JOHN McWHORTER challenges an enduring paradigm among linguists in
this provocative exploration of the origins of plantation creole.
Using a wealth of data -- linguistic, sociolinguistic, historical
-- he proposes that the "limited access model" of creole genesis is
seriously flawed. That model maintains that plantation creole
languages emerged because African slaves greatly outnumbered whites
on colonial plantations. Having little access to the slaveholders'
European languages, the slaves were forced to build a new language
from what fragments they did acquire. Not so, says McWhorter, who
posits that plantation creole originated in West African trade
settlements, in interactions between white traders and slaves, some
of whom were eventually transported overseas.
McWhorter draws on modern techniques of diachronic and
sociolinguistic analysis to demonstrate an "Afrogenesis
hypothesis". He shows how a single English-based pidgin originating
in Africa developed into Atlantic English creoles, and how French-,
Portuguese-, and Dutch- based creoles have African-pidgin origins.
McWhorter's hypothesis explains why there are no Spanish-based
creoles, even though slaves in many Spanish colonies had what was
considered to be "limited access" to the lexifier: because Spain
had no settlements on the West African coast there was no Spanish
pidgin to bring to the New World.
The evidence that most New World creoles were imports traceable
to West Africa strongly suggests that the well-established "limited
access model" for plantation creole needs revision. In forcing a
reexamination of this basic tenet, McWhorter's book will
undoubtedly cause controversy. At the same time it makes available
a vastamount of data that will be a valuable resource for further
explorations of genesis theory.
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