Articles and plural formation in creoles: Change and universals

It is shown that contrary to prevalent opinion, creole languages do not all have similar systems for marking definiteness, specificity, and plurality. Rather, creoles based on English exhibit one system, which is clearly different from that in the creoles based on French and the ones based on Portuguese. The traits shared by all creoles are the ones that occur in all the West European languages involved in the creolization processes. It is proposed that the development in creoles can profitably be regarded as historical change from the lexifier language, under contact influence from that language from the very beginning of creolization. Thus, almost all creoles have an article system of the type found in West European languages because of influence from these languages, and not because of a ‘bioprogram’ or because of universal trends. On the other hand, universal trends do play a role in the formation of creoles. Thus, similarities between plural formation in creoles based on European languages and pidgins based on African languages can be explained by reference to the general communicative need for at least a minimal system of number marking.