Is Creole Change Different from Language Change in Older Languages?
In this section McWhorter seeks to address issues related to language change in creole languages. He claims leftist sociopolitical motivations (“culture cult” as he calls it, p. 162) have restricted the study of creole language change to decreolization or substrate influence and excluded normal language change processes. Chapter six, “Looking into the Void: Zero Copula in the Creole Mesolect,” examines the usefulness of a language-internal diachronic study of the copula in English-based creoles in the Caribbean. In the first place he challenges the validity of the notion of a zero copula in the mesolect of a creole continuum. Next he argues—using synchronic, diachronic, and comparative evidence—that the basilectal creole equative copula is an internal development and that resemblance to West African equivalents is accidental. Consequently, he concludes that basilectal registers of the creoles he examined have evolved from an original stage no longer available and that his approach prov
