Decreolization is a postulated phenomenon whereby over time a

creole language 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. Wh ...

reconverges with the lexifier from which it originally derived. The notion has attracted criticism from linguists who argue there is little theoretical or empirical basis on which to postulate a process of language change which is particular to creole languages.

Overview

Decreolization is a process of

language change Language change is variation over time in a language's features. It is studied in several subfields of linguistics: historical linguistics, sociolinguistics, and evolutionary linguistics. Traditional theories of historical linguistics iden ...

may undergo when in contact with its lexifier. As languages remain in contact over time, they typically influence one another, especially if one holds higher linguistic prestige. In the context of creole languages, the lexifier tends to have higher prestige (though not always) and will exert a much greater influence on the creole, which has lower prestige. This leads to the reintroduction of linguistic material into the creole from the lexifier. Decreolization predicts that eventually the creole will resemble the lexifier to such a degree that it could then be called a

dialect The term dialect (from Latin , , from the Ancient Greek word , 'discourse', from , 'through' and , 'I speak') can refer to either of two distinctly different types of linguistic phenomena: One usage refers to a variety of a language that ...

of that language rather than a separate language at all. According to

Peter Trudgill Peter Trudgill, FBA (; born 7 November 1943) is an English sociolinguist, academic and author. Trudgill was born in Norwich, England and grew up in the area of Thorpe St Andrew. He attended the City of Norwich School from 1955. Trudgill studi ...

, if one views

pidgin A pidgin , or pidgin language, is a grammatically simplified means of communication that develops between two or more groups of people that do not have a language in common: typically, its vocabulary and grammar are limited and often drawn from s ...

ization as a process of simplification, reduction, and

admixture Admixture may refer to: * Genetic admixture, the result of interbreeding between two or more previously isolated populations within a species * Racial admixture, admixture between humans, also referred to as miscegenation * Hybrid * Mixture, the ch ...

from substrate languages, and creolization as the expansion of the language to combat reduction, then one can view decreolization as an 'attack' on both simplification and admixture.

Criticism

Decreolization has been criticized by some linguists as lacking empirical and theoretical support. For example, Michel DeGraff writes:

"... it has not been rigorously defined what structural process is inverted or what structural properties are removed by this decreolization process. ... What historical linguists outside of creolistics study is
language change Language change is variation over time in a language's features. It is studied in several subfields of linguistics: historical linguistics, sociolinguistics, and evolutionary linguistics. Traditional theories of historical linguistics iden ...
, be it contact-induced or not, and language change is a process that is presumably based on universal
psycholinguistic Psycholinguistics or psychology of language is the study of the interrelation between linguistic factors and psychological aspects. The discipline is mainly concerned with the mechanisms by which language is processed and represented in the mind ...
mechanisms that do not leave room for a ''sui generis'' process of (de)creolization."

In other words, as other linguists have argued, there is no ''a priori'' reason to posit a special process of language change specific to creole languages. Furthermore, it has been shown that linguistic changes resulting from contact between a creole and its lexifier do not always emerge in the way decreolization would predict. For example, changes such as

grammaticalization In historical linguistics, grammaticalization (also known as grammatization or grammaticization) is a process of language change by which words representing objects and actions (i.e. nouns and verbs) become grammatical markers (such as affixes or ...

may occur which result in the creole diverging from its lexifier.

References

{{Reflist Pidgins and creoles Theories of language Linguistics terminology

Overview

Criticism

See also

References