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Damián Blasi, Susanne Michaelis and Martin Haspelmath, "Grammars are robustly transmitted even during the emergence of creole languages", Nature Human Behaviour 2017:

[W]e analyse 48 creole languages and 111 non-creole languages from all continents and conclude that the similarities (and differences) between creoles can be explained by genealogical and contact processes, as with non-creole languages, with the difference that creoles have more than one language in their ancestry. While a creole profile can be detected statistically, this stems from an over-representation of Western European and West African languages in their context of emergence. Our findings call into question the existence of a pidgin stage in creole development and of creole-specific innovations. In general, given their extreme conditions of emergence, they lend support to the idea that language learning and transmission are remarkably resilient processes.

Email from Damián Blasi puts it more bluntly:

The basic conclusions are that 1) creoles clearly continue the linguistic structure of the languages that preceded them, 2) we don't have any evidence for a pidgin stage preceding creoles and 3) no evidence for purely creole features (like SVO) whatsoever.

This is striking vindication of a position that Michel DeGraff has been arguing for many years. In "Ayiti Pare" 5/2/2013, I linked to the slides of his presentation in the AAAS 2013 symposium on Historical Syntax, "A Null Theory of Creole Formation", and quoted his abstract:

Creole languages have traditionally been excluded from the scope of the Comparative Method in historical linguistics. To date, the most persistent and popular theories of Creole formation claim that Creole languages constitute an exceptional “Creole typology” whose members lie outside well-established language-family trees. Furthermore Creole languages are often claimed as the least complex human languages. Another view takes Creoles as relexified versions of their substrates. Our ongoing work suggests that these claims are all mistaken. We’ve argued that Creoles duly fall in the scope of the Comparative Method as languages genealogically affiliated with their lexifiers. Here we offer the bases of a framework for a null theory of Creole formation, a theory that we believe is empirically more adequate than the popular exceptionalist claims. This null theory does away with any sui generis stipulation that applies to Creole languages only. Instead it is rooted in basic assumptions and findings about Universal Grammar—assumptions and findings that apply to all languages. In this approach, the creation of new languages, whether or not they are labeled “Creole,” sheds lights on the interplay of first- and second-language acquisition as new grammars are built from complex and variable input. The effects of this interplay are similar across familiar cases of Creole formation as in the creation of Haitian Creole and familiar cases of language change as in the history of French or English. Such null theory undermines various traditional claims about “Creole simplicity” and “Creole typology” whereby Creoles are considered exceptional languages of lowest complexity. This approach also makes for a better integration of Creole phenomena to our general understanding of the cognitive bases for language change.

Or, more succinctly and in larger type, the first slide from Michel's presentation:

See also Enoch Aboh and Michel DeGraff, "A Null Theory of Creole Formation Based on Universal Grammar", Oxford Handbook of Universal Grammar 2016.

One difference: DeGraff argues that "Creoles duly fall in the scope of the Comparative Method as languages genealogically affiliated with their lexifiers", whereas Blasi et al. suggest that "creoles can be explained by genealogical and contact processes, as with non-creole languages, with the difference that creoles have more than one language in their ancestry". My impression, from the outside of the discussion, is that this is a difference of emphasis.

It should go without saying that not everyone will agree with either position, and will instead insist on the "pidgin stage" hypothesis.

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