Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-p9bg8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T09:52:55.443Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Linguists' most dangerous myth: The fallacy of Creole Exceptionalism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 August 2005

MICHEL DEGRAFF
Affiliation:
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Linguistics & Philosophy, 77 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge MA 02139, [email protected]

Abstract

“Creole Exceptionalism” is defined as a set of beliefs, widespread among both linguists and nonlinguists, that Creole languages form an exceptional class on phylogenetic and/or typological grounds. It also has nonlinguistic (e.g., sociological) implications, such as the claim that Creole languages are a “handicap” for their speakers, which has undermined the role that Creoles should play in the education and socioeconomic development of monolingual Creolophones. Focusing on Caribbean Creoles, and on Haitian Creole in particular, it is argued that Creole Exceptionalism, as a sociohistorically rooted “régime of truth” (in Foucault's sense), obstructs scientific and social progress in and about Creole communities. Various types of Creole Exceptionalist beliefs are deconstructed and historicized, and their empirical, theoretical, and sociological flaws surveyed. These flaws have antecedents in early creolists' theories of Creole genesis, often explicitly couched in Eurocentric and (pre-/quasi-)Darwinian doctrines of human evolution. Despite its historical basis in colonialism and slavery and its scientific and sociological flaws, Creole Exceptionalism is still enshrined in the modern linguistics establishment and its classic literature, a not unexpected state given the social structure of scientific communities and the interaction between ideology and “paradigm-making.” The present Foucauldian approach to Creole Exceptionalism is an instantiation of a well-defined area of the linguistics/ideology interface. The conclusion proposes alternatives more consistent with Creole structures and their development, and more likely to help linguists address some practical problems faced by Creole speakers.This project has been supported by, inter alia, a much-appreciated fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities (# FA-37500-02). While I am responsible for the views and errors in this paper, I feel immensely privileged to have benefited from the generous encouragement and judicious comments of editor Jane Hill and two anonymous reviewers at Language in Society, and of many friends and colleagues: Myriam Augustin, Marie-Lucie Brutus, Noam Chomsky, Yves Dejean (Papa Iv), Dominique Fattier, Marilyn Goodrich, Ken Hale, Dimitri Hilton, Tometro Hopkins, Tami Kaplan, Antonia MacDonald-Smythe, Heliana Mello, Miriam Meyerhoff, Salikoko Mufwene, Marilene Phipps, Ella Maria Ray, Faith Smith, Geneva Smitherman, Arthur Spears, and Adrienne Talamas.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© 2005 Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Adam, Lucien (1883). Les idiomes négro-aryen et maléo-aryen: Essai d'hybridologie linguistique. Paris: Maisonneuve.
Alleyne, Mervyn (1971). Acculturation and the cultural matrix of creolization. In Hymes, 16986.
Alleyne, Mervyn (1988). Roots of Jamaican culture. London: Pluto.
Alleyne, Mervyn (1994). Problems of standardization of Creole languages. In Morgan, 718.
Arends, Jacques (2001). Review of Quint 1997. Carrier Pidgin 29(1–3):1314.Google Scholar
Aristotle (1976). The Nicomachean Ethics. Trans. J.A.K. Thomson, rev. Hugh Tredennick. New York: Penguin.
Baissac, Charles (1880). Étude sur le patois créole mauricien. Nancy: Berger-Levrault.
Balutansky, Kathleen, & Sourieau, Marie-Agnès (1998) (eds.). Caribbean creolization: Reflections on the cultural dynamics of language, literature and identity. Gainesville: University Press of Florida.
Bebel-Gisler, Dany, & Hurbon, Laënnec (1975 [1987]). Cultures et pouvoir dans la Carabe. 3rd ed. Paris: L'Harmattan.
Begley, Sharon (1982). The fossils of language. Newsweek, 15 March 1982, 80.
Bellegarde, Dantès (1934). Un haïtien parle. Port-au-Prince: Chéraquit.
Bellegarde, Dantès (1949). La langue française et le créole haïtien, Conjonction. Bulletin de l'Institut Français d'Haïti 19:3943.Google Scholar
Bellegarde-Smith, Patrick (1985). In the shadow of powers: Dantès Bellegarde in Haitian social thought. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press.
Bellegarde-Smith, Patrick (1990). Haiti: The breached citadel. Boulder: Westview.
Bernasconi, Robert (2001a) (ed.). Race. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Bernasconi, Robert (2001b). Who invented the concept of race? Kant's role in the Enlightenment construction of race. In Bernasconi 2001a, 1136.
Berreby, David (1992). Kids, Creoles, and the coconuts. Discover.
Berrou, Raphaël, & Pompilus, Pradel (1978) Histoire de la littérature haïtienne illustrée par les textes. 3 vols. Port-au-Prince: Caraïbes.
Bickerton, Derek (1981). Roots of language. Ann Arbor: Karoma.
Bickerton, Derek (1984a). The language bioprogram hypothesis. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 7:173203.Google Scholar
Bickerton, Derek (1984b). The language bioprogram hypothesis: Creole is still king. (Author's response to commentaries). Behavioral and Brain Sciences 7:21219.Google Scholar
Bickerton, Derek (1988). Creole languages and the bioprogram. In Newmeyer 1988, 26884.CrossRef
Bickerton, Derek (1990). Language and species. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Bickerton, Derek (1995). Language and human behavior. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
Bickerton, Derek (1998). Catastrophic evolution: The case for a single step from protolanguage to full human language. In James Hurford et al. (eds.), Approaches to the evolution of language: Social and cognitive bases, 34158. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bickerton, Derek (1999). How to acquire language without positive evidence: What acquisitionists can learn from Creoles. In DeGraff 1999e, 4974.
Bickerton, Derek, & Calvin, William (2000). Lingua ex machina: Reconciling Darwin and Chomsky with the human brain. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Bloomfield, Leonard (1922). Review of the The owl sacred pack of the Fox Indians by Truman Michelson. American Journal of Philology 43:27681.Google Scholar
Bloomfield, Leonard (1925). Why a linguistics society? Language 1:15.Google Scholar
Bloomfield, Leonard (1933). Language. New York: H. Holt.
Boas, Franz (1911). Handbook of American Indian languages. Part 1. Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 40. Washington: Goverment Printing Office.
Bouquet, Simon (1997). Introduction à la lecture de Saussure. Paris: Payot & Rivages.
Bourdieu, Pierre (1980 [1990]). Le sens pratique. Paris: Minuit, 1990. Eng. ed., The logic of practice. Trans. Richard Nice. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Bourdieu, Pierre (1982 [1991]). Ce que parler veut dire: L'économie des échanges linguistiques. Paris : Fayard. Eng. ed., Language and symbolic power. Ed. & trans. Gino Raymond & Matthew Adamson. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Bourdieu, Pierre, & Wacquant, Loïc (1992). An invitation to reflexive sociology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Brathwaite, Kamau (1971). The development of Creole society in Jamaica. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Cameron, Deborah; Frazer, Elizabeth; & Harvey, Penelope (1992). Researching language: Issues of power and method. London: Routledge.
Césaire, Aimé (1947 [1983]). Cahier d'un retour au pays natal. Paris: Bordas; 2nd ed., Paris and Dakar: Présence Africaine.
Césaire, Aimé (1950 [2000]). Discours sur le colonialisme. Paris: Réclame. Eng. ed., Discourse on colonialism. Trans. Joan Pinkham: New York: Monthly Review Press.
Césaire, Aimé (1978). Entretien avec Aimé Césaire par Jacqueline Leiner. In Aimé Césaire & René Ménil (eds.), Tropiques, 1: vxxiv. Paris: Jean Michel Place.
Chafe, Wallace L. (1976). American Indian languages and American linguistics: The Second Golden Anniversary Symposium of the Linguistic Society of America, held at the University of California, Berkeley, on November 8 and 9, 1974. Lisse: Peter de Ridder.
Chaudenson, Robert (1992). Des îles, des hommes, des langues. Paris: L'Harmattan.
Chaudenson, Robert, & Mufwene, Salikoko (2001). Creolization of language and culture. London: Routledge.
Chomsky, Noam (1964). Current issues in linguistic theory. The Hague: Mouton.
Chomsky, Noam (1965). Aspects of the theory of syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Chomsky, Noam (1966). Cartesian linguistics: A chapter in the history of rationalist thought. New York: Harper & Row.
Chomsky, Noam (1975). The logical structure of linguistic theory. New York: Plenum.
Chomsky, Noam (1979). Language and responsibility. Sussex: Harvester.
Chomsky, Noam (1993). Year 501: The conquest continues. Boston: South End.
Chomsky, Noam (1997). Chomsky no Brasil/Chomsky in Brazil (Revista de Documentaçao de Estudoes em Lingüística Teórica e Aplicada 13). São Paulo: EDUC.
Corcoran, Chris (2001). Creoles and the creation myth: A report on some problems with the linguistic use of ‘Creole’. In John Boyle et al. (eds.), Papers from the 36th Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society. Chicago: Chicago Linguistics Society.
D'Ans, André-Marcel (1968). Le créole français d'Haïti. The Hague: Mouton.
Davis, David Brion (1966 [1988]). The problem of slavery in Western culture. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press.
Davis, David Brion (1975). The problem of slavery in the age of revolution. New York: Oxford University Press.
Davis, David Brion (1984). Slavery and human progress. New York: Oxford University Press.
DeGraff, Michel (1994). Review of The clausal determiners of Haitian and Fon (Travaux de recherche sur le créole haitien, no. 8), edited by Claire Lefebvre (Université du Québec à Montréal, 1992). Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 9:3706.Google Scholar
DeGraff, Michel (1997). Verb syntax in creolization (and beyond). In Liliane Haegeman (ed.), The new comparative syntax, 6494. London: Longman.
DeGraff, Michel (1999a). Creolization, language change and language acquisition: A prolegomenon. In DeGraff 1999e, 146.
DeGraff, Michel (1999b). Creolization, language change and language acquisition: An epilogue. In DeGraff 1999e, 473543.
DeGraff, Michel (1999c). Empirical quicksand: Probing two recent articles on Haitian Creole. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 14:112.Google Scholar
DeGraff, Michel (1999d). Parameter-setting in acquisition and through creolization and language change. In Rob Wilson & Frank Keil (eds.), The MIT encyclopedia of the cognitive sciences, 6247. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
DeGraff, Michel (1999e). Language creation and language change: Creolization, diachrony and development. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
DeGraff, Michel (2000). A propos des pronoms objets dans le créole d'Haïti: Regards croisés de la morphologie et de la diachronie. Langages 138: 89113.Google Scholar
DeGraff, Michel (2001a). Morphology in Creole genesis: Linguistics and ideology. In Michael Kenstowicz (ed.), Ken Hale: A life in language, 52121. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
DeGraff, Michel (2001b). On the origin of Creoles: A Cartesian critique of ‘neo’-Darwinian linguistics. Linguistic Typology 2/3:213310.Google Scholar
DeGraff, Michel (2002). Relexification: A reevaluation. Anthropological Linguistics 44:321414.Google Scholar
DeGraff, Michel (2003). Against Creole Exceptionalism. Language 79:391410.Google Scholar
DeGraff, Michel (2004). Against Creole Exceptionalism (redux). Language 80:8349.Google Scholar
DeGraff, Michel (2005). Morphology and word order in ‘creolization’ and beyond. In Richard Kayne & Guglielmo Cinque (eds.), Handbook of comparative syntax, 249312. New York: Oxford University Press.
DeGraff, Michel (to appear). Language acquisition in creolization: Uniformitarian approaches. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Linguistics.
DeGraff, Michel (in preparation a). Haitian Creole morpho-syntax: A micro-parametric approach to its structure and genesis.
DeGraff, Michel (in preparation b). Postcolonial linguistics: The politics of Creole studies.
DeGraff, Michel, & Walicek, Don (2005). Creole Exceptionalism and accidents of history: A conversation with Michel DeGraff. Sargasso: A Journal of Caribbean Literature, Language and Culture. Special Issue: Creolistics and Caribbean languages, ed. by Don Walicek, 134.
Dejan, Pòl (1988). Ki sa gouvènman peyi a janm fè ant 1943 ak 1988 pou l regle koze pa konn li ak pa konn ekri ann Ayiti. Port-au-Prince: Sekreteri d Eta pou Alfabetizasyon.
Dejean, Paul (1989). Survol des tentatives d'alphabétisation en Haïti par les services gouvernementaux, 1943–1988. Port-au-Prince: Groupe d'action et de recherche pour l'éducation.
Dejean, Paul (1993). Haïti: Alerte, on tue! Montréal: CIDIHCA.
Dejan, Iv (1995). Ann etidye lang nou an. Port-au-Prince: Demen Miyò.
Dejean, Yves (1975). Dilemme en Haïti: Français en péril ou péril français? New York: Connaissance d'Haïti.
Dejean, Yves (1977). Comment écrire le créole d'Haïti. Dissertation, Indiana University.
Dejean, Yves (1985). Ann aprann òtograf kreyòl la. Port-au-Prince: State Secretariat for Literacy.
Dejean, Yves (1993a). Notre créole à nous. Chemins critiques 3(1–2):26383.Google Scholar
Dejean, Yves (1993b). An overview of the language situation in Haiti. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 102:7383.Google Scholar
Dejean, Yves (1997). Alphabétisation: Mythes et réalités. Port-au-Prince: Lemète Zéphyr.
Dejean, Yves (1999a). L'archipel nous revient: Créolistes et données. Études créoles 22(2):85114.Google Scholar
Dejean, Yves (1999b). The native language as a medium of instruction: An issue revisited. In Spears, 93103.
Dejean, Yves (2004). Yon lekòl tèt anba nan yon peyi tèt anba [An upside-down education in an upside-down country]. Ms. Port-au-Prince, Haiti.
Dejean, Yves (to appear). Créole, école, rationalité. Chemins critiques.
Delorme, Demesvar (1870). Les théoriciens au pouvoir. Paris: Plon.
Derrida, Jacques (1967 [1976]). De la grammatologie. Eng. ed. Of Grammatology. Trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Descartes, René (1637 [1962]). Discours de la méthode …. Leyden: I. Maire. Eng. ed., Discourse on Method. Trans. John Veitch. La Salle, IL: Open Court.
Descourtilz, Michel Étienne (1809). Voyages d'un naturaliste et ses observations faites sur les trois règnes de la nature, dans plusieurs ports de mer français, en Espagne, au continent de l'Amérique septentrionale. 3 vols. Paris: Dufart.
Devonish, Hubert (1986). Language and liberation: Creole language politics in the Caribbean. London: Karia.
Dreifus, Claudia (2001). How language came to be, and change. New York Times, “Science Times” section, p. D3, October 30, 2001.
Fanon, Frantz (1952 [1991]). Peau noire, masques blancs. Paris: Seuil. Eng. ed. Black skin, white masks. Trans. Charles Lam Markmann. New York: Grove Weidenfeld.
Fanon, Frantz (1959 [1989]). An cinq de la révolution algérienne. Paris: François Maspero. Eng. ed. Studies in a dying colonialism. Trans. Haakon Chevalier. London: Earthscan.
Fanon, Frantz (1961 [1991]). Les damnés de la terre (preface by Jean-Paul Sartre). Paris: François Maspero. Eng. ed. The wretched of the earth. Trans. Constance Farrington. New York: Grove Weidenfeld.
Faraclas, Nicholas (1988). Rumors of the demise of Descartes are premature. Review article of Pidgin and Creole linguistics by Peter Mühlhäusler. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 3:11935.Google Scholar
Faraclas, Nicholas (1996). Nigerian Pidgin. New York: Routledge.CrossRef
Fattier, Dominique (1998). Contribution à l'étude de la genèse d'un créole: L'Atlas linguistique d'Haïti, cartes et commentaires. Dissertation, Université de Provence. (Dist. by Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, Villeneuve d'Ascq, France.)
Firmin, Anténor (1885). De l'égalité des races humaines (anthropologie positive). Paris: F. Pichon. Eng. ed. The equality of the human races (positivist anthropology). Trans. Asselin Charles: New York: Garland.
Foster, Charles, & Valdman, Albert (1984) (eds.). Haiti – today and tomorrow: An interdisciplinary study. Lanham, MD: University Press of America.
Foucault, Michel (1966 [1973]). Les mots et les choses: Une archéologie des sciences humaines. Paris: Gallimard. Eng. ed. The order of things: An archaeology of the human sciences. New York: Vintage.
Foucault, Michel (1969 [1972a]). L'Archéologie du savoir. Paris: Gallimard. Eng. ed. The archaeology of knowledge and The discourse on language. Trans. A. M. Sheridan Smith. London: Tavistock.
Foucault, Michel (1971 [1972b]). L'Ordre du discours. Leçon inaugurale au college de France prononcée le 2 décembre 1970. Paris: Gallimard. Eng. ed. Discourse on language, trans. Rupert Swyer. Social Science Information, April 1971, 7–30.
Foucault, Michel (1980). Power/knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings 1972–1977. Ed. & trans. Colin Gordon et al. New York: Pantheon.
Froude, James Anthony (1888). The English in the West Indies. Charles Scribner's Sons.
Gardner, Simon (2004). AIDS stalks Haiti's children. Reuters article dated 9 April 2004.
Gilbert, Glenn (1980). Pidgin and Creole languages: Selected essays by Hugo Schuchardt. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gough, Kathleen (1968). Anthropology: Child of imperialism. Monthly Review 19(11):1227.Google Scholar
Gould, Stephen Jay (1996). The mismeasure of man. New York: Norton.
Gramsci, Antonio (1971). Selections from the prison notebooks. Trans. Quintin Hoare & Geoffrey Nowell Smith. London: Lawrence & Wishart.
Greenfield, William (1830). A defence of the Surinam Negro-English version of the New Testament. London: Samuel Bagster.
Greppin, John (2002). The triumph of slang: Social, regional and racial origins of American English. (Review of The Cambridge History of the English Language, John Algeo, ed.). Times Literary Supplement, 1 February 2002, 34.
Haas, Mary (1976). Boas, Sapir and Bloomfield. In Chafe (ed.), 5969.
Hale, Ken (1972). Some questions about anthropological linguistics: The role of native knowledge. In Dell Hymes (ed.), Reinventing anthropology, 38297. New York: Pantheon.
Hale, Ken (1973). The role of American Indian linguistics in bilingual education. In Paul Turner (ed.), Bilingualism in the Southwest, 20325. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
Hale, Ken (1976). Theoretical linguistics and American Indian communities. In Chafe (ed.), 3550.
Hale, Ken (1992). Language endangerment and the human value of linguistic diversity. Language 68:3542.Google Scholar
Hale, Ken (2001). Ulwa (Southern Sumu): The beginnings of a language research project. In Paul Newman & Martha Ratliff (eds.), Linguistic fieldwork, 76101. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRef
Hall, Robert, Jr. (1953). Haitian Creole: Grammar, texts, vocabulary. American Anthropologist Memoir 74. Washington, DC: American Anthropological Association.
Hall, Robert, Jr. (1962). The life cycle of Pidgin languages. Lingua 11:1516.Google Scholar
Harris, Zellig (1951). Structural linguistics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (1836 [1956]). Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot. Eng. ed., The philosophy of history. Trans. J. Sibree. New York: Dover.
Hill, Jane (1998). Language, race, and white public space. American Anthropologist 100:6809.Google Scholar
Hockett, Charles (1955). A manual of phonology. Baltimore: Waverly.
Hockett, Charles (1958). A course in modern linguistics. New York: Macmillan.
Hoenigswald, Henry (1966). A proposal for the study of folk-linguistics. In William Bright (ed.), Sociolinguistics: Proceedings of the UCLA Sociolinguistic Conference 1964, 1626. The Hague: Mouton.
Hoffman, Léon François (1984). Francophilia and cultural nationalism in Haiti. In Foster & Valdman, 5776.
Holm, John (1988). Pidgins and Creoles. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Honda, Maya, & O'Neil, Wayne (1993). Triggering science-forming capacity through linguistic inquiry. In Kenneth Hale & Samuel Jay Keyser (eds.), The view from Building 20: Essays in linguistics in honor of Sylvain Bromberger, 22955. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Humboldt, Wilhelm von (1836 [1988]). Über die Verschiedenheit des menschlichen Sprachbaues und ihren Einfluss auf die geistige Entwickelung des Menschengeschlechts. Eng. ed. On language: The diversity of human language-structure and its influence on the mental development of mankind. Trans. Peter White. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hymes, Dell (1971) (ed.). Pidginization and creolization of languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hymes, Dell (1976). The Americanist tradition. In Chafe, 1128.
James, C.L.R. (1938 [1963]). The Black Jacobins. 2nd ed. New York: Vintage.
James, C.L.R. (1938 [1969]). The West Indian intellectual. Introduction to J. J. Thomas 1889 [1969:2349].
Jespersen, Otto (1922). Language: Its nature, development and origin. London: Allen & Unwin.
Joseph, John E., and Taylor, Talbot J. (1990) (eds.). The ideologies of language. New York: Routledge.
Klein, Thomas (2003). Syllable structure and lexical markedness in Creole morphophonology: Determiner allomorphy in Haitian and elsewhere. In Ingo Plag (ed.), Phonology and morphology of Creole languages, 209228. Tübingen: Niemeyer.
Kuhn, Thomas (1970). The structure of scientific revolutions. 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Larousse, Pierre (1869). Grand dictionnaire universel du XIX siècle. Paris: Larousse.
Lefebvre, Claire (1998). Creole genesis and the acquisition of grammar: The case of Haitian Creole. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Madiou, Thomas (1847 [1989]). Histoire d'Haïti. Port-au-Prince: Henri Deschamps.
Makoni, Sinfree; Smitherman, Geneva; Ball, Arnetha; & Spears, Arthur (2003) (eds.). Black scholars on Black languages: Africa and the Americas. London: Routledge.
Markey, Thomas L. (1979). The Ethnography of variation: Selected Writings on Pidgins and Creoles, by Hugo Schuchardt, Ed. and trans. by T.L. Markey. Ann Arbor, MI: Karoma.
Mason, Marilyn (2000). Automated Creole orthography conversion. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 15:17984.Google Scholar
McWhorter, John (1998). Identifying the Creole prototype: Vindicating a typological class. Language 74:788818.Google Scholar
McWhorter, John (2001). The world's simplest grammars are Creole grammars. Linguistic Typology 5/2:125166.Google Scholar
Meijer, Gus, & Muysken, Pieter (1977). On the beginnings of Pidgin and Creole studies: Schuchardt and Hesseling. In Albert Valdman (ed.), Pidgin and Creole linguistics, 2145. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Meillet, Antoine (1912 [1958]). L'évolution des formes grammaticales. Scientia (Rivista di scienza) 12/26. Reprinted in Meillet 1958, 130–148.Google Scholar
Meillet, Antoine (1924 [1951]). Introduction à la classification des langues [Introductory chapter of Les langues du monde]. Repr. in Meillet 1951, 5369.
Meillet, Antoine (1929 [1951]). Le développement des langues. In Continu et discontinu, 11931. Repr. in Meillet 1951, 71–83.
Meillet, Antoine (1951). Linguistique historique et linguistique générale. Vol. 1. Paris: Klincksieck.
Meillet, Antoine (1958). Linguistique historique et linguistique générale. Vo. 2. Paris: Honoré Champion.
Métellus, Jean (1997). What is an intellectual? (Interview). Haïtiens aujourd'hui, 12/97–1/98, 2(1):1126.Google Scholar
Métellus, Jean (1998). The process of creolization in Haiti and the pitfalls of the graphic form. In Balutansky & Sourieau (eds.), 11828.
Mooney, Carolyn (2000). On Martinique: Elevating the status of Creole. Chronicle of Higher Education, 6 June 2000.Google Scholar
Morgan, Marcyliena (1994) (ed.). Language and the social construction of identity in Creole situations. Los Angeles: Center for Afro-American Studies, University of California.
Montagu, Ashley (1942 [1997]). Man's most dangerous myth: The fallacy of race. 6th ed. London: AltaMira.
Mufwene, Salikoko (1989). Colonial, hypermetropic and wishful linguistics. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 4:24154.Google Scholar
Mufwene, Salikoko (1994). On decreolization: The case of Gullah. In Morgan, 6399.
Mufwene, Salikoko (1996). The founder principle in Creole genesis. Diachronica 13:83134.Google Scholar
Mufwene, Salikoko (1998). What research on Creole genesis can contribute to historical linguistics. In Monika Schmid et al. (eds.), Historical linguistics 1997, 31538. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRef
Mufwene, Salikoko (2000). Creolization is a social, not a structural, process. In Neumann-Holzschuh and Schneider (eds.), Degrees of restructuring in Creole languages, 6584. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Mufwene, Salikoko (2001). The ecology of language evolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRef
Mufwene, Salikoko (2002). What do Creoles and Pidgins tell us about the evolution of language? Paper presented at the conference Origine et évolution des langues: Approches, modèles, paradigmes, Collège de France, 26–27 September 2002.
Mühleisen, Susanne (2002). Creole discourse: Exploring prestige formation and change across Caribbean English-lexicon Creoles. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRef
Muysken, Pieter (1988). Are Creoles a special type of language? In Newmeyer 1988, 285301.
Newmeyer, Frederick (1988). Linguistics. The Cambridge survey. Vol. 2, Linguistic theory: Extensions and implications. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ngugi wa Thiong'o (1986). Decolonising the mind: The politics of language in African literature. London: James Currey.
Niedzielski, Nancy, & Preston, Dennis (2000). Folk linguistics. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.CrossRef
Osthoff, Hermann, & Brugmann, Karl (1878 [1967]). Preface to morphological investigations in the sphere of the Indo-European languages I. Leipzig: S. Hirzel. Eng. ed. in Winfred Lehmann (ed.), A reader in nineteenth century historical Indo-European linguistics, 197–209. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Paul, Hermann (1890 [1970]). Principien der Spraschgeschichte. Eng. ed., Principles of the history of language. Trans. H. A. Strong. College Park, MD: McGrath.
Pelleprat, Pierre (1655 [1965]). Relation des missions des pères de la Compagnie de Jésus dans les iles et dans la terre ferme de l'Amérique méridionale. Paris: Cramoisy. Span. ed. Relato de las misiones de los padres de la compañía de Jesús en las islas y en tierra firme de América meridional. Caracas: Fuentes para la Historia Colonial de Venezuela.
Popkin, Richard (1974). The philosophical bases of modern racism. In Craig Walton & John Anton (eds.), Philosophy and the civilizing arts, 12665. Athens: Ohio University Press.
Posner, Rebecca (1985). Creolization as typological change: Some examples from Romance syntax. Diachronica 2:16788.Google Scholar
Price, David (2000). Anthropologists as spies. The Nation, 271(16):2427, 20 November 2000.Google Scholar
Price, Richard, & Price, Sally (1991). Two evenings in Saramaka. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Price-Mars, Jean (1928 [1983]). Ainsi parla l'oncle: Essais d'ethnographie. Port-au-Prince: Imprimerie de Compiegne. Eng. ed., So spoke the uncle. Trans. Magdaline Shannon. Washington, DC: Three Continents.
Prudent, Lambert-Félix (1980). Des baragouins à la langue antillaise: Analyse historique et sociolinguistique du discours sur le créole. Paris: Éditions Caribéennes.
Quint, Nicolas (1997). Les îles du Cap-Vert aujourd'hui: Perdues dans l'immensité. Paris: L'Harmattan.
Reinecke, John (1980). William Greenfield, a neglected pioneer creolist. In Lawrence Carrington (ed.), Studies in Caribbean language, 112. Saint-Augustine, Trinidad: Society for Caribbean Linguistics.
Rickford, John (1999). African American Vernacular English: Features, evolution, educational implications. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Rizzi, Luigi (1999). Broadening the empirical basis of Universal Grammar models: A commentary. In DeGraff 1999e, 45372.
Rumi, Jalal Al Din (2001). The soul of Rumi: A new collection of ecstatic poems. Ed. & trans. Coleman Barks et al. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco.
Saïd, Edward (1979). Orientalism. New York: Vintage.
Saint-Quentin, Alfred de (1872 [1989]). Introduction à l'histoire de Cayenne … , with Étude sur la grammaire créole by Auguste de Saint-Quentin. Antibes: J. Marchand. 2nd ed., Cayenne: Comité de la culture, de l'éducation et de l'environnement, Région Guyane.
Samarin, William (1980). Standardization and instrumentalization of Creole languages. In Albert Valdman & Arnold Highfield (eds.), Theoretical orientations in Creole studies, 21336. New York: Academic Press.
Sapir, Edward (1921). Language. An introduction to the study of speech. New York: Harcourt, Brace.
Sapir, Edward (1933). Language. Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences 9:15569.Google Scholar
Sartre, Jean-Paul (1961 [1991]). Preface. In Fanon 1961 [1992:7–31].
Saussure, Ferdinand de (1916 [1986]). Cours de linguistique générale. Paris: Payot. Eng. ed. Course in general linguistics. Trans. Roy Harris. La Salle, IL Open Court.
Schleicher, August (1863 [1869]). Die Darwinsche Theorie und die Sprachwissenschaft. Weimar: Hermann Böhlau. Eng. ed. Darwinism tested by the science of language. Trans. Alex Bikkers. London: John Camden Hotten.
Schuchardt, Hugo (1914). Die Sprache der Saramakkaneger in Surinam. Verhandelingen der Koninklijke Akademie van Wetenschappen te Amsterdam. Afdeeling Letterkunde, n.s. 14(6). Amsterdam: Johannes Müller.
Seuren, Pieter (1998). Western linguistics: An historical introduction. Oxford: Blackwell.CrossRef
Seuren, Pieter, & Wekker, Herman (1986). Semantic transparency as a factor in Creole genesis. In Pieter Muysken & Norval Smith (eds.), Substrata versus universals in Creole genesis, 5770. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRef
Smith, Faith (2002). Creole recitations: John Jacob Thomas and colonial formation in the late nineteenth-century Caribbean. University of Virginia Press.
Smitherman, Geneva (2000). Talkin that talk: Language, culture and education in African America. London: Routledge.CrossRef
Spears, Arthur (1999) (ed.). Race and ideology. Detroit: Wayne State University Press.
Sylvain, Suzanne (1936). Le créole haïtien: Morphologie et syntaxe. Wetteren, Belgium: de Meester.
Thomas, John Jacob (1869). The theory and practice of Creole grammar. Port-of-Spain: Chronicle Publishing Office.
Thomas, John Jacob (1889 [1969]). Froudacity: West Indian fables by James Anthony Froude. London: T. Fisher Unwin. 2nd ed., with preface by C.L.R. James, London: New Beacon
Thomason, Sarah (2002). Creoles and genetic relationship. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 17:1019.Google Scholar
Thomason, Sarah, & Kaufman, Terrence (1988). Language contact, creolization, and genetic linguistics. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Trouillot, Hénock (1980). Les limites du créole dans notre enseignement. Port-au-Prince: Imprimerie des Antilles.
Trouillot, Michel-Rolph (1977). Ti difé boulé sou istoua Ayiti. New York: Koleksion lakansiel.
Trouillot, Michel-Rolph (1990). Haiti: State against nation. The origins and legacy of Duvalierism. New York: Monthly Review Press.
Trouillot, Michel-Rolph (1995). Silencing the past: Power and the production of history. Boston: Beacon.
UNESCO (1953). The use of vernacular languages in education. Monographs on Fundamental Education, VIII. Paris: UNESCO.
Valdman, Albert (1971). Review of D'Ans 1968. International Journal of American Linguistics 38:2028.Google Scholar
Valdman, Albert (1978). Le créole: Structure, statut et origine. Paris: Klincksieck.
Valdman, Albert (1979). La situation linguistique en Haïti. Études créoles 2(2):95106.Google Scholar
Valdman, Albert (1984). The linguistic situation of Haiti. In Foster & Valdman, 7799.
Valdman, Albert (1987). Le cycle vital créole et la standardisation du créole haïtien. Études créoles 10(2):10725.Google Scholar
Valdman, Albert (1992). Aspects de l'enseignement du créole comme langue étrangère et langue seconde. Études créoles 15(2):8194.Google Scholar
Valdman, Albert (2000). L'Évolution du lexique dans les créoles à base lexicale française. L'Information grammaticale 85:5360.Google Scholar
Valdman, Albert (2001a). Le sentiment linguistique natif dans l'analyse de la variation phonologique en créole haïtien. In Robert Nicolaï (ed.), Leçons d'Afrique: Hommage à Gabriel Manessy, 52942. Collection Afrique et Langage 2. Louvain: Peeters.
Valdman, Albert (2001b). Sur les processus lexicogénétiques du créole haïtien. In Hartmut Schröder et al. (eds.), Linguistik als Kulturwissenchaft: Festschrift für Bernd Splilner zum 60. Geburtstag, 4353. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.
Valdman, Albert, et al. (1981). Haitian Creole-English-French dictionary. 2 vols. Bloomington: Indiana University, Creole Institute.
Valdman, Albert, et al; Pooser, Charles; & Jean-Baptiste, Rozevel (1996). A learner's dictionary of Haitian Creole. Bloomington: Indiana University, Creole Institute.
Védrine, Emmanuel (2002). An annotated bibliography on Haitian Creole: A review of publications from colonial times to 2000. Boston: E.W. Védrine Creole Project.
Vinson, Julien (1889). Créoles. In Adolphe Bertillon et al. (eds.), Dictionnaire des sciences anthropologiques, 34547. Paris: Doin.
West, Cornel (1982). Prophesy deliverance! An Afro-American revolutionary Christianity. Philadelphia: Westminster.
Whinnom, Keith (1971). Linguistic hybridization and the ‘special case’ of Pidgins and Creoles. In Hymes 1971, 91115.
Zéphir, Flore (1996). Haitian immigrants in Black America: A sociological and sociolinguistic portrait. Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey.