Haitian Creole

The twenty-three years (1934-1957) between the end of the US Occupation and the start of the Duvalier era were a dynamic period of introspection and change in Haitian society. The relatively high degree of freedom of expression, the proliferation of ideologies like Marxism and Noirisme, and the "Revolution of 1946" were all linked to a transformation of Haitian politics and culture unprecedented since 1804. One clear indication of the spirit of this chapter of the country's history, which I have labeled the Haitian Sixties, was the progress made by the Kreyòl movement. After the setbacks under the US Occupation, the call for a legitimation of the popular language entered a phase of renewed vigor: it was bolstered by groundbreaking philological studies, concerted attempts to create a standard orthography, experiments in the use of the Kreyòl language as a medium of instruction, and a renaissance in Kreyòl-language literature. Yet as the movement progressed, it was hampered by new internal divisions and longstanding prejudices at different levels of Haitian society.

Pawòl Lakay is a complete first and second year set of Kreyòl materials designed for beginners and intermediate learners at the college level. It is the most comprehensive resource for the teaching and learning of Kreyòl available on the market. This textbook adopts a pragmatic approach to the teaching of language; emphasizing the value of communicative competence, functional language use, and conversational effectiveness. Pawòl Lakay takes into consideration the most recent research findings, new theories and methods in foreign language teaching. It is designed in accordance with the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages and the ACTFL National Standards for Foreign Language Education.

With Haitian Creole, Albert Valdman breaks new ground in yet another outstanding publication. His many single-authored and multiple-authored books and dictionaries form one of the more influential forces in Haitian Creole and Louisiana Creole linguistics. His Haitian Creole-English Bilingual Dictionary (Valdman et al., 2007) – to cite but one of the many dictionary projects he has directed – is an indispensable reference work in Haitian Creole studies. That dictionary, and now this rich analytical study of Haitian Creole, are great contributions to linguistics and Haitian Creole studies. Both works vastly raise the profile among linguists of this important Caribbean language. The latest addition is also a wonderful resource for graduate and undergraduate students in Haitian studies, provided they have completed at least a handful of courses in linguistics. I used this book on two occasions in an undergraduate introduction to Haitian Creole linguistics and found that, while advanced students grasp the discussions, it is not well suited for inexperienced undergraduates. Courses with large numbers of beginners in the field of linguistics could, however, be assigned shorter passages, a possibility the book makes fully available thanks to its meticulous organization (12 chapters preceded by an introduction).

The English translation of Frankétienne's great Kreyòl novel, Dézafi, is slated for release by the University of Virginia Press in July 2018. As the translator of this challenging work, I am pleased that the first long work of fiction in the Haitian vernacular is finally available in English for scholars and the larger reading public.

Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s first book, Ti difé boulé sou istoua Ayiti [Stirring the Pot of Haitian History] (1977), exposes the foundational role of Haitian Vodou and the Kreyòl language in Haiti’s Revolution (1791-1804). This essay analyzes selected passages from Ti difé boulé that explicitly incorporate Vodou songs, prayers, and terminology to show how Trouillot provocatively deploys oral sources of historical narrative and memory. The young activist, writing in Haitian Kreyòl from New York City during the Duvalier dictatorship in Haiti, powerfully contests official versions of Haitian history by emphasizing the Haitian people’s agency. Vodou and Kreyòl, born out of struggle within a repressive colonial framework, are the forces underlying Haitian resistance. Ti difé boulé examines neocolonial patterns of oppression emerging during the nineteenth century and critiques revolutionary icon Toussaint Louverture, revealing how Haiti’s predatory State harnessed Vodou to continue systematically subjugating the Haitian people.  Trouillot’s innovative yet understudied masterpiece offers contemporary readers “new narratives” (Ulysse, 2015) of Haiti. As twin pillars of Haitian resistance and cultural identity, Vodou and Kreyòl remain a vital and vibrant part of the American heritage. They merit more nuanced understandings within a cultural and political context where they have increasingly come under siege, inside and outside of Haiti.

espanolEl objetivo de este estudio fue analizar los mecanismos cotidianos de racializacion y las barreras linguisticas que enfrentan las ninas y los ninos migrantes haitianos durante su proceso de insercion en las escuelas chilenas. La investigacion se fundamenta en el enfoque de los racismos estructurales que generan relaciones de jerarquizacion y racializacion que recaen sobre determinados cuerpos y provienen desde la ideologia colonialista en los estados latinoamericanos. El estudio se llevo a cabo desde la metodologia cualitativa; se aplicaron entrevistas semiestructuradas a docentes que dictan clases en escuelas publicas con presencia de ninas y ninos migrantes. Se concluye que la infancia migrante haitiana experimenta procesos de racializacion durante su insercion cotidiana en las escuelas chilenas, donde se reconstruyen visiones estereotipadas y vulnerabilizadoras de los sujetos sociales, a quienes se les situa como alteridad. A su vez, la ninez haitiana se enfrenta a la barr...

Le dialecte de Saint-Priest-la-Feuille, petit village limousin du Nord de la Creuse, est encore aujourd'hui un idiome vivant. Une partie importante de la population, surtout parmi les gens âgés de plus de quarante ans, maîtrise le vocabulaire et les conjugaisons de base tout au moins.
Tout le monde n'est pas d'accord sur le nom qu'il faut donner à ce parler. "Marchois", le nom employé ici, dérive de l'ancienne province de la Marche, qui englobait grosso-modo la Creuse actuelle. Ce nom est employé assez couramment par les gens qui s'intéressent à l'occitan.
Cependant, il présente un grave inconvénient: les frontières de la Marche historique ne correspondent pas au marchois tel qu'on l'envisage ici. Le Sud de la Creuse emploie des parlers appartenant aux dialectes occitans limousin (à l'ouest) ou auvergnat (à l'est). Il vaudrait donc mieux parler de "bas-marchois" à propos du dialecte étudié ici, celui de Saint-Priest.

There has been many discursive arguments surrounding how best to regard Creole languages. DeGraff (2005) in his article 'Linguists' most dangerous myth: The fallacy of Creole Exceptionalism' affirms that Creole exceptionalism propagandised by various scholars is a platitudinous discourse with direct correlation to "racism and slavery" (p.534). DeGraff sets out to debunk five canonical tropes surrounding these myths in order to redefine people's views by arguing that there is no difference between Creoles and other languages. These myths relegate Creoles to 'degenerate offshoots', 'linguistic dodos', 'Special hybrids' formed by 'abnormal transmission' and are 'contemporary ursprachen'. Hence, the tenets of DeGraff's arguments rest on a more intellectual assessment of Creoles specifically Haitian Creole (HC). In order to expedite his arguments, DeGraff segments his paper into several Philological sub-topics: "Neo-colonial vs. postcolonial" theories and "Neo-colonial anti-Creolistics". Next he explores the "Socio-historical and epistemological background" of Creolitics and concludes with alternate ways to reform our thinking. He generalizes that marginal assessments of Creoles are responsible for the Neo-colonial dogmas plaguing our society. Thus, to combat this, Creole speakers must "become active participants in the reflexive, Cartesian-Uniformitarian" (p. 579). DeGraff's arguments effectively prove that Creoles meet the needs of their speakers and are not 'caricatures' but are real languages. This contextualizes his discourse, so that, he is able to peel back the layers of trite beliefs disseminated by hegemonic narratives.

L'emprise de la langue française minoritaire dans l'enseignement ha"itien est un des problemes fondamentaux — sinon le probleme fondamental — d'Haiti. Quels sont, en effet, les tenants et les aboutissants de la politique linguistique haitienne ?

This presentation deals with both theoretical and practical reasons for using PowerPoint technology in foreign language classrooms. It demonstrates how PowerPoint increases foreign language learners’ ability to process new language input with greater ease and accuracy. The primary function of the classroom is to provide students with large amounts of contextualized and meaningful input. PowerPoint can be used to make input comprehensible, interesting, and engaging to students.

A century after the slaves of Saint-Domingue won their liberty, their descendants, the free peasantry of the Republic of Haiti, remained impoverished and without access to channels of recourse. Their isolation was exacerbated by the linguistic divide in Haiti, where French was the exclusive language of official and written contexts while the majority of the popula- tion spoke only Haitian Creole. At the start of the twentieth century, a movement began to dismantle this linguistic hier- archy. Haitian poets and novelists started using Creole in their works of literature in order to contest the notion that Creole was an inferior language. They believed that a linguistic revo- lution would allow Haiti’s monolingual masses to participate in public life for the first time in Haiti’s history. Georges Sylvain, Frédéric Marcelin, and their colleagues effectively opened the debate around the status of Creole, and founded a national literature in the process.

This essay explores the genealogy of historian and anthropologist Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s writings as related to broader trends in historical scholarship. The author suggests that it was through Silencing the Past’s acceptance and ascendance within the very North Atlantic “guild” that Trouillot deconstructs in his historical writings that the ideas of nineteenth-century Haitian historians such as Baron de Vastey, Hérard Dumesle, Beaubrun Ardouin, and Thomas Madiou produced an immeasurable influence on the direction of historical scholarship across the world. The author argues that the influence of these nineteenth-century Haitian authors can be seen everywhere in social history, especially in the concept of history from below, even though most historians in Europe and the United States have never even heard the names of these other Haitian authors.

Vodou’s rites and the sacred songs that are sung in the course of their services are in Haitian Creole but they contain many lexical items that stem from West African languages like Fon, Yoruba, Ewe, and Igbo, in addition to West Central African languages like Kikongo. Lexical items with an African origin in Haitian Vodou form a significant part of the religion’s lexicon. The identification of the African lexical sources of the religion allows for hypotheses about the origins of Vodou traditions, sheds light on the history of the French slave trade, and provides clues about the ways in which Vodou took form in colonial Saint-Domingue and independent Haiti. The presence of diverse African cultural and linguistic influences in Haitian Vodou demonstrates the religion’s emergence as a system that syncretized various African traditions into a cohesive whole. This African religious fusion is especially strong in the Asogwe Vodou (Kanzo) tradition, whose stronghold is the Department of the West (i.e. Port-au-Prince and Léogâne) in Haiti. I attempt a preliminary reconstruction of the history of the syncretism of diverse African religious traditions and argue that the “African syncretism” represents the fundamental process that gave rise to Asogwe Vodou in Saint-Domingue and Haiti. I will suggest that the phenomenon of spirit migration within the rites of Haitian Vodou sheds light on the Founder Principle (Mufwene 1996): a few important spirits served in the rites that originate in the Bight of Benin have migrated into the rites of West Central African origin, a process that seems to have taken place in Haiti but draws from a deeper African tradition of spirit-migration between neighboring cultures. This process provides evidence that the religion’s founders from the Bight of Benin exerted a central influence even if pan-African religious inclusivity is a dynamic element of the system they created, Asogwe Vodou.

Résumé de l'article
L'article examine les trois premiers romans de Gary Victor en se focalisant particulièrement sur les passages écrits en langue kreyòl afin de déterminer leur mode d'intégration et leur statut dans ces textes littéraires d'expression française. Pour bien apprécier la qualité, la pertinence et le degré de créolisation linguistique à l'oeuvre dans les romans de G. Victor, ces derniers ont été confrontés à d'autres productions littéraires de même nature provenant d'un corpus de textes francophones haïtiens et antillais.

The Haitian Revolution (1791–1804) was the first antislavery and anticolonial uprising led by New World Africans to result in the creation of an independent and slavery-free nation state. The momentousness of this thirteen-year-long war generated thousands of pages of writing. This anthology brings together for the first time a transnational and multilingual selection of literature about the revolution, from the beginnings of the conflicts that resulted in it to the end of the nineteenth century.

With over two hundred excerpts from novels, poetry, and plays published between 1787 and 1900, and depicting a wide array of characters including, Anacaona, Makandal, Boukman, Toussaint Louverture, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, and Henry Christophe, this anthology provides the perfect classroom text for exploring this fascinating revolution, its principal actors, and the literature it inspired, while also providing a vital resource for specialists in the field. This landmark volume includes many celebrated authors—such as Alexandre Dumas, Victor Hugo, Heinrich von Kleist, Alphonse de Lamartine, William Wordsworth, Harriet Martineau, and William Edgar Easton—but the editors also present here for the first time many less-well-known fictions by writers from across western Europe and both North and South America, as well as by nineteenth-century Haitian authors, refuting a widely accepted perception that Haitian representations of their revolution primarily emerged in the twentieth century. Each excerpt is introduced by contextualizing commentary designed to spark discussion about the ongoing legacy of slavery and colonialism in the Americas. Ultimately, the publication of this capacious body of literature that spans three continents offers students, scholars, and the curious reader alike a unique glimpse into the tremendous global impact the Haitian Revolution had on the print culture of the Atlantic world.

The early history of Haitian Kreyòl remains subject to intense debate among linguists, though there is no doubt it was the principal medium through which slave revolts were organized and the foundations of Haitian culture set. By the end of the nineteenth century there were already significant literary texts, in particular Oswald Durand’s “Choucoune” and Georges Sylvian’s Cric? Crac! During the thirties and forties, proponents of Kreyòl struggled to have it recognized as the national language and standardized. This process did not bear fruit until the IPN (Institut de pédagogie national) orthography became official in the eighties. Beginning in the fifties, there had already been a renais- sance of poetry in Kreyòl, the leading figure of which was Feliks Moriso-Lewa. At least two generations of writers have followed in his footsteps. In the person of Franketyèn, Kreyòl has one of the most fascinating contemporary writers in world literature.

At the start of the twentieth century a movement began to dismantle Haiti’s linguistic hierarchy. Haitian writers started using Creole in their works of literature in order to contest the notion that Creole was unfit for written and formal contexts. Such a linguistic revolution would allow Haiti’s monolingual masses to participate in public life. The emergent Creole movement, however, came to an abrupt end with the onset of the US Occupation in 1915. Haitian intellectuals opted to cling to their French cultural heritage as a way of contesting the validity of the Americans’ ‘civilizing mission.’ The Creole project was shelved. Curiously, the Americans had their own reasons for expanding the use of Creole, and contributed greatly to the infrastructure of the language. The Americans, however, provoked widespread opposition and undermined their own work on the Creole question. The cause of language legitimation, much like Haitian democracy itself, ultimately regressed under the Occupation.

kawousel-kaze kawousel J n. commotion, movement Peyi sa a pa janm pa gen yon kawouset. This country is always in commotion. cf gagot kawoutchou see kawotchou kawoutchoumann see kawotchoumann kayl (ka) n. 1 house, hut, dwelling M ap bati yon kay. I'm building a house. cf kaz 2 building 3 office cf kare, kazye • okay an mi see kay mi okay balkon see kay chanmot okay bas one story house okay chanmot {balkon} two-story house okay jwet dollhouse okay kwafe barbershop okay Iwa {sen} voodoo temple okay madan Vikto bathroom, john, toilet [euph.] M pral ka madan Vikto. I'm going to the bathroom. okay makrel [mal} a "hot pillow hotel" (where rooms are rented by the hour for amorous pursuits) b brothel okay (an) mi stone or cement house okay miste shrine [house], inner sanctuary of voodoo temple containing altar okay pay thatched-roof house okay sen see kay Iwa okay te a mud-walled house b house with dirt floor okay tol tin roofed house oanba kay basement cf kav obay yon moun kay (Ii) to leave the house, clear out

À propos de la syntaxe des pronoms objets en créole haïtien : points de vue croisés de la morphologie et de la diachronie In: Langages, 34e année, n°138, 2000. pp. 89-113. Abstract Striking differences between Haitian Creole (HC) and its lexifier language, French (FR), concern (inter alia) the Case-related morphology and the distribution of Object pronouns. The goal of the paper is to relate HC-vs-FR differences in object-pronoun morphosyntax to other morphosyntactic distinctions between the two languages, i.e. verb morphosyntax and inflectional morphology. As a contribution to the study of the mental processes underlying creole genesis and language change, the paper examines superstrate and substrate influence in language creation qua parameter(re)setting. It is shown that HC differs from both FR and main Kwa languages. Stark morphological differences contrast FR and HC verbs and pronouns. Inflection for Case and word-order also differentiate Fongbe and HC pronouns. Reduced inflectional morphology (as in other language-contact situations) coupled with particularly salient source-language patterns in the Primary Language Data act as triggers toward fixing particular parameters. Verb-syntax patterns make creolization quite similar to diachrony. Both sets of phenomena ultimatety reduce to UG-based constraints in language acquisition.

Zuckermann, Ghil'ad and Walsh, Michael 2011. ‘Stop, Revive, Survive!: Lessons from the Hebrew Revival Applicable to the Reclamation, Maintenance and Empowerment of Aboriginal Languages and Cultures’, Australian Journal of Linguistics 31.1: 111-127.

LINK TO THE ARTICLE: http://www.zuckermann.org/pdf/Revival_Linguistics.pdf

Final version:
http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a932426202~frm=titlelink

DOI: 10.1080/07268602.2011.532859

Australian Journal of Linguistics (AJL)
Volume 31, Issue 1, January 2011, pages 111 - 127

Stop, Revive, Survive: Lessons from the Hebrew Revival Applicable to the Reclamation, Maintenance and Empowerment of Aboriginal Languages and Cultures

GHIL‘AD ZUCKERMANN and MICHAEL WALSH

University of Adelaide and University of Sydney


ABSTRACT

The revival of Hebrew is so far the most successful known reclamation of a sleeping tongue and is a language movement that has been in progress for more than 120 years. By comparison, language revival movements in Australia are in their infancy. This article provides comparative insights and makes information about the Hebrew revival accessible to Australian linguists and Aboriginal revival activists.

Needless to say, the first stage of any desire by professional linguists to assist in language reawakening must involve a long period of thoroughly observing, carefully listening to the people, learning, mapping and characterizing the specific indigenous community. Only then can one inspire and assist. That said, this article proposes that there are linguistic constraints applicable to all revival attempts. Mastering them would be useful to endangered languages in general and to Aboriginal linguistic revival in particular.

This article contributes towards the establishment of Revival Linguistics, a new linguistic discipline and paradigm. Zuckermann`s term Revival Linguistics is modelled upon 'Contact Linguistics' (<language contact). Revival linguistics inter alia explores the universal constraints and mechanisms involved in language reclamation, renewal and revitalization. It draws perspicacious comparative insights from one revival attempt to another, thus acting as an epistemological bridge between parallel discourses in various local attempts to revive sleeping tongues all over the globe.


Keywords: Revival Linguistics, Language Revival, Aboriginal Studies, Hebrew, Social Empowerment, Hybridity and Multiple Causation, Purism versus Compromise, Language and Identity, Contact Linguistics, Yiddish, Aboriginal English, Anthropological Linguistics, Sociolinguistics, Language Endangerment, Resilience Linguistics, Revitalization, Renewal.


Dedicated to Professor Michael Clyne z"l



ARTICLE

"I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain."

(John Adams, 1735–1826, second president of the United States)


The main aim of this article is to suggest that there are perspicacious lessons applicable from the relatively successful Hebrew revival to the reclamation, maintenance and empowerment of Aboriginal languages and cultures. 'Language is power; let us have ours', wrote Aboriginal politician Aden Ridgeway on 26 November 2009 in the Sydney Morning Herald. Previous revival efforts have largely failed (for obvious reasons, we are not going to single out specific failures here). While there have been some good results from several projects since 1992 (e.g. Kaurna, see below), Aboriginal people overall do not see as many positive outcomes from revival programmes as they would like. In large part this is the result of shortage of sufficient (continuity of) funding, lack of technical expertise, and lack of integration of school-based programmes with community language programmes. However, there are purely linguistic reasons too: Many revival efforts were not supported by a sound theoretical understanding of how successful language revival works. As pointed out by Thieberger (2002), decisions about the appropriate target for language maintenance programmes are too often driven by structural linguistics, where the supposed ideal is intergenerational transmission of the language with all its original structural complexity retained, thus creating unrealistic expectations among the Aboriginal community.

This article is the first of its kind as it will innovatively draw crucial insights from 'Modern Hebrew' (henceforth, Israeli – see Zuckermann 1999), so far the most successful known reclamation attempt of a sleeping tongue. Zuckermann's (2008a, 2009, 2010, 2011) research on Israeli demonstrates which language components are more revivable than others. Words and conjugations, for example, are easier to revitalize than intonation, discourse, associations and connotations. We should encourage revivalists and Aboriginal leaders to be realistic rather than puristic, and not to chastise English loanwords and pronunciation, for example, within the emergent language. Applying such precious conclusions from Hebrew will closely assist Australian revivalists in being more efficient, urging them not to waste time and resources on Sisyphean efforts to resuscitate linguistic components that are unlikely to be revivable.

While the results the endeavors we are proposing here have considerable value as a research enterprise, one can also consider them in terms of a cost-benefit analysis (Mühlhäusler and Damania 2004, Walsh 2008): Language revitalization contributes to social reconciliation, cultural tourism (Clark and Kostanski 2005), capacity building, and improved community health for Indigenous peoples (Walsh forthcoming B). In the process of language revival, some Aboriginal people will go from being dysfunctional (cf. Sutton 2009) to well-balanced, positive people. The benefits to the wider community and to Australian society are immense.

Reversing language shift (RLS) (Fishman 1991, 2001, Hagège 2009, Evans 2010, Walsh 2005a, Zuckermann 2011) is thus of great social benefit. Language revival does not only do historical justice and address inequality but can also result in the empowerment of people who have lost their heritage and purpose in life.

Some Aboriginal people distinguish between usership and ownership. There are even those who claim that they own a language although they only know one single word of it: its name. Consequently, some Indigenous Australians do not find it important to revive their comatose tongue. We, on the other hand, have always believed in Australia’s very own roadside dictum: ‘Stop, revive, survive!'


Background: The Hebrew Revival

I suppose the process of acceptance will pass through the usual four stages: 1. This is worthless nonsense. 2. This is an interesting, but perverse, point of view. 3. This is true, but quite unimportant. 4. I always said so. (Haldane 1963: 464)

'Hebrew' is the most quoted example of a successful language revival. On the other hand, if we are to be brutally truthful with ourselves, the modern-day vernacular spoken in downtown Tel Aviv is a very different language – both typologically and genetically – to that of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) or of the Mishnah, the first major redaction of Jewish oral traditions.

Hebrew was spoken since approximately the 14th century BC. It belonged to the Canaanite division of the northwestern branch of the Semitic languages, which constitute a branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family. Following a gradual decline, it ceased to be spoken by the second century AD. The failed Bar-Kokhba Revolt against the Romans in Judea in 132-5 AD marks the symbolic end of the period of spoken Hebrew. We believe that the Mishnah was codified around 200 AD because Hebrew was then dying as a mother tongue. Rabbi Judah haNasi and his collaborators might have realized that if they did not act then to redact the oral tradition, it would soon have been too late because Jews were already speaking languages other than Hebrew. (In fact, the Gemara, the other component of the Babylonian Talmud, which was codified around 500 AD, was written in Aramaic rather than in Hebrew.)

For approximately 1,750 years thereafter, Hebrew was ‘clinically dead’. A most important liturgical and literary language, it occasionally served as a lingua franca – a means of communication between people who do not share a mother tongue – for Jews of the Diaspora, but not as a native language.

Fascinating and multifaceted Israeli, which emerged in Palestine (Eretz Israel) at the end of the nineteenth century, possesses distinctive socio-historical characteristics such as the lack of a continuous chain of native speakers from spoken Hebrew to Israeli, the non-Semitic mother tongues spoken by the Hebrew revivalists, and the European impact on literary Hebrew. Consequently, it presents the linguist with a unique laboratory in which to examine a wider set of theoretical problems concerning language genesis, social issues like language, identity and politics, and important practical matters, such as whether it is possible to revive a no-longer spoken language.

The genetic classification of Israeli has preoccupied scholars since its genesis. The still regnant traditional thesis suggests that Israeli is Semitic: Hebrew revived. The revisionist antithesis defines Israeli as Indo-European: Yiddish relexified; that is, Yiddish, the revivalists’ mother tongue, is the 'substratum', whilst Hebrew is the 'superstratum' providing the vocabulary (cf. Horvath and Wexler 1997). According to Zuckermann's mosaic (rather than Mosaic) synthesis, Israeli is not only multi-layered but also multi-parental. A Semito-European, or Eurasian, hybr...

Malgre sa anpil entèlektyèl frankofòn ta vle kwè, pami tout faktè ki gen yon enpak negatif sous sistèm edikatif ak ekonomi nan peyi Ayiti, itilizasyon lang franse a se yonn nan sa ki pi enpòtan yo. Se vre, lang franse a, kòm yon mwayen kominikasyon, pa reprezante yon pwoblèm an li-menm. Sa ki pwoblèm nan jouk jounen jodi a, se fason yo kontinye ap sèvi ak lang sa a nan sosyete Ayiti a. Depi peryòd lakoloni, itilizasyon lang franse a te toujou ale nan dezavantaj lang kreyòl la nan domèn kominikasyon ekri ansanm ak nan pi fò sityasyon fòmèl yo. Men, malerezman, gen kèk entèlektyèl ki chwazi minimize enpak negatif itilizasyon lang franse a sou sistèm edikatif ayisyen an. Sèten moun menm rive deklare se pa itilizasyon lang franse a ki responsab echèk edikasyon nan peyi Ayiti. Nou chwazi reflechi sou wòl lang kreyòl la nan pwosesis (re)konstriksyon Ayiti a nan atik sa a, paske lè nou fè nouvèl nan radyo ak televizyon oswa lè nou li jounal sou koze (re)konstriksyon Ayiti a, epi sitou lè nou li rapò ak dokiman ofisyèl ki pibliye sou koze a, nou remake de lang ki ap domine diskou sou kesyon (re)konstriksyon Ayiti a se Franse ak Angle. Pa egzanp, tit dokiman Komisyon Enterimè pou Rekonstriksyon Ayiti a (KERA) se « Plan d'action pour le relèvement et le développement national d'Haïti ». Dokiman sa a ak tout lòt rapò ou jwenn sou sitwèb KERA a ekri an franse ak angle sèlman. Dokiman Fowòm Dyaspora Ayisyen an li-menm, ki an angle, se « Contributing to a strategic plan for reconstruction and development in Haiti». Dokiman PNUD lan se « Donner à Haïti les moyens de construire un meilleur avenir »; Gen yon lòt ki se « Haiti: Stabilisation and reconstruction after the quake ». Epi, nou jwenn pa Òganizasyon pou Lafrankofoni an ki se « Propositions d'actions de la Francophonie pour la reconstruction d'Haïti ». Nou site tit dokiman sa yo kòm egzanp, men gen anpil lòt ankò. Nou kab remake pa gen okenn tit an kreyòl. E si genyen, yo pa anpil. Epitou, pi fò ladan yo se dokiman yo te ekri dabò an franse oswa an angle yo tradui apre an kreyòl. Kidonk, mizanplas teyorik pwojè (re)konstriksyon Ayiti a ap fèt nan 2 lang ki etranje pou pèp ayisyen an. Epi, li ta sanble yo pa tèlman itilize lang kreyòl la nan tout gwo reyinyon, rankont, konferans nasyonal ak entènasyonal ki ap fèt sou koze a. Kisa nou konprann nan sa a? Poukisa se ak lang etranje yo kontinye ap sèvi pou reflechi sou pwoblèm pèp ayisyen an? Poukisa lang kreyòl la kontinye ap sibi dominasyon lang franse a jouk jounen jodi a? Ki konsekans eksklizyon oswa mank itilizasyon lang kreyòl la kab genyen sou rezilta pwojè (re)konstriksyon Ayiti a? Se tout kesyon sa yo nou pral chache reponn nan atik sila a. Men, pou nou kab jwenn bon jan repons objektif pou kesyon sa yo, nou oblije dabò defini kòmsadwa tout konsèp kle nou pral itilize nan travay refleksyon sila a. Prefiks « re » a ki ant parantèz nan mo « (re)konstwiksyon » an endike anbiguite ki genyen nan itilizasyon mo sa a nan tout dokiman ofisyèl ak rapò yo ekri sou pwojè (re)konstwiksyon Ayiti a. Voye je sou atik Robert Berrouët Oriol la (2011) ki gen pou tit : Le «système» linguistique d'Yves Dejean conduit à une impasse. http://www.alterpresse.org/spip.php?article11392

"Language Revitalisation: Discourse, Myths and Ideologies
A Critical Approach to Revitalisation Movements in Provence and Scotland
This thesis seeks to explore theoretical and practical aspects of language revitalisation (LR), an emerging field of investigation which has been described as under-­‐theorised. We approach the question from a sociolinguistic and anthropological point of view, informed by fieldwork in Provence and Scotland, where both Provençal (or Occitan) and Scots are construed as being under threat. This thesis, which treats LR as a social phenomenon arising in contexts of cultural contact, comprises three parts (seven chapters) organised as follows:
Part One explores how the question of LR arose from works on language death in descriptive linguistics, but also from works in sociolinguistics and anthropology. It then examines the way in which LR is conceptualised in academic literature, particularly in sociolinguistics and documentary linguistics. This part concludes that while works on LR have focused on language, much work needs to be conducted on social actors in order to understand this growing and worldwide phenomenon.
Part Two links works on LR with more ancient findings on cultural revitalisation movements in American anthropology, and suggests links with LR in order to propose a conceptual framework for the description and analysis of LR movements. This framework includes central notions such as mazeway, and adds the categories of myth and ideology as central notions for the understanding of LR movements.
Part Three explores how this conceptual framework can be used to describe and interpret some aspects of language revitalisation movements in Provence and Scotland, looking at how LR is construed in the discourses of language experts, activists, ordinary speakers and pupils. It then looks at how discourses circulate in two schools, which represent particular sites of LR in which orders of discourse and social practice meet.
In our conclusion, we suggest links between current works on language revitalisation theory and globalisation studies. Contemporary LR movements can indeed represent ways of dealing with the uncertainty caused by the increasingly globalised world in which we live"

Shortly after the catastrophic earthquake that crushed Port-au-Prince and the surrounding towns on January 12, 2010, The New York Times published an article in which columnist David Brooks claimed that “voodoo” is a “progress-resistant” cultural influence because it spreads the message that “life is capricious and planning futile.” Alongside Brooks, many authors promote similar views, especially Christians. I argue that Vodou does not negatively affect progress in Haiti. Rather, there are historical, linguistic, and governmental policies that limit progress. In reality, Vodou practitioners enhance progress in their attention to the planning and giving of ceremonies, in the hierarchical organization they establish in communities, in their ritual and language, and in the education imparted through inheritance, teaching, and initiation. The scapegoating of Vodou by Brooks and others perpetuates a racist colonial legacy, and it betrays an ignorance of the community and the abundant research about it.

Vodou is the hereditary spiritual tradition of African descendants in Haiti (Jil and Jil 2009). Th roughout the ages, Vodou has been transmitted by the elders to the children: Depi m piti, m ap chante pou lwa yo. Se pa ti nèg ki te montre m chante o. Adje, kite m montre chante Bondje! Depi nan vant manman m, gwo lwa m yo reklame mwen. Bilolo! 1

Motivé par la recherche de l’authenticité, Justin Lhérisson, auteur majeur de la littérature haïtienne du début du XXe siècle, a réussi, comme personne d’autre avant lui, à produire un type spécifique de fiction narrative qui reproduit littérairement la complexe dimension tragi-comique de la réalité sociohistorique haïtienne. Dans ses œuvres d’expression française, Lhérisson a certes fait un usage original de certains procédés rhétoriques classiques, mais l’originalité particulière de son écriture réside plutôt dans une esthétique avant-gardiste expérimentée sur les plans diégétique et langagier. Sa technique d’écriture inédite semble avoir influencé la plupart des grands mouvements et concepts de décentrement littéraire postcoloniaux connus, tels que la négritude, l’antillanité et la créolité. Cet article propose une nouvelle lecture de "Les Fortunes de chez nous: La Famille des Pitite-Caille" (1905) et "Zoune chez sa ninnaine" (1906) en se focalisant particulièrement sur l’aspect langagier afin de déterminer dans quelle mesure la poétique romanesque novatrice de Lhérisson lui a permis de relever le défi difficile de dire authentiquement la réalité liée au kreyòl, langue haïtienne orale, dans un texte littéraire conçu et écrit principalement en langue française.

"Jusqu’à la dernière décennie du XVIIIe siècle, Saint-Domingue était la colonie européenne la plus prospère du monde grâce notamment au travail forcé de plus d’un demi-million d’esclaves africains. Ce fut précisément dans le nord de ce territoire insulaire que se produisit en 1791 la rébellion d’esclaves plus importante de l’époque moderne. Cet événement a été suivi par des conflits civils et militaires, souvent liés aux troubles et aux fluctuations politiques en France, et qui conduisirent ultérieurement à l’Indépendance d’Haïti en 1804.

Dès le début de ce processus, la situation des Blancs des sociétés esclavagistes voisines s’en trouva afectée. Ils s’alarmèrent de la violence d’une insurrection qui déboucha sur une République indépendante dirigée exclusivement par des Noirs et des mulâtres. La possibilité que cet exemple puisse être imité par les populations de couleur locales représentait une menace très grave pour leurs vies, leurs familles, leurs possessions matérielles, et même pour l’ordre socio-racial établi par les Européens depuis l’époque de la conquête. Ils craignaient donc pour leur propre paix intérieure, menacée en outre par les actions des abolitionnistes métropolitains et la propagation des idées révolutionnaires françaises. De ce tournant émotif on trouve des manifestations tout au long du XIXe siècle, et presque dans toutes les sociétés esclavagistes des Amériques. Elles se manifestèrent même en Europe, notamment lors des discussions portant sur l’esclavage et le commerce d’esclaves. Tout cela met en évidence l’existence d’un traumatisme culturel lié aux événements survenus dans la colonie française, jusqu’à constituer un véritable syndrome collectif de portée occidentale.

Ce travail s’attache par conséquent à montrer la véritable extension et les conséquences de ce phénomène, en analysant dans le détail et dans diverses aires culturelles du Monde Atlantique (anglophone et hispanophone) chacune de ses manifestations, voire de ses enjeux sur les plans militaire et politique, à travers des outils analytiques inspirés notamment des sciences cognitives.

La thèse doctorale dont ce livre est issu a été récompensée par le prix de thèse de l’Institut des Amériques 2011, et par le prix « Histoires de l’esclavage » décerné par le Comité pour la mémoire et l’histoire de l’esclavage en 2011."

Estimé à plus de 80.000, les Haïtiens représentent 25% de la population bahamienne. Le créole haïtien (CH) est donc la langue minoritaire la plus importante aux Bahamas. Cette langue, dévalorisée et stigmatisée de la même manière que ses locuteurs immigrés aux Bahamas, ne remplit aucune fonction importante dans la société bahamienne. Pourtant, il y a un intérêt croissant pour l’apprentissage du CH aux Bahamas. Cette langue, enseignée au niveau universitaire, est néanmoins absente dans le curriculum des écoles primaires et secondaires bahamiens. Se basant sur des observations empiriques et des données recueillies suite à une enquête sociolinguistique, cet article comporte deux parties. La première partie présente une description analytique des conditions de vie des immigrants haïtiens aux Bahamas ainsi que de la situation sociolinguistique du créole haïtien dans ce pays. Après avoir tenté d’expliquer la motivation des Bahamiens pour l’apprentissage du CH, la seconde partie de l’article propose des solutions pour lutter contre le sentiment anti-haïtien responsable du manque d’intégration des Haïtiens dans la société bahamienne.

This is dedicated to my husband, Francisco, whose unwavering encouragement helped make this dissertation possible; to my daughters, Margarita and Gabriela, for their support and understanding; to my father, Arthur A. Dole, Jr., who helped forge the path before me; and to my mother, Marjorie E. Welsh Dole, for always believing in me. This work is also dedicated to Monseñor Oscar Arnulfo Romero, and to those who have no shoes. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my committee for their time and patience in guiding me through this process. I would also like to thank the many people who contributed information, advice, and support throughout this research study. Many Houston Independent School District staff shared the history and conceptual framework for the HISD two-way bilingual immersion programs, including Al Gavito, who opened doors and facilitated connections, as well as

Pandan 3 lane depi Akademi Kreyòl Ayisyen (AKA) ap fonksyonen ak lajan Leta ayisyen, ki dispozisyon dirijan yo pran pou AKA ankouraje epi patisipe nan pwodiksyon travay akademik oswa syantifik ki ta kapab kontribiye nan « devlopman syantifik » lang kreyòl la dapre atik 213 ki nan Konstitisyon 1987 la? Èske baz òganizasyonèl ak mòd fonksyònman AKA mete l nan pozisyon pou l ranpli misyon l ki detaye nan Lwa pou kreyasyon Akademi Kreyòl Ayisyen an? Objektif nou nan atik sa a, se jwenn repons pou kesyon fondamantal sa yo dapre prensip objektivite ki gide travay rechèch syantifik. Nan sans sa a, n ap analize, dapre yon demach endiktif (démarche inductive), tout done piblik ki disponib sou AKA, san konte lòt done mwen genyen kòm akademisyen manm fondatè epi manm komisyon syantifik AKA a. Pami dokiman k ap sèvi nou kòm sipò pou alimante refleksyon nou sou wòl AKA nan « devlopman syantifik » lang kreyòl la, genyen Lwa pou kreyasyon Akademi Kreyòl Ayisyen an, Ak kòlòk sou Akademi kreyòl ayisyen an, Premye rezolisyon sou òtograf lang kreyòl ayisyen an, bilten AKA yo, plis lòt kominikasyon ofisyèl yo pibliye sou sitwèb AKA ak sou paj Facebook enstitisyon an. Epitou, n ap analize plizyè atik opinyon yo pibliye nan laprès sou AKA. Se tout done sa yo ki pral ban nou yon konesans a posteriori sou sistèm òganizasyon ak mòd fonksyònman AKA ke nou pral pataje avèk piblik la.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the direct causal links that exist between the revalorization of the Haitian Creole language and culture, particularly the written code of this language, and the success of any serious project for economic, political, cultural and social development in Haiti. After an analysis of the situation of written Creole in Haiti following the earthquake of January 12, 2010, the paper proposes recommendations on the role that the future Creole Academy should play in promoting the Haitian Creole language and culture in Haiti.

This paper argues that Scrabble can be used as a tool to help maintain and grow all levels of Haitian Creole literacy and it provides the technical details for developing the game. The rules of the English version are given to introduce the game's basic structure. Haiti's educational, sociolinguistic, and literacy conditions are presented in order to put in context the orthographic form proposed for the Haitian Creole version. An overview of game culture in Haiti shows Scrabble's potential for success. Previous research on the adaptation of Scrabble into Latin by means of a quantitative corpus-linguistic method is examined. Difficult aspects of standard Haitian Creole orthography (IPN) are discussed in order to expose potential pitfalls in design. Quantitative analysis of a Haitian Creole textual corpus provides an empirical basis for the distribution of letter tiles and their point values. Problems encountered in test-games played by Haitian-American university students and Haitian elementary and high school students inform the final proposal. The paper examines the work necessary for the successful introduction of Haitian Creole Scrabble and it provides independent evidence of the game's cognitive benefits. Haitian Creole Scrabble is argued to be a creative and special method for expanding and strengthening literacy in Haitian Creole and other creole languages.

Over the past century Haitian Creole, called by the Haitians, Creole (Degraff 2002:101), has seen much advancement from its spoken as well as its written usage. The last 40 years have been particularly fruitful with the recognition of Creole as one of the nation’s official language its usage at work (Hebblethwaite 2012a:263), and in the education. During this it was also used in the publishing of multiple written documents which support the usage as well the as the diffusion of the language in the subjects of linguistics, literature, social science, religion, agriculture and lexicography (Védrine 2004). One of the attestations of its accomplishments is the production of multiple dictionaries in the language.
Though { TC  ABSTRACT }Creole has multiple dictionaries that manifest its value as well as its advancement, most of them are bilinguals. These documents are therefore, more useful to multilingual than to the 10 million Creole speakers of Haiti. Additionally, despite the abundant works created in Creole, major gaps still exist in its usage in scientific documentation. To fully support the Haitian community, Creole needs to be more ‘instrumentalized’ in all the fields.
In order to further the ‘intrumentlization’ of Creole, this thesis studies and provides the beginning of a plan for the production of a monolingual dictionary in Creole focusing on agricultural and environmental sciences. This dictionary seeks to facilitate the communication between the agricultural and the related environmental fields by providing and defining the terminologies used. In doing so, it will contribute to the instrumentalization of Creole as well as provide a scientific referential document to aid Haitian students in their agricultural studies.

From 1st paragraph of paper: "In Donaldo Macedo’s words, this volume on Decolonizing Foreign Language Education instantiates “engaged and militant scholarship” against colonial methods in our classrooms. I write this Foreword firstly as a rallying call for educators throughout the world, but especially in the Global South, to join forces for the promotion of “linguistic human rights [as] instruments of decolonization opposing hegemonic aggression” (François Victor Torchon, this volume, p. 261–281). Here I write from the perspective of a linguist who has been engaged in a protracted anti-colonial struggle in my native Haiti, which is yet another postcolony where “linguicism has taken over from racism as a more subtle way of hierarchizing social groups” (cf. Phillipson, 1992, as quoted in Hatice Çelebi, this volume, p. 247). ...."

The findings for adverbs and adverbial phrases in a naturalistic corpus of Miami Haitian Creole-English code-switching show that one language, Haitian Creole, asymmetrically supplies the grammatical frame while the other language, English, asymmetrically supplies mixed lexical categories like adverbs. Traces of code-switching with an English frame and Haitian Creole lexical categories suggest that code-switching is abstractly BIDIRECTIONAL. A quantitative methodology that codes the language-indexation of the token in addition to the surrounding lexical items was used for all mixed (e.g. xYx/yXy, xYy/yXx, yYx/xXy) and unmixed (xXx/yYy) adverbs. Discourse position, especially the left-periphery, is found to be a significant factor in adverb code-switching. Sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic analyses which acknowledge the 'low' status of one language and the 'high' status of the other explain better the frequency of mixed English adverbs in a Haitian Creole frame and the rarity of mixed Haitian Creole adverbs in an English frame than a minimalist approach, such as MacSwan's (1999 and subsequent work), which uses phi-feature valuation and entails asymmetry without bidirectionality. While I provide confirmation for Matrix Language Frame approach, I emphasize that trace bidirectional data need to be accounted for by a theory that is grounded in the sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic realities.

This paper discusses noun phrases in Haitian Creole (HC), a French-derived Creole, and in Gungbe, a Gbe language. These languages exhibit "bare noun phrases" (BNPs) in a wider range of positions than in French, English and the other most commonly studied Romance and Germanic languages. Studies on the formation of HC show that many of the creators of the earliest Creole varieties in 17th-century Saint-Domingue were native speakers of Niger-Congo languages including Gbe language. We believe that by close analysis of specific domains of the Creole (e.g. BNPs) and by comparing these patterns to their analogues in the languages in contact during the emergence of the Creole, we can better understand how Universal Grammar regulates the emergence of new varieties out of language contact.

Dans les universités comme dans les médias la francophonie connaît un succès croissant fait de nouveaux cursus et de collections littéraires diverses. Des espaces aussi variés que le Québec et Tahiti se découvrent parents francophones car locuteurs d’une même langue. A l’intérieur de la famille francophone, il faut pourtant bien distinguer des divergences nées de l’Histoire ; ne peut-on pas ainsi regrouper de façon plus précise et plus pertinente les îles à sucre de l’ancien empire français qui partagent l’héritage de sociétés créolophones et francophones de plantation ?
En effet, certains auteurs estiment que le cadre de la francophonie est parfois restrictif voire étranger à leurs aspirations culturelles car il négligerait les apports non francophones. Il paraît donc important d’étudier également les alternatives proposées dans les départements français de l’Océan Indien et des Antilles françaises.
Le statut du créole et du français et l’importance accordée à l’une comme à l’autre langue est à cet égard révélateur, la francophonie se définissant comme une famille culturelle née d’unrapport partagé à la langue française. Ce rapprochement semble d’autant plus fructueux que l’auteur réunionnais Axel Gauvin s’est joint à l’écrivain martiniquais Raphaël Confiant dans la défense de la langue créole face à la suprématie du français dans les îles. Doit-on en déduire un rapport identique à la francophonie ?
Les œuvres littéraires illustrent des approches différentes : les écrivains de l’Océan Indien, Axel Gauvin en particulier, approchent la question identitaire d’une façon plus individuelle, conciliant créolité et une certaine francophonie universelle, non parisienne, qui se traduit par une description psychologique plus importante des personnages, tandis que bon nombre d’écrivains martiniquais comme Raphael Confiant s’intéressent plus à la défense du créole comme langue authentique d’un milieu populaire en opposition au français : la politisation de l’œuvre littéraire entraîne dans ce cas un rapport conflictuel avec la métropole et ses institutions et la création d’une francophonie d’opposition, se plaçant sous le signe d’une régionalisation linguistique et culturelle.