking features, which is especially evident in highly diverse and unconstrained settings.