Blasi Damián E, Michaelis Susanne Maria, Haspelmath Martin
Department of Comparative Linguistics, University of Zürich, Plattenstrasse 54, 8032, Zürich, Switzerland.
Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Kahlaische Str. 10, 07745, Jena, Germany.
Nat Hum Behav. 2017 Oct;1(10):723-729. doi: 10.1038/s41562-017-0192-4. Epub 2017 Sep 4.
Most languages of the world are taken to result from a combination of a vertical transmission process from older to younger generations of speakers or signers and (mostly) gradual changes that accumulate over time. In contrast, creole languages emerge within a few generations out of highly multilingual societies in situations where no common first language is available for communication (as, for instance, in plantations related to the Atlantic slave trade). Strikingly, creoles share a number of linguistic features (the 'creole profile'), which is at odds with the striking linguistic diversity displayed by non-creole languages . These common features have been explained as reflecting a hardwired default state of the possible grammars that can be learned by humans , as straightforward solutions to cope with the pressure for efficient and successful communication or as the byproduct of an impoverished transmission process . Despite their differences, these proposals agree that creoles emerge from a very limited and basic communication system (a pidgin) that only later in time develops the characteristics of a natural language, potentially by innovating linguistic structure. Here we analyse 48 creole languages and 111 non-creole languages from all continents and conclude that the similarities (and differences) between creoles can be explained by genealogical and contact processes , as with non-creole languages, with the difference that creoles have more than one language in their ancestry. While a creole profile can be detected statistically, this stems from an over-representation of Western European and West African languages in their context of emergence. Our findings call into question the existence of a pidgin stage in creole development and of creole-specific innovations. In general, given their extreme conditions of emergence, they lend support to the idea that language learning and transmission are remarkably resilient processes.
世界上大多数语言被认为是由从年长一代说话者或手语使用者到年轻一代的垂直传播过程以及（主要是）随着时间积累的逐渐变化共同作用的结果。相比之下，克里奥尔语在几代人的时间内，从高度多语言的社会中产生，这些社会中没有通用的第一语言可供交流（例如，在与大西洋奴隶贸易相关的种植园中）。引人注目的是，克里奥尔语具有许多语言特征（“克里奥尔语特征”），这与非克里奥尔语所展现出的显著语言多样性形成了鲜明对比。这些共同特征被解释为反映了人类能够学习的可能语法的一种固有默认状态，是应对高效成功交流压力的直接解决方案，或者是贫乏传播过程的副产品。尽管这些观点存在差异，但它们都认为克里奥尔语源自一个非常有限且基础的交流系统（洋泾浜语），该系统只是在后来才发展出自然语言的特征，可能是通过创新语言结构来实现的。在这里，我们分析了来自各大洲的48种克里奥尔语和111种非克里奥尔语，并得出结论：克里奥尔语之间的相似性（和差异）可以通过谱系和接触过程来解释，这与非克里奥尔语的情况相同，不同之处在于克里奥尔语的谱系中有不止一种语言。虽然从统计学上可以检测到克里奥尔语特征，但这源于西欧和西非语言在其产生背景中的过度代表性占比。我们的研究结果对克里奥尔语发展过程中洋泾浜语阶段的存在以及克里奥尔语特有的创新提出了质疑。总体而言，鉴于它们极端的产生条件，这些结果支持了语言学习和传播是极具韧性的过程这一观点。
