Positing English in the British Isles as the original heterogeneous species, we may claim that creoles are the most conspicuous manifestations of blending inheritance and increased diversity, as they represent more obvious deviations from the original typical range of variation. The ecolo- gies of their respective developments also enabled them to emerge most obviously as new subspecies, because they developed their own norms and
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became socially more autonomous (Chaudenson 1992). Creoles reached these norms as their predominantly non-European speakers accommo- dated each other, selecting structural features in and out of their respective idiolects and moving closer and closer to each other’s systems. Still, the communal system never became monolithic. (This is evidenced by the liter- ature on creole continua, on which see especially Singler 1997 and Winford 1997a.)
Many of the same processes took place among speakers of the other, noncreole colonial English varieties (Trudgill 1986). This explains why new native Englishes differ from varieties spoken then and now in the United Kingdom. Surely, English in the then British Isles (up to the seventeenth century) has undergone its own share of changes too, which were probably inevitable, given the important population movements and contacts which took place there during the same colonial period. However, such restructur- ing underscores the fact that dialectal and idiolectal features were engaged in new competitions which yielded different outcomes in different ecologies.
The challenge lies in explaining the development of all these new varieties, especially in figuring out the selection principles followed by those who pro- duced them.
Variation remains an important language-internal ecological factor. It may direct the structure of a language (variety) into a new direction if its external ecological conditions change. Under new conditions, a new variety may emerge, as in the case of English pidgins and creoles, indigenized Englishes, and new native Englishes. As explained briefly in chapter 1, one of the external ecological factors is the set of structural options available in the other languages that English came in contact with. Such contacts could not only allow foreign elements into the changing system but also deter- mine which variants in the overlapping idiolects and dialects from the motherland would be selected into the new variety. Even without the non- European factor, new contact patterns in the colonies among metropolitan varieties and the competition of features that ensued are two ecological factors that may be considered internal to the evolving language. An impor- tant difference in the developments of new native Englishes and the other new varieties lies thus in the nature and size of the pool of structural fea- tures that came to compete with each other, and in whether or not there was a foreign element that could determine differentially which of the compet- ing features of the lexifier itself were selected into the new variety. These are but a few examples of what there is in the ecology of a language that influ- ences its development.
It is pernicious to continue suggesting in our scholarship that some new Englishes are legitimate offspring of an earlier stage of English and that some others are illegitimate ones. The processes that produced them all are 124 The legitimate and illegitimate offspring of English
of the same kind, although the changes that apply are not the same in all cases. All new Englishes are natural developments and legitimate offspring, although some look more like their ancestors or their present-day British kin than others do. In fact, so do descendants of the same ancestor vary among themselves in a species.
Contact within a language community and between a language and some others seems to have played a more important role in language change and speciation than genetic linguistics has traditionally taken into account. In both cases of contact within and contact with others, variation has been an important system-internal ecological factor, just like in biological evolu- tion. Insofar as variation is recognized, the role of individual speakers as agents of change cannot be overstated. They bring their idiolects in contact and restructure them through their mutual accommodations. It is hard to imagine that native Englishes did not develop by the same principles as indigenized Englishes and creoles.
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5 What research on development of creoles can contribute to genetic linguistics
Identifying genetically related language varieties as dialects of the same language or as separate languages is somewhat reminiscent of assigning populations to the same or different races. It is underlain by some social biases that are seldom discussed explicitly or openly. These are often denied when brought up, and all sorts of nonoperational scientific criteria have been invoked to support distinctions that should at least be re-examined.
Genetic linguistics has been influenced more by the cladograms of evolu- tionary biology than by several interesting research questions behind them.
For instance,blending inheritance, which has to do with social interaction and accounts for offspring inheriting traits from combined parental gene pools, has been accepted as a normal and typical phenomenon in theories of evolution. For some reason, genetic linguists remain committed to the assumption that language is transmitted on an asexual model,in totorather than piecemeal and reconstructed by every new speaker. Language-mixing has been considered not as a default aspect of language transmission but as an acceptable deviation. A certain expectation for a pure form of a lan- guage has led linguists since the nineteenth century to treat creoles and pidgins as seemingly less normal, less regular, less natural, and as not genet- ically related to their lexifiers. These working assumptions are related to a few others, including the following: a language is an organism and a social institution into which individual speakers are born; it is changed by the latter presumably because something goes wrong. Together these mistaken premises have prevented good use of the facts submitted in chapter 1 about a communal language, viz., it is an ensemble of idiolects and develops a certain amount of homogeneity because individual speakers accommodate each other in their attempts to communicate successfully. Such accommo- dations are among the factors that bring about change. Language transmis- sion is more horizontal than vertical and there is no particular reason to expect it to proceed under the kinds of constraints that are typical of the animal species. Even in the latter case, blending inheritance is considered a default phenomenon in biology.
Biologists actually recognize more than the animal kind of species. They 126
have long acknowledged that while in some species genes are transmitted from parent to offspring, which is typical of the animal kind, in some others, they are transmitted (also) horizontally, involving a multitude of contributors to the genetic makeup of each of the individuals that form the species through time. Heterogeneity and hybridityare thus normal charac- teristics of a natural species.
It is not completely true that genetic linguists have not acknowledged external influence on the evolutionary trajectory of a particular language.
Terms such as substrate/substratumand superstrate/superstratumare clear evidence that such influence is accepted as part of history, albeit as part of deviations from regular and normal developments. Unfortunately, there are no cases of language evolution that have involved no external influence at all. Nor is it clear where one must draw the line between, on the one hand, those cases that involve external influence but still yield regular and normal language evolution, and, on the other, those cases that do not. As suggested in chapter 4, it is not certain that the distinction between creole and noncre- ole vernaculars is a valid one on structural grounds. It does not help us gain any particular insights about language evolution in general. Below, I explain why.