Creole Languages and their Relevance to Linguistic Theory.
First of all, before discussing specific features of Creole languages, it is worth to take a closer look at the way children master the language used by their enviroment and parents, so the method of how children learn their native language. Even though linguists have been seeking the answer for this question for several decades now, there is still no reassuring and certain viewpoint on this issue. Basically there are two main points of view, two main ideas about this topic. One of them is the empirical approach. Empirists believe that the language learning of small children is based on experience and on the stimuli of the surrounding enviroment only, so the consciousness of babies is 'tabula rasa'. However, the racionalist approach has a totally different idea about this. Their opinion is that infants are already born with a natural inner sense towards the basics of language and experience only helps in the development of these withborn abilities and this finally results in mastering the mother tounge. But the most interesting idea originates from Noam Chomsky: he merged these two conceptions and believed that children both have withborn abilities of understanding the basics of how grammar works and have 'expectations' about language (that is where the name of his thesys comes from: 'innata conception'), which makes these ideas universally usable. This universality allows children to acquire the grammatics of any given language.
Recently the 'durability' of these theories is tested by the examination of the process of creolization. Derek Bickerton examined the nature Creole languages and had nearly the same final conclusion as Chomsky. He has found that the attributes of these Creole languages are not adopted from other languages; but are created by a withborn 'language-creating program'.
And it seems that Bickerton might be right.
The term Creole means many things to many people. ... Black Creoles have their own culture and customs and even there own language, with most of it coming from French. ... Creoles have very popular music. ... Creoles also intermarried. ... In the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, it states that anyone who says they are Creole is a Creole....
Pidgins and Creoles are also examples of innateness. ... A Creole is an elaborated pidgin brought into brought into a full-blown language. Children of slaves from different nations came up with the Creoles so that they could communicate with each other. The reason researchers use pidgins and Creoles to argue innateness is because they all worldwide pidgins and Creoles have the same sentence structure. Question 3 What is language? ...
Characteristics of language Definitions of language Many definitions of language have been proposed. Henry Sweet, an English phonetician and language scholar, stated: "Language is the expression of ideas by means of speech-sounds combined into words. ... Normally, people acquire a single language initially "their first language, or mother tongue, the language spoken by their parents or by those with whom they are brought up from infancy. ... Language, as described above, is species-specific to man. ... The science of language is known as linguistics. ...
Gwendolyn Hall is the author of the book "Africans in Colonial Louisiana: The Development of Afro-Creole Culture in the Eighteenth Century." ... In the next chapter, Hall begins to describe the Louisiana Creole culture. ... This chapter discusses the Afro-Creole culture that dominated lower Louisiana and even inflected itself upon the poor white populace to where they would identify as Creole. Hall explains that the reason why the impoverished white class attached itself to the Creole identifier and language, which is a derivative of the pidgin language that was created in Senegambia during t...
The Creolist hypothesis comes from a Creole language that was widely spoken in the plantation south. The idea is that the plantation Creole has been converging with mainstream English since the civil war. ... Various grammatical and pronunciation features also support the Creole idea. ... There is no written evidence of a plantation language. The origin can be explained without a plantation Creole idea. ...
In this novel, Kate Chopin used her experiences and lessons she learned throughout her life to use traits such as Creole setting and language, feminism, and symbolism in The Awakening. ... Next, the Creole language is used as a constant reminder of the Southern atmosphere. ... The phrasing chambres garnies is Creole language that means "furnished rooms." ... The Creole atmosphere is obviously exaggerated since the only people staying with them are Creoles. ... Obviously, the traits of Creole setting and language, feminism, and symbolism are exaggerated as common traits in this novel, The ...
While our official language is English, most Jamaicans speak a Creole patois - a mixture of Elizabethan English and West African that's often hard to understand, In my household my parents and siblings speak the language, but I am not able to speak it because I've been here in this country for such a long time. ...
As with most of its food like other areas of Louisiana, it is widely known for its Cajun French music and the occasional language. ... Creole Cuisine "Creole" describes the population of people who were born to French colonial settlers in Louisiana, particularly in the New Orleans area. ... Most often the term "French Creole" described someone of European ancestry born in the territory and the term, "Louisiana Creole" describes someone of mixed racial ancestry. ... Creole cuisine is sometimes thought of as a fancier dish compared to Cajun. ... This cuisine has a b...
Every language has a birth. ... Examples include pidgin and Creole languages. Pidgin languages are those languages which are first and have no native speakers. ... Creole is a pidgin language which has expanded in structure. ... The initial stages of children's languages are similar to pidgin languages." ...
