Creoles' Morphology

[Travis B.]

Is it possible to tell if a dialect/language is decreolized like AAVE is alleged to be

If it were, there wouldn’t be such controversy about AAVE. (Or Cocama, for that matter.)

I'm not aware of any real controversy. AAVE is descended from Southern American English and split in the 20th century. It retains many obvious and recognizable features of Southern dialects and does not have the distinctive features of US creoles like Gullah. Maybe there's an argument from the verbal system, but arguments for the creole origin of the distinctive elements of the AAVE verb phrase would have to take care to distinguish features that developed in creoles with shared inheritance of features of Southern dialects that have since been lost due to convergence with the standard among white Southerners.

One thing that should be noted is that there has been drastic changes in Southern American English dialects since the Civil War which have not been shared by AAVE, such as the loss of non-rhoticity (which is only retained by a few modern-day Southern American English varieties today but is practically universal in AAVE).

[Nortaneous]

One thing that should be noted is that there has been drastic changes in Southern American English dialects since the Civil War which have not been shared by AAVE, such as the loss of non-rhoticity (which is only retained by a few modern-day Southern American English varieties today but is practically universal in AAVE).

Not entirely universal.

[Otto Kretschmer]

Do you guys have examples of texts in English-based Carribean creoles other than Jamaican Patois? There is Jamaican wiki but it's hard to find text in Bajan, Trinidadian and other basilects.

Second - how do you think a Japanese-Korean creole might be like? Both are agglutinative and both have a large number of Sinitic loanwords so even though native wordstock is different, there are lots of common words.

[Nachtswalbe]

Here's a gullah text: https://cdstar.eva.mpg.de/bitstreams/EA ... /13_gt.pdf

[Otto Kretschmer]

Could an English-based creole with Arabic substrate have a triliteral root system and broken plurals?

[Travis B.]

Could an English-based creole with Arabic substrate have a triliteral root system and broken plurals?

Those seem like the first things that'd be thrown out.

[Arzena]

Could an English-based creole with Arabic substrate have a triliteral root system and broken plurals?

It would probably keep a limited class of common words to have broken plurals: kalb 'dog' kilāb 'dogs, rajil 'man' rijāl 'men' etc. But I would speculate that the sound plural markers - -īn and -āt and (English's contribution) -s - would come to predominate.

[Nachtswalbe]

There are several forms of pidgin and creole arabic, such as Gulf Pidgin Arabic and Juba

[Linguoboy]

Could an English-based creole with Arabic substrate have a triliteral root system and broken plurals?

Those seem like the first things that'd be thrown out.

+1

I can't even think of any creoles that regularly inflect for number in their basilectal forms. When necessary, they use a quantifier; some reduplicate. Haitian Creole postposes the 3P pronoun yo, but only after definite nouns.

[Linguoboy]

There are several forms of pidgin and creole arabic, such as Gulf Pidgin Arabic and Juba

Pluralisation in Juba Arabic, from: https://apics-online.info/surveys/64

Plural noun derivation is mainly obtained by suffixation and stress shift onto the last syllable: the suffix -át is usually affixed both to Arabic and Nilotic nouns, e.g. hayawan-át ‘animals’, nisab-át ‘bows’. Some lexemes code plurality through change of stem vowels (ablaut, or “internal plurals”), others by suppletion. Internal plurals are productive in Arabic and its dialects, but not in Juba Arabic, where they have been retained as frozen forms with a plural meaning:

múškila ‘problem’ vs. mašákil ‘problems’

béled ‘country’ vs. bilád ‘countries’

mára ‘woman’ vs. nuswán ‘women’

wéled ‘boy’ vs. iyál ‘boys’

The word nas ‘people’ is preposed to nouns to express collective plurals: nas gazál ‘(the group of) the gazelles’, nas ajús ‘(the group of) the elders’.

[Nachtswalbe]

Pluralisation in Juba Arabic, from: https://apics-online.info/surveys/64

Plural noun derivation is mainly obtained by suffixation and stress shift onto the last syllable: the suffix -át is usually affixed both to Arabic and Nilotic nouns, e.g. hayawan-át ‘animals’, nisab-át ‘bows’. Some lexemes code plurality through change of stem vowels (ablaut, or “internal plurals”), others by suppletion. Internal plurals are productive in Arabic and its dialects, but not in Juba Arabic, where they have been retained as frozen forms with a plural meaning:

múškila ‘problem’ vs. mašákil ‘problems’

béled ‘country’ vs. bilád ‘countries’

mára ‘woman’ vs. nuswán ‘women’

wéled ‘boy’ vs. iyál ‘boys’

The word nas ‘people’ is preposed to nouns to express collective plurals: nas gazál ‘(the group of) the gazelles’, nas ajús ‘(the group of) the elders’.

So -at it is.

[Otto Kretschmer]

Why do French based creoles place the definite article after the noun?

It happens both in Haitian and Mauritian creole even though both evolved separately and have different substrates - West African languages (mostly Fon) for Haitian Creole, Bhojpuri, Tamil and Malagasy for Mauritian Creole

[Kuchigakatai]

So -at it is.

I wonder whether this happened in part because -aat is the usual plural suffix of loanwords (and also verbal nouns of derived verbs) in Arabic, as in كومبيوتر kombyuutar 'computer' pl. كومبيوترات kombyutaraat. It is more basic than -iin in this respect.

(I imagine Hebrew is the opposite, with -im in loanwords?)

[MacAnDàil]

Are creoles evolving inflections through grammaticalization?

All creoles are less than 400 years old, there was not enough time for grammaticalization to take place. But it could take place and fairly quickly.

Both those statements are arguable. In fact, before Whorter came along, it was essentially an axiom of linguistics that the natural process of linguistic evolution would obscure the creole origins of a language to the point where it could no longer be distinguished from a non-creole based on strictly linguistic criteria. That is, the only way to be able to say whether a language was creole in origin is to know something about its history first. Obviously, we know little about the history of most languages in the world. And although colonialism spawned numerous creoles, it's not clear that it's the only method of creating them. A natural disaster that caused members of several different linguistic groups to band together for survival could have a similar effect. As for grammaticalisation, I'm not sure what your assertion that four centuries is "not enough time" is based on. How long did it take Romance languages to grammaticalise an innovative future tense? Or Korean?

And even after McWhorter the characteristics that McWhorter purports to be Creole are not necessarily accepted as such by all creolists, as other linguists, such as Michel DeGraff, Salikoko Mufwene and Robert Chaudenson, are not particularly convinced by McWhorter's arguments. Michel DeGraff notably cites his own native Haitian, an archetypical creole if there ever was one, to argue against McWhorter.

There are also debates among creolists as to how to use the term 'creole'. Mufwene would not use the term to refer to Tok Pisin for example, instead calling it an 'expanded pidgin'. Basically, many creolists use 'creole' to refer to those language varieties derived from European languages in former colonies, whose cultures and societies were generally also known as Creole. Whereas others use it more generally to refer to any language which resembles those.

If there are no characteristics common to all creoles and absent from all other languages, is there really any sense in expanding the defintion to include languages outside what we might call the archetypal class? Perhaps by family resemblance?

Why do French based creoles place the definite article after the noun?

It happens both in Haitian and Mauritian creole even though both evolved separately and have different substrates - West African languages (mostly Fon) for Haitian Creole, Bhojpuri, Tamil and Malagasy for Mauritian Creole

Bhojpuri is the second most common native language in Mauritius nowadays, but it wasn't at the point of founding of the colony or the following century. Most Indians in Mauritius, while now the majority, arrived after the abolition of slavery in 1835. c.f. the founder principle.

As for the explanation, the -la suffix is present in modern standard French and other Langues d'Oïl for the demonstrative determiner. It is a point of variability within familar varieties of French itself.

[Kuchigakatai]

As for the explanation, the -la suffix is present in modern standard French and other Langues d'Oïl for the demonstrative determiner.

Ah, in other words it comes from là or -là, not the article la.

It is a point of variability within familar varieties of French itself.

What do you mean by this?

[MacAnDàil]

As for the explanation, the -la suffix is present in modern standard French and other Langues d'Oïl for the demonstrative determiner.

Ah, in other words it comes from là or -là, not the article la.

Indeed, it comes from -là.

It is a point of variability within familar varieties of French itself.

What do you mean by this?

I mean that there is variation in any language (and language family, the distinction between dialect and language not always being clear). One of the variations in French is that the French of Missouri, Louisiane and Québec have (at least sometimes) postposed '-là' where modern standard French preposed "ce". This is therefore the most likely explanation for the -là/-la in French Creoles.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

It sounds a bit like la and là were conflated.

[Nachtswalbe]

English Afro-Atlantic creoles used 'unu' for 2PL from West African languages

[Otto Kretschmer]

English Afro-Atlantic creoles used 'unu' for 2PL from West African languages

Which avoids confusion of singular and plural you

What's odd for me is that Haitian Creole has nou for both "we" and "you"

[Travis B.]

English Afro-Atlantic creoles used 'unu' for 2PL from West African languages

Which avoids confusion of singular and plural you

What's odd for me is that Haitian Creole has nou for both "we" and "you"

I wonder what is odder - not distinguishing personal pronouns by number, or not distinguishing them by person...