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So what is Creole?

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And what I'd like to
do is to look at, say,

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what happens in the
history of learning French

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by adults and by children.

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We saw examples of that before.

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But what we find there,
and this is actually

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a very robust fact,
which is that when

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you have people
learning French, often--

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so in the case of,
say, object pronouns,

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they do produce
structures of that sort.

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This doesn't have to be
in the Creole environment.

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It happens in
Marseilles, it happens

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in all kinds of
varieties where you

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have second-language learning.

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So the idea is that often,
as you learn the language,

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you might see a
particular order,

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like subject, verb, object.

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If that order is
the dominant order,

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often you take that
order and you apply it

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to all the elements
that might fit it.

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You overgeneralize.

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Children do that all the time.

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When children say things
like, I have one foot

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and you have two foots.

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Saying "foot" and
"foots" instead

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of saying "foot" and "feet."

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It's missing that--
almost every child

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will get to do in the
path of learning English.

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Because what do they do?

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They are real scientists.

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They have an hypothesis
about, say, plurals.

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S marks the plural.

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So why should you
bother to say "feet"

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is you have a well-behaved
plural like S.

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If you say, I don't know, if
you say "table," "tables."

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If you say "pen," "pens."

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Why would you say
"foot," "feet"?

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[INAUDIBLE] And
children do that.

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And the same here.

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If you know that your language
has verb object order, you say,

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frapp** la balle, hit the ball.

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Why would you say, when
you have a pronoun,

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why would you put
it before the verb?

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It seems to be a
natural hypothesis,

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if you're a learner, to assume
that a pronoun like a full noun

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will come after the verb.

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And that's what you see.

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The contrast is between
standard French,

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where you get the pronoun before
the verb, and this is as to if.

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This is a learner's
French, an adult learner's

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French, where you get the
pronoun after the verb.

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Not to make a long story
short-- go ahead Nick.

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NICK: I don't know.

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Maybe it's just off topic.

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If it's the most
natural thing to assume

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that the object
follows the verb,

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how did French ever
develop this weird--

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MICHEL DEGRAFF: That's
a good question.

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It means that as you
learn the language

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there are other factors
in that learning.

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Although the learning might
have a natural tendency

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to do that, but since,
in the case of French,

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there are norms.

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There are books, there is TV.

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So eventually, the learner will
move towards a different set

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of patterns.

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But then, languages do change.

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And in language
change, often there

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is a path towards more general--

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Take for example, so Steven
Pinker, a very good linguist

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who was at MIT
and at Harvard, he

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has a whole book on how the
patterns of regular verbs

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change in English.

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Things like go, went
or shine, shown.

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So many of these over
time become regular.

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So you go from shine,
shown to shine, shined.

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Well, it hasn't happened yet.

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But what he said,
over time there's

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a movement of verbs
going from being

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irregular to being regular.

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And one could explain
that because of the fact

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that there's a tendency to
make all these verbs fit

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the same pattern,
the regular pattern.

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Whereas in time, there's
also prescriptive norms.

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There is a prestige language.

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There's a linguist
called Tony [? Krock, ?]

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who actually argued
that very often, changes

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occur in a different
direction because why?

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Because people use language
to show that they are fancy,

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they are sophisticated.

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So they will use the
irregular pattern to show off.

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It's like the who, whom case.

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So how many of you hear
people saying, "whom" in all

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the wrong places, because--

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[LAUGHTER]

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--because whom,
when you say "whom"

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or when you say "John and
I," it might sound fancier

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than "John and me."

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But what you find
is that often people

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will say "John and I" or "Mary
and I" in the wrong place.

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They will say, I just had a
good talk with "Mary and--

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no-- my dad went to
see "Mary and I."

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But "Mary and I" in
that particular context

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is not correct.

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It should be "Mary and me"
because it's the object.

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Why would you say "Mary
and I" in object position?

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Maybe because "Mary
and I" sounds sincere

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people would tend to use it.

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Or the "whom" thing.

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We saw earlier that
there are cases

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where people say "whom," which
grammatically is not correct.

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But because it sounds fancy, so
"whom" should I say is calling?

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I hear that all the time.

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People say "whom" calls you?

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"Whom" calls you?

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It should be "who" called you?

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Because, according
to the grammar

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of the language in that
particular environment,

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it's a subject.

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So you don't expect
to get "whom"

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because "whom" is for
"who," technically,

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in terms of grammar,
like "him" is for "he,"

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or like "her" is for "she."

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This is basically the
function of the m on whom.

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It makes it an accusative form.

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But yet, people now use "whom"
even when it's a subject.

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Why?

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Because it sounds fancy.

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In fact, there's a
linguist that calls it

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a various, a grammar various.

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You get infected because
you want to sound fancy.

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In fact, we talked
about identity,

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that's one place where identity
might play a role in language

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change because by using
those forms you want

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to project yourself
as being superior,

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as being sophisticated.

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And then you would use-- it's
like in Creole, in Haitian

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Creole, people use often the
rounded vowels from French

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to show that they know French.

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They use the rounded vowels,
like "euh" instead of "ee"

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where it doesn't belong.

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And they produce all kinds
of weird sentences, where

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you get all these "euhs" where,
even in French you have "ee."

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Because they perceive
that the "euh"

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is a mockery of
French not Creole.

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And therefore they want to
use it all over the place.

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And it's called
hyper correction.

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You're hyper
correcting yourself.

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But as you hyper correct
you sound stupid really.

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And then there are all
these jokes about it,

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actually, because people
are aware that people

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who use all these "euhs"
is because that we

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know where to use the "ee."

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It's a pressure of
society on speaking

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in a particular way
that actually creates

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all kinds of weird patterns
that eventually can

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become part of the language.

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That's one driving
force in language change

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is this desire to sound
better than you or I.

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It's like people
who vote for Trump.

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They might vote for Trump not
because they believe in Trump

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but because it might mean
something for their identity.

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So language has this power
of establishing status.

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STUDENT 5: So when you
struggle with your identity,

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are we prone to grammar viruses?

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[LAUGHTER]

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MICHEL DEGRAFF: Yeah, yeah.

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That's one way to
put it, actually.

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Yeah.

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The next part that I
was going to talk about

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had to do with why does
language learning by adults

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have this effect on, say,
verb order, on conjugation.

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And the point could
be made very quickly,

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which is that this is
something which is universal.

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That we know, in many
contexts of English learning,

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that adults do have
this effect [INAUDIBLE]

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If you are going to learn, say,
Italian, or any other languages

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that have lots of markers
on a verb for conjugation,

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often in the first stages of
learning, you don't have these.

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You drop these because you're
trying to speak the language.

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And these are to be memorized.

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And at first, you may not
memorize them properly.

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So it seems that it's
a general phenomenon.

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And the point here is that--

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the key paragraph
here is this one.

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That maybe the way to
understand language change,

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which in my view,
includes Creole formation,

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is to consider the effects
of both language learning

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by adults and by children.

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And if that's the
case, then that's

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what is going to drive all
kinds of language change,

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not just what you see in the
case of Creole formation.

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So this is under the
part of the conclusion.

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Just to recapitulate
that, basically,

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so to those of you
who were asking, So

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what's my theory of
Creole formation?

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I don't need one.

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You see, I don't need one
because Creole formation

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is just language change.

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So whatever linguists understand
about the way languages change,

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00:09:00,973 --> 00:09:03,042
to me it applies to
Creole formation.

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00:09:03,042 --> 00:09:06,412
I have one paper that
came out earlier this year

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00:09:06,412 --> 00:09:12,518
with Enoch Aboh, my colleague
from Benin from West Africa.

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00:09:12,518 --> 00:09:16,255
And the paper is called "A
New Theory of [INAUDIBLE]."."

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It's new in the
sense that it should

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00:09:18,190 --> 00:09:20,526
be the default
theory that Creole

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00:09:20,526 --> 00:09:22,228
are like other languages.

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00:09:22,228 --> 00:09:26,098
So therefore, you don't need to
have a special theory for them.

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00:09:26,098 --> 00:09:28,100
So it should be, the
new, like what is this?

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That Creoles don't
need a theory.

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00:09:30,503 --> 00:09:33,172
Whatever theory applies
to French or English

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should apply to Creole.