On the origin of Creoles:
A Cartesian critique of Neo-Darwinian linguistics

Linguistic Typology 2001, vol. 5, nos. 2/3, pp. 213--310

Michel DeGraff
degraff@MIT.EDU

Table of contents

• 1. Neo-Darwinian Creolistics:
  Whence and whereto? A sketch --- p.213
  • 1.1 Historiography and Epistemology:
    From Schleicher to Popper --- p.214
    • 1.1.1 (Pre-)Darwinian linguistics:
      Schleicher (1863) on the `Tree of Language' --- p.214
    • 1.1.2 Neo-Darwinian creolistics:
      Saint-Quentin (1872) and Adam (1883) on simple(st) languages --- p.215
    • 1.1.3 On Cartesian-Uniformitarian linguistics:
      The Neogrammarians --- p.216
    • 1.1.4 Foucault (1972)
      on "chimera and reverie" in linguistics --- p.217
    • 1.1.5 Popper (1965)
      on (criticisms of) myths as science --- p.217
  • 1.2 Schleicherian roots of Language and route to progress:
    From isolating to agglutinative to inflectional/fusional --- p.217
  • 1.3 A foundational myth:
    Creoles as contemporary Ursprachen --- p.220
  • 1.4 Toward Cartesian-Uniformitarian creolistics --- p.220
  • 1.5 Back to
    Schleicher(ian creolistics)'s Ursprachen --- p.223
  • 1.6 Toward Cartesian creolistics (redux):
    A guide for "learning by debunking" --- p.224
• 2. Defining "Creole" --- p.227
  • 2.1 Haitian Creole:
    An anti-prototype Prototypical Creole --- p.228
  • 2.2 The Creole Prototype is
    an anti-Saussurean artificial language --- p.232
  • 2.3 Empirical and methodological considerations --- p.234
• 3. Creoles, how "old" are you? --- p.234
  • 3.1 Creoles as "born again" languages? --- p.234
  • 3.2 Why/How do we "age" languages? --- p.235
  • 3.3 Creoles as
    multi-millenarian morphosyntactically-wrinkled neonates --- p.238
• 4. On "pidgins", "simplification" and "basic communication" --- p.242
  • 4.1 Epistemological issues:
    Vagueness, circularity, falsifiability, etc. --- p.242
  • 4.2 On the making of "pidgins" --- p.244
  • 4.3 Are pidgins designed ab ovo
    from "ground zero" complexity? --- p.250
  • 4.4 "Simplification":
    Terminus a quo and terminus ad quem --- p.256
  • 4.5 "Basic communication":
    What are the basics? --- p.259
• 5. A most simplistic "complexity" metric --- p.265
  • 5.1 Defining complexity via description length
    (= number of information bits) --- p.265
  • 5.2 Not all "bits" of grammar have theoretical bite --- p.266
  • 5.3 How many "rules"?
    The looks of languages vs. the essence of grammar --- p.268
  • 5.4 Complexity is no simple matter --- p.273
• 6. "Learning by Debunking":
  The empirical (non-)basis of age-complexity correlations --- p.274
  • 6.1 Age before complexity? Complexity before age?
    Schleicherian circularity --- p.274
  • 6.2 Cycles of complexity in diachrony --- p.278
  • 6.3 Historical linguists' "endless cycles"
    vs. pro-prototype creolists' "ground zero" --- p.280
  • 6.4 The empirical test:
    To be "old" and "born again"? --- p.281
• 7. Envoi: The descent of the Creole speaker --- p.289
• Appendix I:
  Were Haitian affixes "borrowed late"? --- p.291
• Appendix II:
  On the "afrogenesis" of Haitian (and Mauritian) Creole --- p.294
• Correspondence address --- p.300
• Acknowledgements --- p.300
• Abbreviations --- p.300
• References --- p.300