Nativization

For the process of immigrants adopting native culture, see Cultural assimilation.

Nativization is the process through which in the virtual absence of native speakers, a language undergoes new phonological, morphological, syntactical, semantic and stylistic changes, and gains new native speakers.[1] This happens necessarily when a second language used by adult parents becomes the native language of their children. Nativization has been of particular interest to linguists, and to creolists more specifically, where the second language concerned is a pidgin.

It was previously thought by scholars that nativization was simply interlanguage fossilization, a step taken during second-language acquisition by learners who apply rules of their first language to their second. However, recent studies now suggest that nativization is simply another form of language acquisition. Several explanations of creole genesis have relied on prior nativization of a pidgin as a stage in achieving creoleness. This is true for Hall's (1966) notion of the pidgin-creole life cycle as well as Bickerton's language bioprogram theory.[2][3]

There are few undisputed examples of a creole arising from nativization of a pidgin by children.[4][5]

The Tok Pisin language reported by Sankoff & Laberge (1972) is one example where such a conclusion could be reached by scientific observation.[4] A counterexample is the case where children of Gastarbeiter parents speaking pidgin German acquired German seamlessly without creolization.[5] Broad treatments of creolization phenomena such as Arends, Muysken & Smith (1995) acknowledge now as a matter of standard that the pidgin-nativization scheme is only one of many explanations with possible theoretical validity.[6] Additionally, the emergence of Nicaraguan sign language without a prior established set of symbols puts forth new questions regarding the process of nativization itself.

  1. ^ Lowenberg, Peter H. (1986). "Non-Native Varieties of English: Nativization, Norms, and Implications". Studies in Second Language Acquisition. 8 (1): 1–18. doi:10.1017/S0272263100005805. ISSN 0272-2631. JSTOR 44486848. S2CID 145152117.
  2. ^ Taylor, Douglas; Hall, Robert A. (1967). "Review of Pidgin and Creole Languages, Robert A. Hall, Jr". Language. 43 (3): 817–824. doi:10.2307/411822. ISSN 0097-8507. JSTOR 411822.
  3. ^ Bickerton, Derek (June 1984). "The language bioprogram hypothesis". Behavioral and Brain Sciences. 7 (2): 173–188. doi:10.1017/S0140525X00044149. ISSN 1469-1825. S2CID 144264276.
  4. ^ a b Sankoff, Gillian; Laberge, Suzanne (1980-01-31), "10. On the Acquisition of Native Speakers by a Language", The Social Life of Language, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, doi:10.9783/9781512809589-014, ISBN 978-1-5128-0958-9, retrieved 2021-04-01
  5. ^ a b Pfaff, Carol W. (1981). "Incipient Creolization in "Gastarbeiterdeutsch?" an Experimental Sociolinguistic Study". Studies in Second Language Acquisition. 3 (2): 165–178. doi:10.1017/S0272263100004150. ISSN 0272-2631. JSTOR 44487210. S2CID 146491510.
  6. ^ Arends, Muysken & Smith (1995).