Editing Creole language (section)

==Overview==
A creole is believed to arise when a [[pidgin]], developed by adults for use as a second language, becomes the native and primary language of their children – a process known as [[nativization]].<ref>{{Harvcoltxt|Wardhaugh|2002|p=61}}</ref> The [[pidgin]]-creole life cycle was studied by American linguist [[Robert A. Hall, Jr.|Robert Hall]] in the 1960s.<ref>{{Harvcoltxt|Hall|1966}}</ref>

Some linguists, such as Derek Bickerton, posit that creoles share more grammatical similarities with each other than with the languages from which they are phylogenetically derived.<ref>{{Harvcoltxt|Bickerton|1983|pp=116–122}}</ref> However, there is no widely accepted theory that would account for those perceived similarities.<ref>{{Harvcoltxt|Winford|1997|p=138}}; cited in {{Harvcoltxt|Wardhaugh|2002}}</ref> Moreover, no grammatical feature has been shown to be specific to creoles.<ref>{{Harvcoltxt|Wittmann|1999}}</ref><ref>{{Harvcoltxt|Mufwene|2000}}</ref><ref name="Gil 2001">{{Harvcoltxt|Gil|2001}}</ref><ref name="Muysken 2001">{{Harvcoltxt|Muysken|Law|2001}}</ref><ref>{{Harvcoltxt|Lefebvre|2002}}</ref><ref name="DeGraff 2003">{{Harvcoltxt|DeGraff|2003}}</ref>{{Excessive citations inline|date=November 2022}}

Many of the creoles known today arose in the last 500 years, as a result of the worldwide expansion of European maritime power and trade in the [[Age of Discovery]], which led to extensive [[European colonialism|European colonial empires]]. Like most non-official and minority languages, creoles have generally been regarded in popular opinion as degenerate variants or [[dialect]]s of their parent languages. Because of that prejudice, many of the creoles that arose in the European colonies, having been stigmatized, have become [[Extinct language|extinct]]. However, political and academic changes in recent decades have improved the status of creoles, both as living languages and as object of linguistic study.<ref name=DeCamp>{{Harvcoltxt|DeCamp|1977}}</ref><ref name=Sebba>{{Harvcoltxt|Sebba|1997}}</ref> Some creoles have even been granted the status of official or semi-official languages of particular political territories.

Other scholars, such as [[Salikoko Mufwene]], argue that pidgins and creoles arise independently under different circumstances, and that a pidgin need not always precede a creole nor a creole evolve from a pidgin. Pidgins, according to Mufwene, emerged in trade colonies among "users who preserved their native vernaculars for their day-to-day interactions". Creoles, meanwhile, developed in settlement colonies in which speakers of a European language, often [[indentured servants]] whose language would be far from the standard in the first place, interacted extensively with non-European [[slave]]s, absorbing certain words and features from the slaves' non-European native languages, resulting in a heavily [[basilect]]alized version of the original language. These servants and slaves would come to use the creole as an everyday vernacular, rather than merely in situations in which contact with a speaker of the superstrate was necessary.<ref>{{cite web |last=Mufwene |first=Salikoko |date=2002a |url=http://humanities.uchicago.edu/faculty/mufwene/pidginCreoleLanguage.html |title=Pidgin and Creole Languages |website=Humanities.uchicago.edu |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130603044826/http://humanities.uchicago.edu/faculty/mufwene/pidginCreoleLanguage.html |archive-date=2013-06-03 }}</ref>