Ansaldo Meyerhoff 2020 The Routledge Handbook of Pidgin and Creole Languages

THE ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF
PIDGIN AND CREOLE LANGUAGES
The Rout/edge Handbook of Pidgin and Creole Languages offers a state-of-the-art collection
of original contributions in the area of Pidgin and Creole studies. Providing unique and
equal coverage of nearly all parts of the world where such languages are found, as well as
situating each area w ithin a rich socio-historical context, this book presents fresh and diverse
interdisciplinary perspectives from leading voices in the field . Divided into three sections, its
analysis covers:
• Space and place - area) perspective on p idgin and creo le languages

• Usage, function and power - sociolinguistic and artistic perspectives on pidgins and creoles,
Creoles as sociocultural phenomena
• Framing of the study of pidgin and creole languages - history of the field, interdisciplinary
connections
Demonstrating how fundamentally human and natural these commun ication systems are, how
rich in expressive power and sophisticated in their complexity, The Rout/edge Handbook of
Pidgin and Creole Languages is an essential reference for anyone with an interest in this area.
Umberto Ansaldo is Professor in Linguistics and Head of the School of Media, Creative Arts
and Social Inquiry at Curtin University, Australia. This Handbook was started at T he University
of Hong Kong and completed at The University of Sydney.
Miriam Meyerhoff is Senior Research Fellow at A ll Souls College and Professor of

Sociolinguistics at the University of Oxford. She holds an adjunct position at Victoria
University of Well ington, New Zealand.
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THE ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF LANGUAGE CONTACT

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THE ROUTLEDGE
HANDBOOK OF PIDGIN
AND CREOLE LANGUAGES
Edited by Umberto Ansaldo

and Miriam Meyerhoff
~~ ~~~;~~~~~up
LONDON AND NEW YORK
First published 202 I
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© 202 1 selection and editorial matter, Umbcrto Ansaldo and Miriam
Mcycrho H~; individual chapters, the contributors
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Librmy ofCongress Cataloging·iu·Publicarion Data
Names: Ansaldo, Umbcrto, editor. I McyerhoH: M iriam, editor.
Title: T he Routledge handbook of Pidgin and Creole languages/edited by
Umbcrto Ansaldo and Miriam Meyerholf.
Other titles: Handbook of Pidgin and C reole languages
Description: New York: Routledgc, 2020. I Series: Routledge handbooks in
linguistics I includes b ibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020024452 (print) I LCCN 2020024453 (cbook) I
ISBN 978 11 38557789 (hardback) I ISBN 978 1003 107224 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Pidgin languages I Creole dialects. I Languages in contact.
Classification: LCC PM7802. R68 2020 (print) I LCC PM7802 (ebook) I
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by Apex CoVantagc, LLC
Dedicated to the memory of Robert Chaudenson, who passed away due to
COVID-19-related complications on April 7, 2020, justfive days short of
his 83rd birthday. His breadth ofknowledge and deep considerations for
cultural aspects of Creole languages has been an inspiration to many.
Taylor & Francis
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CONTENTS
List offigures X
List of tables XI
List ofcontributors XIII
Foreword XVIII
Acknowledgements XX
Not in retrospective: the future of pidgin and creole studies 1

Umberto Ansaldo and Miriam Meyerhoff
PART I
Space and place 13
I Sub-Saharan Africa 15
Ana Deumert
2 The Arab world 33

Stefano Manfredi
3 Indian Ocean Creoles 52

Guillawne Fon Sing and Georges Daniel Veronique
4 South and Southeast Asia 74

Nala H. Lee
5 Australia and the South West Pacific 88

Felicity Meakins
VII
Contents
6 The contact varieties of Japan and the North-West Pacific 106

Kazuko Matsumoto and David Britain
7 North America and Hawai'i 132

Sarah Roberts
8 Caribbean, South and Central America 150

Bettina Migge
9 The Atlantic 179

Kofi Yakpo and Norval Smith
10 Pidgins and Creoles in Eurasia: the consolation of philology 199

Anthony P Grant
PART I!
Usage, function and power 215
11 Creole arts and music 2 17

Kathe Managan
12 The rise of Pidgin theatre in Hawai' i 232

Tammy Haili 'opua Baker
13 Creoles in literature: Talking story with Lee A. Tonouchi, 'Da Pidgin

Guerrilla' on Pidgin in the local literatures of Hawai' i 250
Micheline M. Soong and Lee A. Tonouchi
14 Identity politics 269

Nicholas Faraclas
I 5 Creoles, education and policy 286

Denise Angelo
I 6 New identities and flexible languages: youth and urban varieties 302
Ellen Hurst-Harosh
I7 Pidgins and Creoles: new domains, new technologies 322

Theresa Heyd
I 8 Im/Mobilities 335
Lisa Lim
VUI
Contents
19 Variation in pidgin and creole languages 348

Miriam Meyerhoff
PART Ill
Framing 363
20 On the history of Pidgin and Creole studies 365

Rachel Selbach
21 The typo logy of Pidgin and Creole languages 384

Viveka Velupillai
22 Language contact and human dispersal 404

Roger Blench
23 Diachronic studies of pidgins and creoles: exploring Pidgins and

Creoles over time 4 18
Magnus Huber
24 Pidgins and Creoles and the language faculty 434

Marlyse Baptista, Danie/le Burgess and Joy PG. Peltier
25 Child acquis ition of Pidgins and Creoles 45 1

Michele M. Kennedy
26 Multilingual ism and the structure of code-mixing 474

Eeva Sippola
27 Post-structuralist approaches to language contact 490

Kara Fleming
28 Pidgin and Creole ecology and evolution 504

Umberto Ansaldo and Pui Yiu Szeto
Index 520
ix
FIGURES
2. 1 The emergence and diffusion of Arabic SPCs in East Africa 38

3. 1 Western Indian Ocean 53
5. 1 Location and time frame of Australian contact languages 93
5.2 Local Kriol (shaded) and mixed language (striped) varieties in the
Northern Territory and Western Australia 94
5.3 The localist substratist approach to analysing the development of
Australian and Melanesian Creole languages 96
8. 1 Map of parts of South America, Central America, and the Caribbean 152
22. 1 Earliest human dispersals across the world 409
22.2 The Berber languages 412
28. 1 Monolingual ecology nature of transm ission 506
28.2 Multi lingual eco logy nature of transmission 506
X
TABLES
2. 1 Origin of Asian foreign workers in Gu lf countries 43

2.2 Proportion of non-national workers in Gulf countries 43
3. 1 Indian Ocean Creole possessive determiners and personal pronouns 59
3.2 Indian Ocean Creole tense, mood and aspect (TMA) preverbal markers 60
5. 1 Shared grammatical and lexical features in Melanesia contact varieties
which have their origin in Australia 91
5.2 Inclusive/exclusive and nwnber d istinctions across major Australian
and Melanesian Creole varieties 97
5.3 Subject agreement marking in Bislama 98
6. 1 Pronouns in Champon 116
6.2 Vowel/consonant-final verbs in Standard Japanese 121
9. 1 Ingredient X words in the A fro-European Cre.oles 182
9.2 Phonetic isoglosses compared 190
I 0. 1 Summary of the features considered in the three Pidgins 208
I 0.2 The extent to which the Pidgins in this area confom1 to Parkvall's general
observations on Pidgins 208
13. 1 Orthograph ic correspondences in different systems for writing Hawai' i
Creole, aka Pidgin 251
13.2 Odo orthography for Hawai' i Pidgin 267
14. 1 Iterations over the centuries of the same underlying Platonic binary that
underpins colonial and neo-colonial discourse on the colonised and their
languages, inc luding Creole languages 275
14.2 Rankings of the world's 14 biggest languages (Ll , L2 and FL speakers
combined) by size in 2018 278
16. 1 Examples ofTsotsitaa l lexicon and origins 309
19. 1 Systems identified in copular contexts in Hawai' i 351
19.2 Multivariate ana lysis of factors contributing to the occurrence of zero
copula in Bequia in third-person singular contexts 357
2 1. 1 Summary of the assumptions about typical Pidgin features, their test resu lt
and whether the particu lar feature can be used as a diagnostic to set Pidgins
apart from non-Pidgin languages 392
xi
Tables
2 1.2 Summary of the assumptions about typical Creole features, their test
result and whether the particular feature can be used as a diagnostic to set
Creo les apart from no n-Creole languages 399
22. 1 Creoles recogn ised in standard literature 405
22.2 Potential definitions of language mixing scenarios 406
22.3 Characteristics of interactions which result in language m ixing 407
22.4 Language phyla by continent 410
22.5 ldu speech registers 411
26. 1 Sociolinguistic factors and strategies in code-mixing 483
26.2 Sociolinguistic factors and strategies in mixed languages 484
28. 1 Case in Sri Lanka Malay, Sinhala and Lankan Tam il 513
xii
CONTRIBUTORS
Denise Angelo works with Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people on
responses to their contemporary language ecologies, including recognising contact languages,
teaching trad itional languages and developing school curricu lum where Ind igenous students
are English learners. She a lso delivers training to preservice and inservice teachers and devel-
ops languages and education policy.
Umberto Ansaldo is Professor in Linguistics and Head of the School of Media, Creative Arts
and Social Inqu iry at Curtin University. His research covers contact languages of the Asian
region, typology of East Asian languages, language docwnentation and theories of language
contact and change.
Tammy Haili'ilpua Baker, playwright/director, is Associate Professor of Theatre at the Uni-

versity ofHawai ' i at Manoa. Her work centres on the development of an indigenous Hawaiian
theatre aesthetic and fom1, language revitalisation and the empowerment of cu ltural identity
through stage performance.
Marlyse Baptista, Uriel Weinreich Collegiate Professor of Linguistics at the University of

Michigan, studies the morphosyntax interfac.e in Pidgin and Creole languages. She also exam-
ines theories of language creation and language change; her current work investigates the role
of convergence in L2 acquisition, bilingualism and Creole genes is and development.
Roger Blench is a linguist, anthropologist and ethnomusicologist. He has worked primarily

in West Africa, Southeast Asia and the Amazon. He worked for a decade as a development
anthropologist at the Overseas Development Institute in London. He is currently a visiting
fellow at the Macdonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge and
at the Department of History, University of Jos, Nigeria.
David Britain is Professor of Modem Engl ish Linguistics at the University of Bern. His
research interests embrace language variation and change, varieties of Engl ish (especially in
Southern England, the Southern Hemisphere and the Pacific), dialect contact and attrition,
xiii
Contributors
dialect ideo logies, and the dialectology-hwnan geography interfac.e, especially with respect to
space/place, urban/rural and the role of mobilities.
Danielle Burgess is a PhD candidate in Linguistics at the University of Michigan. She is inter-
ested in how biases affecting language learning and use influence language change in various
language contact settings. Her current research uses experimental methods to investigate the
typological tendency for negation to be marked prior to the verb.
Ana Deumer t is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Cape Town. Her research pro-
gram is located within the broad field of African sociolinguistics and has a strong transd isc i-
plinary focus. Her publications cover a range of areas: historical sociolinguistics, language
contact, sociolinguistic theory, digital media and language policy/planning.
Nicholas Far aclas is Professor in Linguistics at the Un iversity of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras.
Having received his PhD from the University of California at Berkeley, he has published
widely in theoretical, descriptive, socio- and applied linguistics; promoted community-based
literacy projects; and conducted research on the languages of Africa, the South Pacific, Latin
America and the Caribbean. nickfaraclas@yahoo.com
Ka r a Fleming is Assistant Professor in the College of Humanities and Education at KIMEP

University in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Her book Revivals, Nationalism, and Linguistic Discrimi-
nation: Threatening Languages with Umberto Ansaldo was recently published by Routledge.
G uilla ume Fon Sing, born in Rose-Hill, Mauritius ( 1981 ), is Maitre de Conferences at Un i-
versite de Paris (ex-Paris 7) and works in the Laboratoire de Linguistique Forrnelle (LLF,
CNRS - UMR 711 ). His research focuses on Creoles, cre.olisation, contact linguistics, French
variations and didactics.
Anthony P. G r a nt is Professor of Historical Linguistics and Language Contact at Edge Hill

University, UK. Involved in language contact studies since the 1970s, he is editor of the forth-
coming Oxford Handbook ofLanguage Contact. From autumn 2021 he will be co-editor of the
Journal ofPidgin and Creole Languages.
Ther esa Heyd is Professor of English Lingu istics at Greifswa ld University. She has worked
in the Cyber-Creole project at Freiburg University, focusing on contact varieties in globalised
settings and spec ifica lly the Nigerian Digital Diaspora. Her main research interest is the socio-
linguistics of digital linguistic practice.
Magnus Huber is Professor of English at Justus-Liebig University in Giessen. He has led a

number of projects that have involved the building of accessible historical archives for linguis-
tic research. These include the Database of Early Pidgin and Creole Texts (DEPiCT), funded
by the German Science Foundation, which assembles early attestations and descriptions of
contact languages.
Ellen Hurst-Ha rosh is a sociolinguist and an Associate Professor in the Hwnanities Education
Development Unit at the University of Cape Town. She teaches discourse analysis and genre
analysis. Her research focuses on African youth language practices including stylects and regis-
ters, as well as translanguaging pedagogies and the use of African languages in higher education.
xiv
Contributors
Michele M. Kennedy is Senior Lecturer in Syntax and Language Acquisition at the UWI,
Mona (retired), and former co-ordinator of the Jamaican Language Unit. Her research interests
include the first language acquisition of Creole lexical items and morphosyntax, and how this
might infonn the language arts classroom and language policy.
NaJa H. Lee is Assistant Professor of Linguistics at the National University of Singapore.

She is interested in the extreme structural and sociological consequences of multilingual ism,
focusing in particular on Baba Malay and on the development and application of tools for the
assessment of language endangem1ent.
Lisa Lim is Assoc iate Professor in the School of Education at Curtin University, Perth, hav-
ing held positions previously in Singapore, Amsterdam, Hong Kong, and Sydney. Her inter-
ests centre around New Englishes, especially Asian varieties in multilingual ecologies; issues
of language shift, endangem1ent, revitalisation and post-vernacu lar vital ity in minority and
endangered language communities; and the sociolinguistics of globalisation, with interests in
mobi lity, urban multi lingua lism, computer-mediated communication.
Kathe Ma nagan is Instructor of Linguistic Anthropology at the University of Louisiana at

Lafayette. Her research focuses on language choice, ideology and identity in Guadeloupe and
Louisiana. Her current research explores how Guadeloupean Creole language comedy draws
on and circu lates social and linguistic stereotypes.
Stefano Man fred i (PhD 20 l 0, University of Naples 'L'Orientale') is a CNRS researcher at the
SeDyL research unit (CNRS, IRD, INALCO). His research ma inly focuses on Arabic-based
p idgins and creoles, Arabic dialectology and language contact involving Arabic in Africa. He
conducted extensive fieldwork in Sudan, South Sudan and Egypt.
Kazu ko M atsumoto is Associate Professor at the University of Tokyo. Grounded in the vari-
ationist soc iol inguistic parad igm, she investigates d ialect contact and koine fonnation (Japa-
nese colonial koine in Palau; Brazilian Portuguese koine in Japan; Korean koines in Japan
and Sakhalin, Russia), the nativisation of Palauan English and contact-induced loanwords in
Palauan and Far East Russian.
Felicity Mea kins is a fie ld linguist based at the University of Queensland. She specialises in
the documentation of Australian languages in northern Australia and the effect of English on
Indigenous languages. This work has provided the basis for Case-Marking in Contact (Ben-
jamins, 20 l l ), A Grammar of Bilinarra (Mouton, 20 14) and Understanding Linguistic Field-
work (Rout ledge, 20 18).
Mir iam M eyerholf is Professor of Sociolingu istics at the University of Oxford. Her research
focuses on the linguistic and social dimensions of language variation, especially in contexts
of language or d ialect contact. She works mainly in Vanuatu, but also Bequia (St Vincent and
the Grenadines), Auckland (New Zealand) and Edinburgh and London (UK).
Bettina Migge is Professor of Linguistics at University College Dublin, Ireland and attached
to CNRS-SeDyL, France. Her research interests include sociolinguistics, language contact and
change, pragmatics, migration and language, language documentation in multi lingual contexts.
She has published on these topics with reference to Suriname, French Guiana and Ireland.
Contributors
.Joy P.G. Pettier is PhD Candidate in Linguistics at the University of Michigan. She uses
experimental and corpus-based methodologies to explore the pragmatics, processing and
development of po lysemous structures, particularly in Creoles and other contact varieties. She
holds a BA and MA in Romanc.e languages from the University of Georgia.
Sa r ah Rober ts is an independent scholar based in Palo Alto, California. She has conducted
extensive archival research on the evolution of contact languages in Hawai' i. Her current
research focuses on documenting language contact in the Pacific during the 19th-century
w haling industry.
Rachel Selbach has researched Solomon Islands Pijin and the Lingua Franca of the Mediterra-
nean. Her current interests focus on the manufacturing of knowledge that comes along with deal-
ing with historical corpora, as well as the historical development of the field of research itself.
Eeva Sippola is Associate Professor oflbero-American languages and cu ltures at the Univer-
sity of He lsinki. She has previously held positions at the University ofBremen (Gennany) and
Aarhus University (Denmark). Her research interests have a broad focus on contact linguistics
and critical socio linguistics, especially in the Hispanic world.
Norval Smith was until his retirement in 2011 an Associate Professor of Linguistics at the
University of Amsterdam. At present he is a guest researcher affi liated to the Amsterdam Center
for Language and Communication (ACLC). His research has two main pillars, phonology and
the study of creoles/contact languages. Lesser distractions are the languages of Scotland, the
Yokuts languages of California, and Frisian.
Micheline M . Soong is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at Hawai' i Pacific Un i-

versity. She teaches the literatures ofHawa i' i and the Pac ific, Japan and East Asia, 20th-century
American Women Writers of Color, and World Literatures. Her research interests include Zen
Buddhist studies, cross-cu ltura l interconnectivity, identity politics, and post-colonial, indig-
enous narratives.
Pui Yiu Szeto is Research Associate at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He obtained a
PhD in Linguistics from the University of Hong Kong. His research interests include language
contact, linguistic typology and grammaticalisation. His recent publications can be found in
journals like Linguistics, Linguistic Typology and Language Ecology.
Lee A. Tonouchi, a.k.a. 'Da Pidgin Guerrilla' , was born Pidgin, and on 'Oahu. Pidgin is in his
DNA, entwined in his every being, due to the fact that everybody in his family speaks Pidgin,
and Tonouchi writes it for a Jiving.
Viveka Velupillai specialises in linguistic typology, contact linguistics and historical linguis-
tics. She is the author of two textbooks: An Introduction to Linguistic Typology (John Ben-
jamins 2012) and Pidgins, Creoles and Mixed Languages: An Introduction (John Benjamins
2015). She is currently one of the series editors for Contact Language Library (CoLL).
Georges Daniel Veronique, born in Port-Louis, Mauritius (1948), is Emeritus Professor of

French Linguistics and Cre.ole Studies at Aix-Marsei lle University. He has published on sec-
ond language acquisition, French Creoles and language teaching.
xvi
Contributors
Kofi Yakpo is Associate Professor of Linguistics at the University of Hong Kong. His work
addresses the complex interaction of genealogica l, area!, typological, social, cultural and ideo-
logical forces in the evolution of contact languages. In recent times, he has kept himse lf busy
with research into the English-lexifier Creoles of Africa and the Americas, and the Asian dias-
pora languages of the Caribbean and the Ind ian Ocean.
xvii
FOREWORD
Any invitation to work on a project like this comes attendant with a nwnber of challenges.
One that concerned us most was how to produce a volume that would be fresh and innova-
tive, rather than a retrospective on old, at times exhausted, debates. What energised us as we
took on the job was the opportunity to empower new voices, offer new perspectives on known
issues, define new problems, as well as new data sets that include coverage of areas of the
world where our knowledge so far is limited. In view of this, we made a conscious choice to
avoid fill ing the line-up of contributors with established 'names' in the fie ld or with veteran
creolists whose traditiona l scholarship has dominated the field in the past few decades. We
wanted instead to present our readers with a handbook that has something new to say about the
linguistic outcomes of language contact and that offers broad-ranging insight into the dyna-
mism and advances of contemporary pidgin and creole studies. We have been particu larly
careful to include as much as possible voices from the global south as well as the east, and to
draw on regions and topics that often fall outside the remit of 'typical' p idgin and cre.ole areas.
An accidental outcome of this is what we believe may be an unprecedented (for the field) num-
ber of chapters authored by women, and a very large proportion of native speakers of contact
languages. We trust that the chapters in this book wi ll play a critical role in advancing a sp irit
of intellectual openness and interdiscipl inarity, while simu ltaneously expanding the reach of
the field into problems of theoretical (linguistic) and social significance.
We are extremely gratefu l to the authors for tackling in good faith and with creativity
and erudition the topics we proposed to them. We also thank our sterling associate editors:
Guillaume Fon Sing, Veronique Lacoste, Sarah Roberts and Viveka Velupillai . We knew we
would end up rely ing on your expertise and dedication, but none of us perhaps real ised at
the outset of this project how much. Very warn1 welcomes are extended to Laia and Louison,
whose arrivals complexified their parents' editorial Jives, while at the same time enriching
them immeasurably.
The disruptions to everyday life brought about by Covid-19 sp iced up the fina l stages of
this handbook considerably. Most contributors were housebound, and many were a lso car-
ing for family members who were themselves housebound, for more or less time while the
handbook's final touches and last minute queries were being addressed. We cannot thank our
authors, associate editors and our accomplished and hard-working editorial assistants, Leah
McPherson and Amy Gi les-Mitson enough. It was a pleasure and an honour.
xviii
Foreword
Final thanks go to the editoria l team at Routledge - Nadia Seemungal, Lizzie Cox and
Adam Woods - for their professional ism and good-natured practical and moral support from
inception to completion.
Umberto Ansaldo and Miriam Meyerhotf
(Sydney and Wellington, May 2020)
xLx
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Chapter 23 of this volume draws in parts from previously published works:

Huber, M. & Velupillai, V. 2016. Sprachkontakt in kolonialen Kontexten 11. Das Pidgin-
Englische in den ehema ligen deutschen Kolonien. In T. Stolz, !.H. Wamke, & D. Schmidt-
BrOcken (eds.). Studienbuch Sprache und Kolonialismus. Eine interdiszipliniire Einfiihrung
zu Sprache und Kommunikation in kolonia/en Kontexten, 93- 116. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Huber, M. & Velupillai, V. 2018. Die Database of Early Pidgin and Creole Texts. Sprach-
planung, Sprachideologien und SprachattitOden gegenOber dem Pidginenglisch in Deutsch-
Neugu inea. In B. Kellem1e ier-Rehbein, M. Schu lz & D. Stolberg (eds.) Sprachgebrauch,
Sprachkonzepte und Sprachenpolitik in ko/onia/en und postkolonialen Kontexten, 71 - 103.
Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Huber, M. 2020. Unearthing the diachrony of World Englishes. In D. Schreier, M. Hundt, &
E.W. Schne ider (eds.). Cambridge Handbook of World Englishes, 484-505. Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press.
The author and editors thank Viveka Velupillai for pem1ission to translate and adapt.
All efforts have been made to contact copyright holders, and the publisher and editor we l-
come further contact or information.
XX
NOT IN RETROSPECTIVE
The future of pidgin and creole studies
Umberto A nsaldo and Miriam Meyerhoff
0.1 Scope of this Handbook

This volume focusses in one way or another on languages whose grammatical systems show
some degree of hybridity. We follow Aboh (20 15) in w1derstanding hybridity as a property of
language that can be identified at multiple structural levels. In our view contact varieties such
as pidgins and creoles are typical of natural language in that they are associated with hybrid
feamres at multiple levels of linguistic structure. This characteristic speaks to the generative
creativity of language per se and to the social creativity in how speakers use language. But
hybrid iry is not the only factor common to pidgins and Creoles: other significant shared traits
include contact among speakers in highly multilingual soc ial spac.es, often as the result of
migration, or enforced disp lacement. They are also notably associated with sociolinguistic
contexts in which there are unequal power relations between speakers and where there is a Jack
of superposed nom1ativity. While previous research on pidgins and creoles has acknowledged
the importance of these traits, they have often been consigned to the margins of linguistic
debates in creolistics and treated as tangential to the core linguistic business. This Handbook
d isputes that and seeks instead to remind creolists - and, by extension, all linguists - of their
central ity to theories of language genesis, language contact, language divergenc.e and language
change.
In the past, p idgins and creo les have been seen by many linguists as language systems
whose sign ificance lies primarily in the extent to which they test universa list theories of
language structure, axioms relating to the autonomy of the language facu lty, or as extreme
examples for modell ing language variation and change. Related to this has been a presump-
tion that pidgins and Creoles are the products of 'different' or abnormal ecologies, a position
that many contributors to this Handbook challenge empirically. For most of the authors in
this Handbook, contact is a gradient and mu ltifaceted phenomenon, a feamre of the ecol-
ogy of all languages. Contact, in itself, is therefore in a broader, eco logical perspective of
language a problematic criterion as the basis for taxonom ising. We envisage this Handbook
as a medium for pushing the field in innovative d irections, as a nursery for developing
fresh perspectives on how research on the outcomes of language contact might afford lin-
guists new frameworks for interrogating the nature of (specifically) those languages gener-
a lly labe lled p idgins and Creoles, but also (more generally) the stams of these languages as
I
human communication systems among other human communication systems. Continuing

to travel along the same lines of argumentation that dominated pidgin and creo le studies
throughout the 20th century risks reproducing tired and somewhat pred ictable intellectual
posturing. As part of the effort to present a broad sociolingu istic or ecologica l perspective to
the field, the chapter titles and the sub-sections of this Handbook do not overlap greatly with
the canonical ways of partitioning the fie ld seen in previous works (Ho lm 1988; Holm &
Patrick 2007; Arends et al. 1994, though there is some affinity to the forward-looking Kou -
wenberg & Singler 2008).
Hence, we believe it is healthy at th is time to blur the edges between pidgins and creoles
and 'other ' languages, and readers will see this sensibility throughout all the contributions in
this Handbook. An early editorial decision that we made was that we would allow authors
freedom to define their workspace and the scope of the ir chapters themselves. As a conse-
quence, in some chapters (for example, Blench, Grant) authors del imit the ir understanding
of the tem1s pidgin and creole, while in others it is impl ied more or less directly.' h1 Manfredi's
chapter, for example, the reader can infer from an explicit association of pidgin with disrupted
first language transmission, that he might subscribe to a view in which creoles are associated
with more nom1a l Ll acquisition. However, in many other chapters we have been content to
Jet diverse w1derstandings of the key tem1s flourish. We see this as having several advantages
over any centralised control of definitions. One advantage is that it requires readers to actively
participate in evaluating the presentation of the data; it invites critical engagement that can
c larify readers' own sense of what purpose the st11dy of language contact serves in general
or what their specific questions are when exam ining pidgins and creoles from a ge.o graphic,
functional or theoretical perspective.
Another advantage to having high tolerance for fluidity of tenns is that we be lieve it engen-
ders a more holistic and empirically valid analysis of the data. Pidgin and creole languages,
like all languages, have a place, a history and are part of wider cultures. Whi le a canonical
view of pidgins is that they are transactionally focussed means for communicating a highly
restricted set of wants or ach ieving a highly circumscribed set of goals, it is worth remembering
that even the most utilitarian communication code is unlikely to have ever been used solely for
instrumental, commw1icative purposes. Anthropologists have confinned through careful study
something the average person on the street most likely knows intuitively, namely that success-
ful transactional encounters involve partic ipants engaging in interpersonal and sociolinguistic
work (Besnier 2004). By abstracting away from this real ity, to create the classification of
'Pidgin' as a purely business-related code of commun ication, creolists have done a violence
to the data. While such reductionism is sometimes necessary in order to test hypotheses or
to clarify basic principles (Meyerhoff 20 17), it need not continue to defi ne a field, especially
one that has seen the kind of growth in basic structural and sociol inguistic documentation that
creolistics has experienced over the last 20 years.
While it is critica l that the field remains concerned with the analysis of grammar and pho-
nology, especially in typological perspective, it is equally important to us that these languages
be located in the ir full sociocultural context, and that the field of academic enquiry expand
so as to address what are traditionally seen as extra-linguistic uses of these languages, e.g.
music, arts, theatre, education and the expressive functions of language. We believe that the
contributions to this Handbook represent all such positions. They present not only state-of-
the-art summaries of what we know about how p idgins and creoles func.tion as linguistic and
social phenomena but also present cutting-edge hypotheses or bold programmatic statements
intended to guide future directions for research in the field (Baptista et a l. ; Blench; Deumert;
Meakins; Faraclas; Fleming).
2
Not in retrospective
Nevertheless, it is impossible to entirely ignore some of the major themes that have shaped
and continue to shape how researchers think about these languages. One important tenet that
has historically constrained the directions of the field is the ex-pidgin hypothesis for creole
genesis. We are positively certain that a maj ority of creoles do not emerge from pidgins and
that pidgins are not necessarily the precursors of creole languages, though we acknowledge
that this is not a position all of the contributors to this Handbook share. This axiom was argued
for and explored most fully by Bickerton ( 1981, though it traces back to work by Hall, as
Selbach explains in her chapter) and even Bickerton gradually retreated into a position of
arguing that a ll and only the conditions necessary to trigger the postulated pidgin-to-creole
development cycle held in Hawai' i. Roberts's ( 1998, 2004) work ultimate ly showed that even
in Hawai ' i, there is no empirical evidence to support this the.ory, comprehensively undernlin-
ing Bickerton's hypothesis. In addition, there is abw1dant evidence for the existence of creoles
without a pidgin stage, as well as cases of pidgins never becoming creoles, documented in the
most recent empirical research in the field (Velupillai 20 15).
If, as Jourdan ( 1991) suggests, pidgins are domain-specific varieties and creoles are socio-
linguistic varieties that are used on an everyday basis for the full range of everyday functions
of language, then it follows that it is highly likely we will have both kinds of languages in the
same highly mu ltilingual, ecological environment. This may explain part of the confusion over
the life-cycle, since pidgin and creole languages often occur together (Ansaldo 2009).
We also need to apply a degree of critical se lf-awareness to the foundational principles
in the field. Creolists, as lingu ists, carry a huge amount of ideological baggage (as Blench;
Faraclas; and Selbach all po int out) that the field of linguistics is currently re-evaluating.
One such notion that has major ramifications for creol istics is the idea that one can model
a ll languages as emerging from some other language in a re lationship of direct inheritance.
Ross's ( 1996, 2007) work on metatypy in areas that are known to have been characterised
by high degrees of population mobility and diachron ic and synchronic language contact has
shown that historical linguistics is a story of multiple origins and horizontal, as well as ver-
tica l, transmission. These themes are picked up in chapters by Ansaldo and Szeto, Blench,
Deumert, and Yakpo and Smith.
For all these reasons, and others articu lated in greater depth by the ind ividua l chapters in
this Handbook, the aim of this volwne is to normalise what has hitherto been seen as some-
thing of a problem, to denature the supposed freakishness of pidgins and Creoles that might
require exceptional explanations. This volume therefore includes discussion of a wide range of
linguistic varieties- in each of the regional survey chapters (and also in Heyd, Hurst-Harosh,
and Sippola's chapters), readers will find examples of very stable and very unstable systems,
varieties wh ich were short-lived and others which have endured and continued to develop for
centuries. Does this suggest that possibly all languages can be viewed under the lens of pidgin
and creole studies? We certainly think all languages in a ll parts of the world can be viewed
as outcomes of some forn1 of language contact in their history. Our increased understanding
of mobility and contact over the history of human migrations supports this view (and back
migration patterns about which we are learning more suggest that this may be true even for
languages hitherto thought to be relatively autonomous, such as those spoken in Remote Poly-
nesia, Walworth 2014). This makes an Wlderstanding of pidgin and creole matters an impera-
tive for any serious linguist.
This d istancing of our approach from the traditional conceptualisation of the field is a lso
reflected in the organisation of the volume, which devotes at least as much space to the descrip-
tion and contexrualisation of different linguistic varieties (Part I) as it does to theory-internal
debates. The next largest section of the volwne (Part I!) is devoted to soc iohistorical and
3
sociolinguistic factors, and the last section (Part Ill) addresses issues of theoretical as well as
methodological significance both within linguistics and beyond.
We shou ld be clear that our purpose is not to denigrate or discourage research within spe-
c ific fom1al lingu istic frameworks - a linguistic ana lysis of the outcomes of language contact
must obviously be linguistically informed (this lies at the heart of some of the criticism of
research that is presented under the aegis of translanguaging, Darquetmes et al. 2019, and
discussed in Fleming's chapter). We therefore applaud the provocative ways in which some of
the chapters in this volume push the enve lope of both theory and description (Baptista, Bur-
gess and Peltier; Faraclas; Yakpo and Smith; Roberts; Matswnoto and Britain, among others)
and point to existing, excellent exemplars of research that jointly contribute to the description
of pidgins and creoles and linguistic theory (e.g. Guillem in 2011 ). However, the structure of
this volume does make a strong claim to the effect that theoretical work should be grounded
in a broader ecological perspective (as is, indeed, demonstrated by these Handbook chapters).
Without such a grow1ding, enquiries into the structure of pidgins and creoles are essentially
exerc ises in pattern-matching, not enquiries into the heterogeneous nature of language as a
social, cognitive and communicative resource.
In the next three parts of this chapter, we introduce the different sections of the Handbook
and explain our motivations for what has been included and how we see the contents linking
to other research (within and beyond the Handbook itse lf).
0.1.1 Space and place

Part I is the largest in the Handbook, in keeping with the importance of handbooks as docwnen-
tary resources and as providing infom1ed surveys of basic data. It is dedicated to a coverage
of the world's pidgin and creole languages that moves away from traditional classifications
based on the lexifier(s) as an organising princip le. Previous authoritative, synoptic works on
p idgins and creoles have used the lexifier as the principal basis for classification (e.g. Holm
1988; Michaelis et al. 20 13), but we think there are at least two assumptions underpinning this
that could well be problematised. When we group p idgin and creole languages by lexifier,
this implies that a key goal of the field of creo listics is to find out what happened to English/
French/Portuguese/Arabic, etc. when they came into contact with different languages. This
is an w1derstandable question if you are a speaker of those colonial languages (as many pro-
fessional linguists are) but we should acknowledge that this risks reifying a sense of the pri-
macy of colon ial languages, and it assigns a fundamentally passive role to the speakers of the
indigenous (substrate) languages (Moon 2016, and see also Faraclas's and Deumert's chap-
ters). Th is epistemo logical starting po int perhaps also refte.cts a more practical consideration,
name ly, that there is typically much better linguistic description of lexifier languages and
that they are generally the languages that have had the greatest input into the development of
theories about language and in defining the scope of linguistic enquiry in the past (part of the
ontological baggage Blench identi fies as colouring creol istics). But as we have already noted,
historical linguistics (and variationist sociolinguistics as shown in Meyerhoff's and Matsu-
moto and Britain's chapters) highlight the need for linguists to be open to the idea that direct
inheritance is not the only mechanism of linguistic diversification.
Alternative ly, the organisation of language profiles according to lexifier m ight be taken to
imply that there is something about the sociocu ltural and pol itical particularities of Anglo-
phone colonisation vs Francophone, Lusophone, etc. colonisation that lead to different lin-
guistic outcomes of English!French/Porruguese, etc. language contact (e.g. Chaudenson
2001; McWhorter 2000; Faraclas et al. 2007). This proposition can only be tested if we take a
4
concerte.d look across regions and consider the ecological factors that did, in fact, characterise
Anglophone, Francophone, Lusophone co lonisation on the ground. In other words, if this is
the reason for organising the analysis of pidgins and Creoles by lexifiers, it has the paradoxical
effect of highlighting exactly what we argue for with the organisation of th is Handbook - that
is, the need for a more expansive notion of creole origins.
In the spirit of this, we take history as our foundation and look at pidgin and creole lan-
guages in area! and typological terms across ten geographically detenn ined chapters. In decid-
ing to organ ise the surveys geographically rather than by input language, this Handbook
advances an a lternate perspective. In our opinion, in order to make progress in the field, we
need to better understand not only the diverse nature of substrates on creole fonnation, but
also the multilingual nature of the input and the social dynamics of communities that in many
cases continue to have extremely high levels ofmultilingualism. This is necessarily a function
of region much more than it is of lexifier.
It is worth bearing in mind that the politics of language and high levels of multilingualism
in a community may be re levant to understanding the ongoing development of Creoles even
if a ll those languages are not d irect input to them. Soong and Tonouchi's chapter, in Part 11,
deals extensively with personal and societal histories of mu ltil ingualism, acknowledging the
relationship between Hawai'i Pidgin and Hawaiian - both united in respect of their status
compared to Standard American Engl ish, but associated with very different rights and prob-
lems today. Huber, in Part III, provides data from historica l records that show how attitudes
towards and practices of multi lingualism have shaped the development of contact languages.
In other words, the local and regional ecologies of language have always played a role in the
emergence and development of pidgins and creoles, and users of these languages today can
testify to the continued re levance of th is approach.
Th is is not to claim that ecologies of language contact are the same throughout a given
region. One of the benefits that we perceive in this grounded approach to the analysis ofpidg-
ins and creoles is that we can see more clearly how differences in ecology affect linguistic
outcomes (compare the chapters by Ansaldo and Szeto; Hurst-Harosh; Manfredi; Meakins;
Roberts).
By presenting surveys based on area! subgroupings, we do not aim to offer an exhaustive
representation of varieties; that is beyond the scope of this volume (Ve lupi llai 20 15; Dar-
quennes et al. forthcom ing make more comprehensive attempts at this). Instead, the guiding
princip le is one of calibration, in which different parts of the world play comparable roles in
shaping our understanding of pidgins, Creoles and other outcomes of language contact. Thus,
this Handbook includes chapters focussing on the Arab world (Manfredi), Eurasia (Grant) and
also on Sub-Saharan Africa (Dewnert, and also Blench, Heyd, Hurst-Harosh in Parts 11 and Ill),
three areas that are too often neglected in the study of pidgin and Creoles. The Indian Ocean
(Fon Sing and Veronique) and Southeast Asia (Lee) are obviously included as important areas
of contact that have in recent years seen growing attention and that continue to reveal impor-
tant insights into the role that linguistic typology and sociohistorical contingencies play in the
outcomes of language contact. Readers will also find we have made an innovative division of
the Pacific into areas that likewise highl ight the linguistic and soc ial contingencies of contact
more than previous surveys of pidgins and creoles do. North America (Roberts) is contrasted
with the Southwest Pac ific (Meakins) and the Northwest Pacific (Matsumoto and Britain).
The Japan/China and Australia/Pacific chapters offer much new data and novel approaches
to enrich our current understanding and inform future discussions. The Americas are covered
in two parts, one focussing on language contact in North America and the other focussing on
the Caribbean and South America (Migge). The chapter on the Atlantic (Yakpo and Smith)
5
recognises the centrality of the Atlantic as a super-region, cotmecting languages in the islands
of the New World with the ir West African inputs (as Migge does, too).
0.1.2 Usage, fun ction and power

In line with our aim to describe languages solid ly situated in their sociocultural and political
context, our second section offers nine chapters on language use, the functions of language and
the relationship between language and power. We start with education and policy and move
to identity politics.
It is c lear that the policies enforced through institutions, such as the education system, have
practical repercussions on how users of any particular language experience soc iety, how well
they can access the full privileges of membership in that society, and the extent to wh ich they
can exercise their own agency in shap ing the society they are part of. However, institutions
themse lves do not, of course, exist in a vacuwn. They are an artefact of the sociohistorical
particu larities that have shaped a commun ity. For th is reason, the historica l status of and atti-
tudes towards pidgins and creoles also warrants being more deeply integrated in the study of
the field. Th is is by no means a new or radical proposal (Arends 2017; Jourdan 1999; Singler
1996; Winford 1997) but it bears restating since, with the advent of new technologies, his-
torical resources that were previously difficult to access (e.g. through the Virtu al Language
Observatory, Paradisec, DEPiCT), may now be more readi ly ava ilable to researchers with an
interne! connection.
As Huber's chapter shows, the move towards more thorough engagement with historical
scholarship is central to the healthy future of the field of creolistics. This is not only because
the historical sources enrich the field by broadening the raw linguistic data available to us,
but also because, with sensitive use, historical sources can give vo ice to otherwise silenced
language attitudes (something that Soong and Tonouchi explore through oral history). The
broader, ecological perspective on language that inforn1s this Handbook recognises that lan-
guage attitudes may have helped shape the evolution of pidgins and creoles, and that the
interplay between synchronic and historic attitudes has a strong impact on the status of pidgin
and creole languages today.
The actions of educators and the policies of local and national education systems have
played (and continue to play) a major role in detenn ining what status pidgins and creoles have
within a community. For this reason, educational policy and practice have been the locus of
many overt and covert contestations of power within commw1ities of non-standard language
speakers and have attracted the attention and political engagement of many researchers (as
discussed in the chapters by Angelo; Kennedy; Fon Sing and Veronique). The c lose links
between linguistics, soc iolinguistics and applied linguistics mean that we have better case
stud ies of the effect that state and local levels of the education system have on the status and
development of pidgins and creoles than we have of other institutions (Migge et al. 20 I 0;
Lacoste 2012). Another future direction for the field of creolistics wou ld be to expand this
perspective to encompass a wider range of institutions. We are starting to see increased atten-
tion to the linguistic analysis of the use of these languages in new domains such as mass or
social media and in technology (e.g. Moll 2015; and chapters by Heyd; Hurst-Harosh; Lim;
Fon Sing and Veronique; Baker). However, discussions of how the vital ity and development
of pidgins and creoles is affected by their use in other institutions, such as government, courts
and religion remains somewhat under-developed.2
The chapters in this section also look at how conununities of pidgin and creole speak-
ers today are using their languages to (re)claim socia l privileges, different kinds of space and
6
d ifferent kinds of personhood. For example, while creole music may be reasonably well repre-
sented in the anthropological literature (e.g. Martin 2012), Gerard and Sidnell (2003) is a sti ll
rare example at the intersection of music, creole languages and anthropology. Managan's and
Baker's chapters make a strong case for the field of creolistics being more open to the very
w ide range of expressive functions of pidgin and creole languages in the communities where
they are used. Musicians, authors and playwrights are not only the voices and representatives of
their commw1ities, but they are also members of transnational networks. They materialise the
ftow of ideas and the contacts between widely d ispersed artistic and linguistic COinmw1ities and
this constitutes a source of language contact that is more (socially) relevant to most speakers
of pidgins and creoles than the transnational networks and academic writing of most lingu ists.
For these reasons, this Handbook includes chapters on music, theatre and literature - topics
generally treated as extraneous to the proper, linguistic analysis of pidgins and Creoles. Our
perspective on the arts is that they are domains that emerge quickly in any kind of stable com-
mwiity, and they therefore deserve to be as central to linguistic analysis as the more transac-
tiona l exchanges that have been reified as basic human social interaction in much of our field's
previous thinking. These domains warrant serious treatment by linguists because the manner
in which the arts integrate imagination and aspiration remind us that any living language is not
simply a static mirror of the sociol inguistic context in which the language is used, it is funda-
mentally forward-looking and inventive. T his dynamism, and the role of language as an active
tool for social change, is central to the chapters on literature (Soong and Tonouchi), music
(Managan) and theatre (Baker) and is also picked up in the discussion of the social function
of new technologies by Heyd and by Lim. The inclusion of a dialogic interview in which Lee
Tonouchi consistently uses (Hawai' i) Pidgin may be a first in the academ ic canon on pidgins
and Creoles. The authors' decision to use Pidgin in this chapter expl icitly takes aim at the lin-
guistic hegemonies and language hierarchies that are taken for granted and reproduced within
academia (Fenigsen 201 1). This point is eloquently taken up in Faraclas's chapter, which devel-
ops ideas from Faraclas (2012) and resonates w ith posthumously published work by Arends
(20 17). It is also central to the socia l activism that has pem1eated Hawai ' i theatre for decades
(as discussed by Baker) and is deeply embedded in the teaching of theatre arts in Hawai' i.
As new technologies are providing new platfom1S and d imensions for perforrnativity, this
section includes a chapter d iscussing the relevance of medium to the tempora l and linguistic
stability, recognition and use of p idgins and Creoles. The hybrid nature of language in social
media and online more generally (Squires 20 16) offers exc iting opportunities for new direc-
tions for the study of pidgins and Creoles. The Jack of a single clear superposed standard, or
users' freedom to orient to very different standards, presents new empirical challenges for
existing theories of language change and diversification (Smakman & Heinrich 2015; Meyer-
hoff & Stanford 20 15).
Hurst-Harosh's chapter not only documents the vitality of the mixed registers that materialise
multiple yow1g, often urban, identities, but also places the yoWlg speakers of these varieties and
the new mixed languages they create within a larger global, pol itical context. For readers look-
ing across sections, there are numerous links between the expanded, sociolinguistic perspectives
given voice in Part 11 and the fresh geographic perspectives that are highlighted in Part I.
0.1.3 Framing
The final section groups nine chapters together w1der the heading of ' Framing'. Our under-
standing of 'framing' encompasses not only the different ways in which we can situate the
study of pidgin and creole languages in linguistics, but also how we can situate their study in
7
the broadest possible context of the hwn anities and social sciences. Keep ing true to the mis-
sion of departing from the old and presenting contemporary and emerging topics of research,
this Handbook chose not to revisit, one by one, the the.ories which framed the origins of the
field. Authors of course make reference to superstratist and substratist approaches (Migge;
Yakpo and Smith), Bickerton 's Language Bioprogram Hypothesis (Roberts; Baptista et al.;
Ve lupillai; Migge), and other fow1dational ideas. Yet it seems clear to us that no one theory
is likely to explain all aspects of all pidgins and Creoles (any more than any one theory of
language has been found to explain all aspects of any language). We think it is likely that all
lingu istic phenomena can profitably be ana lysed through multiple theoretical lenses. Haugen 's
( 1972) origina l, holistic view of language ecology has maintained a strong undercurrent of
followers even as other theoretical debates have raged on the sur face of the field. Sankoff's
( 1980) work on Tok Pis in argued that what survives in language contact is what fits best with
multiple possible ana lyses, a position shared by Crowley ( 1990) for Bislama and a growing
number of creolists who subscribe to an ecological approach. It seems to us that this must be
closest to the truth. Since a story of multiple origins surely also presupposes that different
theoretical perspectives will be needed to adequately analyse pidgins and creoles, we see
further opportunities for creative collaboration as the fie ld of creo listics moves away from
its previous agonistic mode of intellectual engagement. Migge's chapter, for instance, evalu-
ates multiple theoretical accounts of pidgins and Creoles in the Caribbean and South/Central
America and concludes that a synthetic, multi-source explanation for the features found in
contact languages of that region is required (as Meyerhoff 2008 does for various features of
contact languages in Melanesia).
In fact, we would suggest that it is possible to look at most of the major exponents of the
theoretical positions in creolistics over the last 50 years as themselves moving between at
least two approaches (even if they strategically highlight only one). For instance, Mufwene's
Founder Princip le (1996) is both about the sequence in which forms emerge in a speech com-
munity but also about the role of first exposure in constraining how universal or cognitive
principles guide the subsequent development of language. It a lso presupposes attention to
differences in status and prestige in the early stages of language contact. The theory of re lexi-
fication (now strongly associated with Lefebvre 1998) shares features with Myers-Scotton's
Matrix Language Frame model (1993, 2002), as both relexification and the matrix language
theory assume that speakers have an innate predisposition to categorise constituents as func-
tional or lexical and that, once they are so categorised, they behave d ifferently in situations of
language contact (see a lso the chapter by Baptista et al.). Even Bickerton's radical advocacy of
the Language Bioprogram Hypothesis (LBH, Bickerton 1981 ; Veenstra 2008) drew on multi-
ple explanatory tools, since recourse to the LBH is only triggered by pecu liarities of or critical
changes in the demographics and social composition of the speech community.
The question of language development and the debate about the ro le of children vs adults
in creole formation remains to date an important theoretical issue in critical need of more
research. The field is still short of substantial longitud inal studies of acquisition among ind i-
viduals as well as within populations. Particularly important are studies that attend to the
multi lingual context in which most chi ldren grow up, and the effect of multilingual ism on the
acquisition of grammar. To date, there has only been a patchy response to this ca ll (e.g. Adone
20 12; Jones et al. 20 12). A number of chapters in this Handbook (Kennedy; Sippo la; Angelo;
Baptista et a l.) revisit why this area of pidgin and creole research is important and provide
valuable updates on the most recent advances in this area. The diversity of voices contributing
on this topic should encourage future interdisciplinary research in this area, as well as high-
lighting how central language acquisition is to all research on language.
8
As we have already noted, child language acquisition was for many years considered a
c.entral criterion for differentiating Creoles from pidgins. Good (20 15) suggests that Creoles
may be structurally exceptional by virtue of the ir formation: child first language users se lect-
ing and propagating features taken from a sma ll amount of variable input (a position that
Manfredi implicitly subscribes to). However, Croft (2000) and Christiansen and Chater (20 16)
problematise Good's conjecture. If, as Croft and Christiansen and Chater contend, a ll language
change and language diversification can be modelled as the product of children's generalisa-
tion of a small amount of variable input, then clearly this cannot be the defining criterion for
postulating Creoles as a distinct class of languages.
Notwithstanding the enthusiasm of exponents of the language bottleneck, it is evident that
the bottleneck is not the whole story in language evolution; horizontal, peer-to-peer transmis-
sion is also part of the account. As Meyerhoff's chapter notes, synchronic language variation
in a speech community (creole or otherwise) is about much more than children's systema-
tisation of variable input. It seems particularly timely to offer the fresh perspectives on the
language faculty (Baptista et al.), child acquisition of creole languages (Kennedy), ecological
approaches to transmission (Ansaldo & Szeto; Lee; Angelo; Soong & Tonouchi) and the role
of code-mixing in language formation (Sippola; Heyd) that transect the last two sections of
the Handbook.
As we widen our soope, an important methodological issue is the need to view creole lan-
guages from a typological perspective, something which we bel ieve underpins any linguistics
of impact, and Velupillai 's chapter shows precisely what this would look like. Finally, the
remaining chapters in this section focus on the epistemological history of the field, and how
p idgins and creoles can be framed in relation to geography and ideology. Se lbach 's overview
of the history of the field includes discussion of the role of personalities in the development of
the field, a dimension too often naively deemed to be beyond 'scientific' enqu iry. In terms of
geography, Blench highl ights the importanc.e of migrations in the history of human oontact,
providing additional temporal depth to discussions in pidgin and creole studies that often
begin and end with European colonialism, while Lim's chapter extends our focus to demo-
graphic movements in the present day. And Flem ing's discussion of a post-structura list per-
spective on pidgins and creoles explores in greater depth ideas about theory and ideology that
may well play a maj or role in shaping the d irections of the field in the future (Faraclas 20 12).
0.1.4 Concluding remarks

We are conscious of the fact that the Handbook omits perhaps the most recent heated debate
in the field of creolistics, namely the one surround ing the notion of linguistic comp lexity
(McWhorter 2005; DeGraff2003; Bakker et al. 201 1; Szeto et al. 2019). The debate has c learly
shown that different notions of complexity can't be reconciled with each other as they conflict
fundamentally in what they are looking at (Meyerhoff 2008). The oontext-dependent nature
of how complexity is defined is not a problem solely for the field of creo listics. Sinnemaki
(2011) provides a lucid analysis of how this is true for the sciences in general; 'complexity'
assumes entirely different meanings - and is measured along incomparable lines - by different
researchers. Si1memiiki recommends that, given this context-dependency, rather than engage
in otiose debate over whether X is more complex than Y, we would be more profitably engaged
in interrogating what the presence or absence of X and Y mean for our theories of language
or society.
This does not mean to say that complexity is irrelevant to the authors in this Handbook.
It does mean, however, that it emerges where we think it shou ld- as a consideration in the
9
context of other larger questions embedded in chapters on typology (Velupillai; Ansaldo and
Szeto), synchronic and diatopic variation (Manfredi; Meyerhoff; Migge), code-mixing (Sip-
pola) and education (Angelo). Velupi llai 's chapter in this volume draws on her earlier (Velu-
p illai 20 15) methodologically exact and typologically infom1ed comparison of the structural
properties of p idgins, creoles, mixed languages and a representative sample of other world
languages. We are persuaded that the debate over complexity is no longer a productive one and
that enough calm and erudite commentary on this topic already exists (Velupilla i 2015 from a
typological viewpo int, Fon Sing 2017 on the phylogenetic approach).
Handbooks are not generally intended to be read from cover to cover, but there is a sense
in which we are making a hierarchica l or sequ ential c laim with the organisation of this one.
We have chosen to go from the particular in Part I to the abstract and theoretical in Part Ill. In
doing so, we hope that readers might be encouraged to see the field of creolistics as, first and
foremost, not a field defined by theoretical debates but one that (like all good linguistics) starts
from the verifiable observation of linguistic and sociolinguistic facts. To this, we encourage
readers to add observation of the contexts and consequences of the use of languages forged
in the face of intense and unequal ethnolinguistic contact. It is only on the basis of this that
we believe it becomes profitable to frame theoretical questions about pidgins and creoles (are
they heightened exemp lars on a gradual scale of language contact phenomena or are they a
c lass of their own?) or to interrogate how commonplace processes such as language acquisi-
tion and language variation and change are relevant to these languages and vice versa.
Notes
We have also been non-prescriptive with respect to capitalisation of pidgin and creole when referring
to classes of languages. We have some sympathy for the argument that there is an asymmetry in the
literature which refers to Austronesian or Germanic languages, but creole languages, and we appreci-
ate that such asymmetries are seldom value-neutral. However, it will be clear that we, and many of our
contributors, are uncomfonable with arguments of creole exceptionalism, and capitalisation of Creole
suggests that such languages form a linguistic namral class, akin to Romance or Tai-Kadai languages.
2 There are some exceptions to this: Schieffelin (2008) considers use ofTok Pisin in religious domains
among the Kaluli, Jarraud-Leblanc (2012) discusses the wrinen use of Bislama in government and
rel igion and Angermeyer (2010) discusses the use of Haitian Creole (among other languages) in couns
in the United States of America.
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12
PART I
Space and place

Taylor & Francis
~· · · ~;~. :..t, ,UJi.! CRr1nci1..com
1
SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA
Ana Deumert
1.1 Introduction: space and language

T his chapter discusses Pidgin and Creole languages in a geopolitical region that the title identi-
fies as 'sub-Saharan Africa'. The aim is to provide a bird 's eye view of a linguistica lly, eco-
nomically, historically and pol itically diverse area, and to identify broad trends and patterns.
T his introduction clarifies questions of tem1inology, looking at both space and language.
T he moniker 'sub-Saharan Africa' is routinely used by journalists, policy makers and
scholars; it is advocated by organizations such as the United Nations and the World Bank;
and it appears in book titles and development reports. Yet, it is also a contested term. There are
two reasons why the tem1 has been questioned: First, its descriptive imprecision, and second
its political implications. T hus, some countries that are considered to fonn part of the region
(such as Mauritania, Ma li and Niger) are not actually 'south of the Sahara' , but large parts
of their landmass are located in the Sahara desert. Herbert Ekwe Ekwe (2012) calls 'sub-
Saharan Africa' an 'absurd and misleading' concept, and argues that it establishes a curious
racial-re ligious d istinction between Arab-led and African-led states, linking language and race
in ways that are reminiscent of colonial boundary marking (also Mashanda 2016). To use
the Sahara, a seemingly neutral geographical space, as a boundary obscures these political-
ideological motives. It is further noteworthy that African-led institutions, such as the African
Un ion, do not make use of the tem1, but refer to Africa in its entirety, includ ing the island
states in the Indian Ocean. And then there is the question of the African diaspora: Is the dias-
pora not, in some way, part of Africa? This question has been answered in the affirmative by
the African Union which has integrated the African d iaspora into its political and cultural
vision (www.au. int). It is for these reasons that the chapter should be read in conjunction with
the chapters on North Africa, the Atlantic and the Indian Ocean.
Not only questions of space require reflection, but also questions of language: The very
idea of ' language' has come under critique in recent years (Makoni and Pennycook 2007;
Gracia and Li Wei 20 14; Li Wei 20 18), and debates of how to define Pidgin and Cre.ole lan-
guages as a spec ial group of ' languages' are on-going. There seems to be growing consensus
among creolists that Pidgin and Creole languages do not constitute a structural type (brought
about by unique processes of language change), but are better understood as a sociohistorical
formation that is close ly linked to experiences of (neo)colonial ism (Arends 1994; Mufwene
15
AnaDeumert
2000; Ansa ldo and Matthews 2007; Ab oh 20 16). However, this view rema ins contested by
others (Bakker et al. 201 1; McWorther 2018; see Kouwenberg and Singler 2018, for an over-
view of debates in creolistics). My own position is in favour of the sociohistorical view, and it
is this perspective that shapes my argument in the chapter.
A final note on terminology: The distinction between Pidgin and Creoles is usually based
on the criterion of nativeness. Thus, Pidgins are spoken as second languages (and are often
functionally restricted 'media of interethnic commun ication', see Baker 1995), while Creoles
are spoken as first languages. However, the categories of first versus second language are of
little use in the highly mu ltilingual ecologies of Africa, where people learn, and use, different
languages in different contexts, with different interlocutors and also at different times in the ir
lives (on the importance of biographical approaches to language use and multilingualism, see
Busch 2016). Moreover, several Pidgins (such as Nigerian Pidgin) are in the process of being
nativized and are no longer functionally restricted - like Creoles they have become 'media for
community solidarity' (Baker 1995). I will use ' Pidgin and Creoles', the compound 'Pidgin-
Creoles' (loosely following Bakker 2008) and the broad designation 'contact languages' inter-
changeably to indicate that these categories are fuzzy and overlapping.
1.2 The areal hypothesis (and its discontents)

The area! hypothesis was first formulated by Charles Gilman (1986: 33), who argued that 'a
large number of African-like structures [in Caribbean and African Pidgin and Creoles] are best
explained by the influence of area! features which are widely distributed among the languages
of Africa'. Possible African area! features include SVO word order, N-DET order, the use of
front-focusing particles, verb-copying, redup lication, V and CV syllable structure, as well
as tone (the latter has been preserved, for example, in Saramaccan and is also found in Krio
and Cameroon Pidgin). While substrata ! explanations point to individual African languages as
sources for particu lar structural features, the area! hypothesis draws on typologica l commu-
nalities across African languages.
However, adopting an area! perspective risks engaging ' linguistic utopias' (Pratt 1987);
that is, to advance linguistic theories that are bu ilt on the assumption of relative homogeneity
(of areas, speech communities, languages or language fami lies). Work by linguists working on
African languages suggests that the continent might be more diverse than previously assumed.
Thus, Bernd Heine (20 19) notes that recent work on language fami lies has moved beyond
Joseph Greenberg's ( 1963) early genetic classification. Whi le Greenberg distinguished four
language families (Congo-Kordofanian, Nilo-Saharan, Afro-Asiatic and Khoisan), Africanists
today assume that the number of language fam ilies on the continent lies anywhere between 19
and 30. The precise nwnber remains ' a matter of dispute in years to come' (Heine 2019: 179).
In addition to genetic classification, African-language scholars have adopted an area! per-
spective and argued that language contact can explain linguistic communalities across space
(He ine and Nurse 2008; also Greenberg 1959). George Clements and Annie Ria lland (2008),
for example, distinguish six main phonological areas: North, Sudanic, Central, East, South and
the Tanzanian Rift Valley. Others have identified Sprachbunds such as the so-ca lled ' Fragmen-
tation Belt', a high contact area stretching from Senegal to the East African highlands. This belt
includes languages of different phyla: Niger-Congo, Nilo-Saharan and Afro-Asiatic (Childs
2003: 165). Another high-contact area is the Tanzanian Rift Valley, where Cushitic (Afro-Asiatic),
Nilotic (Nilo-Saharan) and Ntu (Niger-Congo)' languages are spoken (Sands forthcoming).
From a linguistic-typological perspective the evidence appears to be mixed: There exist
typological communalities amidst considerable and persistent diversity. This state of affairs
16
Sub-Saharan Africa
both supports and challenges Gi lman's bold 'area! hypothesis', and suggests that in addition
to considering macro-areas and linguistic typologies, one should also look at m icro-situations
and situated human agency. In the context of such micro-studies, it is important to reassess
the derisive expression 'cafeteria principle' (Dillard 1970, cited in Bickerton 1981), which has
been used to ridicule explanations that suggested that speakers - in their effort to communi-
cate and express themselves- m ight select individual features from a variety of languages.
Derek Bickerton wrote (1981: 46) that 'we are asked to believe that . . . a Creo le cou ld mix
fragments of Yoruba, Akan, Igbo, Mandinka and Wolof'. Yet, recent sociolinguistic work on
speaker repertoires and use of linguistic resources has shown that multilingua l speech works in
precise ly this way: Speakers draw on a variety of linguistic (and non-linguistic) signs as they
engage in mean ing-making in the here-and-now (see, for example, Blommaert 2010; Busch
2012; see also Mufwene 2001, on the idea of feature pool from which speakers select (socio-)
linguistic fonns). This here-and-now is always socially and historically constiMed. Although
Africa had its share oflarge empires (such as the Mal i Emp ire, the Mossi Kingdoms and Great
Zimbabwe), small-scale, village-based institutions and forms of dec ision-making were central
throughout its history (Martin 20 12; Mbah and Igariwey 1997). Such a continental prefer-
ence for decentra lized social organization has sociolinguistic implications: Diversity thrives
in autonomous village-based ecologies, and mu ltilingual practices rather than language loss!
shift are typical for such contexts (Nettle 1999). That ( individual and social) multilingualism
is a normal practice across the continent has been noted repeatedly (see for example Makalela
2016; LUpke 2017; Heugh and Stroud 2019), and one might thus refommlate the area! hypoth-
esis as follows: In addition to possible linguistic-typological communalities, certain socio-
linguistic practices- such as the habitual use of diverse fom1s of mu ltilingual speech - are
common on the continent. Yet, emphasizing the extraordinary ordinariness of multilingual-
ism in Africa carries with it the dangers of Orientalism, a stance deeply engrained in Euro-
American scholarship: Is Africa indeed special and exceptional? Might one not find similar
practices of ordinary multi lingualism, and simi lar mu ltilingual ecologies, in other locales
around the world (as suggested, for example, by Kothari 2017, for India)? These are questions
future work needs to consider carefully.
1.3 Making lists, classifying the world

Let me take a step back. Let me put repertoire-resource views of communication to the side
and adopt an epistemological stanc-e that asswnes that languages are object-like (what Harris
and Rampton, 2007, call the ' reification metaphor ' in creolistics), and that they can be named
and enwnerated. From this perspective we can ask: How many Pidgin and Creole languages
are spoken in sub-Saharan Africa? Where are they spoken? And what are their names? While
epistemologically and ontologically precarious, such an approach can help one to orient one-
self, to get a sense of the broader linguistic landscape and its study by linguists.
In An Introduction to Pidgin and Creoles, John Holm (2000) lists 20 Pidgin and Creole
languages for sub-Saharan Africa and groups them according to the ir lexifiers.2
Lexifier, English
Sierra Leone Krio Creole English
Gambian Krio Creole English
Liberian Creole English
Nigerian Pidgin English
17
AnaDeumert
Femandino Creole English

Cameroonian Pidgin English
Lexifier, Portuguese
Cape Verdean Creole Portuguese
Guine-Bisseau Creole Portuguese
Gulf of Guinea Creole Portuguese (Silo TomeAngolar Principe, Am1ob6n Creole Portuguese)
Lexifier, Dutch
Afrikaans
Lexifier, French
West African Pidgin French
Mauritian Creole French
Seychello is Creole French3
Lexifier, African-based
Sango Pidgin/Creole
Juba Pidgin Arabic
Nubi Cre.ole Arabic
Lingala
Kituba
Swahil i Pidgin/Creole
Fanakalo
Lexifier, other
Eritrean Pidgin Italian
Most of the language names in this list are descriptive and scholarly. Speakers themselves
might use very different tenus, and the study of such glossonyms is important for creolists. In
his work on Kituba, Salikoko Mufwene (1997: 220) argued that:
The answer to the question "What's in name?" is that names can tell a great deal
about the contact history of a language and the ecology of its emergence.
One might add that names are also sources for studying attitudes and ideologies (which are
often inoculated via the education system). It is thus no accident that Nigerian Pidgin is also
referred to as Broken, suggesting that many see it as little more than an incomplete and frag-
mented version of English. However, att itudes are changing and a new tenn emerged in recent
years: Na ij a. Pidgin is positioned as a national language of Nigeria, and c laimed w ith pride and
confidence (Omoniyi 2009; see also Ofu lue and Esizemetor n.d.).
A different project, the Atlas ofPidgin and Creole Language Structures (henceforth APiCS,
Michaelis et al. 20 13) divides the space into three geopolitical areas: (i) East and Central Africa,
18
Sub-Saharan Africa
(ii) West Africa and (i ii) Southern Africa. The Atlas places Mauritian and Seychellois Creole
French outside of the continent: They are grouped under the heading ' Indian Ocean' (also this
volwne). APiCS provides 2 1 detailed language sketches and linguistic data sets for continental
sub-Saharan Africa.• The ed itors of the Atlas acknowledge that th is selection is 'partially
opportw1istic and potentially controversial' . The selection depended largely on the availability
of contributors and thus reflects the geographical areas on which scholarly attention has focused
(most notably the West African coast). Differences between Holm's list and the languages in
APiCS include the following: Some of the languages identified by Holm are not included in
APiCS (Kiswahili Pidgin/Creole), others are differentiated (most notably the Portuguese-lexified
languages of the Cape Verdean archipelago) or the name of the language changed (Femandino
Creole English has become Pichi, Yakpo 20 19). In the APiCS list, lexifiers are given in brackets.
East and Central Africa:

Kikongo-Kituba (Kikongo-Kimanyanga)
Sango (Ngabandi)
Lingala (Bobangi)
Kinubi (Sudanese Arabic)
Juba Arabic (Sudanese Arabic)
West Africa:
Krio (English)
Ghanaian Pidgin English (English)
Nigerian Pidgin (English)
Cameroon Pidgin English (English)
Pichi (English)
Cape Verdean Creo le of Santiago (Portuguese)
Cape Verdean Creo le of Brava (Portuguese)
Cape Verdean Creo le of Silo Vincente (Portuguese)
Guinea-Bisseau Kriyol (Portuguese)
Casamancese Creole (Portuguese)
Santome (Portuguese)
Ango lar (Portuguese)
Principense (Portuguese)
Fa d 'Ambo (Portuguese)
Southern Africa:
Afrikaans (Dutch)
Fanakalo ( isiZu lu/isiXhosa)
The two lists illustrate the diversity of lexifiers that are found on the African continent: not
only the languages of the colonial powers (Dutch, Portuguese, English, French, Italian, Ara-
bic), but also languages belonging to the Ntu group (Kikongo-Kimanyanga, Bobangi, isiZu lu
and isiXhosa) and the Ubangian group (Ngabandi). This diversity is not repeated anywhere in
the world (see Map 0 in the introduction to APiCS, Michaelis et al. 20 13). One might assume
that such diversity would attract the interest of linguists. Yet, academic work on African Pidgin
19
AnaDeumert
and Creole languages remains lim ited (Yakpo 20 16). This is especially noticeable for southern
Africa, where the number of Pidgin-Creoles might well be higher than is reflected in these
lists (see Dewnert 2009, for the d iscussion of a German-lexified contact variety in Namibia).
One of the best-known exercises in linguistic list-making is The Etlmologue, published
by the Summer Institute of Linguistics (Eberhard et al. 20 19). Here add itional languages
are catalogued: Two Hausa-based Pidgins (Barikanchi, Gibanawa), both spoken in Nigeria;
two varieties of Afrikaans (F laaitaal, Oorlams), and Cutchi Kiswahi li (spoken in Tanzania
by Gujarati Muslims). The by far most extensive list was comp iled by Norval Smith (1994).
Smith lists additional languages for West Africa, includ ing Togolese Pidgin English and
Fu lani Pidgin English. In the French-lexified category he adds Burundi Pidgin French; in
the Portuguese-lexified category, a Pidgin spoken in Angola. He also includes add itional
Arabic-based Pidgins spoken in Nigeria (such as Turku Arab ic), and four different varieties
of Afrikaans (Afrikaans, Orange River Afrikaans, 'Deep' Cape Afrikaans and Flaaitaal). His
list of Ntu-lexified Pidgin-Creoles is extensive: 15 spoken varieties, and two extinct varie-
ties. He lists six further African-lexified varieties, including Pidgin Hausa and Pidgin Wolof.
Altogether Smith's list includes 58 spoken Pidgin-Creoles and ten extinct Pidgin-Creoles for
sub-SaharanAfrica. This count does not include mixed languages (such as Ma'a!Mbugu) and
other high contact languages (such as urban vernaculars, which he lists separately). Two ear-
lier lists were compiled by Ian Hancock ( 1971, 1977; these lists are discussed and reproduced
in Romaine 20 17).
The lists summarized in this section index the complexity of language contact in Africa,
and the large variety of languages and language families involved. They also create- whether
their authors intend this or not - an impression of order and knowledge. They suggest that lin-
guists are able to establish inventories of languages, classifying them - fairly confidently and
on-going theoretical debates notwithstanding - as 'Pidgin and Creole languages' . At the same
time these lists speak to our ignorance: Given that several high contact zones exist in Africa,
and colonia l contact affected the everyday life of Africans across the continent, it is likely that
there exist many restructured forms of speech that rema in unknown to linguists (for a broader
discussion on linguists as list-makers, see Deumert and Storch 20 19).
It is worth noting that monographs, textbooks and handbooks on ' language in Africa' (e.g.
Wolff 20 19) do not usually include Pidgin and Creole languages. Instead, they tend to focus
on 'African languages' in a more narrow sense: Languages that belong to language fami lies
that originated in Africa (but see Samarin 2000: 303, for classifying Sango as an 'African
language'; and Gi lman 1979, on Cameroonian Pidgin English as a 'neo-African language';
a lso Ch ilds 2003). Restricting the definition of' African languages' in this way has also meant
that the bonds that exist between Africa and the Caribbean have been outside of the purview
of African linguistics. Creolists, on the other hand, have emphasized these linkages in the cat-
egory 'Atlantic Creoles', a category that encompasses the coast of West Africa (Holm 2000:
12- 13, Parkvall 2000). In addition, cu ltura l scholars such as Isabel Hofmeyr (2007) have
argued for the need to develop transnational perspectives that embrace the African diasporas
of both the Atlantic and the Indian Ocean (for an inclusive notion of Africa, see also Zeleza
2005).
1.4 The sociohistorical context: a typology of colonialisms

Carefu l attention to soc iohistorical context is centra l to work in creolistics, and particular
attention has been placed on understanding the political economy of colonization, its man i-
festation in specific locales and how d iverse arrangements- includ ing social and linguistic
20
Sub-Saharan Africa
ideologies - shaped practices of interaction between colonizer and colonized (Faraclas et a l.

2007). This work is, as noted by Peter Muysken (20 16), located at the 'cross-section of
soc iolinguistics and typo logy'. It cons iders the possibi lity of linkages between the ' sociolin-
gu istic circumstances in which a language is or was spoken, and its typo logical properties'
(ibid.). The sociohistorica l context in which Pidgin and Creo le languages emerged is com-
monly described in terms of a three-fold typology of social formations: plantation societies,
fort societies and maroon societies (first suggested by Bickerton 1988). I will discuss these
briefly (as they are well-known categories in the field), and then introduce an additional cat-
egory: settler-colonia l societies.
Plantation societies emerged out of histories of violent displacement, and were embedded
in capitalist forms of crop production, privileging monoculture (mostly sugar and tobacco)
over polyculture. They were shaped by the presence of slavery and/or indentured labour, and
were simultaneously bi-stratal (based on a racist black-white binary), and multistratal ( creat-
ing hierarchies and distinctions between slaves/workers). Plantation societies also showed a
particular demographic profi le: Although they often started as societies with roughly equal
numbers of white settlers/owners and slaves (so-called homestead societies), most showed
a - more or less - rapid increase of slaves, reaching proportions of 20:80 (settlers/slaves) in
many cases (Arends 1994). As a resu lt of these changed population demographics, access
to the lexifier decreased. While lack of access to the lexifier has implications for language
acquisition, access alone does not guarantee 'more' acquisition. Scholars who study second
language acquisition in contemporary societies emphasize that speakers/learners have (crea-
tive) agency, and are not necessarily concerned with improving their interlanguages (an early
study is Schwn ann 1976; see also Norton 2013; Kramsch 2013, as well as the discussion in
Kouwenberg and Singler 2018).
In Africa, proto-typical plantation societies existed, for example, on the islands of Sao
Tome and Principe. These islands off the West African coast were uninhab ited at the time
of co lonization, and plantation soc ieties were estab lished by the Portuguese in the late
fifteenth century. Historica l demographic data show the typical plantation profile: small
numbers of wh ite settlers and large numbers of slaves. Consequently, the languages San-
rome, Ango lar and Principese all show strong influence from African languages, especially
from the Kikongo c luster in Congo, and the Edo id languages of Southern Nigeria (Hage-
meijer 2013).
Maroon societies are independent, anti-colonial societies fonned by run-away slaves.
Jamaican Maroons were among the freed Africans who were settled in Sierra Leone in 1800.
They brought with them a ' deep ' version of Jamaican Creole that was strongly influenced by
African linguistic structures (Bilby 1983). Maroon-like societies - w1derstood as societies
located on the margins of the colonial matrix of power - existed in Africa as well. An example
is the island Annob6n (Equatorial Guinea) where slaves lived without regular contact with
the Portuguese. Plantation owners visited only occasionally, and ships that stopped to pick up
water and provisions never stayed for long. Thus, Fa d 'Ambo, the local Portuguese-lexified
Creole, ' developed more or less on its own, with little influence from outside' (Post 1994: 192;
also Post 20 13). In South Africa, the Afrikaans of the Griqua (also referred to as Oorlams or
Orange River Afrikaans) is also maroon-like. This variety developed largely in isolation from
Cape Dutch as spoken in the colony. The ancestors of the Griqua were European sett lers,
Indigenous Khoe and slaves. They constituted a colonial Creole conununity with a strong
Indigenous (Khoe) character. Griqua Afrikaans is characterized by the maintenance of linguis-
tic structures that originate in Khoe languages (and possibly an earlier Khoe Pidgin, Roberge
1994; Den Besten 20 12; van Rensburg 20 16).
21
AnaDeumert
Forts societies were trading posts. Small numbers of European co lonial traders and admin-
istrators were in contact with local popu lations, using fom1s of speech that drew on colonial
as well as local languages. Trading posts of this type were prominent along the West African
coast, and played an important role in the genesis of West African Pidgin English from the
1600s onwards (see Section 5). Fort Pidgin-Creo les are endogenous: They emerged in sihJ in
a multilingual context, not through displacement. A particular type of trade colony was assoc i-
ated w ith what Sam ir Am in ( 1972) calls the 'Africa of the concession-owing companies'. This
type of colonization, mostly carried out by the French and Belgians, was most prominent in the
central regions of Africa, and obtained large profits through the exploitation of resources and
labour, with minimal (European) investment and invo lvement (see Section 6).
The socio-political category 'settler ' is often used by creolists to refer to plantation own-
ers. Yet, 'settler ' also links to 'settler colonialism', which created colonial formations that
were unl ike those of plantation societies or colonial trading areas (Cavanagh and Veracini
20 17). South em Africa especially was shaped by settler colonia lism: Indigenous lands were
taken - stolen and settled - and a continuous supply of cheap African labour for agricu lture
and mining was secured through spatial dispossession (combined with a system of co lonial
taxes that forced Africans into wage labour). Settler colonial ism is shaped by what Patrick
Wolfe (2006) ca lls 'the logic of elimination': A ' recurring need to disavow the presence of
the indigenous other' (Veracini 2011: 2). Settler co lonialism- like slavery- is a fonn of
necropolitics: It works through physical violence and symbolic domination (on necropolitics,
see Mbembe 2003). The core difference between plantation societies, fort societies and settler
colon ies is that the latter are intended as permanent settlements: Sett lers came to stay, to create
a new white society and nation on stolen land. Intimate relationships between colonizer and
colonized, which were common in fort and some (early) plantation societies, were deliberately
avoided in settler societies (and even legislated against, as in the South African Immorality Act
of 1927).
Derek Den is and Alexandra D'Arcy (2018, 2019) have used 'settler colonialism' as a new
epistemological perspective for the study of varieties of English. They argue that settler-
colonial varieties of English (e.g. Canadian English) differ from postcolonial varieties (e.g.
Singaporean English) in that they show limited borrowing from local Indigenous languages
and no evidence of grammatica l conversion. Den is and d 'Arcy note: ' influence from the Indig-
enous strand(s) [was] expressly and intentiona lly blocked' (20 18: 2 1). This linguistic outcome
is a symbolic reflection of the ' logic of elimination': 'The other'- whose presence challenges
the settler-colonial project, yet whose labour is needed - has to be made invisible, to be kept
apart, physically and symbolically (on the language ideologies of settler colonia lism, see Iyen-
gar 20 14; also Henderson 2017).
A first attempt to use settler colonialism as a lens for understanding pidginization in southem
Africa can be found in my own work on Namibia (Deumert 20 18). Complementary scripts of
supremacy and servitude shape communication in settler colonies, leading not only to the fomla-
tion of servant languages (Schulze 1933; Velupillai 2015, calls these languages 'domestic work-
force Pidgins'; on scripts of servitude see Lorente 20 17), but also to varieties such as Kisettla
in Kenya, Fanakalo in South Africa (see Section 6), or unstable, jargonized fonns of Otiiherero
or Khoekhoegowab in Namibia. These settler-colonial Pidgins developed among the colonizers,
and reflect sociolinguistic processes of second language acquisition just as much as a particular
ideology towards 'the (Indigenous) other' , creating what Ian Hancock ( 1971: 519) has called 'most
aberrant' varieties. Settler-colonial Pidgins are monolanguages: They annihi late any attempts
at horizontal interaction and social ity, a stance that is iconically reflected in centring impera-
tive constructions. mstead, they establish a type of communication that is inherently 'hostile . ..
22
Sub-Saharan Africa
incommunicative conununication, that is, communication that is one way only' (Veronelli 2015:
127). This is echoed by Janet Mclntosh (20 14: 1174) who analyzed Kisettla as a 'state of mind',
its linguistic structure an iconic representation of the settler-colonial project:
[A] sem iotic embodiment of a broader po litical stance that held Kiswahili and the
people associated with it at arm's length .. . the choppiness of the settler Pidgin was
an iconic index of their indifferenc-e to the language and its speakers.
Petit Negre, or Fran9ais Tirai lleur, falls into this category too. It was not a language developed
by Africans, but by white colon ists for Africans. Fran9a is Tirailleur defom1e-d and simplified
linguistic structures, symbolically infantilized the African soldiers, and the language became
a tool for 'talking-down' , e liminating African personhood and identity (Mugane 2015; see
also Velupilla i 2015: 33ff). Recogniz ing settler-colonial Pidgins as a separate and well-defined
category allows one to tackle myths of Creole studies, namely that the creators of Pidgin and
Creole languages are Black or Brown people, thus creating a linguistic category that is implic-
itly racialized (DeGraff 2005).
A final, and important, type of colonization is found in the work of missionaries, which
started in Africa in the late eighteenth century. At times, their activities strengthened Indig-
enous languages; at other times, they drew on new!y emerging contact languages in an attempt
to facilitate rel igious conversion. The latter happened when Scheutist m issionaries decided
to use Lingala, a restructured version of Bobangi that had emerged in the context of regional
labour migration, in their proselytizing. However, prior to doing so they engaged in language
p lann ing: expanding and - in their view - improving a language they considered to be useful
but rudimentary and impoverished. They published grammar books and school books in 'their '
'corrected' version of the language, a language they named 'Lingala' (the term that had been
used hitherto was Bangala, Meeuwis 2009, 2013). The mission-created variety of Lingala is
still spoken today in the area of the original mission settlement in north-western Congo; how-
ever, outside of the area, and especially in Kinshasa, the missionary language planning had
little impact on the language.
1.5 Shorelines as early contact zones

Crossing oceans is central to the colonial enterprise and the shorel ine was, in many cases, the
point of first contact. As described by Jsabel Hofmeyr (20 18), Africa's 'oceans and shorelines
were drenched in imperialism. The ocean ushered in European settlers, officials and armies'-
as well as, one might add, traders and, later, missionaries.
The Portuguese exploration of the West African coast started in the fifteenth century.
Dutch and English expeditions followed in the sixteenth century. These early contacts
took p lace at a time when Africa (and Africans) where not yet seen as being ' inferior (or
weaker) than the rest of the O ld World' (Amin 1972: 505), and at the very beginning it was
contact between autonomous soc ial formations, rather than subjugat ion. However, this
changed qu ickly: The transatlantic slave trade started al ready in 1526, less than a century
after the first co lonia l trading post had been set up in Mauritania (on the island of Argu in).
Soon racist oppression and explo itat ion, rather than collaborative trade, came to shape
interactions bet ween Europeans and Africans (for a chronological overview see Lea and
Rowe 200 l ).
!an Hancock's (1986) work on the re lationship between West African Pidgins, Caribbean
Creoles and Krio (spoken in Sierra Leone) emphasizes the importance of the shorel ine and
23
AnaDeumert
early trading stations. He suggests that English-lexified fom1s of speech emerged- and stab i-
lized - on the Upper Guinea Coast from the early 1600s onwards when English-speaking trad-
ers started to settle in the area. Whi le some stayed only for a short time, others remained for
years, even decades, and intennarried with local women. One of the first types of English that
was possibly heard, and used, was an English-based nautical koine, that had emerged among
the heterogeneous crews of the European vessels (Hancock 1976). When large numbers of
slaves from the Upper Guinea Coast were transported to the West Indies in the seventeenth
century, some of them wou ld have had knowledge of these English-lexified Pidgins. Carib-
bean Creoles were thus shaped by earlier West African varieties, and when Jamaican Maroon
sen lers were repatriated to Sierra Leone in 1800, they brought with them fom1s of speech that
were related to locally spoken varieties. Mutually intelligible English-based Pidgins were also
spoken by the group of Liberated Africans, who had been freed by British anti-slavery patrols
before being transported to the Americas. This group too was settled in Sierra Leone. Thus, it
is possible that Krio - today spoken by approximately four mi llion people (mostly as a sec-
ond language) - has a long history that was shaped by diffusion and convergence. However,
Hancock's proposal has been contested, and a different scenario was proposed by Magnus
Huber (2000, see also Finney 20 13). According to Huber, Krio emerged only in the nineteenth
century, when the freed slaves from the Caribbean brought with them English-lexified forms
of speech that had developed quite independently in the Caribbean. These fom1s then spread
during the nineteenth century across the West African Coast and entered, for example, Ghana
and Nigeria via labour migration (Huber 2013). Combining both proposals, Nick Faraclas
(20 12: 417) suggested a multiple-origins scenario for the West African Pidgin-Creoles (includ-
ing Krio, Nigerian Pidgin, Ghanaian Pidgin, Pichi and so forth). He lists five different inputs
that combined at different times and in different locales:
I) Luso-African and Anglo-African varieties that developed .. . from the 1500s;

2) African languages spoken traditionally in the region; 3) non-standard d ialects of
English spoken by further arrivals from Europe from the 1600s; 4) other Atlantic
Creoles spoken by arrivals from the Caribbean and elsewhere in West Africa from the
1700s; 5) universals of second language use.
The Cape of Good Hope is another shoreline where early contacts took place (Mlambo and
Parsons 20 18). British and Dutch ships stopped at the shorel ine from the late sixteenth cen-
tury onwards, and entered into trade relations with local Khoe communities for water and
provisions. They also - as has been reported for West Africa as well - trained some Khoe as
interpreters in Dutch and English. Hans den Besten (20 12) suggested that a mixed trade jargon
developed on the southern shoreline during this time. In 1647 a Dutch sh ip, the Haerlem, was
shipwrecked near what is today Cape Town, and the crew stayed at the Cape for a period of
roughly a year. They engaged in barter-trade with the local Khoe during that time and it is
likely that earlier j argons stabilized during this period. Thus, by the time the first shipment
of slaves arrived at the Cape (in 1658), a local Cape Dutch Pidgin - created by Khoe in the ir
interactions with the early Dutch settlers- was already in p lace, and contributed to the subse-
quent development of Afrikaans.
Paying attention to the shoreline as a place of initial contact moves our attention to early
colonization, rather than to the nineteenth century when co lonial exploitation reached new
heights, and Africa was divided up among colonial powers in the Berlin Conference ( 1884-
1885). It encourages us to take a long view of colonization and language contact, allowing for
transhistorical diffusion and complexities.
24
Sub-Saharan Africa
L6 Language and labour exploitation

In the concession colon ies of central Africa, Europeans were only minimally invo lved, and lan-
guage contact took place mainly w ithin a large and multi lingual African work force. Kikongo-
Kituba emerged in this context. It is today a major lingua franca in the Democratic Republic
of Congo, with six to eight million speakers. The pre-colonial history of the language might
have involved the fom1ation of a trade koine, that developed locally and became the lexifier for
Kikongo-Kituba in the late nineteenth century, following colonization by Belgium. Salikoko
Mufwene (1997, 2009, 2013) has emphasized the role played by colonial labour migration in
the emergence of Kikongo-Kituba. During the 1891-1898 constm ction of a railway between
Kinshasa and the Atlantic coast, the local Bakongo refused to work as colonial labourers. The
Be lgians therefore brought labourers from other parts of the colony as well as from Senegal,
Sierra Leone and the Gold Coast. Kikongo-Kituba emerged as a lingua franca among this
linguistically diverse group of labourers, and was soon adopted by the colonial administra-
tion. This appropriation by colonial authorities is refte.cted in some of its glossonyms, such as
Kikongo ya bula-matadi, 'the colonial agent's Kikongo' (lit. 'the stone-breaker 's Kikongo'),
and Kikongo ya !eta, 'the public administration's Kikongo' .
The history of Shaba Swahili (abbreviated as ShS in the following quote) shows broad
similarities to Kikongo-Kituba. Shaba Swahili is spoken in the Katanga province of the Demo-
cratic Republic of Congo.' Vincent de Rooj ( 1994: 180) comments on its gestation, which took
place between 1920 and 1940, as follows:
The genesis and development of Shaba ShS is closely linked to the colonial history
of Shaba [now Katanga province - A. D.]. During the first decades of this century the
Belgians began to exploit the cupriferous soi ls [of the area]. Workers in the copper-
mining industry were recruited, often by force and deceit, from all over central
Africa, and spoke many different, yet related, Bantu languages. It was in this context
ofmu ltilingualism that ShS arose.
A very d ifferent African-lexified language that emerged in the context of colonia l labour
exp loitation is Fanakalo. It is a heavily reduced and simpl ified form of Ngun i (isiXhosal
isiZulu), and best classified as a settler-co lonial Pidgin sim ilar to K isettla (in structure,
use and social meaning, see Section 4). Early varieties emerged in the nineteenth century
on the colonial frontier, and by 1900 the language had become established as a language
of command. It was typ ically used between wh ite emp loyers and Black workers, at home,
on farms and sugar plantations, as well as in the mines (on the history of Fanakalo see
Mesthrie 1989; Mesthrie and Surek-Clarke 2013; also Deumert and Mabandla 2018, for
early contact varieties).6 For Nguni speakers, Fanaka lo carries with it a deep sense of disre-
spect and affront, of co lonial subjugation and oppression (Cole 1953; Brown 1988; Sanders
20 16). One of the glossonyms given for Fanakalo is isilunguboi, which translates rough ly
as 'the language of w hites when speaki ng to Africans' (who were referred to as ' boys'). The
most commonly used name, Fanakalo, translates as ' looks like this'. It might have emerged
out of m imet ic instructions that were given to workers (in the sense of 'do it like th is',
Childs 2003: 209); or, a lternative ly, the name can be seen as mimicking and mocking the
very structure of the language ('it looks like this', i.e. reduced, simplified and far removed
from the semantic and grammatical richness of Ntu languages, Nkululeko Mabandla per-
sonal communication; on the current use of Fanakalo and its contestations see Adendorff
2002; Mesthrie 20 19).7
25
AnaDeumert
l. 7 Conclusion: beyond the colonial imagination

Pidgin and Creole languages were traditionally derided and marginalized, considered to be
' broken' versions of their lexifiers. Parallel to the rise of creolistics, the status of these lan-
guages has been changing. Thus, Kofi Yakpo (20 16: 2 11) notes that:
In the last half-century or so, the string of related English-lexifier Creoles and Pidg-
ins of Nigeria, Cameroon, Ghana, Sierra Leone and Equatorial Gu inea have seen a
spectacular expansion as first and second languages.
In addition, they have expanded their use to new domains, especially the media, and their inter-
national reach is increasingly recognized (altogether they are spoken by more than I 00 m ill ion
people across West Africa). For example, Miriam Ayafor and Melanie Green (2017) note how
Cameroon Pidgin is used not only as a transactional language, but also in church, the media
(including social media) and the arts (especially music). It is also used for technology transfer
in agriculture and conservation, as well as by artisans, including those working with mobile
phones and computers. Thus, lexica l expansion is continually taking place. BBC Pidgin - which
broadcasts, since 2017, in West African Pidgin (rather than a spec ific national variety) - also
contributes to lexical and register expansion. However, not all West African Pidgin-Creoles are
thriving: Pichi remains comparatively marginalized (Yakpo 20 16); Fad' Ambo, which is spoken
by between 4000 and 5000 people on Annab6n, is w1der pressure from Spanish (the official
language of Equatorial Guinea; Post 20 13); and Principese is considered to be endangered
(Maurer 20 13; Lee 2020). Other languages are going strong: An orthography has been developed
for Cape Verdean varieties and plans are afoot for their introduction in the education system
(Lang 20 13). An orthography has also been developed for Najia (Nigerian Pidgin; Ofu lue and
Esizemetor n.d.). With regard to the Arabic-lexified Pidgin-Creoles: While some communicative
functions of Kinubi are being taken over by Kiswahi li and English, Juba Arabic is thri ving and
expanding (Luffin 2013; Manfredi and Petrollino 2013). Thus, local ecologies, ideologies and
demographics shape the status of Pidgin and Creole languages, not their history.
Language policies in Africa have mostly been exoglossic with the fom1er colonial languages
retaining a central place in the nations' post-independence linguistic ecology. However, a nwnber
of Pidgin-Creoles have been accepted as official or national languages. Thus, Cape Verdean Cre~
ole is recognized in the COWl try's constitution alongside Portuguese, and Sango is a co-official lan-
guage in the Central African Republic. In South Africa, Afrikaans has been a co-officiallanguage
since the early twentieth century, and Lingala as well as Kikongo-Kituba are recognized national
languages in the Democratic Republic of Congo. And although Krio is not recognized as an offi-
cial or national language in Sierra Leone, it nevertheless has a strong presence: It has a standard-
ized orthography and is present in the school system where it is offered as a subject (Fi1mey 2013).
Most other Pidgin and Creole languages are, however, barred from classrooms (including higher
education). There is a continuous and deeply embedded fear that their presence might stop stu-
dents from acquiring the 'standard' version of the lexifier (Ayafor and Green 2017: 28).
Current debates aroWld Afrikaans add another dimension to the language policy debate:
restandardization. In the late nineteenth century, Afrikaans - at the time a highly variable lan-
guage spoken by descendants of European settlers as well as the local Creole population - was
' hijacked' by white Afrikaner nationalists and declared 'a white man's language' (Deumert
2004; Kriel 2018). The language became closely associated with the racist apartheid regime
and was increasingly perce ived as 'a language of (white, supremacist) oppression'. In post-
apartheid South Africa, however, new discourses have emerged and Afrikaans - now referred
26
Sub-Saharan Africa
to as Afrikaaps or Kaaps - is being reclaimed by speakers of colour (see, for example, the
collection of papers in Multilingual Margins, 2016, mu ltil ingualmargins.ac.za; see also Stroud
and Will iams 2017; Willemse 2018).
The study of Pidgin-Creole languages in Africa offers researchers unique opportun ities: (i)
it focuses one's attention beyond national borders (as many languages exist as international
lingua francas, from West African Pidgin to Fanakalo), and indeed across the oceans (as Africa
exists not in isolation from its diaspora); (ii) it expands existing sociohistorical typologies by
drawing allention to settler-colonial Pidgins in, especially, southern Africa; and (ii i) it provides
novel insights in the future of Pidgin-Creoles in a context where they always, and necessar-
ily, co-exist with other languages in dynamic multilingual ecologies. And finally, more work
on high-contact areas in Africa (discussed in Section 2) is vita l for moving the field out of its
focus on the effects of European colonization, and towards a broader understanding of the
outcomes of language contact.
Notes
Because of the racist associations of ' Bantu ' (especially in Southern Africa, see Dubow 1995), I refer
to this group of languages as the Ntu languages. Nw is a common root among these languages (*nru),
referring to ' some (entity), any)' (e.g. umntu ' person' , isiXhosa).
2 I use the term ' lexifier' rather than 'superstrate' as the latter has unfortunate connotations of 'superi-
ority'. Unfommately, no accepted alternative is available for the term ' substrate' (which has equally
unfortunate connotations). 'Grammaticalizer' might be an option as this would emphasize the contri-
bution these languages have made to grammatical form and structure.
3 Reunionais Creole French could also be listed here. However, politically Reunion remains an overseas
department o f France, and is not an independent country. It is therefore not usually considered to be
part of sub-Saharan Africa ( nor the African Union).
4 I am excluding the entry for Ma'a/Mbugu from this count since the author o f the entry classifies it
unambiguously as a mixed language, not a Pidgin or Creole language (Mous 2013 ).
5 Between 197 1 and 1997 the name of this area was Shaba province. The main substrate languages for
Shaba Swahili are ChiBemba and Tshiluba (both belong to the Nm group). Despite having emerged
through contact between closely related languages, Shaba Swahili has lost most of the agglutinating
morphology of the Jexifier and the substrate languages; nominal agreement (another typological fea-
ture of the languages in contact) was radically simplified.
6 Due to its use in the mines, which rely on migrant from across the region, Fanakalo has spread across
southern Africa.
7 It appears to carry less negative connotations when used in horizontal communication, for example,
between traders (South African-bom Indians as well as recent migrants from South Asia) and isiZulu-
speaking customers (Newby-Rose 20 l l ).
Further reading
Gilman, C. 1986. African area) characteristics: Sprachbund, not substrate? Journal ofPidgin and Creole
Languages I: 33- 50.
An important article which discusses typological features that are shared across languages in Africa,
and that shaped the grammar of Pidgin-Creole languages.
Heine, B. and Nurse, D. (eds.)2008. A Linguis tic Geography ofAfrica. Cambridge: Cambridge University.
An accessible text that helps smdents and scholars to understand the typological complexity of the
African continent.
Liipke, F. 20 17. African (ist) perspectives on vita lity: Fluidity, small speaker numbers, and adaptive mul-
tilingualism make vibrant ecologies. Language 93 : 275- 279.
An innovative look at language vita lity from an Africanist perspective, focusing on small-scale mul-
tilingual ecologies.
27
AnaDeumert
Makoni , S. and Pennycook, A. (eds.) 2007. Disinventing and Reconstituting Languages . Bristol: Multi-
lingua l Matters.
In this edited volume Sin free Makoni and Ala stair Pennycook remind scholars that ' languages' are not
objects and cannot be ennumerated.
Velupillai, V. 2015. Pidgins, Creoles and Mited Languages. An Introduction. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
The volume provides a solid introduction to the larger field of language contact. It contains sociolin-
guistic descriptions and grammatical sketches for several African Pidgin/Creoles languages.
Related topics
Identity and Mixed Languages; Pidgins and Creoles: New domains, new technologies; The
Typology of Pidgin and Creole Languages; Identity Pol itics; Creole Arts and Music
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32
2
THE ARAB WORLD
Stefano Manfredi
2.1 Intr oduction

Over the past two centuries, Arab ic served as a lexifier for several Pidgin and Creo le lan-
guages which emerged both within and outside the trad itiona l borders of the Arab ic-speaking
world. The present chapter provides an overview of these contact languages and highl ights
their relevance for broader Creole Stu dies. By coupling the description of linguistic structures
with an analysis of the sociohistorical and demograph ic factors assoc iated with pidginization
and creolization in Arabic, the chapter surveys the main features of Arabic.-based Pidgins and
Creoles spoken in East Africa and in the Persian Gulf. The resulting multifactorial analysis
brings to the fore the differing roles played by second language acquisition (SLA), substrate
interference, superstrate reanalysis, area! convergence, as well as internal change in Pidgin
and Creole genesis. In addition, the chapter discusses a number of critical issues such as the
alleged p idginization of modem Arabic dialects or the inclusion of migrant learner varieties
among Arabic Pidgins.
Th is chapter is organized as follows. Section 2 reviews the main theories about the origins
of modem Arabic dialects, with a special focus on the p idginization hypothesis advanced by
Versteegh ( 1984). Section 3 details the dynamics of emergence of Arabic-based Pidgins and
Creoles in East Africa and presents the ir linguistic profi le in tem1s of strata! and non-strata!
features. Section 4 sketches an outline of different contact varieties spoken in the Persian Gulf
which are traditionally referre.d to as Gu lf Pidgin Arabic. Finally, Section 5 provides a sum-
mary of the key highlights of Arabic-based Pidgins and Creoles and discusses future directions
of research on these well-docwnented, but often disregarded, languages.
2.2 Critical issues: pidginization, creolization, and the Ar abic dialects

Arabic is part of the Centra l Semitic branch of the Afroasiatic phylum. With its 315 mill ion
native speakers, it is the fourth most spoken language in the world and the majority language
in a vast longitudinal area running roughly from Mauritania in the west to Iraq in the east,
from Thnisia in the north to Sudan in the south. This extensive geographical d istribution is the
result of a long series of population migrations that began with the early Islamic conquests
in the first half of the 7th century. Following Jastrow (2002), we can broadly subdivide the
33
Stefano Manfredi
Arabic·-Speaking world into three zones. Zone I is limited to the regions where Arabic was
spoken before the beginning of the Islamic expansion. This is mainly the Arabian Peninsu la,
except for its southern zones where South Arabian languages were (and, in certa in cases, are
still) spoken. Zone 11 embraces most of the North African and Middle Eastern territories into
which Arabic penetrated during the 7th and 8th centuries. Lastly, Zone Ill encompasses iso-
lated regions where Arabic is spoken by? minority conununities in prolonged contact with other
languages, such as in Cyprus, Turkey, Uzbekistan, and Nigeria (Owens 2000). Against this
background, it is not surprising that Arabic is characterized by important diatop ic variation
whose origins can be traced back to both internally and externally motived language changes.
Arabic dia lectologists generally adopt the umbre lla tenn 'Neo-Arabic' for referring to
all modern varieties of Arabic. Much of the discussion about the profi le of Ne.o-Arabic has
focused on its relation to the 'Old Arabic' language type, as mainly (but not exclusively) rep-
resented by Classical Arabic. Although there is a wide agreement that modern Arabic dialects
conta in innovations dating back to the first centuries of the Arab conquests, intense debate on
the sociohistorical factors behind the emergence of Neo-Arabic has taken place over the past
70 years. Focusing his attention on the loss of case endings on now1s and mood differences on
verbs, Filck ( 1950) was the first scholar to propose that modem Arabic dialects derived from
a single post-Islamic Verkehrssprache (i.e. lingua franca). Ferguson (1959) refines this mono-
genetic theory and argues that modern Arabic dialects derive from an urban koine that sup-
posedly originated in military settlements through a progressive process of dialect levelling.
Ferguson supports his hypothesis with 14 phonological, morphosyntactic, and lexical features
distinguishing Neo-Arabic from Classical Arabic. In contrast with Ferguson's monogenetic
theory, Cohen ( 1962) proposes a polygenetic model of diffusion that attributed the innovations
of modern dialects to parallel developments that gradually spread out in different directions.
Accordingly, Cohen regards simi larities between Arabic dialects as a case of convergence
reflecting the influence of both Classical Arabic and prestigious urban dialects rather than
indicating a common historical origin. '
In a widely known and controversial study, Versteegh ( 1984) detaches himself from the
traditional d ichotomy between monogenetic and polygenetic the.ories of dialect emergence
and argues that features distinguishing Neo-Arab ic from Old Arabic arose through a process
of pidginization, fo llowed by creolization and decreolization. By emphasizing the 'simpli-
fied' nature of Neo-Arabic in comparison to O ld Arabic (e.g. loss of dual marking in verbs
and pronouns, merger of verb derivational schemes, loss of the internal passive, emergence of
analytic possessive constructions, use of a single un inflec.ted relative marker, generalization
of the SVO word order), and applying the Pidgin-Creole li fe cycle (Hall 1962), Versteegh
stresses the role played by non-Arabic speakers in restructuring Old Arabic morphosyntactic
structures. He thus states that, due to a reduced linguistic input, the inhabitants of conquered
territories in North Africa and Middle East developed an Arabic-based Pidgin via untutored
SLA. Originally limited in communicative functions, this early Pidgin was purported ly nativ-
ized, thereby becoming a Creole. At a later stage, the Arabic-based Creole wou ld have been
affected by decreolization under the influence of standard forn1s of the lexifier language and
eventually brought about modern Arabic dialects. In support of his claim, Versteegh draws
a paralle l between the emergence of a nwnber of Pidgin/Creole languages (especially Juba
Arabic, cf 3. 1) and the contact situation of early Arabized territories.
Although the Pidgin-Creole life cycle has been repeatedly proposed as an explanatory
model for the development of many modern languages/ in no case has it gained credibil-
ity. With respect to Arabic, Goodman ( 1986) stresses that Versteegh's definition of pidginiza-
tion is too broad since untutored acquisition is normal in SLA. Comrie ( 1985) points out
34
Tire Arab world
that the hypothesis of pidginization of Arabic is essentially programmatic as it is difficult

to test against synchronic data from present-day Arabic-based varieties. In this connection,
Miller (1994) argues that, despite the longstanding contact between Juba Arabic and its lexi-
fier, the South Sudanese Pidgin-Creole gives no evidence of scalar movement towards Arabic
as expected by a decreolization hypothesis (Versteegh 1984, 1993). Owens ( 1989, 20 18) a lso
shows that socioeconomic relationships between Arabic-speaking groups and later Arabized
populations during the first centuries of Islamic expansion were far different from those typ i-
cally conducive to p idginization. On structura l grounds, Versteegh 's theory of pidginization
has been fau lted for failing to accow1t for the persistence of grammatica l agreement (Ferguson
1989) and affixallablaut morphology in modern Arabic dialects (Owens 1997).
In response to these criticisms, Versteegh (2004) stresses the necessity of taking into
account later migrations of Arabic-speaking populations as well as the role of Arabic foreigner
talk in the emergence of modem Arabic dialects. He then concludes that most of " the modem
d ialects originated in a context of second language acqu isition" and that "pidginized varieties
d iffer only in degree from other types of contact language, and it is difficult or perhaps useless
to try and categorize them as fixed points on a scale" (Versteegh 2004: 354). Thus Versteegh
still ignores the fact that the contact dynamics underlying p idginization are quite restrictive,
entail ing the disruption of intergenerational transmission of a given language. It is undeniable
that widespread bilingualism played a decisive role in the emergence of 'co lonial Arab ic'
(see Behnstedt and Woidich 2013: 3 18). In no case however has SLA of Arabic produced
language change typical of Pidgins and Creoles. A more plausible suggestion is that contact-
induced change affecting Arabic during its early phase of geographical diffusion was closer to
the kind of restructuring found in peripheral L2 varieties of Arabic (Simeone-Senelle 1993;
De Pommerol 1997; Trudgill 2011: 45; Manfredi 2013). These varieties are mainly attested
in Sub-Saharan Africa (Chad, Sudan, Eritrea) where they are used by L2 Arabic speakers as
interethnic means of conununication distinct from local Arabic dialects. In such contexts, a
certain degree of morphological reduction occurs but most of the original inflectional mor-
phology is preserved, as the following examples show (Manfred i 20 17c: 79):
( I) Baggara Arabic (Kadugli, Sudan)

bi=na-ms-u
IND= 1-go-PL
'We (will) go'
(2) Juba Arabic (Juba, South Sudan)

tm{i}tw bi=rowa
IPL IRR=go
'We (will) go'
(3) L2 Arabic (Kadugli, Sudan)

tw-msi
1-go
'I go/we go'
Examp le I displays a typical Arabic imper fective paradigm with personal affixes indexing
aspect, person, and number (gender is also marked in the 2nd and 3rd person), with a procl itic
bi= marking an indicative mood. In contrast, example 2 gives evidence of the analytic mor-
phology of Juba Arabic in which person and nwnber are indexed by an independent pronoun
35
Stefano Manfredi
preceding an uninflec.ted verb marked for irrealis (cf 3.2). This can be also contrasted w ith the
L2 variety of Arabic in example 3 which retains personal affixes, but with the conflation of l st
singu lar and plural person marking and the loss of the proclitic bi=. In view of the typological
distanc.e between Juba Arabic and L2 Arabic, it is clear that untutored SLA of Arabic can pro-
duce widely varying morphological systems, with morphological analyticization remaining a
typical feature of Pidgin/Creole languages. So even ifuntutored SLA is a necessary condition
for pidginization, it does not by itself necessari ly trigger a process of pidginization.
In view of the previously stated, the claim that Arabic dialects emerged from a process of
p idginization-creo lization is now generally rejected as unfounded. Most recent studies (Behn-
stedt and Woidich 2005; Al-Jallad 2009; Watson 2012) show that many alleged Neo-Arabic
features already existed in different varieties of Old Arabic. The innovative nature of modem
dialects can be better explained by a polygenetic approach high lighting processes of internal
drift and convergence. Even though the externally motived changes occurring throughout Ara-
bic's millennia! history were not the result of pidginization/creolization, in the next sections
we wi ll see how different modem Arabic d ialects lexified a nwnber of Pidgin and Creole
languages.
2 .3 Current contributions and research: Arabic

Pidgins and Creoles in East Africa
This section deals w ith a homogenous group of contact languages wh ich are traditionally
labe lled 'Sudanic Pidgins and Creoles' (Tosco and Manfredi 2013), hereafter SPCs. These
three languages share a common Pidgin ancestor developed in the second ha lf of the 19th
century in the southern regions of the Turco-Egyptian Sudan.
2.3.1 Sociohistorical background

In line with other Pidgin and Creole languages, the origins of SPCs are deeply rooted in colo-
nial expansionism and the slave trade. The ir history began in 1821 when Muhammad Al i, the
Ottoman regent of Egypt, launched a military campaign to gain control over Sudan. Following
the occupation of north em Sudanese territories, several anned expeditions penetrated southern
Sudan and establ ished a network of trading settlements in the region. T he southernmost part
of Sudan was and still is a linguistically heterogeneous area encompassing a large number of
Eastem Nilotic (e.g. Bari, Toposa, Lop it), Western Nilotic (e.g. Dinka, Nuer, Shilluk, Acholi),
as well as Adamawa-Ubangi (e.g. Zande, Banda, Ndogo) languages. In such a context, the
imposition of a violent system of slave raid ing produced asymmetric contact between a minor-
ity of Arabic-speaking slave traders and a majority of slave recru its with different ethnolin-
guistic backgrounds. Owing to colonial records, we know that in 1869 nearly a fifth of the local
population was resident in the earl ier-mentioned trading settlements. Of these, only a quarter
were Arab ic speakers, whereas the rest was composed of local enslaved groups (Owens 1990:
222; Wellens 2005: 7-9). On account of the unbalanced sex ratio in the settlements, the local
work force was constantly renewed through slave raiding in the surrounding areas (Mahmoud
1983: 40). This particular demograph ic setting, in combination with the hierarchical military
system in force within the selllements, eventu ally furnished the social basis for the emergence
of an Arabic Pidgin as means of interethnic communication.
Prokosch (1986) names this Arabic.-based Pidgin ' Bimbash i Arabic' (from Ottoman Turk-
ish bimbasi 'officer '), whereas Tosco and Owens (1993: 253) use the label 'Common Sudanic
Pidgin Arabic'. If Mahmoud ( 1983: 18-20) draws attention to the heterogene.ous nature of this
36
Tire Arab world
Pidgin by postulating the parallel development of different linguistic varieties, Owens ( 1990:
222) rather emphasizes the isolation of trading settlements from the socioeconomic network of
southern Sudan, hypothesiz ing that the Pidgin stabilized early in its history. Setting aside the
d ifferent theories about the pidginization of Arabic in the 19th century, linguistic and historical
evidence establishes that the Common Sudanic Pidgin Arabic is the linguistic ancestor of the
following SPCs.
2.3.1.1 Turku/ Bongor Arabic

After the formal abolition of slavery by the Turco-Egyptian administration in 1879, some of
the Pidgin-speaking slave recruits were forced to move from southern Sudan to Borno, in
present-day Chad. This population displacement produc.e d a new variety of Pidgin Arabic
known as Turku. Our knowledge of Turku is limited to a short dictionary and phrasebook
collected by the French co lonial officer Gaston Muraz in 1926. According to Tosco and
Owens ( 1993), this pidginized variety of Arabic achieved a fair degree of stabi lity as an
interethnic medium between Sudanese soldiers and the local populations of western Chad.
Turku is probably related to Bongor Arabic which is nowadays spoken as vehicular lan-
guage in the Mayo-Kebbi region (Luffin 2008, 20 l3a). Due to the paucity of ava ilable data
it is d ifficult to ascertain the historical relationship between the two languages. Nevertheless
both pidginized varieties are atfecte.d by contact with the Arabic dialects of Chad (Tosco and
Manfredi 2013: 503).
2.3.1.2 (Ki-)Nubi
Following the Mahdist revolution in 1888, a few thousand south Sudanese troops fled to north-
em Uganda. The former Sudanese recruits were then integrated into the British King's African
Rifles and scattered throughout East Africa (He ine 1982: 12; Owens 1990: 220; Luffin 2005:
28; Wellens 2005: 16-17). These population displacements brought forth a decisive break of
the Common Sudanic Pidgin Arabic from its original linguistic background. As a result, the
Sudanese Pidgin began to be nativized giving rise to (Ki-)Nubi, the only Arabic-based radical
Creole known so far. Early descriptions of (Ki-)Nubi date back to the beginning of the 20th
century and confirn1 its linguistic affi liation with other SPCs (Kaye and Tosco l993a; Avram
20 15; Nakao 20 16). At the present time, (Ki-)Nubi is the first language of several minorities
located in Bombo (Uganda, see Wellens 2005), Kibera (Kenya, see Heine 1982; Owens 1977,
1985, 1990, 1991, 2000, 200 l, 20 14; Khamis and Owens 2007), and Mombasa (Kenya, see
Luffin 2005). Present-day (Ki-)Nubi is highly affected by its Bantu adstrate, and espec ially
by Kiswahil i in Kenya (Khamis 1994; Luffin 2014) and Luganda in Uganda (Wellens 2005).
Nonetheless, (Ki-)Nubi functions as a strong marker of ethnic identity for its speakers (Smedt
20 ll ).
2.3.1.3 fuba Arabic

The founding of a garrison station in Juba in 1927 marked the inception of a process of urbani-
zation in southern Sudan and gradually the Common Sudanic Pidgin Arabic began to nativize.
At the present time, Juba Arabic can well be considered a Pidgin-Creole (Bakker 2008: 135)
spoken as Ll by almost half of the urban population of Juba (Manfredi 20 l7a), while being
the main L2 of rural and recently urbanized groups. In contrast to (Ki-)Nubi, the adstrate of
Juba Arabic consists of its Arabic lexifier (Mahmoud 1979) and its origina l Nilotic substrate
37
Stefano Manfredi
(especially Bari, see Bureng 1986; Mi ller 1989; Nakao 20 12). Against the recalcitrant idea that
Juba Arabic is more and more sim ilar to Sudanese Arabic due to a far-reaching depidginiza-
tion/decreo lization process (Versteegh 1993; Parkvall and Bakker 2013: 32), only part of its
non-native speech community is affected by language attrition with the Arabic lexifier. Contra-
riwise, it seems that the gradua l creolization of Juba Arabic promoted a resurgenc.e of fonnal
and semantic features from the Nilotic substrate (M iller 2003b: 297, cf 3.2).
Due to their common sociohistorical origin, SPCs share a large nwnber of features in all
grammatical domains (F igure 2.1 ). These may usua lly be attributed to transfer from superstrate
and substrate languages (see Miller 1993). SPCs also display remarkable divergent features
w hich can be the product of either internal changes (i.e. reanalysis and grammaticalization) or
diverse influence of adstrate languages (i.e. lexical and grammatical borrowing).
•
N
••
•
• EGYPT
•••
••
~·
••
••
•••••
••
••••
••
CHAD SUDAN
Bongor [Turku·Bongor]
1879
SOUTH
SUDAN
Map 1. The emergence and diffusion

KENYA
of SPCs in East Africa
• Location (Language(
• • • • • • • • Egypt and Sudan in 1880
Population displacemenls
1000km
Figure 2.1 The emergence and dilf'usion of Arabic SPCs in East Africa.
38
Tire Arab world
2.3.2 Stratal and non-stratal f eatures in SPCs

The strata! features of SPCs include both features derived from their superstrate/substrate lan-
guages as well as features borrowed from present-day adstrate languages. The SPC lexicon is
overwhelmingly of Arabic origin, with a clear influence from Sudanese and Egyptian dialects.
All SPCs present early cu ltural loanwords from their Ni lotic substrate (e.g. Bari gugu > Juba
Arabic, (Ki-)Nubi [5ligu 'granary', Bari bi':J]XJ > Juba Arabic, Ki-Nubi k6rufu ' leave', see Nakao
20 12). Adstrate lexical influence in Juba Arabic is manifest in recent Bari loanwords not attested
in (Ki-)Nubi (e.g. Bari kapoportat > kapaparat 'butterfly'). Ki-Nubi, for its part, is characterized
by the integration of many Bantu loanwords, mainly from Swahil i (e.g. shanga > stmga 'be sur-
prised', Luffin 2014) and Luganda (e.g. e-ntulege > ntulege 'zebra', Nakao 2012: 134).
The segmental phonology of SPCs is deeply affected by both substrate inter ference and
untutored SLA. Still, sound correspondences between SPCs and their shared lexifier can be
established according to the comparative method (Owens 1985). Such is the case for the loss of
pharyngeal (e.g. Sudanese Arabic bajla > htifla 'party'), pharyngealized (e.g. Sudanese Arabic
{awll > towil ' long') and velar fricatives (e.g. xamsa > ktimsa 'five') consonants, absent in the
substrate languages. Concerning the supra-segmental phonology of SPCs, it gives interesting
hints about the prosodic outputs of pidginization. SPCs emerged via an extreme contact situ-
ation involving a stress-timed language (the Arabic lexifier) and various tone languages (the
Ni lotic substrate). According to Salmons (1992: 56), in such a contact situation tone usually
yields to stress, passing through a pitch-accent stage. Juba Arabic and Ki-Nubi may provide a
possible example of this transitional prosodic stage as they both have an obligatory and cumu-
lative accent eo-occurring with one single high tone. 3 That being so, the accent is lexically
(e.g. Juba Arabic klira 'ball' vs. kura ' leg' , Manfredi 2017a: 39) and grammatically (e.g. Juba
Arabic ktitulu 'kill', kattilu 'kili\VN', katuhi 'kili\PASS', Manfredi 2017a: 40) distinctive.
Th is prosodic system is explicable neither in terms of classic historical method nor common
creol ization processes (Owens 200 I), presenting a typological challenge for anyone interested
in drawing a clear-cut distinction between stress and tone languages.
SPC inflectional morphology is almost exclusively of Arabic origin. All SPCs present at least
two Arabic-derived suffixes for nominal pluralization: -tit F.PL > -a(t) PLI and -In M.PL > -in
PL2. Given that gender is no longer a morphological category in SPCs, the two suffixes have
innovative functional distributions. In Juba Arabic the suffix -in PL2 is specialized in the plu-
rali:zation of adjectives (e.g. suker, suker-in 'smali-PL2') and nouns with animate referents (e.g.
sawag, sawag-in 'driver-PL2'), whereas -a(t) PLI is generically used with nouns (e.g. htlja, haj-
at 'thing-PLI ', Manfredi 20 17a: 55-56; Goldshtein 20 17). More recently, Juba Arabic has bor-
rowed the Bari suffix -)in PL3 which is now used for pluralizing Nilotic loanwords irrespective
of the original agreement rules (e.g.laboro, laboro-jin 'banana-PL3', Manfredi 20 17a: 57). Since
Arabic intemal pluralization is unproductive in SPCs, the lexicalized plural items found in Juba
Arabic and (Ki-)Nubi should be described as suppletive fom1s rather than morphological pat-
terns associated with a root (e.g. kebir, kuMr 'big.PL', see Manfredi 20 17a: 58; Kihm 20 11 ). The
relationship between plural forms and their meaning can be even particularly opaque in the case
of mixed plurals constituted by a suppletive item followed by a plural suffix (e.g. kubor-in 'big.
PL-PL2'). More broadly, the richness of the morphological encoding of number along with the
disruption of gender as a morphological category in SPCs could be explained by the persistence
of substrate granunatical categories of Nilotic languages, which present very complex systems
of nominal pluralization while being deprived of morphological gender (Manfredi 2017a: 57).•
Substrate interference is particularly evident in the domain of lexical and grammati-
cal calquing. This is especially true for Juba Arabic which presents many compow1d now1s
39
Stefano Manfredi
calqued on Ni lotic languages (e.g. Bari k:we na ktJdi ' roof' , Juba Arabic ras ta bet ' roof' - lit.
' head of house', Nakao 2012: 236). As a further malter, Juba Arabic and (Ki-)Nubi share a
prototyp ica l passive construction with a comitative marking of the agent w hich is unknown in
Arabic, but attested in Bari (see a lso Manfredi and Petrollino 2013: 6 1; We llens 2005: 179).
(4) Juba Arabic

arabiya de gi juni ma=tete- tere
car PROX.SG PROG=pull\PASS with=tractor
'This car is pulled by a tractor.' (Manfredi 20 l 7a: 122)
(5) Mombasa (Ki-)Nubi

ft yal-a a/ akulli ma=nas tomsa
EXS child-PLl REL eat\PASS with=people crocodile
'There were children who have been eaten by crocodiles.' (Luffin 2005: 365)
(6) Bari
niena wuret a-wur-6 ko=nan
PROX.SG book 3SG.PAST-write-PASS with= lSG
'This book has been written by me.' (Owen 1909: 65)
Lastly, a number of strata! features unveil the possible role played by area! convergence in
the emergence of Pidgin and Creole languages. This is the case of 'exceed' comparative con-
structions in which the standard is the object of the transitive verbfuhJ 'surpass' and which are
attested in all SPCs, as we can see in the following examples.
(7) TUrku
ita awan fiihl kadabgel
2SG bad pass Kadabgel
'You are worse than Kadabgel. ' (Tosco and Owens 1993: 211)
(8) Juba Arabic

uo kebir fiitu ita
3SG big pass 2SG
' He is bigger than you.' (M iller 1993: 167)
(9) Bombo Ki-Nubi

bei ta jeseiri hari jiih1 bei ta gvvanda
price POSS ma ize high pass price POSS cassava
'The maize is more expansive than the cassava.' (Wellens 2005: 109)
Indeed, early grammars ofBari (Owen 1909; Spagnolo 1933) report the same granunatical use
for the lexical verb to 'ngun 'surpass'. Furthem1ore, similar 'exoeed' constructions are attested in
Western Sudanic Arabic dialects ( 10), which were part of the common lexifier ofSPCs.
( l 0) Baggara Arabic
bajm=i b=i-fot=ak
size= l SG IND=3SG.M-pass=2SG.M
'I am bigger than you.' (Manfredi 2010: 96)
40
Tire Arab world
In such contact situations, the traditiona l distinction between superstrate and adstrate fea-
tures is evidently inapplicable and it is then preferable to speak of a mechanism of area! diffu-
sion precipitated by pidginization.
Non-strata! features of SPCs include structures arising from untargeted SLA (independent
of substrate interference) as well as those produced via reanalysis and grammaticalization.
As already argued (cf 2, ex. 1- 2), one of the main typo logical traits characterizing SPCs
is the absence of personal indexes on the verb, the subject being expressed by independent
personal pronouns (see also ex. 4-5, 7- 9). This pattern of change can be attributable neither
to superstrate inheritance not to substrate interference and it is evidently the product of SLA.
Following the loss of verbal inflection, SPCs have developed an innovat ive set of preverbal
TAM markers (C. Miller 1986; Tosco 1993; Versteegh 2016). More particu larly, Juba Arabic
and (Ki-)Nubi share two main TAM markers: bi= derived from Arabic and expressing irrealis
moda lity ( 11- 12) and gi lge= reflecting the grammatical ization of the Pidgin verb geni 'stay,
sit' and typically conveying a progressive aspect (Manfred i 2017a: 98, 13- 14).
( 11) Juba Arabic

kan ita ma b=istaka/ mtifi zol bi=wodi le=ita gunis
if 2SG NEG IRR=work NEG.EXS man IRR=give to=2SG money
'If you don't work, nobody will give you money.' (Manfredi 2017a: 100)
(12) Mombasa (Ki-)Nubi

ina bi=nnitu ini
I PL FUT=die here
'We will die here.' (Luffin 2005: 286)
( 13) Juba Arabic

ana gi=rowa terkeka
ISG PROG=go Terkeka
'I am go ing to Terkeka.' (Manfred i 20 17a: 98)
(14) Kibera (Ki-)Nubi

malar gi=waga
ram PROG=fall
'It is raining.' (Heine 1982: 79)
Crucially, follow ing the creolization of (Ki-)Nubi,' the preverbal marker bi= reached a
higher level of desemantization in comparison to Juba Arabic, becoming more and more spe-
cialized as the expression of a future tense (Well ens 2005: 16, cf ex. 12). As a result, (Ki-)Nubi
is the on ly SPC that expresses a future progressive meaning by combining the two preverbal
markers bi= and gi=.
( 15) Mombasa (Ki-)Nubi

1io bi gi Ja
3SG IRR=PROG=come
' He will be coming.' (Luffin 2005: 281)
Another common morphosyntactic feature attributable to untargeted SLA is the loss of the
Arabic definite artic le at=. This change induc.ed a profound restructuring of the SPC nominal
41
Stefano Manfredi
detenn ination system and produced the emergence of a new definite article grammaticalized
from the proxima l singular demonstrative de (Manfredi 2017c). Juba Arab ic shows greater
morphological continuity with its lexifier than (Ki-)Nubi, though its demonstrative system
lacks gender and conveys number only in the proximal (i.e. de PROX.SG vs. dol PROX.PL).
The innovative demonstrative system of (Ki-)Nubi however has grammaticalized combina-
tions of personal pronow1s with demonstrative determiners (e.g. tio de 3SG PROX.SG > uwede
PROX.SG), demonstrative pronOWlS with demonstrative detenn iners (e.g. dol de PROX.PL
PROX.SG > d61de PROX.PL), and demonstrative adverbs with demonstrative determiners
(e.g. henak de there PROX.SG > nade DIST.SG). This morphosyntactic development includes
important pragmatic functions, as de is ma inly used as a tracking device in Juba Arabic (Man-
fredi 2017b: 64-66), whereas in (Ki-)Nubi its util ity is extended to associative anaphora, a
typical fimclion of definite articles (Wellens 2005: 66-67). In (16), nuswtin 'women' lacks
a prior referent, but it is indefinable via anaphoric association with the ISG pronoun ana.
Accordingly, it is marked by an invariable post-nom ina l definite article de.
( 16) Bombo (Ki-)Nubi

ke ana gata agit na nuswan de
MOD ISG cut intelligenc.e for women DEF
'Let me deceive the wives.' (Wellens 2005: 66)
Since the demonstrative de started as a marker for nominal definiteness, its deictic function
has been definitively backgrounded. This explains why (Ki-)Nubi grammaticalized a more
e laborate series of deictic devices than Juba Arabic, which retained more Arabic-like demon-
strative forms (Manfredi 20 17c: 228). This can a lso be used as an evidence of the grammatical
expansion that took p lace in (Ki-)Nubi after its creolization as well as of the gradual nature of
the social process of nativization.
2.4 Current contributions and research:

pidginization in the Persian Gulf
This section d iscusses several Arabic-based contact varieties emerging within the con-
text of labor migration in the Persian Gu lf. These are mainly used as veh icular means
of communication between local Arabic·- Speaking groups and migrants from the Indian
subcontinent and East Asia. Due to thei r condit ions of emergence, it is d ifficult to ascer-
tain whether these varieties shou ld be described in the same way as Pidgins. However, in
consideration of their structural features, these are tradit ionally labelled as Gulf Pidgin
Arabic (hereafter GPA).
2.4.1 GPA: transient learner variety or true Pidgin?

GPA arose as a consequence of the massive immigration of foreign workers from Asia to
Arab states of the Persian Gu lf during the last decades of the 20th century. Smart (1990)
provides an early account of GPA based on written material from the United Arab Emirates.
More recent studies describe GPA as spoken in Kuwa it (Dashti 20 13), Saudi Arabia (Alaz-
raqi 20 I 0; Almoaily 20 14), Oman (Nress 2008), and Qatar (Bakir 20 10). Bizri (20 14, 20 17)
sketches two comparative descriptions of what she calls 'Asian Migrant Arabic Pidgins' and
highl ights the structural continuity between Arabic contact varieties of the Middle East and
the Persian Gu lf.6 Even if most authors take for granted the pidginized nature ofGPA, it is not
42
Tire Arab world
a trivial matter to define its sociolinguistic status against the comp licated context of foreign
tabor m igration in the Persian Gulf.
It is commonly assumed that transient learner varieties of untargeted SLA in immigrant
communities cannot be considered as Pidgins due to a lack of structural nonns resu lting in a
high degree of individual variation (Parkvall and Bakker 2013: 22). However, this assump-
tion is entirely founded on the observation of scattered immigrant communities in Western
cow1tries; the situ ation of GPA speakers is radically different in tern1s of linguistic practices,
relative demographic we ight and social exclusion in the host countries. First of all, only groups
from the Indian subcontinent, and to a lesser extent from East Asia, speak GPA. These are by
far the largest imm igrant communities in the Gulf countries (Avram 2014: 13; Bizri 2014:
393, cf Table 2. 1). On the who le, Asian migrant commw1ities present a high degree of mul-
tilingualism with Hindi!Urdu, Tamil, Malayalam, Punj abi, Pashto, Bengali, Nepal i, Sinhala,
Tagalog, and Javanese as common Ll s. In spite of the ir diverse ethnol inguistic origins and as a
consequence of their social exclusion in the host countries, Asian m igrants keep strong solidar-
ity networks. They thus frequently use GPA for in-group communication as well, regardless
of their respective Ll (Avram 2014: 37). T his fact indicates that GPA is undergoing tertiary
hybridization (Milhlhausler 1986: 5), which promotes the expansion of communicative func-
tions and, possibly, stabilization of its linguistic structures.
A second point to stress is that, in contrast to immigrant communities in Western countries,
tabor migrants in this part of the Arab world often represent the majority population of the host
cow1tries (cf Table 2.2). This demographic setting, in combination with the social exclusion
touch ing Asian migrants, reduces at a minimum the chances of a targeted SLA of Arabic.
The situation del ineated in Table 2.2 may conform to one of typical social settings trig-
gering pidginization - a multi lingual workplace with laborers drawn from a wide variety of
Table2.1 Origin of Asian foreign workers in Gulf countries (Avram 20 I 4: 9)
Origin S. Arabia Bahrain Kuwait Oman Qatar UAE

Bangladesh I5,039 13,996 29 135,265 I3,11 I 282,739
India 289,297 14,323 45,149 73,8 I9 41,7 10 138,86 I
Nepal 7 1, 116 4,647 15,187 2,442 I02,966 44,464
Pakistan 138,495 5,940 6,25 I 37,580 I0,17 I 222,097
Sri Lanka 70,896 7,057 48,105 6,370 53,632 42, 198
Philippines 293,049 15,434 53,0 I0 10,955 87,8 13 201,214
Table 2.2 Proponion of non-national workers in Gulf countries (Avram 20 14: 10)
Coumry No. of Percentage of

migrams foreign-born
population
Bahrain 3 15,000 39, I
Kuwait 2,098,000 68,8
Oman 826,000 28,4
Qatar I,305,000 86,5
S. Arabia 7,289,000 27,8
UAE 3,293,000 70,0
43
Stefano Manfredi
different backgrounds into a limited area (Siege12008: 12; Parkvall and Bakker 2013: 51). This
raises the question of the extent to which GPA is affected by individual variation. Almoai ly
(2014) points out that there is no sign ificant correlation between speakers' Ll and a nwnber
of morphosyntactic variants in GPA, suggestive of a process of stabilization. Along the same
lines, Bizri (2014, 2017) argues that migrants' mobility across the region is the major factor
inducing the homogenization of both Arabic speakers' foreigner talk and migrants' Pidgin
Arabic. Avram (2018) also notes that the most striking morphosyntactic features ofGPA reflect
the normative effe.cts of the foreigner talk register used by Arabic speakers in their interactions
with Asian migrants. In this overall situation, Ll interference still has important effects on the
phonology and the basic word order on GPA. All things considered, it seems reasonable to say
that despite a slight degree of variation, GPA is a conventionalized language serving as a lin-
gua franca in limited domains of communication with no native speakers. That being so, GPA
fulfi lls the main social criteria of pidginhood proposed by Parkvall and Bakker (20 13: 22).
2.4.2 Main f eatures of GulfPidgin Arabic

Although the main structural features of GPA are not subject to diatopic variation, its lexicon
reflects the influence of different dialects of the Arabian Peninsula, with relative ly few loan-
words from migrants' Ll languages (e.g. Urdu achti > aca ' fine'; Avram 2017: 134- 135).
Sim ilar to SPCs, the phonology of GPA is shaped by both untargeted SLA and interference
from Ll languages. Arabic pharyngeal (e.g. absan > aksan ' better'; araf > araJ 'know'),
pharyngealized (e.g. xala$ > ha/as ' finish') and velar fricative (e.g. §ugl > §ugl 'work') con-
sonants, which are absent in the m igrants' Ll languages, undergo phonem ic merger (Avram
2014: 15). Consonant gemination is universally lost (e.g. sitta > sita 'six', Nress 2008: 36) and
so is vowel length (e.g. giil > gul 'say', Nress 2008: 42). Phonological variation arising from
Ll interference is particularly evident in the realization of I f! as a plosive /p/ by Sinhala or
Tagalog speakers (e.g. nafar > napar 'individua l', Bizri 2014: 393) or lz! as a palatal approxi-
mant /j! by Javanese speakers (e.g. zen > jen 'good', Avram 2014: 16).
GPA has virtu ally no inflectional morphology. It Jacks verbal infie.ction of person (similar
to the SPC pattern in 3.2) and it employs a single series of independent personal pronouns
w hose syntactic function is exclusively fixed by word order, as the following examples show:
( 17) ana mudir ana ma yerid yiswgel

I SG director I SG NEG want work
'I'm the manager, I don't want to work.' (Nress 2008: 87)
( 18) huwa gut la ana ruh

3SG say to I SG go
' He told me to go.' (Bakir 20 I 0: 211)
Generally speaking, GPA presents a dim inished noun-verb distinction as lexical items
derived from Arabic can be used as nouns or verbs without spec ific morphological marking
(e.g. ka/tim 'speech'> ka/am 'speech, speak', Tosco and Manfre.di 2013: 511). Although SPC
verbs mainly derive from plural imperatives (cf 3.2), verbs in GPA are drawn either from the
singu lar imperative or the 3rd person mascu line singu lar imperfective, with the fom1er much
more frequent. Versteegh (201 4) argues that imperatives are a typical source of Pidgin verbs
by virtue of their directive function. Bakir (20 10) rather th inks that there are phonological
constraints detem1ining the occurrence of imperative fom1s in GPA. Recently Nress (20 18) has
44
Tire Arab world
shown that work environment is a key social variable impacting GPA verbal morphology, for
Asian house maids use significantly more imperative-derived forms than shopkeepers.
GPA has no dedicated TAM preverbal marker. Tense and aspect distinctions can be option-
ally expressed through adverbs or lexical verbs, with a/11in 'now' conveying the progressive
(19), kalas ' already' a resultative aspect (20, see also Versteegh 2018), and the dynamic verb
ruh 'go' expressing future tense (21).
( 19) kafi/ gul mafi a/hin l)l

sponsor say NEG now come
'The sponsor says (that) he is not coming.' (Bakir 2010: 2 19)
(20) inta kalas wedi julus?

2SG a lready give money
' Have you sent the money?' (Bakir 2010: 213)
(21) ana ruh kal(l)im baba

I SG go speak master
'l'll talk to the master.' (Bakir 20 I 0: 2 13)
The Arabic-derived existential marker fi has also developed innovative aspectual mean-
ings that are not explicable in tem1s of interference from migrants' Ll languages (Nress 2008;
Avram 20 12), as we can see in the following examples where.fi respectively expresses a pro-
gressive (22) and a factual (23) meaning.
(22) binti fi ati mal wa/ad

daughter PROG give POSS chi ld
'(My) daughter is feeding (my) son. ' (Nress 2008: 89)
(23) alhin fi talak

now FACT divorce
'(I'm) divorced.' (Nress 2008: 89)
More.over fi is currently expanding its usage to copular func.tions in positions between the
head noun and its predicate, as we can see in (24).7 This innovation appears to reflect an inter-
nal development rather than external Ll interference.
(24) inta fi majmm?

2SG COP crazy
'Are you crazy?' (Bakir 20 I 0: 216)
GPA compensates for its reduced lex ical stock through an extensive use of light verb con-
structions. The imperative-derived verb saw(w)i 'do' can precede either nouns as in the case of
saw(w)i mat 'do death' > 'kill' in (25) or verbal nouns saw(w)i talim 'do education'> 'learn '
in (26).
(25) mumkin hada saw(w)i mat kelb

MOD PROX.SG do death dog
'Maybe this (man) would have killed the dog.' (Nress 2008: 85)
45
Stefano Manfredi
(26) huwa saw(w) i talim

3SG do education
' He learns.' (Almoaily 2014: 170)
L I interference also affects GPA word order (Avram 2014: 24-26). First of all, speakers of
SOY languages such as Bengal i, Hindi!Urdu, Pwljabi, Sinhala, and Tami l tend to impose the ir
basic word order on GPA:
(27) ana ciko sup

I SG chi ld see
'I (will) see my children.' (Nress 2008: 4)
(28) baden st1bun hateti

then soap put
'Then (you) put the soap.' (Bakir 20 I 0: 209)
Among the same speakers auxi liary modals usually fo llow the main lexical verb, such as
yigdar 'can' expressing dynamic modality.
(29) inte sora suf yigdar

2SG street see can
'You can see (them on the) street.' (Nress 2008: 4 1)
Lastly, allributive possessive constructions also tmdergo variation from Ll interference.

If Gulf Arab ic typ ically presents analytical possessive constructions with a possessed-FOSS-
possessor order, GPA can sometimes give evidence of the inverse order.
(30) ana mal bin/ talim arabi

I SG POSS girl learn Arabic
'My daughter learns Arabic.' (Nress 2008: 63)
The same is true for the following example.
(3 1) ana sadiki bet

I SG friend house
'My friend's house.' (Nress 2008: 61)
In the light of all the previously mentioned, GPA plausibly confonns to the structural crite-
ria ofpidginhood proposed by Parkvall and Bakker (2013: 22), as it is grammatically reduced
in relation to its lexifier and it draws grammatical and lexical features from ditrerent languages
spoken by the groups in contact.&The pidginized nature of GPA is a lso confirmed by the sim i-
larity between its structural features and those ofSPCs (Tosco and Manfredi 2013: 499) rather
than those of L2 varieties of Arabic discussed in Section 2.
2.5 Further directions

In spite of the growing amount of descriptive, comparative, and sociolinguistic data about
Arabic.-based Pidgins and Creoles, they regrettably remain on the sidelines of Cre.o le Studies.
Most theories ofPidgin/Creole emergence are still exclusively founded on lndo-European-based
46
Tire Arab world
languages and typological debate on the structural nature of Pidgins and Creoles often ignores
Arabic.-based contact languages. However, there is rising awareness of the importance of
non-lndo-European contact languages (Kihm 20 13; Buchstaller et al. 20 14) and Arabic-based
Pidgins and Cre.oles have much to offer to the discipline. For instance, while there is no agree-
ment on whether Creole languages always develop from a Pidgin ancestor, SPCs give us the
rare opportunity to compare different languages historically derived from the same Pidgin
(cf 3.1 ). As we have seen, SPCs d isplay different degrees of vemacularization and/or nativi-
zation. As a result, their comparison can usefully test the relevance of sociohistorical factors
usually cited in theories of creolization. Furthermore, given the ir re latively complex structures
(cf 3.2), SPCs are also of particular interest to those engaged in querying whether Pidgins and
Creoles can be defined as a typologically distinct class of languages. The fact that Juba Ara-
bic emerged in situ and has been in continuous contact w ith both its original superstrate and
substrate can open up new avenues of research on ongoing contact-induced change in Pidgins
and Creoles, especially with the prospect of critica lly exam ining 'depidginization' and 'decre-
olization' processes. (Ki-)Nubi, as a contact language resu lting from population displacement,
can furnish important insights for a multicausal approach factoring in the roles played by
superstrate, substrate, and adstrate languages. As for GPA, the study of structural features
in relation to GPA's social selling (cf 4.1) can contribute to the redefinition of'Pidgin' as a
notional category and furnish new evidence on the re lationship between SLA, foreigner talk,
and pidginization (cf 2). All things considered, Arabic-based Pidgins and Creoles deserve to
emerge from the traditional limited scope of Arabic studies and become an integral and essen-
tial part of the contemporary creolistics debate.
Notes
See A. Miller ( 1986) for a comprehensive review of monogenetic and polygenetic theories about the
origins of modem Arabic dialects.
2 See Schlieben-Lange ( 1977) for Romance languages and Poussa ( 1982) for English.
3 This prosodic system has been alternatively described as a 'pitch-accent' system (Manfredi 20 l7a for
Juba Arabic) and as a ' tone-accent' system (Gussenhoven 2006 for (Ki-)Nubi).
4 J uba Arabic and Ki-Nubi can also mark nominal plural by means of ablaut or by adposition of the
plural word nas 'people ' to singular nouns (Manfredi 20 l7a: 59; Luffin 2005: 14 1, see ex. 5).
5 'Nativization ' is here intended as a social process of first language acquisition that can function as
a catalyzing factor of grammatical change. In this perspective, nativization has no psycholinguistic
relevance as it refers to a social process that can take place in different ways and at different times.
6 Bizri also takes into account Pidgin Madame, a vehicular form of Arabic developed by Sri Lankan
housemaids in Lebanon (Bizri 20 10). Being exclusively focused on GPA, the following outline largely
disregards this variety.
7 lt is interesting to note that the same ongoing process of grammaticalization ofji is attested in Juba
Arabic (e.g. (waji kwes ' I am fine', Manfredi 2017a: 117).
8 Bakir (2010) rather adopts Win ford 's classification of Pidgin and Creole languages and proposes to
consider GPA as a 2nd-stage Pidgin with non-idiosyncratic structures for predication.
Abbreviations and symbols

affix boundary
clitic boundary
reduplication
\ ablaut
COP copula
47
Stefano Manfredi
DEF definite (artic le)

EXS existential
F fem inine
FACT factual
FUT future
IND indicative
IRR irrealis
M masculine
MOD modal
NEG negative
PASS paSSIVe
PAST past
PL plural
POSS possess1ve
PROG progreSSIVe
PROX proximal
REL relative
SG singu lar
VN verbal noun
Further reading
Miller (2003a) gives two valuable overviews of Arabic-based Pidgins and Creoles highlighting the
importance of Arabic-based Pidgins and Creoles for historical linguistics and Arabic dialectology
respectively.
Kaye and Tosco ( 1993b) provide a good theoretical introduction to Pidgin and Creole languages with a
special focus on SPCs.
Thomason and Elgibali ( 1986) remain the only source o f Maridi Arabic, a supposedly pidginized variety
o f Arabic documented by the 11th-century Andalusian geographer Al-Bakri.
Related topics
Sub-Saharan Africa; Pidgins and Creoles in Eurasia; The Typology of Pidgin and Creole Lan-
guages; On the History of Pidgin and Creole Studies; Diaclrronic Smdies of Pidgins and Creoles
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Versteegh, K. 1993. Levelling in the Sudan : From Arabic creole to Arabic dialect. lmemarional Journal
ofrhe Sociology ofLanguage 99: 65-79.
Versteegh, K. 2004. Pidginization and creolization revised: T he case of Arabic. In M. Haak, R. de Jong
and K. Versteegh (eds.), Approaches ro Arabic dialects: A collecrion ofanicles presemed ro Manfred
Woidich on the occasion ofhis sixrierh birthday. Leiden: Brill, 343- 357.
Versteegh, K. 2014. Pidgin verbs: Infinitives or imperatives. In I. Buchstaller, A. Holmberg et M.
Almoaily (eds.), Pidgins and creoles beyond Afi'ica-Eui'Ope encoumers. Amsterdam - New York:
John Benjamins, 141-169.
Versteegh, K. 2016. Aspect marking in Juba Arabic and Ki-Nubi. In P. Cassuto, M. Sanori and M. G iolfo
(eds.), Appi'Oaches ro the history and dialecrology ofArabic inhonor ofPierre Larcher. Leiden: Brill ,
451~73.
Versteegh, K. 20 18. Temporal adverbs of contrast in the basic variety of Arabic. In S. Manfredi and
T. Mauro (eds.), Arabic in conracr. Amsterdam - New York: John Benjamins, 234-250.
Watson, J. 2012. Arabic dialects. InS. Weninger et al. (eds.), 77re Semitic languages. An imernarional
handbook. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 85 1-896.
We liens, I. 2005. The Nubi language ofUganda. An Arabic creole in Afi'ica. Leiden: Brill.
51
3
INDIAN OCEAN CREOLES
Guillaume Fon Sing and Georges Daniel veronique
3.1 Introduction
The aim of this chapter is to provide a survey of the external ecology and of the internal organ i-
sat ion of the French-re lated Creoles of the Indian Ocean. It provides an account of the deve-
lopment of Indian Ocean Creoles (IOC) and describes some of their linguistic features. The
paper provides also some insights on the sociolinguistics of IOC and the language planning
issues involved in their social environment. Section 2 of the paper is devoted to the historical
development ofFrench-re lated Creoles in the Mascarenes (Mauritius, Reunion and Rodrigues)
and the Seychelles archipe lagos. French-related Creoles, close to Mauritian Creole (MC), are
spoken in Agalega, and in the Chagos Islands but little information is available. Section 3
presents linguistic aspects of IOC. Section 4 addresses the status and function of IOC in the ir
multi lingual settings and the relations they hold to French and English, ex-coloniallanguages.
Section 5 discusses the writing of IOC. Section 6 examines the use of IOC in the med ia and
Section 7, the introduction of IOC in education.
3.2 The historical development ofiOC: socio-historical

data and conflicting explanations
This section provides infom1ation on the history of the granitic archipelago of Seychelles (4.67 S,
55.49 E), of the volcanic archipelago of the Mascarenes comprising Mauritius (20.34 S, 57.55
E), Reunion (21.11 S, 55.53 E) and Rodrigues (19.68 S, 63.41 E) (W. Bertile (2013) and on
the development of French-related Creoles in these islands. It discusses explanatory models put
forward by Chaudenson ( 1974) and Baker and Come ( 1982) to account for the development of
IOC). Figure 3.1, 'Western Indian Ocean' (adapted from Map Indian Ocean West 1996. U.S. Cen-
tral Intelligence Agency. Credit: University ofTexas Libraries: https:l!legacy.lib.utexas.edu/mapsl
islands_oceans_poles!indian_ocean_w _96jpg), portrays the geography of!OC-speaking areas.
3.2.1 Plantation Creoles in the Indian Ocean:

som e socio-h istorical f acts
The French-related Indian Ocean Creoles developed during the French colonial expansion
in the Indian Ocean. Bourbon (future Reunion) was colon ised in 1665 and still fom1s part of
52
ltrdian Ocearr Creoles
8f1dell •. C/lffOf
lnclitl'l 00.... .,_,;...,.,....,.
l~
... .. ...... ..,........
-
~.a.
INDIAN
~----------~~~------------------1-------·~
OCEAN
--
·-
Figure 3. I Western Indian Ocean.
the French Republic. !le de France (future Mauritius), fom1erly Dutch, was occupied by the
French in 172 1 up to 1810, when it was taken over by the British. Rodrigues was occupied
at various periods by French settlers ( 1725, 1736) and became a French colony in 1792. As a
dependency of Mauritius, it was also conquered in 1810. Seychelles, occupied at various peri-
ods by the French ( 1753, 1756), became a French colony in 1770. Like Mauritius, Seychelles
was won over by the British in 1810 and passed officially under British rule in 1814.
The two main islands of the Mascarene Archipelago (Bourbon ( 1660) and Jle de France
( 1721-23) developed according to an identical pattern, evolving from the homestead stage
(habitation) to the plantat ion stage (Chaudenson 1979, 1992, 2003, 2013), although the pace
of development in the two island colonies di trered importantly. The ditrerence in the onset of
the plantat ion period in Bourbon and Jle de Franc.e as compared to the respective date of their
fow1ding engendered important linguistic ditrerences between the two islands. Rodrigues, the
third island of the Mascarene Archipelago, colonised from Jle de France and Bourbon, had a
less developed plantat ion economy and was mainly a piece of land for the liberation of the
East-African and Malagasy populations salvaged from the slave trade by the British navy in
the nineteenth century.
Seychelles archipelago ( 1770) was peopled by senlers and slaves from Jle de France and Bour-
bon who brought with them the Creole languages that had developed in these colonies by then.
According to Bollee (2007a: 5), in 1810, the population of Seychelles comprised 3 17 whites, 135
freedmen and 3015 Creole slaves (mainly born in Bourbon and Ile de France). ln 1825 there were
582 whites to 323 freedmen and 6058 Creole slaves. h1 the period between 1861 and 1872,2400
Africans were salvaged from the slave trade by the British and landed in Seychelles.
53
Guil/aume Fon Sing et al.
Although their geographical structures differ completely, Bourbon and !le de France were
French colonies of comparable size, hosting similar slave populations in size and origin, i.e.
ea. 60 000 slaves at the end of the slavery process. Differences between the two colonies
were related to the size of the ir homesteads and plantations, and to the pace of their develop-
ment. The homestead period lasted ea. 45 years in Bourbon and ea. l 0 years in !le de France.
There was a significant presence of Malagasy and Indo-Portuguese women in the early days
of Bourbon, and whites remained dominant in number for about 50 years; moreover, a popula-
tion of poor wh ites moved to the secluded parts of the island, in the highlands, as early as the
e ighteenth century but mostly in the nineteenth century. These speakers developed a specific
variety of Reunion Creole (RC), creole des houts (Gueunier 1982). During the sett lement of
!le de France, the presence of a majority of slaves from West Africa in the first 15 years of
the colony was strongly underlined by Baker ( 1982, 2007), who used this demograph ic fac-
tor to argue in favour of a possible proximity ofMauritian Creole (MC) with the West Indian
French-re lated Creoles.
After the abolition of slavery (slavery was suppressed in Mauritius in 1835 under the Brit-
ish rule), Mauritius started receiving indentured labourers from India. By the end of the period
of immigration of an external work force (ea. 1900), Mauritius had hosted more than 400 000
indentured labourers com ing from different regions of India, and bringing their home lan-
guages and cultures with them. In Rew1ion Island, the number of indentured workers was
l6times less to that of Mauritius, during a comparable period of time (i.e. from 1848, which
marked the abolition of slavery in the French colon ies).
After a parallel and coordinated development throughout the eighteenth century, and regu-
lar linguistic and cultural relations, the political destinies of !le de France-Mauritius, Sey-
chelles and Bourbon-Reunion di verged as early as the beginn ing of the nineteenth century.
A French colony from 1665, Reunion Island became an overseas department of France in
1946, whi le Mauritius and its dependencies (includ ing Seychelles), passed under British ru le
in 1810. Seychelles became a British Crown Colony separated from Mauritius in 1903. Mau-
ritius gained independenc.e from the United Kingdom in 1968 and became a Republic in 1992.
Aga lega and the Chagos Islands (also known as the British Indian Ocean Territory but claimed
by the Republic of Mauritius) Creole-speaking areas, together with Rodrigues, are related to
the Republic of Mauritius. These territories host speakers of different Creole dialects related
to Mauritian Creole and which are mutually intelligible.
The Republic of Seychelles became independent in 1976. From 1977, a one-party system
came into power with the Seychelles People's Progressive Front (SPPF) headed by Presi-
dent Albert Rene. A new linguistic policy was enforced wh ich had far-reaching consequences
because Seychellois Creole became the first official language of Seychelles, English and
French being the other two official languages of the Republic. Thus, a process ofco-lingua lism
(Balibar 1985) ofSC with English and French was launched (see Section 4.1).
3.2.2 Conflicting ling uistic accounts ofthe development ofI OC

Two explanatory models have been proposed to account for the deve lopment of Creo le
languages in the Indian Ocean: the Bourbonnais theory ofChaudenson ( 1974) and the proto-
Indian Oc.ean Creole theory put forward by P. Baker and C. Come ( 1982). Both mode ls are
related to the Schleicherian Stammbaumtheorie, i.e. they both ascribe a common ancestor
to the IOC but the proposals differ in the genetic ties postu lated. While Chaudenson has
repeatedly defended the hypothesis that Bourbonnais, a proto-language developed in Bour-
bon before 1715- 20, is the origin of the Creoles spoken in Reunion, Mauritius, Seychelles
54
and Rodrigues, his opponents, Baker and Come inter alia, have constantly argued in favour
of the existence of two different proto-languages - Bourbonnais, for RC on the one hand,
and the proto-lndian Ocean Creole, for the Creoles of Mauritius and the Seychelles on
the other. Since the first vers ion of the Bourbonnais theory (Chaudenson 1974), Chauden-
son has reformulated his views in various books and articles, inter alia (1981, 1992, 2003,
20 I 0). A. Bollee (2007b) rekind led the controversy by providing an analysis of old RC texts
(ea. 1770).
In 1974, Chaudenson supported the view that Bourbonnais was a proto-Creole; from 1989
on, he described Bourbonnais as a continuum of French varieties. According to Chaudenson
( 1992: 59, note 15, our translation),
Bourbonnais refers to the probable continuum of approximations of French used in

Bourbon in 1721 ... it is obviously the language used by the whites and blacks of
Bourbon that played a major role in the beginning of the colonization of the Isle of
France.
Certa in traits of Bourbonnais, certain lexica l items could have been transferred from Mala-
gasy and Ind ian languages. According to Chaudenson (2003: 274), RC did not exist at the
time lie de France was colonised. Come and Moorghen ( 1978), opponents to the Bourbon-
nais theory, do not deny the lexical and phonetic affinities between the four Creoles of the
Indian Ocean but posit that the differences between the IOC are due to the incomplete cre-
olisation of RC, due to the long duration of the homestead (habitation) period in Bourbon-
Reunion. R. Chaudenson ( 1981) exp lains that differences between RC and the rest of the
IOC through a process ofbasi lectal erosion that occurred in the course of the nineteenth cen-
tury. Come and Moorghen ( 1978) hold that certain grammatical features of RC are close to
the French varieties spoken at Carenage in the West lndies. This view came to be shared by
Chaudenson in 1998, after a fie ld investigation in Saint Barthelemy (Ca lve! and Chaudenson
1998).
Chaudenson ( 1974, 198 1) states that the main proof of the existenc.e of a common proto-
language between RC and MC lies in the Malagasy lexicon shared by IOC. Respond ing to
Chaudenson's arguments pro Bourbonnais theory, Baker (1982) disputes the assertion that
88% of the words of Malagasy origin found in Mauritian Creole (MC) are also found in RC.
He argues back that RC and MC have on ly 54% of the Malagasy lexicon in common. On the
basis of a grammatical comparison of MC and RC, Baker concludes that "MC, in no sign ifi-
cant sense, is derived from RC (or 'Bourbonna is')" (Baker 1982: 236).
In the course of her analysis of eighteenth-century RC texts by Caulier, Bollee (2007b: I 0 I)
comes to the following conc lusion:
we can affirm that the continuum of the dialects used at Bourbon in the 1720s which
goes from the French of the colonists to the more or less approximate varieties spo-
ken by the subservient popu lation cannot be considered as "Creole".
(Bo llee 2007b: I 0 I, our translation)
According to A. Bollee, one of the conditions for the creation of a Creole, the breakdown of
transmission, was not fulfilled in the history of Bourbon-Reunion (Bollee 2007b: 113). However,
Bollee considers RC to be a fully fledged Creole language, unlike Holm ( 1989) who termed
RC a sem i-Creole, but emphasises the linguistic continuum between RC, creoles des hauts
and Reunion French.
55
3.2.3 Convergent findings

Despite 30 years of fierce controversy, a summ ing up of the debate on the deve lopment of!OC
shows that a certain number of points of agreement have been reached.
(i) There was no fu lly fledged Creole language in Bourbon prior to 1722, i.e. during the
homestead (habitation) period, but dialectal varieties of French, wh ich may be dubbed
'Bourbonnais', close to the French linguistic varieties spoken in the French West Indies,
were probably in use.
(ii) Commerc ial and linguistic relations existed between the populations of the Mascarene
islands, especially at the beginning of the development of a plantation economy under
Governor Labourdonnais (1733-46) both in Bourbon and lie de France, and throughout
the e ighteenth century.
(iii) The French dialect of Bourbon contributed probably to the starting point of the Creole of
the lie de France, especially at the lexica l level, together with other specific components
such as the languages spoken by West African slaves, dominant in number for a short
period, at the beginning of the French settlement in lie de France, Malagasy and Eastern
Bantu.
(iv) The Creole of Bourbon and of lie de France developed simu ltaneously on the basis of a
common lexicon, a comparable phonology and reciprocal grammatical influences.
(v) The two Creoles, undoubtedly with a predominance of the lie de France Creole, contrib-
uted to the emergence of the Seychellois Creole (SC) and Rodrigues Creole (RoC).
3.2.4 Summ ary

JOC are plantation Creoles which share a common history because French colonists from
Bourbon, and later from Bourbon and lie de France, and their slaves contributed, up to a cer-
tain point (colonists also arrived from France), to the foundation of lie de Franc.e, Rodrigues
and Seychelles. These Creole languages share phonetic, syntactic and lexical features but dif-
fer in their morphology. However, as A. Bollee (2007b: 173) correctly observes, "every Cre-
o le has its own history". The size of the Mascarenes (Mauritius is 2030 km2 large, Reunion
is 2500 km2 large and Rodrigues 110 km2 large) and of the Seychelles archipelagos (460 km2
large), the ir demography (the popu lations involved are: Mauritius (I 271 163), Reunion
(893 509), Rodrigues (41 699) and Seychelles (98 175) in March 2020), the contrasted geo-
graphical structures of these islands, all these physical features together with the ethnic com-
position of the populations involved shaped the social and historical development of the IOC.
W. Bertile (20 13) provides a vast and exhaustive geographical and historical comparison of
the Seychelles and of the Mascarenes. He analyses in great depth and detail the course of
two centuries of history and shows how these societies gradually drifted apart soc ially and
politically, without severing completely the ir old historica l and social relations. The present
state ofJOC both in their internal organisation and in their external ecology strongly refte.c t
the interplay of these factors.
3.3 Linguistic aspect s of IOC

In this section, some linguistic aspects of IOC grammars will be presented. It is not intended
to provide an exhaustive description of these Creoles but to p in-point the main characteristics
of their internal organisation in the phonetic, morpho-syntactic and lexical domains.
56
3.3. 1 Aspects of the phonetics/phonology of IOC

T he phonological systems of the IOC present many sim ilarities. Comparing RC to MC, Come
( 1999: 70) establishes the following list of shared phonetic fearures:
• T he weakening of lrl, espec ially post-voca lly;

• T he pa latalisation of /t/ and Id! before/ if, giving a range of variants ([ts], [c] and [dz], [J]);
• T he palatals [J1 and [3] of some varieties are replaced by [s] and [z] respectively in other
varieties;
• T he front rounded vowels [e] and [y] of some varieties are replaced by [e] and [i] respec-
tively in other varieties.
French regional or dialectal origin are very probable to account for these features. Analysing
MC more specifically, Grant and Baker (2007: 202) note that it differs from Caribbean French
Creoles in having five rather than seven peripheral oral vowels (vowel length contrasts are
ignored). It shou ld also be noted that Caribbean French Creoles have both pa latals [J1 and [3]
and dentals [s] and [z]. T he absence ofpalatals U1 and [3] in certain varies ofJOC is attributed
to Malagasy influence.
3.3.2 A short comparison of IOC grammars
3.3.2.1 Noun and noun phrase
( A) AGGLUTINATION
In IOC, there are two kinds of lexical agglutination:
• Syllabic agglutination (French artic le + noun stem), e.g. RC: mon lamin 'my hand'; sa
dife 'this fire');
• Consonantal agglutination (initial consonant IV, lzl or In! deriving from a trace of French
article+ noun stem), e.g. MC /ekors ' bark (of a tree)' (<Fr. /'ecorce), ziifli 'child' (<Fr. les
enfants), nam 'soul ' (<Fr. une lime).
RC, where the definite article to is pre-posed to the noun in the NP contrary to the rest of IOC
w here the definite article la is post-posed, differs from the other IOC, on two counts:
• Syllabic and consonantal agglutinated nominals are rare as compared to MC, RoC and
SC; even if there exists cases of lexical agglutination as in the other IOC (notably agglu-
tination of IV in front of vowe l initial nouns);
• T here exists a phonetic agglutination of to, la, di to mono-syllabic N in the context of bare
NPs (see A lbers 20 19).
T he difference in the agglutination process within IOC was accounted for by two conflicting
interpretations: (i) Chaudenson claimed that the difference was due to " basi lectal erosion" in
RC (Chaudenson 1981: 176, 2003, 20 10); (i i) Baker explained the difference by the influence
exerted by Banru languages on MC (Baker 1982: 800-802, 1984; Grant 1995; Strandquist 2003;
Grant & Baker 2007: 21 0-213) (and supra 2.2). In a different perspective, Henri and Bonami (in
press) analyse the factors which favour or disfavour agglutination in MC and its predictability.
57
( B) GENDER
IOC have one of the features considered as typ ical of (French and other) Creoles: the loss of
grammatical gender, which is marked in French either by determiners and adjectives- and
in some cases also by the morphological form of the notm: etudiant- etudiante, instituteur-
institutrice. However, gender marking through nominal and adjectival ftexional morphology
is not totally absent in IOC. For MC, Fon Sing (2014: 141- 144) provides several exam-
p les, notably for frequent adj ectives, professions and ethnonyms (e.g. kokelkoket 'pretty',
direkterldirektris, 'director', morisienlmorisienn 'Mauritian '). In RC, gender is marked on 3rd
person singular pronoun (+Hwnan) (e.g. li ' he' vs fell 'she'), in some dialects (Albers 20 19).
(C) NUMBER
Another characteristic feature of IOC is the loss of French plural marking and the emer-
gence of a new plura l marking. Nowadays, a ll IOC possess the same marker ban (< Fr.
bande) wh ich is not found in other French Creoles. Diachronica lly, o ld texts show that
some French marked forms subsisted next to unmarked ones before the grammatica lisa-
tion of ban (Bollee 2000: 25-39). According to Baker and Come ( 1982) (see also Baker
2003), the development of ban as a plura l marker is quite recent. The noun ban is attested
in MC in the midd le of the nineteenth-cenmry "ein ban' petits muletons" < Fr. une bande
petits mu lets (Lolliot 1835, quoted in Baker and Come 1982: 21 0). Band as a single mor-
pheme pre-posed marker of plura lity is first recorded as such in the 1880s. Given that the
first attestation of this plural marker in RC only dates from 1930, Baker and Come (1982)
hold that it is a MC innovat ion transferred to RC. This hypothesis has been challenged by
Chaudenson (1983, 2003: 27 1-275; 20 10: 79- 84) who argues that it must have existed in
Bourbon since 1721.
(D) DETERMINERS
Definite and demonstrative determiners Bollee (2007b: 46) underlines that R. Chaudenson
compared the demonstrative system of standard French, North American French and French
Creoles and showed that the marker. .. la is inherited directly from the element -Id in French
composed fonns. Considerably preferred in spoken French, -la has evicted the proximity
marker - ci in North American French. By contrast, pre-posed r;a with the function of a nom i-
nal determiner is a Cre.o le im10vation:
IOC present only one notable " innovation" which is the generalization of "9a"
instead of "ce, c'te, ces"; it is already sketched elsewhere in North American
French where, . .. "s:a" frequently appears in cases where nom1alized French wou ld
have "c.e ".
(Chaudenson 1993: 33, our translation)
There is no doubt that r;a has replac.ed cela or ce in some French varieties but only as a
pronoun. Its extension to the function of determiner is undoubted ly due to the appropriation
of approximate varieties of French by the slaves, who have, during the creolisation process,
generalised a salient form. On the post-posed marker of definiteness and/or specificity in MC,
see Gui llemin (2007) and Syea (2007) for contrasting analyses. For definiteness in RC, see
Albers (20 19).
58
Table 3.1 Indian Ocean Creole possessive determiners and personal pronouns
MC RC se
Po Pe Po Pe Po Pe
SG l nro nro mon mwen,m- mon JnOJI
SG2 10, Oll ro, ou out, ron ou, rwe, (- 011 011
SG 3 so li SOil li son li
PL l llOU llOU nour llOU nou 110ll
PL2 ZOI :or :or ZOI zot : Of
PL3 zor :or zor zor zot zot
Source: Adapted from Chaudenson (2003: 307)
Possessive determiners Chaudenson (2003: 306-308) provides the following list of posses-
sive determiners (Po) and personal pronouns (Pe) in IOC (Table 3.1 ).
The IOC possessive detem1iners are pre-posed toN in NP. In IOC, possessive determin-
ers, derived from Fr. man, ton, son, and personal pronouns, derived from French-stressed
pronouns moi, toi, lui, nous, vous, have fused. The use of zot for possessive determiners and
personal pronouns (stemming probably from Fr. les autres (the others)) for PL2 and PL3 is
specific of IOC.
3.3.2.2 Personal pronouns

Grant and Baker (2007: 203) report the fo llowing features about MC:
• ''Speakers of MC can if they wish distinguish between inclusive ('you and 1': MC nu tu)
and exclusive ('s/be and I but not you': MC nuzot) 1st person plural pronouns, a distinc-
tion which is also made in Tamil and Malagasy";
• "Zot does service as both the 2nd pi and 3rd pi personal pronouns" (ibid.);
• "The use of an expression meaning '(my) body' as means of expressing '(my)selr is wide-
spread in Creoles, including MC, and is also found in various other languages" (ibid.).
It should be noted that zot and reflexive /ekor are also found in the rest of IOC.
3.3.2.3 Verb phrases
(A) VERBAL MORPHOLOGY
IOC verbs are not complete ly invariable. RC has kept important traces of French flexional
verbal morphology. Most of the RC verbs have three forms:
• A short fom1, used after the markers i and te i and also when the verb is detem1ined by
a manner adverb, a nom ina l or pronominal object, or a Jocative (Staudacher-Vall iamee
2004: 83);
• A long form which appears after the markers la and fin(i) , or at the end of a rhythm ic
group (Staudacher-Valliamee 2004: 83);
• A future RC form found only in negative phrases (e.g. manzra pa 'will not eat') (Chauden-
son 1974: 330).
59
(B) VERB ALTERNATION
In modem MC, RoC and SC, most verbs have two fonns. Their use is detem1ined entirely by
syntactic criteria: the short fom1 is employed ins ide the phonetic word, i.e. before the (nominal
or pronominal) complement, before the attributive, before another verb or adverb; the long
form appears at the end of a rhythmical group. According to Grant and Baker (2007: 203),
nothing sim ilar is found in any of the possible substrate languages (Wolof, Mandika, Fongbe,
Hindustani, Makhuwa, Tamil, Malagasy). For a more recent srudy of the phenomenon in MC,
see also Henri (20 I 0). In RC, the use is described by Chaudenson as follows:
"Verbal alternation (short and long fonn): in MC, according to P. Baker, about 70%
of the verbs show this alternation (as manz l manze, rand I rande, tonb I tonbe), the
others staying invariable (montre, aste, ba/ye, etc.). The si!Uation is more complex in
RC (Chaudenson 1974: 330-332), even if most of the verbs belong to the type single
base with -e/0 alternation. Whereas in MC, we always find the short form when the
verb is followed by a noun, and the long form in absolute final position or before a
temporal adverb (Baker, 98), in RC, short forms always appear in present (mi manz)
or imper fect (moin te ilki manz), whereas, in other cases (moin/a manze), we find the
same alternation as in MC" (198 1: 195, our translation).
Despite some differences, MC, RoC, SC and RC share a common alternation of the verbal
stem in specific contexts.
(C) PREVERBAL MARKERS
The expression of tense, mood and aspect (TMA) in IOC are generally rendered by particles
which precede the verb. In other words, all the verbal fonns are marked by the absence, the
presence or the combination ofTMA markers which are found only before the verbal lexeme
(or the predicative lexica l nucleus), which is not marked for number, gender or person. The
IOC preverbal TMA particles find their source in the periphrastic constructions of popular
spoken French varieties of the seventeenth-eighteenth centuries. There is a volwn inous litera-
ture on TMA preverba l markers in French Creoles. For IOC more specifically, we can refer to
Chaudenson ( 1974, 1992, 2003), Baker ( 1972), Bollee ( 1977), Baker and Come ( 1982), Come
Table 3.2 Indian Ocean Creole tense, mood and aspect (TMA) preverbal markers
MC, RoC, SC RC
Past tijin, ti~1 re fin(i),
re ifin
Progressive past ripe (le)re apre
(le)re an11-en (d)
Indefinite past ri rei
Definite past @ .fin(i)
fin, in, n la
Recent past fek sorr
vyen d , vyen
Present @ i
Progressive present apre, (le) apre
(a)pe (le) antren (d)
60
MC, Roe, se RC
Future a, (a)va a, (a)va
pou (le) pou
sa,sava
Conditional ti a te i sa
ti pOll (le)te po11
( 1999), Veronique (2001), Caid (2000), Fon Sing (2009), Staudacher-Valliamee (2004, 2007),
Watbled (2015). Table 3.2 summarises the IOC TMA system.
According to Veronique (to appear), in the domain of the expression of temporality, the
IOC verbal systems present the following identities:
• T he use of pre-verbal TMA particles whose values vary according to the economy of the
specific linguistic systems;
• MC and SC, which seem close compared to RC in the organisation of their pre-verbal
particles, differ at least by the use of i in SC and its absence in MC;
• Shared units, such asfin(i), ap(r)e or pou(r), present functional ditrerenc.e s which, depend-
ing on the Creole concerned, can lead to them being analysed as either auxil iaries or pre-
verbal markers.
( D) 'AUXIUARIES' TO BE AND TO HAVE
'To be' and the copula T he French verb etre ('to be') is of limited use in most French Creoles
(see Stein & Mutz 2017: 146-148). In IOC, the following items and uses derived from Fr. etre
may be observed:
• T he TMA marker ti in MC and SC and the lel(/e)te in RC are remnants of French verbal
periphrasis etre/ete cl;
• Adjectives and nouns can be used as predicates in MC and SC without copula. In the case
of RC, one of the following fom1s of the inflecte.d copula must be used: le (present), fete
or te (past), sra (future) and sre or lore te (conditional);
• The copu la appears at the end of a sentence or of part of a sentenc.e, typically interrogative
clauses. RC has le while MC and SC have ete.
Ex: MC kat li ete?

se kot i ete?
RC usali le?
'Where is (s)he?'
'To have' and the presentational MC and SC use ena, RC ena, na, nana ('to have') to express
existence, location, etc. ('there is'). While this feature comes unquestionably from French, the
use of the verb 'to have' as presentational may have been reinforced by simi lar structures in
other languages used by the slave populations (see Fon Sing & Veronique 2007).
(E) NEGATION
MC, RoC and SC verbs are negated using preverbal pa (see also Veronique 2003) while in RC
the negator follows the verb (Albers 2019).
61
(F) DOUBLE OBJECT CONSTRUCTIONS AND EK (WITH')
The use of a single word meaning both 'with' and 'and' (ek) to link two or more noun groups
is well attested in IOC. The same word is also used to mark the indirect object of a ditransitive
verb (see Kriegel & Michaelis 2007 for more detai ls).
3.3.2.4 Grammatical words: adverbs, conjunctions, prepositions

According to Grant and Baker (2007: 2003), the meaning of MC depi 'since' and ziska 'unti l',
both of which can have spatial as well as temporal senses, are often confused in speech, and this
feature may have its roots in Hindustani or other Indic languages in which the periods of time
before and after an event are sometimes labelled with the same word, e.g. Hindustani kat refers
to 'yesterday' or 'tomorrow'. Somewhat similarly, MC lot 'other' can mean 'the one before
last' or 'the one after next', e.g. lot samedi 'the Saturday before last', 'the Saturday after next'.
3.3.3 Aspects ofthe lexicon ofI OC

Since the seminal work ofChaudenson (1974) on the lex icon of RC (with comments on other
IOC), many studies have explored the lexicon of IOC and many different dictionaries have
been published. Amongst others, see Annand ( 1987), Baker and Hookoomsing ( 1987), Bollee
( 1993- 2007) and Carpooran (2009).
3.3.4 Summary
In this section, we have explored some internal linguistic aspects of IOC and presented some
of its remarkable features. The aim of this short description was neither to establish a strict
identity between the linguistic systems nor to show that certain systems wou ld be more 'rad i-
cal' than others, that is to say more distant from the lexifier language (French) - which is a
questionable nom1ative bias. This brief description allows us to assess the e lements that IOC
share in different domains and points to some grey areas that remain to be described.
3.4 Indian Ocean Creoles in multilingual settings

This section addresses the status and functions of the IOC in their multilingual settings in
the Republic of Mauritius (independent in 1968), in the Republic of Seychelles (independ-
ent since 1976), in the French departement d 'outremer (since 1946) of Reunion and in
Rodrigues (an autonomous entity within the Republic of Mauritius since 2002), since the
1970s. IOC are widely spoken in the Mascarenes and in the Seychelles; their sociolinguistic
settings ditrer tremendously from one politica l entity to the other. Because of the ditrer-
ences in status of IOC in their respective social environment, MC, RC, RoC and SC do not
hold the same diglossic re lations to both English and French. Both in the Mascarene and
the Seychelles, IOC are in the process of deve loping co-lingua lism (co-/inguisme) (Balibar
1985), with the dominant language of the previous colonia l powers, i.e. English and French.
This involves the standardisation (Auroux's 1994 grammtJtisMion) of the language (i.e. the
e laboration of its orthography and the writing of dictionaries and grammars) on the one hand
and its introduction in official spheres such as govern ment and administration, schools and
media, with an emphasis on the written media, on the other. The process of co-lingualism
has already been achieved in the Republ ic of Seychelles but not in the other po litical entities
of the Indian Ocean.
62
3.4.1 Mauritian Creole and Rodrigues

Creole in their multilingual settings
In Mauritius, the section of the population whose ancestors came to Mauritius as indentured
labourers from India from ea. 1840 until 1910, still ha il from various Indian ethnolinguistic
groups (Bhojpuri, Gujerati, Marathi, Tam il, Te legu, Urdu, etc.) but except for the use of Bho-
jpuri, other 'ancestral languages' (the rece ived tenn for the Indian and Chinese languages
brought to the island in the course of the nineteenth century) are on the wane. Chinese dialects
seem still to be in use in Mauritius. Hindi, Tamil and Arabic inter alia are in use for religious
celebrations (see Ste in & Mutz 2017 for an update on the linguistic simation in Mauritius).
Active canvassing in favour of these languages has led to the ir introduction in the educa-
tional system of the Republic of Mauritius (Rajah-Carrim 2007). It is aga inst the mu ltilingual
backdrop of 'ancestral languages' that the re lation between MC, French and English must be
assessed. The main diglossic relation in Mauritius holds between French and MC. The same
is true for Rodrigues, an autonomous region of the Republic of Mauritius, although the island
hosts few speakers of Bhojpuri.
The Republic of Mauritius has no official language but de facto this status seems to have
been bestowed on English which is in use in adm inistration and government. French is widely
spoken on the island, recruiting new speakers in the past 50 years (Baggioni & de Robillard
1990). MC is the most widely spoken language in Mauritius, solely or in association with an
'ancestral language'. However, it is sti ll associated with the Creole ethnic group (the general
population in loca l terrns) wh ich represents approximately one-fourth of the tota l popu lation.
Because of th is linguistic ideology, any decision as to a change in stams of MC is related to
the strife for the maintenance of 'anc.estra llanguages' in Mauritius, mainly claimed by ea. 70
to 75% of the total population; this conflict in stams is particu larly visible in the Mauritian
educational system (see Section 5). In 2019, the Mauritian government set up an Akademi
Kreol Repiblik Moris (AKRM) to promote MC and its orthography. This new institution
seems to be the successor to Akademi Kreol M oris (AKM) founded in October 20 I 0.
3.4.2 The status ofReunion Creole in a depart ement

d'outremer of the French Republic
As Reunion is part and parcel of the French Republic, French is its official language. RC has the
stams of a French regional language (langue regiona/e). As such, it is entitled to all the rights
bestowed on regional languages in matters of education and culn~re in the French Republic
since 195 1 (Loi Deixonne). In Reunion Island, the 'ancestral' languages of the Asian inuni-
grants seem to have undergone attrition. However, Hindi, Tamil and Arabic are still in use for
religious celebrations. In Reunion, the main diglossic relation is between French and Creole.
3.4.3 Seychelles Creole, the first official language

of the Republic ofSeychelles
In the Republic of Seychelles, SC has acqu ired a dominant position of first official language
as from 1977. Much effort has been made by the govemment authorities to confer official
status to se, including in tenns of written documents. se is both the first official language
of the Republic of Seychelles and the lingua fi'anca of the island. It is an important means of
communication in all walks of life, including pub lic administration and government. In the
63
Republic of Seychelles, co-lingua lism (Balibar 1985) has been conferred to SC, which is on a
par with English and French. However, this does not suppress the diglossic re lation between
SC and English mainly, and code-switching. French, the third official language of the Republ ic
of Seychelles, is still present in the island.
3.4.4 Diglossia, code-switching and 'post-diglossia'

in the Mascarenes and Seychelles
R. Chaudenson (1984) postulated that IOC societies had witnessed a "nested" bi lingua lism
during the slavery period which came to an end in Mauritius and Seychelles in 1835 and in
1848 in Reunion Island. During that period, the emerging Creole language, a lthough dom i-
nated by French and possibly later English, superseded the vemacular languages of the slave
populations. However, there are testimonials that Malagasy was still in use in the first ha lf of
the nineteenth century in Mauritius (Larson 2009), and possibly in Reunion. Little is known
about the language shift undergone by the slave population to Creole and the language attri-
tion suffered by that population. Some traces may still exist in practices of sorcery (cf. servis
kabare - prayers for the deceased) in Reunion.
The description of the contact situations between the Creole language and French in terms
of diglossia (i.e. as a blunt opposition between a high and a low variety) has been challenged
for Reunion Island by Carayol and Chaudenson (1978, 1979), who described the linguistic
simation of this island as a linguistic continuum, akin to the relation between English and
Creole in Guyana as described by Bickerton (1975). Accord ing to Souprayen-Cavery (2005:
99- l 00), in Reunion, " French has progressive ly interfered in homes and even in certain work
conversations; Creole meanwhi le has spread widely at school, in the oral and written press,
on billboards". According to Simonin and Wolff (2005: 45), in ever more di verse simations,
French and Creole tend to mix in Reunion. Language mixing in Reun ion has been accom-
panied by a regression in the use of the Creole language in households in Reun ion (Tupin,
Fran9o ise and Combaz 2005).
Diglossic relations between MC and French and SC and English may be more explicit in
Mauritius and Seychelles. However, code-switching and code-mixing between French and
Creole in Mauritius and Reunion on the one hand and between English and Creole in Sey-
chelles are quite frequent (for Mauritius, see Chady 2018). The emergent bilingual speech
has been dubbed lnterlecte by L.F. Prudent ( 1981 ). In the case of Mauritius, the extension of
mixed speech may be related to an expansion of French which has led Baggioni and de Robil-
lard to state that Mauritius represents a case of 'paradoxical francophonie' (une francophonie
paradoxale) because in an independent country which is not under the direct influenc.e of
France, the nwnber ofFrench speakers has risen regularly.
The radical distinction between French and Creole in Mauritius, and to a much lesser
degree in Reun ion, has been replaced by a continuum of mixed language practices. This deve l-
opment which is most marked in Reunion does not imply the attrition of RC since new Creole
language uses have emerged, especially through the access of RC to media and digital com-
munication. The tenn post-diglossia has been used to refer to the novel situation, at least in
Reunion, where Creole has become a minority language whose practice and functions tend to
be restricted, wh ile enjoy ing a positive image, supported by efforts at institutionalisation (Tse-
kos 1999; Blanchard 2015: 33). Creole post-diglossic situations do not imply a substitution of
Creole by French whereby the French language would in all circwnstances replace the Creole
languages. In Reunion, RC is present both in day-to-day interaction and in specific domains
such as music and other cultural practices.
64
4.5 Summary
Despite differences in status and function in the various pol itical entities of the Indian Ocean,
JOC has set foot in new domains- the most significant cases being government and adm inis-
tration on the one hand and the media on the other. ln the independent states of Mauritius and
Seychelles, it may be argued that a fom1al register of Creole has developed which is used in
formal speeches, based on code-switching and code-mixing with English and French (Vero-
nique 2013).
3.5 Writing IOC: the adoption of Creole orthographies

A tradition that dates back to the nineteenth century has led MC and RC to be written in vari-
ous circumstances (verbatim statements transcribed by the Registrar in courts, catechisms and
other rel igious texts, songs, etc.). The scriptae used were usually derived from French orthog-
raphy (often called graphie etymologique). Noteworthy among these attempts are the adap-
tations of La Fonta ine's fables by Fran9ois Chrestien's (1767- 1846) Les essais d'rm bobre
africain (I st edition 1822, 2nd edition, 1831) together with various songs in MC, and Louis
Hery's (1802-56) Fables Creoles dediees twx dames de l'ile Bourbon ( 1828). According to
A. Bollee (2007a), the first important text in SC is Rodolphine Young's (1860-1932) adapta-
tion of La Fontaine's fables which "may originate from the late 19th/early 20th century",
w hich was edited by Bollee and Lionnet in 1983. R. Young seems to have been inspired by
F.A. Marbot's adaptation of La Fontaine's Fables, Les Bambous, rather than by Chrestien's
and Hery's adaptation. ln the post-Second World War period, the process of developing lOC
w riting followed d ifferent paths in Mauritius, Reunion and Seychelles, detem1ined by their
sociolinguistic status and function.
3.5.1 A standard orthography for Mauritian Creole

(grafi-larmoni)
V. Hookoomsing (2004) provides a good, if not complete, survey of attempts to write MC
starting with Chrestien 's Essais d'un bobre africain. It should be mentioned that at the end
of the 1950s, a newspaper mostly written in MC, L'Epee (1952-64) was produced by Joseph
Coralie ( 1912-67). One of the first novels in MC in modem times was Tention caiinan by Jean
Erenne al ias Rene Noyau ( 197 1). The script used in these early publications was derived from
French orthography. According to Hookoomsing (2004), the standardisation process of Mau-
ritian orthography started in the 1970s. One activist group at least, Ledikasyon pu Travayer
(LPT), and academ ic and literary figures such as Dev Virahsawmy and Lindsey Coli en, pro-
duced literary texts and translations wrilten in their own script or in LPT script. Religious
authorities, foremost the Roman Catholic Church, renewing with past practices, produced
graplrie consensuel/e with the he lp of Dev Virahsawn1y. ln 2004, a commission headed by
V. Hookoomsing and comprising all interested parties led to the establishment of an official
orthography for MC, grafi-larmoni.
3.5.2 A n orthography f or Seychelles Creole:first

official lang uage of the Republic of Seychelles
Follow ing the government decision to promulgate SC as the first official language of the
Republic of Seychelles, beside English and French in 1977, co-lingual ism and standardisation
65
was in the offing. At the same period, two linguistic grammars of SC were published (Bollee
1977; Come 1977). In 1978, A. Bollee and D. d' Offay proposed a new standardised orthog-
raphy for SC. This orthography was revised in 1983 and is sti ll in use today. According to
Canova (2006), some deta ils of the orthography are still being worked out by Lenstiti kreol,
a governmental body set up in 1987. In 1982, the first dictionary of SC, Diksyonner kreol-
franse, was published by D'Offay and Liotmet (1982). The standardisation (grammatisation)
(Auroux 1994) was complete by then.
3.5.3 Writing Reunion Creole

In 1977, Axel Gauvin (1977: 80 et seq.) sketched a program for Cre.ole-French bilingua l-
ism in Reunion. Since that period, various proposa ls have emerged for the writing of RC.
Ukritir 77 (Orthography 1977) was proposed by a group of activists in 1977. In 1983,
Ukritir 83 (Orthography 1983) - or KWZ was proposed by the same group as an alternative
for Lekritir 77. This new orthography aimed at maximal differentiation from French orthog-
raphy through the use of letters 'k', 'w' and 'z'. Tango!, a non-profit organisation founded
by A. Gauvin proposed a new orthography for RC. The creation of a Certificat d'Aptitude
au Professorat de l'enseignement du second degre (Certificate of Aptintde for teaching at
secondary level - CAPES) for teaching Cre.o le languages (a teaching diploma for Creole in
the French educational system) has revived the discussion on the cho ice of writing for Creole
in Reunion (Bigot 2005; Dupuis 2005; Gauvin 2005; Bavoux 2009). This debate is far from
being resolved, but the development of digital commun ication and text writing has modified
the terms of the discussion (Ledegen 2009). A. Gauvin (2005), one of the promoters of Tan-
go! orthography, has worked towards propos ing a comprom ise between the various existing
spell ings of RC. In 2006, he founded Lofts la tang kreo/ la Renion for language planning.
In 2016, an orthography which synthesises all previous proposals, Lekritir Kreol La Renyon
(LKR), was published under the aegis of the Comite de la Culture, de I 'education et de
I 'environnement (CCEE) of Reun ion, an official body of the Regional Council of Reunion set
up by the French Law n° 82- 117 1 (31 December 1982) and devoted to the organisation of the
overseas French Regions.
3.5.4 IOC and electronically mediated communication

The practice of computer-mediated communication, espec ially texting or SMS (Short Mes-
sage Service) has become common in IOC and is modifying the writing of these languages.
In Reunion, the scriptwriters use an original graphic system that comb ines the constraints
of digital communication and French spelling as well as the spelling of RC (Ledegen 2007,
2009). Texting implies code-switching between French and RC in Rew1ion and English and
MC in Mauritius (see Rajah-Carrim 2009; Auckle 2017a, 2017b).
3.5.5 Summary
To date, all IOC have a standardised orthography. However, the func.rions of writing for a spe-
c ific IOC depend on the external ecology of the language. The orthography of MC and RC are
used for educational purposes mainly (see Section 7). In the case of SC, the picture is different,
given that SC is one of the officia l languages of the Republic of Seychelles. Texting and digital
communication are introducing typical modifications in the use of writing in IOC and imply
code-switching with English and French.
66
3.6 IOC in the media

Both in the Mascarenes and in Seyche lles, JOC have been used orally and in written form
since the 1970s or the 1980s, fo llowing the pol itical entity involved. Creole languages have
been used in billboards and advertising in the 10 islands. Use in the media and for public
announcements carries ideological weight on the representation of Creole languages (ldelson
2004; Hoareau & Noel-Cadet2011) and the writing of these languages. According to Ledegen
and Simonin (20 I 0: I 07), the media space in Reunion has changed during the period 1976-86.
Radio Freedom station, which began broadcasting in July 1981, has granted a w ide place to
Creole, as have other radio stations launched at the same period.) Te/e Kreol, broadcasted by
a non-profit organisation, is an active TV channel in Reunion. The Mauritius Broadcasting
Corporation (MBC) hosts a Creole-speaking TV Channel called Senn kreo/. The Seychelles
Broadcasting Corporation (SBC) also hosts rad io and TV broadcasts in Creole.
3.7 Indian Ocean Creoles and education

T he management of Creole in educat ion in the Republ ic of Mauritius, in the Republic of Sey-
chelles and in Reunion, an overseas Department of the French Republic is different. A lthough
the educational issues are similar in the three main Creole-speaking entities, different sociolin-
gu istics settings have produced different solutions.
3.7. 1 The Republic of Mauritius: Mauritian

Creole as an optional subject
As from 1975, the Mauritius Institute of Educat ion (MIE) had plans to introduc.e MC in the
Mauritian school system (Hookoomsing 2004). In 2009, the Truth and Justice Commission
was set up to invest igate slavery and indenture and its aftem1ath in Mauritian Society. The rec-
ommendations of the Commission were published in 2011 . In 2012, the government of Mauri-
tius dec ided to introduce MC as an opt iona l subject in primary schools in Mauritius (Natchoo
20 18). An addendum was made to the National Curriculum Framework under the guise of
Curriculum Kreol Morisien. In the meantime, the Bureau of Catholic Education designed a lit-
eracy and numeracy program called 'Prevok-BEK' (pre-vocat ional Biro Edikasyon Katholik)
in 2005, with the help of D. Virahsawmy, "introduc ing the study of Creole as a full-fledged
subject and a medium of instruction for maths, information technology and science. Prevok-
bek is a remedial three-year course in the prevocational stream for pupi ls who fail the Certifi-
cate of Primary Education" (Harmon 2011 ) . Since 2005, th is program has been implemented
in 12 secondary schools representing 900 students, 55 teachers and 70 staff (Hannon 2007). In
2012, the Republic of Mauritius introduced MC in its school system.
T he introduct ion of MC in the school system, even as an optional subject matter, met with
strong opposition from advocates canvassing in favour of ancestral languages already present
in the Mauritian School system (see Raj ah-Carrim 2007). According to N. Rughoonundun-
Chellapemlal (20 17), the project of implementing a real mu ltil ingual school system in Mauri-
tius failed because of ethnic controversy. Nowadays, MC is still present in the primary schools
in Mauritius. It is taught with great success in the Roman Catholic-aided schools.
3.7.2 Reunion Creole: a regional lang uage in the Fren ch school system
Until the 1980s, school in Reunion was taught in French, Creole being banished from school prem-
ises (Gauvin 1977). C. Boyer ( 1990) advocated that the teaching of French should take Creole
67
into account. As from 200 I, RC was introduc.ed alongside French in kindergarten and in the
first years of primary schools (Fioux & Marimoutou 200 I; Wharton 2003a, 2003b; Mari-
moutou 2004). Following the creation of the 'CAPES de Creole(s)', Creole regional language
and culture (LCR) classes are taught at many school leve ls, from kindergarten to the final year
in Reun ion (Adelin & Lebon-Eyquem 2009). The extension of Creole as a subject matter and
a medium of instruction is dependent on the needs expressed by families in Rew1ion.
3. 7.3 Seychelles Creole in the educational system

of the Republic ofSeychelles
The Republic of Seychelles teaches SC in the first years of schooling. SC is the medium of
teaching at kindergarten, which is not compulsory, and in the first years of the primary school.
In the 1981 reform, SC was the medium of instmction in the first four years of primary school
(P(rimary) I to P4). In the last years of primary school (P5 to P6), it is one of the school sub-
jects. Besides from P2 to P9, English is taught as a school subject, and French from P4 to P9.
As from 1997, SC remains the medium of instruction in kindergarten and PI and P2 but English
becomes the medium of instmction as from P3. The trend of evolution has been to strengthen
English in the educational system and marginalise French, so much so that the Seychelles Edu-
cational system is not precisely trilingual (Bollee 2007a; Salabert 2003; Barthelemy 2009).
3. 7.4 Summary
Although the most widely spoken languages both in the Seychelles and in the Mascarenes,
IOC do not benefit from a high status in the education systems of Mauritius, Reunion and Sey-
chelles. In the Mauritian system, MC is an optional school subject, usually chosen by pupils
of the Creole ethnic group, on a par with 'ancestral languages' chosen by pup ils of Hindu or
Musl im descent. Its status is different in government primary and secondary schools and in
the Roman Catholic-a ided school system run by the Bureau d'Education Catholique. In Sey-
chelles, the status and time allotted to SC in the school system has been gradually reduced to
the benefit of English, primarily. In Reunion, the status of RC, a regional French language, as
a subject matter in the school system varies according to the school pedagogical team and to
the wishes of the parents.
3.8 Conclusion
The French-related Creoles of the Indian Ocean are historically, if not genetically, related. The
development and uses of!OC are directly related to the social structures where they emerged
in co lonial slave societies, and expanded when these territories were colon ies of the French
and British Empires. After World War 11, lOC have met new social challenges in the political
entities where they were in use. IOC are fully equ ipped today in terms of orthography, diction-
aries and grammars - they are standardised - to meet new social and pol itical needs in terms
of writing, education and communication.
Further reading
Stein, P. avec la participation de Mutz, K. 20 17. Kreolisch und Franzosisch. Deuxieme edition. Berlin:
Mouton de Gruyter.
68
The second edition of a volume which provides linguistic and sociolinguistic information on French-
related creoles.
Syea, A. 2017. French Creoles: A Comprehensive and Comparative Grammar (Routledge Comprehen-
s ive Grammars). Abingdon & New York: Routledge/ Taylor and Francis.
A comparative grammar of French creoles with a bias towards JOC, especially MC and SC.
Related topics
Creoles in Education; Creoles in Literature; Identity Pol itics; lm/Mobil ities
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4
SOUTH AND
SOUTHEAST ASIA
Nala H. Lee
4.1 Introduction
Pidgins, Creoles and other contact languages in South and Southeast Asia are among lesser-
c ited contact languages. The general impression is that there are re lative ly greater amounts
of concentrations of pidgin and creole languages in the Caribbean basin, the Indian Ocean,
the coast of Western and Central Africa, and Oceania (Webb 2013). As such, where area!
overviews in handbooks are concerned, the South and Southeast Asia regions are often unac-
counted for, with some exceptions being Schiffman's (2010) overview of language contact
in South Asia (including other types of contact phenomena such as contact-induced gram-
maticalization); and an overview of various South and Southeast Asian trade languages and
lingua francas, subsumed w1der a general discussion of trade languages and lingua francas in
Asia and Oceania, in a chapter on non-Indo-European pidgins and Creoles (Versteegh 2008).
It is notable that apart from these overviews fow1d in handbooks, coverage of the languages
within these regions can be found in Ansaldo, Matthews, and Lim 's (2007) positioning of the
contact languages of these regions within a larger typology, and a special issue on the pidgins
and cre.o les in Asian contexts publ ished by the .Journal of pidgin and creole Languages,
which partially comprised pidgins and cre.oles spoken in South and Southeast Asia (Ansaldo
20 I 0). The languages of these regions are also of special focus in Ansaldo (2009) and Lim and
Ansaldo (20 15).
Far from being uninteresting, the p idgins, Creoles, and other contact languages of South
and Southeast Asia fonn a group of languages that are as genetically diverse as they are socio-
historically and typologically interesting, but they do not inform the conventional literature
on contact languages. Much of this literature is rooted in the traditions of pidgins and Creoles
outside th is region. For example, according to Bickerton's (1988) typology, there would be
three types of Creoles - maroon creoles, plantation Creoles, and fort Creoles. Of these, one
could possibly state that only fort Creoles can be found in the region, fort Creoles including
languages that have their origins in trad ing posts. While a sizeable number of these contact
languages were formed via trade and colonial ization, such as with Portuguese-based creoles
including Daman and Diu in South Asia (Cardoso 2006, 2009) and Malaccan creole Portu-
guese, also known as Kristang in Southeast Asia (Baxter 1988), not all contact languages in
this region emerged the same way. Some were formed via interethnic interaction between local
74
South and Southeast Asia
groups, such as with pidginized varieties of Hindi, Naga pidgin (see Versteegh 2008; Schiff-
mao 20 I 0), and Jharwa pidgin, the latter two being based mostly on Assamese. Significantly,
contact languages such as these in South and Southeast Asia are not always based on a Euro-
pean Jexifier (Versteegh 2008) and have components that are entirely non-European in nature.
As a resu lt of having emerged via various and diverse fonns of interaction, the contact
languages in South and Southeast Asia do not always conform to the archetypal pidgin and
creole rhetoric. For example, some of these languages are not formed via imperfect learning
or a break in the transmission of the Jexifier (Thomason and Kaufman 1988), or associated
with social conditions of be ing dom inated, oppressed, or underprivileged. Ansaldo, Lim, and
Mufwene (2007) demonstrate how Baba Ma lay is one such example - the language is spoken
by the Peranakans, who were once among the wealthy e lite in Southeast Asia (Lim 20 16b). In
addition, considering the fac.t that contact languages within South and Southeast Asia are not
always based on European languages, resultant contact languages in the region can be typo-
logically different than prototypical contact languages. For examp le, Naga pidgin, regarded as
having w1dergone creolization in more urban areas (Bhattacharya 1994), is an SOY language
and uti lizes postpositions, both of which are rare properties amongst creoles- these languages
are usually SVO in nature and uti lize prepositions instead ofpostpositions (Bakker and Daval-
Markussen 2017). Other languages in South and Southeast Asia that have rarer word orders
include Philippine Spanish creoles, also known as C habacano (these are VSO in nature), Sri
Lanka Malay and Sri Lanka Portuguese (these are SOY). Contact languages that are anything
other than SVO and prepositional are rarer - there are only three languages out of 76 contact
varieties surveyed on the Atlas ofpidgin and creole Languages (M ichael is et al. 2013) that
are not SVO, and two Creoles out of 18 surveyed in Holm and Patrick (2007) use postpositions
instead of prepositions (see Bakker and Daval-Markussen 2017 for discussion).
While p idgins, creo les, and other contact languages of South and Southeast Asia present
unique opportwlities for research, it is important to note that the threat of endangerment and
loss is growing for a number of these contact varieties. The reasons for why researchers shou Id
be conc.erned about language loss include the loss of cu ltural or ethn ic identity (Tsunoda 2005),
the loss of linguistic diversity (Hale 1992), and the loss of languages themselves, which com-
prom ises the ability ofl inguists to w1derstand the complete range of what is possible in human
language and cognition (Lee and Van Way 20 16). In fact, it is argued that there is just as much
to Jose with the loss of pidgins, creoles, and other contact varieties as with non-contact varie-
ties (Lee 2017, 2018, 2020). Research specifically on languages such as Sri Lankan Ma lay and
Baba Malay (Ansaldo and Lim 20 14; Lim 2016a; Lee 2019) have also addressed the linguistic,
cultural, and social values of these contact languages within the endangerment paradigm. In
the general South and Southeast Asian region, the trend of language endangern1ent and loss is
one that researchers have previously noticed.
In the Language Atlas of the Pacific Area (Wunn and Hattori 1983), Baxter (1983) stated
that a nwnber of languages in Southeast Asia had already become extinct. For example, among
the varieties of Portuguese creoles within Southeast Asia that had spread with the develop-
ment of the Portuguese trade empire in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, those that had
become extinct by the time of his writing included those in Penang, Java, Timor, Bunna, Thai-
land, Swnatra, Kal imantan, Sulawesi, Flores, Adonara, Solor, and the Moluccas. According
to Smith's ( 1995) annotated list of Creoles, pidgins, and mixed languages arow1d the world,
a nwnber of Portuguese Creoles in South Asia had also become extinct by the time of his
w riting, includ ing Khambat creole Portuguese, Sural creole Portuguese, Dapoli creole Por-
tuguese, Southern Maharashtra creole Portuguese, Goanese creole Portuguese, Mangalore
creole Portuguese, Honavar-Bhatkal creole Portuguese, Northem Kerala creole Portuguese,
75
Na/a H. Lee
and Southern Kerala creole Portuguese, among others. Presently, some contact varieties in
South and Southeast Asia that have become threatened and endangered include Daman creole
Portuguese, Diu creole Portuguese, Korlai creole Portuguese, Cannanore creole Portuguese,
Sri Lanka Portuguese, Malacca creole Portuguese, Sri Lanka Malay, and Baba Malay. Much
of the current research in the South and Southeast Asian region on pidgins, Creoles, and other
contact languages are incidentally, or otherwise, being carried out on these varieties.
The rest of this chapter categorizes the contact varieties by their bases, introduces the contexts
of contact within South and Southeast Asia, and focuses in particu lar on the state of their vitality.
4.2 European-based contact languages of South and Southeast Asia

European-based contact languages in South and Southeast Asia can be categorized by the ir
bases, w hether they are most heavily influenced lexically by Portuguese, Spanish, English,
Dutch, or, in a single instance, French.
4.2.1 Portuguese-based contact languages

The most numerous contact varieties in South and Southeast Asia are those based on Porw -
guese. This is unsurprising, given the extent of the Portuguese trade empire during the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries. In South Asia, Portuguese-based contact languages can be found in
India and Sri Lanka, and in Southeast Asia, a Portuguese-based creole can still be found in
Malacca and Singapore.
The Portuguese first reached arrived in India in 1498 (Ley 1943) and began establishing for-
tified trading posts in Cochin ( 1503), Cannanore ( 1505), and Goa (15 10) on the Malabar coast
for the purpose of engaging in the spice trade (Holm 1989: 185- 286). Intem1arriages between
Portuguese soldiers and local women were also encouraged to increase the numbers of the Por-
wguese, resulting in a population of Luso-Indian ancestry (Jamagin 20 ll ), a new caste that
identified itself with the Portuguese in various ways, including by lingu istic means (Holm 1989).
Several varieties of Portuguese creoles then emerged, and can be subcategorized by their domi-
nant adstrate languages (Smith 1995:35 1). In Smith's ( 1995) annotated list of pidgins, Creoles,
and mixed languages, Portuguese cre.oles that can be characterized by a Gujarati adstrate include
those spoken in Daman, Diu, and Goa, as well as in Gujarat itself; creoles that are characterized
by a Marathi adstrate include those spoken in the Maharastra state (including Mumbai, formerly
known as Bombay); and those w ith a Konkai adstrate include those spoken in the Southern
region of Maharastra, the island of Mangalore, as well as in Daman, Diu, and Goa. A Kannada-
influenced Portuguese creole cou ld be found in Kamataka, and the Portuguese-based Creoles in
Kerala were influenced by Malayalam. A long the Coromandel Coast, Tamil-influenced Portu-
guese creoles could be found in Tamil Nadu, while Telugu-influenced ones could be fow1d in
Andhra Pradesh. Finally, Oriya-influenced Portuguese creoles could be fow1d in Odisha (for-
merly known as Orissa) in the Bay of Bengal.
Of the Portuguese-based creoles in India, those in the Daman and Goa areas were said
to be decreolizing towards standard Portuguese (Sm ith 1995:351) due to continued Porw -
guese presence in th is region (Holm 1989:386), even after the Portuguese lost control of
major regions in India to the Dutch and British. Crucially, many of the Portuguese-based
Creoles in India are now moribund or extinct. At the beginning of the twentieth century,
when Dalgado published descriptions of the varieties spoken in Daman, Bombay, and Kor-
lai, as well as Negapattnam (in Tami l Nadu), he indicated that the southern varieties were
highly endangered, while the northern varieties in Daman, Diu, and Bombay were still viable
76
(Dalgado 1998). Almost a century on, the southem varieties have become extinct, and what is
left of the northem varieties have become vulnerable too. The Daman variety is said to have
around 4,000 speakers (Clements 1991), the Korlai variety (spoken in the village of Korlai in
Maharastra) is said to have 780 speakers (Clements 2013), while the Diu variety has about
180 speakers remaining (Cardoso 2009), and the Malabar variety (spoken in Kerala) has six
speakers rema ining (Cardoso, pc). Cardoso (2006) makes an interesting argument, positing
a difference between the social contexts of Korlai and Cannanore versus Diu and Daman,
stating that mu ltil ingualism alone does not pose a threat to language maintenance unless the
languages involved compete for the same social functions. In Diu and Daman, the languages
compete with standard Portuguese for the same functions, while this is not so in Korlai and
Kerala, suggesting that util izing the latter two varieties in activities that warrant them, such as
Catholic church activities, can be worthwhi le.
Towards the southern end of the Indian continent, Sri Lanka Portuguese is possibly close to
extinction. In 1992, it was recorded that 30 speakers of this variety remained (Lewis, Simons,
and Fennig 2015). The language, associated with the Burgher ethnicity, resu lted from earlier
unions of Portuguese and Dutch men with local women. The creole, described by Dalgado
(1900), and later, Smith (1978, 1984), is SOV in nature. Smith (1984) also highlights the mor-
phologically complex nature of Sri Lanka Portuguese, such as the occurrence of case inflections
on nouns and verb inflections, postpositions, among others. Both word order and morphological
complexity can be attributed to Tami l and Sinhala influence, making the creole unique among
other Portuguese-based Creoles (see also Bakker and Daval-Markussen 2017:87).
Sim ilarly, due to the expansion of the Portuguese trading empire during the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries, Portuguese-based creoles developed in Malaysia (and was brought to Sin-
gapore later), Bunna (present-day Myanmar), Siam (present-day Thailand), as well as parts
of Indonesia (such as in Java, Sumatra, Kalimantan, Su lawesi, Flores, Adonara, Solor, and
the Moluccas) (Baxter 1983). At the time Smith's (1995) atmotated list of pidgins, Creoles,
and m ixed languages around the world was published, he indicated that all of these Southeast
Asian varieties had become extinct, except for two - Bum1a-Siam creole Portuguese was
still spoken by a few speakers from Phuket in Thai land who were living in Penang, Malaysia,
and Malacca creole Portuguese (also known as Papia Kristang or Kristang) was spoken by
about 1,500 speakers in Ma lacca, Malaysia, and by a few hundred speakers in Singapore and
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (Sm ith 1995:350). Today, the Bunna-Siam variety is presumably
extinct, while Kristang is highly threatened, with an estimated 800 people in Malaysia (Baxter
20 13) and an estimated l 00 speakers left in Singapore (Zaccheus 20 16). Kristang is possibly
one of two Portuguese-lexified cre.oles with a dominant Austronesian (Malay) substrate left
in the world (the other being Maquista). Documentation projects are currently underway in
both Malacca (Pillai 20 l l ) and Singapore (author's own). In Singapore, the Kodrah Kristang
initiative, currently in its third year, was set up for the revita lization of the language (Wong
forthcoming). In add ition to offering free language lessons, Kodrah Kristang has developed
Jarddingu, a lexical incubator for the accelerated addition of new words corresponding to
modem concepts, so that the language can remain relevant to younger speakers in the current
age (see www.kodrahkristang.wordpress.com).
Finally, while Maqu ista is not within the bounds of South and South Asia, the language
requires a mention in th is subsection. Maquista, also known as Macanese Patois or Patua to
its speakers in Macau, developed among descendants of Portuguese settlers when Macau was
occupied by Portuga l in the mid-sixteenth century. Many of these settlers were from Portu-
guese Malacca, and the chief substrate ofMaquista is argued to be vernacu lar Malay, explain-
ing the strong resemblance between Maqu ista and Kristang (Baxter 2009; Ansaldo 2009).
77
Na/a H. Lee
Currently, Maquista is critically endangered, with less than 50 native speakers, all of whom
are e lderly (Brad ley 2007).
4.2.2 Span ish-based contact languages

Spanish-based contact varieties are found mainly in the Philippines. This can be attributed
again to the specific history of the Phil ippines, which was colonized by Spain between 1571
and 1898. Perez (20 15) states that Chabacano can be divided into two main types - the Manila
Bay type on the island of Luzon and the Southern Mindano type. Whi1mom (1956) suggests
that Chabacano developed from a contact variety spoken in the Mo luccas in the late seventeenth
century- the mardikas, a group of loca l Christians on the island ofTernate were resettled in
Manila Bay around 1660, when the Spanish had to evacuate their garrison there. These speak-
ers were said to have spoken Spanish, Tagalog, and their own language, eventually resu lting in
Chabacano (Sippola 20 l3a). Another theory proposed by Lipski ( 1992) suggests that Chaba-
cano derived from the creol ization of a Spanish-based pidgin with Tagalog inftuences in the
Bay of Manila, and in the case of Zamboanga Chabacano (in Southern Mindano), the variety
had developed in the garrison of Zamboanga city itself, with inftuence from the Manila Bay
type, and later, Hiligaynon, Span ish (in a case of re-Hispanicization), and Cebuano.
According to Perez's (2015) typological description of the language, Chabacano derives a
number of derivational affixes from Filipino languages such as ika- oRDJNAL, ma- ADJECTIVAL,
and maka-CAUSATJVE among others, as well as its VSO word order, making it the only Ibero-
Asian creole with VSO word order, and very different from other Spanish-lexified Creoles
with African adstrates. Various similarities between Chabacano and other Ibero-Asian creoles
(such as Kristang and other Indian Portuguese Creoles) also exist, such as the use of kilaya for
' how', negative irrealis nohade, and concessive maski (Perez 20 15:32).
Of the Manila Bay type, there are about 4,000 speakers of Cavite Chabacano out of the
105,000 inhabitants in Cavite City (Sippola 20!3b) and 3,000 speakers ofTernate Chabacano
out of the 20,500 inhabitants in the town ofTernate (Sippola 2013a). Language shift is taking
place in both Cavite and Ternate. Most speakers are bilingual in Tagalog and Chabacano. In
Cavite, most speakers also speak English, while in Ternate, some do so. While Chabacano is a
home language and also one that is associated with local culture days and used for a monthly
mass, Tagalog is the main language in Manila, and English is the main language of business
and higher education. Efforts are be ing made to revitalize Cavite Chabacano in the fonn of
infonnal language lessons (Sippola 2013b). Ermita Chabacano, a third Manila Bay variety,
was said to be spoken prior to the Second World War and is now extinct (see Baxter 1983).
The Southern Mindano varieties include those of Zamboanga, Cotabato, and Davao, of which
the Davao variety is also bel ieved to be extinct (Perez 20 15). The Cotabato variety (together
with Semporna, spoken in Sabah, Malaysia) is said to be sim ilar to the Zamboanga variety
(SteinkrOger 20 !3), which is the most viable variety of Chabacano. There are an estimated
300,000 speakers and Zamboanga is utilized as a lingua franca in the region, with standard-
ized orthography and usage in Bible translations, literary and press publications. Oral use in
broadcasting, church, and some public schools is on the rise (Steinkrilger 20 !3).
4.2.3 English-based contact languages

With the history of Eng lish colonialism in South and Southeast Asia, a discussion of
contact varieties of English is necessary, although research on these varieties often incor-
porates a World Englishes view rather than a pidgins and creoles' perspective. Kachru
78
(2006) considers the varieties of English in countries such as India, the Phil ippines, Malaysia,
and Singapore to be among outer c ircle varieties, where in English is not the native language
of the speakers, but is important for historical reasons, and is often used for official purposes.
T his is somewhat problematic, for various reasons (Schm itz 2014), including the facl that
English varieties have been nativized partially in some of these regions, including Singapore
and Ma laysia. One key point that Kachru (2006) brings up about outer c ircle Englishes is
that English is often one of two or more codes used by bi linguals or multilinguals in these
instances. Inevitably, while the Englishes of South Asia and Southeast Asia wou ld typically
not be categorized as pidgins or creoles, the varieties of English formed have been heavi ly
influenced by contact with other languages.
In South Asia, Indian English is not a single entity but a range, considering the various
types of influences in different parts of India. For example, in addition to a first language,
speakers in India would also be at least bi lingual in a second regional language, such as Tami l
and Kannada in Uttar Pradesh, or Hindi and Bengali in Andhra Pradesh (see Kachru 1965).
T he range then a lso depends on the speaker 's level of education, among other factors (Kachru
1965). Indian English can be characterized by cultura l tem1s that are not used in other varie-
ties of English, such as words to do with the caste system, a transfer of meanings from Indian
tem1s to English words, such as in the case of salt-giver, meaning 'helper or provider ', or a
transfer of mean ing and context in the case of greetings, for example: bow my forehead orfall
at yourfeet (see Kachru 1965 for more examples). It is notable that less than 0.1% of the total
population in India speak English as a first language (India 200 I).
In Malaysia and Singapore, English was introduced via mainstream education during the
period of British colonialization, beginning in 1816 in Penang (Malaysia) and 1819 in Singapore
(Platt and Weber 1980). In both areas, a home-grown variety was also said to have emerged w ith
children speaking Hokkien, Cantonese, Malay, and Tami l at home (Platt and Weber 1980). In
addition, English in both countries is understood to operate on a continuum, with a more acrolectal
variety being used for official purposes and a more basilectal variety being spoken in infom1al
contexts or by those who wou ld have had received minimal English-mediwn education (Platt and
Weber 1980). The departure between both varieties then would have taken place upon independ-
ence of both cow1tries. In Singapore, while English remains the official language of education,
business, and policy-making (Lim, Pakir, and Wee 2010), Malay gradually replaced English as
the language of public administration and as a mediwn of education in national schools and public
universities in Malaysia, and English is only compulsory until the fifth form in secondary schools
(Pi llai 20 12). Today, English is used as the main language of 36.9"/o of the population at home
in Singapore (Singapore 2015), while 5% of the population in Malaysia are first language speak-
ers of English (Crystal 2005). It is w1clear if these figures refer to standard English speakers or
speakers of the non-standard varieties. Notably, due to the fact that there is extensive nativization
in Singapore, the more basi lectal version of the language (popu larly called "Singlish") has been
regarded as a "creoloid" (Piatt 1975), and even a creole (Lee, Nomoto, and Ling 2009).
Another region in Southeast Asia that deserves comment is that of the Phi lippines. While
English was the official language used during the American occupation of 1898- 1946, its
dominance together with Taga log during the post-colonial era gave rise to the Taglish, with
Spanish-inftuenced Tagalog fom1ing the matrix language (Bautista 2004). It is interesting that
the language took on different social roles during different time periods. Whi le Tagl ish was
seen as a sign of corruption during the postcolonial era, it came to be viewed as a language
of the masses, of anonymity and neutrality in the martial law era during 1965-1986 (Rafael
1995). Till today, the language exists, but with standard English and Tagalog functioning as
languages of utility and importance (Gonza les 2017).
79
Na/a H. Lee
While none of these languages are commonly regarded as being vu lnerable or endangered,
it is notable that all of these varieties of Engl ish have lim ited use within less officia l domains
and are often derided as be ing ' broken' (see Kachru 1965; Rafae1 1995; Baskaran 2008; Wee
2008). In Singapore, a Speak Good English campaign has been ongoing since 2003 to discour-
age the use of Singlish (Wee 2005).
4.2.4 Dutch-based contact languages

The establishment of the Dutch East Indies company in Batavia between 1816 and 1949 led
to the development of two Dutch-based contact languages. Javindo developed from intermar-
riages between Javanese women and Dutch men in Java and Semarang, and the language is
said to derive most of its lexicon from Dutch and most of its grammar from Javanese (Will ems
1994). Petjo, on the other hand, originated from the intermarriage of those who spoke Dutch
and Indonesian, and derives most of its lexicon from Dutch and most of its syntax and mor-
phology from Indonesian (Van Rheeden 1994).
Both languages are critically endangered. Javindo may have a few second language speak-
ers and very few first language speakers left, with the language being spoken only by e lderly
speakers (Wunn 2007). Similarly, Petio is only spoken by a small percentage of the com-
munity, and whi le there are still some first and second language speakers left, the language is
moribund and not being passed on to younger speakers (Wum1 2007).
4.2.5 A French-based contact language

The only contact variety of French that was spoken in Southeast Asia is Tay B6i, also known as
A1mam ite French. France's period of colonization in Indo-China (including Vietnam, Cambodia,
and Laos) took place between 1858 and 1954, and Tay B6i was said to have been used between
the French and their domestic servants, and the local recruits to French military and police,
among others (Come and Hollyman 1996). As a pidginized variety of French first reported in
1867, Schuchardt ( 1888) noted that this language comprised Vietnamese, French, English, Java-
nese, Portuguese, etc. Whi le Schuchardt ( 1888) perceived Tay B6i as possibly developing into a
creole, Reinecke et al. ( 1971) state that the language remained purely a pidgin. The lexicon of
the language is mostly derived from French, while the syntax of the language is said to simplified
French, with some influence from Vietnamese. Phonologically, Tay B6i is closer to Vietnamese
than French, with features such as the lexical tones of Vietnamese being incorporated into the
contact variety, albeit without phonemic functions (Reinecke et al. 1971 ). The language, whose
low prestige was reflected in its name - Tay B6i meaning French spoken by the boys (or serv-
ants) - was at the time ofReinecke's writing noted to be almost extinct, with the earlier departure
of the French in 1954. However, in more recent work on language policy and perceptions of
Tay B6i and French in Vietnam, Love (2000) reports that some of the older generation above the
age of70 still speak it in some fom1, although more research has to be done to detennine if the
snatches of pidgin fow1d are indeed remembered Tay B6i or decayed French.
4.3 Non-European-based contact languages

of South and Southeast Asia
The non-European based contact languages of South and Southeast Asia include Malay-based
contact languages, a Hokkien-based contact language, and mixtures involving Tibeto-Burman,
Dravid ian, and Sinitic languages, among others.
80
4.3.1 Malay-based contact languages

The discussion of Ma lay-based contact languages warrants a section on its own, consider-
ing the extent to which Malay vernaculars were used as a lingua franca in the Monsoon Asia
region, particu larly in the Malay-Indonesian archipelago (Ansaldo 2009). Ansaldo (2009) pre-
sents a description of events that led to the maritime boom the region experienced. Some key
events included the Mongol expansion during the Yuan Dynasty (AD 1271- 1368) from north-
em China to mainland Southeast Asia and from the South Ch ina Sea to the eastern borders of
Europe, as well as their expansion of trade relations with the Majapahit Empire based in Java
that existed between 1293 and the 1520s. Other key events included the voyages from China
made under the command of Chinese admiral Zheng He between the years 1406-1432. The
aims of these voyages were to establish pol itical and trade all iances in new regions, includ-
ing Southeast Asia (Wade 2015). As a resu lt of these engagements, Malay-based contact lan-
guages developed, with various vernacular Malays being the lingua franca of the region during
those periods.
In add ition to the development of various Trade Malays or a set of communicative strategies
involving Malay that were shared by various communities (Ansa ldo 2009), other varieties a lso
ensued in the South and Southeast Asian region, including Sri Lankan Malay in South Asia,
Bazaar Malay, Baba Malay, and Chitty Ma lay in Malaysia and Singapore, as well as varieties
such as Ambon Malay in Indonesia, among others (see Smith 1995 for a more extensive list).
Sri Lankan Malay in South Asia has previously been said to be formed by the intermarriages
of Malay speakers brought over from Indonesia by the Dutch in the mid-seventeenth century
and Tam il speakers in Sri Lanka (S lomanson 2013), although there is a body of research that
contests that account, showing that metatypy may more accurately explain the evolution of
Sri Lankan Malay (Ansaldo 2009, 2011; Ansaldo and Lim 2014). This Malay-based creole
that is also influenc.e d by Tamil and Sinhala is endangered - it has lim ited usage as a home
language, is spoken by less than half of the community, and speaker numbers are decreasing
at an accelerated pace (Lim and Ansaldo 2006). It is interesting that the community appears to
be engaging in revitalization projects, but these projects are targeted at standard Malay instead
of Sri Lankan Malay (Lim and Ansaldo 2006).
In Southeast Asia, it is disputed if the Bazaar Malay that is spoken today in Singapore
has anything to do with the vernacular varieties that were used for trade in the past (Ansaldo
2009; Aye 20 13). The p idgin, which is heavily influenced by Hokkien, the heritage language
of majority of the Chinese majority in Singapore, is said to be spoken by fewer than I 0,000
speakers, most of whom are elderly and middle-aged (Aye 20 13). Another contact variety,
spoken in both Ma laysia (in particular, Ma lacca) and Singapore, that has significant Hok-
kien influence is Baba Malay. The history of Baba Malay goes back to the fifteenth century
or earl ier - the language is a home language to the Peranakans, who are descendants of early
intermarriages between Hokkien-speaking Chinese traders and indigenous women (Ansa ldo,
Lim, and Mufwene 2007). The social history of Baba Malay and its speakers is particularly
interesting, for this contact variety was associated with the wealthy and elite Peranakans at one
point, s ince the Peranakans who were among the first to be educated in English were crucial
middle-men between the British and other non-English speaking popu lations at the time of
British colonization (Lim 20 16b). Today, Baba Malay is critically endangered. It is spoken
mostly by commw1ity members above the age of 50, and has fewer than I ,000 speakers in
Malacca, and fewer than 1,000 speakers in Singapore (Lee 2014). Another language that is
closely related to Baba Malay is Chitty Malay. It is spoken by m ixed South lndian-Malay
desc.endants in Malaysia and Singapore (Ansaldo 2009). There has been very little research
81
Na/a H. Lee
conducted on the language, but it is high ly probable that the South Indian language component
would have been Tamil, and that the language is likely to also be a highly threatened one.
There are also numerous Malay contact varieties in Indonesia (see Holm 1989; Smith
1995). Recent work has been carried out on Ambon Malay, which is spoken in the central and
southern Moluccas Island (Paauw 2013). Spoken by up to 1,000,000 speakers, the language is
based on a vehicu lar Malay, and is also influenced by Portuguese, Dutch, and other vernacu-
lar languages of the Moluccas. Despite having a large number of speakers, the language is
regarded as an inferior Low variety as compared to standard Indonesian (Paauw 20 13).
4.3.2 Other mixtures ofSouth and Southeast Asia

In South Asia, various mixtures that do not involve a European language exist. Versteegh
(2008) identifies Naga pidgin and Vedda creole as two of the non-Indo-European contact lan-
guages that exist in South Asia, and also highlights that Marathi has in the past been proposed
to be a variety of creolized Sanskrit acquired by second language learners (Southworth 197 1).
Naga pidgin, spoken in Nagaland, was fonned from the interaction of Assamese speakers
from the plains and hill Nagas who speak some 20 Tibeto-Bunnan varieties (Holm 1989:575).
Also known as Nagamese, the language is used for wider communication in Nagaland, and is
a lso said to be the Ll for the Kacharis and children of interethnic marriages. Holm ( 1989:576)
indicates that Naga p idgin has a relatively high number of inflections that would distinguish
the language from other pidgins, and it might technically not constitute a pidgin. Compared
to Naga pidgin, Vedda, wh ich was previously spoken in Sri Lanka, has components of an
unknown origin in addition to a Sinhalese base. Vedda's status as a creole is debated (Dhar-
madasa 1974; McWhorter 201 1), and the language is said to be dorn1ant, since it is w1known
if any surviving speakers remain (van Driem 2007).
With regard to Southeast Asia, a notable contact language that is based mainly on a non-
European language is Philippine Hybrid Hokkien. Introduced recently into the literature by Gon-
zales (20 17), Phil ippine Hybrid Hokkien is mainly based on Hokkien, a Southern Min variety
from China, followed by Tagalog and English. The language emerged as a result of Chinese
immigration that began during the time of Spanish colonization. The language is spoken by
1.2 to 1.4 million Chinese Filipinos (Uytanlet 2014), mostly concentrated in the capital city of
Manila. It remains the lingua franca of the Chinese Filipino commw1ity, a lthough it is no longer
used in schools as it previously was. Phi lippine Hybrid Hokkien is mostly spoken by those
between 40 to 79 years of age, and speakers between 21 to 39 uti lize a version that has more
Tagalog while speakers who are 80 and above util ize more Philippine Hokkien (Gonzales 20 17).
4.4 A note on language vitality in South and Southeast Asia

While the aim of this chapter was to provide an overview of contact languages that exist in
South and Southeast Asia, it should become apparent from the discussion that the threat of
language endangern1ent is a pressing issue within this region. Aside from Zamboanga Chaba-
cano, Ambon Malay, Naga pidgin, Phi lippine Hybrid Hokkien, and the English-based contact
languages, most of the pidgins, Creoles, and mixed languages discussed in this chapter are
e ither already extinct or very threatened. In a survey of 96 pidgins, Creoles, and mixed lan-
guages around the world, it was found that the risk of endangennent and loss is 95.8%, and
essentially twic.e as great for contact languages as that for all the world's languages (Lee 2017,
2018, 2020). The pattern in South and South Asia appear to fo llow that trend closely, and more
can be done in tenns of documenting and revitalizing the contact languages that still exist.
82
Further reading
Ansaldo, U. 2009. Contact languages: Ecology and evolution in Asia. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
This book focuses on how pidgins and creoles in Monsoon Asia and Southeast Asia evolve within
these particular dynamic contexts using an evolutionary approach based on a population view of cat-
egories and a theory of selection o f evolving systems.
Lee, N. H. 2018. Contact languages around the world and their levels o f endangerment. Language Docu-
mentation & Conservation, 12: 53-79.
This journal article raises the issue of language endangerment for the field of contact languages,
provides an overall picmre of levels of endangerment across the globe, and utilizes examples from
contact languages within Southeast Asia to highlight what is at risk o f being lost.
Lee, N. H. 2020. Status of endangered contact languages of the world. Annual Review of Linguistics, 6:
301-318.
T his review covers the general literamre concerning language endangerment for the field of contact
languages globally. It provides reasons for why these contact languages might be particularly endan-
gered, and what is at risk of being lost.
Lim, L. & Ansaldo, U. (eds.) 20 15. Languages in contact. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
This volume brings together research on current issues a ffecting languages in contact, such as globali-
zation and endangerment, with a special focus on languages within the Asian ecology, including the
South and Southeast Asian regions.
Schitl'man, H. 2010. Language contact in South Asia, in The handbook of language contact, edited by
Raymond Hickey. Maiden, MA: Wiley- Biackwell: 738- 756.
T his handbook chapter addresses issues resulting from language contact in South Asia. In addition to
highlighting recent work on pidgins and creoles in South Asia, it also provides an in-depth discussion
of grammaticalization in the region.
Versteegh, K. 2008. Non-Indo-European pidgins and creoles, in The handbook ofpidgin and creole stud-
ies , edited by Silvia Kouwenberg & John Victor Singler. Maiden, MA: Wiley-Biackwell: 158- 186.
T his handbook chapter examines pidgins and creoles whose lexifiers are non-Indo-European, includ-
ing a number within Asia and raises issues to do with the notion of pidgin and creole prototypicality.
Related topics
Indian Ocean c reoles, p idgin and creole Ecology and Evolution, Typology of pidgin and creole
Languages
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87
5
AUSTRALIA AND THE
SOUTH WEST PACIFIC
Felicity Meakins
5.1 Introduction
Hugo Schuchardt (1979 [1883]), cred ited with be ing (one of) the founders of creo listics,
brought Melanesian and Australian Pidgin and Creole languages to the attention of the
field of linguistics with his study of Bislama and its connections to Queensland (Aus-
tral ia) through the trade in Melanesian slaves in the late 1800s, known as 'blackbirding'.
Despite this early work, the general theoret ical literature on Pidgin and Creole languages
has remained large ly Atlantic-focussed, with the Melanesian and Austra lian contact varie-
ties under-represented in discussions about the orig ins and deve lopment of these languages
(with some notable exceptions, for example Siegel, 2008). In addition, the focus of lin-
guists working in this region has been on producing accounts of the structure and historical
orig ins of these languages, no doubt due to the strong descriptivist trad ition in Austral ia
and the Pacific region.
Interest in Melanesian and Australian Pidgin and Creole languages began in earnest in the
1970s, particularly at the Research School of Pac ific Studies at the Austral ian National Uni-
versity (ANU) under the directorship of Stephen Wurm. Language description forn1ed the
basis of much linguistic work at ANU at this time, and these contact languages were added
to the long list of grammars and etymologica l d ictionaries under production. For example,
Tom Dutton (1985; Dutton & Thomas, 1985) studied Tok Pisin and Hiri Motu in Papua New
Guinea (PNG), alongside Ko iari and other Papuan languages; and Terry Crowley ( 1990)
and Darrell Tryon and Jean-Michel Charpentier (2004) documented Bislama in Vanuatu,
in addition to the original languages of this region. Miriam Meyerhotf ( 1996, 2000, 2003,
2009, 20 13) later picked up the Bislama baton, with a series of studies based in the tradition
of Variationist Sociolingu istics. During this period at ANU, particu lar attention was also
g iven to New South Wales (NSW) and Queens land Pidgin English and their contribution
to Melanesian Creoles and north Austral ian Kriol (Dutton, 1983; Dutton & Miihlhausler,
1984; Miihlhliusler, 1985, 1996a, 1996c; Troy, 1990, 1992, 1994), cu lminating in Wunn et
a l. 's (1996) Atlas ofLanguages oflntercultura/ Communication in the Pacific, Asia and the
Americas.
At th is time, north Austral ian Kriol also received a lot of attention from the Summer Insti-
tute of Linguistics (SIL) missionary linguists in south-west Arnhem Land (Northern Territory)
88
Australia and the South West Pacific
and the Kimberley region of Western Australia (Graber, 1987; Harris, 1986; Hudson, 1985;
Sandefur, 1979). The interest in Australian Pidgin and Creole languages went into a lull in the
1990s, with some notab le exceptions being Troy's (1990, 1992, 1994) documentation of the
historical development of NSW Pidgin, Baker's ( 1993) comparative work on NSW Pidgin and
its diffusion into Melanesia, and Rhydwen's ( 1996) work on the socio-political status of Kriol.
Work on Kriol has continued more recently, with a focus on substrate influenc.es from Indig-
enous Austral ian languages (Ange lo & Schultze-Bemdt, 20 16; Dickson, 20 16; Koch, 20 ll b;
Mw1ro, 2011; Ponsonnet, 2016), and the further development ofKriol varieties into the mixed
languages, Gurindji Kriol and Light Warlpiri (Meakins, 20 l l ; Meakins & O'Shatmessy, 20 l 0,
2012; O'Shannessy, 2009).
One of the big findings of this work was the establishment of a historical link between
geographically disparate English-based Creoles, Bislama (Vanuatu), Solomons Pij in (Solo-
mon Islands), Tok Pisin (PNG) and Kriol (Australia), which were ultimately shown to find
their origins in NSW Pidgin. The approach of this work has been three-fold: (i) a comparison
of the lexicon and grammar of Melanesian and Australian Pidgins using historical samples
of reported speech from the l700-l 800s (Section 2); (ii) a historical documentation of the
social, work and trade relations between Aboriginal and non-Aborigina l people in NSW and
Queensland (Sections 3~) and also between Austral ia and Melanesia (Section 5); and ( iii)
substrate influences on the emerging Pidgins (Section 6). Most of this work is swnmed up in
two volumes (Tryon & Charpentier, 2004; Wurm et al., 1996). For more detai led overviews of
the history of work on Melanesian and Austral ian Pidgin and Creole languages, see also Tryon
and Charpentier (2004), Milhlhiiusler (2008), Meakins (201 4) and O'Shannessy and Meakins
(20 16).
Note also that a number of other English-based Pidgins developed relative ly inde-
pendently of NSW Pidgin, which will not be dealt with in this chapter. Some examples
inc lude Northern Territory (NT) Pidgin English, which arose in Port Essington in the late
1830s (Miihlhiiusler, l996b; Shnukal, 1988); Western Australian Pidgin English, which
developed around the Perth/Freemantle area and Rottnest Island prison from the 1840s
onwards (Milhlhiiusler, 1998); Chinese Pidgin English (Siege!, 2009); and Pitkern and its
daughter language Norf'k spoken on Pitca irn and Norfolk Islands, which are a blend of
18th-century English and Tahitian. There are also a number of non-English-based Pidg-
ins documented in the Pacific region including Jargon Kauma spoken in Adelaide (Simp-
son, 1996), Pidgin Ngarluma spoken in the Pilbara region (Dench, 1998), Pidgin Macassan
(Evans, 1992; Urry & Walsh, 198 1), Broome Pearling Lugger Pidgin which was based on
Kupang Ma lay (Hosokawa, 1987); French-based Tayo spoken in Southem New Ca ledonia
(Ehrhart & Revis, 20 13); Unserdeutsch, a German Cre.o le spoken on New Britain (PNG)
(Maitz & Volker, 2017); Hiri Motu, wh ich developed from an Indigenous language of the
Port Moresby region (PNG) (Dutton, 1985); and Pidgin Hindustani, a mix of Hindi, Fijian
and Engl ish, spoken on Fij i (S iege!, 20 13). For further referenc.e s to colonial contact lan-
guages, see Meyerhoff (2008: 49-50).
5.2 Shar ed features of Melan esian and

Australian Pidgin and Creole langu ages
A quick glance across the major English-lexified Cre.ole languages in Melanesia and Austral ia-
Bislama, So lomons Pijin, Tok Pisin and Kriol - revea ls some striking similarities, for example
a dual distinction in pronOWlS (I) and (3); agreement markers (2}-(4), the adjectival suffix
89
Felicity Meaki11s
-fela (2) and (4); first person pronouns which distinguish clusivity (I), (2) and (3); the general
spat ial preposition langa (I )-{3); and transitive marking on verbs ( I}-(4).
(I) I neva let-im mindubala go langa

3SG.S NEG.PST Jet-TR ] DU.EXC go LOC
big gel tok-in na

big girl ta]k-CONT SEQ
'She didn't let us two go to the big girls to talk.'
(Kriol: Angelo & Schultze-Bem dt, 2016: 286)
(2) Hem 1 put-im mifala long wtm-fttla sipi, Kennedy

3SG AGR put-TR ] PL.INC LOC One-ADJ sh ip NAME
' Ke1medy put us on a ship.' (So lomons Pij in: Keesing, 1988: 225)
(3) Afta hem i tal-im long 1111 wetem Charlie - mitufala

after 3sG AGR tell-TR LOC ]SG with NAME- ] DU.EXC
wetem Charlie 1 wok

with NAME AG R WOrk
'So he said to me and Char lie - Charlie and I were at work.'
(B islama: Meyerhoff, 2013: Examp le ID 23-44)
(4) Bai ol 1 kuk-im bik-pla kaikai

FUT 3PL AG R COOk-TR big-ADJ food
'They w ill cook a lot of food.' (Tok Pisin: Smith & Siege!, 2013: 218)
This simi larity is significant given the large distances between the places where these four
Creole languages are spoken, and the high degree of multilingualism which characterises
speech communities in Melanesia and Austral ia. Bislama is the lingua franca of Vanuatu,
spoken by 200,000 people, alongside over I 00 Melanesian languages, English and French.
Solomons Pij in is spoken in the So lomon Islands by over 400,000 people in conjunction with
over 60 Papuan and Austronesian languages. Tok Pisin, spoken Papua New Guinea alongside
750 vernacu lar languages, has the greatest nwnber of speakers of a Creole language in this
region with 5.1 m illion speakers. Kriol is the ma in language of more than 20,000 Aboriginal
people across northern Australia, many of whom continue to speak trad itional Austra lian lan-
guages, although they are more highly endangered than in Me lanesia or Papua New Guinea
(Tryon & Charpentier, 2004: 7-16).
Indeed, the simi larity between Melanesian and Austral ian Creole languages is of no coin-
c idence. Baker (1993), with some later additions from Baker and Miihlhausler (1996b),
conducted a large-scale comparative study between a number of Me lanesian and Australian
Pidgins and Creoles inc luding Bislama, Solomons Pijin, Torres Strait Creole, north Australian
Kriol, Queensland Pidgin English, Kanaka English and NSW Pidgin. They identified I 06 fea-
tures, which are found in all of the Melanesian varieties. Some of the I 06 features can be
disregarded because they can be attributed to the more general features of fore igner talk varie-
ties of English such as the preposed negative and zero copula (Baker & Miihlhausler, 1996b:
554). Other features and words were already present in South Seas Jargon, for example, too
much 'plenty' , piccaninny 'child, small', sabi 'know, understand', catch 'get' (Baker, 1993;
Baker & Mllhlhiiusler, 1996b; S impson, 1996). Nonethe less many of the features were un ique
to Melanesian Pidgins. Baker also found that 71 of the I 06 features were attested in Austral ia.
90
Table 5. 1 Shared grammatical and lexical feamres in Melanesia contact varieties which have their origin
in Australia
Form Function or meaning Source References in addition to Baker (1996a)

Structural f eatures:
-felal -bala adjective and pronoun suffix fellow (Baker, 1996a, 1996b; Keesing, 1988:
11 3; Koch, 20 11 b)
-im trans itive marker him, them (Keesing, 1988: 112; Koch, 20 11 b;
Meyerhoff, 1996; Siege!, 1999)
yumi, etc. inclusive/exclusive pronouns Australian languages (Baker & Miihlhiiusler, 1996a: 540-542;
Keesing, 1988; Siege!, 1999)
i resumptive he, she (Baker & Mfihlhiiusler, 1996a: 542-544;
Keesing, 1988: 11 2, 143-170)
(a)long(a) general spatial preposition along
belong genitive preposition belong (Keesing, 1988; Siege!, 1999)
make 'em periphrastic causative make him/them (Keesing, 1988; Siege!, 1999)
go, come serial verbs (Meyerhotr, 200 I)
Lexical items:
gabarra head From the Sydney Troy ( 1990, 1994)
binji stomach language
bogi bathe
bullock canle or beef From English Troy ( 1990, 1994)
devil devil evil spirit
sit down be at
tomahawk axe
stop stay
no more no longer
no good bad
gammon pretend
sugarbag honey comb
walkabout wander
bugger up spoil
kill hit, strike
Even more significantly, the features were observed in Australia before they were recorded in
Melanesian varieties. Some of these features are given in Table 5.1.
Th is comparative data is good evidence that (i) Australian Pidgins in general predated Mel-
anesian Pidgins, and (ii) NSW Pidgin, and to a lesser extent, Queensland Pidgin English, are
the origins of Melanesian variet ies. Th is work was a substantial refutation of earlier studies
w hich thought they originated in Chinese Pidgin English (Ciark, 1979; Hall, 1943; Wum1,
197 1), and another study by Keesing ( 1988) who proposed seven shared features in Melane-
sian Pidg ins and Creoles, which he suggested originated in Melanesian Pidgin.
53 The origin of Melanesian and Australian

Pidgin and Creole lan guages
The development of NSW Pidgin began w ith the invasion of Australia in January 1788. Troy
( 1990: 13- 15) observes that just over 1000 British colonists, mostly convicts, established a
penal colony in the area now known as Sydney Cove, bringing with them a new language to
91
Felicity Meaki11s
the continent, i.e. English. Commw1ication went beyond the expected exchanges about the
loca l resources required to establish the colony to more complex social and linguistic inter-
actions, mostly during mixed drinking parties. Add itionally, the colony's governor, Arthur
Phillip, had been instructed to establish a re lationship with the loca l people, wh ich resulted in
attempts at team ing Dharuk (Troy, 1990: 41-46). Most notably, a nava l officer and astronomer,
William Dawes, befriended an Aboriginal woman, Patyegarang, who became his language
teacher.' ln general, though, the expectation was for Aboriginal people to learn English.
South Seas Jargon, wh ich had been used by sai lors with local people through the Pacific,
was probably one of the earliest influences on deve lopment of NSW Pidgin (Amery & Milh l-
hausler, 1996; Clark, 1979). A sma ll nwnber of lexical items from this jargon are still seen in
north Austral ian Kriol and some Melanesian contact varieties, for example too much 'p lenty',
piccaninny 'chi ld, small', sabi 'know, understand' and catch 'get' (see Baker, 1993 for a dis-
cussion of the origins of these words). Early settlers also used words from the north Queens-
land coastal language Guugu Yim idhirr on the assumption that Aborigina l people spoke one
language. These were recorded during James Cook's 1770 mapping expedition, and at least
word, kangaroo, remains in English.
The development of NSW Pidgin continued with more formal attempts to teach the local
Aboriginal people English. These attempts involved kidnapping Aboriginal men, or children
orphaned by the small pox plague. They were kept captive with the expectation that they
would become interpreters. 2 The most well-known of these students was Bennelong, who
became a good friend of Governor Phillip. Troy ( 1990: 39-46) claims that Aboriginal inter-
preters such as Bennelong were probably instrwnental in the development and dissemination
of NSW Pidgin because they were responsible for teaching what was probab ly a second lan-
guage variety of English to the local Aboriginal people. Indeed, the first recorded example of
NSW Pidgin-like utterance is attributed to Bennelong. At the time, other Aboriginal people
were living in the houses of colonists, but maintaining contact with their families. Each of
them wou ld have been a point of d iffusion of an idiolectal variety of contact English. These
contact Englishes probably gradually standardised and became a linguafranca amongst colo-
nists and Aboriginal people (Amery & Miihlhausler, 1996: 37; Troy, 1990: 47).
Another important factor in the development of NSW Pidgin was the convergence of Abo-
riginal people on Sydney who were members of previously disparate groups and did not share
common languages. Scores of Aboriginal people had been killed at the hands of the Europeans
and by introduced diseases such as small pox. Others had been displaced as their land was
gradually taken over. The survivors wou ld have fonned new allegiances, probably using the
developing Pidgin as their main means of commWlication. By 1804, NSW Pidgin was well-
established as the language of communication between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people,
and between Aboriginal people themselves (Amery & Miihlhiiusler, 1996: 38).
5.4 The diffusion of NSW Pidgin into northern Australia

NSW Pidgin spread north into Queensland through the new penal settlement in Moreton Bay
and Brisbane, and later in land through the pastoral industry (Dutton, 1980, 1983; Dutton &
Mllhlhausler, 1984; Miihlhausler, 1985, 1996a). The earliest observations of this Pidgin in
Queensland occur in the m id-1800s in the Brisbane area. Aboriginal people were found to be
usingfe/low as an adjectival and pronominal suffix, been as a past tense marker and -im as a
transitive marker, as well as words such as piccaninny 'chi ld', too much 'plenty' and stop ' live,
be in a place'. Evidence that NSW Pidgin was the source of the Pidgin spoken in Queensland
were words derived from NSW languages such as budgery 'good' and gin 'woman'. New
92
Melaneslan Pidgin
1840s
Pon
ington
r- --·- - - - - - - - - - - -
•
• Lale1700s
South Seas
Jargon
Figure 5.1 Location and time frame of Australian contact languages.

Source: Mcakins (20 14: 263)
words also entered th is Pidgin includingjackaroo 'stockman' ,yacca 'work' and humpy 'shel-
ter ' (Dutton, 1983: 100-101). NSW Pidgin also made its way into Queensland via an in land
route with the search for good land to run cattle and sheep . Dutton (1983: 108) observes that
the Pidgin that was used along this route also had similar features to NSW Pidgin and the
coastal variety of Queensland Pidgin English. He claims that it was this inland Pidgin that
was the forerunner for Cape York Creole, Palm Island Aboriginal English and north Australian
Kriol. The structural similarities are striking and a few words from the Sydney language such
as bogi 'swim, bathe', gabarrt1 'head' and binji 'stomach ' are found in north Australian Kriol
as a result (Harris, 1986: 286 onwards; Troy, 2003: 47). Figure 5.1 gives the trajectories and
timeline of the di ffusion of the developing Pidgin.
' Kriol ' is the term used to refer to the contact varieties of English which are spoken as a first
language by up to 30,000 Aboriginal people across northern Australia from westem Cape York
to Broome and south to Tennant Creek. The different dialects are Roper (River) Kriol (Dick-
son, 20 16; Harris, 1986; Munro, 20 11; Sandefur, 1979), Barunga/Beswick Kriol (NT) (Pan-
sonnet, 20 11; Rhydwen, 1996), Daly River Kriol (Reid, 1990), Westside Kriol (Timber Creek
area, NT) (Schultze-Bemdt et a l., 20 12), Kimberley Kriol (WA) (Hudson, 1985; Moses &
Wiggles worth, 2008), Barkly Kriol (Tennant Creek, NT) (Graber, 1987). Figure 5.2 shows the
distribution of Kriol dialects, as well as the two mixed languages, Gurindji Kriol and Light
Warlpiri, which have Kriol as one of their sources.
93
Felicity Meaki11s
Timor
Sea
_. . .
·--
.. Kimborloy ..
-
Krlol
Borkly
. ,_., Krlol
F1tz roy •
-·
Valloy
Krlol
..]j
~
!:,,.....,
.....•
;j..
'----r-~
:1
::
:"I
..
-
\
'
',
,\
''
NORlHERN
-· ---
,.,...
WUMputrOritl
•••
WOfO)'O
• .
.••
'
T ERR ITORY
.
I '\ ••
I \ • •• -~
. ' \ ~·
I '-,
Figure 5.2 Local Kriol (shaded) and mixed language (striped) varieties in the Northern Territory and
Western Australia.
Source: Mcakins and O'Shanncssy (2016: xiii)
One of the earliest observations of the emergence of north Australian Kriol was at Roper
River Mission (now Ngukurr, NT), with a detailed account provided by Harris ( 1986). Roper
River Mission was origina lly established in 1908 as a refuge for Aboriginal people escaping
massacres at the hands of the Eastem and African Cold Storage Company. Roper River Mis-
sion provided sanctuary for Aboriginal people from nine different language groups, with the
Pidgin becoming the lingua franca . Following Bickerton's ( 1984) Bioprogram Hypothesis,
Harris ( 1986) argues that creol isation was abrupt, occurring with in one generation as ch ildren,
separated from the ir parents in donn itories, nativised the Pidgin in a bid to create a more
fully expressive language. Mumo (2004) disputes this theory, suggesting that creolisation took
place incrementally over successive generations. She attributes greater agency to adult leam -
ers who, she suggests, shaped Kriol according to the structures of their first languages using a
mechanism of transfer constraints proposed by Siege! (2008).
The spread of Kriol across northern Austral ia is equally contentious. Meakins (20 14: 377-
379) summarises accounts of diffusion as two ma in hypotheses wh ich she refers to as (i) the
monogenesis hypothesis and (ii) the multi-regional hypothesis, advocating for the latter. The
monogenesis hypothesis suggests that Kriol originated at Roper River Mission and then spread
94
across northern Austral ia as a fully Hedged Creole in a process of language shift and expan-
sion (Munro, 2000). The multi-regional theory proposes that Pidgin English spread throughout
the north of Australia through the pastoral industry (via imported Aborigina l labour and the
Afghans) and creo lised in different places (Sandefur & Harris, 1986; Simpson, 2000).
5.5 The diffusion of NSW Pidgin into Melanesia

NSW Pidgin also diffused into Melanesia. This influence is not surprising given that by the
end of the 1700s, Sydney was the major port in the South West Pacific with all shipping trade
replenishing stocks or recruiting labour there. American sealing and whaling ships also com-
monly passed through Sydney. Queensland Pidgin English later contributed to Melanesian
Pidgin English during the period known as the Labour Trade. Between 1864 and 1904 more
than 60,000 Melanesians from the New Caledonia, Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands and, to a
lesser extent, Papua New Guinea were brought to north Queensland to work in the pastoral
industry (before 1877) and later the sugar industry (Milhlhiiusler, 1985: 242). Dutton and
Milhlhausler ( 1984: 235) suggest that after about the 1880s some of these workers, who were
collective ly known as Kanakas, brought with them some knowledge of a develop ing Melane-
sian Pidgin English which a lready included a great dea l of influence from NSW Pidgin. The
Kanakas who worked in the inland pastoral industry would have come in contact with Abo-
riginal labourers and probably blended their Pidgin variety with Queensland Pidgin English
(Milh lhausler, 1985: 244). Similarly, Kanakas working in the sugar plantations wou ld have
been influenced by the Queensland Pidgin English used by the white plantation owners. This
new variety of Pidgin spoken by the Kanakas was referred to as Queensland Canefie lds Eng-
lish or Kanaka English (Dutton, 1980; Dutton & Milhlhiiusler, 1984). When Kanaka workers
were repatriated to their islands in the early 1900s, they took with them this Pidgin. A nwnber
of features of Queensland Pidgin English filtered back into Me lanesian Pidgin via Kanaka
English. These features includefe/low used as an adj ectival suffix on pronouns, little bit, devil
devil 'monster', sit down 'to be, reside', close up 'nearby' ,you and me' I st dual inclusive' pro-
noun (Baker, 1993: 43-47; Baker & Milhlhiiusler, 1996b: 558; Dutton, 1980: 107 onwards).
5.6 Spheres of substrate influence in the Australia and Melanesia

Since the documentation of Austral ian and Melanesian Creoles began in earnest in the 1970s,
the approach has been strongly substratist, no doubt due to the strong descriptivist back-
ground of linguists. 3 Much of this linguistic work has been focussed on producing grammati-
cal descriptions of Austral ian and Me lanesian languages; however many striking structural,
phonological and semantic similarities between these languages and the local Creoles have
been observed in the process. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, substratist approaches pro-
vided cow1ter-evidence for universalist theories of Creole deve lopment, particularly Bicker-
ton 's Bioprogram. Interestingly, Bickerton himself( 198 1: 3-4), a vocal opponent of substratist
work, acknowledged that the development of Pacific Creoles was Wll ikely to be the result of
an abrupt break in language transmission, but probably took generations and was influenced
by the co-existing substrate languages.• The result of the substratist work has been papers and
monographs comparing Melanesian and Austral ian languages with local Creole varieties in
individual speech communities, with claims of direct parallels between these language(s) and
the new contact language. Examples are Camden's (1979) comparison ofSanto and Bislama;
Mose l's ( 1980) comparison of Tolai and Tok Pisin; Keesing's ( 1988) comparison of Kwaio
and Solomons Pijin; Munro (2004, 201 1), Nicholls (2016) and Dickson's (2016) comparisons
95
Felicity Meaki11s
Local
Indigenous
language(s)
English
-- Creo le
Figure 5.3 The localist substratist approach to analysing the development of Australian and Melanesian
Creole languages.
of south-west Am hem Land languages and Raper River Kriol, and Ponsonnet's (20 16, 20 17)
comparisons of Dalabon and Barunga Kriol. The problem with this highly localist approach is
that it treats the synchron ic language ecology as a reflection of the historical development, as
shown in Figure 5.3.
Yet most claims of a direct substrate influence from local languages are difficult to verify,
and are now easily refuted in light of the extensive historical and comparative work ofTroy
( 1990, 1994), Baker ( 1993) and Baker and MUhlhiiusler ( 1996b) who painstakingly identified
the first attestations of features in historical sources (Sections 2 and 3). Thus caution is needed
before any substrate claim can be made directly linking Austral ian and Melanesian languages
with a local Creole variety. The following sections outline some convincing case studies of
substrate influence from NSW and QLD languages (Section 6.1 ), regional languages (Sec-
tion 6.2) and local languages (Section 6.3).
5.6.1 Substrate influence from Sydney languages

A good example of a su bstrate influence from Sydney languages is the development of
the transitive marker -im, which is found in all Austra lian and Melanesian Creoles and is
derived from the English him and them (Baker, 1993: 22; Keesing, 1988: 119). Examples
were given in ( 1)-(4). Keesing (1988) claims that the influence orig inated in Central East-
ern Ocean ic languages; however Koch (20 11 b) convincingly shows that -im deri ves from
NSW Pidgin as a result of substrate influence from local Australian languages. As Koch
observes, in colloquia l English, him and them are unstressed and encliticised to the verb,
i.e. 'em. He suggests that Aboriginal language learners targeting Engl ish probably reana-
lysed them as a part of the verb stem. The phonotactics of Australian languages would have
re inforced this interpretation. First, inflected verbs in Australian languages are two sylla-
bles or more, and adding a transitive suffix allowed English words to conform, e.g. make-
im. Second, consonant-final clusters are d isallowed in verb stems, which means that adding
a transitive suffix made some Engl ish words pronounceable if they were re-syllabified,
such as drin 'k-im, fin 'd-im, sen 'd-im, hun 'l-im. Finally, certain consonants do not occur
syllab le-final in Australian languages, e .g. p;j (N.B. k and t do though). Again, the transi-
tive suffix renders these words permiss ible according to Austra lian phonology, for examp le
keep-im, stop-im, catch-im.
One question remaining is why English learners d id not ana lyse the encl itic -em as a part of
a paradigm with other English accusative pronouns i.e. me, you, her, us? There is where Syd-
ney coastal languages may have had a specific substrate influence on the developing Pidgin.
These languages have object clitics, which encliticise to the verb, but are separated from the
verb by subj ect enclitics (3), are not necessarily attached to the verb (4) and are zero for the
third person singular (5).
96
(5) Manyimunga-dya=mi=ngll
startle-PsT=2so.s= l so.o
'You made me start.' (Sydney language: Koch, 20llb: 496)
(6) Yuwin-dyu =dlwn yeriwa-ng warranglln-dyll

man-ERG= Jso .o throw-FUT boomerang-tNSTR
'A man will throw a boomerang at me.' (Sydney language: Koch, 201 1b: 496)
(7) Kuulbllnga-bll=wi=o
hold-Fu-r= I so.s=3so.o
' I w ill hold it up.' (Sydney language: Koch, 20l l b: 496)
As a resu lt of these features of pronominal clitics in Sydney coastal languages, Koch

(201lb) argues that Engl ish learners would have reanalysed the English verb+object cl itic,
e.g. Clltch 'em as simply a verb, because they were not 'looking' for an object pronoun.
5.6.2 Substrate influence from regional languages

Other substrate influences come from a regional level, i.e. the linguistic feature is common
across a region (either areally or phylogenetically) rather than specific to a single language
or small group of closely related languages. This observation is a vital component of S iegel's
( 1999, 2000, 2011) Transfer Constraints approach w here he suggests that the more languages
which possess a feature regionally, the more likely it is to develop in the Creole language (with
the feature transferring onto the English lexical material at hand). Siege! refers to this as the
Re inforcement Principle.
An example of a regional influence in the development of Melanesian Creoles is trial pro-
nouns. Keesing ( 1988: 96) initially claimed that the dual distinction in Melanesian Creoles had an
Oceanic source; however this complexification of the English pronoun system in Australian and
Melanesian Creoles to include dual pro nouns (and an inclusive/exclusive distinction in first per-
son non-singular pronouns) has earl ier origins in Queensland Pidgin English (Baker & Milhlhau-
sler, 1996a: 540-542). Nonetheless the further expansion of the system in Bislama and Solomons
Pidgin to include trial pronouns is likely the resu lt of substrate influence from Oceanic languages,
which make this distinction (w1like Australian languages, see Table 5.2) (Camden, 1979: 88).
Table 5.2 Inclusive/exclusive and number distinctions across major Australian and Melanesian Creole
varieties
Kriol' Tok Pisin' Bislama 1 Solomons Pidgin'

I DU. EX min(du)bala mitupela mitufala mitufala
I DU. JNC yunmt, mmyu yumitupela yumitu iumitufala
I TR. EX mitrifala mitrifala
I TR. !KC yumitri iumimitrifala
I PL.EX mibala, mela(bat) mipela mifala mifala
I PL. JNC minolabat, wilat yumt yumt iumifala, iumi
I (Schultze-Bemdt et al. , 2013: 243); 2 (Smith & Siege!, 2013: 2 17); 3 (Meyerhotr, 20 13: 225);
4 (Keesing, 1988: 192)
97
Felicity Meaki11s
Table 5.3 Subject agreement marking in Bislama
Singular Plural Trial Plural

IINC 0 0 0
IEXC 0
2 0 I
3 oli
Source: Meyerhoff (2001: 253)
Another good example of a regional influence on the development of Melanesian Creole

languages is the use of subject (and object) agreement, which is most elaborated in Bislama
(and also exists in Austral ian varieties to an extent, but has a different flavour to it). An exam-
ple is given in (8) and the paradigm ofBislama agreement is given in Table 5.3.
(8) Wan man i flat -em kakae ia finis

INDEF man AGR flatten-TR food DEF COMPL
'Somebody finished this food.' (Bislama: Meyerhotr, 2013: 226)
This structure was first observed by Keesing ( 1988: 143-170) who referred to it as the
resumptive he. Although Baker ( 1993) disproved the Melanesian origins of Keesing's other
Melanesian Creole features, agreement marking remained irrevocably Melanesian under Bak-
er's methodo logical rigour.
(R)esumptive he is found sporadically throughout the Pacific area from the early
part of the 19th century. As this feature is attested in VAN [Bislama], NCA [New
Caledonia] and DNG [German colony ofNew Gu inea] before QLD [Pidgin English],
it looks as though it was introduced into the latter from MOE [Melanesian Pidgin
English] rather than in the opposite d irection.
(Baker, 1993: 49)
In Australia, some substrate influences on Kriol varieties also occurred after the development
of NSW Pidgin, and are the result of shared regional features rather than individual languages.
For example, Angelo and Schultze-Berndt (2016) argue that substrate influence (and inde-
pendent grammaticalisation processes) are responsible for the semantic extension of the tem-
poral succession marker bambai 'soon, later, then' (derived from <by and by) which is found
in all Austra lian and Melanesian Creole varieties (9) to the func.tion of an apprehensive modal
expressing undesirable possib il ity in some Kriol varieties (I 0).
TEMPORAL SUCCESSION:
(9) Ai show yu thad lilgel bambai, Denise, yu luk la 1111
JSG.S ShOW 2sG the girl TEMP NAME 2SG look LOC 3SG
'I'll show you (i.e. introduce you to) that girl later, Denise, you'll see her.'
(Roper Kriol : Angelo & Schultze-Bemdt, 20 16: 269)
APPREHENSrvE:
(10) Ai gan /ad-i yu insaid. Bambai yu dagat 1111
ISG.S NEG let-TR 2sG inside APPR 2SG eat lso.o
98
APPREHENSIVE:
' I won't let you in. In case you eat me.'
(Roper Kriol: Angelo & Schultze-Bem dt, 2016: 269)
5.6. 3 Substrate influence fro m local lang uages

Other substrate influences can be attributed to more specific structures found in particu lar
local languages. Pinning down these more localised influences is very difficu lt, but some
convincing examples can be found. In Australia, the use of the genera l locative preposition
longa (<along) as an instrumental in Central Australian Aboriginal Engl ish follows a simi lar
pattern found in Centra l Austral ian languages (Koch, 20 l la: 450). This function of along
is not found in other north Austral ian Kriol dialects or beyond. Another local ised substrate
effect can also be seen in possessive constructions in Kimberley Kriol (Meakins, 201 4:
382- 383). ln all varieties ofKriol, the genitive preposition bla(nga) (<belong) is found pre-
posed to the possessor, as shown in ( 12). In the western varieties such as K imberley Kriol,
blanga is a lso found postposed to the possessor, as shown in (13), which Hudson (1985:
71 - 72) attributes to substrate languages such as Walmajarri which express possession with
case suffixes.
( l l) Motika bltmga det gel

car POSS the woman
'The woman's car.' (all Kriol varieties including Kimberley)
(North Austral ian Kriol: Meakins, 2014: 383)
( 12) Det gel blanga modiga

the woman POSS car
'The woman's car.'
(Kimberly Kriol: Meakins, 201 4: 383)
Meyerhoff (2009) also gives an example of a localised substrate inftuenc.e from Tamambo
on the dialect of Bislama spoken on Malo Island (Vanuatu). Meyerhotr (2009) exam ines the
role that animacy plays in Bislama in detern1ining the variable presence of pronominal sub-
jects, and the fonn of third person agreement (see Table 5.3 for subject agreement fonns),
and whether this variation has its origins in the local substrate Tamambo. To test whether this
animacy etrect is a substrate influenc.e, Meyerhoff (2009) establishes the constraints (includ-
ing animacy) on subject pronominal variation in Bislama and Tamambo, and then models the
constraints using multivariate analysis.
( 13) 0 1 man oli kam. (jJ o/i lukaot hem

PL n1an AG R come @ AG R search 3sG
ftJ oli luk we trak blong leg blong hem . ...
ftJ AGR look REL track POSS leg POSS 3SG
'Everyone came (and they) looked for him. (They) saw that his footprints .. . .'
(B islama: Meyerhoff, 2009: 377)
99
Felicity Meaki11s
( 14) S uina JI{J vono 110 rasimsitaka ana hurina

bone 3PL.AGR go AGR poke-out 3SG.POSS skin
((} na wa/ada/ikaki 110 em bena
((} 3PL.AGR go.around 3SG.POSS body
' His bones poked out of his skin. (They) went all round his body.'
(Tamambo: Meyerhoff, 2009: 387)
31 12 Bislama and 272 Tamambo clauses were coded for the occurrence of a null subject
(dependent variab le) and the animacy of the subject (human, non-hwn an animate, inanimate)
and discourse status (continuing topic, first mention) (dependent variables). Meyerhoff(2009)
fow1d that in both Bislama and Tamambo, the probab ility of the occurrence of a null sub-
ject increased in subjects which were a continuing topic, which is a common feature cross-
linguistically, and if they were human, which she attributes to substrate transfer.
5.7 Conclusion
The previous sections outlined the detailed historical and comparative work which has demon-
strated the related nature of many English-based Creole languages in Melanesia and Austral ia
(Sections 2-5). Their development is no doubt the culm ination of many processes such as L2
transfer, grammaticalisation and relexification. The substrate approach has been the focus of
much of the work in Australia and Melanesia. In this paper, various potential points of sub-
strafe influence in the history of the development of these contact varieties were discussed,
beginning with the influence of Sydney languages on the develop ing NSW Pidgin, for exam-
ple in the suffix -im 'TR' (Koch, 20 l l b) (Section 6.1 ), to areal influences such as Oceanic trial
pronouns (Crowley, 2002) or the Austra lian apprehensive (Angelo & Schu ltze-Bemdt, 20 16)
(Section 6.2), right down to the localised influenc.es on particular Pidgin and Creole varieties,
such as the possessive constructions in Kimberly Kriol (Hudson, 1977) or subject agreement
marking in Bislama (Meyerhofl', 2009) (Section 6.3).
Much of the work on Melanesian and Australian Creoles has been regionally focussed,
descriptive and largely a-theoretical. Yet these languages have the potential to make valu-
able contributions to theoretical work on creolisation because most are younger than At lan-
tic Creoles. Thei r more recent origins means that earlier stages of their development can
be observed and often more historical documentation is ava ilable. For example, Melane-
sian and Australian Creoles provide counter-evidence to Chaudenson ( 1992) and Mufwene
(2000)'s claim that Creoles are merely restructured varieties of thei r lexifiers, rather than
developments from Pidgins. The evidence for the link between NSW Pidg in prior to the
emergence of a C reole suggests that this remains a possible path of creolisation. Melane-
sian and Austra lian Creoles, which continue to exist a longside their substrate languages,
a lso provide evidence against Bickerton 's ( 1981) Bioprogram Hypothesis which suggests
that Creoles are the result of an abrupt break in transmission with substrate languages.
These Pidgi n and Creole languages also provide va luable data for debates which have pre-
occupied other creolists over the last two decades, such as whether creolisation involves
a process of morphological simplification (DeGraff, 2001; McWhorter, 2001; Mufwene,
2000; Plag, 2003). For example, the loss of case in the pronoun system, coupled with the
development of inclusive/exclusive and dual/trial d istinctions paints a more comp licated
p icture of loss and expans ion.
100
Notes
I www.williamdawes.org
2 Training captive Aboriginal people, particularly children, as interpreters was a practice used across
Australia. For a Northern Territory example see Wavehill (2016).
3 Peter Miihlhliusler and Jetf Siege) are notable exceptions, coming to the study of these Creole lan-
guages as creolists first and foremost.
4 This development is unlike Atlantic Creoles which many claim developed w ith only a single genera-
tion of exposure to substrate languages, although see counterclaims from advocates of relexification
approaches such as Lefebvre ( 1998).
Further reading
Angelo, Denise & Schultze-Berndt, Eva (20 16). Beware 'bambai' - Jest it be apprehensive. In F. Meak-
ins & C. O 'Shannessy (Eds.), Loss and renewal: Australian languages since colonisation (pp. 255-
296). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
T his chapter is a rigorous demonstration o f how to go about making substrate arguments in the devel-
opment of linguistic constructions in Pacific Pidgin and Creole languages.
Baker, Philip ( 1993). Australian influence on Melanesian Pidgin English. Te Reo, 36, 3-U7.
T his paper undertook an extensive comparison of linguistic stmctures and words across Pacific Pidgin
and Creole languages to show the origin of these varieties in Australian Kriol.
Meakins, Fel ic ity (20 14). Language contact varieties. In H. Koch & R. Nordlinger (Eds.), The lan-
guages and linguistics of Australia: A comprehensive guide (pp. 365-4 16). Berl in : Mouton de
Gruyter.
T his chapter is a comprehensive overview of Austral ian language contact varieties including Kriol.
Siege I, Jefl· ( 1999). Transfer constraints and substrate influence in Melanesian Pidgin. Journal of Pidgin
and Creole Languages, 14(1), 1-44.
This paper is an application of Siegel's theory of substrate transfer to a number of Melanesian Pidgin
and Creole languages.
Troy, Jakelin ( 1990). Australian aboriginal comact with the English language in New Sowh Wales: 1788
to 1845. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.
This book carefully documents early interactions between Australian Indigenous people in the Sydney
area w ith European colonists and the emergence of Australian Kriol from this sociohistorical setting.
Related topics
Contact varieties of Japan and the North West Pacific; The Typology of Pidgin and Creole
Languages; On the History of Pidgin and Creole Srudies; Pidgin and Creole Ecology and Evo-
lution; Pidgins and Creoles and the Language Faculty; Creoles, Education and Policy
Bibliography
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cas (Vol. 2. 1, pp. 33- 52). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Angelo, D. & Schultze-Bemdt, E. (20 16). Beware 'bambai ' - Jest it be apprehensive. In F. Meakins &
C. O'Shannessy (Eds.), Loss and renewal: Australian languages since colonisation (pp. 255- 296).
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Felicity Meaki11s
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6
THE CONTACT VARIETIES
OF JAPAN AND THE
NORTH-WEST PACIFIC
Kazuko Matsumoto and David Britain
6.1 Introduction
This chapter focusses on the Pidgins, Creoles, koines and other contact varieties of the North-
West Pacific- an area extending as far north as Sakhalin, Russia and as far south as equatorial
Micronesia. We concentrate on those varieties shaped by contact with Japanese, but a lso con-
sider others in the area that emerged from contact with English and other languages. Japanese
has served not only as a superstrate but also as a substrate language in the fonnation ofPidgins
and Creoles in the region, as well as the dom inant ingredient variety for a munber of m ixed
languages and koines. In contributing to the genesis of these new varieties, it has come into
intensive contact with languages such as Chinese, Korean, English, Portuguese, Spanish, For-
mosan languages (Atayal), Ryukyuan languages, Ainu, Russian, Nivkh, Palauan, Chamorro,
as well as a number of Micronesian languages. In Micronesia, in addition to the existence of
some now obsolescing Japanese koines, colonial contact with British, Austral ians and Ameri-
cans, especially sinc-e the end of the Pacific War, has led to the emergence of newly nativising
Englishes (Britain et al. forthcoming). Furthennore, other contact varieties have emerged there
as a result of unique demographic events on certa in islands. For the purposes of this chapter,
this region is defined as Japan and the islands of East Asia, Russia and Micronesia.
Milhlhausler and Trew ( 1996) were the first to draw widespread attention to the Pidgins,
Creoles and other contact varieties in the North-West Pacific that emerged as a result of inten-
sive contact with Japanese and other co lonial languages. Their insightful overview has since
led to an increasing number of studies on diaspora Japanese especially. There has been some
debate, however, about whether there were/are (m)any fully fledged Pidgins, let alone Creoles,
in the North-West Pacific. This chapter considers language contact phenomena as the broader
object of our study, pointing to a range of communities where such contact has yielded inter-
esting linguistic consequences.
6.2 Language contact history in the North-West Pacific

Well before the colonial expansion into the North-West Pacific by the Europeans and the
Japanese, Chinese exerted the strongest extemal linguistic influence in the area. Many Ch i-
nese lexemes and orthographic conventions became embedded into Japanese and Korean and
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Japan and the North-West Pacific
the prestigious status of Chinese led to a 'diglossic bil ingualism' amongst the el ites in Japan
during the 8th century where Chinese served as the High written language (Loveday 1995:
212). During the subsequent European colonial expansion, some parts of East Asia had inten-
sive contact with Portuguese and Spanish (16th-17th centuries), English (17th- 19th centuries)
and Gennan (l9th~arly 20th centuries) resulting in the emergence of trade Pidgins. A good
illustration is Chinese Pidgin English' which emerged through interaction between Chinese
merchants and European traders in maj or ports such as Hong Kong and Shanghai.
Japan, on the other hand, closed itself to the outside world for two centuries (Sakoku, the
National Seclusion Pol icy, 1639- 1854), prohibiting anyone, including Japanese and foreign-
ers, from leaving and entering the country. When it was lifted, Gaikokujin Ky01y iichi 'foreign
settlements' in maj or ports (e.g. Yokohama, Kobe and Nagasaki) were penn itted for trade
purposes where, until 1899, American, British, Dutch, Russian, Gern1an and French traders
lived alongside Chinese merchants, while interacting with Japanese tradespeople, drivers and
maids. This led to the emergence of Yokohama Pidgin Japanese, a Japanese-lexified Pidgin
(Section 3), and contrasts with the situation in China where trade activities brought about not
Chinese-lexified but English-lexified Pidgins.
The post-seclusion period also saw a massive emigration of Japanese civilians both to
newly acqu ired Hokkaido and internationally - initially to seek temporary work to supple-
ment fam ily income (Azuma 2002: 32). Overseas destinations inc luded Hawai' i, Central and
Southem America (e.g. Mexioo, Brazil, Peru, Bolivia, Chi le, Paraguay) as p lantation workers,
as well as the US and Canada as 'school boys' who attended school while perfonn ing domestic
duties for North American fami lies in exchange for room and board (Azwna 2002: 34-35). 2
This type of migration is called dekasegi in Japanese - a key tenn in the history of both
Japanese overseas em igration and, since the 1990s, reverse-imm igration of the descendants
of those Japanese emigrants back to Japan. It means ' to leave home temporari ly/seasonally
to earn money', though these supposedly temporary workers often ended up settl ing perma-
nently. The Ministry of Fore ign Affairs of Japan (2016) estimates that 2.13 million Japanese
emigrants and their descendants (out of over 3.6 million) reside in Central and South America
as of20 l 5 (see later about their recent return immigration to Japan).
Concurrently, Japan's victories in a series of fore ign wars brought about the acquisition
of territories in East Asia, Russia and Micronesia. As a resu lt of the First Sino-Japanese
War, Taiwan became a formal colony in 1895. The Russo-Japanese War and the Treaty of
Portsmouth led to: (i) the southern part of Russia's Sakhalin Island becom ing administered
by Japan in 1905; (ii) Korea being annexed in 1910 and (i ii) the southern part of Manchuria,
China being transferred from Russia to Japan in 1904, where the Empire of Manchuria was
founded as a puppet government for Japan in 193 1. Furthennore, in accordance with the
Anglo-Japanese All iance, Japan seized control of most of the forn1er Gennan territories of
Micrones ia (the Northern Mariana Islands, exc luding Guam; the Marshal! Islands; the Caro-
line Islands, including Palau) in 1914, and governed them under a League of Nations man-
date from 1919. Overpopulated Imperial Japan sent tens of thousands of Japanese settlers to
Micrones ia, especially Palau and Saipan. As a consequence, a dialectally diverse group of
settlers oolonised new territories in varying proportions and developed distinctive colonial
.Japanese varieties with different substrate influences from different indigenous languages in
each area (see Section 4).
Post-war Japan, on the other hand, experienced the so-called GHQ (General Headquarters)
Allied occupation by US civil servants and military persormel from 1945 to 1952. US mili-
tary bases (e.g. Hamamatsu, Shizuoka Prefecture) developed a short-lived English-lexified
Pidgin called Bamboo English or Hamamatsu English-Japanese Pidgin, wh ich was also later
107
Kazuko Matsumoto mrd David Britairr
transferred to US military bases in South Korea where Bamboo English with some Japanese
substrate influenc.e was further mixed with Korean (see Section 5).
Meanwhile, many of the Koreans who came to Japan during the colonial period (in the first
half of the 20th century) remained after its end, while many of the Chinese imm igrants (and
their descendants) who lived in the foreign settlements in major port cities during the latter
half of the 19th century (see earlier) remained after their closure, forn1ing ethnic settlements
throughout Japan (e.g. China Town in Yokohama and Korean Town in Ikuno, Osaka). This led
to the emergenc.e of Korean immigrant koines as well as the Chinese-Japanese m ixed language
known as Champon (meaning 'mixed (language)' in (Ports Pidgin) Japanese) (see Section 6).
In the meantime, contact varieties emerged in the peripheries of Japan - in the Ryukyuan
(Okinawa in Japanese) Islands located between Taiwan and Japan, and the Bonin (Ogasawara
in Japanese) Islands located between Japan and Micronesia, both of which had been annexed
by Japan during the 1870s. In Okinawa, speakers of the mutually unintelligible Ryukyuan
languages were forced to learn Japanese at school and the ir own indigenous languages
were banned. As a consequence, today a continuum exists between basilectal and acrolectal
Ryukyuan varieties of Japanese called Uchina Yamatoguchi (literally meaning ' Ryukyuan
Japanese') - essentially a gradually nativising L2 variety of Japanese, sim ilar to the many
L2 Englishes that are undergoing a simi lar process across the Pacific (see later). We do not
discuss this variety therefore here, but further details can be found in Anderson (20 15). The
Bon in Islands accommodated a small number of European and Pacific islanders who were
later joined by an overwhelming nwnber of Japanese settlers, leading to Bonin Creoloid Eng-
lish, Ogasawara Mixed Language and later Ogasawara Koine Japanese (see Section 7).
During the 1980s, Japan saw the height of its post-war economic success. In order to meet
the ever-expanding demand for manual labourers, legal changes enabled Japanese descend-
ants of up to the third generation living abroad to come to work in Japan. Many descendants
of dekasegi (see earlier for an explanation of the tenn dekasegi) in Central and South America
took up this chance to rerum to Japan for work. This has resulted over the last three decades in
the emergenc.e of Latin American communities up and down the country. Language and dialect
contact between Brazi lian Portuguese, Peruvian Spanish and Japanese has led to the formation
both of contact varieties called Dekassegues or Dekasegi-go (referring to ' indentured Porw-
guese') and Brazilian Portuguese immigrant kaines in contemporary Japan (see Section 8).
The vacuwn in Micronesia left by Germany's role in World War I and the defeat of Japan
in World War II was filled by a variety of Anglophone colonial powers. Austral ia took over
Nauru from Germany in 1914, the US took control of the Northem Marianas, the Marshalls,
the Carolines and Palau in 1944 and the British retained control of the Gi lbert and Ellice
Islands, after a brief occupation by Japan during the war. The political status of these islands
was in ftux throughout much of the second half of the 20th century - some are now independ-
ent: the Republic of Nauru, the Republic of Kiribati (mostly the former Gilbert Islands), the
Republic ofThvalu (the forn1er Ell ice Islands), while the Republic of the Marshall Islands, the
Federated States of Micronesia and the Republic of Palau are all independent within a com-
pact of Free Association with the US. The Northern Marianas, meanwhile, chose a path more
integrated with the US, and are now known as the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana
Islands, with a relationsh ip to the US simi lar to that of Puerto Rico. Guam, American since the
late 19th century, except for during a brief period of the Pacific War, remains separate from the
Northem Marianas, with a somewhat distinct relationship with the US too.
Across Micronesia, the nativisation of local island Englishes is highly variable - the longer
under Anglophone control, the more successfu l the loca l economy, and the greater the degree
of contact with the former (or ongoing) colonial power, the greater the degree of nativisation.
108
Japan and the North- West Pacific
Contemporary Guam English (Kuske 20 19), consequently, especially among the young, is
almost indistingu ishable from the fluid ethnically diverse variety of American Engl ish accents
spoken on the West Coast of the US; the Englishes of Palau (Britain and Matsumoto 20 15;
Matswnoto 2020a) and Sa ipan (Hess 2019) are nativising rap idly, but those ofNauru (Met-
tier forthcoming) and especially Kiribati (Leonhardt 2019) are much further behind in the
nativisation process. All, however, are originally L2 varieties in various stages of develop-
ment, and cannot be considered as koines, since nowhere in Micronesia was there significant
or intensive Anglophone settlement or interactive presence (see Britain et al. forthcom ing). In
considering the Anglophone impact on Micronesia here, therefore, we restrict our attention to
two more c learly distinctive contact-induced varieties. On the atoll of Sapuahfik, 150km south
of Pohnpei in the Federated States of Micronesia (fom1erly the Carol ine Islands), a Creole is
(or perhaps was) spoken on the only inhabited island ofNgatik known as Ngatikese Creole or
Ngatikese Men s Language. This emerged, as we will see later, as a result of a colonial mas-
sacre in the mid-19th century. Second, on the island ofNauru, just south of the Equator, north
of New Zea land, a Pidgin emerged through contact between local Nauruans, and phosphate-
mine workers from China and the South Pac ific, known as Nauru Pidgin English. We explore
these in Section 9.
6.3 Yokohama Pidgin Japanese

As Japan increasingly opened to the West in the second half of the 19th century, the nwnber of
European and Chinese tradespeople increased. In Yokohama, just south of Tokyo, a Gaikoku-
jin Kyory!lchi, or foreign nationa ls' settlement was established in which foreign traders cou ld
buy land, build and do business. By 1897 there were over 4,000 Europeans and Chinese in the
settlement, and it is here, accord ing to lnoue (2006), that a Japanese-lexified restricted Pidgin
emerged. Others (e.g. Avram 201 4: 67) suggest that something very sim ilar also emerged in
other large cities wh ich saw such an influx of foreigners, such as Kobe and Nagasaki. The resi-
dential restriction on foreigners ended in 1899, so the geographical focal point for the Pidgin
weakened. Jnoue (2006) argues that many of the Chinese traders in Yokohama were from
Guangzhou, and because of their earlier trading experience in South-East Asia and the Pac ific,
were likely speakers of C hinese Pidgin English. The Yokohama variety, used in the limited
social interactions between Japanese and fore igners during business negotiations or talk with
servants, is known Wlder a nwnber of names, such as Yokohama Pidgin (Japanese) (henceforth
YPJ), Yokohama Dialect (Leland 1879), Yokohamese (Jnoue 2006) and Japanese Ports Lingo
(e.g. Daniels 1948). The ma in source is Atkinson 's ( 1879) Revised and Enlarged Edition of
Exercises in the Yokohama Dialect, a sma ll pedagogical gu ide for learners, but Avram (20 14)
lists a number of other sources, formal and informal, and his synthesis of what is known about
YPJ is the most extensive and thorough accowll, and from which many of the examples here
are drawn. Stanlaw (1987: 95) suggests that around 85% of the lexical material of YPJ was
Japanese.
Some of its most salient characteristics include:
• A phonology that shows affin ities with the Tokyo Japanese of the time, such as the pres-
ence of word internal [IJ] (e.g. nangeye [tall], from Japanese nagai), and the substitution
ofUJ for Standard Japanese [~] (e.g. shto [man], from Japanese hito);
• A restricted lex is, leading to (i) a good deal of lexical polysemy (e.g. aboorah, meaning
any fonn of o il, including butter, kerosene and grease, from Japanese abura meaning
'oil' ; (ii) a number of circumlocutions, such as okee abooneye pon pon - big dangerous
109
hammer = 'earthquake'; (iii) lexical influences from a number of sources, including:

other Pacific Pidgins such as Chinese Pidgin English (man wwr - number one = ' best,
excellent'); Malay (piggy from pergi, 'to go'); French (shappo- 'hat') and English (e.g.
sitesh 'n, 'rai lway station');
• Compounding appears relatively frequent, often with sto or shto (from Japanese hito, 'per-
son') or mono (Japanese for 'thing/object'): e.g. selly shto (sell ing man = 'auctioneer');
• Personal pronouns distinguish person but not number or case.
• There is one negator nigh (from Japanese nai), used post-verbally, as in ( I)
(I) oh my nangeye tokey high-kin nigh

You long time see NEG
'I haven 't seen you for a long time' (lnoue 2006: 62).
• WH-forms are not clause initial and follow the elements in focus: e.g. aboorah doko?
(= butter where? = 'where is the butter?').
6.4 Colonial contact varieties in former Japanese territories

Between 1895 and 1945, Imperial Japan's victories in a series of fore ign wars led it to acquire
and govern colonial territories in East Asia (i.e. Taiwan, Korea and Manchuria, China), Russia
(southern part of Sakhalin Island) and Micronesia. Over two million Japanese settlers arrived
across these places in the North-West Pacific (see Matsumoto 2021 for Japanese colonial
settlement demography). Consequ ently, varying degrees of contact with new selllers induced
different linguistic outcomes in each place. This section focusses on three regions, i.e. Palau in
Micronesia, Sakhal in in Far East Russia and Taiwan.
6.4.1 Formation and obsolescence ofa Japanese colonial koine in Palau

Between the start of World War I and the end of World War II, and authorised by the League of
Nations from 1919, the Micronesian islands of the Western Pacific were governed as Japan's
'South Pacific Mandate'. In particu lar, Palau's Koror Island- where the headquarters of the
South Sea Mandate were located - the Japanese language was transp lanted not only through
the nationwide introduction of the Japanese educational system but also via intensive contact
with Japanese settlers and the ir children. Matsumoto (2020b) po ints out that on Koror Island
Japanese civilians outnumbered locals from the beginning till the end of the Japanese regime.
In 1922 there was an approximate ratio of one to one, but by 1940 this had become eight to
one. As the maj ority of Japanese settlers lived and worked alongside Palauans on Koror Island
at that time, Pa lauan children became bilingual speakers in Palauan and Japanese, well before
they started school, through daily interactions with Japanese settlers and espec ially with the ir
children (Matsumoto 20 16).
Matswnoto and Britain (2003 , forthcoming) and Matsumoto (2013) have studied Japanese
in Palau from the perspective of dialect contact and new-dialect fonnation. Matsumoto and
Britain (forthcoming) analyse the popu lation statistics by birthplace during the 30-year Japa-
nese administration, and show that while there were settlers from across Japan, the majority
of earlier settlers were from Eastern dialect-speaking areas of Japan (inc luding Hokkaido,
Tohoku and Kanto regions), whereas among the latecomers, Ryukyuans from Okinawa Pre-
fecture were in the majority, suggesting an interesting dialect contact scenario, but one likely
to be strongly shaped by Eastern Japanese dialects. From a large corpus of spontaneous speech
data collected from elderly islanders who had spent their childhood and adolescence in Koror,
11 0
two of the features they analysed were the variable use of negation (morphological marking
of verbal, adjectival, nominal adjectiva l and nominal negation as well as pragmatic negation
without morphological marking (Matswnoto and Britain 2003)), and the use of pronouns (sin-
gu lar and plural forn1s for the lPPs, 2PPs and 3PPs, Matsumoto 2013; Matsumoto and Brit-
ain forthcoming). The results suggested that Pa lauan Japanese was a ko ine, demonstrating
evidence of levelling, simpl ification and rea llocation (see Trudgill 1986; Britain 2002, 2018;
Britain and Trudgill 1999, 2005).
Levelling was clearly evident from the results on negation. Given that the majority of early
migrants were from Eastern dialect-speaking areas where non-polite -ne and neutral -nai were
used for all predicates, the following minority features were almost entirely levelled away: ver-
bal negating -hen, -hin (from migrant Western dialect speakers), -n (from Western and Kyushu
dialect areas) and -nu (from Chubu at the Eastern/Western dialect border); nominal and nominal
adjectival negating -chau (from Western areas). A relatively complex system (-n, -nu and -hen
for verbal negation, but -nai and -chau for adjectival, nominal and nominal adjectival negation)
was also avoided. Instead a simple system spread (-nai for all predicates). These results con-
firnled the idea that the first senlers of a commWlity are largely responsible for the shape of the
new dialect (Sankoff's ( 1980) '%st past the post", Mufwene 's ( 1996, 200 I) ''foWlder principle").
Reallocation - where different input variants survive dialect contact and come to serve new
roles in the nascent d ialect (Trudgill 1986; Britain and Trudgill 2005) - appeared to account
for the Palauan Japanese use of the colloquial 3PP aitsu as a demonstrative (Matsumoto and
Britain forthcoming). This form is known to have been used among Tohoku speakers of East-
em Japanese. However, the Palauans adopted not the Tohoku real isation [aedzu], but the (East-
em) Kanto and standard realisation [ai1Su]. Speakers had therefore adopted the Tohoku syntax
and semantics - the forn1 serving as both 3PP and demonstrative - but with Kanto/Standard
(where it is only a 3PP) phonology. The Palauan Japanese koine also includes some archaic
linguistic features. The archaic Eastern-dialectal 3PP plural forn1s, such as otoko-shii ([man-
PL] literally meaning 'men') and onna-shli ([woman-PL] 'women'), were found in Palauan
Japanese. These were the usual 3PP plural forms in the early 20th century but are no longer
used in contemporary Japanese.
English took over as the colonial language in 1945 and all Japanese settlers were expatri-
ated. Today just a few very elderly islanders survive to remind us of the once vibrant Japanese
speech community. Matswnoto and Britain (2003) investigated linguistic obso lescence in this
rapid ly d isappearing postcolonial Japanese speech community. They compared "fluent speak-
ers" of Palauan Japanese with "semi-speakers" and "rememberers" (adjusting categories in
Dorian 198 1). The ana lysis of negation highlighted analogical levelling. Adjectival negation
-ku-nai (e.g. omoshiro-ku-nai [interesting-INF-NEG] 'not interesting'), a rare ly occurring con-
text in spoken Japanese, was replaced by a more frequently occurring class, the nominal and
nominal adjectival negation de nai. Consequently, 'not interesting' changed from omoshiro-
k.u-nai to omoshiro-i de nai [interesting-PRES coP NEG].
6.4.2 Contact varieties spoken in Sakhalin, Far East Russia

In 1905, the Treaty of Portsmouth following the Russo-Japanese war passed the southem part
of Russia's Sakhalin Island to Japan. Most of the resident Russians relocated to the north or
to continental Russia (Vysokov 2008). In their place, a large number of Japanese settlers arrived.
KarafutochO (1940) reveals that in 1940 Japanese settlers accounted for 95.7% of the pop-
u lation; Korean immigrants about 4%, with indigenous peoples (e.g. Nivkh, Uilta, Evenks
and Ainu) and Russians making up the remainder. As of 1930, Hokkaido and Tohoku dialect
I ll
speakers accounted for over 70% of the population (37.87% and 34.88% respectively), fo l-
lowed by Chubu dialect speakers (14.04%) (Karafutocho 1934). In such an extreme scenario
of demographic shift and d ialect mixture, one would expect a colon ial koine to emerge.3
Fajst and Matsumoto (2020) examined contact-induced loanwords from Japanese and Korean
found in the contact variety of Russian spoken on Sakhalin Island but not in other varieties of
Russian. They identified 92 and 177 loanwords from Japanese and Korean respectively. Their
analysis showed the following (we adopt here the Yale system for the Romanisation of Korean):
(i) Potential dialectal influences from Japanese and Korean at the phonological level: In both
Hokkaido and Tohoku (Eastern dialectal subdivision) as well as in Korean, word-internal
/t/ is voiced as [d]: o.?JCa6yooH (dzhabudon) l ou6ooH (dibdon), ~;{fiN! (zabuton) 'a floor
cushion'.
(ii) Phonological influences from Korean dialects: In southern South Korea, word-initial /kl is
palatal ised as [!f/]. Consequently, the dialectal forms, •a~ou<1u (~imchi) and •aw<1a (~im
cha) 'kimchi', were more common than standard KUM<iu (kimchi) and KUAt•w (kimcha).
(ii i) The use of Russian female noun ending - a on Korean loan words. Russianised fonns:
•w,lt<ia (ch imcha), KUAt•w (kimcha) and KJlKCa (kuksa) 'noodle' [cf. non-Russianised
forms: •IUAt•w (chimchi), KtiAt•w (k imchi) and "YKCY (kuksu)].
(iv) hmovative loan-blends between Japanese and Korean
(a) aHKOmoKiaHKilmOK (ankotok/ankatok)

<i> lv;:. (anko) 'sweet bean paste' + 1!1 (ttek) ' rice cake'
' Rice cake with sweet bean paste'
(b) UKKaoiim (ikkadyot)
~' fl' (ika) 'squid' + ~ (ces [dui)) 'pickled'
'Pickled squid'
(v) Innovative loan-blends between Korean and Russian
(a) (chimchigryzy) derogatory term

<iUAt•lu2pbr3bJ
~:I: I (cimchi) 'kimchi' + 2pbl3br (gryzy) 'to chew on'
' Koreans' (literally ' People who chew on kimchi ')
(b) <itw<iu:J/Cap (ch imchizhar)
~:I: I (cimchi) 'kimchi' + J/Cap (zhar) 'to fry'
'A dish, fried kimchi '
They suggest that the more intensive influence of Korean (rather than Japanese) on Sakha-
lin Russian can be explained by the greater intensity of contact between Koreans and Russians
(cf. Thomason 200 I). During the Japanese era, only a hundred or so Russian nationals were
allowed to remain on South Sakhalin, and when the Russians took over again in 1945, almost
all Japanese settlers left.• By contrast, the Korean immigrants were not allowed to return home
by the Soviet Union and remained on Sakha lin result ing in more prolonged and intensive con-
tact with Russian. As a resu lt, some core vocabulary, such as body parts,' nursery,6 and sensory
words' has been adopted from Korean.
6.4.3 Yilan Creole Japanese in Taiwan

As a resu lt of the First Sino-Japanese War, Taiwan formally became a colony of Japan in 1895.
Taiwan Sotokufu ( 1944) shows that the popu lation of Japanese settlers, over half a century of
occupation, never accounted for more than 5% of the total population - a total contrast with the
11 2
situation in Sakhalin mentioned previously. Of this small number, Westem and Kyiishii dialect
speakers accounted for approximately 70% of the Japanese in 1935 (Taiwan Sotoku Kanbo
Rinj i Kokuse i Chosabu 1937). ln mu ltiethnic and multilingual Taiwan, Japanese school edu-
cation and forma l language pol icy, rather than daily face-to-face interaction with settlers, was
likely to drive the spread of the language as a lingua franca.
Chien and Sanada (2010a: 350, 357) c laimed to have 'discovered' " the first Japanese-
lexicon Creole" spoken in four vi llages of Yilan County in Eastem Taiwan (Tungyueh, Chin-
yang, Aohua and Hanhsi villages). Setting aside whether or not it is justifiably categorised as
a Creole (see later for discussion), this contact variety began to emerge in 1913 when, as part
of a re location scheme for indigenous Taiwanese, the Japanese regime dec ided to settle the
Atayal and Seediq peoples in Yilan County without recognising the ethnic (and linguistic)
d ifferences between them (Ta iwan Sotokufu Keimukyoku 1938). They apparently adopted
a 'simplified Japanese' as a lingua franca, which was acquired as an Ll by subsequent gen-
erations, and eventually developed into a Creole (Chien and San ad a 20 l Oa: 353). Chi en and
Sanada (20 l Oa: 350) name it "Yilan Creole" (hereafter YC).
Qiu (20 15: 31- 56) presents by far the most comprehensive description of the structure of
YC based both on a significant corpus of data from interviews, elicitation tasks and recorded
conversations collected in Hanhsi Vi llage, as well as from the official The Yilan Hanhsi Atayal
Language Textbook produced by the Taiwanese Council of Indigenous Peoples. We list the
following examples here: 8
• YC consonants contain all consonants of Japanese and Atayal, except for the (rather
marked) Japanese bilabial fricative [4>] and uvular nasal [N], and the Atayal uvular stop [qJ;
• Though the Japanese CVCV rule does not allow any consonant (except for [N]) to come
word-finally, YC consonants, such as /t k s x h/, can appear word-finally as in Atayal (e.g.
papak 'eat', /okalr 'good');
• The vo iced stop [d) of Japanese origin is only variably realised in YC; 9 words of Japanese
origin, such as kyodai 'sibling' , dakara 'so' and denwa 'telephone' were often realised
with [l] instead of[d), whi le desyo ' J wonder ' tends to retain [d] (Qiu 2015: 37);
• Stress normally falls on the final syllable in YC, which comes from Atayal, as it is a stress-
final language, whi lst Japanese is a pitch-accent language (Qiu 2015: 39);
• YC pronouns: unlike Japanese, YC pronouns are not marked for gender or honorifics.
l PP wa and waha 'J' come from Japanese watasi, the former is more frequently used than
the latter. 2PPSS anta and su 'you (singular)' derive from Japanese and Atayal respectively.
The fonner is more frequently used. 3PPSS are hiya 'he/she' of Atayal origin, and zinbun
(derived from zibun 'oneself'), zin (the shortened fom1 of zibun) and are (demonstrative
'that'), all of Japanese origin. The word are also functions as a demonstrative in YC. Plural
PPSS are mostly formed by add ing the affix -tati to singular PPss, if they are of Japanese
on gm;
• YC nouns: YC nouns derive from both Japanese and Atayal. However, kinship terms,
such as shenshen 'aunt' and akong 'grandfather' are derived from Mandarin and Min-
d ialect. Modem lexemes (e.g. shouji 'cell-phone' and dianshi 'TV') also come from Man-
darin (Qiu 2015: 4 1-42);10
• YC adjectives: the adjectives for size and length, such as nagai ' long' are mostly from
Japanese, whi le the adj ectives to describe colour and feelings, such as /abu 'white' come
from Atayal;
• In YC, independent c lauses involving predicate nouns and predicate adjectives do not
need a copula, and behave like verbs, as they do in colloquial Japanese.
11 3
• To express the tense of predicate adjectives, temporal adverbs of Japanese orig in, such
as kyo 'today', kino 'yesterday' , are used instead of inflectional morphemes: kilux 'hot'
of Atayal orig in; e.g. kyo kilux 'today (is) hot', kino kilux 'yesterday (was) hot' (Q iu
2015: 42);
• Tense on verbs is also expressed by using temporal adverbs of Japanese origin; the past
tense is indicated by an adverb izen 'before' or kino 'yesterday', while the future tense is
expressed by an adverb asita 'tomorrow' or /aine 'next year' (Qiu 2015: 44);
• YC negation: five negative fom1s of Japanese origin are found in YC; cigaw (Japanese
tigau 'to differ ') for nominal predicates (as in 2), Sinai for adjectival predicates (as in 3),
-nai and -ng for verbal predicates (as in 4 and 5), and tikang (the Japanese -te and ikon
'don 't') to negate the imperative (as in 6) (Qiu 2015: 42-48):
(2) are luma cigaw lasi

that flower NEG seem
'That (does) not appear to be a flower.'
(3) ky6 samui sinai

today cold NEG
'Today (is) not cold.'
(4) asita sigoto takusan kara are bang tabe-nai

tomorrow work a Jot because 3 PP evening eat-NEG
'Because tomorrow slhe has a Jot of work, slhe will not eat dirmer.'
(5) /ainen wa TaiholaJ ni ika-ng

next year I PP Taipei to go-NEG
'I w ill not go to Taipei next year.'
(6) yu tikang
say NEG
'Don't tell.'
Chi en and Sanada (20 11) c laim, on the basis of data from just one speaker (20 11: 78),
that the two negative fonns -nai" (a Standard Japanese fom1) and -ng (a Western dialec-
tal fonn) have been restructured such that the former occurs for past and present states and
actions, while the latter occurs for future states and actions, reflecting 'real is' and 'irrealis'
in the Atayal language. As examp le (4) from Qiu (2015: 47-48) demonstrates, however, the
negative form -nai can occur for future actions (i.e. 'will not eat').
Whether YC is justifiably categorised as a Creole is controversial. Although Chien and
Sanada (2010a: 350) named it ''Yilan Creo le", the speakers 'do not use this terrn'; what
they call it differs from one village to the next, but in each the common element is Nihongo
'Japanese'. Sanada and Chien (2008: 95) reported that young Yilan Creole speakers could
mostly understand Japanese te levision programmes when they visited Japan. It is notable,
indeed, that some of the example sentences provided by Q iu (20 15) are identical to collo-
quial non-standard ma inland Japanese. Second, no evidence has yet been provided of any
Seed iq influence on th is contact variety. It is reported indeed that the Seed iq in this area
have undergone language shift to Ataya l (Chien and Sanada 20 I Oa: 352). Another ques-
tion that has been ra ised (Qiu 2015: 16) is why Japanese rather than Atayal became used
11 4
as the lingua franca in these villages, when the demographic statistics show that the Atayal
accounted for a full 85.6% of the popu lation, whereas Seediq accounted for on ly 14.3%
(Institute of Ethnology, Taihoku Imperia l University 1935). Although Chien and Sanada
(2010a: 352) chose one couple cons isting of a Seediq-origin wife and an Atayal-origin
husband to demonstrate that YC is so widely used, the vast maj ority of fam ilies would have
been Atayal-only, and able to use the Ataya l language. Much more information is needed
about YC and its sociolingu istic history for us to be able to fi rm ly establ ish what kind of
contact language this is.
6.5 Bamboo English and Hamamatsu English-Japanese Pidgin

Bamboo English (BE) is the term given originally by Norman (1955: 44) to the highly
restricted jargon/Pidgin used by American Gls occupying Japan in the period after World War
11 (and later to its use in Korea in the 1950s, since many of the same soldiers were involved).
The literature on Bamboo Engl ish is sparse, and mostly rather informal and lexical in nature
(Norman 1954, 1955; Webster 1960; Algeo 1960). Goodman ( 1967) is more detai led, both
socio-historically and linguistically, but focusses specifically on the 'English-Japanese Pidgin'
of a group of American officers and a irmen based in Hamamatsu, Shizuoka Prefecture in the
mid- l950s. It is not clear whether the two should be considered as the same, especially since
Goodman cites none of the literature on Bamboo Engl ish. Research on Bamboo English is
also briefly synthesised in Stanlaw ( 1987). Most of the literature conc.entrates on the use and
adaptation of words from Japanese in what is otherwise an English lexical base. Sukosh, for
example, from Japanese sukoshi (few, some) meant 'l ittle' in BE. Morskosh (from Japanese
mokoshi (a little more)) came to mean 'soon'. Another example is the word mus (from Japa-
nese musume (daughter/ young woman)) which, as Nom1an (1954) discusses at some length,
refers to a female sex friend.
Phonologically, the literature points to the frequent deletion of word-final /if and /u/, and the
use of /kif in place of /kj/ in place names such as Kyoto, Tokyo, etc.
Grammatically, little has been said about BE. Stanlaw ( 1987: 97) argues that there are a
number of simplifications typical of pidginised varieties such as tense marked adverbially
rather than morphologically and lack of copula. Algeo ( 1960: 2 1) po ints to frequ ent reduplica-
tion. BE has adopted the Japanese respect suffix -son, and attached it to English words, e.g.
boysan - 'a (young) man who cleans the barracks', papasan - 'a man who drives and does
janitor work' (Norman 1955: 45).
Goodman's (1967) accoWlt ofHamamatsu English-Japanese Pidgin (HEJP) is a good deal
more detailed, systematic and serious. First, he provides more detail on the contexts in which
this variety is used. Whereas the literature on BE implies that it was mostly used for basic
communication on base and the procurement of sex and alcohol, Goodman suggests HEJP
was used also in local shops, among neighbours when the service personnel lived off-base, in
mixed team baseball matches, and in infonnal moments when interacting with local m ilitary
personnel. In his only aside, preswnably about BE, he argues that
the fact that the Pidgin was needed [in work contexts - KM&DB] plus the fact of
isolation from American fac ilities were the two circwnstances that made the dialect
developed at Hamamatsu perceptive ly different and probably richer than the general
Pidgin of Tokyo and Nagoya bars and shops.
(1967: 50)
li S
Second, his linguistic description is considerably richer. Clearly some features are shared
with what has been described for BE, including the use of skoshi (few, little), taksan (from
Japanese takusan - much, many) and mus. But he goes further than any of the descriptions
of BE. In terms of lex is, he talks of widespread polysemy, including, for example, the use
of sayonara (Japanese 'farewell'), not only in its original sense, but a lso to mean 'to get
rid of something' or for 'something to be missing' (1967: 53). Grammatically, he notes the
Jack of definite article, tense and copu la. In commenting on the presence of reduplication
(e.g. testo-testo, for 'exam ine', 'conduct an analysis'), he po ints to the possible fam iliarity
mi litary personnel may have with this through contact with Hawa i' i Pidgin during the Pacific
War. In terms of phonology, he mentions the use of /ei/ or /if instead of Japanese word final
/e/. The s imilarities with Bamboo English are strong, but as Goodman suggests, the social
conditions were riper for Pidgin formation than perhaps in other post-war mi litary contacts
in Japan at the time.
6.6 Mixed languages and koines in old

immigrant communities in Japan
6.6.1 Champon in Yokohama China Town

Both Chinese and Korean imm igrants are regarded as established in Japan and many have
been naturalised as Japanese citizens. More Chinese live in Japan than any other fore igner
group, almost 800,000 in June 2019 (Ministry of Justice 2019), but this figure does not
include the earlier Chinese immigrants and their descendants because of their naturalisa-
tion as Japanese citizens. Chinese imm igration dates back to the late 19th century when
Pidgin Japanese was formed in foreign settlements in major ports (see Section 3). The larg-
est China Town emerged in Yokohama, with the first Chinese school establ ished as early
as 1898. Before WWII, Cantonese was the dominant language in Yokohama China Town,
while Yokohama Pidgin Japanese also served as a lingua franca with non-Chinese. After the
war, however, Mandarin replaced Cantonese as the mediwn of instruction in the local Chi-
nese schools. Yamashita ( 1979) explains that this change in school language pol icy created a
communication barrier between different generations of speakers, which further triggered a
shift toward Japanese. Kobayashi (20 17) confim1s this generational language shift from ver-
nacu lar languages (e.g. Cantonese) to Mandarin and then to Japanese as well as to a mixed
Mandarin-Japanese known locally as 'Champon' 12•
Nomura's (2003a, 2003b) research on Yokohama Champon revealed, for example, the fo l-
lowing four characteristics. First, as shown in Table 6.1, all pronouns are exclusively Chinese.
Second, Japanese discourse markers are used to connect sentences (e.g. conjunction dakara
'so', de 'and then') or mark the end of utterances (e.g. final particle ne) (Nomura 2003b:
24-25): 13
Table 6. I Pronouns in Champon
Singular Plural
IPP 'llt wo3 'lltin wo3men
2PP i!J; ni3 f"j;ifl ni3men
3PP ~rt:: tal .ft!!. ifll~ ifll't:if] ta Imen
116
(7) ~El '*'-ifl JiY.~ Mii tt.Z. lltf~

Tong2xue2men ying I gai I zhi ldao4 shen2me shi2hou
Student-PL should know what time
(8) .m B~ tt.Z, utM .m $}( •

:tong4 Ri4:i)!3 shen2me shi2hou :tong4 Zhong I wen2 .
use Japanese what time use Chinese
(9) t;!. tJ• .;, 1-'E-Ifl .m '*'~ - A :l;@l

Dakara ni3men genl Zhong I guo2ren2 lao3shi I
CONJ 2PL with Chinese-people teacher
(10) ~ .ill. $1[ tJ.. (' 1~ifl

:tao4 jiang3 Zhong I wen2 neo De ni3men
must speak Chinese FP CONJ 2PL
(11) m B ;;ii:- A ;lt~ili .m Bi'g

jltJ. ]! tJ. .
genl Ri4ben3ren2 lao3shi I :tong4 Ri4:i)!3 zuo4 hua4 ne.
with Japanese-people teacher use Japanese do talk FP
' Everyone should know when to use Chinese and when to use Japanese, right? Therefore,
you should speak Chinese to the Chinese teacher, and Japanese to the Japanese teacher, right?'
Third, many verbs follow the fonnula whereby a Chinese verb is followed by the Japanese
light verb - suru 'do'. Note that suru is an irregular verb, so in (12) it is conjugated to shi
(Nomura 2003b: 24).
(12) Z.(J) ffi%-0 $- ~ .2t 1t l - -e

kono kuo4hao4-no naka-wo xianl suan4 shi-te
this bracket-GEN inside-Ace first ca lculate LV-GER
'Calcu late inside this bracket first.'
Fourth, tense and aspect are served by Japanese, so that when Chinese pred icates are used,
Japanese predicates also follow to express tense and aspect (Nomura 2003b: 24):
(13) I .m. fl!f.? -c - ~ - t.:.

Xia4 Yl!l futte-ki-ta
fall.down ram fall.down-tNCH-PST
'The rain is beginning to fall.'
On the basis of comp lementary use of Chinese for pronouns and Japanese for discourse
markers and so forth, Nomura (2003b) concludes that "wholesale replacement" has taken
plac-e in Champon. He further argues that differences in the degree of"obligatoriness of labe l-
ling" between Chinese and Japanese can accow1t for this systematicity; Chinese has a higher
obligation not to omit pronouns than Japanese, whereas Japanese has a stronger obligation to
use tags and connectives as discourse markers. More recent studies confirm that Champon is
being intergenerationally transmitted in the home (Kobayashi 20 17). The use of Champon
with these same linguistic structures was confirmed by 95% of students in a Taiwanese school
11 7
in Yokohama regardless of ethn ic background (Kordesch 20 17). Kordesch 's findings reject the
prediction made 20 years ago by Hirasawa ( 1997) that the diversifying linguistic backgrounds
of the students in ethnic schools were leading to its decline.
6.6.2 Korean immigrant koine in the Greater Tokyo area

Korean immigration to Japan began in 1910 following annexation. At its peak in 1940, over a
million Koreans moved to Japan. Early migrants came for academic and commercial purposes,
whi le later migrants came as labourers and m il itary personne l through Japanese recruitment,
with most coming from the southern part of what is today South Korea. After the war, about
half returned to Korea, whi le the other half remained, forming Korean commw1ities through-
out Japan with numerous Korean schools sponsored by e ither North or South Korea. Tsum-
hasi in Osaka and Okubo in Tokyo are home to the largest Korean communities today: as of
June 2019, over 450,000 Koreans reside in Japan (Ministry of Justice 2019).
Yoshida and Matsumoto (2020) and Yoshida, Matsumoto and Kim (2020) exam ined Korean
dialect and language contact and koine fonnation among Japan-born second -generation Korean
immigrants resid ing in the Greater Tokyo Area. The majority ofpre-WWJJ immigrants were
Gyeongsang dialect speakers followed by Jeolla dialect speakers, while those arriving during
the post-war period were ma inly Jeju dialect speakers fleeing violence as we ll as, since the
1980s, many coming for business, academic and marriage purposes, most ly from the capital
Seoul. Because North Korea had more economic power than South Korea in the early post-war
period, all Korean schools available for second-generation children were sponsored by North
Korea where the North Korean Standard variety was taught.
Yoshida and Matsumoto (2020) and Yoshida, Matsumoto and Kim (2020) investigated
Japanese Korean in order to assess the extent to which it showed signs of koineisation and
the influence of Japanese. They compared present-day data with the first Korean dialect atlas
(Ogura 1944a, 1944b) comp iled from the 191Os till the 1930s in order to investigate:
(i) The alternation between /k/ and /If/ (e.g. the word 'kimchi' ~:1:1 varies between the
standard [kim-f'i] and South dialectal [t.fim-!l''i]);
(ii) Presence or absence of prevocalic /jl (e.g. the word 'hair p in' t:ll L.:l : standard [pi-nj:>),
Seoul [pi-na), Southern [pi(n)-ne), [pi-n£) and others);
(iii) Presence or absence of prevocalic /w/ (e.g. the word ' leaf' ~AFt!: standard [ip-' sa-gwi),
North Korean [nip-1sa-gwi, nip-1sa-gu] and Southern [ip-'sa-gu, ip-pha-ri));
(iv) The alternation between /m/ and IN/ (e.g. the word <t/ ~ ~ (yangnyemcang) 'a spicy
Korean sauce' varies between the original Korean [jarJ-nj:>m-d3mJ) and Japanised
[jalJ-nj:>N-d3alJ]);
(v) The a lternation between h i and /o/ (e.g. the word 'bone' H~ varies between Korean [?pj:>)
and Japanised [?pj o).
The results reveal that (i) the South dialectal forn1 [!f) brought by the early settlers from Gyeo-
ngsang, Jeju and Jeolla provinces was the majority forn1; (ii) the prevocalic glide [j] occurred only
word-initially, but rarely word-internally, as in the Gyeongsang dialect; (iii) Prevocalic [w], now
the standard fom1, but which was hardly used in Korea in the early 20th century, did not survive;
(iv) speakers with more limited Korean conununicative ability used the Japanised variants /NI and
!of rather thaJl original Korean /m/ and /:>/. Overall, these findings suggest that the variants of the
majority ingredient dialect in the earlier Korean settlements levelled away the others, including
those taught in the North Korean-sponsored schools, 3Jl outcome typical ofkoineisation.
li S
6.7 Contact varieties in the Japanese periphery

The Ogasawara Islands lie between the Japanese archipelago and the Northern Mariana Islands
in the Northern Pacific. They were first settled in the 1830s by a small group of Americans,
Europeans and Pacific Islanders, and were later joined by more Pacific Islanders, Chinese,
South-East Asians and other Europeans. In the 1870s, the Japanese took over, settled to the
extentthatthey soon outnumbered the earl ier popu lation, and controlled the islands until the
end of the Pacific War when the Japanese were sent back to Japan by the US occupying forces.
They returned to Japanese control in 1968. A number of contact varieties emerged, outlined
in this section.
6.7.1 Bonin Creoloid English

In the early years of the selllement of the islands, a form of English, despite in no way being
the majority language of the selllers, became the lingua franca and was passed on to sub-
sequ ent generations. Many of the non-Ll Anglophone selllers had had experience on ships
trading around the Pacific, where English and/or Pacific Pidgin English and/or South Seas
Jargon were often used, and the islands also saw both the sporadic arrival and departure of a
number of beachcombers and other transient visitors, as well as many settled islanders depart-
ing for periods of time to work onboard ship. These were idea l conditions for a contact variety
to emerge - no education system, no formal target variety to orient to, but, neverthe less, an
orientation to and exposure to one particular language of which there were native speakers
in the community. Relative ly little is known about the variety they spoke (see Long 2007).
A wordlist collected by some shipwrecked Japanese sailors in 1840 pointed to Hawai ian influ-
ence (Long 1999: 262- 263). This list included examples of reduplication, such as koukou, for
'cook'. A few islanders, notably, were literate and there is evidence therefore that something
more akin to a mainstrea m variety of English was also used on the islands in certa in contexts.
A significant nwnber of Japanese selllers arrived after annexation in 1876, bilingual edu-
cation was introduced and English survived as a community language through to World War
II, after which the Japanese were forced to return to Japan until 1968. Long argues that what
emerged in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was a creoloid, the result of the abrupt
creolisation of an English-lexified Pidgin used amongst the different migrants in the mid-
19th century (2007: 3 1). The survival of Engl ish was assisted between 1946 and 1968 by the
absence of the Japanese and the presence of American soldiers, though this undoubted ly had
the effect of 'decreolising' the creoloid. There is limited evidence of the late 19th-century/early
20th-century creoloid. Long and Trudgi ll (2004) and Long (2007) present an analysis of one
speaker of a form of Bonin English, Uncle Charlie Washington, born in 188 1 and recorded in
197 1. They make it clear that Washington does not speak the more pidginised variety of the
mid- 19th century, or even a particu larly basilectal form of the creoloid, but something more
mainstream, w1doubtedly influenced both by education during the Japanese era, and by the
American period. Washington's accent is described as a 'surprisingly old fashioned', con-
servative form of American English with strong resemblances of the English of Eastern New
England (Long and Trudgill 2004: 103). There is indeed relatively little in his accent which is
suggestive of a pidginised contact variety, except for TH-stopping, and re lative heavy conso-
nant cluster reduction. Grammatically, there is more evidence of a potential creoloid base: he
uses (variably) zero or non-standard plural fom1s (e.g. womans), third person present zero (e.g.
she say), but also features common to many mainstream non-standard varieties, such as mul-
tiple negation, distal plural them, relative pronoun what, etc. Long (2007: 133) analyses other
119
speakers, born later, who show relatively lim ited evidence of phonological contact phenom-
ena, but more at the grammatical leve l (e.g. copula is e ither absent or invariant be, use of null
subjects, non-standard article use, etc.), in combination again with mainstream non-standard
features. Long also makes it clear that there is very little evidence of the influence of Japanese
on the English of these speakers, enab ling him to argue that "English remained the first and
dominant language of the Westerners for many decades even after the Japanese takeover of the
islands" (2007: 138). As the Japanese period continued, more people became more dominant
in Japanese than English, but the end of the war brought over 20 years of American Navy
rule and the repatriation of the Japanese population to Japan. English became more dominant
again, was the principal language in the education system, and a number of islanders continued
their education in English-language colleges in Guam, Saipan and elsewhere. Th is was then
reversed again once the Japanese regained control in the late 1960s and BCE has become more
or less extinct.
6. 7.2 Ogasawara Mixed Language

Between 1900 and 1920 a shift began in the Bonin Islands, from English being the dominant
language of youngsters, to Japanese. A few became monolingual Japanese, but many reta ined
competence in English alongside (Long 2007: 139). What emerged was a "complex intertwin-
ing of the two languages into a single language system with both grammatical and phonologi-
cal features (as we ll as mere lexical ones) from both languages" (Long 2007: 139), a m ixed
language in the formal sense ofBakker and Mous (1994). This was used especially by those
born of Western parents, and has been labelled Ogasawara Mixed Language (OML) by Long
(2007: 140). Long (2007: 194) suggests that post-war OML kept the two systems more dis-
tinctly apart than was previously the case, and tendencies for one language or the other to be
used became more categorically adhered to after the war.
OML has Japanese as the matrix language but has:
(i) Relatively everyday lexis in English (e.g. wind,fish , rope).

(ii) Large amounts of special register lexis in English (e.g. re lated to fishing).
(iii) Lim ited apparent Japanese influence on the English phonology and vice versa.
(iv) No nominal marking of plurality, a lack of articles.
(v) Tenus for numerals, cow1ting and measurement mostly in English.
(vi) The use of me as a subject pronow1, especially in the post-War period.
(vii) No Japanese fonnal verb endings, honorifics and sensitivity to formality in personal
pronoun system (Long 2007: 138-153).
Long (2007: 152- 153) argues that OML is not English interlayered with Japanese, but Bonin
Creoloid English mixed with Ogasawara Koine Japanese, that we now discuss. Since the rever-
sion of the islands to Japan in the late 1960s, OML has become restricted to those brought up
before this period and to fewer doma ins as more and more of the population are monol ingual
in Japanese (Long 2007: 233).
6.7.3 Ogasawara Koine Japanese

While Japanese settlers to Ogasawara came from diverse parts of Japan, the majority (about
70%) were from Hachijo-jima and Aoga-shima, neighbouring Japanese islands situated
between Bonin and Tokyo, where Hachijo dialects were spoken. By 1944, the popu lation
120
Table 6.2 VoweVconsonant-final verbs in S tandard Japanese
Conditional form Imperative form

Consonant-final verbs (e.g. kak-u ' write') -e -e
Vowel-final verbs (e.g. shime-ru 'close') -(r)e -(r)o
Source: Abe (2006: 112)
had reached over 7,500. For nearly 70 years (1876-1944), therefore, different Japanese set-
tler dialects and the English-lexified creoloid were in intens ive contact, and as a resu lt,
Ogasawara Koine .Japtmese emerged among Japanese settlers. During the period of US
occupation, as explained previously, the Japanese were repatriated. Ogasawara Koine Japa-
nese had a new lease of life from 1968 when the Bonin Islands were returned to Japan. Not
only did former pre-war residents return, but they were j oined by new settlers. Since 1979,
the number of the latter has exceeded that of the forn1er. Which region then sent most? As
of 2000, Tokyo alone sent 30%, the Kanto region (excluding Tokyo) sent 40% and other
regions - mostly Aomori, Tokushima, Hokkaido, Fukuoka, Shizuoka, Hiroshima, etc. -
accounted for 30%.
Abe (2006) investigated the variab le use of -re rather than -ro as the imperative form of
vowe l-final verbs (e.g. sute-re vs. standard sute-ro ' throw ( it away)' and irregular verbs
(e.g. su-re vs. standard shi-ro 'do (it)'). The resu lts suggested that the non-standard form
was used among older speakers born on Bonin before the war, while middle-aged speakers
do not use it though they have heard of it. Hachijo dialect speakers, the majority before
the war, however, did not use this form. Abe (2006: 112) argued for an internal linguistic
reason why the minority form (i.e. the non-standard - re form) won on the Bonin Islands.
He pointed out (Table 6.2) that the -o ending maintains comp lexity; if it becomes -e, the
distinction between conditional and imperative forms is lost and that between consonant-
and vowel-final verbal forms simpl ified, producing the paradigmatic simplification typical
of koineisation.
6_8 Indentured varieties and koines in new

immigrant communities in Japan
During the 1980s, the rapidly expanding Japanese economy was faced with a serious shortage
of manual labour. Consequently, immigration controls were radically revised to allow Nik-
kei (Japanese descendants of) Latin Americans to come to work in Japan. This has resulted
in the emergence of, for example, Braz ilian communities across Japan, who, in particular,
concentrated in the areas where automobile and other factories are located. Large Braz il-
ian commw1ities typically have Brazilian supennarkets, restaurants, beauty salons, sports
gyms and judo classes, driving schools and churches accessible in Portuguese, and a Brazil-
ian school that offers education from nursery to high schoo l. All of these institutions and
facilities allow Braz ilians to live in Brazilian communities in Japan without being required to
have fluency in Japanese. Brazilians have come to represent the largest ethnic group from a
non-Asian country among foreign residents in Japan; over 200,000 Brazilians lived in Japan
as of June 2019 (M inistry of Justice 2019). Over the past three decades, furthermore, there
has been an increase in the nwnber of Japan-born second- and third-generation residents who
have never been to Brazil.
12 1
6.8.1 Dekassegues in Japan

Shigematsu (2007, 2009) has p ioneered research exploring Japanese Brazilian Portuguese
(JBP), known as Dekassegues in Portuguese and Dekasegi-go in Japanese." She has examined
to what extent and in what way Japanese lexis has been integrated into JBP. As a result of a
long ethnography in schools in the largest Brazil ian communities (in Toyota and Yokka ich i),
she found that (i) Japanese loan words are fully phono logically integrated into their JBP; (ii)
the morphology of Japanese loanwords mostly follows Portuguese rules - see ( 14)-( 16) (from
Shigematsu 2007: 95-96). Japanese e lements are underlined.
( 14) patinqueiro (Japanese (J) patinco 'pinball' + Brazilian Portuguese (BP) agentive -
-eiro) 'pinball player'
( 15) bakazinha (J baka 'fool'+ BP diminutive -zinha) 'silly fool'
( 16) nihongues (J nilwn(go) 'Japanese'+ BP (portu)gues 'Portuguese') 'Japanese-
Portuguese mixed language'
Japanese nouns are often verbalised by adding the Portuguesefazer 'do' (e.g.j{1zer + baito 'to
do a part-time job') orjogar 'do (sports/play)' (e.g.jogar + gemu 'play a game').
Shigemastsu (2007: 192) argues that Dekassegues will not, however, eventually creolise,
given that only two languages (i.e. Japanese and Brazilian Portuguese) are involved and there
continues to be regu lar and intensive contact with superstrate Japanese. More likely, she sug-
gests, if the Brazi lians remain in Japan, is gradual language shift toward Japanese, via an ever
greater adoption of Japanese linguistic elements into the ir Portuguese.
6.8.2 Brazilian Portuguese immigrant koine in the Greater Tokyo Area

Matswnoto and Okwnura (2019, 2020a, 2020b) used variationist techniques to investigate
Brazi lian Portuguese dialect and language contact and subsequent koine fonnation in Joso
City in the Greater Tokyo area. As part of this analysis they looked at three rhotic variab les:
(i) Variation in 'strong' /r/ that appears word-initially (e.g., radio ' radio') or intervocali-
ca lly, represented in the orthography by <rr> (e.g. carro 'car '), is real ised as a back
fricative [x] in southern dialects of Brazilian Portuguese or [h] in south-east dialects and
other regions, or a trill [r, R] stereo-typically by the elderly.
(ii) Variation in 'weak' /r/ that appears either intervocalically, and represented in the orthog-
raphy by <r> (caro 'expensive'), or as the second member of consonant cluster (trafico
'traffic'), which is generally pronounc.ed as an alveolar tap [r] in Brazil and Portugal, but
which is often interchangeable with 'strong' /r/ in some West African diaspora varieties.
(iii) Variation in coda /r/ that appears either word-intemally (porta 'door') or word-finally
(mar ' sea') and typically pronow1ced as [x] in Rio de Janeiro, [r] mostly in Silo Pau lo
(especially by those among higher social classes), and [.tJ mostly in southem dialects
(especially by those in lower soc ial classes).
The results for strong /r/ provide some evidence of (i) dialect levelling (the south-east
dialectal majority fom1 [h] won, whi le the trills associated with 'old-people's speech' were
avoided) and (ii) 'focussing' toward [h] occurred among second-generation speakers;
(ii i) ongoing changes toward lenition in Brazil ian Portuguese were imported to Japan, which
led to them continu ing in parallel in Brazil and Japan as a result of 'drift'; (iv) the initial <r>
122
of the word rural is increasingly realised as the bilab ial fricative [4>]. Th is is not present
in Brazilian Portuguese, suggesting not only the adoption of a xenolectal feature (Mufwene
2008), but one with the same linguistic constraints - [4>1 is only used when <r> is followed by
/u/, as in Japanese.
Second, variation in intervocalic strong and weak / r/ resembles one of the common char-
acteristics of diaspora contact varieties of West African Portuguese (Bouchard 20 19): the dis-
tinction between strong and weak has become blurred so a small number of second-generation
speakers use strong /r/ in weak /r/ position and vice versa (e.g. the word churrasco ' Braz ilian
BBQ' is increasingly realised as [r] rather than the expected [h, x)).
In terms of variation in cod a / r/ the results indicate potential evidenc-e of (i) dialect levell ing
(the two majority fom1s [r] from higher social class speakers in Sao Paulo and [.(I from lower
social class speakers in the south dialect survived), (ii) reallocation (an earlier c lass-based dis-
tinction was refunctionalised into a position-based distinction ([r) in word-media l codas vs. [.(I
in word-final codas) among some of the first-generation speakers, and (iii) 'focussing' towards
[.(I in any position among second -generation speakers.
These outcomes (Trudgi ll 1986; Britain 2018) point to the emergence of a Japanese Bra-
z ilian Portuguese koine. Furthermore, they also demonstrate that the newly emerging variety
in Joso City resembles dialects spoken in the regions in Brazil (i.e. the south and south-east)
w here the majority of first generation speakers came from, thereby confinn ing the val idity of
the Founder Principle (Mufwene 1996).
6.9 English-influenced Pidgins of Micronesia

As outlined earlier, Micronesia has a complex and diverse colonia l past. Each colonial power
left its own linguistic legac ies, with the most impactful being the Japanese and Anglophone
eras, but in d ifferent ways. As we showed earlier, the Japanese era led to the emergence of
localised Japanese koines on some islands, largely due to the settlement colony status of some
of the islands, and the intensity of that settlement. This is less the case for the Anglophone
period, where what we see instead, for the most part, is the gradual and uneven emergence of
nativised and nativising L2 varieties, alongside - in some places (e.g. Guam), but certainly
not all (e.g. Nauru, Kiribati, Federated States of Micronesia (FSM)) - language shift. We can,
however, note the emergence of two English-influenced Pidgins!Creoles in Micronesia: Nauru
Pidgin English and Ngatikese Men's Creole.
6.9.1 Nauru Pidgin English

Nauru is a lone, formerly phosphate-covered island, 57 km south of the equator, and l300km
north-east of the Solomon Islands. First settled by Micronesians and Polynesians over
3,000 years ago, it was annexed by Gem1any in 1888 and came w1der the contro l of Australia
in 1914, then a League of Nations Mandate gave control to Australia, New Zealand and the
UK in 1919. Following a brief period of Japanese rule during World War 11, the three afore-
mentioned countries regained control under a Un ited Nations mandate until independence in
1968. The local language is Nauruan, in the Micronesian subbranch of Austronesian. English
is relatively w idely used on the islands as an L2, and Nauruan English has been described by
Mettler (forthcoming).
Siege! ( 1990) reports on the emergence of a koineised Pidgin that emerged on Nauru as a
result of a m ixture of Chinese Pidgin English (CPE) and Pacific Pidgin English (PPE). CPE
formed in the first half of the 18th century in Hong Kong, Macau and Guangzhou. PPE was
123
formed in the first half of the 19th century as a result of contact along the sandalwood, beche
de mer and other trading routes of the South Pacific. These varieties came into contact on
Nauru largely as a result of the island's intensive phosphate mining in the 20th century. Ch i-
nese workers arrived from southern C hina from 1907 onwards, and from 1925 to the early
1950s made up at least a quarter of Nauru's population, often more. Caroline and Marshall
Islanders also arrived in the 1920s, as did workers from New Guinea for a short period. From
the 1950s, most migrant workers came from the Gi lbert and Ellice Islands (now Kiribati and
Tuvalu respectively). Social interaction between the Chinese and others was lim ited by decree,
but nevertheless contact between the Chinese and others on Nauru took place in the mines and
in trading contexts. Siege! cites Ell is ( 1935) who noted that
Both Nauruans and the Banabans [another phosphate-mining island, now part of
Kiribati - KM&DB]trade regularly with the Chinese, se lling them pigs, fish, fruit
and vegetables .. . apart from sport contests and small trading operations, the races
do not mix freely in their ordinary life.
(1935: 254 in Siege! (1990: 160))
He argues that the context was idea l du ring these early years of phosphate mining- induced
imm igration for p idginisat ion and the emergence of Nau ruan Pidgin English (NPE) to
take place: "speakers of different languages in limited contact, need ing to communicate
in certa in contexts, such as trading" (1990: 160). NPE later became main ly used in com-
mercial sett ings in the many Nauruan-owned but Chinese-run shops and restaurants on
the island.
Siege! ( 1990) presents a detai led catalogue of many of the characteristics ofNPE. This co l-
lection demonstrates the highly m ixed nature of the variety and the role of CPE and PPE in its
formation. He points to features which are attested in CPE, but not PPE, PPE but not CPE, as
well as a long list of features found in NPE that are common to both, though some of Siegel's
analysis is problematised by Baker and Huber 's (2001) work that shows several features are
worldwide properties of contact Englishes. Examples of characteristics of NPE shared with
CPE but not PPE include the numera l classifier piece, as in ( 17).
( 17) de~ adilJ tli pisi ot£1

There perhaps three NUM hotel
There are maybe three hotels there
Shared with Pacific Pidgin English but not CPE are, for example, the use offellow as a suffix to
adjectives, as in ( 18), and the use of all together as a quantifier, as in ( 19) (Siege! 1990: 164-165).
( 18) him jau bigf~la srd6a

He has a big store
( 19) olgita nalu mren m6 silnJ

all the Nauruans don't have any money
Siege! further lists a number of lexica l features found in NPE but not attested in CPE or
PPE, including: jtw (existential 'there is') from Cantonese, larJ ilalJi ('crazy') from Gi lbertese
and kUmo ('pig/pork') from Nauruan. He argues that NPE is a koine formed from the dialect
mixture of the two Pidgins and other elements. Further research is needed on the contemporary
124
vibrancy of NPE, especially given the collapse of the phosphate industry from the 1980s
onwards, and the ever-dwindling nwnber of Chinese and other non-Nauruan residents on the
island. In 2011, only 1.5% of the population claimed Chinese ethnicity, 1.8% were 1-Kiribati
and 3. 1% claimed another ethnicity.
6.9.2 Ngatikese Men's Language

Ngatikese Men 's Language (henc.e forth NML, also known as Ngatikese Pidgin, Ngatikese
Creole and Ngatikese Men's Creo le), is a rather unusual- both soc io-historically and lin-
gu istically- Pidgin/Creole spoken on Ngatik, the main island of the atoll of Sapwuahfik,
145km south-west ofPohnpei in the Federated States of Micronesia (formerly the Caro line
Islands) in the Northern Pacific. It began to form in the late 1830s after a bloody massacre
on the island. In 1836, C. H. Hart, the British captain of the Lambton visited Ngatik in the
hope of trading for turtle shell. A fight broke out, and Hart and his crew retreated. A year
later, Hart set sail again for the Carol ine Islands, and his visit to Pohnpei also led to confl ict
w hich resulted in a mass slaughter of Pohnpeians, and the hanging of the chief of Mado-
lenihmw, one of the main districts of the is land. From there, remembering his encounter
the year before, he and his crew headed back to Ngatik and ki lled every adu lt male on the
island. Hart installed an Irishman, Paddy Gordon, as chief, and left a few Europeans and 20
Pohnpeians to collect turtle shell. Their descendants form the major part of the contempo-
rary community on Ngatik.
The variety, spoken mainly by men when conducting community tasks such as fishing and
house and boat building, combines some e lements of English, especially the PPE commonly
used across the South Pacific trade routes in the 19th century, along with e lements from the
Ngatikese variety of Pohnpeian, a nuclear Micronesian language in the Austronesian fami ly.
Tryon (200 I) remains the most detailed description of the Pidgin/Creole. He suggests that
" less than half of its lexicon and morphosyntactic markers" (200 I: 355) come from English
and that there has been a great deal of mixing of NML and Ngatikese Pohnpeian, presumably
suggesting some form of ongoing decreol isation.
Tryon (200 I: 348-356) points to some of the following characteristics:
• There is a total absence of long and blong as prepositions and suffix -fela, common to
many other South Pacific Pidgin!Creoles such as Tok Pisin and Bislama;
• Ngatikese Pohnpeian distinguishes between singular, dual (inclusive and exclusive) and
plural in its pronominal system. In NM L, the duals are merged with the respective plural
forms, but it continues to distinguish 1st dua l inclusive yumih from 1st dual exc lusive
me/m;
• The lexicon is very m ixed, some words deriving from English, some from Ngatikese, e.g.
boe (boy), rein (rain), nihm (name), tipakerh (tobacco), nokuht (bad), natakain (different)
from Engl ish and deke (island), malek (fowl), lahp (friend) from Ngatikese. Numbers are
based on English, e.g.faif, sefinte;
• The predicate marker ih, common to a number of Pac ific Pidgins (and which also happens
to be the third person pronow1 in Ngatikese Pohnpeian) occurs in NML only when the
subject is third person singu lar, as in (20):
(20) Tat serhpein ih mmt 11111 tat lepinpik-o

That girl PM Stay LOC DEM sand cay-DEIC
That girl stayed on that sandbar.
125
• Future tense is marked by kon (ko), as in (21), but the Pohnpe ian fonn nehn is also found:
(2 1) /rha kon ko laid

3PL FUT go fishing
They are going to go fishing.
Despite some sim ilarities with other Pacific Pidgins, Tryon (200 I: 356) argues that NM L
is un intell igible with them because of the significant Pohnpeian content. He suggests it shows
more similarity with early New South Wales Pidgin, pointing to Ngatik's strong trading con-
nections with Sydney in the 1820s and 1830s, but the decl ine of trading contact with other
Pacific islands since the demise of the whale trade.
6.10 Conclusion
In this chapter, we have reviewed the current state of research on contact varieties spoken now
or in the last century in Japan and the islands of East Asia, Russia and Micronesia. A wide range
of factors which triggered contact events- trade, colonisation, war, annexation, labour emigra-
tion and reverse immigration, even massacre- have led to the emergence of 'traditional' Pidg-
ins and Creoles, but also creoloids, mixed languages and koines, across this vast area of the
Pacific. Further research is required to assess the ongoing vitality of some of these varieties,
for example Nauruan Pidgin English, Ngatikese Men's Creole, Yilan Creole Japanese, Cham-
pon and Sakhaliner Korean koine; others we know are obsolescent (e.g. Palauan Japanese
koine, Japanese Korean koine, Ogasawara Mixed Language); others still have already disap-
peared (Yokohama Pidgin Japanese, Bamboo English, Hamamatsu English-Japanese Pidgin,
Bon in Creoloid English). Ongoing m igratory movement, however, continues to provide ferti le
ground for the ongoing focussing of other contact varieties (Brazilian Portuguese and South
American Spanish as imm igrant koines in Japan) spoken w idely today.
Notes
Ansaldo (20 l 0: 499) describes this extinct variety as being apparently restructured in such a way that
"abundant Cantonese grammar [is] mixed with predominantly English lexical sources" (see Ansaldo,
Manhews, Smith 201 1 for details).
2 For snrdies of linguistic contact in these Japanese diaspora communities, see Nishimura ( 1997) on
Canada; Hiramoto (20 10) on Hawai'i; Okumura (forthcoming) on Mexico; Tokumasu (forthcoming)
on Penr.
3 Asahi (2009), further, described the accent system of a set of two mora nouns (e.g., haslri ' bridge' LH ,
unri ' sea ' HL) read aloud by two speakers who had Jived on Sakhalin until the age 20, and then moved
to Hokkaido. One had been previously recorded in the 1930s (Hirayama 1957), but showed no change
overtime (Asahi 2009: 14).
4 Matsumoto (20 16) and Matsumoto and Brita in (20 19) also investigated Japanese loan words in
Palauan, but since many Japanese-speaking Palauans remained on the island after the colonial period,
the consequences of contact were more far-reaching than on Sakhalin.
5 Body part words include ,.,opu (mori, 012.1(meli) ' head'), nyn (nun, lr (nwun) ' eye'), and 0Jlb2)'Jlb
(ol'gul , ~~ (elkwul) ' face').
6 Nursery words include iJopu-iJopu (doridori, £2.1£2.1(tolitol i) ' peek-a-boo'), which is an expres-
sion used for play with babies and small children or to refer to ' a head movement of babies and small
children'.
7 Words that express senses and feelings include mwcrt (nemsi, '2JAI (naymsi) ' smelly'), nrw2o (tygo,
~7-j (tnrke) 'hot') and K6enqanal! (kvenchanayo, t!!~Of .9. (kwaynchanhayo) ' OK?').
8 In the examples to follow, words from Atayal are underlined.
9 Chi en and Sanada (20 IOa: 354) claimed that the use of Id! in word like denwa ' telephone' is evidence
of Japanese influence because Atayal does not have it. It is unclear whether they s imply did not
126
recognise the variable realisation o f Id! in YC spoken in Tungyueh Village or there is geographical
variation between Hanhs i and Tungyueh vi llages.
I0 Chi en and Sanada (20 IOa: 354) state that " YC draws roughly 70 percent of its vocabulary from
Japanese, roughly 30 percent from Atayal" on the basis of the Basic Vocabulary ofthe Yilan Creole in
Taiwan (Chien and Sanada 20 IOb). However, they (20 IOb: 6) excluded Mandarin-origin words with-
out explaining why this was appropriate. Consequently, although they asked their one informant the
YC word for 3,500 different items, they ended up including only I,452 words. The source language
of the 2,048 others, a majority, was ignored.
11 Chi en and Sanada (20 11) spell it - nay.
12 The word champon is now the established loanword used in Japanese to mean 'mixed', originat-
ing from Malay campur 'to mix', drawing from the early port Pidgin (Maeda 2005). The Korean-
Japanese mixed language is called Ccamppong-mal or Pipim-mal (l iterally meaning ' mixed language'
in Korean) (see Kim 2000).
13 In these examples, the first line displays the orthographic representation of Chinese and Japanese,
while the second line presents the romanisation of them (i.e., pinyin and Hepbum system respec-
tively). In both lines, the Chinese parts are underlined . PL=plural; 2PL=second person plural;
CONJ=conjunction/conjunctive; FP=final particle; GEN=genitive; GER- genmdive; ACC=accusative;
LV=light verb; CONJ=conjunction/conjunctive; INCH= inchoative; PST=past.
14 See the meaning of dekasegi in Section 2.
Further reading
Britain, D. (2018). Dialect contact and new dialect formation. In C. Boberg, J. Nerbonne and D. Watt
(eds.), Handbook ofDialectology. Oxford: Wiley BlackwelL 143- 158.
This chapter provides a theoretical overview of how new dialects are formed in contact s ituations and
helps contextualise the many examples of koines we provide here.
Britain, D. , Matsumoto, K., Hess, D., Leonhardt, T. and Lynch, S. (eds.) (forthcoming). Micronesian
Englishes. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
This book provides an extensive discussion of the history and contemporary status of English as a
contact language across Micronesia.
Matsumoto, K. (202 1). Japanese in the world: The diaspora communities. In J. Maher (ed.), Languages
and Communities ofJapan. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Chapter I.
This chapter outlines Japanese diaspora communities world-wide - historic, colonial and labour
migrant, transnational contemporary- encompassing numerous themes in the study of language and
dialect contact.
Miihlhliusler, P. and Trew, R. ( 1996). Japanese in the Pacific. In S. Wurm, P. Miihlhausler and D. T. Tryon
(eds.), Atlas of Languages of lntercultural Communication in the Pacific, Asia, and the Americas.
Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 373- 399.
T his chapter is a seminal work that has drawn widespread attention to the Pidgins, Creoles and other
contact varieties in the Asia-Pacific region that emerged as a result o f intensive contact w ith Japanese
and other colonial languages.
Related topics
Variation in Pidgin and Creole Languages; Mobility and m igration; Language Contact and
Human Dispersal; Australia and the south-west Pacific; South and South East Asia
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7
NORTH AMERICA
ANDHAWAI'I
Sarah Roberts
7.1 Introduction
North America witnessed the formation of dozens of contact languages but it has less visibility
in linguistic research than other major pidgin/creole hotspots. A much smaller proportion of the
population of Canada and the United States speaks a pidgin or creole compared to regions like
the Caribbean and Melanesia. Moreover, most of the contact languages on the continent are now
extinct, which limits the ir study to archival sources. There is also considerable heterogeneity in
their sociohistorical context and linguistic character, reflective in part of the immense linguistic
diversity of the continent. Some contact languages may pre-date European colonization, while
others developed through different waves of settlement in separate regions involving a variety of
language groups and forms of contact. The varieties run the gamut from trade jargons, extended
pidgins, creoles, mixed languages, and regional dialects. The pidgins and Creoles in Australia
and Melanesia, in contrast, developed through a single wave of colonization and may be studied
in tenns of their shared history and structure (Tryon & Charpentier 2004). The Atlantic creoles
arising from the transatlantic slave trade have similarly inspired many comparative studies.
Research on North American contact languages is primarily descriptive and historical.
Although m issionaries as early as the 17th century docwnented pidgins in the course of acquir-
ing Amerindian languages (such as Pidgin Delaware in Campanius Holm 1702), linguistic
anthropologists published valuable reports of contact media in their social contexts (see Hale
1846; Stefansson 1909; Prince 1912; Boas 1916; Jacobs 1932 for some examples). The field
of ethnohistory developed within anthropology to address concerns of ahistoricism in ethnog-
raphy of native American commw1ities (Harkin 20 l 0) and this has led to improved methods in
researching the dynamic circumstances of contact language deve lopment (Silverstein 1996).
Drechsel ( 1997), for instance, stud ied the prior sociocultural contexts of Mobil ian Jargon
through ethnohistorical approaches. In recent decades, the field of contact language studies has
intensified its investigation of archival sources, which has enriched our understanding of the
early stages of pidgins and creoles in Suriname, St. Kitts, Austra lia, Hawai' i, and elsewhere
(Baker 1993; van Rossem & van der Voort 1996; Baker & Bruyn 1998; Roberts 1998, 2005;
Arends 20 17). This has led to the rediscovery of long-extinct varieties in North America, such
as Pidgin Oj ibwe and Pidgin Heiltsuk. However, many important studies on these pidgins are
e ither unpublished (such as Grant 200 l; Cl ark 200 l; Robertson 20 15) or appear in venues
132
North America and Hawai'i
with lim ited circulation (Bakker 1994; Nichols 1995). The Atlas afLanguages aflnterculhtral
Communication in the Pacific, Asia and the Americas gives a systematic review of North
American contact languages (Wurm, Milhlhliusler, & Tryon 1996).
Beyond descriptive work, close srudy of particular varieties, such as Chinuk Wawa, has deep-
ened understanding on the linguistic narure of contact languages and their circumstances of ori-
gin (Silverstein 1972; Thomason 1983; Thomason & Kaufman 1988). Lorenzo DowThmer, the
father of Gullah srudies, was one of the first to examine African substrate influence in a creole
(Turner [ 1949] 2002), one of the most popular topics in creolistics. North American varieties are
also important for current research on language typology (Bakker 2003, 2008; van der Voort &
Bakker 20 17; Roberts & Bresnan 2008). Presently six varieties (Gullah, Louisiana Creole French,
African American English, Michif, Chinuk Wawa, and Eskimo Pidgin), as well as Pidgin Hawai-
ian and Hawai ' i Creole English, are included in the most exhaustive typological analysis of con-
tact languages (Atlas ofPidgin & Creole Language Stntchtres, or, APiCS; Michaelis et al. 20 13).
Although this chapter 's focus is on North America, it will also cover Hawai' i as wel l. The
contact languages of Hawai ' i are historically related to other Pacific varieties, although they
lie outside the Australia-Melanesia complex surveyed in Felicity Meakins's chapter (this vol-
ume). But Hawai'i was also colonized by the United States and was in contact with varieties
developing in North America. Research on linguistic developments in Hawai' i has influenced
the field of p idgin/creole studies in several ways. Reinecke ( 1969) produced one of the earliest
sociolinguistic analyses of creole genesis. Bickerton (1981) developed his strong universal-
is! model (the language bioprogram hypothesis) on the basis of fieldwork he conducted in
Hawai'i in the 1970s, which shaped the research agenda in the fie ld for two decades. Roberts
( 1998, 2005, 20 13) also conducted extensive archiva l research to bring greater clarity to the
sociohistorical context of pidgin and creole fom1ation in Hawai'i.
7.2 Overview of contact langu ages and settings

The co lonization of North America by major European powers (primarily the Spanish, French,
English, and the Dutch) in the 17th and 18th centuries transfonned the linguistic landscape
profoundly. In 1492 the continent was home to some 300 languages spoken by a variety of
indigenous nations and tribes (M ithun 200 l : l ), but hundreds of years of sett ler colonialism,
Indian removal, slavery, and imperialism led to the extinction of a majority of native lan-
guages, the fonnation of regional dialects of French and English, and the creation of pidgins,
creoles, and mixed languages across a varied range of interethnic encounters. The a im of
this chapter is to summarize the diversity of contact languages in North America and Hawai' i
(itself colonized largely by the United States) in their ecological contexts. There were three
main kinds of encounters in the formation of contact varieties: (i) contacts with native Ameri-
cans, (ii) contacts with enslaved Africans, and (iii) contacts with imm igrants.
The first contact languages in the Americas arose from interethnic encounters involving
indigenous pe.o ples. These contacts embraced different types of social interaction. One of the
earliest and most pervasive forms of linguistic contact was trade, which involved different
communicative strategies depending on the intimacy of contact: silent barter, nonverbal ges-
tures, the use of interpreters, and the development of trade jargons. Silverstein ( 1996) notes
that trade often produced communities of practice organized around a common endeavor,
requiring specialized fonns of communication among people still belonging to distinct cul-
tural commw1ities. A pidgin that is established through systematic and regular trade may then
expand its util ity to contacts beyond trade as interaction grows in intensity, such as diplomatic
relations, colonial industry, and the fom1ation of new group identities.
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Settler colonialism in North America meanwhile took various fonns and evolved through
stages of increasing confl ict. Early small-scale contacts often depended on indigenous social
structures, but the growth of co lonies promoted intertribal violence, the se izure of land for
habitation and cultivation, and eventual ethnic c leansing. Contact languages played an impor-
tant role in facilitating communication during these stages of colonization, but it should be
stressed that varieties based on Amerindian languages may have not necessarily arisen via
contact with Europeans. Although the pidgins are all known from colonial contexts, some may
date to pre-Columbian times and only later served to enable linguistic contacts with whites
(Drechsel 1996). The sociohistorical context of pidginization remains a key research question
in the swdy of these contact mediwns.
Slavery imposed dramatically different linguistic environments on the African diaspora
than experienced by native Americans in trade senings. In the case of the !alter, interpersonal
relations were more reciprocal and colonists usually needed to uti lize a form of the relevant
Amerindian language for communication. Because North America was home to hundreds of
tribes and languages, this resulted in the creation of a wide variety of trade pidgins. Native
Americans were also enslaved, particularly in the South, through wars with colonists and
allied tribes, but they were frequently exported to the West Ind ies as a fonn oflndian removal
(Gallay 2002). In contrast, a diverse popu lation of West Africans was settled into Southern
tobacco, sugar, and cotton plantations w1der slavery and they lacked any power to impose their
native languages on their masters, and so just a few varieties lexified by colonial languages
arose. Slaves also eventually lost their ancestral languages within a few generations. As a
resu lt, varieties developed through slavery have tended to be creoles instead of pidgins. They
were also historically related to creoles in the Caribbean which emerged under sim ilar circum-
stances. Yet the language spoken by most descendants of slaves in the United States, African
American English, is not currently a creole and it is not clear whether it has ever been one.
Finally immigration in the post-colonist era was responsible for the growth of a few contact
languages in North America and Hawa i' i. In the case of the latter, the importation of contr act
tabor in the sugar industry resulted in a creole vernacular. Expatriate communities of creole
speakers have also arisen in the United States, particu larly in New York City (Joseph 2002;
Winer & Jack 2002). Imm igration has furthermore produced new loca lized dialects of Euro-
pean languages, which show contact effects arising from English bilingualism.
The following presents a non-exhaustive list of languages forn1ed via interethnic contact in
North America and Hawai'i. It is worth noting that language labels do not necessari ly reflect
current lingu istic nomenclature; Mobilian Jargon for instance was not an unstable jargon but a
genuine pidgin. Also the tenn lingua Jranca may a lso refer to certain contact languages with-
out clear staws as jargons or pidgins. The rest of this chapter will explore in further detai l the
structure and social settings of many of these varieties.
Jargons and pidgins involving contact

with n ative American s and Hawaiians
Souriquois (Bakker 1988, 1989, l996a)
Montagnais Pidgin Basque (Bakker 1988, 1989, l996a)
Labrador Inuit Pidgin French (Bakker l 996a; Dorais 1996)
Powhatan Jargon (Barbour 1972, 1986)
Pidgin Massachusett (Goddard 2000)
Pidgin Delaware (Thomason 1980; Goddard 1997; Buccini 1999)
Lingua Franca Creek (Drechsel 1983)
134
Mobilian Jargon (Crawford 1978; Drechsel 1984, 1997)

Pidgin Ojibwe (Bakker 1994; N ichols 1995)
Plains Sign Language (Taylor 1996)
Trader Navajo (Wem er 1963)
American Indian Pidgin English (Mi ller 1967; Flanigan 198 1; Brand! & Macerate 1982)
Nootka Jargon (Samarin 1988; Cl ark 200 I)
Chinuk Wawa (Silverste in 1972; Thomason 1983; Lang 2008; Grant 2013)
Pidgin Heiltsuk (Robertson 20 15)
Pidgin Haida (Grant 200 I)
Broken Slavey (Bakker 1996b; Mishler 2008)
Jargon Loucheux (Bakker 1996b)
Herschel Island Pidgin Eskimo (van der Voort 1997)
Maritime Polynesian Pidgin (Drechsel 2007, 2014)
Pidgin Hawaiian (Roberts 2003, 20 13)
Jargons and pidgins involving contact with immigrants

Ca lifornia Chinese Pidgin English (Kim 2008)
Hawai'i Pidgin English (Nagara 1972; Bickerton & Odo 1976; Roberts 1998, 2005)
Mixed languages
Michif(Bakker 1997, 2013)
Navaj o-English mixed language (Schaengo ld 2004)
Creoles
Gullah (Turner [ 1949] 2002; Montgomery 1994; Klein 20 13)
Afro-Seminole Creole (Hancock 1980)
Louisiana Creole French (Neumann 1985; Klinger & Newmatm -Holzschuh 2013)
Grand Ronde Ch inuk Wawa (Zenk 1984; Grant 1996b; Larsen 2002)
Hawai'i Creole English (Bickerton 1977; Roberts 1999, 2005; Velup illai 2013)
New indigenized or localized varieties of European languages

Mohawk and Jersey Dutch (Buccini 1995; van der Sijs 2009)
Pennsylvanian Gem1an (Buffington & Barba 1954; Ke iser 20 12; Louden 20 16)
African-American English (Rickford 1999; Mufwene et al. 2013; Green 2002, 2013)
Cajun English (Dubo is & Horvath 1998, 2003)
Texas Gem1an (Boas & Pierce 20 11 ; Boas 2009)
Chicano English (Santa Ana 1993; Fought 2003)
7.3 Varieties arising from contacts involving native Americans

As the earlier list shows, contacts involving native Americans and Hawai ians produced a large
number of contact languages. This section will exam ine the circumstances of their origin and
development as well as the ir linguistic properties.
135
Saral! Roberts
7. 3.1 Sociohistorical context by region
7.3.1.1 The northeast region

Basque and Portuguese fishermen frequenting the wild cod and whale fisheries of Newfound-
land and the St. Lawrence estuary were among the fi rst Europeans (at least sinc.e the Norse in
the 11th century) to establish sustained contact with native Americans on the continent. It is
unknown when contact commenced but they were certainly active in the area by the 1530s.
Trade was principally with Montagnais, Micmac, and Jnuit tribes utilizing a Pidgin Portu-
guese, a mixed Basque-Micmac Pidgin (Souriquo is), as well as a mixed Montagnais-Basque
p idgin (Bakker 1989, 1996a: 269- 272). It is not known whether these were distinct varieties
or comprised a j argon continuum.
The 17th century saw the development of pem1anent colonies in the region. The French
settled in Quebec (New France), where they established a successfu l fur trade. At least in the
beginning, they continued to use the local Basque pidgin. Meanwhile the English planted
colon ies first in Massachusetts and Virginia and then later the whole of New England, while
the Dutch had an early foothold in New Netherland (parts of later New York and New Jersey)
and the Swedes in De laware. Algonquian languages were spoken throughout the region, along
with a few Siouan and Iroquois tongues. According to Goddard (2000: 72), there probably
were "local fonns of Algonquian-based pidgins all along the coast, though perhaps in some
areas they had deve loped only to the extent of rudimentary trade jargons." Powhatan Jargon,
docwnented in 1612 by Captain John Smith (Barbour 1972), was the mediwn of commwiica-
tion between the Powhatans and the English settlers of Jamestown, Virginia. The lexifier was
the source of more loans into American Engl ish than any other native American language
(Siebert 1975: 290). Pidgin Massachusett, meanwhile, was the contact language initially used
in contacts between the Wampanoag and the Plymouth colony (founded in 1620) and later
e lsewhere in coastal New England (Goddard 2000: 71 - 72). It was also a major source of
loanwords in American English. Then in New Netherland and New Sweden, Pidgin Delaware
(lexified primari ly by Unam i) was the major lingua franca between the Delaware Indians and
Dutch and Swedish settlers (Thomason 1980; Goddard 1997).
7.3.1.2 The southeast region

According to Goddard (2005), the southeast US was high ly diverse, embracing not only
Siouan and Muskogean languages but a lso ten smaller language families, plus a plethora of
unclassified languages that were never recorded before they became extinct. Several pidg-
ins and lingue franche are known to have existed in the region, but few of them left behind
any documentation as well. Drechsel ( 1996: 12 16-1221) provides the most deta iled survey,
mentioning contact languages and lingue franche lexified by Occaneechi, Saponi, Catawba,
1\Jscarora, Shawnee, Apalachee, and Creek.
Mobi lian Jargon (MJ), on the other hand, is one of the best-known pidgins ofNorth America.
First attested in 1699, it was widely spoken throughout the Gulf Coast in Louisiana, Missis-
sipp i, and Alabama, as well as along the Mississippi River as far north as Missouri, facilitating
communication in the regional fur trade. MJ was partially lexified by Western Muskogean
languages (with parallels mostly to Choctaw and Chickasaw) and it facilitated trade among
Muskogeans, Natchesans, Siouans, Caddoans, as well as the French, English, and other groups.
MJ survived into the mid-20th century and was studied by Crawford ( 1978) and Drechsel
( 1984, 1997). Crawford ( 1978) holds that MJ had an 18th-century origin in the Lou isiana
136
colony, but th is claim was disputed by Drechsel ( 1997) who posits a pre-colonial genesis on
sociohistorical and linguistic grounds. Grant ( 1999) concurs with the theory that MJ formed
before French contact but questions the suggestion that MJ served as a lingua franca during the
pre-Columbian Mississippian cu lture (an idea Koller 2018 explores in depth). Drechsel ( 1984,
1997) also argues that Lingua Franca Creek was an Eastern Muskogeon-lexified variety of
MJ, while Grant (1999: 194) believes it may instead have been "parallel to MJ, not a dialect
thereof," as there is little evidence of overlap between the two varieties.
7.3. 1.3 The Great Lakes and Plains

T he fur industry greatly transformed societal relations in Ontario and the Great Lakes region
in the 17th and 18th centuries. Beaver pelts were bartered for guns and other European goods,
financing the expanding colony of New France w hich encroached on lroquo is lands. Many fur
traders married native women, and colonists in general spread infe.ctious diseases that wiped
out approximately 60% of native popu lations (Warrick 2003). ln response, the lroquois waged
intertribal warfare against the other Amerindian nations allied with the French, which was fol-
lowed by maj or migrations westward and southward ofShawnee, Huron, Erie, and other refu-
gee tribes, resulting from the push-pull effects of colonialism and Indian removal policies. T he
Oj ibwe, an important ally of the French in Quebec and Ontario, expanded westward through
the Great Lakes region and disp laced other tribes. Chi ldren born from unions between Indian
women and French fur traders meanwhi le began to form a distinct ethnic category, the Metis.
There is extensive evidence of the use of Oj ibwe (Algonqu ian) as a lingua franc a through-
out the region. There was a lso an earlier medium based on Huron (Iroquoian), which Oj ibwe
replaced in the Great Lakes area (Bakker & Grant 1996: 1116). A pidginized forn1 of Oj ibwe
was attested in the 1820s at Pra irie du Chien, Wisconsin - spoken by white traders and native
speakers of Menominee (Algonquian), Winnebago (Siouan), and other languages (Nichols
1995). The Cree were another major First Nation involve.d with the fur trade and sources show
that traders from the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) generally used a fonn of Woods Cree in
parts of Ontario and Manitoba. Bakker (l996a) examined texts of Hudson's Bay Trader 's Cree
and found that it lacked the systemicity of a pidgin and rather it had the traits of an unstable
jargon. Plains Cree meanwhile "was a lingua franca on all the northern Plains and some of the
adjacent woodlands" (Bakker & Grant 1996: 1122). T he Metis, who were born from unions
of French traders and ind igenous women from various linguistic backgrounds (Oj ibwe, Cree,
Shoshone, Atsina, and others), grew up speaking both French and Plains Cree and they devel-
oped a mixed language called Michi f (Bakker 1997).
In the southem Plains, the most well-attested contact language was signed rather than spoken.
Plains Sign Language (PSL), originating possibly on the Texan Gulf Coast, spread northward
from the Panhandle to Wyoming, Montana, and North Dakota, and westward into parts of New
Mexico and Colorado (Taylor 1996). It was especially used in intertribal contacts among the
Kiowa, Comanche, Cheyenne, Arapahoe, as well as eastem tribes pushed west by mdian removal
pol icies such as the Cherokee, Delaware, and Shawnee. But PSL also had an important inner-
tribal role (such as public speaking in front of large crowds) and was also used even in family dis-
course. It accompanied spoken language often, assisting L2 acquisition in multil ingual contexts.
7.3. 1.4 The southwest

According to Drechsel ( 1996: 12 15), evidence of contact language formation in the US south-
west is elusive. This is surprising since the pueblo cu ltura l region in New Mexico was one of
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Saral! Roberts
the most dense ly populated areas in pre-Columbian North America, whi le pre-contact Cali-
forn ia was one of the most diverse areas in the Americas, with some I 00 distinct languages.
This may simply be a matter of sparse documentation, as Drechsel suggests, since Spanish
missionization suppressed native languages and took little interest in indigenous linguistic
practices. What we do know is that tribes under Spanish control acquired some forn1 of L2
Spanish. Dozier ( 1961: 141) c laims that as early as the late 17th century, Spanish "had become
a lingua franca among the Pueblos." According to Go la (20 11: 230), the mixed popu lation
laboring at the vast ranchos in 18th-century California "commw1icated with their Spanish-
speaking masters in semi-pidginized varieties of Spanish." The situation was different with the
Navajo in northeastern Arizona; their language was used as a medium between the Spanish
and Hopi (Peterson 2006: 8 1- 82) and white selllers developed an unstable variety known as
Trader Navajo by the early 20th century (Werner 1963).
Aside from the use of indigenous languages and Spanish, is there evidence of an English-
lexified contact variety spoken by southwest Ind ians? Anglophone presence in the southwest
increased following the 1848 Mexican Cession, the California Gold Rush ( 1848- 1855), the
growth of mining and ranching settlements in Nevada and Arizona, and the construction of
the transcontinenta l railroad in the 1860s. Literary depictions of interethnic interactions in the
"Old West" typically portray Ind ians using a kind of pidginized English with Anglophones.
This linguistic style endures in white cu lture as Hollywood Injun English, the stereotypical
language put on the lips of Indian characters in film and television (Meek 2006). Brandt &
Macerate ( 1982), building on the work of Miller ( 1967) and Flanigan ( 1981 ), suggested that
American Indian Pidgin English (AIPE) originated in the second half of the 19th century in
mixed frontier communities where whites, free blacks, Chinese, and indigenous tribes inter-
acted. Drechsel ( 1996) is highly skeptical of the existence of AIPE; he suggests the texts rep-
resent "a kind of European 'foreigner talk' with Indians," representing white preconceptions
more than actua l Indian speech. Further study is needed to sell le the question of AIPE's his-
torical existence and its sociolingu istic context. There has been almost no archival research on
more reliable sources like court records. One possibility worthy of further inquiry is whether
AIPE is essentia lly the same variety as Californ ia CPE, described by Kim (2008); see Sec-
tion 5 for further details.
7.3.1.5 The northwest and northern subarctic

The region corresponding to Oregon Territory and British Columbia was a "hotspot" of pidgin
formation (Robertson 2015: 12- 15). The earliest known variety was Nootka Jargon (NJ), a
simplified form of Nuuchahnulth (Wakashan) used from the 1780s onward in maritime con-
tacts between the Nuucaanul and European (chiefly British, Spanish, and Russian) fur traders
off the coast of Vancouver Island, chiefly at Nootka Sound (Samarin 1988). By 1810 sea otter
stocks were becoming depleted along Vancouver Island and the locus of Anglo-American
hunting shifted north to the Queen Charlotte Islands and south to the Columbia River water-
shed (Samarin 1988; G ibson 1992). Trading posts were established at the mouth of the Colum-
bia at Fort Astoria in 18 11 and further inland at Fort Vancouver in 1825. This is where Chinuk
Wawa (CW), also known as Ch inook Jargon, was first recorded; the oldest unambiguous sam-
ple is foWJd in an 1824 manuscript from Astoria discovered by Henry Zenk (Lang 2008). It
drew the majority of its lexicon from Lower Chinook (Penutian), Engl ish, and French, with
important contr ibutions from Nuuchahnulth (via NJ), Lower Chehalis (Salishan), and Cree.
As a general lingua franca, CW's range spread throughout Oregon Territory by 1860, British
Colwnbia by 1870, and theAlaskan panhandle by 1900 (Grant 1996a).
138
The origin of CW has long been a disputed question. One theory posits that it began as
an intertribal contact language with the Lower Chinook, such as a slave jargon (Hymes
1980; Thomason 1983; Harris 1994). The other major theory is that it formed later via
Anglo-American contact, with First Nations and Metis women (partnered with white trad-
ers) playing a crucial role (Samarin 1988; Lang 2008). CW had a comp lex phonological
system that was simplified when spoken by whites, yet it also had a sma ll but important
lexical contribution from NJ that already exhibited interference from European languages.
The pre-contact theory views the NJ component as a later accretion to an orig inally Chi-
nookan pidgin (with its typ ical Pacific Northwest phonology ind icating that Europeans and
Americans were not involved in its genesis). The post-contact theory holds that fur traders
spread NJ to the mouth of the Columbia River by 1810, where it formed the core of a new
p idgin that drew from languages in the area (later stabi liz ing when used as vernacular by
mixed -blood speakers).
A pidgin (or incipient p idgin) based on Hei ltsuk (Wakashan) was spoken along the Central
Coast, particularly at Fort McLoughl in operated by the HBC between 1833 and 1843 (Robert-
son 20 15). There was also a pidgin ized fonn of Ha ida used in contacts among whites, Haida,
and Tsimshians at the Queen Charlotte Islands (Haida Gwaii) and environs, from the 1790s to
middle of the 19th century when it was replaced by English and Chinuk Wawa (Grant 200 I).
Further north in the Dene and Eskimo cu ltural regions of the western subarctic, severa l contact
mediwns are known to have flourished before the 20th century. Broken Slavey and Loucheux
Jargon were two pidgins spoken by the Gwich'in (Athabaskan) and a mixed population of
French Canadians, Algonquian Metis, Slavey, and others in the Northwest Territories, Yukon,
and northeastern Alaska (Bakker 1996b; Mishler 2008). Finally, coastal Yukon and Alaska was
home to an Eskimo pidgin that enabled trade between the Iiiupiat and Anglophone whalers,
possibly derivative of the more complex variety used by the Gwich' in. It included loanwords
from the Pidgin Hawaiian or Maritime Polynesian Pidgin spoken by Hawaiian sailors (van der
Voort 1997).
7.3.1.6 The Hawaiian islands

Although Hawai' i is not part of North America, it is surveyed in this chapter because it lies
beyond the western Pacific focus of Meakins (this volume) and because contact there was ini-
tially embedded in the fur trade network of the Pacific Northwest, with Hawai'i later becom ing
annexed to the United States by the close of the 19th century.
Contact between Europeans and native Hawaiians began in 1778. By 1800, Americans
dominated the industry and used a highly lucrative trade route that depended on Hawai' i 's
strateg ic location. From around 18 10 to 1825, Hawa i' i was the chief producer of san-
dalwood until the resource was exhausted; whaling then became the leading industry in
Hawai' i unti l about 1860, which promoted the growth of port towns like Hono lulu as hubs
of commerce. The fur merchants using Hawai'i as a base of operations spoke NJ and CW
in lingu istic contacts in the Pacific Northwest and CPE at the other end of the trading route.
In Hawai' i they used primarily a pidgin ized form of Hawaiian. The earl iest lexical features
were fi rst attested in 1789 (Roberts 2013: 119). It is important to recognize that simi lar
featu res occurred in p idginized Polynesian in Tahiti, Aotearoa (New Zealand), Marque-
sas, and e lsewhere. Drechsel (2007, 20 14), drawing on a comprehensive ethnohistorical
approach, posits a Maritime Polynesian Pidgin that began as foreigner-talk Tahitian in
the 1760s and eventually developed into a stab le pidgin that served as a genera l lingua
franca in the Eastern Pacific for the first half of the 19th century. However it is important
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Saral! Roberts
to recognize that documentary sources show a co-existence of early Pidgin Hawaiian and
an Anglophone jargon - the former as a general lingua franca and the latter used ma inly
by Hawai ians with particu larly intimate relations with whites, w ith prevalence growing by
the 1840s when increasing numbers of Hawaiians sought employment in towns and aboard
ship (Roberts 2005).
7.3.2 Linguistic character of native Am erican pidgins

Amerindian languages used in interethnic contacts were morphosyntactically comp lex, dis-
playing e ither polysynthesis or agglutination. Contact languages based on these languages
are thus typologically significant, revea ling the types of structures simplified in pidginization
as well as those that are retained. This section presents sentences from many of the contact
languages discussed earlier.
POWHATAN JARGON
(I) Ke-katen Pokahontas patiaquagh ningh tanks manotyens, neer mowchick
2SG-tell P. bring two little basket-PL ISG many
rawrenock audowgh
beads gtve
'Tell Pocahontas to bring two little baskets, I will give her a lot of beads
(to make a wampum belt).' ([1609] Barbour 1986: 139)
PIDGIN MASSACHUSETT
(2) Malta neen wockonet nomen Winsnow
NEG I SG again see W.
'I w ill never see Winslow again.' ([1623] Winslow 1624: 28)
PIDGIN DELAWARE
(3) Mcilla nyr kommota
NEG ISG steal
'I w ill not take away [your knife].' ([1648] Thomason 1980: 172)
These pidgin varieties eliminated most of the polysynthetic morphology of Algonquian;

independent pronouns take the place of person affixes (an exception is 2SG ke- in the first
example) and clause-inital ma//a replaces the negative infix. One important theoretical ques-
tion is whether these p idgins arose from European contact or date to the pre-Co lumbian era.
Thomason ( 1980) proposed that Pidgin Delaware originally formed in contacts between Iro-
quois and Delaware speakers, pointing to Unam i-derived features like OV order and negator
placement. Buccini ( 1999) however found that many syntactic features in the pidgin are expli-
cable as L2 transfer from Dutch and later English.
MOBILIAN JARGON
(4) Baspo eno baste taha
knife I SG cut finish
'I've cut [it] with a knife.' (Drechse11 997: 120)
MJ was morphologically analytic, losing the bound morphology of its lexifiers (with cer-
tain exceptions, such as the negative suffix -kSo). It showed a preference for a typologically
140
marked OsV word order (s = subject pronoun), which cannot represent L2 interference from
French, nor does it refle.ct the Muskogean SOY basic pattern; rather it seems to follow the
ordering of segments in the agglutinative parad igm, with objects preceding verbs prefixed
with person inflections.
PIDGIN OJIBWE
(5) ( Ca 'wween nin ojey warberma 1 a 'nvayyor tarbinna 'ck)
Gaawin niin ogii waabamad awnya odaabaanaak
NEG I SG PST look.at anyth ing sleigh
' I did not see anything but sleighs.' ([1788] Long 1791: 285)
Here the animate forn1 of the verb occurs though it has an inanimate object (the animate
form of the indefinite pronoun also occurs instead of gegoo 'anything'). The verb lacks nega-
tive concord, it has a fossilized d irect suffix -ad or -aad (requ iring a 2SG or 3SG subject), and
it is in conjunct fonn. The tense/aspect preverb also functions as a past marker with a non-
conjunct 3rd person o- prefix.
CHINUK WAWA(KAMLOOPS BC)

(6) Alta naika cako= komtaks pus kah mamuk= pipa kapa maika
now JSG INGR know IRR where CAUS letter to 2SG
'Now I've learned where to write to you.' ([ 1890s] Robertson 20 11 : 147)
CHINUK WAWA (GRAND RONDE, OREGON)
(7) Alta ixt stin tik ltimiyai ytika hai munk ftisfus
now one day DEF old.lady 3SG IPF CAUS mce
'Now one day the old lady was cleaning up things.' ([ 1930] Jacobs 1932: 46)
Si lverste in (1972) believed that CW Jacked an autonomous grammar but Thomason

( 1983) showed that it was a genu ine p idgin with distinct phonological and syntactic ru les.
As CW spread beyond its original range, it developed new regional varieties. Both Kam-
loops CW and Grand Ronde CW (a nativized variety) show evidence of considerable struc-
tura l e laboration. In (6), there is irrea lis complementizer pus (< Pidgin English suppose
'if') and proclitics for the ingressive(< cake 'come') and the causative. The creolized CW
from Gran de Ronde had simi lar features like causative munk and imperfective lwi ( < hayu
'many, much'), but it a lso developed reduced forms of pronouns (e.g. na 'ISG' < naika)
wh ile uti lizing the full forms in focus constructions; in addition it grammaticalized the
deictic pronoun tikuk 'this, that' into re lative c lause marker uk (Zenk 1984; Grant 1996b;
Larsen 2002).
PIDGIN HAIDA
(8) (Kaigan stuttle king Hawaii)
Gyaagan sdahll qmg Hawa ii
I SG want see H.
'I want to see Hawai'i.' ([1829] Green 1830: 344)
T his sentence shows that Pidgin Haida lost bound morphology (including TMA, clitic pro-
nouns, and the infinitive infix), as well as used the possessive pronoun gytwgan 'my' as the
basic I SG pronoun, in place ofagentive ISG h/aa.
14 1
Saral! Roberts
HERSCHEL ISLAND PIDGIN ESKIMO

(9a) ( 0 -mf-ak-piik a- /ak '-tok pT-cii 'k-tok a-woti-a)
Umiaqpak iglaqtuq pisuktuq uvalJa
Ship go want ISG
INUPIATUN ESKIMO
(9b) (Gm '-1-ak piix-mox-6 'k-tuiia)
Umiaqpak -muk -suk -tul)a
ship go.toward DESID ISG
'I want to board your ship.' ([1909] Stef{msson 1909: 218)
As (9) shows, Pidgin Eskimo el iminated the polysynthesis of Jnupiatun; the independent
pronoun here replaces the ISG suffix -tw;a (with verbs end ing with the inappropriate 2SG
-h1q), and there is no inflection for desiderative mood nor noun incorporation. Although word
order parallels the Jnupiatun affixation parad igm in this instance, SOY order was more com-
mon in Stefansson ( 1909).
These examples show that theories of contact language fonnation cannot afford to ignore
the typological richness of North American pidgins.
7 A Creoles and dialects of the African diaspora

Labor in the early colonies of the first half of the 17th century (largely in the homestead
phase or societe de habitation) depended on European and African indentured servants as
well as captured native Americans (who were increasingly exported as slaves to the West
Indies). Large-scale importation of enslaved Africans began in Charleston (South Carol ina) in
the 1670s and then spread through the British and French colonies of the Deep South which
adopted p lantation economies with tobacco, cotton, and sugar as cash crops. Many of the early
slaves were introduced from the West Indies and thus were famil iar with the creoles spoken
there but later plantation owners preferred recently captured slaves from Africa. Slavery con-
tinued until the Civi l War of the 1860s.
Gullah (Geechee) is an Anglophone creole spoken on the coasta l plain and Sea Islands
of South Carol ina and Georgia. It derives from the speech used on 18th-century rice planta-
tions which drew most of their captive labor from the rice-growing windward coast of West
Africa. In the 1740s blacks in South Carolina outnwnbered whites by 2: 1 and by the end of
the century they comprised 80% of the population in coastal areas (Holm 1989: 493). Gu l-
lah has a clear affinity to Engl ish-lexifier Caribbean creo les, with such features as Jocative
de, past tense bin, progressive/durative da, completive done, habitua l does, and 2PL pronoun
una, with !ecta l variation overlapping with AAE (Troike 2003). An example ofTMA marker
combinations can be found in ( I 0). It also is the source of a derivative variety, Afro-Seminole
Creole, which formed in the 18th century in a population of maroons who joined with Indian
tribes in Georgia and Florida (Hancock 1980). They eventually migrated to Texas, Mexico,
and the Bahamas.
GULLAH
(I0) A been [5\Vine gii ya de money
3SG PST FUT give 2SG the money
'I was going to/wou ld have given you the money.' (Klein 2013: 144)
142
Outside oflowland South Carolina and Georgia, black slaves accounted for a much smaller
proportion of the population (e.g. about20% in Arkansas by the 1840s), and likely had more
contacts with white indentured servants and overseers speaking nonstandard English dialects
(such as Hiberno-English). The ir descendants speak African American English, today spoken
by most working- and midd le-class blacks in the US. The historical background of AAE is
one of the most intensely smdied questions in soc iolinguistics. One the.ory is that AAE is a
post-creole and originally more close ly resembled Gullah; however the majority view is that
AAE drew primarily on regional varieties of British English and was never a creole (Rickford
1999; Mufwene et al. 2013; Green 2002; We ldon & Moody 2015). For instance, habitua l or
consuetudinal be (as in Sue be singing 'Sue usually sings,' Green 2013: !51) has been traced
to Ulster English. Important clues on the early stages of AAE can be found in recordings of
former slaves as well as the speech in expatriate commw1ities in Liberia, Nova Scotia, and
Samana (Dom inican Republic). Another disputed question is whether AAE underwent dialec-
tal divergence during Post-Reconstruction segregation. Beyond these issues, the contemporary
status of AAE as one of the most important dialects of the US makes it the best smdied of the
varieties surveyed in this chapter. Research on policies pertaining to the role of AAE in educa-
tion have pertinence to similar work in the Caribbean (see Migge, th is volume).
Louisiana Creole French, with fewer than 7,000 speakers today, has a complex history. It
arose in the 17th century whi le the Louisiana colony changed hands several times between
France, Spain, and the US. Large-scale sugar agriculture under the Spanish depended on tabor
from African (predominantly Senegalese) slaves, who comprised 45% of the popu lation by
1810. Th is was after Louisiana received a large influx of population from Saint-Domingue
(modern Haiti), introducing speakers of Haitian Creole into the community. Yet historical
sources show that Louisiana Creole was already in existence and had likely jelled by that time
(Newnann 1985; Klinger & Newmann-Holzschuh 2013). It bears some resemblance with the
creole French of the Lesser Anti lles (with TMA markers like past te, progressive ape, fumre
va and ale, etc.), but it also shares features with Cajun French owing to long-tenn bilingual-
ism. Much research on LCF centers on dialectal variation and its implications for creole gen-
esis (Speedy 1995; Klinger 2000).
LOUISIANA CREOLE FRENCH

( l l) Li t ap jwe ken mo vtm
3SG PST PROG play when lSG come
' He was playing when I came.' (Klinger & Newmann-Holzschuh 20 13:234)
7.5 Pidgins and Creoles arising from immigr ation

Immigration in the 19th and 20th centuries produced new regional dialects like Texas German
and Chicano English (Boas 2009; Fought2003), but in a few cases pidgins arose in immigrant
communities. Kim (2008) uncovered documentation of a California variety of Chinese Pidgin
English (CCPE), including an 1887 court transcript. It was spoken in San Franc isco and other
towns with significant Chinese populations. CCPE shows virtually the same features claimed
for AIPE, includ ing the transitive marker -um and the quantifier/intensifier heap 'a lot, very.'
The latter was perhaps the defining feature of AIPE and not only did it occur in CCPE, but it
also was diffused to Hawai'i by California Chinese (Roberts 2005: 125).
The massive importation of contract tabor also led to the development of two pidgins and
a creole in Hawai'i. Beginning in 1876, large numbers of Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese,
and later, Koreans, Puerto Ricans, and Filipinos imm igrated to the islands to work on sugar
143
Saral! Roberts
plantations. Collectively they began to outnwnber the native Hawaiian population within a
decade. Pidgin Hawaiian (PH), a restructured version of the contact language discussed in
Section 3.1.6, became the language of the fie lds and constituted a general lingua franca unti l
the mid-1890s when it went into decline after the 1893 overthrow of the government (Roberts
20 13). The sentence in ( 12) is an example of PH used in an encounter between Portuguese and
Japanese immigrants:
PIDGIN HAWAllAN
( 12) Kela lio oe inaha akahi eke pa/ani
DEF horse 2SG break one sack bran
'Your horse tore into a sack of bran.' ([1892] Roberts 2013: 122)
PH co-ex isted with Hawai ' i Pidgin English (HPE), which flourished in the urban con-
text where contact with Anglophones was most intense. When HPE replaced PH on p lanta-
tions, it was repidginized with considerable PH lexical residue and Japanese SOY word order.
This was the variety smdied by Bickerton and Odo (1976), which differed considerably from
Hawai'i Creole Engl ish (HCE). This fonned an empirical basis for Bickerton's bioprogram
hypothesis (Bickerton 1981 ), which had an enom1ous impact on the field of creolistics in
the 1980s. Roberts (2005) however did not find historical support for Bickerton's analysis
of HCE's development. She concluded that the cre.ole evolved over two generations and did
not nativize fully until the third generation (grandchildren of immigrants). It also developed
many of its distinctive features under Hawaiian, Portuguese, and Chinese substrate influence.
The example in (13) of for embedding a clause with an overt subject reflects Hawaiian and
Portuguese models:
HAWAI'I CREOLE ENGLISH

(13) My mother tell for I stop home
'My mother says I must stay home.' ([1921] Roberts 2005: 194)
( 14) He been stay teasing me.

' He was teasing me.' ([1937] Roberts 2005: 190)
The creole also developed an imperfective marker stay, with properties para lleling the
Portuguese Jocative verb estar (S iegel 2008). Since Hawai' i became a state in 1959, HCE
has w1dergone considerable decreolization and it rema ins stigmatized in education and other
professional sectors. Current research has been centered both on its early history as well as its
present status (Roberts 1999, 2005; Velupillai 20 13; Grama 20 15).
7.6 Conclusion
The contact languages of North America and Hawai' i are highly diverse and have contributed
enormously to the general understanding of processes of linguistic change in simations of
interethnic contact. With continued archiva l research and contemporary fieldwork, the fumre
shows much prom ise in advancing our knowledge of the structure and sociohistorical context
of known varieties. This information would further improve theoretical models on creole
formation, variation, and change. Current debates on the typology of contact languages in
particu lar would benefit from further descriptive work on w1derdocumented varieties.
144
Further reading
Finegan, E. and Rickford, J. (eds.) (2004) Language in the USA: Themes for the Twenty-First Century.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
This intermediate-level introduction helps students understand the sociolinguistic dynamics o f
AAVE and creoles in the United States as well as regional dialects, Spanish, and imm igrant
languages.
Gray, E. G. and Fiering, N. (eds.) (2000) The Language Encoumer in the Americas, 1492- 1800: A Col-
lection of Essays. New York: Berghahn Books.
This edited volume explores the transformative etrects of colonization on the indigenous linguistic
landscape throughout the Americas.
Wurm, S., MHhlhausler, P. and Ttyon, D. (eds.) ( 1996) Atlas ofLanguages ofInter-Cultural Commrmica-
rion in the Pacific, Asia and the Americas. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
This reference book contains several articles by Anthony P. Grant, Emanuel Drechsel, Peter Bakker,
and Allan R. Taylor which collectively provide the most exhaustive survey o f Amerindian-lexifier
contact languages in North America.
Related topics
Australia and the South West Pacific; Caribbean, South and Central America; The Typology of
Pidgin and Creole Languages; Child Acqu isition of Pidgins and Creoles; Diachronic Studies
of Pidgins and Creoles
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149
8
CARIBBEAN, SOUTH AND
CENTRAL AMERICA
Bettina Migge
8.1 Introduction
The Caribbean, South and Central America are a vast region that has been significantly affected
by European colonial expansion. The experience was by no means homogeneous across the
region. While the latter two regions were mainly dominated and influenced by Spain and
to a lesser extent Portugal (South America), the Caribbean and the Guiana region of South
America were subject to expansionist activities from a number of European nations (Denmark,
England, France, Netherlands, Spain). Official pol itical dependency on Europe also lasted
much longer and still continues in some cases in the Caribbean and the Guiana region whi le it
ended for the most part in the early 19th century in the other two regions. In all three regions,
European expansionist activities focused on exploitation of the region's natural resources and
led to a significant reconfiguration of the population. Native American peoples from the pre-
Columbian period were decimated and replaced by people from outside of the region (enslaved
Africans, indentured Asians and Europeans and Europe-descent popu lations). Contact between
these population groups gave rise to new ones, includ ing new cultural and linguistic patterns.
The latter are the subject of th is chapter. On the one hand, it will sketch the types of contact
patterns, the circumstances that brought them about and their outcomes and, on the other hand,
it will present the field investigating them, outl ining the issues, approaches, controversies, and
main findings.
The English-official Caribbean (that is, the parts of the Caribbean where English has offi-
c ial status) has taken a lead role in pursuing research on Pidgin and Creole languages (P/Cs)
over the past few centuries. According to Holm (1988: 17-18), Moravian missionaries began
describing Creoles in the 1730s for the purpose of re ligious conversion, beginning in Suri-
name and the island ofSt Thomas. By 1770 they published the first-ever granunar of a Creole,
name ly the variety spoken in St Thomas and St Cro ix. Much later in the 20th century, the Car-
ibbean was also instrumental in consolidating the field into an academic discipline as the first
two major con ferences on P/Cs were held in 1959 and 1968 at the Mona, Jamaica, campus of
the University of the West lndies (Kouwenberg & Singler 2008: 2- 3). These two conferences
(see the proceedings in Hymes 197 1) were pivotal in garnering scholarly attention to P/Cs as
respectable subjects of linguistic research. Many leading scholars in the field also either origi-
nated from the English-official Caribbean or undertook research there.
ISO
Caribbean, South and Central America
From 1972 onwards the Soc iety for Caribbean Linguistics and later the Society for Pidgin
and Creoles Lingu istics (fow1ded in 1989) has supported research and app lied goa ls in effect-
ing positive change in Creole-speaking communities, particu larly in the Caribbean. South and
Central America, outside of Suriname and Guyana, has had lower prominenc.e in the field.
This is however slowly changing due to a greater interest in Spanish-based and minority P/Cs
which has brought add itional territories, languages, and contact settings into focus (e.g. Lipski
2005; Schwegler 2000; McWhorter 2000). There are also a number of French-official coun-
tries in the region. Research on French-based P/Cs has been conducted in part through the
Comite International des EhJdes Creoles founded in 1976.
The remainder of this contribution is structured as follows. Section 2 gives a very broad
overview of the three regions. Section 3 fi rst presents the types of contact settings that have
existed in the region and then d iscusses linguistic details re lating to some of the more emblem-
atic outcomes of contact. The main lines of linguistic research and theoretical debates (Creole
genesis, sociolinguistics of Pidgins and Creoles (P/Cs) and applied linguistics issues) are dis-
cussed in Sections 4-6.
8.2 A snapshot of the geographical and

historical context of the region
The three regions (Figure 8.1) do not form a natural entity due to differences in their physical
makeup and their partially different historical developments. I broadly present each and then
summarize some important properties. The Caribbean Sea is the seventh largest body of water
in the world, located between Central and South America (primarily Venezuela) to the south,
the Gulf of Mexico to the west, and the North Atlantic Ocean to the north and east. It encom-
passes several island chains (totalling approximately 7000 islands, islets, and cays), including
the Greater Antilles to the north and the Lesser Antilles to the east.
Between 1630 and 1770 Caribbean territories w1derwent an intense period of colonization,
with sustained conflict and rivalry between European powers, lead ing to frequent changes in
ownership of colonies driven by the pursu it of profits in sugar agriculture and from slavery.
By the end of this period all Caribbean lands had come under European control with territorial
acquisition shaped by the slave trade economy (Higman 2011: 109- 112). Native American
populations of Arawak and Carib origin were effectively replaced by African and European
populations, with European languages and Creoles arising from contact thenceforth dominat-
ing the region.
Even after the end of slavery, the Caribbean region continued under the yoke of European
colon ialism in contrast to much of Central and South America. By 1900 only Cuba, Haiti and
the Dominican Republic had achieved independence. Even today only 13 of the 24 polities of
the Caribbean have fully independent representation in the United Nations (Higman 2011: 7).
The others ' belong' to other nations such as the United Kingdom, France, the United States,
Colwnbia, and Venezue la. Thus Guadeloupe and Martinique are insular regions of France,
Puerto Rico is a territory of the U.S., and Monserrat and the Cayman Islands are British Overseas
Territories. Caribbean countries and territories also share populations and po litical member-
ships with Central and South American nations (includ ing Suriname, Guyana, French Guiana,
Belize, Panama, Costa Rica, and Nicaragua). Jama icans, for example, were employed in the
railroad construction project in the Limon region of Costa Rica in the late 19th century and
participated in the construction of the Panama Cana l in the early 20th century.
Central America currently consists of seven independent nation states and is home to no
less than 45 indigenous popu lation groups (Foster 2007: xi). It is bordered by Mexico to the
151
Gulf of
Mexico 'i>
N~~ laAHr:AS I J •
Turks and Caicos

"'P Islands ATLANTIC OCEAN
c!J
I Cayman lslans I
t:l:>
- Caribbean sea -
~
; ;·
"'
N
• IBAABADOSI "'
s:
~-
I GRENADA I "'
'
TRINIDAD&
TOBAGO
VENEZUELA
PACIFIC OCEAN COLOMBIA

• Bogola
o 250 500 no 'IOOC)I(m
".. --
""' c...,.., --
300 CIO 500 eoo ,..... A
BRAZIL
Figure 8. 1 Map of parts of South America. Central America, and the Caribbean.
north and Columbia to the south, functioning as a bridge between the two American subcon-
tinents with the Pacific Ocean to the west and the Atlantic Ocean to the east. Five of the states
of Central America, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, El Sa lvador, Costa Rica, share a long
history because under Spanish ru le they were administered as part of the Kingdom of Guate-
mala for severa l centuries.
During Spanish rule, the native Amerindian popu lation was decimated throughout the
region and except for Costa Rica, a two-tier society emerged where peop le of Spanish origin
constituted the dominant class and everyone else, comprising Amerind ians, Mestizos (peo-
p le of mixed Spanish-Amerind ian origin), and enslaved Africans made up the lower class
(Booth & Wa lker 1993: 19). After independence in 1823, these states formed a short-lived
federation which fell apart around 1838. The two-tiered society endured and the economy
continued to focus on production and export of agricu ltural products such as coffee, which
concentrated power into the hands of the elite and forced Mestizo locals into work on these
p lantations.
The most common language in Central America is Spanish in its various forms, but there
are also millions of speakers of Miskito (Misuma lpan) and Mayan languages, and English-
based Creoles are found in Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama. Un like other Centra l Ameri-
can countries, Belize was governed as a British colony from 1840 to 1981. Linguistically it
resembles Caribbean countries with English-based Creoles, with the Creole-speaking popula-
tion arising as a consequence of the logwood trade (Escure 2013a). English serves as the offi-
cial medium of instruction in schools and language of government, Span ish is wide ly spoken
as a first language among Mest izo populations, and Gari funa (a mixed Arawakan-Carib
language belonging to a people originally from St Vincent and Dominica with African and
indigenous ancestry) has smaller speech communities in Honduras, Guatemala, and Belize.
Panama differs from other Central American nations in initially joining forces with the southern
Federation (Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and Venezuela) after independence. Panama
remained linked to Colombia after the Federation 's dissolution and on ly ach ieved independ-
ence from Colombia in 1903. In subsequent years many people from the Caribbean and further
afield came to Panama to support the massive effort of build ing the Panama Canal which was
officially opened in 1920. Most of its population speaks Spanish but small communities on
the Caribbean coast speak both vernacular English and a Creole originating with immigrant
populations from Jamaica and other Caribbean islands.
South America itself spans a vast subcontinent stretching from the Panama-Colwnbia bor-
der to the southern tip of Chile and is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, the Gulf of Mexico,
and Pacific Ocean. lt includes 12 independent countries (the largest of wh ich is Brazil), two
British territories, and an overseas department and region of France (French Gu iana). The
countries colonized by Spain as we ll as Brazil, colonized by Portugal, are often treated as
a w1it under the label of Latin America as they share colonial and religious simi larities (the
impact of the Catholic Church) but are still socially and economically diverse.
After independence, countries in the main exploited the ir natural resources (mining of sil-
ver, gold) and engaged in agricultural activities (e.g. sugar plantations in the Guiana region
and Brazil) to supply European and North America markets. This led to the emergence of
p lantation and mining societies and the subordination of indigenous societies, destroying the ir
social structure and trad itional livelihood. The extent of this destruction d iffered across this
vast region, depending on the nature of exploitable resources. Indigenous rural populations,
African-descent populations, and later also immigrants from Europe provided the labour for
the mines and plantations, and eventua lly also contributed to the rapid growth of the cities.
South American states were led by European-descent elites and the relative power as well as
! 53
Bettina Migge
the re lative proportions of indigenous, European immigrant populations and African-descent

populations differed widely from country to country (Archetti et al. 1987; Bakewell 1998).
The main languages spoken are varieties of Spanish and Portuguese (Brazil) and native Ameri-
can languages have been under threat since colonial times.
The Guiana region (French Guiana, Suriname and Guyana) differs from Latin American
states in that they were colonized by France, the Netherlands and England and also stayed
under colonial ru le well into the !alter part of the 20st century; French Guiana is still an over-
seas region of France. All three are ethnically d iverse and in all of them indigenous American
populations constitute tiny minorities of the population while African-descent populations are
dominant though changes have occurred since independence with Asian imm igrant popula-
tions constituting increasingly larger proportions of the soc iety in Suriname and Guyana. All
three countries are linguistically very diverse and there is migration between them in that
Afro-Guyanese have migrated to Suriname and French Guiana and Afro-Surinamese Maroons
make up an important section of the French Guianese population (see Migge & Leglise 2015;
Pric.e & Price 2003). Besides European languages that serve as the main media in the official
domain, Creole languages play an important role in society. Asian immigrant languages and
Amerindian languages are under pressure from both these languages.
In summary then, whi le these regions are quite different, there are broad sim ilarities in
some respects. First, in the pre-Columbian period, indigenous populations of Native Ameri-
cans inhabited most of the territories. Second, these flourishing societies came under pressure
from European nations seeking wealth and larger zones of influence starting with Christo-
pher Colwnbus's first expedition in 1492. Third, whi le 'early' colonizers, Spain and Portugal,
focused their activities mainly on Central and South America, ' later ' ones (Britain, France,
Netherlands) concentrated on the Caribbean and the Guyana region. Fourth, colonization
completely changed populations in all three regions. As indigenous populations diminished
particu larly in the Caribbean but also in South American plantation economies, colonizers
replaced them with enslaved Africans from the Senegambia, Sierra Leone, Windward Coast,
Bight of Ben in, and Gold Coast (Eltis 20 18). African-descent populations quickly outnum-
bered indigenous peoples and European-descent populations in Caribbean and some South
American colonies. In Central and South America Mestizo populations outnumbered indig-
enous American populations. Fifth, in some Caribbean and South American countries, labour-
ers from India (Guyana, Trinidad, Tobago) or India, China, and Indonesia (Suriname) replaced
African-descent plantation labourers after the end of slavery, further diversifying societies.
Sixth, societies were stratified on the basis of race or ethnicity and occupation, with European-
descent populations constituting the local el ites even after independence. Seventh, one group
that emerged across the Caribbean and South America were Maroons. They were communities
formed by enslaved people who ran away from plantations to escape slavery. They "dotted
the fringes of p lantation America from Brazil to the southwestern United States, from Peru to
the American South" (Price 1996: I). In some co lonies, such as some French islands, com-
munities were very small and did not much affect the colony while in others, such as Suri-
name, communities were large and destabilized the plantation economy. Planters and colonial
administrations had to invest a lot of resources to fight them because they usually sell led in
inaccessible areas and were skilled in warfare. At times, colonies had to sign treaties that
guaranteed Maroon communities' territorial rights, freedom, and the provision of econom ic
goods (Price 1996: 3). Communities initially consisted of large proportions of men, African-
bom persons, and ski lled laborers. They remained dependent on the plantation economy for
some of the ir goods and initially also for new members, suggesting that they were not socially
isolated but that their social and language practices impacted colonial ones and vice versa. All
!54
communities are nowadays under pressure to integrate into ma instream soc iety, but generally
conceive of their commun ities as separate cultural entities.
The contact and mixing of populations over many generations has produced a rich tapestry
of language contact and given rise to new languages. This will be broadly sketched in the next
section.
8.3 Contact languages in South and Central America

and th e Caribbean
Bilingual ism and multil ingua lism as well as language contact phenomena have been common
in the three regions since the pre-Columbian era. A general overview of the kinds of contact
settings and outcomes that existed in the three regions is presented in Section 3.1 and exam-
p les of some linguistic features of the most emblematic contact languages of these regions,
European-based Creoles, are discussed in Section 3.2.
8.3.1 An overview of contact settings and languages

Some contact settings and outcomes such as the formation of European-based Creoles are
better described than others. The pre-Co lombian period involved contact between Native
American peoples in which some Amerindian languages served as linguae francae. Quechua,
the language of the Incas, endures as a lingua franca in mu ltip le locales and some of these
varieties "may have originated as pidginized varieties of an Inca trade language, for example
Ecuadorian Quechua" (Versteegh 2008: 172). The re lated languages 1\Jpi and Guarani came
to be widely used by speakers of other languages in the Amazon area. Cocama possibly arose
as a Tup i-based Creole in the 15th century from contact between 1\Jpi and Arawakan speakers,
drawing on an older Quechua-based pidgin (Eriksen & Ga lucio 2014: 191). Nheengatu (Lin-
gua Geral), another 1\Jpi lingua franca, arose by the 17th century from intense contact with
Portuguese colonizers. Me ira and Muysken (2017: 205) argue that Carib Coastal Pidgin or
Coastal Karinya Pidgin (a likely source for Island Carib Creole) was the main Pidgin language
on the northern Coast of South America and in the Guiana region, used first between Arawak
and Karii\a speakers, but then extended to French contacts, and finally with the Wayana and
Aluku/Boni Marrons further inland. Further south, Mapudungun served as a lingua franca
for parts of Chile and the Pampas under the expansion of the Mapuche from the 17th to 19th
centuries (Opere 2008: 65).
The foregoing shows that some languages that initially served inter-Amerindian contacts
were later extended to contacts with Europeans, with new contact languages developing from
the new lingu istic landscape. One of these is Media Lengua, an intricate mixture of Span ish
and Quechua spoken in Ecuador (Muysken 2013). Several trade Pidgins lexified by Span ish
also arose in the 18th and 19th centuries in the Ecuadoran Upper Amazon, such as Pioje Pidgin
Spanish (Muysken 1980), which had SOY word order, drew basic pronouns from the posses-
sive, and used the gerund as the main form of the verb. Nambikwara-Portuguese Pidgin in
the early 20th century facilitated communication between Nambikwara Ind ians and Brazilian
government workers employed along the telegraph lines (Uvi-Strauss 1955). A further exam-
p le is Patagon ian Jargon Spanish, a trade jargon used between the Tehuelche and the British,
Americans, French, and Spanish engaged in the seal ing and whaling industries in the late 18th
and early 19th centuries (Roberts 201 4).
With the onset of the plantation economy in the Caribbean and parts of South America,
which involved large popu lations of enslaved Africans working on European-owned sugar
!55
Bettina Migge
plantations, European-based Creole languages emerged out of the contact between various
European languages (Dutch, English, French, Spanish) as spoken by European owners and
overseers, and African languages spoken by the disp lac.ed populations. While they involve
lexical items mostly derived from these European languages, the ir structures often do not at
all or only partially match those of the European languages. In some cases, they show various
degrees of structural resemblances to the (African) languages of their creators or are different
from both; see Section 4. These languages are still widely used across the Caribbean and South
American region and some of them, such as Jamaican and other English-based Creo les, were
a lso transplanted to other areas in Central America, such as Costa Rica, Panama, and Nicara-
gua, where they spurred the development of new contact varieties. They function as w1official
national languages in most countries as they were also acquired by other population groups
after the end of slavery. Creole languages, espec ially those spoken by Maroon populations,
a lso entered into contact with Amerind ian languages due to economic contacts between the ir
speakers and gave rise to new mixed languages such as the Trio-Ndyuka Pidgin (Huttar &
Ve lantie 1997; Meira & Muysken 20 17) from Suriname and the Wayana-Aluku Pidgin (Dupuy
2007) from French Guiana. In addition, there is Garifuna spoken in Belize which combines
Arawak with lexical material from Carib and European languages (Escure 2004).
In the post-slavery period when Asian labourers were brought in to replace enslaved Afri-
cans on the p lantations, Asian languages came into contact with Creole languages and Euro-
pean languages in some countries (such as Javanese in Suriname and Bhojpuri in Guyana,
Trinidad, and Suriname), giving rise to localized Asian varieties (Mohan 1990; Yakpo 2017b;
Villerius 2017; Rojas-Berscia & Shi 2017). However, processes of language shift towards
loca l Creole languages and ex-colonial European languages are often leading to the decline of
these languages.
Another kind of contact language forn1ation involves convergence between an existing
Creole and a European language that was not involved in the Creole's original formation.
A case in point is the vernacular English ofSt Lucia which arose through contact with Kweyol,
the local French-lexifier Creole (Garret! 2003), and English, the new official language. Also,
postcolonial education systems, migration, and mass med ia have brought socially separated
groups and/or languages in closer touch with each other such as Haitians, Guyanese, and Bra-
z ilians with Surinamese Maroons (Migge & Leglise 20 13) and speakers of Sranami, an lndic
contact language, with Suriname's national language Sranan Tongo (Yakpo 20 17b). These
contact processes have brought about new Creole varieties that serve as lingua franca and show
various types of contact-induced changes. Postcolonial contact settings have also induced the
emergence of new varieties of European ex-colonial languages (see Deuber 20 14; Lacoste
2017 on English; Chaudenson 1998; Leglise 2003 on French; de Kle ine 2007; Muysken 2017
on Dutch; and Lipski 2005 on Spanish varieties) and new Creole varieties (Borges 2017;
Migge & Leglise 2013; Yakpo 2017a).
In addition, intra-regional migration (occasionally dating back to co lonial times) has also
a ltered contact patterns in all of the countries of the three broad regions. For instance, Mes-
tizos from northern America and other Central American countries moved to Belize in the
19th century and therefore Mestizo varieties of Spanish came into contact with Belize Creole
and English. Another case involved the migration of Haitians to both Caribbean and South
American cow1tries due to natural disasters and political changes in Ha iti. As a result, Haitian
Creole has come in contact with other languages, including other (French) Creoles and French
in French Guiana and Sranan and Maroon Creoles in Suriname and French Guiana (Laethier
2011 ). The French state settled Hmongs from Laos in French Guiana in the 1970s following
the Indo-Chinese war. Varieties of Hmong have thus come into contact with Maroon Creoles,
!56
French, and French Guianese Creole- speakers have adopted lexical items from these lan-
guages (Ly 2007).
A non-exhaustive overview of the different kinds of languages that have emerged from
these contact patterns follows. The linguistic outcomes best described in the literature are the
Creoles languages of the Caribbean and the Gu iana region.
Native Am erican trade Pidgins

Carib Coastal Pidgin or Coastal Karinya Pidgin (Northern Coast of South America and
Guiana region, Meira & Muysken 20 17)
Nheengatu (Brazil, Moore et a l. 1994)
Contact langu ages involving Native American

lan guages and colonizers' languages
Media Lengua (Ecuador, Muysken 2013)
Nambikwara-Portuguese Pidgin (Brazil, Levi-Strauss 1955)
Piiiaguero Panare Pidgin Spanish (Venezuela, Riley 1952)
Pioje Pidgin Spanish (Ecuador, Simson 1879; Muysken 1980)
Patagonian Jargon Spanish (Argentina, Roberts 201 4)
Creoles
D utch-lexified Creoles
Berbice Dutch (Guyana, Kouwenberg 2013a)
Virgin Islands Dutch Creole (Sabino 20 12)
English-lexified Creoles
Bahamian (Bahamas, Hackert 2013)
Belizian (Bel ize, Escure 20 l3a)
Creolese (Guyana, Devonish & Thompson 20 13)
Jamaican (Jamaica, Farquharson 2013)
Lim6n Creole (Costa Rica, Herzfeld 1978)
Miskito or Nicaraguan Creole English (Nicaragua, Bartens 2013a)
Nenge(e) or Eastern Maroon Creole (Suriname and French Gu iana, Migge 20 13a)
Saamaka (Suriname, Aboh et al. 20 13)
San Andres Creo le (Columbia, Bartens 2013b)
Sranan (Suriname, Win ford & Plag 20 13)
Vincentian (St Vincent and the Grenadines, Prescod 20 15)
Vernacular English (St Lucia, Garrett 2003)
French-lexified Creoles
Guadeloupean and Martini can (Colot & Ludwig 20 13b)
Guianese (French Guiana, Pflinder 20 13)
Haitian (Haiti, Fattier 2013a)
!57
Bettina Migge
Kheu61or Karipuna French Creole (Brazi l, Tobler 1983)

Kweyol (St Lucia, Carrington 1984)
Spanish/Portuguese-lexified Creoles
Papiamento/u (Aruba, Botm aire, and Cura9ao, Maurer 2013)
Palenquero (Colombia, Schwegler 20 13)
Panamanian Afro-Hispanic Creole (Panama, Lipski 1986)
Native American - Creoles, Pidgins

Ndyuka-Trio Pidgin (Suriname, Huttar & Velantie 1997)
Indigenized Asian langu ages

Boshpuri (Trinidad, Mohan 1990)
Sranami (Suriname, Yakpo 2017b)
Surinamese Javanese (Suriname, Villerius 20 17)
Suriname Hakka (Suriname, Rojas-Berscia & Shi 2017)
New varieties of Creoles

Urban (Ll and L2) Nengee (French Gu iana, Migge & Leglise 2013)
Urban Sranan Tongo (Suriname, Yakpo 20 17a)
New/in digenized or localized varieties of European lan guages

Suriname Dutch (Suriname, de K leine 2007)
Caribbean Englishes (Lacoste 2017; Winford 1991)
Caribbean French (French Guiana, Leglise 2003)
A fro-Peruvian Spanish (Peru, Sessarego 20 15)
Afro-Bo livian Spanish/Afro-Yunguei\o Spanish (Bolivia, Lipski 2008; Perez 2015; Ses-
sarego 2009)
A fro-Hispanic (Americas, Lipski 2005)
8.3.2 Shared linguistic features of Caribbean

Creoles and other contact languages
Research has traditionally focused on English-lexified Creoles and on morphosyntax, and
much less attention has been paid to other areas of grammar such as phonetics and phonology
(Sm ith 2008) and semantics or pragmatics. Substantial descriptions of individual languages
and comparative overviews of a wide range of Pidgins and Creoles can be found in Holm and
Patrick (2001a) and in Michae lis et al. (2013a, 2013b). Here I only discuss a few features that
have figured prominently. One feature that has rece ived a lot of attention is the copula domain,
particu larly in English-based Creoles. Unl ike European languages, English-based Caribbean
Creoles distinguish predicate nominals and possessives from locatives and attributives. Attrib-
utive predicative structures do not involve a copula clause because property items are verbs in
the English-based Creoles (M ichaelis & APiCs Consortium 2013a: 295), as in (1).
!58
(I) Dis Guatemala loveson me @ kajinda /wt. (Belizian Creole)

DEM Guatemala quest io n ANT coP kind.of hot
'This Guatemala quest ion was rather hot.' (Escure 20 13a: 96)
Predicate nominals and possessives require a copula, often na o r da (which shares its fonn
with the focus marker) that is generally not fully verbal and the construction has a topic-
comment construction (2).
(2) Di djadj (I di dakta da gud fren. (Belizian Creole)

DET judge and DET doctor coP good friend
'The judge and the doctor are good friends.' (Escure 20 13b: 9- 139)
Predicative Jocative and existential constmctions generally also involve a copula, de or dt:,
w hich is verbal (3).
(3) Bra fayajfay dt: da statm bra Anansi dr. da bo.

Brother Firefly coP at stem brother Anansi coP at bow
'Brother Firefly was at the stem and brother Anansi was at the bow.' (Escure 2013b: 9-144)
T he exact details differ somewhat between Creoles. For instance, in some varieties such as
Be lizian Creole, there is variation in copular absence in nominal and Jocat ive contexts (Escure
1982; Migge 1996):
(4) Krab @ way 111 . (Belizian Creole)

Crab COP way in
'Crabs are way in. OR: Crabs burry themselves deep (in the sand).' (Escure 2013b: 9-144)
In the Surinamese Creoles this is not attested (Arends 1986). ln Nengee equat ive and class
nominal constructions are not distinguished while in others, such as Saamaka and earlier
Sranan Tongo, they are ditrerentiated (Arends 1986; McWhorter & Good 20 12). Note also that
the predicat ive nominal constmction may be replaced by the copu lar used in Jocative contexts
in non-present tense constmctions.
T he copular domain is structured differently in non-English-based Creoles. ln French-based
Caribbean Creoles such as Guadeloupean Creole all three stmctures do not involve a copular
e lement:
(5) Diana bel. (Guadeloupean Creole)

Diana COP beautifu l
'Diana is beautifu l. ' (Colot & Ludwig 2013a: 50-139)
(6) I dokte.
3sg coP doctor
'He/she is a doctor.' (Co lot & Ludwig 2013a: 50-141)
(7) I @ ante pan-la.

3SG COP On bridge-DEF
' He/she is on the bridge.' (Colot & Ludwig 2013a: 50-142)
!59
Bettina Migge
In contrast, Papiamentu, a Spanish-based language, has an obligatory invariant copula ta in

all three constructions (Michaelis & APiCs Consortiwn 2013b: 302).
(8) E ta mashti bunita mes. (Papiamentu)

3so COP much pretty EMPH
'It is really very pretty.' (Kouwenberg 2013b: 47- 149)
(9) E ta w1 muhl!. chikitu.

3so coP INDF woman small
'She is a sma ll woman.' (Kouwenberg 2013b: 47- 147)
( 10) Ora rm ta na lama rm ta siiia ltmda, .. .

hour lso coP LOC sea lso !MPFV Jeam SWim
'When I am on the beach, I learn to swim, .. .' (Kouwenberg 2013b: 47- 151)
The Trio-Ndyuka Pidgin spoken in Suriname resembles French-based Creoles in that it

does not involve a copula in any of the three constructions:
(11) tide tuna munu (Trio-Ndyuka Pidgin)

now/today COP n ver big, high
'The river is high now.' (Meira & Muysken 2017: 215)
Another area that has been studied intensely is the tense, mood, and aspect (TMA) system.'
"In the Atlantic Creoles [including the Caribbean and West Africa], verbs generally indicate
tense and aspect not with infie.ctions but rather with preverbal (in some cases postverbal)
markers" (Holm & Patrick 200lb: vii). Creoles in the Caribbean region genera lly have a rela-
tive past marker derived from English been (bin, bi, be, ben, mi) in the case of English-based
Creoles ( 12) and the French past participle ete (te) in French-based Creoles ( 13) to mark ante-
rior tense and these particles can be combined with aspectual markers. The anterior marker is
a lso widely used to mark the counterfacmal in if-clauses.
(12) I ha dis man bin a wuhk km fo J. (SI Vmcentian Creole)

3SG have DEM man ANT PROG work land for J.
'He had two sheep.' (Prescod 2013: 7- 9)
( 13) Mwen te korm vann liv bo lekol la. (Haitian Creole)

I so ANT HAB sell book close school DEF
'I used to sell books close to the school.' (Fattier 20 13b: 49- 130)
However, past is most common ly expressed via the unmarked verb in the case of dynam ic
verbs ( 14-15).
( 14) I posh evriting duhng. (SI Vincentian Creole)

I SG push everything down
'I pushed everything down.' (Prescod 2013: 7-136)
( 15) Bouki vann chat la. (Haitian Creole)

Bouki sell cat DET
'Bouki sold the cat.' (Fattier 20 13b: 49- 146)
160
Papiamentu has an imperfective past tense marker tabata which may be combined with
moda l forms (Kouwenberg 20 13b), ( 16). However, unmarked fom1s are only possible for a
subset of stative verbs, namely those which cannot be combined with the progressive marker.
Entirely wunarked dynamic verbs with an anterior interpretation do not seem to exist.
( 16) E tabata sa bini seka nos tur dia. (Papiamentu)

3sG ANT able come at I PL every day
' He came by us every day.' (Kouwenberg 20 13b: 47-88)
The Trio-Ndyuka Pidgin does not appear to have any TAM marking.
( 17) mi-ponoh-ta-ne (Trio-Ndyuka Pidgin)

2SG-tell-pl-pa.DIST
'you all told a story (long ago).' (Meira & Muysken 2017: 212)
In many varieties there is a progressive marker which may perform either only progressive
functions or progressive, habitual, current state and in some cases also future. In English-based
Creoles in the region the marker is either a or a fonn of de (de, di, e), (18-19). Copu la de
derives from the English locative there as in the case of the locative copular and a originates
with the English dialectal fonn a V-ing.
(18) Hi a kuhm tomaaro. (St Vincentian Creole)

he IMPFV come tomorrow
' He's coming tomorrow.' (Prescod 2013: 7-127)
( 19) Dem a bit aaroroot faktori now. (St Vincentian Creole)

3PL PROG build arrowroot factory now
'They are building an arrowroot factory now.' (Prescod 2013: 7-125)
In French-based Creoles, the progressive form is either ka as in Antillean Creoles or ape <
French apres as in Haitian. While it is mainly used to mark progressive aspect and future in
Haitian (DeGraff 200 I: I 04), it can also encode habitual and current state in Guadeloupean
(20-21).
(20) I ka domi. (Guadeloupean)

3SG PROG sleep
' He/she is sleeping.' (Colot & Ludwig 2013a: 50-79)
(21) I ka )we foutbol.

3SG HAB p lay football
' He plays football.' (Colot & Ludwig 20 13a: 50-81)
In Papiamentu the preverbal ta can express a wide range of meanings including, hab itual,
current state, progressive and future (22). It can also be combined with the Spanish verbal
suffix -ndo.
(22) E baka ta kome yerba; (Papiamentu)

DEF COW PROG eat grass
'The cow is eating grass.' (Kouwenberg 2013b: 47-43)
161
Bettina Migge
Serial verb constructions (SVCs) constitute another area of interest in research on Creoles.
They involve two or more verbs in sequence where one of them, usually the second one, has
a functional meaning. There are different types and Creoles differ in tem1s of the variety of
SVCs and the kinds of grammatical func.tions that they per form (see Winford 1993). One type
that is commonly found are SVCs involving the reflexes of the verbs go and come which func-
tion as directional markers expressing 'away from a point of reference to' and 'from a point of
reference to', respectively.
(22) A subi go anda. (Nengee!Eastem Maroon Creole)

he cl imb DIR over.there
' He climbed over there.' (M igge 2013b: 4- 143)
(23) An voye y ale Lapwent. (Guadeloupean Creo le)

l SG send.3sG go Pointe-a-Pitre
'I sent it to Pointe-ii-Pitre.' (Colot & Ludwig 2013a: 50-157)
(24) E bebi a gatia bai den kushina. (Papiamentu)

DEF baby tMPFV creep go in kitchen
'The baby crept into the kitchen.' (Kouwenberg 2013b: 47- 164)
8.4 Creole genesis

The topic that has dom inated P/C studies more than any other are the circumstances of P/C
formation. The Bioprogram Hypothesis (LBH, Bickerton 1984), along with its numerous cha l-
lenges by special ists, was a major driver of genesis research. The LBH posits that Creole
formation constitutes a special case of first language acquisition, with children in plantation
societies activating an innate blueprint for language in the face of inadequate input (a structur-
a lly reduced Pidgin spoken by the ir parents) in order to create a full, native language. Carib-
bean and South American P/Cs have figured prom inently in responses to the LBH because
plantation economies played a crucial role in the emergence of many Creoles in the region.
However, sociohistorical research which initially focused predominantly on demography (e.g.
ratios of enslaved Africans versus Europeans, Africans versus locally born slaves, and ch ildren
versus adults), has revealed that plantations differed demographically and consequently gave
rise to different linguistic outcomes.
For instance, the Suriname and Haiti contexts were initially characterized by low enslaved
versus European and African versus locally bom slave ratios, giving newly arriving enslaved
Africans litt le susta ined contact with the lexifier or dominant European language (Arends
1995; Singler 1995). The resulting languages (Suriname Creo les and Haitian Creo le) are
consequently highly distinct from their lexifiers in phonology and morphosyntax. Moreover,
the small number of children and " the rate at which the proportion of locally-born blacks to
African-bom blacks changed in favor of the former, was so slow that it seems high ly unlikely
that creolization" (Arends & Bruyn 1995: 112) w1derstood as nativization would have been
instantaneous. On the other end of the spectrum, there were co lonies whose demographic
conditions allowed enslaved labour greater access to European languages. These contexts pro-
duced varieties with greater structural overlap with their European input languages such as the
Creoles of the French Anti lles and Barbados (Singler 1995; Rickford & Handler 1994). Other
loca les such as Bequia (Walker & Meyerhoff2015) and Saban (Will iams & Myrick 2015) did
not involve p lantation econom ies and produced non-Creole varieties of English or Spanish
(Sessarego 20 15).
162
More recent research delves into the narure of life on plantations and in early communities
using available qualitative and quantitative data. Arends's (2017: 35- 53) analysis of histori-
cal sources on the Guiana region shows that a dense network of overlapping European and
particularly English settlements existed in pre-1650 Suriname which suggests that the plan-
tation varieties probably emerged prior to 1650 or that these varieties had a strong impact
on their emergence. His analysis of the makeup of the 18th-cenrury plantation population
(Arends 2017: I 01- 121) also demonstrates that it was highly stratified on the basis of ethnic-
ity (African, European, Creole) but also occupation, creating a diverse commw1ity consisting
of a number of status groups (e.g. skilled labourers, domestic staff, children and older people,
field hands, overseers) with partially different social and linguistic practices whose importance
also shifted over time. Instead of strict social separation, there also existed rich and dynamic
relationships across racial lines between these different group ings and with people from other
p lantations and from outside of the planation context (e.g. soldiers, Maroons, city dwellers).
This suggests that Creole genesis and development was by no means abrupt or unidirectional,
but involved socially and linguistically complex processes, as in other contact settings, taking
p lace in dynam ic and overlapping contact settings.
The contribution of the languages of the creators of Creoles, so-called substrate influence,
has played a central role in genesis research and has inspired a nwnber of collections (e.g.
Migge & Smith 2007; Michaelis 2008; Lefebvre 2011; Essegbey et al. 20 13; Muysken & Smith
20 15) and articles ranging from comparisons of specific aspects of grammar in African input
languages such as the varieties ofGbe and in Caribbean/South American Creoles (e.g. Haitian,
Suriname Creoles, Palenque, Berbic.e Dutch) to theoretical d iscussions assessing the workings
of first language input (Singler 1988; Win ford 2003). 2 While all of this research highlights the
importance of the first languages of the creators of Creoles in Creole fonnation, theories posit
d ifferent roles and processes. Strong versions, such as the Relexification Hypothesis (Lefebvre
1998), maintain that Creoles are essentially continuations of their creators' first languages and
that their genesis was a cognitive process. Weaker, socially oriented versions (Alleyne 1971 ,
1980; Keesing 1988; Migge & Goury 2008) argue that the impact of different first languages
was not unifonn across contexts and areas of grammar since other sources (e.g. superstrate, uni-
versals), factors (e.g. social context, types of languages), and processes also contributed to the
shaping of Creole grammars. The Relexification Hypothesis also differs from other substrate
accow1ts in that it proposes that creators adopted phonetic strings (words) from the superstrate
and imposed them on lexical entries of their first languages. This process used to be referred
to as relexification but is now called relabelling (Lefebvre 20 15). It is supported by levell ing
which helps to address differences between substrate grammars. Other substrate accow1ts gen-
erally posit a more dynamic interaction between substrates and other sources and processes.
They generally start from the assumption that Creole genesis involves processes that are part of
second language leam ing (e.g. see swnmary in Winford 2003; Siege! 2008).
The bulk of substrate research has assessed morphosyntactic features such as copulas,
SVCs, TMA systems, and complementation, as these figure prominently in the LBH. Migge
(2003: 90ff), for instance, shows on the basis of contemporary language data that there are
similarities in tenus of the types ofSVCs (e.g. d irectional, dative) and their makeup between
the Creoles of Suriname and their main African input languages, varieties of Gbe. Example
(25), for example, demonstrates that both languages have an element that is homophonous
with the verb 'to go', go in the Eastern Maroon Creole and y i in Aja Gbe, which is used to
introduce a locational phrase to a main verb, indicating that the movement denoted by the main
verb is away from the point of reference towards some other location. They also have very
similar syntactic properties.
163
Bettina Migge
(25) (a) Nownow, den m! man post 1 go a joto moo.(EMC, PM 17)

now they NEG able send 2SG sv LOC town more
'Now, they cmmot send you back to Paramaribo anymore.'
(b) Ye a m:> o tr.J f: hw yi axwe. (Gbe, Aja I)
3sG FUT say 2sG retum 3SG hold sv house
'He'll tell you to bring it back to the house.' (Migge 2003: 92)
There are also substantial simi larities between Suriname Creoles and Gbe languages in the
copular domain. In both groups of languages, property items are mostly verbs and nominal and
locational structures require d ifferent linking elements (see a lso earlier) . Predicative nominal
constructions are widely expressed as topic-comment constructions where the predicating or
linking e lement is a focus or presentative marker (M igge 2002: 73ft). With respect to the link-
ing element used in locational constructions, Migge (2003: 64-69) shows that the Gbe (la, c[ol
c[u, le) and Surinamese (de) forms are verbal and can be used to predicate a range of elements
such as locational phrases (26), reduplicated adjectives and ideophones (27), and also express
existence without a complement (28). Notwithstanding some distributional differences, the
sim ilarities suggest that the Surinamese copu la doma in and its elements were modelled on
that in Gbe languages.
(26) (a) A be de //(/ Alibina wan pisi ten. (EMC,ND4b)

3sG ANT COP LOC Albina one p1ece time
' He was in Alibina for some time.'
(b) lxhe m:> c[e d:> mr kliya. (Gbe, X we la I)
.
fish PAST COP net Ill IDEO
' Fish were in the net in great quantity.'
(27) (a) Ma ala en ede be de baakabaaka. (EMC, PM 11 b)

but all 3sG head PAST coP blackblack
' But all his head (hair) was still (in a) black (state).'
(b) Ny:>nu-vi a /<1 bbbb (Gbe, Wac i)
woman-small DET COP thinthin
'T he girl is (still in a) thin (state).'
(28) (a) A goon mu de, a honiman mu de. (EMC, NO 3a)

DET field must COP DET hwller must COP
'T here must be a field and there must be a hunter (man).'
(b) A: Degb<J ([a? B: a li. (Gbe, Waci)
name COP? 3SG COP
'A: How about Degbe? B: He is well. ' (Migge 2003:
65-Q?)
More recently, other phenomena, includ ing lexico-semantics (Schwegler 2000; Huttar et al.
2007), morphological processes (Kouwenberg 2003), and phonology (Smith 2008), have also
figured in substrate research . This research took its initial cue from Alleyne ( 1980) and Kees-
ing's ( 1988) work on Melanesian P/ Cs (see Meakins, this volume). Stu dies confirm the impor-
tant role that substrate languages have played in Creo le fonnation in general and the West
African languages Gbe, Akan, and Kikongo in the case of Creoles from the Americas and the
Caribbean. But much of this work a lso demonstrates that Creoles are not direct copies of the ir
164
substrates because their genesis also involved the influence of European languages, other Lis,
universals, and processes of language change. Debate on the processes that shape the forma-
tion of Creoles still continues unabated.
Most recently a rather contentious debate has arisen between some researchers about the
p lace of simplification in Creole genesis. McWhorter (2002) and others such as Parkvall
(2008) see the Pidgin-Creole life-cycle and processes of simplification and pidginization as
definitive of Creole genesis because, in their view, Creoles developed from highly reduced
c.ontact vernacu lars. Their creators' first languages and superstrates impacted Creole gram-
mars but only simplified or less complex features were taken over to facilitate commwJica-
tion in multilingual contact areas. As a result, Creoles constitute a separate set of languages
whose members are characterized by the lack of three features indicative of earlier pidginiza-
tion: contextual inflection such as concord marking, functional tone marking and semantically
opaque morphology (McWhorter 20 18). The findings from recent phylogenetic research (Bak-
ker et al. 20 17) are seen as evidence in favour of this hypothesis. This view of Creole excep-
tionalism is vehemently opposed by scholars such as DeGraff (2005) and Mufwene (2008),
among others. T hey reject the cruc ial role of simplification and pidginization in Creo le genesis
and thus the exceptional status of Creoles as a separate group of languages, arguing that the
processes that gave rise to Cre.oles also conunonly occur in other contact settings.
There is also debate over whether New World P/Cs o rig inated in Africa (Hancock 1986;
McWhorter 1999, 2000; Devonish 2002; Smith 2015) or developed in the Americas and
whether they were diffused o r transplanted from one location such as the Upper Guinea Coast
(Hancock) or the Gold Coast (McWhorter) in West Africa, or St Kitts in the Caribbean (Baker
1999; Baker & Bruyn 1999), or whether they largely deve loped separately in each territory.
There is also debate about the relative importance of diffusion and the kinds of elements that
were diffused across regions and territories. Was it mostly restricted to a set of lexical features
or did it possibly involve entire varieties or subsystems thereof? There is need to broaden
the types of features (e.g. pragmatics), data (elicited examp les versus textual data), and the
types of Creoles. For instance, substrate influence in French-based Creoles in the Caribbean
and South America (e.g. Jennings & Pflinder 2018 on French Guianese Creole) is still in its
infancy because French research has trad itionally focused on the French superstrate and often
denied the role of substrate influence (Chaudenson 2001: 93- 94). Most of the descriptive
research on Caribbean/South American Creoles came about due to interest in their o rigins and
development.
The focus on synchronic data to study the formation of Creoles was rightly criticized by
Arends (2002) who was one of the pioneers for research on historical texts written in Carib-
bean/South America Creoles. Scholars (e.g. Winer 1984; Arends & Per! 1995; Baker & Bruyn
1999) search for and edit a range of older texts (e.g. letters, manuals, court records, dictionar-
ies) and mine them for linguistic details and for infonnation on the social and sociolinguistic
makeup of the contexts in which Creoles developed (e.g. Grant 1999; Arends 2017). One
particularly notab le effort in this regard is the collective volume edited by Baker and Bruyn
( 1999) which exam ines the largest body of early texts (two books and a newspaper) on Carib-
bean Creoles by one author, Samuel Augustus Mathews, from a variety of angles in order to
gain insights into the origin and diffusion of Caribbean Creoles, and the place of St Kilts in
these processes.
One o bvious problem with early texts is that they were often not written by native speakers
of these languages. Arends's (2017) research on the authors of early Sranan texts, however,
shows that many of the authors such as European missionaries and colonial government agents
were competent in the language. However, Migge and van den Berg (2009) also show that some
165
Bettina Migge
of the fearures such as the imperfective marker in the early Sranan texts involves palterns of
variation (between presence and absence of e) that are very simi lar to those found in contempo-
rary second language varieties of the Eastern Maroon varieties spoken in French Guiana. This
suggests that second language practices affected the development of some areas of grammar
in the plantation Creoles. Another issue is the relative paucity of such texts for some periods,
particularly the earliest period, and for some contexts. Historical texts have been srudied for the
Surinamese Creoles Sranan and Saamaka (e.g. Arends 1989; Bruyn 1995; van den Berg 2007),
Haiti (Carden & Stewart 1988), Jamaica (Lalla & D'Costa 1990), Dutch Creole (van Rossem &
van der Voort 1996; Sabino 20 12), French Anti!lean Creoles (Hazael-Massieux 1996).
Philological research, like demographic investigation, supports a gradua list model of Cre-
ole genesis which, in a nutshell, posits that Creole genesis was not an instantane.ous, abrupt, or
uniform process, as ma intained by Bickerton (1984), but took place over several generations.
It shows that variation was common and occurred along several dimensions (geographical,
social, ethic) and also changed over time (e.g. van den Berg 2007: 379-392; Arends 2017:
chapter 4). Several areas of the morphosyntax underwent changes after what must have been
the orig inal emergence of a Creole language. Arends and Bruyn (1995: 113), for instance,
show that after 1800 "a monolithic category of equation (including attribution and identifica-
tion, both expressed by da)" (29-30) became differentiated into two subcategories: copula da
came to be used for identification (3 1) and copu la de for attribution (32).
(29) Hoe fassi joe man da granman vo joe?

What way 2so man coP boss of 2so
'Your husband doesn't own you, does he?' (attr.; Van Dyk c l 765: 69)
(30) Mie no sabie o sama da em .

lso NEG know what person coP 3so
'I don't know who he is.' (indent.: Weygandt 1978: 91)
(3 1) Mi wefi de wan bejari soema toe.

l so wife coP a aged person also
'My wife is [an] old [person]too.' (attr.; Anon 1829: 8)
(32) Mi da Gabriel, disi de tanapoe na Gado fesi a/arem.

lso COP Gabriel REL ASP stand LOC God face always
'I am Gabriel, who is always standing before God.' (ident.; Anon 1829: 8)
(Examples come from Arends & Bruyn ( 1995: 113).
As in the case of other languages, changes in grammar were motivated by language inter-
nal and contact-induced change. The latter probably occurred due to changes in the speaker
populations such as in the case where enslaved Africans whose language backgrounds differed
from that of the original creators learned the plantation varieties and introduced new fearures.
The introduction of new lexica l items often happened due to changes in the slave owner or
overseer group (van den Berg 2007: 393-394). In the case of possible outcomes of internal
changes such as grammaticalization, Bruyn (1996: 39) cautions that "they may differ from
ordinary grammaticalization in languages with a longer history: they may proceed at a higher
rate and they may be crucia lly determined by influenc.es from other languages". For example,
the development of l 8th-cenrury definite determiner da < English 'that' in Sranan is a case of
regular language-internal grammatica lization in that it " increased in frequency, lost some of its
166
deictic value, and has been reduced in fonn, via na to a" ( ibid.). In contrast, no such develop-
ments are attested in the sources for the indefinite detem1iner wan< English 'one', suggest-
ing that th is usage dates from the early stages of Sranan 's development and was based on a
mode l from one of the input languages. Bruyn ( 1996) identifies a number of such instances
(e.g. dative serial verb gi and complementizer taki in Sranan) and proposes to refer to them as
instances of apparent grammaticalization, that is instances "where a feature does not resu lt
from grammaticalization that took place within the Creo le language itself but rather from the
transfer of the result of a process of grammatica lization that has taken place in another lan-
guage" (p. 42). Change may also be due to quantitative socia l changes when the Creole varie-
ties of the enslaved became more socially prominent than those of their enslavers leading to a
reduction in frequency or loss of the latter's (original) practices, and thus their representation
in written documents (van den Berg 2007).
8.5 The sociolinguistics of the Caribbean

Sociolinguistic research played an important role in early research on (Caribbean) Creoles
because many early investigators were trained in what was then a rap idly growing field (Rick-
ford 1988; Meyerhoff, this vo lume). The Caribbean (particu larly the English-official COWl -
tries) thus largely became the birth cradle of PlC-based models of variation and fumished the
bulk of emp irical evidence on variation in P/Cs, which also generated insights into important
notions in (quantitative) sociolinguistics such as social c lass (Rickford 1986).3
The most prominently d iscussed P/C model of variation (wh ich is often assumed to rep-
resent the sociolinguistic structure of Creoles) is the Post-Creole Continuwn. Although the
notion of a continuum was already discussed in the 1960s (see Holm 1988: 52- 56), the conc.e pt
of the Post-Creole Continuwn is generally associated with DeCamp's ( 197 1) discussion of the
Jamaican situation and Bickerton's (1975) analysis of recorded data from Guyana. The model
posits that an English-lexified Creole and a local variety of Standard Engl ish constitute two
poles of a single system with continuous variation between them. It alleged ly emerged after
the end of slavery when speakers of the deep Creole, also referred to as the basilect, gained
greater access to English, the so-ca lled acro/ect, for the purpose of social upward mobility. As
people were learning English, they gradually replaced features in the deep Creole with those
derived from English, creating hybrid systems (called mesolects) drawing on both languages.
The process leading to their formation was generally called decreolization, a term that implies
that the basilect loses its distinct character through contact with the standard language. But
subsequent quantitative research, as well as historical study, has deconstructed the notion of
decre.olization, showing that Creoles are linguistically independent from the ir lexifiers and that
the mesolect may precede the basilect in Creole development. What has been called decreoli-
zation involves contact-induced and internally motivated language change, with social upward
mobi lity and prestige being but one of the social motivations for change and contact between
a Creole and its lexifier being but one source of change (Aceto 1999; Bailey & Maynor 1987;
Rickford 1974; Winford 1997).
Ideologically the deep Creole or basi lect is traditiona lly associated with rural and infonnal
contexts, and with speakers with lower educational achievements on account of the relative
absence of higher educational institutions in rural areas. English meanwhile is indexically
linked to education, urban areas, professiona l jobs, and formal contexts (Rickford 1985).
Quantitative socio linguistic studies provided empirical evidence that linguistically distin-
guishable language systems co-exist in Caribbean commllilities and that their use is system-
atically cond itioned by social factors as in all bil ingual communities (Escure 1982; Edwards
167
Bettina Migge
1983; Rickford 1991; Devonish 1992). Beliz ian interviewees, for instance, mostly employ
English variants of the copula (am, is, are, were, was) in formal contexts and Creole equiva-
lents (da, de, 0) in inforn1al contexts (Young 1973; Escure 1982; Migge 1996). At the same
time, stylistic variation within the sociol inguistic interview and across settings is non-discrete,
demonstrating that Creole communities are not diglossic (Win ford 1985). Interlocutors code-
switch between varieties to negotiate interactional a lignments, identities and relationships,
as in all mu ltilingual contexts. However, one 'system' usually dominates in a given inter-
action suggesting that it constitutes the matrix language of the interaction (Myers-Scotton
1993). Linguistic anthropological research on St Vincent (Abrahams 1983) also supports
these findings.
Socio linguistic research in the English-official Caribbean also successfully debunked the
myth that all Creole commw1ities are structured the same way. Some communities such as
Guyana and Jamaica (Rickford 1991; Edwards 1983; Patrick 1999) have two conventiona l-
ized Creole varieties, a rural variety (i.e. basilect) and an urban variety which is linguistically
intermediate between the rural variety and local English. However, it is a conventionalized
variety and does not confonn to DeCamp's ( 197 1) notion of the mesolect as a zone of inter-
action. In other contexts, such as Belize, in contrast, there are two sets of conventionalized
practic.es, English and Creole, and the variation between them reflects code-switching and/
or ongoing language change (Young 1973; Migge 1996). In a third set of communities such
as Trinidad, Barbados, and the Bahamas, a deep Creole variety is absent and the Creole more
c losely resembles the Guyanese mesolect which shows c loser affinity to standard ized forms of
English (Alleyne 1980; Win ford 1997).
Finally, there are also contact settings such as Suriname, the ABC islands (Aruba, Bonaire,
Curacao), and St Lucia and San Andres where Creoles co-exist with European languages of
different lexica l bases. The Post-Creole Continuum is not relevant to these languages, as it was
designed for contexts where a Creole co-exists with its lexifier. Sociolinguistic research on the
Eastern Maroon Creoles ofSuriname and French Guiana (e.g. Migge & Leglise 2013) shows
that they have always had distinct stylistic registers that index social categories and identi-
ties. As the latter are affected by social change, both the social functions and linguistic forms
that index them also undergo diachronic change and new practices linked to emerging social
identities and categories arise. The impact of the dominant local languages is only one of the
factors that drives language change.
In recent years, sociolinguistic research on Caribbean/South American Creoles, like
research in soc iolinguistics more generally, has shifted to exam ining language use patterns and
their meaning-making potential (Milhleisen 2002). Th is research has also dealt with a wider
range of varieties. The notion of face and linguistic politeness is at the centre of various studies
in Milhleisen & Migge (2005). They show that variation does not simply respond to contextual
factors but is actively dep loyed to negotiate social status, interactional and social identities
and the functions of communicative routines. Other studies such as Rickford (20 19b) and Sid-
nell ( 1999) show how semantic and pragmatic meanings impact the distribution of linguistic
variants such as personal pronOWlS or explore gendered communicative norn1s (Sidnell 2003).
Meyerhoff and Walker (2007) investigate the impact of patterns of mobility on variation and
Migge and Leglise (2013) examine how migration affects language practic.es. There has also
been work on the social meanings and functions of transl ingual practices (Shields-Brodber
1992; Youssef 1996). Migge (20 15) in particular shows that multilingual practices in French
Guiana result from the acquisition of Eastern Maroon Creoles by diverse populations and the
different social orientations of the younger population in the urban sphere. The latter deploys
linguistically fuzzy practices as a distinct social strategy for managing soc ial (especially
168
ethnic) alignments and stigma. This meaning-making approach to variation is in line with Le
Page & Tabouret-Keller's (1985) 'acts of identities' sociolinguistic model which was devel-
oped based on data from the English official Caribbean. It argues that
the individual creates for himself[/herse lf] the pattems of his [/her] linguistic behaviour
so as to resemble those of the groups w ith which from time to time he [/she] wishes to
be identified or so as to be unlike those from whom he [/she] wishes to be distinguished.
(Le Page & Tabouret-Keller 1985: 181)
Identification is constrained, however, by aspects such as our abil ity to identify potential
groups and our access to them and our ability to adapt our behaviour. However, the model was
not widely adopted because instead of working from the social data, its categories were cre-
ated based on linguistic data using cluster analysis, was not sufficiently constrained, and did
not take account of internal constraints (Rick ford 2011 ).
Mediated linguistic practices among diaspora commun ities and non-traditional users are
also rising. Managan (20 11) explores enregistrement on Guadeloupean TV, that is the process
by which lingu istic items or varieties become indexed with particu lar speaker groups or their
attributes (Agha 2005). Garret! (2000) and Migge (20 11) investigate the use of French Creole
in St Lucian and the Eastern Maroon Creo les in French Guianese radio programmes, respec-
tively; Hinrichs (2006) and Moll (20 15) explore computer-meditated practices; and finally,
there is a lso a growing tradition of research on language use in music (Herzfeld & Moskowitz
2004; Farquharson 2017; Sankar & Winer 2006). The latter work is often linked to research
on linguistic practices in Caribbean diaspora communities (e.g. Hinrichs 20 14). These studies
show that Creole ways of speaking are dynamic, changing in step with their user communities,
but continue to function as important meaning-making resources.
8.6 Caribbean Creoles, education , and standardization

Due to the discrepancy between official language policies (and the ideologies motivating
them) and actual language practices in Creole-speaking commw1ities, the use of P/Cs in edu-
cation has been a persistent issue (see Angelo, Kennedy, this volwne). Broadly speaking, gov-
em ments typically mandate the ex-colon ial language as the only means of instruction on all
levels of education despite the fact that many children have little knowledge of that language
upon entering school. The community languages spoken by children have traditionally been
denigrated. With the growth of the school-attending population in recent decades, P/Cs are
variously used by teachers to reduce educational failure.
However, such informal approaches used by educators have mostly focused on 'touching
up' a colonial system designed for children who speak the ex-colonial language as their main
language. For instance, PlC-speaking children are no longer punished for using their first lan-
guages on school premises and educationa l institutions are not penn itted to openly den igrate
them. Fundamental change such as implementation of the UN recommendation that children
should be educated in their first language is still rarely considered as a viable option even if
the P/C is spoken by the majority. Full competence in the ex-colonial language remains one of
the main goals of schooling.
Much of the research in the Caribbean has therefore focused on developing educational
approaches that focus on clearly distinguishing P/C practices from dominant language (English/
French) practices and on mobilizing the fom1er to enhance acquisition of the latter. On the basis
of speech pattems in Creole communities where P/Cs coexist with their lexifier (see Section 4),
169
Bettina Migge
Denis Craig (1976, 1999) has argued that Caribbean chi ldren should not be treated as speakers or
leamers of the dominant language because, due to the partial overlap between the two, the latter
is neither a foreign language nor fully fami liar to them. They often have good control of certain
aspects of grammar (where the Creole and the dom inant language overlap) but lack competence
in others and are often also not able to distinguish between Creole and dominant language options
in a socially appropriate manner because the social meanings of different options are not clear to
them. This has generally negatively affected children's educational opportunities. Education must
thus focus on clarifying the linguistic, stylistic, and ideological differences between the languages
involved and create instructional approaches that build on the overlaps in addition to raising the
social profi le of Creoles. Pollard ( 1999) has further advocated for the greater use of Creoles in
some educational activities to unleash chi ldren's creative and expressive capacities. In short, edu-
cational institutions should pursue an additive rather than a subtractive model of education.
However traditional approaches focusing on acqu isition of the dominant language gener-
ally only teach chi ldren literacy through the official variety of English, with the Creole remain-
ing an ora l language in most domains- leaving intact inequal ities in social prestige between
the two. More recent approaches place greater emphasis on fostering concurrent competences
in both languages; this involves the use of separate orthographic systems as well as teach-
ing local cu ltural knowledge through the Creole. Such methods are more read ily accepted in
contexts where the P/ C is recognized as a distinct language (Siege! 2006), including St Lucia,
San Andres, the Eastern Maroon Creoles in French Guiana and Papiamentu/o in Aruba and
Curacao (see papers in Migge et al. 2010). In cases where P/ Cs serve as a (co-)medium of
education, language planning has followed su it in developing orthographies, descriptive gram-
mars, d ictionaries, pedagogical materials, as well as new styles, practices, and terminologies.
The French Ant illes provides an instructive examp le of success in persistent language plan-
ning efforts; since the 1980s Jean Bemabe and other members of GEREC (Groupe d'iuudes
et de recherches en espace creolophone) brought about the standard ization and acceptanc-e of
French-based Creoles as subjects and media of education at school and university in Franc-e.
8.7 Conclusion
New World P/ Cs have figured in almost all areas of research on P/ Cs. Most of the theories
and models that currently exist were based on or heavily influenced by P/ Cs from this broad
region. The preceding overview demonstrates that contexts, circumstances, and outcomes
were far from homogeneous and that academ ic models based on data from this region do not
properly refle.c t the current state. Despite the dominance of the Caribbean, important gaps are
still visible such as the fact that French-based Creoles remain understudied or that much of the
sociolinguistic and app lied linguistic research has focused on contexts in which a P/ C coexists
with its lexifier. Future work will have to put greater emphasis on comparison within the three
regions and beyond and across lexifiers.
Notes
I For a useflll overview of research on TMA systems in Creoles, see Win ford (20 18).
2 There is much less research on the nature of superstrate varieties, but see for example Chaudenson
( 1992), Smith ( 1987). Research confirms the importance of regional European varieties and also sec-
ond language varieties as opposed to standard varieties.
3 For an overview of pertinent issues in quantitative sociolinguistics research on Creoles and its con-
tribution to research in quantitative sociolinguistics, as well as reprints of important articles by John
Rickford, an important figure in the field, see Rickford (2019a).
170
Related topics
The Typology of Pidgin and Creole Languages; The Atlantic; Sub-Saharan Africa; Australia
and the South West Pacific; Creoles, Education and Policy; Diachronic Studies of Pidgins and
Creoles
Further reading
Farquharson, J. T. & Migge, B. 2017. Pidgins and Creoles: Critical Concepts in Linguistics. Vols l-4.
Maiden, MA: Routledge.
The three volumes reprint a w ide range of prominent anicles on sociolinguistics, genesis, and applied
research and provides succinct summaries of each area.
Kouwenberg, S. & Singler, J. V 2008. The Handbook of Pidgin and Creole Swdies. Maiden, MA:
Wiley-BlackwelL
This book consists of review anicles that cover a wide range o f topics in research on creoles.
Siege!, J. 2005. Applied creolistics revisited. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages, 20(2): 293- 323.
This article gives a thorough overview on the implementation of creoles in a range of domains and
the obstacles.
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9
THE ATLANTIC
Kofi Yakpo and Norval Smith
Introduction
A common theme in the description and theorization of the Atlantic Ocean and its African,
American, and European littoral is 'movement, transformation, relocation' (Gi lroy 1993). The
interaction and merging of popu lations, languages, cultural traditions, and economic modes
in the Atlantic basin from the 16th century onwards can be seen as a harbinger of the shape of
things to come. The colonial Caribbean in particular became the epitome of the later trajectory
of the world in which Europe forged its version of Western modernity (Mintz 1996), with
its constitutive elements of industrial capita lism, asymmetrical globalization, forced labour,
castism-racism, large-scale labour migration, and the destruction of older social institutions
and kinship systems, the 'me lting of so lids' (Bauman 2013).
But the Atlantic world also saw the rise of an equally modern counter-project, the syncretic
and subversive culture of ' metisage' (Glissant 1997) constructed by enslaved and colonized
African-, Indigenous-, and Asian-descended peoples of the Americas, who rejected the hier-
archical binaries of European colonialism that sought to dehumanize them. The resulting
'creol ite' (Bernabe et al. 1989) is powerfully embodied in the Afro-European, Afro-Indigenous
(e.g. Taylor 1956), Euro-Indigenous and Afro-Asian (e.g. Yakpo 2017a) cultural and linguistic
contacts along the Atlantic rim. A whole range of linguistic varieties emerged from these
contacts. Among these, the Afro-European Creole languages of the Atlantic basin stand out
because they combine the various linguistic lineages spoken by their progenitors in particularly
interesting ways, and continue to be spoken in ecologies characterized by extensive contact.
Here, we focus on the Afro-Caribbean English-lexifier Creoles (AECs) in order to ftesh out
some salient features of language contact in the Atlantic. Today, AECs are spoken by around
a hundred and twenty m ill ion people in a string of closely related, often mutually intelligible
but typologically differentiated varieties in Africa and the Americas (Yakpo 2016). Contrary
to the colon ial official languages of the Atlantic, the exponential growth in AEC speaker num-
bers across time and space has been entirely self-authored, and against formidable ideo logi-
cal odds inherited from colonialism and enslavement. The masses of working pe.o ples who
speak AECs as the ir primary languages still face educational, po litical, and economic exclu-
sion (Devonish 20 I 0). AI the same time the economic and socio-cultural transformations
of the last few decades have dramatically extended the reach of the contact languages of the
179
Kofi Yakpo m~d Norval Smith
Atlantic. Afropop sung in Nigerian Pidgin, Reggae and Dancehall in Jamaican and African
American English Rap lyrics have become the musical and lingu istic signatures of a Trans-
Atlantic culture. The trajectory of the AECs therefore epitomizes the significant linguistic and
social transfonnations of the Atlantic world, and the globe at large, in the past few centuries.
9_1 The Atlantic as a contact and conver gence area

The littora l zone of the three continents bordering the Atlantic Ocean has served as an arena
of people and language contact for millennia. In precolonial times, the North Atlantic with
its character of an inland sea and coasta l lowlands served as a theatre for contact and conver-
gence between peop les and related and unre lated languages (Ureland 2011 ). Canoe-powered
naval trade, warfare, and fishing connected the entire western seaboard of Africa (Smith
1970), and extensive marine networks linked the continental Americas and the Caribbean
(Hofman et al. 20 I 0). Existing patterns of contact had therefore already shaped the linguis-
tic practic.es and individua l experiences of peop le on the three Atlantic continents when the
Western European nations set out to colonize the Americas and the Atlantic islands of Africa
in the 15th century.
The colon ial period laid the foundations for the Atlantic as an intercontinenta l convergence
zone across hitherto regionally confined linguistic macro-families. Arawak languages indig-
enous to the Americas, Atlantic-Congo, Afro-Asiatic and Mande languages of West Africa,
European regional dialects of Portuguese, Spanish, English, French, Breton, and Irish were
brought together in ever-changing constellations in early colonial-era settlements.
From the late 17th century, and particularly the 18th century onwards, the European colo-
nial p lantation economies grew to industrial proportions, fuelled by the enslavement of Afri-
cans. In this period, the Atlantic increasingly became a contact ecology dominated by Kw a and
Benue-Congo substrate languages, Romance and Germanic superstrates, and A fro-European
Creole languages. An additional layer of typologica l complexity was added in the 19th and
early 20th centuries. Large numbers of indentured labourers came with the ir languages
from h1dia (e.g. Boer 1998), southern China (e.g. Rojas-Berscia & Shi 2017), Java (e.g. Villerius
2018), and West Africa (e.g. Warner-Lewis 1996).
The postcolonial era since roughly the 1960s - with the notable exception of Haiti wh ich
rid itself of colonialism and slavery in 1804, and the continenta l American colonies- is again
characterized by migration and mobi lity, albeit without d irect coercion. The experience of a
considerab le portion of the populations of the Americas, Africa, and Europe is one of (often
c ircular) migration and language contact between languages of the Northern and the Southern
hemispheres of the Atlantic (e.g. Hinrichs 2011; Kootstra & ~ahin 20 18). These more recent
migratory movements have extended the reach of Afro-European contact varieties from their
homesteads in the once colonized Southern Atlantic to the Northern Atlantic. True to their
historical role as languages of identity and resistance, Afro-European contact varieties have
garnered prestige in grassroots culture, thus feed ing into urban popular cu lture, and intereth-
nic youth speech styles in the cities of the former colon izing nations (for the Netherlands, see
Dorleijn et al. 20 15).
9_2 Current contributions and research

Research on language contact in the Atlantic has been deeply invested in theorizing the
ontological status of Creoles. Sensationalist claims that Creoles have the 'simplest grammars
180
The Atlantic
of the world' (McWhorter 2001), and more diligent arguments that Creoles constitute a ' typo-
logical class' (e.g. Bakker et al. 20 17) have occupied a disproportionate amount of discursive
space in Pidgin and Creole studies.
A consequence of the singular focus on Creol ization is that Afro-European Creole (AECs)
languages have been excised from their genetic heritage and area! context. The study ofAtlan-
tic (and other) Creoles however offers countless possibil ities for cross-fertil ization with the tra-
d itional fields of comparative and historical linguistics, and with genetic and areal-typological
linguistics, more so in combination with an increasingly sophisticated linguistic data science.
In Section 3.1, we address genetic aspects in the reconstruction of an AEC proto-Janguage. In
Section 3.2, we turn to area! typology.
9.2.1 Gen ealogical perspectives: 'Ingred ien t X'

The structure of the AECs may be seen to reflect the genealogical heritage of the Jexifier (for
a recent, data-driven study, see Blasi et a! 20 17), of the substrates (e.g. the pioneering study
ofBoretzky 1983), or a comb ination of both (van Sluijs et al. 2016). A fourth perspective
is to postulate a 'non-genetic' origin of Creoles (e.g. Thomason & Kaufman 1988). Here,
we turn away from the embattled question of determining external genetic continuities and
look at the equa lly interesting internal genealogy of the AECs. A relationship between the
Afro-Caribbean English-lexifier Creoles has been suggested for quite some time (Hancock
1969; Alleyne 1980; McWhorter 1995; Huber 1999). In the following we give a brief over-
view of the position of Smith ( 1987, 20 15), wh ich combines socio-historical and linguistic
data to argue for the emergence of an AEC proto-Janguage in the Caribbean in the early 17th
century.
Sm ith (1997, 2015) introduced the term 'Ingred ient X' on the model of a term employed
in British TV soap powder advertisements. This was a supposedly secret ingredient that
wou ld help produce a more sparkling wash. The intended imp lication was that a group of
words from coasta l West African languages dispersed along many hundreds of miles of coast,
had, in unexplained fashion, entered the vocabu laries of many English-lexifier Creole
languages in the Atlantic area.
In Table 9.1, we repeat the list in a fonn based on Smith (2015: 70-72, sources provided
there) (also see Baker & Huber 2001; Avram 2004; Parkvall2016). The number of AECs has
however been increased to cover more varieties. We give one African form only, choosing,
where possible, the likeliest source language, whose name is given immediately preceding the
relevant form. The very fact that this set of lexical items was drawn from a disparate group
of at least eleven African languages makes it very unlikely that any common source has to be
looked for in Africa itself (pace Hancock 1986). This also suggests that these items belonged
to a single original linguistic system employed in the very early 17th century during the Eng-
lish colonization of the Caribbean. The presence of ' Ingredient X' in the African AECs a lso
supports the idea that a Maroon variety of Jamaican was transplanted to Freetown, Sierra
Leone in the late 18th century and substantially fed into the emerging Krio language (Smith
20 17). A comparison of the phonology, grammar and lexicon of the African AECs among each
other, in turn, suggests that the diffusion of the Krio language a long the West coast of Africa
in the 19th century ushered in the formation of Pichi, Nigerian Pidgin, and Cameroon Pidgin
(Huber 1999: 12&-129).
Some ' Ingredient X' items also occur in the French-lexifier Creoles of the Caribbean Cre-
oles (Parkvall 20 16). This need not, however, in itse lf indicate more far-reaching genealogical
181
Table 9.1 Ingredient X words in the Afro-European Creoles
English Aji'ican languages Sr J Kr Sa SK Guy Bail Mi Cren Bar Am Cut Is Bel Total
( l) spider anans1 Twi Ewe X X X X X X X X X X X X X X 14

(2) eat nyam Wolof X X X X X X X X X X X X X X 14
(3) stab juk Fulaoi X X X X X X X X X X X X X X 14
(4) White man bakra Efik X X X X X X X X X X X X X 13
(5) only soso lgbo Yomba X X X X X X X X X X X X X 13
(6) magic obia Efik X X X X X X X X X X X X X 13
(7) a staple food fufu Twi Ewe Yontba X X X X X X X X X X X X 12
(8) dmm gombe Kikongo X X X X X X X X X X 10
(9) you {plural) uou/uoa!ooa Igbo X X X X X X X X X X X ll
( 10) ghost jumbi Kimbundu X X X X X X X X X X X ll ~
';:;.,
( ll ) leprosy kokobe Twi X X X X X X X X X X X II ;;;:
(12) gossip koogosa Twi X X X X X X X X 8 ~
-"'
00
( 13) headpad kata Kikongo X X X X X X X X 8 !i"
( 14) evil ghost do pi Gan X X X X X X X X X X 10 "'-
(15) ackee aki Kru X X X X X X X X 8 ~
(16) mttle sak Efik X X X X X X X X 8 i
(17) deaf/dumb mu mu Twi Ewe Mende X X X X X X X X 8 ~
(18) beaocake
( 19) okra
akra
okra
Igbo
lgbo
Yoruba
E.lj\)
Foo X X X X X X X X 8
10
s:
X X X X X X X X X X
(20) monster bubu Kikongo X X X X X X X 7
(21) game wan Twi X X X X X X X 7
(22) mud potopoto Twi Ewe Kikongo X X X X X X 6
(23) peanut l gobo(gobo) Kimbundu X X X X X X 6
(24) peanut 2 pinda Kikongo X X X X X X X X 8
(25) yam nyams Mende X X X X X X 6
(26) dumpling dolmn Twi Yomba X X X X X X X 7
(27) vulva bombo Kikongo X X X X X X X 7
(28) lungs fukofuko Yoruba X X X X 4
(29) strike fom E. lj\) X X X X 4
Reflexes in language 29 29 25 25 21 21 20 19 16 15 14 14 12 15
Abbreviations
Sr = Sranan (Suriname)
J = Jamaiec:'ln Creole
Kr = Krio (Sierm Leone)
Sa = Saamaka (Sammaccan)
SK = St Kitts (Kittitian)
Guy = Guyanese Creole (Creolese)
Bah = Bahamian Creole
Mi = Misk:ito Coast Creole (N icamgua)
Gren = Grenadan Creole
Bar = Barbadian Creole (Bajan)
Ant = Antiguan Creole :;l
-"'"" Gul =
Is =
Gullah (South Carolina, Georgia)
Islander Creole (Providencia-San Andres) (Colombia
"
:..
i}
"
~
;;·
links between the different Afro-European Creole groupings. For one thing, Africans were
deported to the Americas from the same regions in Africa. Second, the distribution of' lngred i-
ent X' words is not the same. Dopi 'evil ghost' is restricted to the AECs, whi le makak 'monkey'
is only found in French-lexifier Creo les. Jumbi 'ghost', on the other hand, is near-universal.
Names for foods and plants tend be present in both groups.
Third, there was contact and borrowing between the Creole groupings due to population
movements between American colonies held by different European nations. So for example,
we have the near-universal bakra 'White person ' in the AECs. The French-lexifier Creoles,
in contrast, mostly have beke, probably of Eastern lj<> origin. However, Bajan, the English-
lexifier Creole of Barbados, also has brki, a form related to beke, while bakra is only recorded
in Bajan in the 18th century. Barbados is geographically cut off from the other English Creole-
speaking islands by a string of (former) French Cre.ole-speaking islands including Dominica,
Martinique, and St Lucia. A possible conclusion is, therefore, that Bajan br.ki has been bor-
rowed from (one of the) French-lexifier Creoles.
The existence of grammatica l items (e.g. the subjunctive complementizer mek, see Sec-
tion 3.2) in addition to lexical ones provides further evidence for an AEC proto-language.
Given present-day speaker numbers of more than one hundred million, this is quite a remark-
able trajectory for a language once spoken by a few thousand Africans who had arrived on the
shores of the Caribbean in cha ins.
9.2.2 Areal perspectives on Afro -European contact languages

Another line of research has looked at the Afro-European Creoles of the Atlantic basin in an
a real perspective. Thick descriptions emanating from this perspective (e.g. Essegbey 20 15; Aboh
2015; Yakpo 2019a; Hackert2019) have made the identification of a Creole ontological type
ever more elusive. A coherent body of area I work is, for example, the work on the 'Transatlantic
Sprachbund' (Muysken & Smith 20 15), showing the links between the speakers, grammars, and
lexica of the Gbe languages spoken in present-day Togo and Benin, and the Creole languages
spoken of Suriname. Yakpo and Muysken (20 17) trac.e the outlines of a linguistic area within
Suriname itself. An interesting finding is that Suriname's dominant Creole language Sranan
functions as a conduit for influences on the Indic, Austronesian, Sinitic, Arawakan, and Cari-
ban languages for both European (via Dutch) and African (via the substrates) area) features, for
example in the transfer of overt clause linkage with 'and' to Hakka vs. the strengthening of serial
strategies in Javanese, and the borrowing of a 'say' complementizer by Lokono.
An Atlantic linguistic area can therefore be conce ived of in much broader geographical
tern1s. Muysken (2008: 11-24) discusses the Atlantic as an intercontinental linguistic area, as
in the spread of African structural features and lexical items to the European languages and
Creoles of the Americas, and European lexical and structural influence on the Creoles and
Indigenous languages of the Americas. Taking this further, the Atlantic can be p ictured as the
meeting ground of two large linguistic areas that we may conveniently call the 'Afrosphere'
and the 'Eurosphere', made up of the languages of the West African littoral and its hinterland,
and of the European colonizing nations respectively.
The area) character of Eurosphere and Afrosphere languages beyond their genetic con-
nections have been studied for West Africa (see Gilldemann 2018 for a recent overview) and
Western Europe (see Haspelmath 200 I for an overview). Some of the many features of the
Afrosphere described in the literature and relevant here are serial verb constructions; a ten-
dency towards isolating morphology; 'hypertransitivity' (Essegbey 1999); few prepositions
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and (mostly postpositional) locative nouns; no (pro-)nominal gender; no pro-drop; a specific-

ity distinction; aspect and mood prominence; tone systems; and lexical, idiomatic, and prag-
maticAfricanisms (e.g. 'kiss teeth' , a sign ifier of negative affect, see Figueroa 2005). Relevant
features of the Eurosphere, in turn, are overt clause linkage, some fusiona l morphology, many
prepositions, a definiteness distinction, stress systems, and lexical Europeanisms.
Evidence for the presence of both African substrate and European superstrate features sug-
gests that these two spheres converge in the A fro-European Creole languages of the Atlantic
basin. The Creoles therefore form an 'area) buffer zone' (cf. St ilo 2005) between the Euro-
sphere and the Afrosphere. Some of the convergences and eo-occurrences of Euro- and A fro-
sphere features in the Creoles are:
• Full-blown tone systems (e.g. Ndyuka, Huttar & Huttar 1994: 562- 579), next to ' residual'
(Berry 1972) tone systems (e.g. Sranan, Smith & Adamson 2006), stress systems (e.g.
Jamaican, Gooden 2003), and m ixed systems combining tone and stress (Papiamentu,
Rivera-Castillo 1998) or etymologically layered tone systems (Saamaka, Good 2004; for
an overview, see Devon ish 2002);
• A trend towards analyticity characteristic of both Kwa and English/Romance;
• 'Mismatches' in constituent order, e.g. strict SVO and the expression of core spatial rela-
tions through prepositions and postpositions in the same Creole (e.g. in Sranan, see Yakpo
2017b);
• African-style TMA systems (e.g. Winford & Migge 2007) and mixed NP systems com-
bining European (e.g. adj ective-word order in the AECs) and African fonnal features (e.g.
post-posed determiners, plural expressed only once in the NP).
In the American At lantic, the presence of Afrosphere features gradually tapers off in line with
various factors that cond itioned the d iffering demographic distribution and socio-econom ic
stratification between Black and White popu lations in the New World (M intz 1971; Faraclas
et al. 2007; Yakpo 2020 for a discussion of both factors). Structurally somewhat less independ-
ent Black ethnolectal varieties than the Creoles like African American English (e.g. Green
2002) and Afro-Spanish varieties (e.g. Afro-Yunguei\o, see Perez & Zipp 2019), as well as
ruraVworking class varieties like Brazi lian Vem acular Portuguese (e.g. Petter 2004) for exam-
p le, have comparatively fewer Afrosphere features than the Creoles on the one hand, but still
more than White ethnolectal and standard varieties, on the other.
Probably the most important driver of the spread ofEurosphere features in the last century or
so is the expansion of formal education in the fom1er European colonies of the Atlantic rim as
well as increased national, regional, and international mobil ity and migration and media access.
Uninterrupted contact for five centuries with European superstrates in the Americas has infused
more Eurosphere features into A fro-European Creoles and Indigenous languages of the Americas
than into Creoles (and other African languages) spoken on the African continent. In the follow-
ing section, we show how the resulting Trans-Atlantic area) cline of Eurosphere vs. Afrosphere
features can be captured with the help of a particu lar linguistic feature.
9.2.3 The stratal-areal contact model: subjunctive m ood in the A ECs

Processes of area) convergence have played a central role in shaping the differentiation of
AEC grammars. The stratal-areal contact model (Yakpo 2017c, 2017d) suggests, among other
things, that contact with African adstrates has reinforced and expanded existing Afrosphere
185
features in the African AECs, whi le the absence of contact with African adstrates has led to a
weakening of Afrosphere and a strengthening of Eurosphere features in the American AECs.
We briefly explore this by looking at the formal-functional differentiation of subjunctive mood
across AECs in Africa and the Americas (examples from Kofi Yakpo's field data unless a
source is provided).
Subjunctive mood is instantiated in the modal complementizer mek(i) 'sBJv ' homophone
of, and diachronically related to the lexical verb 'make' (for an overview, see Sm ith 2015:
83-85). The use of subjunctive mood in complement clauses is associated w ith the presence
of the deontic nuanc.e of 'manipulation' (Giv6n 1995: 125ff.). Subjunctive mood appears in the
directive main clause types of imperative (I), cohortative (2), and jussive (3 ):
(I) M ek YIJ lvtit sm!JI!

SBJV 2so wait small
' Wait a bit!' (Cameroon Pidgin)
(2) Mek w1 go!

SBJV I PL go
' Let's go!' (Jamaican)
(3) A so meki a tan!

FOC Jike.that SBJV 3SG.SBJ remam
' Let him/her/it be (like that).' (Ndyuka; Suriname)
Second, the subjw1ctive complementizer mek(i) also introdu ces subordinate clauses depend-
ent on main verbs whose meaning contains an element of causat ion, manipu lation, proposal,
and desire as well as other affective nuances compatible with deontic modal ity; see (4) and (5).
This is the central domain of the subjunctive, where the modal complementizer occurs w ith a
great number of deontic main verbs in some AECs (e.g. in Pich i, see Yakpo 2019b: 389-392;
and in Nigerian Pidgin, see Faraclas 1996: 26- 32):
(4) Mi bt!li en taki meki a an kon.

I SG shout 3SG.OBJ QUOT SBN 3SG.SBJ NEG Come
' I shouted at him/her that he shou ld not come.' (Ndyuka; Suriname)
(5) /i gud meek 11 faa/ dong.

3so.SBJ be.good SBJV 3sG.SBJ fall down
' It's good (serves him/her right) that/if s!he falls.' (Tobagonian)
Among the deontic 'manipulative' contexts, we also find WANT-complements (6), and the
subordinate clause of effect in analytic causative constructions. Like (4) and (5), these con-
structions are 'balanced ', consisting of two finite clauses and hence a subject undergoer (l ike in
African languages, see later), rather than ' deranked' (Cristofaro 2003) ones involving an object
undergoer and argument sharing (like European languages, see the translations of examples).
However, only some of the African AECs allow the eo-occurrence of the causative verb and the
homophonous subjunctive marker as in (7) (again like African languages, see ( 15)):
(6) Mi wani meki a du wan sani gi rm.

)SG want SBJV 3SG.SBJ do One thing PREP )SG
' I want him/ her to do someth ing for me.' (Sranan; Suriname)
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The Atlantic
(7) A' mek mek e dr6ngo.

)SG.SBJ make SBJV 3SG.SBJ be.drunk
'I got him/her drunk.' Lit. 'I made that slhe be drunk.' (Pichi; Equatorial Guinea)
Th ird, subjunctive mood occurs in purpose clauses, which contain the deontic nuance of an
anticipated outcome:
(8) Blak di ruod m ek l/1! no kom /l/1.

.
block DEF road SBJV 3sG NEG come Ill
'B lock the way so that slhe doesn't come in.' (Jamaican)
The occurrence of subjunctive mood across the three functional domains (d irectives, com-
p lement clauses, and purpose clauses) is, however, unevenly distributed across the AECs.
T here are roughly speaking three groups of AECs with respect to the role of subjunctive mood.
Group (I) conta ins all African AECs. These have a unitary system, in which all three func-
tional areas are characterized by the use of subjunctive mood. Group (2) consists in geographi-
cally isolated AECs of the Americas (e.g. Tobagonian) and AECs that have not been in contact
with the lexifier English for a considerable time. These have instead been in contact with a
non-lexifier superstrate. For instance in Suriname, Sranan has been in constant contact with
Dutch since the 1670s, and less so the maroon Creoles Ndyuka and Saamaka. In all three
Creoles, the w1itary system is (still) available. However, MAKE-subjunctives compete with
other modal strategies. In Sranan, for example, SBJV may but need not occur in the subordinate
clauses of deontic ma in verbs like wani (as opposed to the obligatoriness ofsnJv in this context
in the African AECs), compare (6) and (9):
(9) Mi wani dati a musu kari en gi 1111.

ISG want COMP 3SG.SBJ must carry 3SG.OBJ PREP ISG
'I want him/her to carry it for me.' (Sranan; Suriname)
Group (3) are AECs that have been in continuous close contact with English over the cen-
turies. In these, mek(ij-subjunctives are now largely restricted to the less central functions of
d irectives, and sometimes, purpose clauses. In Jamaican, the non-finite modal complementizer
fi is far more common than mek as a modal complementizer for the subordinate c lauses of
deont ic ma in verbs; compare (6) and (10). Also note that (10) no longer involves an African-
like 'balanced', but rather an English-style 'deranked' structure. Trinidad English Creole has
gone further. Most constructions that involve subjunctive mek in Group I and 2 AECs have
generally been replaced by more English-like altematives; compare ( 11):
(I0) Mi no wa/111 dem ji shout aafami.

I SG NEG want 3PL MOD shout after lsG
'I don't want them to shout at me.' (Jamaican)
( 11) A doon wont yu kam, yu noo.

I SG.SBJ NEG want 2sG come 2sG know.
'I don't want you to come, you know.' (Trinidadian Engl ish Creole)
Deontic subjunctives are an area I African characteristic. We assume that the AEC proto-
language had an African-type un itary system of subjunctive marking, which has gradually
become fragmented in accordanc.e with the amount of exposure to European superstrates.
187
Without going into too much detail, we provide the following examples from West African
languages of diverse genetic affi liations. The field data contains examples of the full range of
possibilities of subjunctive use in fifteen West African languages (for details on the corpus, see
2017c). In the five languages provided here, a subjunctive complementizer is found across the
three doma ins of d irectives, complements of deontic main verbs and in purpose clauses, like
in the African AECs. In all instanc.es we find the same kind of 'ba lanced' structure involving
a subjunctive complementizer and a finite subordinate clause with a subject (not an object)
pronoun. Compare the following examples with the AEC examples previously. Note that Kri-
yol (16), the Portuguese-lexifier Creole of Guinea-Bissau, behaves no differently from the
non-Creole African languages listed:
(12) K i 6 wa!
SBJV 3SG.SBJ COme
'Let him/her come!' (Yoruba; Nigeria)
( 13) I po ktme k:> kt1111a ;) k:Jne.

[ SG.SBJ PFV tell 3SG.OBJ SBJV 3SG.SBJ go
'I told himlherto go.' (Temne; Sierra Leone)
( 14) Ma /33 ma tti a Zl.

.
[SG.SBJ want COMP SBJV 3SG.SBJ come
' I want hint/her to come.' (Bafut; Cameroon)
• 'I~ •
( 15) :J-ma-a mii :J- nJ-:J.
3SG.SBJ-Cause-COMPL SBJV 3SG.SBJ-go-COMPL
'S/he made hint/her go.' Lit. ' S/he made that s!he go.' (Fante; Ghana)
(16) Aos n bin prasa pa n toma kafe na Imperio.

yesterday lso come town SBJV lso take coffee LOC PLACE
'Yesterday, I came to town (in order) to take cotree at the Hotel Imperio.' (Kriyol)
There is therefore an east-west area! cline across the Atlantic basin. The widest distribu-
tion of mek(i} 'sBJV' in a unitary deontic domain is found in the African AECs, hence in the
core of the Afrosphere. The most fragmented, non-unitary expression of deontic modality
through various forms (complementizers, auxiliaries, and preverbal markers) is found in
the AECs with the historically most profound exposure to the Eurosphere. Other AECs fall
between these two poles, depending on their individua l contact trajectory. The issue of post-
formative contact-induced change with the lexifier is addressed further in the following
sections.
9.3 Critical issues

Much ink has been spi lt on the controversy arow1d the so-called Creole prototype, represented
in extremis by the work of Bickerton (1984) and derivatives (e.g. McWhorter 1998). The
prototype idea is fow1ded on a terra nullius scenario, in which Atlantic basin Creoles arose ex
nihi/o via the simpl ification of European lexifier languages. The methodologica l foundations of
this approach have been criticized from various angles including its typological asswnptions
(Aboh & Ansaldo 2007), circularity (Fon Sing 20 17), the ahistoricity of its social premises
(Mufwene 2000), its epistemology (DeGraff 2005), the paucity of the data (Lupyan & Da le
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The Atlantic
20 I 0) and the shallowness (Spears 2009) of the linguistic analysis (also see Yakpo 20 19a).
T he core assumption of the terra nullius scenario that there was a transmission bott leneck in
the early stages of creolization has been called into question (see Blasi et a l. 2017 for a recent
study based on large amounts of comparative data).
In Section 3.1 , we briefly discuss the idea that enslaved Africans d id not have sufficient pos-
sibility to learn English and therefore pidginized it. In Section 3.2, we place the equally much-
d iscussed concept of 'decre.o lization' within the broader context of post-fonnative change in
the AECs, by addressing d ifferences in the outcomes between lexifier and non-lexifier contact.
9.3.1 The social context of the formation of Proto-AEC

Enslaved Africans spoke quite a variety of languages, and as a result of regional fluctuations dur-
ing the European slave trade, the linguistic balance among enslaved Africans kept shifting. This
meant that it was usually out of the question for enslaved Africans to adopt a common African
language. In the initial phase of the first colonies, the nwn ber of enslaved Africans was small,
and this phase is often referred to as the ' homestead' phase, because enslavers and enslaved
lived together in close proximity. The ratio between Blacks and Whites is asswned to have been
relatively balanced so that newly arrived Africans would have learned English rapidly, within a
few years at most.
From here on the opinions among Creol ists begin to diverge rapidly. The standard approach
is that the increasing nwnbers of new ly enslaved Africans from Africa as well as larger p lanta-
tions meant that access to English was reduced more and more, and that the end result was a
Creole language. Such the.ories ignore the fact that a body of Black speakers of English had
most probably already been created in the homestead phase. Most enslaved Africans wou ld
therefore have had access to Black speakers of English if it had been advantageous to them
to learn and use English as a lingua franca. Instead, the Proto-AEC would have served as
language of 'identity alignment' (Ansaldo 2009) and resistance (cf. Alleyne 1980; Faraclas
et al. 2007). The linguistic evidence seems to indicate that English was widely known among
enslaved people during the fonnative period ofProto-AEC and thereafter (as shown, for exam-
p le, in the subtle Engl ish-derived d istinctions in the use of definite detern1iners in AECs; see
Aboh 2015: 74-75).
lt is instead more likely that there was multilingualism among early enslaved Africans
including two lingua francas, next to other (African, European, and in some cases Indigenous)
languages. The first lingua franca would be English, indeed to communicate with the colonists
at least during the homesteading period. T he second would be a variety of the Proto-AEC that
spread through the Caribbean with the movements of English colonists and the ir enslaved
workforce. The Proto-AEC, in turn, would have developed in the early 17th century when
the English only had a few small colonies in the Caribbean. 1t must therefore have developed
prior to the expansion of English colonization in the Caribbean. This is demonstrated by the
presence of 'Ingredient X ' lexical items in all AECs (see Section 2.1 ). Further evidence comes
from a core of common grammatical items (Smith 2015: 83-87, 20 17), among them the sub-
jwlctive complementizer mek(i} (see Section 2.3).
9.3.2 The role of contact with the lexifier in Creole language change
A second qu estion much debated in the literature next to the socia l conditions that engendered
the AECs is that of post-fonnative change. Th is question was discussed from a broader, area I
perspective in Section 2.3. Here, we look at the specific role of contact with the superstrate,
189
which has traditionally been studied in linguistically rather homogenous Creole-speaking socie-
ties like Jamaica and Guyana (see Winford 1997 for an overview). The variation of forms
encountered in a continuum between a basilectal and a mesolectal Creole variety has been
assumed to refte.ct diachronic stages of a Creole's deve lopment inc luding 'decreolization'
(e.g., DeCamp 1971; Bickerton 1973; Rickford 1987).
The continuum approach has, however, not been successfully transferred to more com-
plex multilingua l ecologies (e.g. Nigeria, see Deuber 2005). Equally, the terms ' superstrate'
and ' lexifier ' are used interchangeably in Creo le linguistics (but see Snow 2002; Selbach
2008). The difference is s ignificant, however. The formal-lexical sim ilarity between a Cre-
ole and its lexifier appears to fac ilitate change of phonologica lly similar Cre.o le words in
the direction of lexifier etymons, including the development of multip le variants and hybrid
forms, a phenomenon a lso found in dialect contact (Gaetano 2005). Existing overlaps in
form and meaning make the Creole amenable to faster semantic change toward the lexifier
than in cases of contact between unrelated languages. A shared genealogy may also result
in the interchangeabi lity of grammatical elements between lexifier and Creole even in more
tightly organ ized areas of the grammar (cf. Law 2013). Yakpo (2017c, 2017d) provides first
systematic accounts of differences in outcomes between lexifier and non-lexifier contact in
African and Caribbean AECs. However, a high degree of societa l multilingual ism including
the Creole and a non-lexifier superstrate may also engender far-reaching typological change
in the direction of the superstrate (Yakpo 20 17b). Work therefore still rema ins to be done
on the fine differenc.e s between Creole change induced by contact with a lexifier vs. a non-
lexifier superstrate.
The different outcomes oflexifier-Creole and non-lexifier-Creole contact can be exempli-
fied by the fate of certain phonological features. One of these is the treatment of the diph-
thongs f ail or /~i/, and /aul or /~u/ in closed syllables in English; the other is the presence
of anaptyctic vowels, i.e. supporting vowels that prevent certain consonants from appearing
word-finally (for a detailed treatment, see Smith 20 15). Languages with little exposure to
English (Group I) in the 'post-founder' period (Mufwene 1996) show the short-m id vowel
monophthongs lt, e/ and /':), of as in /fait/ vs / ftt/ ' fight' , and /haus/ vs. /(h)os/ ' house'.
Languages with much exposure to English (Group 2) have d iphthongs and lack anaptyctic
vowels. Compare Table 9.2:
Table 9.2 Phonetic isoglosses compared
English Sranan Ndyuka Saamaka MSL Krio (Sierra Jamaican

(Suriname) (Maroon) (Maroon) (Jamaica) Leone)
black blaka baaka baaka blaka, braka blak blak
dead dede dede d£d£ dede dede- ded
knock naki naki naki naki oak oak
talk taki taki taki taki t6k tak, taak
walk waka waka waka waka wakil waak
climb kren kelen • klem, krem klem klaim
time ten ten ten tern ttm taim
fight feti feti feti fete f£t fait
night neti neti ndeti net n£t nait
white weti weti weti wete wet wait
*Saamaka uses a Portuguese· derived word for 'climb '
190
The Atlantic
Group I consists ofSranan (Suriname) and the Maroon AECs of the Caribbean (Ndyuka,
Saamaka, Windward Maroon), as well as Krio, the African offshoot of Leeward Maroon
Creo le (Jamaica) and the direct descendants of Krio (e.g. Pichi). Group 2 consists of all
other AECs today spoken in the Caribbean (e.g. Jama ican) and in Africa (e.g. Ghanaian
Pidgin English). The parallel isms between the Group I languages MSL and the Suriname
Creo les include anaptyctic vowels and monophthongization of pre-coda English diphthongs
as phonologica l parallels (see Table 9.2). The Group I language Krio also has monoph-
thongs and anaptyctic vowels appear in some, but not all common words (e.g. waka 'walk').
Of the languages in Table 9.2, only Jamaican (the on ly Group 2 language) therefore has
d iphthongs in words whose Engl ish model had a diphthong-consonant sequence, and no
anaptyctic vowels.
The Suriname Creoles and the Proto-AEC that spawned them had contact with English
for a maximum of about seventy years: an w1known period of maximally twenty-five years
on Barbados, St Kitts, Nevis, and Montserrat from whence Suriname was co lonized by the
English in 1651 , followed by sixteen years in Suriname until the Dutch take-over of 1667.
Conceivably, English was still spoken for another twenty-five years in Suriname after the
Dutch conquest (Smith 2009: 315).
The Suriname Creole languages show striking structural and lexica l parallels with the
Maroon Spirit Language (MSL) of the Windward Maroons of Jamaica (Bilby 1983). MSL
is today still used to address spirits of maroons who were born in Jamaica. Up till the early
1930s MSL seems to have represented the everyday language used by the Windward Maroons
(Harris 1994), but it has now been supplanted by Jamaican. The conservative nature ofMSL
shows that even within Jamaica, where English has been spoken without interruption for more
than 350 years, the relative isolation of the Windward Maroons preserved Proto-AEC features
that are today still found in the Suriname Creoles (see Bilby 1983 for some grammatical
features as well).
Sm ith (20 15: 92- 106; 20 17) argues that Krio is largely descended from Western Maroon
Creole (pace Hancock (insert reference here and at back)), hence another, now extinct
Maroon Creole spoken on Jamaica in the 18th century similar to MSL. The fate of the these
two phonetic isog losses therefore shows how varying degrees of exposure to the lexifier
English have led to d ifferent contact outcomes.
9.4 Future directions

We still know too little about the fine details of granunar, phonology, lectal variation, and the
effects of contact with adstrates and superstrates in the Atlantic basin to make broad claims about
Creole typology. Detailed studies are necessary in order to catalogue the inunense genealogical
and typological diversity in linguistic stmctures; an observation already made in the 19th century
by Schuchardt, that pioneer of contact linguistics. Future work wi ll be complemented by quantita-
tive approaches, with data drawn from language-specific (e.g. Green et al. 20 16; Caron 20 19) and
typological databases (e.g. Kortmann & Lunkenheimer 2011; Michaelis et al. 2013).
Contact-related work will have to factor in the tectonic demographic shift and far-reaching
socio-econom ic changes w1derway in Africa, and their consequences for patterns of language
use and contact along the Atlantic rim. The population of Africa is reckoned to quadmple in
the next eighty years, reaching over four bi ll ion by 2100. Nigeria alone is projected to grow to
in excess of seven hWldred million Wltil2100 (United Nations 2017). Demographic growth rates
for the other major AEC-speaking countries Sierra Leone, Ghana, and Cameroon are simi lar. It
is therefore not unrealistic to expect up to half a billion speakers of AECs in West Africa alone
191
by the end of the 2 1st century. The mutually intelligible string of African AECs wou ld then
overtake Spanish, Portuguese, and French as the most wide ly spoken (group of) Janguage(s)
of the Western hem isphere besides English.
Research on other large and small Atlantic rim languages that make for equally exciting
subjects of study in language contact has barely begun. This includes, for example, the Man de
zone across the Atlantic rim stares Senegal, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Liberia, and
Core d'Jvoire (e.g. Diallo 201 4). Between eastern Ghana and the Benin-Nigerian borderlands,
languages of the Gbe cluster (Ewe, G£, Adja, Gun, and Fon among others) are in intimate con-
tact with each other, English in Ghana (Amuzu 20 15), French in Togo and Benin (Essizewa
2007), and with other African languages (see e.g. the studies in Ameka 20 17). Hard ly any
work has yet been done ro describe contact-induced changes that the languages of the Beti-
Bulu-Fang cluster, Lingala, and Kikongo have undergone in recent decades in their expansion
to the cities and a long the coastal zones of Cameroon, Equatorial Gu inea, Gabon, the two
Congos, and northern Angola.
The African capitals dotting the Atlantic rim are, in turn, sites of intense contact that have
seen the emergence of urban lingua francas, koines, and youth languages that are only begin-
ning to be stu died. Among them feature urban Wolof in Dakar (McLaughlin 200 I), the French-
Jexifier contact language Nourchi in Abidj an (Kube 2005), the Gbe koine of Lome (Sedj i
20 13), the Akan koine of Accra (Yankson 20 18), and the vernacular Portuguese varieties of
Siio Tome (Bouchard 2018) and Angola (Nzau et al. 2013).
Adstratal influence from African languages on the European-lexifier contact languages spo-
ken in Africa, as well as on the standard European supersrrate varieties spoken in Africa, require
detailed scrutiny. Recent research is beginning to show, for example, that many African varieties
of European colonial languages have tone systems (for French, see Bordal 20 12; for English, see
Gussenhoven 20 17; for Spanish, see Bordal Steien & Yakpo 2020), thereby call ing into question
established ideas about the vulnerability of tone during language contact and creolization.
So far, only a small body of work has addressed the expansion of the conununicative func-
tions of contact languages in the Atlantic basin (e.g. Heyd & Mair 201 4; Moll 2015). The
absence of top-down, stale-administered language policies requires looking at the standardiz-
ing and multiplier roles of private digital media (e.g. Beltman 20 18), instant messaging, social
media, fi lm and pop music. The emergence of more fonnal registers in contact languages on
both sides of the Atlantic, including the spread of vernacu lar orthographies opens up possib il i-
ties for the study of language policies and language ideologies (e.g. Migge et al. 20 10; Yakpo
20 16). In the coming decades, the importance of the Atlantic will only grow as a crossroads
of language contact, and a site for the emergence of new languages, speech styles, and p luri-
lingual practices.
Further reading
Alleyne, M. C. 1980. Comparative Afro-American: an historical-comparative study of English-based
Afi"o-American dialects ofthe New World. Ann Arbor, Ml: Karoma Publishers.
Well ahead of its time in its holistic approach and coverage, and in continuation of earlier pioneering
work such as Hancock (1969), this book looks at the evolution of the Afro-Caribbean European-
lex ifier Creoles through the tense of historical, comparative, genetic, and typological linguistics,
without shunning the discussion of socio-culmral aspects of Creole genesis.
Linebaugh, P. & Rediker, M. 2000. The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hid-
den History of the Revolutionary Atlamic. Boston: Beacon Press.
192
The Atlantic
This history from below reconstructs the cmcial role that enslaved, oppressed, and marginalized women
and men o f African, European, and Indigenous descent played in fashioning the modem Atlantic area
in the interstices between colonial conquest and slavery.
Muysken, P. & Smith, N. (eds.). 2015. Surviving the Middle Passage: The West Africa-Suriname Sprach-
bund (Trends in Linguistics, Studies and Monographs (TiLSM) 275). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
This edited volume is the first to systematically conceptualize the African and American Atlantic as a
linguistic area. It conta ins fi fteen studies in socio-history, phonology, morphosyntax, semantics, lexi-
cography, and phylogenetic analysis that assess and show the extent o f the area! connections between
Gbe and Kikongo, and the Suriname Creoles.
Ureland, P. S. (ed.). 2011. Language Comact across the Norrh Atlantic (Linguistische Arbeiten 359).
T ubingen: Max N iemeyer Verlag.
This 500-page volume contains over twenry studies of pre- and postcolonial (Trans-)Atlantic contact
in the Northern hemisphere. The focus is on Germanic (and Scandinavian in particular), but Celtic,
Romance, and Krio are a lso included.
Yakpo, K. 2017. Towards a model o f language contact and change in the English-lexifier Creoles of Africa
and the Caribbean. English World-Wide 38( 1). 50-76.
The first smdy to present a comprehensive typology of post-formative contact and change in the A fro-
Caribbean English-lexifier Creoles on both sides of the Atlantic, this article shows the importance o f
area! and strata! forces in the genealogical di fferentiation of this group of languages.
Related topics
Sub-Saharan Africa, North America, and Hawai' i; Caribbean, South and Central America;
Diachronic swdies of Pidgins and Creoles; The Typology of Pidgin and Creole Languages;
Pidgin and Creole Ecology and Evolution; Identity Politics.
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10
PIDGINS AND CREOLES
IN EURASIA
The consolation of philology
Anthony P. Grant
This chapter discusses the general history of p/cs in the area, looking at a number of languages
such as Basque-Icelandic Pidgin, Lingua Franca, Chinese Pidgin Russian and Russenorsk.
Among the resources upon which this study draws are materials on various languages which
have only been unearthed or investigated from a creolistic and philological viewpoint in the
last few years, despite the fact that they were sometimes recorded centuries ago. Even though
most of these languages are no longer in use, the materials available to us on them still have
much to contribute to a nuanced understanding of foreigner talk and processes of pidginisation.
10.1 Introduction, definitions and the languages in question

Europe, and indeed Eurasia in general, has been central to the investigation of Pidgins and
Creoles (hereafter p/cs) for centuries. A small set of Western European languages (English,
Dutch, French, Spanish and Portuguese) has provided the core lexica of most modem Creole
languages which are used throughout the world, in Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Ocean environ-
ments, and of many Pidgins too.
Speakers of many of these Creo les can be found in the tens of thousands in Europe. There
are thousands of speakers of Sranan Tongo (English-lexified) from Surinam and also of Papia-
mentu (Portuguese!Spanish-lexifier) living in the Netherlands, and large numbers of speakers
of Haitian, Martiniquais and Guadeloupean (all French-lexifier) in France, and speakers of
Caribbean Creole Englishes and also of Kweyol (French-lexifier Creole language from the
Lesser Antilles) in Britain, while speakers ofPortuguese-lexifier Capeverdean varieties can be
found in the thousands in Paris, Amsterdam, Lisbon and elsewhere in Western Europe. Fur-
themlore, although some documentation of p/cs from this area (and of modes of foreigner talk
which may have developed into Creoles used further afield) dates from the 16th or 17th cen-
tury, the theoretical, descriptive and historical study of Creoles and Pidgins began in Europe
in the mid-19th century with work by the Portuguese Adolpho Coelho, the Dutchman Dirk
Christiaan Hesseling, the German (resident in Austria) Hugo Schuchardt, and the Slovene
Franz Miklosich. In those days the structural and other features of these languages were fil-
tered all too often through a European colonialist lens, and the study of Creole languages
continues to be pursued in Europe, albeit with much greater intellectual sophistication, a much
deeper knowledge of the languages which influenced them as substrates and of the Creoles
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Anthony P. Grant
themselves, and a globa l and comparative perspective. And of course very often the people
working in Europe on these European-lexifier Creoles are themselves speakers of the Creole
languages under study. On the other hand, records of Pidgins from Europe and Asia, what-
ever lexical source they may have are relative ly few, and hard ly any of the languages can be
described as well-documented.
This chapter provides a general survey of p/cs used in the area, looking at a number of
languages such as Basque-Icelandic Pidgin, Lingua Franca and Russenorsk, giving some
infonnation upon their structures and seeing what issues these languages raise. Among the
resources upon which this study draws are materials on various languages wh ich have only
been unearthed, or investigated from a creo listic and philological viewpoint, in the last few
years. This is despite the fact that these materials were sometimes recorded or created centuries
ago. Even though these languages are no longer in use, and even though the coverage of nearly
all these languages is shockingly sparse, the materials available to us on them still have much
to contribute to a nuanced understanding of foreigner talk and processes of pidginisation.
In this chapter the '-asia' part of Eurasia will be taken also to cover the Asian portions of the
former Soviet Union, while Iceland will be counted as part of Europe on political rather than
geologica l grounds. Pidgins and Creoles from South Asia, Southeast Asia and East Asia, and
those used in the Arab World, are treated elsewhere in this volwne. There is also a large and
growing body of work on language varieties inspired by migration from the South to Northern
Europe, such as Mu lticulrural London English, Kebabnorsk and Rinkebysvenska: the reader is
referred to the bibliography in Matras and Bakker (20 13) for further details.
The usual definitions app ly here and are swnmarised for convenience. A Pidgin is a speech
variety used for interlinguistic communication among people who have different first lan-
guages and no fluent command of any language which they can all employ. It is mostly used
for simple interactions and has a limited lexicon of a few hundred words. An expanded Pidgin
has a larger lexicon, greater stmctural complexity and is available for use in most commun i-
cative situations. Pidgins which acquire Ll speakers are Creoles, and Pidgins whose lexical
resources are basically derived from two or more languages are macaronic Pidgins. Pidgin-
Creates are languages which are Creoles for a minority of their speakers but are (usually very
expanded) Pidgins for the majority of their users; there probably are or were no such examples
in Europe.
10.2 The long narrative of Pidgins in Europe: which, when and where
None of the Pidgins attested in this vast area has been documented with anything approaching
the copiousness of, say, Ch inese Pidgin English (let alone the coverage of thriving languages
such as Tok Pisin), and materials which were specially designed to teach people how to speak
and use these languages and which were subsequently circulated more publicly have been
extremely few in number. Much of what we know about most of these languages has come
down to us by mere chanc.e .
Among the Pidgins in the parts of Eurasia under discussion here which never (as far as
we know) developed into a Creo le, the best-attested Pidgin, and the one for which we have
the greatest length of period of allestation and the greatest geographical range of origins of
sources, is the Mediterranean Lingua Franco (hereafter LF). This was often known as Sabir
(LF: 'know'), a tern1 which became appl ied to other Pidgins. This Pidgin, whose lexicon
varied from region to region but which was usually based on Ital ian with elements from other
Western Romance languages and a few from Arabic, was first allested in Djerba, 1\misia in
1353 (though it must have existed earlier) and was used by p ilgrims, slaves, slave-owners,
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Pidgins and creoles in Eurasia
travellers, traders and mariners. For this language a small nwnber of texts, a greater nwnber
of individual sentences and over 2000 lexical items are available in our material, and we may
assume that the lexicon was larger than this. This re lative richness of material is largely expli-
cable by the existence of one of the few manuals for learning a Pidgin from this region ever
produc.ed, the anonymous Dictionnaire de la /angue franque ou petit mauresque (Anonymous
1830). Th is was produced in Algiers and published in Marse ille, and it refte.cts the local form
ofLF and also the local variety of darija (colloquial Arabic). It was a hack job with numerous
typographical errors and was produced for the benefit of the insurgent French military, which
is why it also conta ined words and phrases in Algerine Arabic. Schuchardt ( 1909) is the most
famous older account of LF.
The lexicon of this variety of the language is mostly Spanish, Italian and French, with
some words from Catalan, Portuguese, Thrkish and Arabic (though none from the territorially
contiguous Taqbaylit 'Berber ' language). Several studies of LF, which may have survived
unti l World War I and which certainly must have survived into the era of recorded sound,
have been carried out, most famously in a paper by Hugo Schuchardt based on correspond-
ence and published sources rather than much fieldwork (Schuchardt 1909), but latterly impor-
tant recent work on LF has been done by Selbach (20 17) and Operstein ( 1998, 2007, 2017a,
2017b, 2017c, 2018a, 20 18b, 2018c, 2018d). Rel ics ofLF may remain; Hancock (1984) has
made a strong argument for LF contributing an important component to the Anglophone gay
male slang Polari. Could some speakers' knowledge of Lingua Franca have been taken to the
Horn of Africa and have influenced Asmara Pidgin Italian, which may sti ll be in use in Eritrea
with people who speak Tigrinya or Amharic? There are some structural similarities, as Holm
(1988-1989, 2000) po inted out: the marking of direct objects with a fonn of ita lian per, and
the use of the past participle to indicate past tense. We know that LF was used in the Adriatic
especially in the 16th century; Venetian Ita lian had an impact on the language so this is not
surprising. It was also spoken in the Levant, including Istanbu l, and North Africa, latterly in
the Maghreb. Despite its longevity (Whinnom 1977 suggested that it may have emerged in
the course of the early Crusades (the First Crusade began c. 1096), and it survived into the
20th century), the nwnber of textual records of LF from which we can surmise its structure is
not great, though there is evidence for grammatical change within the Pidgin over the centu-
ries. Geographical spread should also be factored into a picture of morphosyntactic and other
variation within LF. The impact of Spanish upon LF (whether as primary or secondary lexi-
fier) is greater in the Algerine variety than in, say, material from Constantinople, where the
Romance elements are usually exp licable in tenns of derivation from Italian varieties (even
though Constantinople had from the mid -16th century many speakers of Eastern Judezmo, a
variety of Spanish). Operstein (2018a) suggests that LF occupies a midpo int on the Pidgin-
koine continuum because of its structural characteristics which are not entirely Pidgin-like (the
availability of more than one kind of verb forn1 per verb, for instance).
Operstein (2017a) po ints out that in the early 19th century European slaves (some of whom
converted to Islam) constitu ted a quarter of the popu lation of Algiers, with the bulk of inhabit-
ants being Arabs, Thrks (Algiers was then part of the Ottoman Empire, being taken over by
France in 1830), Arabic·-Speaking Jews and Amazigh people. Lingua Franca would have had
an important role as a language for use between Europeans of different linguistic backgrounds,
many of whom were from Northern Europe. Many slaves worked in service industries (for
instance in trade) rather than as galley-slaves and the like, and there were even churches set
up and maintained by these slaves, with the tac it approval of the ir Musl im masters. The c ir-
cumstances for LF to develop into an expanded Pidgin were certainly propitious. The titles of
Operstein (1998, 20 18b) suggest that at its height LF was more in sociolingu istic terms than
201
Anthony P. Grant
just a jargon. There may well have been a high degree of bil ingualism in LF and Algerine
Arabic, and the Europeans would of course a lso have known their own languages (and maybe
more than one European language).
Samp le sentences of Lingua Franca, with glosses, the original translations into French and
English translations, from Anonymous ( 1830; taken from Operstein 20 l7a: 96):
( l ) (a) dounque bisogno if Bacha querir pache.

So need the pasha want.IMPF peac.e
'Le Pacha sera done oblige de demander la paix.'
'So the pasha will need to seek peace.'
(b) perque if Bacha tenir ftmtetzia.

because the pasha have.JMPF arrogance
'Parce que le Pacha est entete.'
'Because the pasha is stubborn.'
(c) sarar la porta.

close.IMPF the door
'Fennez la porte.'
'Close the door.'
There are a few cases of Pidgins developing as the result of friendly relations between
the participant groups (something which is not usually the case in situations which bring
about the birth of Pidgin languages). Social inequal ity between the speakers characterises
most p/c settings and one language will usually dominate in providing the lexicon; Russeno-
rsk is interesting because the users of the Pidgin were social equals and on good tern1s with
one another. Russenorsk, known to its speakers as moja po tvoja ('me to you') or kakspreck
('how-language', the latter being a name blending Russian with Low German), was used,
mostly in the summer months (seasonal because of winter ice), by people who were engaged
in the so-called Pomor trade, which took place in the seas in the area between Munnansk
(Russia) and Troms0 (Norway). This trade existed from the early 19th century until the Octo-
ber Revolution in late 1917, when internationa l borders with Russia were closed. T he Pomor
trade involved trade in fish, flour and birch-bark: Russian fishermen's catches were traded for
Norwegian merchants' goods. Russenorsk was documented in Lw1den ( l 978a, l 978b) and
especially Broch 1927 (the definiti ve studies, Broch and Jahr l984a, l984b, were edited by
lngvild Broch, his great-niece). Just under 400 words of this Pidgin have been recorded (47%
from Norwegian and 38% from Russian, with the ba lance from Finn ish, Saam i, Dutch/Low
German and English), and we also have some texts in the fonn of short conversations, some of
them transcribed in a pre-phonem ic transcriptional system.
The Pidgin status ofRussenorsk has been questioned: Kortlandt (2000) avers that Russeno-
rsk is not actually a Pidgin in the strict sense, but rather a fonn of simplified Norwegian with
some admixture of Russian foreigner talk and words which are part of the speaker 's own lan-
guage, which has hitherto been taken for a Pidgin. One may, however, po int out that the bulk of
Russenorsk data which we have comes from Ll speakers of Norwegian rather than of Russian,
Saami, etc., also that the data were largely collected from a small number of linguistic inform-
ants, and that this may sway our perception of the nature of the language. We also know that
from around 1850 Norwegian merchants strove to learn 'proper ' Russian, which they increas-
ingly used in their interactions with Russians, so that Russenorsk began to lose its usefu lness.
202
Slightly more than half the recorded lexicon of Russenorsk is from Norwegian and over 40%
is from Russian; the remainder - less than I 0% of the total - comes from Dutch/Low German,
English, Swedish, and Finnish and Saami (the latter two categories mostly being names of
fishes). P/cs in Europe, as elsewhere, arise as the result of both trade and human exploitation
(includ ing trade in human lives), and often both.
Sample sentences of Russenorsk (Broch 1927, orthography slightly modified):
(2) (a) Moja paa skib slrep-om

!so on ship sleep-VERBAL
' I will sleep on board ship.'
(b) Tvoja fisk kop-om

2SG fish buy-VERBAL
'You are buying fish.'
One should also mention the five recorded sentences of 801gamuilet, docwnented in northern
Sweden in the 17th century. This language was used by Swedes who commwucated with Saami-
speakers and maybe also Finns, and may have been an analogue ofRussenorsk (Holm 1989: 621 ).
Some of the Pidgins in this area have been documented more or less by a single author. One
such example is Faskruoarjjardmfransk, 'French of the Faskruilar Fjord ( in eastern Ice land)'.
Th is is actually a kind of simplified Icelandic or a Gennanic koine with a only sma ll actual
French component. Our record of this is taken from an 1877 novel by Icelandic author J6n
Myrdal (Bakker 1989b discusses this).
Another examp le of a language which is essentially documented in a single source by a
single author is Orenburg Gennan, which was discussed and exemplified in a single sentence
in an otherwise error-riddled paper by Schultze written at the start of the Hitlerze it (Schultze
1933). In his two-page account of this he correctly identified loans from Tatar and Russian
employed in the framework of a simplified High German brought to Orenburg (Chkalov) by a
few dozen fami lies and disseminated further. Our data on other Pidgins such as the Russian-
English Pidgin called Solombala English (used near Archangelsk, Russia in the 17th century)
and Chukotka Pidgin English (used at the easternmost tip of Siberia in the late 19th century
and which features words from Hawa i' ian and Portuguese in the scanty data we have of it)
are similarly evanescent. But for the casual observations of a traveller or trader, we wou ld
not even know that they have ever existed. Other Pidgin languages have been discussed or
analysed in a single source, even if we have texts in other sources: thus literary historian and
language teacher William Ames Coates (Coates 1970) discussed in a single rare article the
Pidgin Italian used by German soldiers (lanzichenecchi, i.e. Landsknechte) in Italy in the 16th
century and documented in some songs.
One shou ld mention that these Pidgins were often erroneously taken to be the non-pidginised
languages from which they drew the ir lexicon: for instanc.e L ingua Franca was sometimes
taken by people who heard it briefly (such as Thomas Dallam, who went from Flixton, Lanca-
shire to Thrkey to install a musical pipe-organ donated by Elizabeth I) to be Italian. Similarly
some people who used Russenorsk thought that they were speaking the language of the other
party: some Russians thought they were speaking Norwegian, and vic.e versa.
There are other Pidgins with an important Russian lexical component. Dieter Stem (Stem
2002) takes issue with Norval Sm ith's list of Russian lexifier p/cs (Smith 1995) and classifies
several Russian-lexifier Pidgins, including Russenorsk, Govorka (the name given to Siberian
Pidgin Russian, in which Russian lexicon predominated), Ch inese Pidgin Russian (Neumann
203
Anthony P. Grant
1966; Perekhvalskaya 2003, 2008), and the variety described by Nichols ( 1980, 1986), which
was spoken by Ll speakers of the Southern 1\mgusic language Nana i, and which was depicted
in work by Arsen'ev ( 1949). One may almost think of Russian-lexifier Pidgins as constitut-
ing a constellation of Pidgins in an astronomical sense, inasmuch as their interrelationship is
assumed rather than being obvious and is mostly visible to the observer.
Other Slavic languages provided rather little impetus for p/cs. Mitrovic ( 1972) mentions
two Pidgins used in Bosnia-Herzegovina after it was taken from the Ottoman Empire and
incorporated into Austria-Hungary. One derived its lexicon from German and the other from
South Slavic, but further evidence is not provided. A curious deve lopment occurred in the Rust
Be lt of the United States (especially Ohio and Pennsylvania) in the early 20th century, when
speakers of a whole range of East, South and West Slavic languages found themselves working
in the same commw1ities and developed a Slavic·- lexicon koine, known as Slahvish, as a means
of communication. This may have been a Pidgin, but we have too little evidence to be certain
(McDavid 1967 discusses this phenomenon but gives no samples).
10.3 Historical perspectives on the Pidgins and Creoles in Eurasia

Interest in these languages occupied the minds of some of the founders of creolistics, albeit
tangentially. Hugo Schuchardt was aware of Chinese Pidgin Russian and Lingua Franca, and
corresponded with Franz Miklosich (Schuchardt 1884) about the linguistic results of interac-
tion of Gem1an, Italian and South Slavic languages.
The contemplation of issues in language contact, the levels of influence and the ways in
which the features and processes of contact-induced linguistic change can be anatomised have
been extremely influential in the linguistic literature, and this has been especially clear since
the 1980s. Ideas such as substrate, adstrate, superstrate, which developed in European linguistic
thought and which were whetted by attempts at their application to instances of Creoles, Pidg-
ins and mixed languages, are very important. Some of the tenn inology which was generated in
creolistics can also be fruitfully used in discussing the results of non-creolistic contact-induced
linguistic change (supralexification, for instance, in which semantic d istinctions are introduced
from one linguistic system to another in conjunction with the means of expressing them).
Examples of this are the Welsh words me/yn 'yellow' and gwyrdd 'green', which derive from
Latin mel/inus 'honey-coloured' and viridis 'green' respectively, and which expanded the pre-
existing colour system which Welsh had inherited from the Brythonic branch of Insu lar Celtic.
Older scholars sometimes tried to map less commonly met contact situations onto a Pidgin-
to-Creole template and pattern of deve lopment because such a temp late was one whose
operation they understood more clearly. Applying this theory the linguistic outcomes of such
siwations was nearly always a mistake as it was not app licable. For example the heavy lexical
impact of assumed non-Indo-European substratum languages which are otherwise unknown is
what we find in Gern1anic, Insu lar Celtic. Saam i and the like (see Vennemann 2003; Feist 1932
for very d ifferent views ofGennanic, Aikio 2004 for Saami and Matasovic 2009 for a possible
non-Indo-European substrate in Celtic). There are also cases of stable m ixed languages blend-
ing lexicon and infie.ctional morphology from differing sources.
10.4 Current contributions and research

There has been quite a boom in work on studying Eurasian pl c languages over the past couple
of decades, even though nearly all of them have been extinct for years if not for more than a
cenwry and none of the languages upon which this chapter focuses probably has any speakers
204
now. This is largely due to the rediscovery of previously forgotten sources in or on some of
these languages. The existence of some of these sources had been reported or were assumed
for other reasons but until recently this assumption could not be verified with hard data - this
is the consolation of philology as referred to in the title of this chapter. A stellar example of
this is the publ ication of three handwritten Chinese-med ium dictionaries of Kyakhta Chinese
Pidgin Russian (Popova and Takata 20 17). In this work there are reproduc.ed both the Chinese
character glosses and the characters used to write their Pidgin Russian equiva lents; there are
over 2400 such glosses in the records. The editors also provide the Russian words and sen-
tences which the dictionaries translate and a phonemic transcription of the Chinese characters
which have been used to transcribe the Pidgin Russian utterances.
New discoveries of Pidgins in Eurasia, and new data sources for Pidgins once used there,
are being made sporadically. A recently discovered example of this is the so-called Vega
Pidgin, a Chukchi-lexifier Pidgin which was used for a few months in 1878- 1879 when the
Swed ish explorer ship Vega, which was attempting to go around the world, was trapped by ice
in Chukotka, far eastern Siberia, for almost a year (Parkvall2017b). The ship's polyglot crew
had ample provisions and was therefore able to conduct friend ly relations with the famished
Chukchis. We are fortunate in knowing when this evolved and probably also the time when it
d ied out, and have some twenty-three short sentences of material.
Vega Pidgin (Parkvall 20 l7b; non-C hukchi elements are W1derlined):
(3) (a) Uynga chakara (cha/ara <Russian zaxar)

NEG sugar
'Isn't there any sugar?'
(b) Metschinki ram (ram< English rum)

Good liquor
'good liquor '
An interesting case study of a language which pretty much escaped attention for three cen-
turies after its use is the one docwnented in the thesis by Deen ( 1937) on Basque-Icelandic
Pidgin, which has been carefully analysed by Bakker (1987) and also by Hualde (1984), who
commented extensively upon them in a work intended for speakers and scholars of Basque.
This language was long extinct when Deen exam ined it, but it is attested in two glossaries
from the early 17th century (with eleven words copied from a third glossary, now lost) which
were the subject of a PhD thesis written in Latin and published in 1937. The second of
these glossaries, which were all probably compi led independently of one another, contains
some sentences and therefore enabled Deen to make some remarks on the morphosyntactic
structure of the language in addition to provid ing a lexicon (in which some of the forms
are provided in both Basque and Spanish). A fourth Icelandic.- Basque glossary, comprising
sixty-eight words and phrases, was found in the Hough ton Library at Harvard by Prof. Shaun
Hughes ofPurdue University and published by Etxepare and Miglio (2011; see also an earlier
paper by Miglio 2008). Apparently composed in the late 18th or early 19th centuries, accord-
ing to Etxepare and Migl io, it shares some mistakes with the glossaries edited by Deen but
adds twenty-three new lexical items or phrases to our knowledge. The lexicon of this Pidgin
is large ly Basque, but it contains a large number of Romance words (some but not all of them
are Romance words borrowed into Basque) and a small number of items of Dutch or English
origin, while others, such as the general negator cavinit, are of uncerta in origin (? Dutch ik
heb niet 'I don't have').
205
Anthony P. Grant
Overall most of our records of this language are lexical and amow1t to a few hundred sepa-
rate items, and here some key elements like personal pronouns (for mi 'for me') and some
basic verbs (presenta 'to give') are not of Basque but of Romance or maybe Dutch/English
origin. There may be several hWidred discrete words in the glossaries of Basque-Jc.e landic
Pidgin (including religious and maritime tem1s, though numerals, which derive from Basque,
only occur fortuitously in a few phrases) but the dearth of sentent ial material means that what
we can say about the Pidgin's structure (and incidentally also its phonology) is limited.
Samp le of Basque-Icelandic Pidgin (Bakker 1987: 5-6; Basque words are underlined):
(4) (a) For JU mala gissuna

for 2sG bad man
'You are a bad man.'
(b) Ser presenta for flU

What g1ve for l sG
'What will you give me?'
(c) Bocata for 1111 attora

Wash for lsG shirt
'Wash my shirt.'
A further Basque-lexifier Pidgin was used with speakers of the Algonqu ian language
Mi'kmaw in Newfoundland in the 17th century; this also contained some words from Mi'kmaw
and others of Romance origin (Gascon, Spanish or French) but also found in Basque (Bakker
1989a).
P/cs in Eurasia of which we have records are most ly coastal - Arctic regions, the Atlantic
coast, the Mediterranean littoral. There is a dearth of them - or rather a dearth of records of
these- in the Ba ltic, the Balkans and the Carpathians, as far as we know. Maybe a dozen p/cs
which are known to have been used w ithin Europe or Siberia and which are not classifiable as
mixed languages are listed by Norval Smith (Smith 1995) but for some of these we know little
more than the name and location. There is only one Eurasian p/ c surveyed in APiCS (M ichae-
lis et al. 20 13), and that is Chinese Pidgin Russian, which is on the border of the huge area
under discussion, and which is documented by Elena Perekhvalskaya (2008). It has also been
discussed in a long article by Roman Shapiro (Shapiro 20 13), which provides considerable
infonnation about what was at that time known of Chinese phrasebooks of the Pidgin which
were written (though never apparently printed or published) using Chinese characters. Popova
and Takata (20 17) takes this narrative further and their work lifts the study of th is Pidgin to a
whole new level by providing an edition of three such works, w ith translations and transcrip-
tions into Russian. The three sources show an understandable degree of overlap in coverage,
but taken as a group they are an invaluable addition to our knowledge of Chinese Pidgin Rus-
sian. The Pidgins' lexicon is mostly Russian, with maybe a third of the lexicon deriving from
Mandarin Chinese (or on occasion Mongol ian).
Sample of Chinese Pidgin Russian (Popova and Takata 2017: 142, all words are of Russian
origin):
(5) (a) Ya tuvar di veidiyau

I SG goods 2sG seen
' I have seen your goods.'
206
(b) Basili nyedasuge

then insufficient
'Then there won't be time.'
Stem's Govorka material in some of his articles (e.g. Stem 2005) is largely given in Rus-
sian orthography and is spelt as though it were standard Russian. These are factors which
impedes our w1derstanding of the phonology of this variety. Nonethe less, Stem 's 2012 book-
length treatment of the Pidgin (Stern 2012), which includes extensive phonetic data, is the
fullest account of any of these Pidgin languages which we have, and he caught the language in
the very nick of time, as it is no longer used.
For several decades the standard treatment of Chinese Pidgin Russian was Neumann
( 1966), which was based largely on some 19th-century sources written in Russian. This has
been superseded in the 2010s. Chinese Pidgin Russian was concentrated in Kyakhta (for-
merly known by its Mongolian name Altanbulag) and Maimachin!Maimaicheng, two cities
(the first in Russia and the second in China) in areas origina lly occupied by speakers of the
Buryat variety of Mongol ian. The Pidgin was developed for the purposes of S ino-Russian
trade, and in those towns where it was used C hinese merchants were not pem1itted to bring
their w ives. This trade was guaranteed protection in the Treaty of Kyakhta of 1727. In the late
19th and early 20th centuries a variety of the language developed in Harbin in Manchuria, in
modem Heilongj iang province, and here the Russians settled and set up their own schools
and churches, and mostly interacted with the Chinese through use of the Pidgin; few Russians
made the effort to learn Chinese (this variety is described in Lyovin's 1969 translation of the
Polish-language paper by Harbin native Alina Jablonska). Works in the Pidgin using Chinese
characters were produced for mercanti le purposes; this will have had an effect on the way the
Pidgin was represented because only syllables for which characters were available could be
easi ly w ritten in this system.
10.5 Characteristics of Eurasian Pidgins and Creoles

Some kinds of deta il in these languages are more amenable to study than others. We can on ly
speculate about the phonetic and phonological features of LF or of the Basque-Icelandic
Pidgin, which were recorded prephonemica lly, though we can still identify obvious mistakes
such as typographica l errors in some sources. The same is true of other Pidgins for wh ich we
have no records from the 20th century. On the other hand, Broch ( 1927) as a trained phone-
tician transcribed Russenorsk more or less phonetically, and both Siberian Pidgin Russian
varieties and some forms of Chinese Pidgin Russ ian have been documented to some extent
by trained linguists in the last couple of decades, though in the case of Chinese Pidgin Rus-
sian the speakers are rememberers rather than people with fu ll fluency; the time for a fuller
documentation of that Pidgin has passed. G iven the sparse information we have on many
of these languages, the areas which we can hope to understand best are morphosyntax (in
those instances when we have sentences or texts) and some aspects of the lexicon, including
a rough idea of their etymo logical composition, and of course, a number of actual lexical
items.
Ideas about the phonology (and even more the phonetics) of these languages are perforce
speculative in the absence of sound recordings in most cases. A high degree of use of li uJ in
Algerine LF in words which in their origina l Spanish and/or Italian have /e o/ may refte.c t the
impact of the Maghrebi Arabic vowel system on LF. Some Russenorsk material reflects Rus-
sian pronunciation habits applied to Norwegian: gav for Norwegian hav 'sea'. Russian has /x/
207
Anthony P. Grant
but lacks lh/. Po 'on, by' is a preposition used both in Russian and in Norwegian (pa, a com-
mon continental Scandinavian preposition deriving from upp A 'up at').
We have enough infonnation on some p/cs to enable us to compare them with one another
and with their lexifiers - and w ith other Pidgins from other parts of the world. Table I 0.1 out-
lines characteristics of Pidgins as seen by Parkvall (20 17a) and Table I 0.2 tests the val idity of
this with data from some of the better-docwnented Pidgins in this study.
Structural (and especially morphosyntactic) features which are characteristic of Pidgins
have been assessed in Parkvall (20 17b) on the basis of a comparison of Chinook Jargon/Chi-
nuk Wawa of the US Pacific Northwest, Yokohama Pidgin Japanese and Fran9ais Tiraiilleur of
Senegal and other countries in the former French West Africa. It is feasible and academically
legitimate to compare the Pidgins in the chapter typologically using such a roster of features,
since none of them were part ofParkvall's study, and to see how val id his claims for the robust-
ness of Pidgin fearures are.
Parkvall's observations on prototypical Pidgin features are generally borne out by the Pidg-
ins discussed here, as far as the sentential or textual resources will permit us to make such
observations (which is far from always being the case). Many detai ls which we would like to
have are simply missing from our data. A few comments on Table I 0.2 will help. Algerine LF's
tense marking is done with the affix -ato for the past, proposed bizonyo for the future and -ar/
Table I 0. I Summary of the features considered in the three Pidgins
Personal pronouns Usually three persons and two numbers, but little else
Tense/mood/aspect No grammaticalised markers at all
Adpositions Often zero, sometimes extremely frequent use of one single item
Articles Usually absent
Demonstratives Usually no distance contrasts
Gender/noun classes/classifiers Neither grammatical nor biological gender (or comparable systems)
Copula Not inherited from the lexifier. For the most part absent, but
sometimes grammaticalised from other material
Negation Free and invariable particle, often preverbal
Nominal number Not obligatorily marked
Word order Few or no exceptions to whatever order is dominant
Source: Park\•all (20 17b)
Table 10.2 The extent to which the Pidgins in this area conform to Parkvall 's general observations on
Pidgins ('?' = insufficient data; '-' = feature is absent)
Bl LF RN TPR CPR
Personal pronouns English? Italian Russian Russian Russian

TMA Yes pastlpres/fut
Adpositions ? Preposition Preposition
Articles
Demonstratives Italian; preposed
Gender/noun classes No No No No No
Copula ? Italian
Negation Basque Italian Russian Russian
Nominal number ? >
Word order SYO SYO SYO SOY SOY
208
are for the present tense. Russenorsk /po/ before a verb has been interpreted as a progressive
marker (Kortlandt 2000). Some forn1s of Siberian Pidgin Russian make a primary distinction
not between aspects but between the presence of evidentiality or its absence (Nichols 1986).
For a sense of what we still lack (and probably a lways will) in tern1s of knowledge of Eura-
sian p/cs, we may quote J. I. Hualde on what we don't know about Basque-Ice land ic Pidgin
structure (Hualde 1984: 437):
The data do not show us how genitive constructions were fonned. More complex
constructions, like relative clauses, perhaps did not develop. Yes-no questions are
not illustrated e ither; possibly they were distinguished by means of intonation only,
as seems to be general for Creoles.
10.6 Related fields

Many languages which have been listed together with Pidgins or Creo les may be better clas-
sified as being languages of other kinds. For example, Europe has hosted a number of Para-
Romani varieties. These combine quantities of Romani lexicon (including some function
words) with a structurally regularised version of the morphosyntax (and generally also the seg-
mental and canonical phonology) of the loca l language. Their lexica often also contain words
of unknown origin, some of them probably artificially created, but some others traceable to
non-Romani slangs. Some of the interest which these languages have garnered results from
them often be ing the on ly attested Romani linguistic material from a particular area. It must be
noted that Romani varieties which have preserved the original Iodic-derived morphology are
themse lves etymologically diverse in their lexica. Even though over 75% of the contents of the
Swadesh lists and a lmost all the productive inflectional morphology of these Romani varie-
ties derives from Indic, they all conta in a large number of loans fonn Iranian (mostly Farsi),
Arn1enian, Greek and South Slavic, and often also from other languages with which speakers
of Romani were formerly coterritorial, such as Romanian and Gennan. Smart and Crofton
(1873) and latterly Matras (2010; Angloromani); Krinkova (2015; Iberian Romani); and Car-
ling, Lindell and Ambrazaitis (20 14; Scandoromani) are good guides to some Para-Romani
varieties. Bakker and Cortiade (1991) is a general accow1t of Para-Romani varieties, including
details of some wh ich are not listed here. It appears that there are few words ofwlknown origin
which cannot be traced either to Romani or to one of the Para-Romani languages' coterritorial
languages in evidence w1til we examine records of these languages from the mid- 19th century
onwards.
It is probably not surprising that there are so many macaronic argots, thieves' jargons and
the like docwnented from Europe and especially Western Europe. This is because this is the
area where a prolonged interest in such speech forms first became embedded; it shou ld not
be assumed that there are fewer speech forms of th is kind in other parts of the world simply
because fewer of them have been brought to scholarly or general attention.
A couple of examples follow. Lazar Saineanu, publishing under the French form of his
name Lazare Sainean ( 1907), documented :jmechereasca, a thieves' jargon of Roman ia, which
contains Romani, Yiddish and 1\Jrkish elements, wh ich are used in a Romanian grammatical
framework. We mention also Jenisch!Je inesch, with its exolexicon built up of Romani, Hebrew,
Yiddish and Rotwelsch (Gern1an criminal argot), used by non-Romani itinerant popu lations in
Germany and its western neighbours. Letzebuerger Jinnesch is documented in Bausch (20 15).
There are also some deliberately d istorted languages or languages with components such as
these, such as Shelta, which combines phonologically modified elements oflrish Gaelic origin
209
Anthony P. Grant
with words of unknown origin, and some further words from English Cant and Angloromani.
These items, numbering several hundred, are used in an Irish English morphosyntactic frame-
work (Hancock 1984). In the same piece Hancock also discusses the subculture language
Polari, which uses a large ly Italian lexicon (abutted by backslang and some other creations) in
an English framework.
In Eurasia there are also some stable mixed languages. Of these Mednyj Aleut or Copper
Island Aleut (often CIA) is the best case of a stable mixed language in Eurasia, albeit intru-
sive from both west and east. This fom1ed in the early 19th century and was spoken on Cop-
per Island (Russian: Mednyj Ostrov) in the Russian Commander Islands until the population
was relocated to the neighbouring Bering Island in 1969, after which it fe ll into disuse. Its
components are Attuan (Western) Aleut (A leut is nowadays also known as Unangam Tunuu)
and Russian. Copper Island had been settled not only by Russians and Aleuts but also by
Ll speakers of Kom i, Romani, Itelmen and other languages that wou ld have had forms of
Russian as L2. The nominal morphology of CIA derives from Aleut, with its two regularly
infie.cted cases (Russian has six), and the inflectional morpho logy of the verb comes from
Russian, as do c liticised personal pronouns and the clitic ised negator. As such CIA employs
the simpler of the two morphological systems for both nouns and verbs; they s imply derive
from different languages. Furthermore since a CIA sentence may cons ist solely of an inflected
verb, people who spoke Russian better than they didAieut (even if Russian was not their first
language) wou ld simply have needed to acquire a stock of Aleut roots and insert them into
a Russian verbal framework in order to arrive at a system like modern CIA. The lexicon is
mainly Aleut but a large amount of less frequent lexicon, including terms used to express
European-origin concepts, is from Russian (from which Aleut has also borrowed). CIA is
highly endangered, if indeed any speakers remain. Golovko and Vakhtin ( 1990) is the single
most comprehensive account of Mednyj Aleut by fieldworkers, containing a grammatical
sketch and two texts.

Apart from the cases discussed here, there are also cases where languages have undergone
simplification of structure and the rad ical loss of productive inflectional morphology taken to
be characteristics of pidginisation in the classical sense. Halbdeutsch, a fom1 of Gem1an used
by Ll speakers of Estonian and Latvian (and possibly Livonian) is one such example (Holm
1988-1989: 61 1-613). The smdy of such cases would be a usefu l exercise.
Reproduc ing exceedingly rare excerpts or accounts of these Pidgins and often making them
available on the Web has already begin, and this is sure to trigger further interest and apprecia-
tion of these languages.
We may yet discover early sound recordings of some of these languages (LF and many
Pidgins containing Russian elements lived on into the era of recorded sotmd and portable
recording devices). New kinds of items keep appearing every few years, and the field of Eura-
sian Pidgins is one in which smdents with an interest in reading books of travel and working
over o ld documents may still be able to make striking new discoveries.
Further reading
Velupillai (20 15), Holm ( 1988-1989) (condensed and slightly modified in Holm 2000) and \Vinford
(2003) are canonical works on Pidgins and creoles. Russenorsk and other Pidgins of the Arctic region
are extensively discussed in Jahr and Broch ( 1996), a volume devoted to the topic. The Atlas ofPidgin
2 10
and Creole Language Srntclures (APiCS; Michaelis et al. 2013) is invaluable although only Chinese
Pidgin Russian is covered out of all the Eurasian p/cs mentioned here.
Related topics
The Contact Varieties of Japan and the North-West Pacific; The Arab World; South and South-
east Asia; T he Typology of Pidgin and Creole Languages
Acknowledgements
I would like to acknowledge the help I received from Peter Bakker, Stefano Manfredi, Natalie
Operstein, Mikael Parkvall, Elena Perekhvalskaya, Margaret Taylor and Viveka Velupillai.
The usual disclaimers apply.
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cal Pitfalls in Describing an Extinct Oral Comact Code. Paper presented at the XI Creolistics Work-
shop, Jusms-Liebig Universitat Giessen, March.
Shapiro, R. 2013. Chinese Pidgin Russian. In : Umberto Ansaldo (ed.), Pidgins in Asia. Amsterdam: John
Benjamins. 6-58.
Smart, B. C. & Cro fton, H. T. 1873. The Dialect of the English Gipsies. London: Asher.
Smith, N. 1995. An Annotated List of Creoles, Pidgins, and Mixed Languages. In : Jacques Arends, Pieter
Muysken & Norval Smith (eds.), Pidgins and Creoles: An Introduction. Amsterdam and Philadelphia:
John Benjamins. 33 1-374.
Stem, D. 2002. Russische Pidgins. Die Welt der Slaven 47: I: 1- 30.
Stem, D. 2005. Ta imyr Pidgin Russian (Govorka). Russian Linguistics 29: 289-3 18.
Stem, D. 2009. T he Taimyr Pidgin Russian Morphology Enigma. lmernational Journal of Bilingualism
13:3:378-395.
Stem, D. 20 12. Tajmyr-Pidgin-Russisch: Kolonialer Sprachkomakt in Nordsibirien. Smdies on Language
and Culture in Central and Eastern Europe. Mtinchen, Berlin: Ono Sagner.
Velupillai, V. 2015. Pidgins. Creoles and Mixed Languages. An lmroduction. Amsterdam: John
Benjamins.
Vennemann, T. 2003. Europa Vasconica - Europa Semitica. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Whinnom, K. 1977. Lingua Franca: Historical Problems. In: Albert Valdman (ed.), Pidgin and Creole
Linguistics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 295- 3 12.
Win ford, D. 2003. An lmroduction to Comact Linguistics. Ox ford: Blackwell.
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PARTII
Usage, function and power

Taylor & Francis
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11
CREOLE ARTS AND MUSIC
Kathe Managan
11.1 Introduction: historical perspectives and main research methods

Until recently, few creolists took a sustained interest in the linguistic features of Creole lan-
guages in the arts and music. One notable exception in the area of music is Pollard's (2000
[ 1994]) Dread Talk. Pollard examines the social history of a variety of Jamaican Patwa referred
to as Dread Talk, cons idering how the rel igious ideology of Rastafari and its response to the
political situation in Jamaica have led to language innovation, primarily at the lexical level.
In her book she mentions the role of reggae music in spreading Dread Talk and dedicates a
chapter to poetry. Indeed, Pollard is herself a poet. Her work exempl ifies a common approach
to Creo le-language arts that stresses the use of Creole languages as linguistic resistance in
popular arts fom1s.
We do, however, find earlier literature that examines arts and music in Creole-speaking
areas written by folklorists, such as Roger Abraham and ethnomusicologists such as Gage
Averi II. Averill's Day of Hunter, which I discuss later, provides an ethnomusicological per-
spective on Haitian pwen songs and rara music. Folklorist Abrahams's early research on verbal
art provides insight into the aesthetic uses of Creole languages and African American Vernacu-
lar English (AAYE) within the African diaspora in the US and the Caribbean. In his exploration
of distinctive genres of verbal art, he contributes to the development of the ethnography of
commtmication approach.' His Man-ofthe-Words in the British West lndies ( 1983) examines
the prominent role of verbal art in Creole languages, in the presentation of self in the African
diaspora, especially for men.2 In that book, he draws on the concept of diglossia to argue that
the linguistic ecology of the Anglo-Caribbean exhibits a contrast between English and English-
lexicon Creoles that maps onto a division between speech acts.3 He suggests that a general con-
trast operates between talking 'sweet' (a type of elaborate oratory predominantly perfom1ed
in English) and talking 'broad' (a type of licentious perfom1ance predominantly in Creole, or
what he referred to as Black English, a cover term for a variety of Caribbean English-lexifier
Creoles and AAVE). He also draws on Peter Wilson's ( 1973) respect-respectabil ity binary, as
d iscussed in Crab Antics, and develops a binary vision of Caribbean social life that contrasts
Creole:English::crossroads:home::sweet:broad::sensible:nonsense - and to a lesser extent,
male: female (see also Abrahams 1972).
Since many of the scholars who have written about Creole languages in arts and music are
ethnomusico logists, folklorists or linguistic or cultural anthropologists, ethnography, centering
2 17
Kathe Managmr
on participant observation, figures prom inently as a research method. This method consists of
a researcher immersing him- or herself in a community over an extended period of time (a
year is common) and making detailed observations and possibly recordings while participat-
ing in community life. The goal is to capture naturalistic speech and behavior and community
member perspectives in a way that might not be possible through short-tenn observation or
interviews alone. Those who are not linguists or lingu istic anthropologists and use participant
observation focus more on describing speech events or explaining the symbolic value of Cre-
ole languages. Linguists and linguistic anthropologists who conduct ethnography combine
deta iled observations of language use with recordings of naturally occurring speech that can
be analyzed using discourse ana lysis or other methods. Some of the scholarly literature on
Creole-language arts and music relies on corpus data (e.g. Leung 2009; Lawnuno 201 1), ana-
lyzing a corpora of song lyrics or written texts, while other scholars center their analysis on
language use in perfonnance (e.g. Balmes 2007; Gaudio 2019; Managan 2012b; Pardue 2016).
11.2 Critical issues

Some central (and interrelated) themes that recur in the literature on Creole-language arts and
music are popular culture; orality; indexicality; resistance; and national, ethnic, racial and gen-
der identity. Literature on nationalism often emphasizes the role that shared language plays in
the creation of a shared sense of identity (e.g. Anderson 1983; Hobsbawm 1992). For example,
sociolinguists Le Page and Tabouret-Ke ller ( 1985) focus primarily on newly independent Car-
ibbean nations in their study of language use as acts of identity in part to understand the process
by which members of nation-states come to have a shared sense of identity around language.
Indeed, national ist movements often feature a national language as an icon of national identity.
In the case of Caribbean Creoles, most often the Creole shares the linguistic landscape
with only a colonial language. In other Creole-speaking contexts, such as Nigeria, Papua New
Guinea and Hawai' i, the Creole exists alongside indigenous and heritage languages primarily
in the intimate, informal sphere, whi le the colonial language maintains a dominant role in the
formal, administrative sphere. This is an important distinction to make because the absence
of indigenous languages in the Caribbean allows Creole languages to also have a symbolic
connection to heritage and to serve the role as a symbol of a new (often Cre.ole) identity. For
example, Kamau Braithwaite ( 1984) developed the idea of "nation language" to distinguish
between the English-lexifier Creoles of the Caribbean from the imposed, imperial language of
English. Similarly, the French West Ind ian literary movements of Antillanite (Glissant 1981)
and Cre.olite (Bemabe, Chamoiseau and Confiant 1993 [ 1989]), alongside independence move-
ments in Guadeloupe and Martinique, concretized the image of Kreyol as an icon of Guade-
loupean or Martinican (or Creole) identity. For this reason, Guadeloupean gwoka, another icon
ofGuadeloupean identity, recently placed on UNESCO's List of Intangible Cultural Heritage,
is strongly associated with Kreyol (Camal 20 19; Lawn uno 20 l l; Tahon and Sitchet 20 17).
Indeed, the links between Kreyol and gwoka are so entrenched that gwoka performances (swan!
/ihvoz) are one of the rare contexts in which Kreyol holds sway over code-switching between
French and Kreyol (Managan 20 16). In Papua New Guinea, on the other hand, indigenous
languages are the key identifier of one's belonging to a particular place (Wilson 2014a). Tok
Pisin still plays an important role as a shared lingua francallanguage for the nation and serves
an important role in /okal music, along with indigenous languages. Similarly, Gaudio (2019)
notes that Nigerian Pidgin serves as an icon of national identity without indexing tradition or
heritage. In that context, ancestral indigenous languages like Hausa and Igbo index tradition,
but Nigerian Pidgin indexes a modem Nigerian identity that crosses ethnic lines.
2 18
Creole arts and music
Much of the literature w ritten outside oflinguistics focuses on the symbo lic force of Creole
languages within nationalist movements and in popu lar culture, including youth culture with-
out analyzing linguistic form or pragmatics. More rec.ent linguistic literature discussed in the
sections to follow explores these features ofCre.o le languages in the arts and music. For exam-
p le, Farquharson (2005) exam ines the pragmatics of the speech actfaiya-bon and homophobia
in Jama ican dancehall and Joersz (20 15) discusses the way that the Haitian speech event voye
pwen operates in a rara song that indirectly criticized the president.
Romaine reminds us that "Cre.oles, like other minority languages and nonstandard varie-
ties, are symbolic of familiar, intimate, and solidarity relations among in-group members,
as opposed to the more formal, public, and distant connotations of the c.olon ial language or
the standard" (Romaine 1995: 83). For this reason, we often find Creole languages featured
prom inently in popu lar music and art forms, in the Caribbean and other postcolonial countries,
where language, music and art have been used to further nationalist identity movements. The
French West Indian literary movements of Antillanite and Creolite envision the artist, and par-
ticu larly the writer, as playing a c.entral role in promotingAntillean identity (Managan 1999).
Sim ilarly, Pollard (2000 [ 1994]) suggests that the growing popularity of reggae in Jama ica,
associated with Dread Talk, reflects its role as:
the one e lement common to all parts of a society of "almost obscene economic
extremes" and of strikingly contrasting philosophical poses. In what seemed like
the twinkl ing of an eye all classes of Jamaica were moving to music that had been
reserved for lower class dance halls; and drawing rooms resounded w ith a beat that
shouted for loin movement to tw1es from which parents had protected their children's
ears a decade earlier. The music was in protest of the establishment but the estab lish-
ment was accepting the music (23 ).
Although much of the scholarly literature on Creole languages and arts focuses on music,
Creole languages have played an important role in other arts, such as genres of verbal art and
genres associated with orality, like theater and comedy.
11.3 Theater, film and comedic performance

The emergence of Creole-language popular theater has played a role in the mobilization of Creole
languages in several nationalist movements. For example, throughout the Anglophone Caribbean
in the 1950s, a style of popular !heater called 'yard play' emerged (Stone 1994). This genre focused
on the day-to-day interactions of families living in a single barrack-yard. In the late 1960s and
1970s other popular theater groups emerged in Jamaica, such as the Sistren Collective, which uses
popular theater to express the struggles of women in Jamaica. Writing collectively, the women of
Sistren Collective drew on Jamaican Creole in their perfom1ance and writing (Cooper 1995).
Using the concept of orality as a starting point, Cooper ( 1995) explores the language of
Jamaican popular culture with a focus on how women's experiences have been depicted over
time by women and men, in various genres. A lthough primarily a textual analysis, Cooper
provides useful data on the use of Jama ican Creole as part of an ongoing oral tradition. She
devotes two chapters to the poetry of Louise Bennett, then moves onto the perfonnance poetry
of Jean Binta Breeze, who specialized in dub poetry and storytell ing. The following chap-
ter exp lores Sistren Collective's Lionheart Gal: Lifestories ofJamaican Women. Written as
a bilingual dialogue between the women of the collective and Honor Ford Smith, it offers
context to the perfonnances of the Collective, exp loring the struggles of Jamaican women to
2 19
Kathe Managmr
survive and how this impacts their relationships with men and the ir children. Cooper writes
half of this chapter in Jamaican Creole, providing her analysis of the women's stories in Jama i-
can Creole as a way to "narrow the socia l distance between the stories and the language of
textual analysis" and as a "subversion of the authority of English as the sole language of scho l-
arsh ip" (Cooper 1995: 91 ). Cooper goes on to discuss the depiction of women in dancehall
music, suggesting that DJ perfonnance is less constrained by literary conventions than other
examples she discusses. Following Devonish (1986), she suggests that writers such as Ben-
nett strived to challenge assumptions about the rightful place for Creole in Jama ican society
by using Creo le for literary genres, but in their struggle to do this, they paradoxically stressed
the traditional role of Creole and its connection to the 'fo lk,' which then made it possible for
early national ists to refer to the ir work in token symbolic gestures to the speech of the 'folk.'
Throughout the book, Cooper interrogates and challenges the ideo logical connection of Eng-
lish to propriety and Jamaican Creole to slackness.
In the Francophone Caribbean, we see the same process, as popular theater, often in Kreyol,
emerged alongside the independence movement in Guadeloupe, Martinique and French Quay-
ana. Much of the writing on this Creole-language art form comes from literary scholars who
primarily mention the use of Kreyol in passing. For instance, Balmes:•
Since the course of the 1970s, the first popular theater troupes manifest the wish to
create a theater that cou ld deal with topics that were specific to Martinican society,
where Creole would not be a sign of ignorance of"Culture" and thus French, and also
the possibility to evoke quotidian social relations with more realism.
(Balmes 2007: 3-4)
Similarly, Naudillon (2010) suggests that Guadeloupean popu lar theater is "un theatre mir-
roir" ('a mirror theater '), presenting a portrait of Guadeloupean everyday life that aims to be
realistic. To that end, Guadeloupean popu lar theater includes plays that are a lmost exclusively
in Kreyol, as well as those that feature both French and Kreyol. Naudillon (2009) explains that
the use of the different languages follows typical Guadeloupean language choice patterns that
include gendered language expectations. A play about a couple in which the husband is con-
sidering an extra-marital affair, for instance, includes long stretches in French, since it is most
common (and considered most proper) for men to pursue romantic liaisons in French. Sec-
tions of the play where ma le friends converse feature Kreyol.' Naudillon refers to the concept
of d iglossia (typical language choice patterns in Guadeloupe). She also notes that language
choice can appea l to other indexical values of French and Kreyol. French is viewed as the
language of forn1a lity but also of pretense, while Kreyol is the language of fami liarity as well
as frankness. For example, in one scene Naudillon (2009: 13) describes from the play Moun
Koubari two brothers are at a rum shop. Dede speaks to the proprietress in French, describing
how he has succeeded in life by becoming a police officer. His brother, Leyon, makes fun of
him in Kreyol remind ing him that he had spent time in prison in Franc.e . She suggests that the
comedic plays of Jose Jernidier in particular feature the use of Kreyol to dispel pretense.
In Hawai'i, 1946-48 saw the growth of Pidgin (as Hawai ian Creole is often ca lled) theatre
under Assistant Director John Kneubuhl at the Honolulu Commw1ity Theatre. He envisioned
an indigenous theater that wou ld spotlight Pacific heritage. By 1953, interest in Hawaiian
Pidgin theater faded away, until a renaissance in 1971, begim1ing with a small theatre group
called Kumu Kahua at the University of Hawai' i. The full text of several Kumu Kahua plays
may be found in the anthology edited by Dennis Carroll (1983). In 1975, another group formed,
Booga Booga, that specialized in improvisational satirical sketches. One play in Hawaiian
220
Creole that drew considerable audiences was James Benton's TlvelfNite or Wateva! based on
Shakespeare's 7\ve/fth Night:
Twelf Nite moved expertly and widely on the Pidgin culture and language contin-
uum. Syntactic and morphological characteristics of hard-core Pidgin were abun-
dant, directorships of such as peculiar negative constructions and frequent om ission
of linking verbs, certain prepositions, and inflectional endings. Liberal sprinkling of
Hawaiian and other loan words and idioms localized the vocabulary, and common
sow1d substitutions were suggested in the script.
(Carroll and Carroll 1976: 58)
Although Carroll and Carrot (1976) discuss the language of the play, they focus on Benton's
use of Hawaiian Creole as an example of naturalism in theater. DiPasquale (20 19) discusses
T\velj Nile or Wateva! and its author in more detail, providing insights into the author 's back-
ground and views on language, and providing insight into the popu larity of the play. She notes
that the play was a "work of 'orature"' and involved elements of improvisation and audience/
performer interaction in performance. DiPasquale discusses how Benton transformed Shake-
speare's play to situate it within a Hawai ian context, exploring many examples of lexical
choice. A literary scholar, DiPasqua le focuses on the play as an example of postcolonial resist-
ance and suggests that it "successfully challenges the notion of Shakespeare as a high-culture
commodity reserved for educated haoles ('Caucasians')" (DiPasqua le 2019: 189).
Furukawa (20 ll ), a linguist, emp loys discourse analysis to swdy stylistic variation in
Hawaiian standup comedy performance. He argues that comedians draw on indexica l mean-
ings attached to specific language styles to performatively create categories of membership of
their audiences, focusing on the differences between Locals and Non-Locals. He also notes the
d ifferential use of Hawai ian Creole by comics and by discursive contexts. While some come-
d ians on ly used Hawaiian Creole in reported speech and constructed dialogues, others a lso
used it in narration, ''thereby stylizing themselves and the ir audiences as Locals who address
and are addressed in that language" (Furukawa 20 ll: 269). 6
In an article that compares literary uses ofTok Pisin and Hawaiian Creo le, Romaine (1995)
mentions the emergence of groups such as Raw1 Raw1 Theater in Goruka, Papua New Guinea,
who present drama in Tok Pisin. Raun Raun Theater, according to Romaine, draws on the
tradition of oral literature, using unscripted Tok Pisin to create improvisational " fo lk opera"
(Romaine 1995: 9&-99). The group created the play based on traditional folktales. She pro-
vides an excerpt of a script for a play ("Traim Pasas," 'Try Armband') by another group, called
Kas Theater Group, although she does not analyze it in detail.
As noted in the discussion of popular !heater in Guadeloupe, much Creole-language popu-
lar !heater takes the fonn of comedic plays and sketches, as well as other genres of comedy,
such as standup comedy. Managan (20 l2b) takes a linguistic anthropological approach to
comedy sketches in Guadeloupe, examining how the familiar characters mentioned in Naudil-
lon's work come to life on stage through the skillfu l use of code-switching and stylistic varia-
tion. Go ing beyond Naudillon 's assertion that Guadeloupean popular theater reflects diglossic
conventions, Managan's study provides a fine-grained analysis of the varieties of French and
Kreyol that index specific stock characters in Guadeloupean comedy sketches. The common
Rasta character, for instance, speaks a style of Kreyol referred to as Kreyo l Zayatm, which
includes certa in tem1s drawn from Dread Talk and Rastafari (such as /tal, I n I or Yes 1). Hai-
tians are often depicted as undocwnented workers in Guadeloupean comedy sketches, and are
portrayed by interspersing well-known features of Haitian Kreyol (especially the preverbal
221
Kathe Managmr
marker ap where Guadeloupean Kreyo l uses ka and the verb gen ['to have'] in place of tini)
into Guadeloupean Kreyol speech. Managan argues that Guadeloupean comedy uses these
easi ly recognizable lingu istic features, along with non-linguistic cues such as occupation and
dress style, to present a Guadeloupean public as d iverse and mu ltifaceted and to position diffe-
rent social types within a hierarchy of value, through stance and character juxtaposition.
Creole-language comedy, especially the genre of standup, has also been studied in Nigeria
(Adetunji 2013; Filani 2015; Gaudio 2019). Standup comedy in Nigeria started to become
popular in the early 1990s thanks to the performances of Alle lujah Atupota Akpobome (a.k.a.
Ali Baba) in a Lagos nightclub . He went on to train many other comics. Adetunji (20 13: 3)
exam ines the "major pragmatic strategies [that] Nigerian standup comedians use to involve
their audiences in hwnor production and consumption," stressing the fac.t " that comedians and
audiences eo-produce and eo-consume hwnor, in more ways than are evident." In discussing
the eo-production of humor, Adetunji considers the role of code-switching, between Nigerian
Pidgin, English and, to a limited extent, various local languages to foster a sense of dialogue;
the use of stereotypes to foster a sense of shared background and perspectives; the use of
formulaic expressions to create a sense of solidarity with the audience, who begin to intelject
the expression at the end ofjokes; call and response exchanges between the comedian and the
audience, which are related to formu laic expressions; the perfom1ance of self-deprecation,
to lessen the distance between the comedian, who holds the microphone and thus the con-
versational power, and the audience; and the use of shared experiences to create a sense of
community.
Almost every Nigerian can speak or understand NP, and so, it has become the unof-
ficial or de facto language of advertisement, entertainment, and any other fom1 of
infonnation intended for mass consumption.... Nigerian stand-up comedians have
tactically appropriated this linguistic resource for their profession.
(Adetunji 2013: 3)
Filani (2015) offers a discourse-centered analysis of Nigerian comedy focusing on discourse

types. Gaudio (20 19) provides a detailed analysis of the ways that com ics use stylistic varia-
tion between varieties such as standard and colloquial English a long with Nigerian Pidgin to
take stances on what it means to be Nigerian, African and Black. He focuses in particu lar on
the indexica l va lues of varieties of English counterposed with Naija in performance, showing
how English is used in some instances to mock White members of the audience. He suggests
that such usages present a counter-hegemonic vision of the relationship between English and
Nigerian Pidgin. In other examples he analyzes, comics use English to portray a negative
stereotype of Nigerians who have lived abroad and take on a irs by speaking 'fone,' which
refers to using 'White' varieties of English in a way that is viewed by Nigerians as putting on
a irs.' The comedic performance of fone, Gaudio asserts, also has a gendered component. Most
comedians are male, and most often the butt of comedy routines portraying Nigerians speaking
fone involves women. In this way, he argues, the use ofNaija as an emblem of national unity
and racial pride exists alongside images of gender inequality in Nigerian comedy. His analysis
makes a distinction between the context of the joke and the context in the joke (that which is
being performed).
Although works on Nigerian Pidgin I have c ited mention in passing the prominent use of
NP in Nollywood films, alongside English, few linguistic studies explore this in detai l. This is
surprising given the attention that Nollywood received in academia more generally. Ehineni
(20 15) does include a few brief examples of code-switching between English and NP, along
222
with examples of code-switch ing with other indigenous Nigerian languages, but the focus of
the paper is on the pragmatics of English as used in Nollywood films. Adedun (2010) analyzes
language choice and code-switching as well, but looks at examples of switching involving NP
in more detail. His analysis is complicated by the fact that he views NP as a variety of English,
and not an indigenous Nigerian language. Both works suggest that speakers switch to NP pri-
marily due to interlocutor (NP being seen as a lingua franca) or context (NP being predominant
in the marketplace or in the mixed-ethnic space of the un iversity).
Although the studies of Creole-language theater, film and comedic perfom1ance include a
wide range of different genres and different uses for Creoles, we have seen how Creole languages
play a prominent role in oral perfonnance, espec ially in works written in the context of national-
ist movements. Since Creole languages owe their origin in many cases to colonization, it is per-
haps not surprising that they figure prominently in postcolonial perfom1ance as symbols of some
type of shared identity in a wider, contested social field. In Caribbean sett ings, Creole languages
may index a shared, national identity, but the studies discussed indicate that the linguistic land-
scape is complex and the subtleties of language variation are often exploited in theater, comedic
performance and film to comment on social complexity and to engage with different audiences.
11.4 Music
Outside of literature, the most widely studied art fom1 in Creole languages is undoubtedly
music. A wealth of literature discusses many aspects of Creole language use in a diverse range
of musical genres. One topic that recurs in this literature is the way that musical genres have
been mobilized in national movements and in postcolonial political critique (e.g., Carnal
2019; Lawnuno 2011; Pardue 2016). Another topic that appears frequently is the global flow
of musical genres like reggae and hip hop and how this has been accompanied by the spread
of Creole languages and related varieties, such as Dread Talk, Jamaican Creo le English and
AAVE beyond their national boundaries (Alim 2006; Pollard 2000 [ 1994]). In this section I first
explore the first analytical trend, discussing studies of Creo le-language musical genres closely
associated with particular places. Then, I move onto studies of the ways that hip hop, reggae
and dancehall have influenced language and music outside of Jamaica and the US. As we wi ll
see, the flows of these genres have not necessarily meant linguistic or cultural homogenization.
Instead, each case has something to say about linguistic, cu ltural and political processes in their
respective context.
11.4.1 Haitian pwen songs and rara

Etlmomusicologist Gage Averill ( 1997) provides insights into the role that Creole languages
p lay in music, even though the focus is less on the fonn of the languages in question. Averill 's
Day of Hunter, for instance, provides the lyrics of many songs in Haitian Kreyol and a lso
details certain speech events that occur both in song and in everyday speech. The speech event
voye pwen, for instance, is a type of indirect speech used to critic ize another person (see a lso
Morgan 1996 on indirection in African American speech) that may be used by Haitians in
everyday conversation, but is also found in song (called pwen songs). T hese pwen songs figure
prom inently in rara music, perfom1ed during a period of procession that precedes Easter.
Linguistic anthropologist Joersz (20 15) examines pwen songs and rara in further detai l,
focusing on the circulation of a specific phrase in one cam ival song from 2013 that criti-
cized Haitian President Martelly. The phrase eventually took on the character of a slogan,
as President Martelly tried to respond to the criticism. Joersz links the way that pwen songs
223
Kathe Managmr
operate to broader verbal aesthetics and verbal genres found with the African diaspora. Pwen
songs are evaluated based on their authors' ability to use language in a creative and aesthetic
way, includ ing wordplay and exaggeration (see also Abrahams 1983). She a lso suggests that
pwen songs (and pwen critique in interaction) convey another feature of African American
speech discussed by Marcyliena Morgan, "the collaborative process through which a meaning
or interpretation is constituted (Lempert 2012: 193)" (Joersz 2015: 305). Much like signifying
in the African American community (M organ 1996) or dropping a remark in Barbados (Fisher
1976), "[i]n the case of Ha itian pwen, the target's response confirms for (over)hearers (i.e., the
audience) the veracity of a given insult or critique" (Joersz 2015: 305- 306). To respond to the
pwen is to 'co llect' (ranmase) it and confim1 that one is indeed the target and potentially give
credence to the claim made. In the example Joersz studied, Marte lly tries to deny the claims,
but in responding directly, he only opens himself up to further criticism.
11.4.2 Kn!yol as icon in gwoka in Guadeloupe

Scholars such as Carnal (20 19), Lawn uno (20 11) and Tahon and Sitchet (20 17) have noted the
important symbol ic function of gwoka music sung in Guadeloupean Kreyol for the Guade-
loupean nationalist movement. Carnal (20 19) deta ils how gwoka emerged as a nationalist icon,
a long with Kreyol, as the independence movement took shape, and points out how gwoka
was shaped in the process. Laumuno (20 11) provides an analysis of early gwoka song lyrics.
Managan (2012a) points out the gendered dimensions of this symbolic connection, noting
that female singers of gwoka have been marginalized and had their voices silenced because of
the aesthetics of gwoka singing, the assoc iation of gwoka with impropriety and an emphasis
on women's respectability. Tahon and Sitchet (2017) also detail the voice qualities present in
gwoka singing, particu larly the use of nasalization to emphasize emotion, and note the inclu-
sion over recent years of creaky voice into gwoka singing.
11.4. 3 Tok Pisin and tok ples in Papua New Guinean lokal music
Wilson (20 14a) discusses a genre of contemporary music in Papua New Guinea known as /oka/
music, noting the importance ofTok Pisin and other indigenous languages (locally referred to
in Tok Pisin as tok pies) in establishing a sense of place (pies). While tok pies serve an impor-
tant symbolic function declaring the singer's own identity and sometimes singers use other tok
pies to address specific audiences, Tok Pisin remains the most conunon language. Webb ( 1993)
argues that the amazing linguistic diversity of Papua New Guinea leads to artists choosing the
lingua franca Tok Pisin and suggests that tok pies operate in local music as indexes of rural
place more generally, rather than simply indexes of the specific areas where each is spoken.
Wilson (2014b) exp lores two different albums produced in Papua New Guinea, noting that
one established a sense of place (pies) and a connection with specific rural locales by singing
in Tok Pisin and indigenous Papuan languages. This contributed to its success. The other was
sung entirely in English, which hindered its success because of its "absence of pies-based
references in her music and marketing" (Wilson 2014b: 66).
11.4.4 Jamaican reggae and dancehall

As mentioned earlier, Pollard's (2000 [1994]) Dread Talk studied the emergence of a variety
of Jamaican Patwa associated with Rastafari and reggae and explored the spread of this variety
via the global flow of reggae music. Sebba ( 1993) suggests that while reggae was important for
224
spreading an awareness of Jamaican Creole to others in London, its role was likely limited within
the Caribbean conununity. He points out that many reggae lyrics are not in Jamaican Creole, but
in Jamaican-accented English. Instead, he argues that toasting was more likely to be in Jamaican
Creole. Nonetheless, he notes that those elements of popular culture, along with Rastafari, gave
prominence to Jamaican Creole in London, such as members of the wider Caribbean diaspora
in London were likely to speak at least some Jamaican Creole. Farquharson (20 17) made a
simi lar argument. ln his view, reggae music switched the usua l diglossic situation in Jamaica,
where Jamaican Creole had been the language of popu lar culture. ln reggae songs, however, the
dominant language was English. Nonetheless, reggae appears to be a factor in the use of at least
features of Jamaican Creole by non-Jamaicans around the world. Gerfer (20 18), for instance,
studies on-stage and off-stage speech of White reggae artists in Europe, the US and Bennuda.
Her data suggests that Jamaican Creole has emerged as an important linguistic resource for those
wanting to display a global reggae persona, even off-stage. She suggests that future research
shou ld pay attention to audience reception of singers' language use, including the perception of
Jamaicans toward the use of Jamaican Creole by White, non-Jamaican reggae artists.
In more recent years, dancehall has grown in popularity and has attracted the attention of
linguists and other scholars. ln one study of language in dancehall, Farquharson (2005) draws
on the perspective of perfonnativity to examine homophobic speech acts (tennedfiya-bon) in
dancehall, through which, he suggests, artists engage in acts of sexual identity and perform
masculinity. Whereas Farquharson (2017) argues that the dominant language of reggae was
English, he notes that danceha ll is predom inantly in Jamaican Creole. ln that artic le, he a lso
traces out broader language ide.ological fie lds in Jamaica and considers how these ideologies
influence language choic.e in different musical genres over the years. Over time, he notes, folk
music came to be associated with Jama ican Creole. Reggae was an exception to this, some-
thing he attributes to the influence of American R&B on that genre. Dancehall, for Farquhar-
son, represents a shift toward a grassroots language nationalism in Jamaica, an "ideological
shift that made Jamaican the language that indexes national identity" (Farquharson 2017: 17).
11.4.5 Nigerian Pidgin in Afrobeat and Nigerian hip hop

Gaudio (20 11) notes that Fe la Aniku lapo-Kuti, famed Afrobeat music star, popularized the
use of Nigerian Pidgin in popular perfom1ance in the national sphere in Nigeria. His efforts
to speak to a national audience through the use of Nigerian Pidgin influenced its use in com-
edy, cinema and many genres of Nigerian music. Kuti's use of Nigerian Pidgin to critique
the postcolon ial Nigerian politics is echoed today by many N igerian hip hop artists. Gaudio
explores how these artists forge cultural ties beyond Nigeria by combining Nigerian Pidgin
with other African diasporic varieties often viewed as 'broken English' (such as AAVE or
Jamaican Creole). Gaudio suggests further that these artists' use of Nigerian Pidgin may rep-
resent a cha llenge to the dominance of North American languages English and AAVE as the
Hip Hop Nation Language (Alim 2006). Gaudio po ints out, however, that the symbolic force
ofNaija is less strong in Northern Nigeria, where Hausa serves as a lingua franca and which
often sees itself as cu lturally separate from the South.
11.4.6 Trinidadian soca and ragga soca:

metalanguage and acts ofidentity
Leung (2009) exam ines the borrowing of 'Jamaican Creole English' (JCE) features into
Trinidad ian Creole English (TCE) in the per formance of ' ragga soca' (a fusion of Jamaican
225
Kathe Managmr
dancehall and contemporary Trinidadian so ea) in Trinidad. She takes up Le Page and Tabouret-
Keller's ( 1985) model of acts of identity to argue that yow1g ragga soca performers adopt
certain features associated with JCE (especially the d iphthongs [ie] and [uo]) to give their
TCE lyrics a Jamaican ftavor as an act of identity. She suggests that these artists picked up
an awareness of these features through Jamaica dancehall. She also notes that the influence
of dancehall on ragga soca is also seen at the pragmatic level. Whereas traditional soca and
calypso lyrics employ metaphor, allusion, symbolism and double entendre to communicate
messages indirectly, ragga soca, like dancehall, favors more direct, 'plain talk' or brazen lyr-
ics. Leung further argues that
enterprising ragga soca artists, who were themse lves heavy consumers of dancehall,
appropriated JCE into their performance repertoire, thereby claiming that feeling of
disenfranchisement and marginalisation as their own. This innovation is more than
linguistic; it is a social act of identity which captures the dialectic between the ind i-
vidual and societal experience.
(Leung 2009: 527)
Leung (20 17) explores YouTube comments on soca music as metalanguage data using the
framework of index icality. She examines d iscussions about the meanings of particu lar Creole
words that come from a lex ical set associated with carnival. She notes that the words all con-
tain a marked Trinidadian Creole English vowel variant (the NURSE vowel) which " has the
potential to connote extremity, intensity, or urgency" (Leung 20 17: 243). She concludes that
the vowel is used in You Tube comments about soca music for stance and stylistic purposes,
including taking "oppositional stances against respectability in a carnival context" (Leung
2017: 23 1).
11.4.7 Kriolu in Cape Verdean rap

Anthropologist Derek Pardue (20 13, 2014, 20 16) is the scholar who has written most exten-
sive ly about Kriolu or Cape Verdean Creole in mus ic, spec ifically rap . His research focuses
on Cape Verdean migrants Jiving in Lisbon, Portugal and the way that they use rap in Kriolu
to express a racialized identity. In his work, he notes that the term Kriolu operates as both the
name of a Creole language as well as the name of an identity. Invoking Bakhtin's concept
of the chronotope, Pardue (20 16) suggests that Cape Verdean rappers in Portugal stress that
Kriolu is not just part of their African heritage and thus the past, but is also relevant to their
lives as marginalized migrants living in the urban center of Lisbon. Pardue also contends that
these rappers draw on the image of " Modern Blackness" discussed by Thomas (2004). For
instanc.e, he points out that the rappers, in song and in interviews or casual conversations, draw
on expressions in English. In one gathering, some young men shouted "black lyrics, soldiers,
ghetto li fe," which Pardue interprets as a way for them to stress their experiences of "black-
ness, poverty and violence" (Pardue 2013: 125).
Pardue (20 16) discusses the ways that Kriolu rappers develop on lex ical irmovations such
as pretugal (a combination of preto, ' Black' and Portugal), to highlight the ambiguous rela-
tionship between Portugal and its former colonies, both in the earlier colonial period and more
recently, as Cape Verdeans migrate to Portugal and find themselves on the margins of society/
of the nation. In this context, Kriolu rappers may rap in Kriolu as a strategy of emplacement,
creating a place for themselves. One way they do this is by using Kriolu to create and maintain
226
social networks, something especially important to these migrants who are frequently on the
move and displaced from fam ily.
11.4.8 Global and local music and identity in Mauritius and Reunion
Bremner (20 14) examines language and popu lar music in two postcolonial, Creo le-speaking
societies in the Indian Oc.ean that have followed very different routes throughout their post-
colon ial history: the independent nation of Mauritius and the French overseas department of
Reunion. She suggests that popular music plays a ro le in combating colonial language preju-
d ices and focuses on the ways that popular music engages with discourses of national identity
(an argument developed also in Bremner 20 15). She considers the rise of cultural nationalism
in Mauritius with the music of sega and explores the role of dancehall in forging a sense of
globa l modernity in both Mauritius and Reunion. Bremner (20 15) focuses on the engagement
of Reunionese dancehall with local language politics. She points out that dancehall is associ-
ated with modernity and with the outside word, in contrast to another musical style, mayola,
which was recently the subject of a revalorization movement, which culminated in its declara-
tion as Intangible Cultural Heritage by UNESCO. That revalorization movement centered on
mayola as part of''representations of La Reunion/on/an, a nostalgic vision of Reunion's rural
past" (Bremner 2015: 113). Whereas certain mayola artists had created Kreol neologisms as a
strategy of proving its equality with French, Rew1ionese dancehall lyrics may include French,
reflecting the language practices common of Rew1ionese youth. These artists also intersperse
English with Kreol in their lyrics. Bremner suggests that through this "rough juxtaposing and
combining Kreo l with English and/or Jamaican Creole English, danceha ll artists may attempt
to draw on English's perce ived prestige as an international language, and to confer this pres-
tige onto their own vernacular" (Bremner 2015: 120). In this way, Reunionese dancehall art-
ists appear to be drawing on dancehall's association with ' Modem Blackness' in a way that
impacts the status of Kreol.
11.4. 9 Reke: Pacific reggae in Bislama in Vanuatu

Stressing that despite the global flows of the Jamaican music genres, there are many reggaes,
Levisen (20 17) considers the local semantics of reke as a recent emergence in postco lonial
Vanuatu. Levisen suggests that reke is semantically assoc iated with youth (yangfala), people
of col or (blakman ), having a message and smoking marijuana, and contrasted with older peo-
ple and attending church. Although he notes that his consultants made cotmections between
reggae artists around the world, reke is seen as being rooted in the local environment and in
Bislama semantic categories.
11.4.1 0 Creole-language use in music: conclusions

Th is section has discussed a range of musical genres, from genres less well known at the inter-
national level such as Guade loupean gwoka, Mauritian sega, Haitian rara, Reun ionese mayo/a
and New Guinean /oka/ to we ll-known genres such as reggae, dancehall and rap. Although a
few studies explored the pragmatics of a specific phrase (/iya-bon in Jamaican danceha ll) or
of spec ific musical genres (indirection in pwen songs), most of the studies discussed center on
the indexical values of Creo le languages in specific communities. In severa l examples, Cre-
o le languages symbolize a shared nationa l identity. Guadeloupean gwoka is a central icon of
227
Kathe Managmr
Guadeloupean identity mobi lized by nationalist activists seeking independence from France,
while Tok Pisin serves as a unifying lingua franca in lokal music that otherwise stresses local,
rura l places through the use of indigenous Papuan languages. In other examples, Creole lan-
guages, including the languages of others, are used as a way of connecting across the African
diaspora, indexing 'Modem Blackness' in Reunionese dancehall and Kriolu rap among Cape
Verdean migrants in Portugal or connecting to a wider global youth cu lrure in Vanuatu.
11.5 Conclusions
This chapter has explored stud ies by linguists and scholars working in related fields on arts
and med ia in Cre.ole languages. Despite the prominent ro le of Creole languages in popular
cu lture, there are relatively few linguistic srudies of the forms and uses of Creole language
in the arts and music. That being said, the existing literature covers Creole languages spoken
over a wide geographic range. Certain artistic genres have received more scholarly attention,
such as stand-up comedy and comedic theater and music, especially reggae, rap and dance-
hall, whi le others, such as film, have rece ived less attention. This may reflect a greater preva-
lence of Creole-language use in these genres as much as a scholarly preference. In the studies
that do exist, we see the recurrence of the themes of verbal art or oral ity and the symbol ic
functions of Creole languages, especially in national ist movements and other types of group
boundary-making.

To date, creolists have not focused much attention on the topic of the arts (espec ially
beyond music), so one can hope that furure directions of research will remedy this gap.
Given the popularity of popular arts and music genres in Creole languages, a wealth of
data is avai lable to scholars. It wou ld be especially help fu l if more linguists and lingu istic
anthropologists would turn their attention to Creole languages in music and arts, so that
we cou ld have more detailed analysis of lingu istic form, stylistic variation and pragmat-
ics. While the work of other scholars is useful, it tends to cerller on language as a sym-
bol ic object in popular culrure. Recent work by lingu ists and linguistic anthropo logists
on popu lar culrure in Naija, French Caribbean Cre.o le !heater and music, Jamaican music
and the influence of reggae and dancehall on language use outside Jamaica, gives prom ise
of increased scholarly attention to a wide range of Creole-language music and arts. One
topic current research suggests wi ll be fruitfu l is the appropriation of Jamaican Creo le
into the spontaneous speech of non-Jamaicans and the ways that both Jamaicans and non-
Jamaicans view these acts of identity.
Notes
He wrote collaboratively w ith linguistic anthropologist and folklorist Richard Bauman on a taxonomy
o f Vincentian speech acts. Abrahams also contributed a chapter, "Black Talking on the Streets" to Bau-
man and Sherzer's collected volume Explorations in the Er/urography ofSpeaking.
2 Aside from reference to verbal art in my discussion of pwen songs in Haiti, this chapter does not
include discussion of verbal a11 in Creole-speaking areas. Although there is a wealth o f literature on
the topic, given space considerations, I decided not to include that as an art form. I a lso chose not to
spend much time discussing music and a11 in AAVE, although I do reference work on Hip Hop Nation
Language, which explores the role o f AAVE in the global flows of hip hop.
3 He also draws on Peter Wilson's respect-respectability binary, as discussed in Crab Amics.
228
4 Depuis le courant des annees soixante-dix, les premieres troupes de theatre populaire manifestaient le
souhait de creer un theatre qui puisse ala fois traiter de sujets propres a la societe martiniquaise, ou le
creole ne serait pas le signe d 'une meconnaissance de "la culture" et done de la langue fram;aise, mais
la possibilite d'evoquer les relations sociales quotidiennes avec plus de realisme.
(Balmes 2007:3-4)
5 See Schnepel (1993) and Managan (20 16) for a discussion of language choice and gender in
Guadeloupe.
6 He also discusses the use o f Mock Filipino to comment on the place of Filipinos in Hawaiian society,
a topic he discusses in Furukawa (2007) and Hiramoto (20 11).
7 Compare Managan (20 12b) discussion of the stereotype of the negropolitain in the French West lndies.
Further reading
Alim, H. S. , lbrahim, A. and Pennycook, A. (eds.) 2009. Global Linguistic Flows: Hip hop Culwres,
Youth ldelllities, and the Politics of Language. New York: Rout!edge.
Devonish, H. 2006. On the Status of Diphthongs in Jamaican: Mr. Vegas Pronounces. In Exploring the
Boundaries of Caribbean Creole Languages, edited by Hazel Simmons-McDonald and fan Roben-
son. Kingston: University o f the West Indies Press: 72-95.
Inyabri, I. T. 2016. Youth and Linguistic Stylization in Naija Afro Hip Hop. Sociolinguistic Studies
10(1-2): 89-108.
N'Zengou-Tayo, M. J. 1997. Literature and Diglossia: T he Poetics o f French and Creole ' InterJect' in
Patrick C hamoiseau 's Texaco. Caribbean Quarterly 43(4): 81 - 10 I.
Ruprecht, A. 2003. Les theatres francophones de la Cararbe. Paris: L' Harmattan.
Related topics
The Rise of Pidgin Theatre in Hawa i'i; Creoles in Literature; Identity Politics; Identity and
Mixed Languages; Pidgins and Creoles: New domains, new technologies; North America and
Hawai'i; Caribbean, South and Central America; Indian Ocean Creoles
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12
THE RISE OF PIDGIN
THEATRE IN HAWAI'I
Tammy Hailiopua Baker
12.1 Little bit intro for da chapter

Theatre sits at the intersection of literarure, history, social identity, civil rights, multicu ltur-
a lism, and multil ingua lism. Hawai'i's Pidgin' theatre embodies these intersections having
emerged out ofHawai'i's diverse culrural tapestry and history. This chapter aims to define and
chronicle the development of Pidgin theatre in Hawa i' i, high lighting the instirutions and key
playwrights producing theatre in Pidgin. The chapter also illustrates the use of Pidgin theatre
for language advocacy and to project culrural and linguistic identity.
12.2 Small kind history

T he Hawai ian archipelago consists of eight major islands and is the ancestral home of Kanaka
Maoli, the indigenous people of the islands, who spoke 'Olelo Hawai ' i. The American mission-
aries would develop a written Hawaiian language through the establishment of an orthography
in 1822 as a means to disseminate proselytism to the Kanaka Maoli population (Nogelme ier
20 10; Baker, C.M.K. 20 15). With the arrival of more foreigners to the island shores in the late
e ighteenth cenrury, English weaved its way into social intercourse. The influx of foreigners and
the enterprise of sugar plantations introduced a variety of immigrant conununities to the islands
of Kaua' i, O'ahu, Maui, Lana'i, and Hawai'i Island. Chinese laborers were the first group
brought over to work on the sugarcane plantations in 1852. The plantation owners spoke Pidgin
Hawaiian with the Kanaka Maoli workers as well as the Chinese (Roberts 2004). T he intermar-
riage of Kanaka Maoli women and Chinese men would further expand the use of Pidgin Hawai-
ian while the Cantonese spoken by the Chinese influenced Pidgin Hawaiian. The growth of the
sugar plantations increased the demand for laborers and in 1868 the first workers from Japan
arrived in Hawai' i. The Japanese learned Pidgin Hawaiian and their chi ldren spoke it.
The Reciprocity Treaty of 1875 supported the American interests in the rapidly developing
plantation system, giving America dominance over the sugar trade and Hawai' i's economy
(Beamer 20 14). Soon, more la borers were imported from Portugal, Korea, Puerto Rico, and
the Ph ilippines. Each community brought their own language and traditions with them, creat-
ing fertile ground for the development of a Pidgin language to link these plantation laborers
faci litating commun ication on the p lantation. Pidgin Hawaiian decl ined in use as more people
232
Tire rise of Pidgilr theatre in Hawai'i
learned English and other languages pern1eated the landscape. Cantonese, 'Oielo Hawai ' i,
English, Japanese, and Portuguese converged deve loping Pidgin English (Roberts 1993).
According to Sakoda and Siege!, Pidgin is " the unique lexical accommodation reached by the
multi-ethnic population of the Hawai' i plantations in the early twentieth century" (Sakoda and
Siege! 2003, pp. 6-7).
Following the illegal overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom in 1893, English becomes an
important means to exert power and control over people. In 1896, the insurgent provisional gov-
enunent passed Act 57 banning Hawaiian as the medium of instruction in the Hawa i'i school
system (Warner 200 I). C hildren were punished for speaking Hawai ian at school inclusive of
corporal punishment (Baker 2018). This led to a major language sh ift in the islands. Entering
the twentieth century, both Hawaiian and Pidgin were treated as illegitimate languages while
English took a seat of prestige and dom inance. Decades of native speakers of Pidgin evolved
into Hawai ian Creole English (HCE), which developed dialectal differences per island and even
per district. Following World War 11 the campaign to "Speak American" forced assimilation to
American culture and the English language, which had serious ramifications for Hawai' i's lan-
guage ecology. Negative stigmas associated with Pidgin would manifest through the perpetua-
tion of the myth that Pidgin speakers had lower intelligence, were inferior, and less competent
than English speakers (Booth and Young 2009). As a chi ld who was raised in a Pidgin speaking
household in a plantation community on the island ofKaua ' i, I have firsthand experience of the
d iscrim ination in the schools for those of us who spoke Pidgin. I witnessed how these divisions
compound the dynamics of speaking Pidgin in public and private spheres.
Pidgin Literature would flourish beginning in the 1980s with the publishing of short sto-
ries and poetry through Bamboo Ridge Press and Bess Press. Authors like Darrell Lum, Eric
Chock, Gary Pak, Wayne Kamuali'i West lake, and Lois Ann Yamanaka wou ld lead the way
in promu lgating literature in the ir native tongue relevant to their home. Pidgin to da Max, a
d ictionary of Pidgin words and phrases, would elevate Pidgin with its initial pub lication in
198 1. In sp ite of the public awareness and the celebration of Pidgin in literature, the socio-
political impact of speaking Pidgin would come to a head in 1987 when the Hawai' i Board of
Education attempted to ban Pidgin in the public schools. 2 The move to ban Pidgin in Hawai ' i 's
school system received much media attention and was met with tremendous opposition from
the public. Being that " Pidgin is the dominant language of loca l families in Hawai'i. Most
people living in the Hawaiian archipe lago, especially those who were born and raised here,
are speakers of Pidgin and Hawai ' i English" (Drager 2012), the community displayed great
support for Pidgin as it is linked to public pride of a local identity. In response to the Board
of Education, linguists, professors, students, and invested community members established
Da Pidgin Coup at the University of Hawai' i at Miinoa (UHM). In 1999 Da Pidgin Coup
authored a position paper on Pidgin and education "in response to negative statements from
the Chairn1an of the Board of Education."' The group focuses on linguistic and educational
issues concerning Pidgin by supporting and creating research of Pidgin as well as advocating
for the recognition of Pidgin at the university, in the community, and beyond.• Housed in the
Charlene Sato Center for Pidgin, Creole and Dialect Stud ies' at UHM, Da Pidgin Coup is an
invaluable resource for Pidgin publications, programs, and curriculwn (see Higgins 2010).
123 What kine theatre get in Hawai'i

Hawai' i's theatre landscape represents the diverse demographic makeup of the Hawaiian archi-
pelago. Based in oral tradition, the perforn1ing arts practices of Kiinaka Maoli such as hula
(dance), o/i (chanting), mete (song and poetry), hula ki'i (puppetry and image dancing), and
233
Tammy Hai/iopua Baker
ha 'i mo 'o/elo (storytelling) are the indigenous theatre fom1s that existed since time immemo-
rial (see Baker 2019). During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the island of O'ahu, a
major port of the Pacific, was exposed to many traveling theatre companies and consequently
built a robust theatre COinmw1ity that weaved the indigenous theatre fonns of Hawai ' i into the
growing theatre scene. Also contributing to the theatre landscape were the immigrant plantation
workers who brought their own performance traditions. Chinese and Japanese would establish
theatres in Honolulu to practice their traditional forms and host traveling theatre troupes from
their countries of origin. Kanaka Maoli developed hana keaka (Hawaiian-medium theatre),
tableaux perfonnances, and operas producing original plays alongside the visiting professional
and amateur theatre companies from around the world (see Baker 2019 for a detai led timeline
of theatre in Hawai' i). Noteworthy to the discussion on the development of Pidgin theatre is
an original play written and directed by Kanaka Maol i composer Charles E. King in 1925 (Ka
Nupepa Kuokoa, 23 Aprill 925, p. I). King's musical play, Ke Keikiali'i o Hawai 'i (The Prince
ofHawai 'i), featured a Chinese merchant Sing Wo Fat who visits the High Chief after the birth
of the royal prince requesting "pem1ission to drive away any evil spirits that may want to hurt
the new prince" (Baker 2019, p. 179). Addressing the High Chief, Sing Wo Fat shares:
Aloha ! You, King, you too muchee luckee fellah. You ketchum one boy! Belly good!
Belly good! Me get plenty girl, no ketchum one boy. You numbah one luckee fe l-
lah . . .. Eh, King! My place, China, eh, suppose baby come, papa no likee ghost
come, ghost make too muchee tlouple. Chinamen alia time makee fireclakah, play
big music, sure no akua come. Suppose me makee music bang, makee fireclakah
bang-bang! You sabee me likee helup you? Me scare debbil like Hell!
(King 1925, p. 8)
Following this dialogue Sing Wo Fat perfom1s a blessing and clashes symbols simulating Chi-
nese opera musical accompaniment. The character appears again at the end of the play to del iver
a closing comical monologue. King uses phonetic spelling for some of the vocabulary in Sing Wo
Fat's dialogue throughout the play. The gra1nmar is consistent with Pidgin grammatical structure.
The character displays elements of comedy through action and the scripted dialogue. Sing Wo
Fat's dialogue is juxtaposed to the proper English and Hawaiian of the other characters. I imag-
ine that this would have solicited laughter from the audience members in attendance. Although
previous research att ributes the first play written in Pidgin to Ann " Bessie" Toishigawa hloyue
for her play Reunion in 1947 (Carrolll983; Martos 2002; Choy 201 1), the character Sing Wo Fat
is likely the first scripted Pidgin speaking character in Hawai'i's theatrical history.
The vast majority of Pidgin theatre can be traced back to the UHM where scripting plays
that represented Hawai ' i was originally encouraged by Professor Willard Wilson in his Eng-
lish courses beginning in 1936. Writing Pidgin plays was later championed by Theatre Profes-
sor Dennis Carrollthrough the establishment of a new theatre company, Kumu Kahua T heatre
(see Mattos 2002), whose mission was to produce original works by and for the people of
Hawai'i (Carroll 1983). Willard and Carroll created opportunities for new works encourag-
ing ''Hawai'i-bom students .. . to write about the ir multi-ethnic community, in its vernacular,
and with characters based on its history" (Choy 201 1, p. 42). A similar community effort was
launched by Samoan screenwriter and playwright John Kneubuhl in 1947. Shortly after taking
the post as the Artistic Director of Hono lulu Commw1ity Theatre (later named Diamond Head
Theatre), Kneubuhl wrote a manifesto regarding the need for Pacific Island playwrights to
w rite Pacific Island plays for Pacific Island audiences. He writes, " We want to have far greater
representation of the various groups that make up island society, and we hope for the day when
234
they can appear solely in plays for them and by them" (Kneubuhl 1947, p. 68 quoted in Mattos
2002, p. 36). Through the efforts of Wilson, Carroll, and Kneubuhl the stage became a plat-
form that featured the voices and experiences ofHawai' i validating and ce lebrating Hawai ' i's
history, languages, and identities.
As I am using the term Pidgin theatre it is important for me to recognize that the term that
most scholars and theatre practitioners in Hawai' i use to refer to this fonn of theatre is "local"
theatre. The concept of"local" relates to the orientation and perception ofHawa i' i-bom resi-
dents of the islands inclusive of"an appreciation of and a comm itment to the islands and the ir
people, cultures, and ways of life" (Okamura 1994, p. 174). In his article "Hawai'i's "Local"
Theatre," Carroll defines two categories of local theatre: local Asian American theatre and
local Hawaiian theatre (2000, p. 124). Local Asian American plays speak to the experience of
descendants of immigrant plantation workers and the quest of "finding a place to call home
and evolving through various adaptat ions a transfonned sense of the ir culture and an identity
in consonance" (Carroll 2000, p. 125). According to Carroll the local Hawaiian plays ''deal
with Hawaiian culture," are "dom inated by a painful sense of loss and dispossession," and
"those set in contemporary times use much Pidgin" (2000, p . 125). Sammie Choy's research
further delineates Carroll's two categories to include a third, i.e., Asian American, Hawai-
ian, and Local (Choy 2011, p. 44). Choy's research focused on the interculturalism of Local,
Asian, and Hawai ian theatre, intercu ltural theatre perspectives, and the use of Pidgin!HCE as
a medium to project Local or Hawaiian identity. Choy explains that in Hawaiian plays, "the
characters' Hawaiian identity is either clearly stated or strongly imp lied in the text and the ir
relationsh ip to that identity generally proves to be their critica l motivating force" (20 11 , p. 43)
whereas in Local plays the identity of Native Hawai ian characters "is not the fow1dation for
their participation in the plot nor for the ir interaction with other characters" (20 11, p. 43). The
category of Local theatre includes a crossover of Asian American and Native Hawaiian con-
tent but is ma inly comprised of plays specifically defined as local. Of these three categories,
local theatre tends to have the highest percentage ofPidgin!HCE dialogue.
12.3. 1 Local theatre, try break 'um down li'dat

Local theatre has five defining characteristics. First and foremost is the language in which
the play is written and perfonned in. Pidgin represents the world of the characters and the
"degree of HCE may also be an indicator of time period and generation" (Choy 201 1, p. 117).
According to Carroll, Pidgin is worn like "a badge of ethnicity and localism" (2000, p. 128) by
local people to identify as belonging to the island commWiity. This language badge "separated
" locals" from resident haoles and tourists of all races" (Carroll 1983, p. xvii). Mattos adds that,
"In Hawai'i, where you cannot always detern1ine a person's ethn ic backgrow1d by physical
appearance alone, language was one method used to express one's identity. Pidgin had become
a way of showing others that you were "local"" (Mattos 2002, p. 37). Georganne Nordstrom's
research examines the language politics among Pidgin speakers stating:
For Pidgin speakers in the settler Local community, c laiming Pidgin often corre-
sponds to claim ing an identity and corresponding experiences tied to the islands, a
relationsh ip beginning with the plantation era. For Hawaiians, however, speaking
Pidgin does not represent a culture that evolved post contact, but is better under-
stood as a disp lay of cu ltural perseverance- a site of linguistic adaptation when the ir
Native language was si lenced.
(20 15, p. 335)
235
The concept of Pidgin as an indigenous resource expands the binary groupings of m inority/
dominant languages in Hawai'i. Within the Pidgin speaking community exists a collective
" local" linguistic identity that is salient during the perfom1ance of Pidgin/HCE plays, which
creates a sense of community for the audience members. Choy references theatre scholar Mar-
vin Carlson to build her argument on audience reception of Pidgin/HCE theatre stating that:
When Creole languages are used on stage, they "might operate like more conven-
tional 'standard' languages, especially when they have become the 'native' language
for at least the majority of the audienc.e " (113). That is, a monolingual audience
may presumably comprehend all speech in a play emp loying their own language. So
when HCE is used in a Hawai' i play . .. HCE is either a native language for many
Hawai'i residents or at the least, it will be extremely fami liar. Code-switching in
a Hawa i' i play, then, will sometimes involve moving from speaking in HCE, the
native language of the characters as well as some of the audience members, and then
registering a linguistic adjustment to standard English when speaking to someone of
another commw1ity.
(Choy20ll , p. 118)
Following in this logic, Pidgin plays speak to the heart of the people resonating with the local
audience. Articu lating the native struggle in the native language is a cornerstone of Pidgin thea-
tre. Carroll writes that "all locals, regardless of ethnic, economic, and educationa l background
move somewhere along a language mastery continuum between the heaviest Pidgin variants
and the neutral American standard" (2000, p. 128). In 1976 Carroll and Carroll hypothesized
that "Pidgin may be the instrument that can forge a genuinely multi-racial Hawaiian popular
theatre" (p. 58). The deve lopment of local theatre furthers the normal ization and promotion
of Pidgin.
The second defining characteristic of local theatre is the location of the action. Local plays
are set in the Hawa iian arch ipelago where audience members recognize place names, commu-
nities, environment, and iconic things associated with that place. For example, a story about
Hilo would likely reference the rain. Other examples are the eateries that each island is known
for. A play located on Kaua ' i may mention Hamura's saim in, whereas a play on Maui might
include Makawao cream puffs or guriguri (Japanese sherbet ic.e cream).
The third defining characteristic are the local recognizable characters that embody the
world of the play. These characters are identifiable and famil iar to the audience remin iscent
of fami ly members, friends, or people in their commw1ity. The characters lead recognizable
lifestyles, share sim ilar concems, and face identifiable issues.
The fourth defining characteristic of local theatre are the relevant issues and themes
addressed in these works. Issues of cu ltura l identity, "inter-ethnic relations ... and the cha l-
lenges of " leaving home" to see the world beyond Hawai' i" (Mattos 2002, p. 39) tend to be
common subject matter. These issues are specific to cultural beliefs and practices, w hich is
particu larly true with the immigrant population where settler cultures are negotiating the ir
place in Hawai' i while struggl ing to maintain their traditional cultural practices. Typically, the
main character in a local play embarks on a journey discovering aspects about themselves and/
or their culture which results in a transcendence of understanding.
The final defining characteristic of local theatre is its reclamation of Hawai' i 's history. As
these plays are commonly written by Local playwrights for their specific communities, each
play provides an insider perspective of cultural and societal issues unique to a particular com-
munity in Hawai ' i. Local theatre thus posits itself as a champion of the "local" commun ity's
236
narratives, reflecting the genuine nature of life in Hawai' i. The beauty of these plays is the
representation of the Pidgin voice that expresses a range of emotion as well as the linguistic
and cu ltura l diversity that exists in the Hawaiian Islands. Local theatre is a platform for people
of Hawai' i to write the ir history and present it to their community via the stage.
12.3.2 Ho! Kinda choke Pidgin theatre now

From l947through 1971 Pidgin plays were scripted and produc.ed solely at the UHM (Carroll
1983). The establishment of Kwnu Kahua Theatre in 1971 by Professor Dennis Carroll and a
handful of graduate students enrolled in the Department of Theatre and Danc.e created a new
venue to produc.e original locally wrillen and staged p lays. The works of Kwnu Kahua Thea-
tre have been compared to that of Wan Smolbag theatre company in Vanuatu whose work is
predominantly aimed at education and giving voice to community issues (Looser 2014). For a
decade the dominant narrative that appeared on the Kumu Kahua stage was that of the Asian
experience in Hawai'i as the early playwrights were of Asian descent. Hawai' i-born Japanese
p laywright Edward Sakamoto's first play, In the Alley, broke new ground for local theatre and
the Pidgin!HCE voice. Sakamoto would become ''one ofHawai'i's most prolific playwrights"
(Mattos 2002, p. 124) scripting 20 plays in his lifetime. He has been compared to the Afro-
American playwright August Wilson whose plays captured the experiences of his community
whi le introducing linguistic and cultural diversity to the American stage. Sakamoto's career
as a playwright spans four decades in which he captured "the "local" Japanese experience in
Hawai'i in very specific ways .. . with references to places or pastimes of a particular era"
(Mattos 2002, p. 124) through investigating the concept of "home" and the "emotional and
material consequences of moving from one place to another- an experienc.e deeply ingrained
into so many local Asian American families" (Carroll2000, p. 128). Sakamoto's work repre-
sents the Japanese experience and voice in Hawai' i's theatre tapestry. Sakamoto has published
two anthologies of his plays, Hawai 'i No Ka Oi: The Kamiya Family Trilogy ( 1995) and Aloha
Las Vegas and Other Plays (2000).
Adding to this diversity is Hawa i' i-bom Chinese playwright Darrell H.Y. Lum. A prol ific
short fiction writer and the founder and editor of Bamboo Ridge literary joumal, Lum 's plays
" also deal with epic themes of immigration, conflict between the generations, and cultural
assimilation" (Carroll 2000, p. 131 ). Lum writes poetic characters who speak Pidgin repre-
sentative of their generation and level of assimi lation to Hawai' i and America. Frequently his
protagonists are elderly and the ir language d iffers from that of the ir descendants who have
been immersed in the dom inant Engl ish culture and society of Hawa i' i. The following is an
excerpt from Lum 's play Oranges Are Lucky w here grandmother Ah Po is concerned about
her grandson finding a spouse.
AH PO: He no like Chinee girl? He no marry? Wassamalla him? Chinee girl good
for Ah Jiu. She cook for him, she make plenny children fo him. Why he no like? Ah
Goong name Hoong Jiu . Oat mean "successfu l businessman," and all the grandchil-
dren have the Chinese name "successful. " Ah Jiu every time he quiet boy, no talk,
him .... Aie, I no bring coconut candy for Ah Jiu. Maybe next time he get married.
You tell him no need be Chinee girl. Now modem days, okay marry Japanese, maybe
haole, anykine girl okay. Ah Jiu get married, be happy, den Ah Gnip get married. I go
temple and pray for Ah Jiu . Maybe da Buddha help me find one nice girl for Ah J iu.
Bumbye no marry, no have children for the fami ly name.
(Lum in Carroll 1983, p. 74)
237
The conc.e pt of fam ily legacy is a salient C hinese value. Ah Po vocalizes the need to increase
progeny who wi ll carry on the family's name. She shows her progressiveness stating that Ah
Jiu cou ld marry outside his race. The Pidgin here has nuances of plantation Pidgin as with the
negative stmcture, i.e., he no like, he no marry, why he no like, I no bring, bwnbye no marry,
and so on. Lum's p lays illustrate the Chinese experience in Hawai'i and can be fow1d in the
Kumu Kahua arch ives and the anthology Kumu Kahua Plays (1983).
12.4 Kanaka represent!

The development of Kanaka Maoli playwrights beginning with Victoria Nalani Kneubuhl
and her play The Conversion of Ka 'ahumanu in 1985 expanded the local theatre offerings.
Kneubuhl is an accomplished playwright and novelist who mentored and paved the way for
Kanaka Maoli playwrights like me. The Hawai ian voic.e in recent plays has addressed Hawa i-
ian socia l problems such as tourism, homelessness, the m ilitarization of Hawai' i, land and
water rights, and so forth. Since extensive research has been done on Sakamoto, Lum, and
Kneubuhl's plays (see Carroll2000; Mallos 2002; Choy 2011; Looser 201 4), I' ll focus on a
few other theatre makers who have left a lasting imprint on Pidgin perfonnance. As a part of
Kumu Kahua's fourth season in 1974, James Grant Benton, ofKanaka Maoli descent, scripts
a Pidgin adaptation ofWilliam Shakespeare's Tivelfih Night entitled TivelfNite 0 Wateva. This
production was the first of its kind in Hawa i' i adapting Shakespeare in Pidgin for local theatre.
In analyzing Benton's text today one sees a proliferation of negative stereotypes of Kanaka
Maoli and other ethnic peop les living in Hawai' i illustrated in the following example from Act
I, Scene III:
KUKANA: Eh, manong, jus because you Mahealan i's uncle, dat no mean nutt ing to me.
Mahealani was telling me da odda day dat she no dig your ill hours, you and that oda
nut Andrew. You bagas stay up all night and drink dat mean okolehao. Oat shit drive you
blind, you know.
OPU-NUI: Yeah, but me and Andrew, we get some good fun. Eh, plus he can talk about tree or
four different languages widout one book; plus he get plenny kala! Anyway, hia's to my
niece and her healt.
KUKANA: So wea 's your oda half today? Probably drunk and laid out in the taro patch already?
(Benton in Carroll 1983, p. 190)
The character Kukana infers that Opu-Nui (l iterally "Big-Stomach") is a drunk and so is his
assoc iate, Sir Andrew Waha (h is last name means "mouth"), with the references to drinking
okolehao, homemade Hawaiian moonshine. Andrew is seemingly inte lligent with his ability
to speak three to four languages; however, the assumption that he is drunk early in the day
enforces the negative stereotype of Hawaiians as lazy drwlks who do not fu1fill their respon-
sibilities. Locating Andrew at the taro patch furthers the insult; traditionally, the taro patch
was the cornerstone of sustainable farming and represents the ancestral link to Haloa, the
younger sibling oftaro, to whom all Kanaka are genea logically linked (Kame'eleihiwa 1992;
Goodyear-Ka 'opua 20 14). This play is a product of its time. The language was influenced by
the original text and the cultural decisions were based on the perspectives and prerogatives of
the playwright. Regarding the language in the script Carroll writes:
TivelfNite moved expertly and widely on the Pidgin cu lture and language continuum.
Syntactic and morphological characteristics of hard-core Pidgin were abw1dant, such
238
as pecu liar negative constructions and frequent omission of linking verbs, certain
prepositions, and inflectional endings. Liberal sprinkl ing of Hawa iian and other loan
words and idioms localized the vocabu lary, and conunon sound substitutions were
suggested in the script.
(1976, p. 58)
In 2013 Benton's script was produced at the Mission House Museum which kicked off a series
of summer Shakespeare adaptations in Pidgin. Benton is remembered as a successfu l Hawai-
ian actor, comedian, and storyteller who embraced Pidgin as core to his identity.
Benton's other significant contribution to the Hawai' i theatre scene was a collaboration
with other Kanaka Maoli perform ing artists to establish the comedy group Booga Booga in
1974. The collective of Benton, Ed Ka 'ahea, and James Kawika Pi' imauna "Rap" Reiplinger
would constitute the first iteration of this performance troupe. The trio began acting on the
university stage. Their original show Kanaka Komedy launched in 1975 at the Territorial Tav-
em. This would evolve into a television program in the 1980s. The Best ofBooga Booga pre-
miered in 1987 followed by Roach Bowl// in 1988 at the Blaisdell Arena. Other cast members
of Booga Booga included Andy Bumatai, Ray Bumatai, Frank B. Shaner, Bill Ogilvie, and
''Dangerous Dave" Lancaster.
Rap Reiplinger's contributions have had a profound impact on Hawai ' i 's Pidgin culture
and local theatre. His creative work is some of the most recognizable Pidgin perfom1ances,
such as Rap's Hawai 'i, a performance that contained commentary on race relations, assimila-
tion, loss of traditional Hawaiian practices, and political satires. The innovative Rap 's Hawai 'i
was produced in 1982 and aired on KGMB-9 Television featuring a variety of scenarios with
issues spec ific to Hawa i' i. Rap wrote the scripts, composed new music for the segments, and
performed all of the principal roles in the fi lm. The iconic Auntie Maria lan i's Cooking Show
continues to be quoted today. After taking multiple sips of cooking wine, Auntie Marialani
shares, "Go check 'wn, go check 'wn, go.... Not too sweet, not too rancid, but just right."
The same is true with Rap's song, "Tell Faith Yanagi I Love Her," which can be found at every
karaoke bar in Hawai' i and is in the repertoire of most local party celebrations. Other segments
included Willy Maunawi li's campaign for mayor; Room Service, illustrating the inability of
tourists to understand Pidgin; Puka Shell Tour Guide, making commentary on the displace-
ment of Kanaka Maoli and the ir enslavement in the tourist industry; Murdie Murdock sell ing
used cars; the Hulihuli Chicken Hula that incorporated local iconic places and activities; a
stuttering pastor who struggles to perfonn his sem1on; a soda taste test where the customer,
Rap, just wants to eat more crackers; a safety briefing from Mahalo Airlines with Rap as the
stewardess; and a futuristic scene with robots. The scenes were weaved together by an elderly
Hawaiian man, Rap again, as storyteller speaking to the intercultural relationships in Hawai ' i.
Rap's Hawai 'i was an expansion of his originally composed and recorded albums like Poi Dog
( 1978), Do I Dare Disturb the Universe ( 1980), Crab Dreams ( 1980), Poi Dog with Crabs
( 1992), The Best ofRap ( 1993), and The Best ofRap Too ( 1996). The latter three discographies
were distributed by the Mow1tain Apple Company posthumously. Similar to Rap's Hawai 'i,
Andy Bumatai's All in the 'Ghana (1980) was a Pidgin film about a fami ly trying to save the ir
land from development where comedian Bumatai performed all roles: Honey Girl, Junior
Boy, Tiitii, Ma, and Dad. Worthy of note here is that Bumatai and Rap's television specia ls
were groWldbreaking in film and te levision, having premiered more than ten years before the
American screen would see Eddie Murphy per form multiple characters in his movie The Nutty
Professor (1996) or Tyler Perry's Madea films beginning in 2005, both which are claimed to
be the pioneering works of this kind.
239
Satire and political commentary were often overarching themes in Rap's work. Although
he inc luded multi-ethnic themes and content, there was a sense that his Kanaka Maoli identity
infom1ed the majority of his work and the messages he encoded in each perfonnance. One of
his Hawaiian Nursery Rhymes demonstrates this identity and consciousness as a Kanaka Maoli:
Pussy cat, pussy cat where have you been?

I been to 'Iolani Palace to see the Queen.
Pussy cat, pussy cat why do you moan?
The K ingdom has toppled and Hawai ' i is my home.
(spoken) I gotta throw that in, heh?! 6
This nursery rhyme addressed the illegal overthrow of the Hawai ian Kingdom which at the time
when the recording was made was not a popular topic in the public sphere. Rap was a brilliant, inno-
vative, and politically conscious artist. His untimely death in 1984 was a tragic loss for Hawai' i.
Another ce lebrated theatre maker connected to the university was Tremaine Tamayose. The
playwright, actor, director, producer, composer, and comedian authored nine plays and ten tel-
evision programs from the early 1970s up unti l 1998 when he passed. Education was a lways
at the core ofTamayose's work that was predom inately scripted and produced in Pidgin. Plays
like It's School, Brah (1976), 'Ono/u/u (1977), Big Boys Don 't Cly (1980), and Sexpectation
( 1981) were designed for Hawai ' i's local schools inclusive of workshops for teachers to facil i-
tate the content of the plays in the classroom. For example the script for 'Onolu/u was aimed
at grades 7- 12 and listed the fo llowing objectives:
(i) To develop in students a better understanding of inter-ethnic relations in Hawai i.

(ii) To develop in students an appreciation of Hawai i's many ethnic groups and cultures.
(iii) To provide teachers with a model of creative drama as a tool for exploring social issues.
(iv) To provide educators with a stimulus for classroom dialogue concerning the problems
and contributions of ethnic minorities in Hawaii.
(1977, p. 2)
This Pidgin play used the diversity and appreciation of food to bridge ethnic relations "with spe-
c ial focus on the Samoans in Hawaii" (Tamayose 1977, p. 2). In Scene 5 the dialogue between
mother Carolyn and her son David shows the discrimination of races based on stereotypes.
CAROLYN: David, you come here right this minute. ( DAVto hesitates). What you waiting for?
DAVID: I no like get lickings Ma.
CAROLYN: You want me to come over there?
DAVID: No, Ma, I com ing, I coming. What I did, Ma, what I did?
CAROLYN: What you doing over here?
DAVID: Playing.
CAROLYN: I said you can go out and play? (Grabs his ear). You, you no listen, yeah. What's
the matter with your ear?
DAVID: Auwee, auwee, Ma, auwee!
CAROLYN: I told you, I don't want you to come down here and play with these kids and get
into trouble.
DAVID: But Ma . ..
CAROLYN: No buts! I don't ever want to catch you here again. I don't want you play ing with
those Samoans. They always causing trouble. I don't want you playing with these Haoles
240
e ither, they think they too good. And don't you go near those Filipinos you hear me?
(grabs his ear) I said you hear me? I don't want you playing with the Chinese, Japanese,
or Hawai ian e ither.
DAVID: But Ma, we Hawaiian, too.
CAROLYN: I don't care.
DAVID: Then who I going play with?
CAROLYN: I don't want you to play with anybody. You want to play, play with your toys.
DAVID: But Ma . ..
CAROLYN: I said no buts, you coming home with me right now.
(Tamayose 1977, pp. 6-S)
In this scene Tamayose highlights how racism in the schoo ls begins in the home. The character
David is confused at his mother 's directives to not play with peers of another race includ ing his
own, Hawaiian. Here we see the unfortunate projection of self-hate that for generations was
instilled in many Hawai ian youths which led to low se lf-esteem, demoralization (see Crabbe
2007), and high incarceration rates of Hawaiian men (see Tengan 2008). The play ultimately
ends with each character recogniz ing an ethnic food that they identify with and each shares
appreciation for the other. Tamayose's efforts in drama education will always be remembered.
12.5 Kumu Kahua Theatre, das da one

Local theatre continued to flourish through the 1980s and persists in the 2000s at Kumu Kahua
Theatre with the theatre's commitment to produce locally written plays about Hawa i' i. The
1990s ushered in a new generation of Pidgin-speaking playwrights who author Pidgin plays;
Alani Apio, Lee Cataluna, Lee Tonouchi, and myself. Each playwright has contributed to the
cannon of Pidgin plays, much of which have been produced by Kumu Kahua Theatre. Apio's
p lays Ktimau1 ( 1994) and Ktimau A 'e ( 1997) centers on the dispossession of Kanaka Maoli
from their lands and the struggle with identity and self-detem1ination. The long-awaited third
p lay in this trilogy, Ua Pau (It is Finished, Over; Destroyed), will premiere in August 2019 as
a part of Kumu Kahua Theatre's 49th season.
Cataluna and Tonouchi are productive playwrights and writers whose works are regularly
featured at Kumu Kahua Theatre. Currently a colwnnist for the Star Advertiser newspaper,
Cataluna 's breakout play Da Mayah ( 1998) satirized local pol itics. Her early plays were pri-
marily comedies; however, current plays del ve into family drama. Cataluna is also known for
her short stories, her novel Three Years on Doreen~ Sofa (2011), and most recently her chil-
dren's books. Tonouchi and I were students of Dr. Dennis Carroll in the mid- l990s. Coined as
Da Pidgin Guerrilla by a newspaper article in the 1990s, Tonouchi has become a champion for
Pidgin expression and the publ ication of Pidgin materials. He has devoted his work to invig-
orating Pidgin Literature and cow1tering the negative stereotypes associated with speaking
Pidgin (see "Pidgin Positive: Changing Yourse lf vs. Changing da Perception"- www.hawai i.
edu/satocenter/?p= l489). Tonouchi's plays speak to the modem local Japanese experience in
Hawai'i. His short stories and poetry centeron the challenges the local community faces today
such as the influx of transplant tourists in our islands. In his short story, Da Untold Sto1y of
Hawaiian Santa, a Pidgin Story, he attacks this issue.
From sma ll-kid time, our kiipuna always emphasized how we need da tourists. Our
e lders, our teachers, all told of how tourists is good for us. Kinda like vegetables,
bland, but full of richness. And how we need tourists for keep com ing back, cuz dey
241
keep our economy going. But w hat dey nevah fu lly understand is so what we do
w hen da tourists return, but nevah go back?
In oddah words planny Hawai'i people going be force for move away. I know
some of these newcomers going be immigrants cuz Hawai' i get one history of imm i-
grant labor from way back in da plantation days. But da article sa id most of da new
residents is going be rich Mainland transplant peoples. Cuz seems like getting for be
das da only people who can afford for live ova hea.
(Tonouchi 20 14)8
As demonstrated in the excerpt, Tonouchi's work sheds light on the difficu lt relevant issues
and concerns ofHawai'i's commun ity.
I' ve been fortunate to have two Pidgin plays produced at Kumu Kahua Theatre: Kupua
(200 I) and My Boy He Play Ball (20 15). Kupua bridges local theatre and Hawaiian theatre.
Choy writes:
The two short plays that comprise Kupua, however, are traditional Hawa iian tales:
mo'olelo, which Baker trans lates as "story or tradition" (play program), but she
deliberately notes that the plays are written in HCE. Not only is Kupua written in
the basilect variety, it is contemporary HCE, as well, with colloquialisms used within
the dialogue that might be uttered now in everyday conversation. . .. The two plays
are not translated and do not genuflect to standard English at all. Their language lays
c laim to identification with both the Hawaiian and Local.
(2011, pp. 134-135)
The two stories that constitute the p lay Kupua were stories of socialization that were tradition-
a lly told in families to their youth. With this in mind I wanted to bring the story to the com-
munity and therefore employed the Pidgin that I grew up with on Kaua'i. Viewers commented
that the variant of Pidgin featured in the play was "thick" and "authentic."
Set in 2015, My Boy He Play Ball dealt with a young Hawaiian college ath lete who strug-
gles with his identity and kuleana (responsibility, obligation) as a Kanaka Maoli. Facing adver-
sity in the American Midwest Boy Kahalewai decides to return home to Hawai ' i to fu lfi ll his
call ing to pol itical activism for Kanaka Maol i land rights, specifically the protection of sacred
Mauna Kea. His father, a former NFL linebacker, opposes Boy's decision to return home. The
following excerpt is from a heated exchange between Boy and his father where he expresses
the cu ltura l and linguistic differences he experienced in America.
BOY: Tough, you know what's tough, being in one place thousands of miles away from home
w here everybody ta lk different than you, everybody dress different than you, the food is
nothing you recognize, it's butt ass cold in the winter, there's no beaches, the haoles no
like you cause you too brown to be one of them, the Popolos no like you cause you not
brown enough to be one of them, the Asians look like they belong in Hawa i'i but when
they ta lk they sound haole. Mexicans talk Spanish to you and they think you being rude or
like fight when you no answer them. And then when you talk, everybody look at you like
you one F.O.B. or something because you have a we ird accent. People ask me if! actually
speaking Engl ish.
Boy rejects assim ilation to American culture and reaffim1s his linguistic and cultural identity
by leaving America for his birth sands where his kuleana awaited him. Scripting stories like
242
that of Boy Kahalewai is a way to give voice to stories from my community validating those
experienc.es and empowering language and identity. Very often Pidgin is still used for comedy
with the intent to entertain or parody (see Toshiaki Furukawa for a study on stand-up comedy
in Hawai'i). In my ro le as playwright I utilize the language to create character, authenticate the
location, the world, the time, space, and content of the plays. As a native speaker of Pidgin my
language is relative to every emotion that I feel and is not a language that I code switch in and
out of exclusively for cracking jokes. Authoring plays in HCE/Pidgin is a form of advocacy
w hich has increased appreciation for the language and helps to negate the stereotype that HCEI
Pidgin speakers lack inte lligence.
12.6 Da oddah theatres

Aside from Kumu Kahua Theatre's mission to produce plays about Hawai' i for Hawai' i there are
a couple other theatre companies on O'ahu with comparable efforts. Founded in 1955, Honolulu
T heatre for Youth initially introduced local-themed productions in 1972 with Peter Chariot's
play Mo 'o: A Modern Legend. Since the 1990s Honolulu Theatre for Youth has embraced local
stories and today the majority of the plays produced in their season tend to be stories of Hawai'i
and the Pacific. The theatre program at Leeward Community College has also contributed to the
local theatre landscape with Hawaiian Style Theatre, an effort that was led by director Paul Cra-
vath from 1994 through 2003. Perfonned in Pidgin each play was based on a collection of stories
for a particular district on the island of O'ahu: Wai'anae (1994), For 'Ewa (1996), Nanakuli
( 1997; Baker 1998), and Manoa.· the story ofKaha/aopuna (2002; Baker 2003) with one excep-
tion where the focus was a district on the island of Hawai' i, Ka/apana (1995). The creation
process began w ith the gathering of stories about the district that were adapted for the stage. The
stories were scripted and presented to the public in two phases. The first phase was somewhat
experimental local theatre perfom1ed in a black box lab theatre. The second phase included a
revision process followed by a production remount on the mainstage. The plays integrated tra-
ditional fom1s of Hawaiian perfonnance when appropriate. Cravath conun issioned me to script
the latter two plays. Nanakuli centered on a family from Nanakul i and dealt with modem issues
that helped to understand the historical past. The mother and father character weaved the story
together, transporting the audience from one scene to the next. The following excerpt illustrates
the Pidgin dia logue and one of the topical issues explored in the play.
DAD: (Reading the newspaper.) Look at this Ma, more people getting worried about this gay
marriage stuff.
MOM: You know w hy, heh? They worried too much gay people going move over here from
the mainland. I don't know why people get all rash about this, we all know they together,
sleeping together, going out, being in love. Only thing different now is they like get mar-
ried too. You catmot blame them, it's good fun getting wedding gifts!
DAD: Yeah, maybe Terence Tom no more mahus in his fami ly. Maybe he in denial!
MOM: Maybe he no can handle being around gay guys.
DAD: Yeah, yeah, yeah he's homo ... homoporbic. I think most mens li' dat.
MOM: Mahu?
DAD: No, scared ofmahus.
(Baker 1997, p. 6)
T he concept of mahii, queer or also transgender, is further explored as the father comes to
tem1s with his son's eventual reveal of his sexual orientation during the course of the play.
243
Upon returning home from Hilo son Robb ie seeks cow1sel from his mother after his initial
encounter with his father.
ROBBJE: E wait Ma, before you go put on the coffee, I can ask you one question?
MOM: Sure. What is it?
ROBBJE: You think da' kine?
MOM: What you mean, da' kine?
ROBBJE: You think Daddy had feel da' kine?
MOM: What kine?
ROBBJE: (Little sad.) Well, I get one feeling he no was da' kine.
MOM: Robbie, enough kine already! What you think he was little bit shock for see you?
ROBBJE: No! We ll maybe, maybe he wasn't too happy for see me.
(Baker 1997, p. 21)
The word "da' kine," a pronom inal with an anaphoric reference to something e ither previ-
ously mentioned or presupposed in the discourse, is iconic to Pidgin vocabulary. During this
intimate scene between son and mother, laughter was heard from the audience with each
utterance of the word da'kine, which illustrated the pragmatic effect that the use of da'kine
has. The Hawaiian Style Theatre produced at Leeward Community College was a platform
simi lar to that of Kumu Kahua Theatre bringing stories, relevant issues, and concerns of the
Leeward districts of O'ahu to the Leeward coast community. Two other theatres in recent
years have begun to produce p lays specific to the O'ahu community. Playbuilders ofHawai' i
w hose mission is, "To gather and share real stories that resonate with, empower, and connect
individuals throughout the culturally rich and diverse communities of Hawai'i,"9 and Palilcti
Theatre at Windward Community College, producing a play or two each season with local
content. The use of Pidgin at these theatres varies on the subject matter and the playwright
scripting the play. Kwnu Kahua Theatre remains the major theatre company in Hawa i' i gen-
erating local theatre. For example, the past five seasons have featured two to three Pidgin
plays of the five in each season. A rising playwright recently produced at Kumu Kahua Thea-
tre is Hannah li Epstein. li Epste in's p lays are primarily in Pidgin and set on the North Shore
of O'ahu. Not One Batu (20 16) centers on the drug epidem ic in her community. Its prequel,
Paka/o/o Sweet (20 18), follows a family of marijuana growers and their hardships. l i Epstein
currently lives in C hicago creating theatre and fi lm to share stories of her island home and
cu lture.
12.7 UHM is da piko

Over the decades there have been gaps in the scripting and production of Pidgin theatre simply
due to the relatively modest number of playwrights who create these kinds of works. In the
Department of Theatre and Dance at UHM, I am now the director of the Master of Fine Arts
Playwriting Program carry ing forward the responsibilities of my mentor Dr. Denn is Carrol l.
In addition to teaching playwriting curriculum which generates new plays from the diverse
voices enrolled in the courses, I have deve loped an introductory course in Pidgin!HCE Thea-
tre to encourage the study, practice, and creation of new Pidgin p lays. The new course which
memorializes and reifies Pidgin cu lture provides a venue for the study, inqu iry, and practice
of Pidgin!HCE theatre with a focus on acting. Students are immersed in the language through
play readings, acting exercises, scene study, and the perforn1ance of Pidgin drama. Drawing
244
from Hawai' i's mu lticulrura l landscape, srudents leam to conduct a character srudy and are
exposed to regional language diversity (i.e., neighbor island dialectical differences, vocabu-
lary and idiosyncratic variation). The course also chronicles the artistic expression and contri-
butions of Hawa i' i p laywrights and comedians in the development ofPidgin/HCE theatre. The
desired student learning outcomes are for the srudent to:
• Recognize Pidgin!HCE dialogue and dialectical variations;

• Appreciate Hawai' i's culrural diversity represented in Pidgin theatre;
• Analyze the social context and di verse cu lrural perspectives represented in the Pidgin
p lays and perfonnances studied;
• Acquire the necessary fluency to perform Pidgin drama;
• Compose a monologue in Pidgin.
There are six assignments during the duration of the term that aim to hone the students' ski lls
in acting and HCE/Pidgin. The first assignment is a comedy sketch where srudents memo-
rize and perfom1 a short Pidgin comedy sketch by one of Hawai' i's comedians. Around the
mid -term srudents select a short scene from a Pidgin play to rehearse and perform in small
groups for their peers. For the character study assignment, students select a character from a
p lay srud ied in class to do a brief character biography through analyzing character traits and
extracting a character's backstory from the text. Next is a monologue assignment where each
student composes a short monologue based on one of the acting exercises explored in class.
These acting exercises span from vocal exercises on inflection, intonation, and pronunciation
to spatial awareness exercises. The acting curricu lum explores exposition through an exercise
titled, " How come they no stay?" Then we incorporate improvisational exercises: " Brah, try
focus"; phrasing and delivery exercises: "What you said? Try say that again"; motivation
exercises: " Why you going go?" and " How come you so . . ."; and conflict exerc ises: "Why
you no like for?" and " You neva do 'um yet?" For cu lminating proj ects srudents trans late and
perfom1 a scene from an English play into Pidgin/HCE for their final scene perfonn ance. As
a part o f the cu lminating proj ect, the translation exerc ise done in small groups over two drafts
prepares the srudents for their scene work. Trans lating and adapting plays from the Western
canon aims at localizing these international texts. Throughout the course I invite guest artists
to visit and share their processes and perspectives on Pidgin. This course has generated inter-
est in Pidgin theatre and has stimulated the development of new works in Pidgin. The end
of the semester showcase featured five scenes of new Pidgin material, fi ve original Pidgin
monologues, and four monologues taken from the works of Ap io, Cataluna, and Rap. The
institutionalization of curriculum in this Pidgin/HCE theatre course places value on the lin-
gu istic and culrural diversity in Hawai ' i while va lidating local identity. Additionally, in the
Department ofTheatre and Danc.e at UHM, we bestow an award for excellence in playwriting
at our annual awards ceremony to acknowledge the new voices of aspiring p laywrights. The
award is in recogn ition of Ann " Bessie" Toishigawa lnoyue, the author of first Pidgin play
in 1947. I received the award in 1996 as an undergraduate and in 1999 as a graduate stu dent
and now have the privilege of honoring srudents enrolled in our theatre program with th is
award recognizing their achievements as budding playwrights who may further elevate our
community, culrure, and linguistic diversity. The most recent recip ient of th is award is Kiana
" Kiki" Rivera whose MFA thesis production was the first Samoan play to be produced at
UHM. Rivera 's work rises from the Pacific queer community, adding vo lume to the voices
in Local theatre.
245
12.8 Da future of Pidgin Theatre

Pidgin!HCE may not dominate the local theatre scene today; however, UHM continues to be a
hub for the promulgation of Pidgin theatre, literature, film, and research. Last year a playwrit-
ing student of mine pointed out what they perceived as a dwindling nwnber of native Pidgin
speakers when they were having a difficult time in securing actors to workshop their play. The
discussion that followed made me ponder the reasons for the scarcity of Pidgin speakers in
metropolitan O'ahu. Cou ld it be the distancing of the immigrant plantation generation? Or the
ramifications of forced assimilation to American culture in Hawai'i? Or the homogenization of
English language compounded with the globalization ofAmerican pop-culture? Or perhaps there
is still a negative stigma attached to Pidgin language? In response to these questions my obser-
vations of Pidgin usage in our conununity were heightened as I desired to gauge the vitality of
Pidgin today. Social media proved to be a potent breathing grow1d for Pidgin content created by
and for Pidgin speakers as evidenced on Instagram posts, which consists of performing comedy
sketches, interviews, and social commentary. For example, there's Bula Kaleo (@porkfat54)
whose tagline is "Yessah blessah from the professah." There's "Mr. Mean" (@ meanhawaii) who
dubs Pidgin voice-overs on popular American films and comedian Zavier CUnun ings (@hows-
disguy) who perfonns comedic routines as well as journalism highlighting current island issues.
Pidgin short films are another mediwn that speak to the vitality such as Moke Action (20 11) by
filmmaker 'Aina Paikai and short animations like Rosie Sutherland's The Goat Wahine ofUpper
Kanaio (20 19). The composition and performance of original music in Pidgin also speaks to the
vibrancy of the cu lture. Composer, musician, and Hawaiian language instructor Ka 'ikena Scan-
lan's song Smoke All Day took Hawai'i by stonn this year.' 0 Embedded with an anti-drug mes-
sage, the Pidgin song highl ights the local culture of preparing smoked meat. T he song is framed
with Hawaiian lyrics and then illustrates hunting, gathering, and smoking the delicacies of the
mow1tain and ocean, inclusive of the recipe for the sauce to season the meats. The comradery and
conununity efforts involved in this process are depicted in each verse.
Sup palata you know why I called ya

I'm looking for kiawe but I know you get guava
We can throw on some chicken
I know you like the sausage hotta
We can run da ribs and brisket whateva you wanna
No murdah styling we strictly slauter
Hawaiian salt upon the counter fo make the mean pip ikau la
Got the shoyu sugar ginger garlic chil i peppa watah
Cause the boys just came back with one big fricken pua' a aye
We not going pau till sunset

And we spahken it up at dawn
I hope I hope you no mo plans
We smoking all day long
Ho cuzzin how much wood you like me throw

Choke wn choke um I like see this buggah flow
Wipe down my hands put down my tongs
Cause we be smoking smoking yeah smoking all day long
Smoking all day long cause we be smoking smoking yeah smoking all day long"
246
I mention this song because it was recently adapted into a sonnet in a Shakespearean course
in the Engl ish department at UHM. The composition and performance of this sonnet shows
the impact of local culture and language that pem1eates across disciplines of study. Scanlan's
influence on loca l culture and identity is profound. His song has gone viral, saturating Hawai ' i
radio stations, Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, and all like streaming platfom1s. T-shirts,
stickers, and other fom1s of merchandise with Pidgin phrases from the song are worn with
pride across the archipelago. Scanlan's Instagram account, @kaikenascanlan, is inundated
with posts of people reciting lyrics and singing his song. This brings me back to my student's
d ilemma in seeking Pidgin speakers for the play workshop. Clearly there exists a dynam ic
Pidgin commw1ity that consistently performs their language and identity on stage, on screen,
on the radio, and on social media. So then, did my student exhaust every possible resource in
looking for actors? I no tink so!
12.9 Almost pau , time for wr ap 'urn up: conclusion

Pidgin theatre evolved as a means to recount stories specific to Hawai ' i via the stage. The per-
formance history of this work spans seven decades filled with a myriad of culturally specific
plays that express ideas unique to the Hawaiian archipelago. Pidgin theatre uses the stage as
a tool for projecting and empowering linguistic and cultural identity. Kumu Kahua Theatre
reigns as the beacon for Local theatre while UHM continues to nurture new voices and talents
to imbue Hawai' i's theatre landscape with more Pidgin plays.
Notes
I Pidgin is the autoglossonym for Hawai'i Creole English (HCE).
2 (http://si s. hawai i.edu!Pidgin/time Iine/)
3 (www.hawaii.edu/satocentern page_id= 195)
4 (www.hawaii.edu/satocentern page_id= 195)
5 (www.hawaii.edu/satocenter/)
6 (www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-w5ytCmU9Q)
7 Apio 's Kiimau, Baker 's Kupua, and Cataluna's Da Mayah are featured in He Leo Hou: A New Voice,
an anthology of Hawaiian playwrights.
8 ( www. bono )u lumagazine.com/ Honol ulu-Magazine/ N ovember-20 14/ Da - Unto Id -Story-of-
Hawaiian -Santa-a-Pidgin-Story-by-Lee-A-Tonouchi/)
9 (www.playbuilders.org/home)
I0 (www.hawaii.edu/news/20 19/0 1/28/uh-hilo-smoke-all-<lay-song/).
11 (https://lyrics.loVartist/11 17990-ka-ikena-scanlanllyrics/4 143305-smoke-all-day)
Further reading
Higgins, C. (2010). Raising Critical Language Awareness in Hawai'i at Da Pidgin Coup. In Creoles in
Education: An Appraisal of Currem Programs and Projects. Migge, B. , Uglise, 1., & Barrens, A.
(Eds.) ( pp. 3 1- 54). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
T his chapter describes the etlorts of Da Pidgin Coup, an advocacy group in Hawai'i that strives to
raise critical awareness about Hawai' i Creole. Examples of activities that challenge negative attitudes
of Pidgin are covered.
Sakoda, K. and Siege), J. (2003). Pidgin Grammar: An Introduction to the Creole Language ofHawai'i.
Honolulu, HI: Bess Press.
This is the first book devoted to Pidgin/Hawaiian Creole English grammar covering the origins of the
language and a rudimentary introduction to Pidgin phonetics, morphology, and syntax.
247
Related topics
North America and Hawai ' i; Australia and the South West Pacific; Contact varieties of Japan
and the North West Pacific; Creole Arts and Music; Creoles in Literature; Creoles, Education
and Pol icy; Identity and Mixed Languages
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Kahua Theatre Archives.
Apio, A., Baker, T. H., Cataluna, L., and Kneubuhl, V. N. (2001). He Leo Hou: A New Voice. Desha, M.
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13
CREOLES IN LITERATURE
Talking story with Lee A . Tonouchi, 'Da
Pidgin Guerrilla' on Pidgin in the local
literatures of Hawai'i
Micheline M . Soong and Lee A . Tonouchi
13.1 Introduction
In this interview, Tonouchi discusses his linguistic environment whi le growing up; the moment
he real ized that the language he is speaking, Hawai ' i Creole (HC), was not Standard American
English (SAE); his educational experience with HC, from kindergarten through graduating
high school; his educational experience with HC, in college; his choice to write exc lusively in
HC as a pol itical act of defiance; teaching Pidgin Literature at Hawai' i Pacific University; and
loca l ethnic literatures vs Pidgin Literature(s).
We preface the interview with some terminological clarification:
(i) Hawai' i Creole, more popularly known as Pidgin, is not what is canonically considered a
p idgin, but rather a "full-fledged, nativized, geographically stable Creole" according to the
Wikipedia page on Hawaiian Pidgin: (https://en.wikipedia.org / wiki/Hawaiian_Pidgin).
Throughout the interview the language discussed wi ll be referred to as HC or Pidgin.
(ii) Readers may notice that throughout the interview, Tonouchi varies in his use of SAE
words or the equivalent word represented in HC, and that the spelling appears to be
inconsistent. For example, sometimes the appears as "da" or " the", hard appears as either
"hard" or "hod", how come appears as "how come" or ''hakum", or different might be
"diff'rent", "ditfrent" or "different", etc. In order to facilitate ease of readability, we opted
to render the interview transcription in a combination of SAE and what Inoue (2004:
4-5, fn. 12) labels "etymological HCE orthography", that is, the system that Tonouchi
(200 I) uses in his Da Word short story collection to capture his speaking of HC. What
may appear in our transcription to be spelling inconsistencies actually represents the vari-
ability of Tonouchi's HC word usage based on differing contexts, listening audiences, and
emphases. Sometimes Tonouchi pronounces a word in SAE depending on whom he is
addressing or the level of fonnality that is required by the content of his communication.
At other times, he will pronounce the same word in varying degrees of Pidgin whether
acrolecta/ (a "lighter" variety heavily influence.d by Engl ish) or basi/ecta/ (a "heavy"
variety c loser to the original language), varying stress on different syllables in the same
word, all depending on the intended emphasis and meaning of the sentence. This under-
scores the fundamental oral nature of Pidgin.
250
Creoles i11 literature
Table I 3. I Orthographic correspondences in different systems for writing Hawai' i Creole, aka Pidgin
Sound change Standard English Erymological OdoHCE

orthography HCE orrhograplty orthography
( I) realization of th as t think tink tingk

mouth mout maut
(2) deletion/vocalization of rafter V later laytah leita
smart smaht smat
(3) word final consonant cluster reduction dialect dialeck daialek
priest preece pns
( 4) nasal c luster simplification plenty plenny pleni
county cowny kauni
Source: lnoue (2004)
Carefu l consideration went into the transcription of HC in the interview for this volume. As
HC is primari ly an oral language, currently there is no agreement on a standard system of tran-
scription when HC appears in print. Using SAE orthography to represent HC presents prob-
lems such as the interferenc.e of English language spelling conventions on HC pronw1ciation,
and this in turn can re inforce the misperception that HC is simply bad English grammar. Odo
orthography, developed by linguist Carol Odo in the 1970s, more accurately represents the
phonological sounds of HC; however, its use is limited to linguistic studies and is not widely
known or accepted by HC speakers. Inoue (2004: 11) visually illustrates the differences across
three orthographic systems as in Table 13. 1.
Both authors of this chapter feel that Odo orthography is most effective w hen used in its
entirety to capture HC, wunediated by SAE spell ing conventions. However, we acknowledge
that most readers are w1familiar with the system and may have difficulty reading transcriptions
exclusively in Odo (Bamboo Ridge Press editors received anecdotal feedback that readers
skipped Tonouchi's story "Pijin Wawrz" from the Da Word collection, because some readers
foWid the spell ing convention indecipherable). Here is an excerpt from Tonouchi 's short story
" Pijin Wawrz", p. 130:
De tawt hi waz wan a dem. Big Ben da bichreya. Hi wen plea ap hiz Loko rutz, bat
hi wen put daun hiz kalchrol heritej. refta da riilekshenz awv 2022, hiz bainreriz wen
go awl balistik ren hiz progrremin kam awl hremajreng.
Here is the SAE translation of the excerpt:
They thought that he was one of them, Big Ben, the betrayer. He played up his Local
roots, but he put down his cultural heritage. After the re-elections of 2022, his bina-
ries went ballistic and his programming went haywire.
Because Odo's appearance can seem as alien as a separate language from English for readers,
we chose not to use the Odo orthography. Instead, we incline more towards what Inouye calls
"etymological HCE orthography" to avoid confusing readers. (An appendix to this chapter
provides more detail on transcription ofHCE.)
(ii i) In order to address the signi ficance of non-colonial language use in literature, we first
want to make clear that American colonization has had a radically different effect on
251
Micheli11e M. Soong a11d Lee A. Tonouchi
Indigenous Native Hawaiians than it did to subsequent waves of immigrants who settled
in Hawai ' i. Without question, Indigenous Native Hawaiians suffered lingu istic and cu l-
tural genocide with American colonization, whereas settler immigrant popu lations expe-
rienced pressure to conform to the dominant language and culture in order to survive and
improve their socio-economic status within American society. Native Hawaiian language
is indigenous to Hawai' i whereas Pidgin, while definitely place-based, that is, originat-
ing and evolving specifically in Hawa i'i, does not have the standing of an indigenous
language. Discussions on the critica l importance of literature featuring Native Hawa i-
ian language and its attendant worldview crucially needs to be addressed; however, it
has to happen elsewhere, as it is not the focus of this particular interview. References to
Pidgin's roles to transgress and subvert the hegemonic and privileged attitudes embedded
in the dominant language of American colonization are to be taken with in this context of
acknowledging Native Hawaiian language's standing as an ind igenous language.
In this interview, Tonouchi makes the case that the advocacy of Pidgin use in a ll forms of
mainstream media (print, film, rad io, television, on stage, or digital, but especially in litera-
ture) is at once a way to acknowledge one's familial lingu istic identity, as well as serve as a
political act that substantiates and re ifies one's existence am id overt messages that one's lan-
guage is not legitimate and does not have the right to exist. There is great transformative power
for Local people to see their own experiences and li festyles represented in stories in their own
language. When experiencing popular cultural representations through the lens of their own
perspectives, Loca l people intimately engage with literacy and the creation of literature as an
identity-affinning process instead of associating SAE literacy solely as an external means of
assim ilation into the dominant culture.
13_2 Context for the interview

Lee Tonouchi, known as "Da Pidgin Guerrilla", a grass-roots Pidgin language and Pidgin cu l-
ture advocate, literary magazine editor, produced playwright, and publ ished author of Pidgin
essays, short stories, and a community-derived Pidgin dictionary, was asked to teach a section
of ENG 3226 Hawai ' i Writers, an upper division literature course for Hawai'i Pacific Un iver-
sity in the early 2000s. Upon the succ.essful delivery of that course, then-English Department
chair, Dr. Catherine Sustana asked Tonouchi if there were any other literature courses he would
want to teach. Ever envisioning a more fully Pidgin world, Tonouchi boldly suggested a course
devoted solely to Pidgin Literature and a course in Pidgin Language which, Kent Sakoda, a
fow1ding member of the Pidgin advocacy group Da Pidgin Coup, and co-author of Pidgin
Grammar: An Introduction to the Creole Language of Hawai 'i, and a University of Hawai ' i
at Manoa instructor of a Soc iolinguistics course on Pidgin, could teach. Tonouchi's sugges-
tion was taken seriously by HPU's then-Senior Vice President and Dean of Academic Affairs,
Dr. John Fleckles, whose own scholarship focuses on Oceanic History; it subsequently won key
support of then-Associate Dean of Academic Affairs, Dr. John Keams, a classicist by training,
and also an award-winning playwright ba lancing his love of Greek and Latin languages with
that of his mother tongue, Pidgin, in his produced plays; and the course was shepherded through
the w1iversity curricu lum committee process by HPU's English Department faculty.
In 2005, the English Department ofHawai ' i Pacific University offered the first undergradu-
ate Pidgin Language and Pidgin Literature courses in the state and country, taught by Sakoda
and Tonouchi, respective ly, and The Wall Street Journal deemed this newsworthy enough
to feature in an article (Hwang 2005), on what was then seen as a controversial move for a
252
university to do- to formally recognize Pidgin as a culturally distinct language of its own,
and Pidgin Literature as a body of work worthy of academic study. Although Dr. Sustana
conceded that people outside ofHPU were "confused by the move" (Hwang 2005, par. 16), as
the prevailing view of Pidgin had been that it was an impediment to student academic success,
she firmly believed that offering these two courses aligned with the department's reconfig-
ured English Studies program focus that was moving away from a heavily Anglocentric view,
towards a more global perspective that encompasses post-co lonial literary studies.
Beyond teaching this course for HPU, Tonouchi continues his work as "Da Pidgin Guer-
rilla" to change people's negative perceptions of Pidgin language and culture through such
varied activities as academic speaking engagements, publishing books, writing and producing
p lays within and outside of Hawai'i, writing a newspaper column, food blogging, and serving
as an expert witness for legal trials. Sakoda maintains his affil iation with his home institution,
the University ofHawai' i at Manoa, primarily teaching SLS 430 Pidgin and Creole English in
Hawai'i for the Department of Second Language Stud ies and serving as the Pidgin specialist!
consultant and outreach fac ilitator at the Charlene Sato Center for Pidgin, Creole, and Dialect
Studies. Sakoda continues to be asked to adm inister Hawa i' i Creole Language competency
exam inations for graduate stu dents from the U.S. continent and arow1d the world.
My (Soong) first collaboration with Tonouchi goes back to the late 1990s when he visited
the sophomore high school English Literature class I was teach ing to discuss his short story
''Da Word", and we have since worked together on a number of projects promoting the reading
of Pidgin Literature in Hawai ' i's classrooms at the high school and college leve l. In 2010, he
asked me to write the introduction to his poetry collection in order to provide teachers using the
text with a historical context for understanding the position of Pidgin and Okinawan against
the dominant languages of Engl ish and Japanese in Hawai ' i. I sat down with him in Fall 2018
for a conversation/interview on his thoughts on Pidgin's transgressive and subversive roles in
Hawai'i's local literatures and of his experiences teaching Pidgin Literature at HPU.
13.3 A personal Pidgin history: An interview with Lee Tonouchi

MS: For people who don't know you, can you briefly describe the linguistic environment that
you personally grew up in?
LT: I grew up wit my grandparents in Kaimuki [a residential neighborhood in Honolu lu near
Diamond Head on ' Oahu], my Grandfaddah talked some Japanese and some English,
my Gramma could talk Japanese, Pidgin, English, some Okinawan and various mixtures
of those languages. I grew up wit my Faddah, and him and my Aunty cou ld talk Eng-
lish and Pidgin. An 'den my Mau i Gramma who came for live wit us, she could talk
Okinawan, Japanese, Engl ish, Pidgin, and C hampuru Uchinaguch i (das one m ixture of
English, Pidgin, Japanese, Okinawan, and lots ofHawai ian). Ka imuki Grandpa could talk
one mixture of Japanese and English, not so much Pidgin. Cuz my Kaimuki Grandpa,
he was born ova hea [in Hawai' i], but den he moved to Okinawa, for several years, den
he came back. When he talked, wuz mostly half-Japanese and half-English. I not sure if
that get one name. It's hard, yeah, cuz we tink of these tings as separate, but lotta times
when my Granparents wou ld talk, it's one blend. An'den, yeah, it changes too, depend-
ing on who dey talking to. So if my Gramma talking to someone her own age, and if dat
person Okinawan, Japanese, or whatevah, den she would be ta lking to dem in Japanese,
Okinawan, English, Pidgin, all mix up too, depending on da person. But if she talking
to me, she go in try her best for use her bestest English even though m ight not really be
English.
253
MS: Did you encounter other pe.o ple who speak Champuru Uchinaguchi besides the commu-
nity your grandmother grew up in?
LT: Yeah, had planny old people who could talk li' dat.
MS: On 'Oahu too?
LT: Ah, my Kaimukl Grandparents' one is similar to my Maui Grandma's Champuru
Uch inaguchi, except had not dat much Hawaiian. My Gramma from Maui grew up plan-
tation so her Pidgin had planny Hawai ian inside. And my Dad and my Aunty, dey grew
up plantation camp, so dey cou ld w1derstand when my Granma guys would buss out dis
mixcha of languages, but dey themselves nevah use em, but dey could undahstan. And
me, I could only undahstan da Pidgin and da English. If my grandparents sa id so meting in
Japanese, Okinawan, or Hawaiian, I always had fo ask wot dat meant.
MS: That helps me to understand the permeability of it. Like how your Kaimukl Grandpar-
ents could understand it [the mixture of languages Maui Gramma could speak), but they
themselves didn't speak it, right? Did they have much interaction with Maui Gramma?
LT: My Kaimukl Grandparents, dey cou ld undahstan Japanese, and dey could also speak Jap-
anese. Not proper kine Japanese, but. Like when I took Japanese class at school I found
out dey used archaic kine words, like benjo for toilet.
MS: Did your Maui Gramma know your Kaimukl grandparents? Did they interact?
LT: Yeah, whenever dey got togeddah for parties li ' dat. Interesting, I remembah one time
I had two a dem in da backseat while I wuz dri ving, and dey wuz having dis whole con-
versation, and I could on ly undahstan about half ofwot dey wuz saying.
MS: So in order to communicate with each other, did they just [use) Japanese?
LT: No. Cuz dey wuzn't fluent Japanese ta lkers. Dey always used one mixcha. Lotta times
when dey talking and ifdey dwmo da word for someting in Japanese, den dey would just
trow in one English word.
MS: Did they understand the Hawai ian part of Champuru Uchinaguchi?
LT: My Ka imukl Grandparents, they only knew little bit Hawa iian, but not as much as my
Maui Gramma. So my Maui Gramma would just use less Hawai ian when talking to dem.
MS: And they don't know Okinawan, they don't speak Okinawan, right, because it's Japanese
and Pidgin.
LT: My Kaimukl Grandparents, I would asswne dat dey knew little bit Okinawan. But I no
really know how much dey knew. Cuz my great-grandparents who came from Okinawa
used to live with dem too, so Uchinaguchi wuz prob' ly the ir primary language. Wuz
prob' ly same like my Maui Gramma. She could talk fluent Uchinaguchi, to her in-laws
cuz she had for live with my great-grandparents. And dey only knew Okinawan. So she
had to talk Okinawan to dem.
MS: What decades do these generations represent? Because, you've talked about that you
have your great-grandparents, and then you have your grandparents, and then you have
your parents, so, what are we looking at? Late 1800s for your great-grandparents, early
1900s?
LT: Or sometime after 1900.
MS: So it goes back three generations, right, cause it's you, your parents, your grandparents,
and your great-grandparents. Well, okay, how do we count it? The first generation to set
foot in Hawai' i - that's your great-grandparents? One. Your grandparents. Two. Your
mom and dad. Three. [Then you are four) . So when you were growing up then, what was
spoken in the home?
LT: U m ... all those languages. [Laughing)
MS: How did you keep them all straight?
254
LT: I guess, like some words, it's obvious like, "Oh, das one Japanese word" or "Oh, yeah,
das Hawaiian." But there's a lot dat I nevah know wot it wuz. Jus like da example
I always give, right? " Bumbye." I always tot "Oh, das da kine Engl ish word ." But come
fo find out das one Pidgin word. I tink hard fo keep em straight cuz probly my grand-
parents themselves had hod time keep ing em straight. My [Kaimuki] Gramma wou ld
tell da story of her friend who grew up hea and den she moved to Japan. When da friend
had for cook da ditmer for all da people, aftah she \VUZ pau [finished] cooking she wou ld
say, "Aru man, [English with a Japanese accent: a ll-man - everybody] kau kau [Pidgin
for eat] time." And no one wou ld move cuz nobody understood her. And she thought
she wuz talking Japanese. But no, and she \VUZn 't talking Japanese. In fact, I no link
had any Japanese in her sentence. [Laughing] It 's hod for know wot word is from we a.
Before time, if my family used one Okinawan word, I probly wou ld have lumped em wit
Japanese, because at dat time, I nevah even know had such one ting as da Okinawan lan-
guage. I jus thought wuz all Japanese. And I cou ld tell wot \VUZ one Hawaiian word, but
ifwuzn't Japanese or Hawai ian, I just assumed das gotta be English cuz I nevah know
had such one ring as Pidgin too.
MS: Ok, that helps a lot. With whom did you end up speaking more in HC with, of all your
family members?
LT: Probly with my Maui Gramma, she knew da least English das why. She from Maui, but
came for live with us when I \VUZ maybe in da 5th or 6th grade. I lived with my Kaimuki
grandparents from Preschool to 1st grade.
MS: Did your father reinforce the way they spoke around you? Did he also speak the same
language they were speaking to you?
LT: My Dad wouldn't use da kine mixchas my Maui Gramma wou ld use. Yet him and his
sibl ings, dey could a ll undahstand when my Maui Gramma would trow in some Japanese,
Okinawan, or Hawaiian words. But he himself wou ld rarely use those words. His \VUZ
mostly English and Pidgin. But my Dad too, I no link, he cou ld distinguish between one
Japanese or one Okinawan word.
MS: I find it interesting that right now, you are, in tenus of the work and focus, you're sort
of circling back, because [earlier in your career] you did a lot of stuff with Pidgin, and
[currently] now you're looking at Okinawan. This is still really .. . he lping to lay the
foundation of this interview in terrns of what shaped you as a Pidgin speaker. You have
this really complicated set of people in your life [and] Pidgin is, would you say, a smaller
part of their linguistic make-up, because there's Japanese, there's Hawai ian, and some of
your grandparents could speak English, and that got mixed in. To what extent is Pidgin
something that was foundational in what they were speaking to you? Because, do you feel
that your ma in language is Pidgin?
LT: Uh, yeah. Even though I nevah know dat das wotl \VUZ talking. [Laughing]
13.3.1 Recognition that Hawai'i Creole (HC) was not

Standard American English (SAE)
MS: How old were you when you first realized that the language you were speaking was pro-
hibited? What was the encounter like?
LT: Das one hod question. I guess I nevah even know wot I wuz ta lking wuz Pidgin, until
I \VUZ talking to my friend and I used da word "bwnbye" and den she nevah know wot dat
wuz. So I said, "How come you dunno ' bumbye'?" So I used da word for her in couple
255
sentences. Den, I made her one bet, we go look em up in da dictionary. And den, "Eh,
nevah get 'bwnbye' insai da dictionary." Das when I went home and I axed my faddah
"Eh, how come ' bumbye' wuzn 't insai da dictionary?" And das when he explained to me
that ''bumbye" \VUZ one Pidgin word. So das probly da first time I knew I talked Pidgin.
[Laughing]
MS: What year was this? How old were you?
LT: Like elementry school time. But still yet I nevah fully realize dat Pidgin \VUZ one language
yet. I just thought it wuz word choices and pronunciations. Like saying "Teacher, may
I use the restroom?" instead of saying "Eh, teachah, can go bachroom?" and she wou ld
just correct you, " It's not 'bachroom,' it's 'restroom. "'
MS: At what point did it become clear to you that Pidgin was a full-fledged language? I mean
that must have come decades later, right?
LT: In da 1980s, when da book Peppo 's Pidgin to da Max [Simonson et al. 1981) came out, dat
book \VUZ supah popular. All da kids had em and I wanted for have em too, so I axed my
Aunty when she took me to, I dunno if [the store's name) wuz Da iei or Holiday Mart at
da time. I axed her if I can have dat book, and den she said, "Uh, no .. ." cuz my faddah
wouldn't like it, bum bye I go in learn more Pidgin words. But yet, my fad dab nevah told
me direct, he nevah said "Eh Lee, no talk Pidgin!" right? That wuzjust my Aunty assum-
ing wot my faddah wuz go in say. Cuz later on in college time, when I did write ehryting
in Pidgin, my faddah wuz very supportive. Actually \VUZ my Maui Gramma, wuz da one
who wuz very se lf-conscious about her Pidgin. She \VUZ da one who \VUZ always asking
me for correck her and stuff, cuz she nevah like transfer her Pidgin to me, ab. But she did.
[Laughing]
MS: But was she supportive of you publishing and perfom1ing in Pidgin? Did she get to see
you grow up and use Pidgin?
LT: Uh, yeah. But, she had super hard time reading any of my stuff even though she ta lked
full-on Pidgin.
MS: She's not a reader?
LT: [No -) She loved for read romance novels. But those \VUZ all written in English. For read
Pidgin, das hod I guess. Cuz people not used to [seeing it written out in any way).
MS: But did she see perfom1ances of your work? Did she see you get up and talk? Did she
understand when she heard it? And was she proud of you?
LT: Yeah, she did. [My) two Grammas \VUZ proud of me.
MS: Did they think it was weird that it was in Pidgin?
LT: I tink my whole family thought \VUZ weird. I still remember my faddah used to tell a ll his
friends, "Oh, I send my boy go college, and now he write everything in Pidgin," and he
go laugh. He thought \VUZ ironicals.
13.3.2 His educational experience with HC, K- 12

MS: Did anyone discourage your use of Pidgin?
LT: Uh, yeah. School of course! Cuz in elementary school I still remember my teachahs used
to tell me "Eh, Lee you write like how you talk," and at first I took em like one compli-
ment. But den I find out, no, das bad. But to me, nevah make sense, cuz writing like
how you talk, dat reflected da real world. For examples, I used to write da word "kinda."
Instead of writing " it's kind ofhot," I wen go write, "kinda hot." And I wou ld get bashed
for dat. But in da rea l world, I nevah know nobody who said, "Oh, it's kind of hot today."
[Exaggerated enunciation) [Laughing)
256
Teachahs nevah cared too much for when I did stuff li' dat, but den I remembah, when
I got older, maybe intermed iate school or high school, I used to write stories for my
friends, and I remembah one time I wrote da word "hakum." And initially nobody cou ld
recognize what I wrote, but when dey sounded em out, dey had that recognition so dey
would laugh cuz das how we all said em, as one word, not two like "how come." It's
"hakum"! Like ''Hakum I come, I stay you go?"! [Laughing]
MS: Were you ever punished in school for talking Pidgin?
LT: You mean besides you gotta hold your shishi [hold off your urge to urinate unti l you asked
correctly in SAE]? Uh, not like we got whack with da ruler or anything. Da teachahs only
shamed us in front da class kine. But das bad too, cuz today you might call that bullying.
MS: Because we hear about stories of the suppression of language for Native Hawaiians, they
were actually beaten, right, it was like, very severe consequences for speaking a prohib-
ited language, but in terms of your experience growing up . ..
LT: I guess \VUZ more covert raddah than overt, ah. So wuz more like having da teachah cor-
reek you everytime kine. So dey would tell, this English way stay da right way, and your
Pidgin way stay wrong. So den, eventu ally you start fo believe dat da way you talk stay
all wrong. Wuz like da teachah indirectly saying you nevah goin eva amount to anyting.
MS: Did you ever not speak Pidgin in your life?
LT: I guess all chrew growing up I tried for refrain from talking Pidgin, cuz in skool, you leam
das bad. And even my Maui Gramma who lived with us wuz embarrassed by her Pidgin.
She would always rem ind me how she only went up to seven grade so she would encou-
rage me for "correck" her. Wuz sad seeing my Gramma being shame.
MS: Did these teachers also speak Pidgin too, on the side, or were they always speaking Eng-
lish to you, in your recollection?
LT: See das hard for say, cuz when I wuz growing up, I just asswned everybody talk English,
right. So, I dunno. Maybe dey wuz talking Pidgin too. When I came college-age I cou ld
recognize that lotta times people tink dey talking English, but lotta times, dey talking
Pidgin!
13.3.3 His educational experience with H C, in college

MS: Did you always speak Pidgin when you were at school? And did you always write in
Pidgin?
LT: Well, in terms of the writing, you kind a gotta write like how da teachah like you write if
you like get one good grade. Wuzn't until college, when I reached da point wea I wuz all
like, Whatevah, you can give me one bad grade, if you like. But growing up, you kinda
gotta do what da teachah like you do.
MS: We understand it today as code-switching, is it bilingual to speak English versus to speak
Pidgin? Were you fluent in being able to code-switch into English?
LT: I jus like point out I get one Master's degree in English. I know how for write papers using
English. Wuz just that I reached one point in college when I decided I wuz jus going do
ehryting in Pidgin. So I know how talk English. I know how write English. I jus choose
not to. If anyting, I might talk differring degrees of Pidgin depend ing on who I talking to.
MS: When did this realization occur?
LT: I w uz taking one sophomore literature class at UH [University of Hawai'i] and da pro-
fessor Rob Wilson, who wuzn 't from he a, he wuz one of da few professors who wuz
using The Best ofBamboo Ridge [Chock and Lum 1986] as one of his college textbooks.
So along with Shakespeare and Faulkner, I got exposed to some Hawai' i literature. And
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inside that book had one poem, "'T'utu on da Curb" by Eric Chock and dating wuz written
in Pidgin! I wuz all like, Ho, get guys writing in Pidgin. And we studying em in co llege.
Das means you gotta be smart for study Pidgin! So from dea I started taking some crea-
tive writing courses so I could write in Pidgin. Den pretty soon I began fo wonder, Eh,
if I can do my creative stuff in Pidgin, hakum I no can do my critical stuff in Pidgin too?
So I started doing my short reaction papahs in Pidgin, den eventually I started writing
my 30-page research papahs in Pidgin, unti l eventually I did my whole Master's thesis
in Pidgin.
MS: It's interesting because you mentioned that for your grandparents, when they spoke to
each other or when they spoke to d ifferent pe.ople, they wou ld sort of dial [modu late
their use of Pidgin] it up or down depending on who the listener was, to determine lev-
e ls of appropriateness for Pidgin, Champuru Uchinaguchi, Japanese, English, etc. Did
you ever feel comfortable speaking in English only? I have never known you to speak
English . . .
LT: I guess young time I had fo tr y talk and write English for do good in school. But dat wuz
only in school. On da playground we talked howevahs. At home I had all kine mixchas.
[So,] I nevah fe lt like I had da kine identity crisis, cuz I had already come for rea lize that
school wuzn't reflective of my world, so when I did em for skool, wuz like I \VUZ playing
one part I guess, like acting. I always knew dat wuzn 't me.
13.3.4 Writing exclusively in HC as a political act of defiance

MS: . . .Has it [writing and operating exclusively in Pidgin] been a political act of defiance
for you?
LT: I suppose so. I decided for do ehryting in Pidgin cuz da assumption is da Pidgin talker not
as smart as da standard English talker. So da way I see em wuz you get two choice den.
You can either change yourself or you can change da perception. I decided I \VUZ going try
do someting for try change da perception. And for me, pretty much all my opportunities
have been coming because of my Pidgin.
MS: Instead of the other way around, which is what you' re saying - that the majority of the
opportunities are stacked aga inst Pidgin speakers, right?
LT: But not [just] saying dat .. . da writing gotta be good too, right? Jus cuz you writing
Pidgin, if it's junk sruff den still going be junk, right?
MS: But I guess the political act of defiance, the idea behind that question is, . . . do you feel
like ... it's brave of you to . . . number one, to c laim this identity and to mainta in it, to
have integrity to it - this is who I am, and I 'm going to operate just like anyone wou ld
operate in a language . . . . I guess the advocacy part that you' re talking about is like, the
fact that you choose . . . a wide range of different projects, it's not like you stick to only
one genre. Like, you' re not only a playwright, you're not someone who only does poetry,
you' re not someone who on ly does newspaper columns, you do all that AND community
outreach stuff as well, like your commw1ity-based dictionary [Da Kine DictionOJy : Da
Hawai 'i Community Pidgin DictionOJy Projeck 2005] involving people to get excited
about the language they actually use in their lives. I think it goes back to that thing what
you were saying about that time you wrote that word ["hakum"], and people were like
"What is that?" and then once they heard it, they were like "Oh yeah, of course, we say
that all the time!" but you were the first person to po int that out in writing. Yes, we say this
all the time, and yes, it's one of our words, but it's not legitimized. So, do you fee l like the
work that you do is doing that?
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LT: I suppose das da goa l, but I no feel das especially brave, for jus be myself. I guess for me
da m ission has always been jus for question. Cuz people always say, "You cannot do d is,
you cannot do dat," but how you know, if you no try?
MS: Do you think that that is an integral part of local identity - to be kind of subversive in that
way? I mean, to question? To even question, means that you are pointing out, Why is this
[expectation of what you can or cannot do] the assumption? And who made it so? And
what's behind it? And you're actually trying to uncover the prejud ices against Pidgin and
Pidgin speakers, right?
LT: Interesting, hakum das Local, den?
MS: Yeah, I'm thinking that there is something about the local experience and the history of
local people growing up, having to deal with [immigrant assimi lation] pressures, when
you are under the thumb of another culture or political and econom ic entity, the only way
you can maintain your sense of integrity, right, is to circumvent [subvert by changing
the negative attitudes about Pidgin among the speakers themselves] . Instead of saying
d irectly, "No, this is wrong," you have to be more creative in the way in which you deal
with the oppression. Do you see Pidgin as a language and its capability to make sense, is
bound up in that? ...
LT: Hod for change people's minds about Pidgin. You not going do dat by waving one sign or
by signing one petition. Da on ly way I see you going do em is you gotta show em, ''Eh, not
no can. It's - no, can." Sodas why I feel like I gotta try do all kine diff'renttings in Pidgin.
MS: This kind of goes into the name of "Da Pidgin Guerrilla" for you. Do you fee l like it's
been a good name for you? Are you proud of it? Or is it something that has it changed over
time, in terms of your embrace of the title?
LT: Back when I wuz going UH, cuz of my radicalness of my Pidgin, da Ka Leo, da school
newspapah did one article on me. In that article my old professor Rob Wilson, he said,
"Lee, he's like a Pidgin guerrilla." Den, when my friend Lisa Kanae saw that, she said,
"Lee, he's not a Pidgin guerri lla, he's Da Pidgin Guerrilla." And das how da name stuck.
I suppose I like da name, cuz it wuz one nickname that wuz bestowed upon me. Although
Iona people ca ll me da "self-proclaimed" Pidgin Guerrilla. But, only loser people, brah,
gotta make up one nickname for themselves. Dis da name people honored me with, so it's
da name I feel like I gotta live up to now.
MS: Has it changed for you? Is it something you live up to? Or do you think it is something
like . . . Oh, I don't need to fight it anymore because there are more people who have
changed their views on Pidgin? Has there been more of an embrace of Pidgin as a subject
of study? That it's more legitim ized in the mainstream English-speaking world?
LT: Actually I feel like, I dunno if dis job evah going be done, get more and more for do now,
it's like, as da years go on, you hear people say "Get less and less Pidgin talkers now."
So I kinda feel, like I gotta do even more now! ... But, I tink da key is people gotta see
dat Pidgin get value. Once dey see dat Pidgin get value, den you know, people going take
pride in the ir language, den more pe.o ple going do more stuffs.
MS: One thought .. . . You mentioned the gigs that you were offered to write came about
because you posted some things on your own Facebook page in Pidgin. [From that, the
blog] Frolic and [local newspaper] the Honolulu Star Advertiser wanted you to write in
that way for them. That shows that somebody is saying, "This has value to our newspaper,
web magazine and our readership." In that sense, there is this shift. Twenty years ago, you
d idn't imagine being asked to do that.
LT: I guess it's changed cuz nowdays people find me. Back in da day I used to subm it more.
So I always been publish ing Pidgin tings in all our Local period icals. I did movie reviews,
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books reviews, guest columns, interviews, stories, and poems all in Pidgin. I wuz a lways
trying for get as much Pidgin out there, as much as possible, so I wou ld always submit
my poems, short stories, and academic papahs, to journals all across da continent and
to oddah countries an stuff too, yeah. Oat wuz always part of da mission, right? Eh, you
know, people in Canada tink Pidgin is cool. Dis journal came out from New York and
dey link Pidgin is cool. But, hakum we [Pidgin speakers in Hawai ' i] cannot tink Pidgin
is cool? Right?
MS: You mentioned that being Da Pidgin Guerrilla, you realize that there's still work ahead of
you because there are still people who, although there's more of an acceptance of Pidgin,
it's still not seen as a legitimate language ...
LT: I dunno how true is that - is dea more acceptance?
MS: Do you think we are getting farther and farther away from that generation in wh ich this
linguistic context for Pidgin in Hawai' i, that we're getting away from that .. . you don't
have a whole generation [speaking Pidgin] . . . like you were saying you had your great-
grandparents, grandparents, your parents, your whole fami ly network ...
LT: For me, das what gives it its value, right, cuz das who we are. Dis is my family. So I guess
as we lose dat connection, how much value Pidgin going have to one younger kid, den?
I get one interesting observation. Dis not only for da younger Pidgin writers, but also for
some Pidgin writers das older than me. It's interesting cuz get some guys who write in
Pidgin, but dey say dey not politica l. To me, da whole act of writing in Pidgin to begin
with, das already one pol itical act, no? So I dunno, how you can say, you not pol itical?
Cuz da fac.t you stay writing in Pidgin peop le going automatically assume das means you
down with Pidgin [in support of its legitimacy]. But these guys, both young and old say
dey not into da who le Pidgin advocacy stuff.
MS: Some people might be writing [Pidgin] just because it's a function of the characters speak-
ing it. But you're saying that to write in Pidgin means that you are taking a stand that you
believe that Pidgin is a language of its own, that it's part of someone's linguistic identity
(all the stuff that we've been ta lking about). But there are people [who m ight use it in the ir
w riting] who still don't think of it as a legitimate language of its own.
LT: But if dey using em hakum dey no like take da stand?
MS: Maybe because the underlying [stance] is that English is still primary. That Pidgin is just
window dressing . ..
LT: Das wot I linking. Oat in their minds dey jus linking Pidgin is decoration for dem.
MS: What I've seen in literature, the narrative is in English, the framework for the story is
in Engl ish, the main characters are basically English speakers and you have sprinkled
in there these token characters who supposedly speak Pidgin, but then it turns out, that
they aren't even speaking Pidgin - grammatically correc.t Pidgin - what they speak is this
made-up language. There are those who deploy ''Pidgin" or what they think is Pidgin,
they throw it in to make it sound exotic, and they are not see ing from the perspective of
the people whose lives and identity are bound -up in this language experience.
LT: Oat kine people, I can kinda understand, cuz dey not tied to da language, dey fine with
jus making up anykine. But wot about da people who wuz born hea, raised hea, and dey
w riting real Pidgin, but yet, dey no like commit themselves to acknowledging Pidgin as
one legitimate language? Wassup with dem guys?
MS: That's a really good question - why are there Pidgin speakers who write Pidgin, but don't
see what they are doing as a political act? Maybe because they are not invested in trying to
stand up to that erasure . .. . Do you think that a lot of people don't have as c lear an opinion
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on the status of Pidgin? They think, "Yeah, it's funny, it's something that we do here, but
that they still believe underneath, [regardless of] whatever they say, English is king here."
LT: It's probably people still tink "No can" right? Cuz dey no see it in oddah contexts besides
da context of humor. Dey hea Pidgin on da radio, dey tink oh, Pidgin can ony be used
for hum or on da radio, if you wanna become, like, one comedian. What else you can use
Pidgin for? Like you sed, we had one pretty Pidgin-talking governor, if he had embraced
da fact dat he talk Pidgin ... dat might have changed da whole way people viewed Pidgin.
13.3.5 Teaching Pidgin Literature at Hawai'i Pacific University
MS: Why was it a big deal for you to be teaching the Pidgin Literature course at HPU? It was
featured on the front page of the Wall Street Journal. Why would it make the news on such
a major outlet? What was really at stake?
LT: I guess get lotta parallels between Pidgin and languages like Ebon ics and Spanglish. So
das probably da reason why wuz such big national news. Ironically it got virtually no
Local coverage. I mean we had da first eva college-level courses devoted solely to Pidgin
Literature and to Pidgin Language. Das groundbreaking stuff. But I tink Local people no
can believe. My friend who's one Pidgin w riter, k [ok], she's one PIDGIN WRITER, I gave
her one Xerox copy of da Wall Street Journal article and she nevah said anyting about
it. I kinda expected her for say, "Ho, das super awesome, Lee." or ''About time we get
stuff li'dat." But she nevah say anyting. So I just thought, Whatevahs. I only found out
years later, dat she thought wuz all fake. She thought I penned one fake article and used
Photoshop.
MS: What is the significance that there is no corresponding course at other universities in the
state?
LT: Oh, you mean UH? [Laughing] Da vibe I get from da old timers is, "Our job stay done
already. We get one Literatures ofHawai' i course of which Pidgin stay one part." Dey saw
my Pidgin Literature course as redundant. But to me, we get such one enonnous body of
Pidgin Literature now wea we can talk about em separately. My c lass had all kine going
all da way back to da 1930s. Plus my definition of literature wuzn't only stuff das printed.
We studied Pidgin comedy records and videos. Pidgin in Hawai ' i music. All kine. In my
mind, we need more Pidgin c lasses. Cuz da goa l is for one day have it so dat people can
get their degrees in Pidgin. Cuz if you can get your degree in Pidgin den das go ing be one
big step in legitimizing Pidgin in people's minds, ab?
13.3.6 Local ethnic literatures vs Pidgin Literature(s)

LT: We go talk about Pidgin Literature and how it's distinct from oddah ethnic kine literatures.
Probab ly oddah ethnic literatures, dey all based on ethnicity. Whereas wit Pidgin Litera-
ture, you can pretty much be anybody and you can talk Pidgin, right, you no have to be
from one particular ethnic group. And I tink in some ways das what makes it easier in
people's m ind for discriminate against Pidgin talkers, because dey know dey not discrim i-
nating against one particu lar ethnic group or race of people.
MS: So, would it be more of like an economic or a class issue? "Oh, they're uneducated; oh,
they're immigrant laborers" kind of thing?
LT: Interesting you bring dat up. Cuz I a lways tink about Pidgin and Local. Like for Kent
Sakoda, he no can distinguish between Local and Pidgin, to him, they're like synonymous,
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right. Pidgin is Local, how you can separate da two tenus? So I always ask, but wot about
da people, who cool wit ehryting about Local culture, but dey look down on Pidgin? For
Kent, dat jus means, oh, those guys, dey not Local.
MS: .. . So you are saying there is a very different dynam ic going on between Ethnic Lit-
eratures and Pidgin Literature, where the fonner is comprised of narratives fo llowing a
single, particular group of people over time through their migration journeys and estab-
lishment of roots with subsequent generations. Whereas, in the latter case, the narrati ves
include different ethnicities and trajectories but the people share a deep C01111ection to
place and perhaps a conunon experience of oppression by a ru ling c lass of colonizers.
Pidgin Literature also explores other kinds of issues, such as the difficulty of establ ishing
legitimacy within a context of [a) colonizing force that's trying to erase or devalue the
people under their jurisdiction. In Pidgin cu lture in Hawai ' i, there's a shared experience
of a common foe that endeavors to erase your ethnic identity and experience as an imm i-
grant of trying to become an American. Economic class disparity and distinctions seem to
be also inextricably linked to Pidgin culture represented in its literature .. .
LT: So, I always wondered if you can be one rich Loca l?
MS: That's a good question because the Locals who make it [succeed financially) tend to dis-
tance themselves - they don' t want to be seen speaking Pidgin, or claim not to speak it,
and they don't want to be identified with that, unless it's expedient to do so. Like they'll
bust it out when they need to get work done on their house with construction workers, but
they won't speak it in front of the ir business colleagues, especially if it's go ing to make
them look weak - they won' t use it. So I think ... they have to decide or ask themselves,
Where am I going to get the maximwn benefit from using this language? So, you raise a
good question - how much of Pidgin culture and Pidgin language use is tied to econom ic
c lass? ...
You also bring up the issue that a lot of Ethnic Literature narratives deal with the stages
of the immigrant experience: trying to make it [survive, accl imatize, and thrive) in a
new place, ultimately to become part of the mainstream. A lot of the imm igrant laborers
wanted their kids to get ahead and become Americans, and so if Pidgin is the language of
necessity, for communication on the plantation, they want more and better for their kids,
they don't want them to be relegated to what the previous generation had to go through. Is
Pidgin a stepping-stone to becoming mainstream Americans? So is the trajectory of Eth-
nic Literatures more about becoming accepted in a new place, whereas Pidgin literature
has a different trajectory of try ing to maintain one's ethnic identity in the face of erasure?
LT: I rink wot stay diff'rent is if you get, let's say Japanese-American literature, you always get
one homeland where Japanese has value, stay respected, and everybody know Japanese
[language). But, you no more dat for Pidgin literature. Pidgin's homeland stay Hawai' i,
but da language not respected and lotta people tink Pidgin no more value.
MS: So what does that do for the dynamic for the literature that is written in Pidgin? Are
Pidgin writers primari ly concerned with trying to map out space for legitimacy? I think
about how your whole li fe trajectory in your writing has been to say: This is who I am [a
cu lmination of a ll of the people who have made the joumey here). The people who have
come before me have all worked hard to make a living and ra ise a family. It just so hap-
pens that I end up in this amalgamation of languages and cu ltures that has shaped who
I am, and so everything that I do and touch, has to do with legitimizing who I am through
the way I express myself . ..
We talked a little bit about how Pidgin literature has a coup le of modes, such as: There
are those writers who use Pidgin in the ir writing as window dressing, the Pidgin that's
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in their writing may even be inauthentic, ungrammatical Pidgin, not even really trying.
Another mode is on the other side, with writers who actually speak it, live it, and tell their
stories in this way, because they haven't been told before. Are there other kinds of writ-
ers? What comes to mind are the writers like Lois-Ann Yamanaka, who writes in Pidgin
and garners big publishing contracts outside of Hawa i'i, attracting world-wide audiences
with mu ltiple language translated versions. [An aside - I've often wondered how Pidgin
gets translated into other languages. How is that even possible to capture Pidgin in other
" legitim ized" national languages that do not share the same social, cultural and economic
linguistic history?) ...
LT: But, like, you can see too, how her stuff get less and less Pidgin inside as each book comes
out, right? Like Saturday Night at da Paha/a Theatre ( 1993), her first book had way more
Pidgin than her latest book dat came out. She gave lotta talks about how she tired being
da Pidgin poster child.
MS: That goes back to what you asked Kent: Is Pidgin identified with being local and is her
portraya l of local life accurate and authentic? She was called on the carpet and accused
of negatively stereotyping Fi lipinos perpetuating damaging misconceptions towards them
in her novel 8/u:S Hanging (1997). And people who stood up for her, said, " Look, she's
w riting what is real to her for her characters." The big issue that I had with some of her
accusers was that there were people who were criticizing her and they hadn't even read
her work.
LT: To me da most wrong one wuz da peop le who critic ized her poem about superstitions in
Saturday Night. Cuz basically you get one misreading of da poem - cuz she saying all
these tings is NOT tme. She saying da Filipino stereotype stay wrong, but yet she wuz
criticized. But for dem for criticize her Btu :S Hanging, dat wuz lil' bit mo complex, but.
So den, wot's interesting den, for Pidgin Literature, is now you get one responsibility
for all Ill da different ethnic groups. Cuz all these ethnic m inority literatures stay part of
Pidgin literature too, so you get da responsibil ity of how you portray all these diffrent
ethnic groups too.
MS: So you think that there's more pressure on w riters who employ Pidgin in their writing?
LT: I wuz very conscious about ethnicity when I wrote my first book, da Pidgin short story
collection Da Word. So I tried not for labe l any ethnicity for any character because of
what wuz happening to Lois-Ann at dat particular time. Wuz interesting da feedback I got.
Readers wuz very interested, dey wanted for know da ethnicities of da characters. So lotta
dem would try for figgah out. Dey would do process of elimination, "Okay, if Grandma
said he no can marry d is, dis or dis, then das means he must be .. ."And dey try narrow it
down to "Oh, I link da main guy must be Okinawan." And dey figured it out, even though
I nevah really write em. At dat time, when I wuz writing stories in college, we a ll made
friends with whoevas, we nevah care wot anybody wuz. So I nevah like dat distract from
people's actual enjoyment of da story, right? To me all dat wuz important, wuz dat these
wuz all Pidgin people.
MS: In your short story " Da Word," I remember making the assumption that the brown-noser
was hao/e [white person). And you po inted out to me, "Where does it say dat she's hao/e?"
LT: Eh, you racist!
MS: Exact ly. And I was like, "Oh, that's right, it's not mentioned at a ll, and I have no idea
what she is."
LT: But, if you read to da end of da story, you figgah out wot she is.
MS: Is Pidgin Literature inherently more political because it has to do with trying to stand
up to oppression, English writers impugn on these targeted groups saying "You are not
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educated; You ' re not worthy of being an American." You said it earlier, if you are a Pidgin
speaker, by virtue of the fact that you speak Pidgin, you are taking a stand. Do you think
that th is a lso applies to Pidgin Literature?
LT: I link get lotta writers who jus might write one Pidgin story, and den pau, das it for dem,
right. It's probably mo' easier for get your stuff publish if it's not in Pidgin. Cuz jus like
my friends tell, "Oh, how come you don't write your stuff in English? Then you cou ld
reach a lot more people."
MS: So, what's your response to that?
LT: To me, den dat wouldn't be authentic, like it's not real. Why wou ld I wanna show one
Hawai'i das not da rea l Hawai'i? We already get stuff li' dat, like Hawaii 5-0 , right, wea
on top dat show dey no can even call Pidgin, Pidgin. Dey call Pidgin, Bird. Like, wassup
wit dat?
MS: This brings up the question for me about authenticity. There is a school of thought about
literature about authenticity that brings up a whole bunch of issues such as: Is a writer
w ho is not from here or not a Pidgin speaker, able to pull it off, in other words, can they
w rite convincingly? But there are some people who would say that's a stupid question
because you got writers who are not female but write a really good female character, who
gets the voice down pitch perfect, or vice versa. It p its authenticity aga inst imagination.
It's been argued that th is is a moot issue. Why is it that when we talk about ethnicity and
culture there has to be some kind of essentialism, that you have to be of that group to have
permission to speak about them? I'm not asking you to necessarily answer this question,
but I'm just saying that that's the kind of argument that goes around literature representing
the non-mainstream position. But of course you are welcome to comment on it. We see
many instances of inauthentic Pidgin, right, what you refer to as " How lie Pidgin."
LT: Das one of da w1its I cover in my Pidgin Literature course. So we study da interesting
ways dat writers who not from Hawai' i, how dey handle da Pidgin. So you get some
people, dey dec ide that if their main character not from hea, dey might filter it through da
voice of dat character, sodas what he hears. So even though da Pidgin all wrong, it's how
he hear em. Den you [get] oddah outsider writers inventing these creative characters who
maybe speak one combination of Jamaican, surfer speak, and Pidgin all combined toged-
dah. So it has that little bit, small kine Pidg in flavah, and you no can say das wrong, cuz
das dat character 's own made-up language.
MS: Should those kinds of Pidgins be included in Pidgin Literature?
LT: I wuz jus showing diffrent ways people handle it, right? And den, da most conunon way
outsider writers handle Pidgin is dey jus pretend dat Pidgin no exist. Das probably da easi-
est way, right? For jus erase Pidgin totally.
MS: Is there a place for that in your scheme of things, in the way that you see a world where
Pidgin is valued, is there an important plac.e for the perception of Pidgin through outsid-
ers' views, representations of what they think they are see ing and hearing, should that be
in this body of work as well?
LT: I used to tink about dat a lot whenever one Loca l writer won some kinda award or somet-
ing, cuz I had one teacher who would say that these Local writers who won these prizes
\VUZ all "Haole-wannabes." Das what he would call them. But for me, as long as you
remained true to who you are, you not se lling out. I wouldn't consider dem for be "Hao/e-
wannabes." But to dis teacher, just da fact that dey wanted da outside validation, dat made
dem lame to him. For da case of Pidgin, I link it's important for have recognition from
da outside, cuz when outsiders say dat dis is worthy, it does change how Local people
perce ive Pidgin. Like when da census wen quote-unquote, "recognize Pidgin" as one
264
language. All of a sudden more people started linking, "Oooh, da census people classify-
ing it as one language, so maybe Pidgin is one language."
MS: What do you see as the role of code-switching for Pidgin speakers?
LT: Yeah, so several months ago [in 20 18)1 wuz one of da main talkers at one Pidgin con-
ference. Da conference wuz aimed at Hawai ' i teachers for provide em with teaching
strategies for how dey might incorporate Pidgin as part of their classroom. It wuz being
called one pro-Pidgin conference. But wuz little bit weird to me cuz pretty much all da
speakers at da conference wuz dea saying when wuz appropriate and not appropriate for
use Pidgin. Pretty much I wuz da only person saying, ''Up to you. You can use Pidgin
whenevah you like. Das your choice." I tink I wuz da only one at da pro-Pidgin confer-
ence who wuz actually pro-Pidgin! So aftah, I wen go ask Kent, "Eh, wassup wit dat?
I wuz at da pro-Pidgin conference, and yet ehrybody telling me when I can and no can use
Pidgin." So, I guess to dem, get progress, to where get more people now who might accept
Pidgin some of da time. I wuz little bit disappointed. I thought I wuz finally going get for
meet more people like me [who expecting full-on recognition of Pidgin as a mainstream
language jus like English).
MS: Do you feel like they' re just paying lip service to saying that they support Pidgin?
LT: No, dey seriously believe dey stand ing up for Pidgin!
MS: Oh, wow ... okay ...
LT: But I guess das bettah than being totally anti-Pidgin. [Laugh ing]
Further reading
Kanae, L. 2001. Sista Tongue. Honolulu, HI: Tin Fish Press.
Kanae's graduate smdies paper-mmed-ehapbook collaging image and word, poetry and prose in
English and Pidgin (Hawai 'i Creole), provides a searing look at the discriminatory treatment of Pidgin
speakers by the state education policy through snippets of historical documents and her brother's own
experience of being labeled mentally deficient for having a speech defect when he was speaking
Pidgin.
Sakoda, K. & Siege!, J. 2004. Pidgin Grammar. Interview with Kent Sakoda and Jetl'Siegel of the Univer-
s ity ofHawai'i- Authors of Pidgin Grammar. Transcript. Interviewed by Dmae Roberts for Crossing
East Radio Series, 12 October. Available at: www.crossingeast.org/crossingeastarchive/20 17/03/27/
pidgin-grammar/ (Accessed: 18 December 20 18).
Crossing East Radio Series: Our Stories, Our Hist01y, Our America is an Asian American/Pacific
Islander history series on Public Radio. This interview is in Program Three "Raising Cane" section
under "Pidgin English." Sakoda and Siege! discuss the impems for their research that resulted in their
publication.
Tonouchi, L. 2004. Lee Tonouchi, Author and Playwright and Teacher of [Kapiolani} Community
College. Transcript. Interviewed by Dmae Roberts for Crossing Easr Radio Series, 16 November.
Available at: www.crossingeast.org/ crossingeastarchive/20 17/03/27/lee-tonouchi-pidgin-english-
teacher-pidgin-english-language-elass/ (Accessed: Viewed 18 December 20 18).
Crossing East Radio Series: Our Srories, Our History, Our America is an Asian American/Pacific Islander
history series on Public Radio. This interview is in Program Three "Raising Cane" section under " Pidgin
English." Tonouchi discusses his experiences teaching Pidgin Literamre as a college course.
Yamamoto, C. 2002. Understanding a Contentious "Local" Literary Community: The Controversy over
s
Lois-Ann Yamanaka's 8/u Hanging. Senior Honors BA Thesis, University ofHawai' i, Mii.noa. Avail-
able at: https://scholarspace. manoa.hawaii.edu/handle/1 0 125/31855 (Accessed: 19 December 20 18).
This undergraduate honors thesis examines the question of equitable literary representation of vari-
ous ethnic groups within Hawai ' i's local literary culmre when a dominant group has more access to
publication than others.
265
Related topics
Post-structuralist Approaches to Language Contact; North America and Hawai' i; Creole Arts
and Music; Rise of Pidgin Theatre in Hawa i'i; Identity Politics; Identity and Mixed Languages
Bibliography
C hock, E. & Lwn, D. (eds.) 1986. The Best ofBamboo Ridge: 77te Hawai 'i Writers · Quarterly. Honolulu,
HI: Bamboo Ridge Press.
Department of Second Language Studies, University of Hawa' i at Miinoa. 2009, 2010. Talking Story
Abow Pidgin: Exploring the Creole Language of Hawai 'i. Materials for Educators: Section 11, Les-
son 2 Orthography and Pidgin. Available at: www.sls.hawaii.edu/Pidginlmaterials2.php (Accessed: l
December 20 18).
Hawaiian Pidgin on Wikipedia (webpage last edited 3 December2019). Available at: hnps://en.wikipedia.
org /wiki!Hawaiian_Pidgin (Accessed: 3 December 2019).
Hwang, S. 2005. Long Dismissed, Hawai'i Pidgin Finds Place in classroom. Wall Street Journal, l August.
Available at: www.wsj.com/articles/SB l 12285961 17760 1138 (Accessed: 19 December 2018).
Inoue, A. 2004. Visual Word Recognition in Hawai' i Creole English: Bidialiectal Eftections on Reading.
Working Papers in Linguistics, 35 (2): l- 29. Available at: www.l ing.hawaii.edu/research!WorkingPa-
pers/wp-inoue.pdf (Accessed: l November 201 8).
Simonson, D., Sakata, K. & Sasaki, P. 198 1. Peppo 's Pidgin to da Max. Honolulu, HI: Bess Press.
Tonouchi, L. 200 l. Da Word. Honolulu, HI: Bamboo Ridge Press.
Tonouchi, L. 2002. Living Pidgin: Contemplations on Pidgin Culture. Honolulu, HI: Tin Fish Press.
Tonouchi, L. (ed.) 2005. Da Kine Dictionary: Da Hawai'i Community Pidgin Dictionary Projeck. Bilin-
gual edition. Honolulu, HI: Bess Press.
Tonouchi, L. 2011. Significam Moments in da Life of Oriental Faddah and Son: One Hawai'i Okinawa
Journal. Honolulu, HI: Bess Press.
Yamanaka, L. 1993. Sawrday Night at the Palzala Theatre. Honolulu, HI: Bamboo Ridge Press.
Yamanaka, L. 1997. Blu 's Hanging. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
266
APPENDIX
For those readers curious about Odo orthography, this is a chart from the webpage Talking
StOJy about Pidgin: Exploring the Creole Language of Hawai 'i that provides symbols for
basilectal and acrolectal varieties of Pidgin (www.sls.hawaii.edu/ Pidgin/materials2.php).
Table I 3.2 Odo orthography for Hawai' i Pidgin
Basilectal variant Acrolectal variant Examples English equivalems
Vowels
hit, liv, mi hit/heat, Jive/leave, me
hit, liv, mi hit, live, me
et et e ij , Jeit age, late
e e eapa\\1, mek airport, make
re (ae) re (ae) rek, trerabol act, terrible
a a Jeita, aloha later, a loha
aw aw tawk, bawt talk, bought
0 0 brok, oke broke, okay
ou ou vou t~ gout vote , goat
u u uji, luk ' yucl-y ', look
at at ai, Jaik I, like
au au au au, maut ' bathe', mouth
Ot Ot boi, ointment boy, ointment
r r rt, wrd, pri fr earth, word, prefer
11 hiit, liiv heat, leave
uu ruuki, shuu rookie, shoe
(Continued)
267
Table 13.2 (Continued)
Consonants Examples English equivalents
p p pau, pepa 'finish', paper

I I tita , fait ' sister', fight
k k tek, joka take, joker
b b bebe, raba baby, robber/mbber
d d dawg, kad dog, card
g g baga, hambag bugger, humbug
h h hauzit, bred ' hello', had
f f fani, refta funny, after
V V neva, hrev never, have
Basilectal Acrolectal
s s samting, mas something, must
z z izi, hauzit easy, 'hello'
eh eh ehrai, baehi try, 'retribution'
sh sh shehrit, shuga street, sugar
.
J J jraiv, baj drive, barge
m m make, hemo 'die' 'remove'
'
n n nais, entatein nice, entertain
ng ng ring, brengk ring, bank
r r krai , rabish cry, mbbish
lolo, pie, pul ' smpid ' , play, pull
y y yre, l]'Ut yeah, cute
w w kwik, wea quick, where
D D kaDaoke, taDanta Dan karaoke, 'acting smpid '
IS IS tsunami, shiatsu tsunami, shiatsu
th thin, preth thin, path
db dha, bridh the, breathe
zh mezha, yuzhol measure, usual
hw hwat, hwer what, where
glottal stop Hawai' i, Nu"uanu Hawai'i, Nu'uanu
268
14
IDENTITY POLITICS
Nicholas Faraclas
14.1 Introduction, definitions and terminology

In this chapter, politics and identities are considered in relation to the study of Creole lan-
guages/varieties and their speakers at multip le levels and from mult iple points of view. In
this process, we explicitly and implicitly challenge many of the fundamental definitions of
the basic terms that have been uncritically used by creolists and linguists over the past cen-
tury, beginning with the term 'Creole' itself. Desp ite attempts to define Creo les as a distinct
c lass of varieties based on their structura l features (McWhorter 200 l ), there seem to be no
consistent forma l criteria which can be used to d istinguish Creole languages from other lan-
guages. Generally avoiding the term ' Creole' throughout his long and d istingu ished career,
Mervyn Alleyne (2002 and e lsewhere) argued, (as have others, e.g. DeGraff 2003) that
because the word ' Creole' is saturated with racist and other ethnocentric notions of 'con-
tamination' of 'pure' European language, cu lture and bloodlines, it shou ld be discarded as a
legacy of colonialism (Said 1978, 1989). Alleyne's advice has been heeded to some degree
in tem1s of the naming of colonial-era contact varieties, so that what was once generally
called 'Jamaican Creole' is now more often referred to by lingu ists simply as 'Jamaican';
and what was onc.e named ' Guyanese Creole' or 'Creolese' is increasingly called ' Guya-
nese.' Some creolists have unfortunately used this same line of reasoning to argue that what
are norma lly referred to as the colonial-era Creoles are better understood as dialects of the
European languages to which most of their lexical inventory can be traced (Chaudenson
200 l ; Mufwene 200 l ).
While we wholeheartedly agree with Alleyne's assessment of the inadequacies and dangers
of using the word 'Creole,' we also agree with him that the crisis in creolistics that could result
from eventually eliminating the term should neither lead us to conc lude that these varieties
are essentially dialects of European languages, nor lead us to abandon the stu dy of this set of
varieties as a field of academ ic inquiry. On the contrary, it could be argued that the continued
study of extensively restructured varieties, especially those that emerged during the co lonial
era due to intense and susta ined contact among peoples of African, European, Indigenous
American, Pac ific and Asian descent, as a socio-historically (rather than structura lly) defined
set of ('Creo le') languages is more important now than ever before.
269
Nid10las Faraclas
Up until the present, the growing bodies of critique and counter-evidence that are leading
to the dismantling and abandonment of many of the most fundamental concepts that have
underp inned creolistics and lingu istics over the past century have been very uneven and
diffuse in tenns of their depth, scope and impact. Because the study of Creole varieties has
become synonymous with paradigm-defying language patterns and practices, creolistics has
played and will continue to p lay a p ivotal ro le in bringing the fresh approaches and insights
that have emerged from such critical work together in a systematic and coherent way. For
these reasons, as we ll as to harn10nise effectively with the other chapters in this handbook,
we wi ll continue to use the terms ' Creo le,' 'creolisation ' and 'creol istics' in this chapter,
precise ly because we contend that in non-trivial ways, all of the languages of the world have
undergone significant degrees of contact-induc.ed restructuring and shou ld be re-examined
by linguists in the light of the insights gained from the study of Creole varieties, where
the evidence of contact and restructuring are less easily ignored and erased than in other
varieties.
While it is customary in both non-academic and academic usage to utilise the tenn 'poli-
tics' in the plural, politics has taken on a singu lar and exclusive meaning that both removes it
from the private sphere as well as snatching it from the hands of marginalised peoples such as
women, peoples of non-European descent, and non-propertied peoples of European desc.ent.
In this chapter, we adopt a notion of pol itics that not only seeks to dissolve the Platonic binary
opposition that separates the public from the private, but also seeks to undo erasures of the
agency of marginalised peoples by acknowledging them as important and resourceful lead-
ers in the shaping of creolised societies, cultures, languages and identities. We argue that this
reconceptualisation of politics and agency is one of the key inputs that creolistics cou ld have
in unsettling the discipline of linguistics and the rest of the social sciences, because we assert
that all societies, cultures, languages and identities exhibit a dynamic interplay of wave after
wave of contact and restructuring.
The term ' identity' is normally used in the singular. We argue that th is reflects the nor-
malisation of an idealised, monolith ic and standardised notion of a single national language,
culture and identity that has been hegemonically imposed on the peoples of the world over
the past 500 years, since the rise of the nation state in Europe, the beginning of European
maritime colonial expansion and the consequent emergence of the colonial-era Creoles.
The language practices of speakers of Creoles and other non-standardised varieties world-
wide, however, are living evidence that in most human cultures and for all but the last
few moments in human history, pluri-culturalism, pluri-lingua lism and pluri-identification
have been the norm, rather than the exception that most linguists and too many creolists
asswne them to be. As do other users of non-standardised varieties, speakers of Creoles
more often than not move seamlessly through an extensive repertoire of linguistic, cultural
and identificational signifiers that defy any neat categorisation into a single language, cu l-
ture or identity. We have therefore chosen to speak of ' identities' rather than ' identity' in
this chapter, where we suggest that another important contribution that creol istics could
make to linguistics and the rest of the social sciences is to help de-naturalise static, exclu-
sive, hegemonic and colonising notions of mono-cultural ism, mono-lingualism and mono-
identification (Sh iva 200 I). This questioning of the notion of autonomous lingu istic system
problematises the term 'language' itself (Makoni & Pennycook 2006). In many cases, we
use the word 'variety' in this chapter instead, but we retain the tenn ' language' in a number
of instances for the sake of clarity.
We sometimes use the tenns 'colony,' 'colonial' and 'co lonisation ' as we ll. Most speak-
ers of Creole varieties live in territories that were economically and eventually mi litari ly
270
Identity politics
colonised by European nation states from the 15th cenmry onward, with most rece iving
their nominal political ' independence' during the 20th cenhlry. We argue that, by the hlrn of
the 21st cenhlry, most of these ' forn1er' colonies had been transformed into econom ic and
politica l neo-colonies by mu ltilateral agencies such as the World Bank, the International
Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization which were organised and have been
uti lised by the 'former ' colonial powers to re-assert their co lonial agendas. Colonisation
is most effective when it uses discursive power (which we often refer to as ' hegemony' in
this chapter), rather than coercive power, in such a way that the co lonised internalise the
epistemic and norn1ative practices imposed on them by the ir colonial masters and begin to
enforce the agenda of the colon isers on themselves and their peers. We also attempt to take
on board Mies, Bennholdt-Thomsen and von Werlhof's (1987) critique and re-formulation
of our understanding of colonial ism, which extends the scope of the targets for the system-
atic plunder unleashed by the colonia l process from the non-European descended peoples
who we traditionally see as the objects of co lonial exploitation, to two additional 'colon ies,'
i.e., nature and women.
14.2 Historical perspectives

Politics and identities are areas that have genera lly been avo ided by creolists and other
linguists, and this can be attributed to a number of factors. The diaposilif(Foucault 1980:
194) that constihltes the Western academy d ictates that those who do ' objective' scientific
work must operate as apolit ically and anonymously as possib le, so as not to allow their
polit ics and identities to 'contaminate' their methodologies and results. Over the past cen-
tury, the critica l literature on science as a concept (e.g. Bakhtin 1935; Whorf 1956; Kuhn
1962; Foucault 1972; Merchant 1980; Alvares 1992; Lakoff & Johnson 1999) has amp ly
demonstrated that Western science is only one among a host of equally valid, empirica lly
grounded and socially useful scientific traditions that have emerged among thousands of
d ifferent ethnic groups over the cou rse of human history, and that all of these traditions,
includ ing that of Western scienc.e, are saturated with personal and group subj ectivities,
identities and po litics. So, when creo lists and other academics in the Western trad ition
refuse to explicitly position what they say and write politically, their work is automati-
cally positioned by the dominant discourses of the prevailing systems of pol itical contro l,
such as patriarchy, ethnocentrism and capita l accumulation, to which Western science has
become generally subservient.
As a disc ipline, lingu istics has been less open than others (such as physics) to take
some of this criticism of the Western episteme on board. This is in no small part due to
the fact that Saussure, Chomsky and many of the other founders of modem lingu istics
consc iously and consistently strove as much as possible to distanc.e the study of language
from the human ities and the 'soft' soc ial sciences, in order to make it adhere to the ideal-
ised mathematical 'rigour ' of classical formal logic, which, in the ir minds, would be more
appropriate to the ' hard' physical sciences. Ironica lly, in the 20th century, just as the physi-
cal sciences, led by the physicists themse lves, were obliged by their data to question and
d iscard many of the non-empirically accountab le foundations of the Scientific Revolution
and the Enlightenment of the 17th and 18th cenmries and instead to embrace such non-
Platonic and non-Cartesian notions as relativity, ambiguity and indeterminacy, linguists
were proudly declaring their unquestioning adherence to an outdated rationalist ' Cartesian
Lingu istics' (Chomsky 1966, 197 1) that prides itself on reducing what should be studied in
language to an idealised, universal, decontexmalised, unambiguous Platon ic system which
271
Nid10las Faraclas
obeys an antiquated and simplistic forma l logic. Although this misgu ided attempt to make
linguistics a 'real' science persists as a major impulse behind what passes for acceptable
linguistic theory and practice today, the cracks in the Platonic and Cartesian edifices are
widening and deepening, open ing up new spaces from which creo lists and other linguists
can envis ion new ways of thinking about and studying language.
It is no accident that the study of Creole languages has been of crucial importance in
moving lingu istics beyond its Platonic and Cartesian understanding of knowledge in general
and of language in particu lar. In this connection, we consider Bakhtin 's ( 1935) critiqu e of
Saussurean linguistics, a critique which can be extended to most of the dominant theories of
language advanced during the entire 20th century, especially those put forward by Chom-
sky. Among the typical postures adopted by linguists that came under critical scrutiny by
Bakhtin are:
(i) Linguists' mono-/ectal obsession with an idealised, simplistic, non-variable system,

which erases the dialectal, variable and complex nature of all language.
(ii) Linguists' mono-logical obsession with the individual, which erases the dialogica/
connections among mu ltiple interlocutors and texts in space and time that typifies all
language.
(ii i) Linguists' non-dialectical obsession with static and decontextualised 'universals,' which
erases the highly dynamic, contextualised and dialectical agentive, political and identifi -
cational nature of all language.
One could easily argue that, among the world's languages, Creo les, especially the contact vari-
eties that emerged during the colonial era, are some of the least amenable to the mono-!ectal
(non-variable), mono-logical (non-perfonnative) and non-dialectical (non-agentive) forms of
analysis that typify the dominant paradigm in linguistics.
The sub-discipline of sociol inguist ics was originally 'banished' by Chomsky as largely
irrelevant to the 'serious' study of Universa l Grammar. As it has emerged in its modem
form since the 1960s, however, socio linguistics has become a magnet for creolists. Eckert
(2012) traces the trajectory of contemporary soc iolinguistics by identifying three non-
strictly chronologica lly ordered waves or approaches to the study of meaning in variation,
which include:
(i) A first wave, typified by the early work of Labov from the 1960s onward, that re-
established the study of variation as a valid linguistic pursuit, but mainly in relation to
very broad social categories.
(ii) A second 'ethnographic' wave, typified by the soc ial networking studies of Lesley Mil-
roy ( 1980), that allowed for the emergence of locally defined categories which could be
correlated to patterns of linguistic variation.
(iii) A third wave, typified by Eckert's own recent work, which moves the focus from struc-
ture and categories to agency and practice in order to study how language is deployed
in advancing social agendas and in constructing identities in specific communities of
practice and praxis.
We take the liberty here of re-interpreting Eckert's framework to focus on how sociolin-
guistics has successively intensified its questioning and subversion of the Platonic and Car-
tesian underp innings of modern linguistics, with particular emphasis on the important ro le
p layed by creolistics in the process whereby sociolingu istics has responded to Bakhtin 's
272
Identity politics
( 1935) overall critique of linguistic science. Eckert's three waves of sociolingu istics have
to one degree or another gone some d istance to address each of the shortcomings identified
by Bakhtin, with the first wave challeng ing the mono-lectal bias of modern lingu istics in
order to include variation as a leg itimate field of linguistic study; the second wave challen-
ging the mono-logical bias of modem lingu istics in order to include the audience, other
interlocutors and performance as a leg itimate field of linguistic study; and the third wave
challenging the non-dia lectica l bias of modern linguistics in order to include the articu la-
tion of political agency and identities through language as a legitimate field of linguistic
study. Each of these turns in the emergence of modern sociol ingu istics was motivated
to some degree by linguists' fa iled attempts to force the data from colonial-era contact
languages into the mono-lecta l, mono-logical and non-dialectical constraints of modem
linguistic science, includ ing Labov's ( 1969, 1972) and Wolfram 's ( 1969) studies of African
American English, which were instrumental in ushering in the first wave; Rickford's work
on Guyanese ( 1986) which was instrumental in ushering in the second wave, and Le Page
and Tabouret-Keller 's work on Belizean ( 1985), which was instrumental in ushering in the
third wave.
14.3 Critical issues and topics over time

Among the key discussions that have shaped the contours of the study of colonial-era con-
tact languages over the past 200 years are the Creole genesis debate and the related Creole
exceptionalism debate. As is the general case for discourse within Western academia, these
contentious discussions have been saturated with patriarchal, Eurocentric and economically
exploitative politics from their w1derly ing presuppositions to the ir fractious conclusions. Nev-
ertheless, creolists have usually taken part in these debates as if they were operating in a
vacuum, sheltered from the 'subjective' influences of their personal and collective politics
and identities. Following the dictates of their disc ipline, creolists have seldom challenged
the colonising impetus behind the ritualistic criteria that detern1ine who is allowed to partake
in these debates, the rules by which that participation is pern1itted to take place and what is
accepted as a valid contribution (Foucault 1972). Creolists have also tended to discount the
potential impacts that their inputs into these debates can have on the politics of colonial-era
Creole-speaking communities and on the identificational stances adopted or avo ided by the
members of those communities.
The Creole genesis debate is defined by at least four positions including:
(i) The superstratist stance, that privileges inputs from the colonising language as the deter-
minant factor in the emergence of the colonial-era Creoles.
(ii) The uni versalist stance, that privi leges the operation of a set oflanguage universa ls as the
detenn inant factor in the emergence of the colonial-era Creo les.
(ii i) The substratist stanc.e, that privileges inputs from the languages of the colonised as the
detenn inant factor in the emergence of the colonial-era Creo les.
(iv) The monogenesis stance, that privileges inputs from a single proto-language as the deter-
minant factor in the emergence of the colonial-era Creoles.
Underneath the apparent di vergence among these positions lie several points of disturbing
commonality.
All four positions are essentially mono-causal and mono-directional, attributing primary
importance to one causal factor above a ll of the others. This reflects a deeper mono-causal
273
Nid10las Faraclas
and mono-directional epistem ic bias in Western science which seeks to find a singular,
underlying and original sourc.e for all of the d iverse phenomena that we encounter at pre-
sent, which are assumed to have 'deve loped' directly from it (Merchant 1980). This search
for the ' magic bu llet' typ ifies Western sc ience, from the ' theory of everything' in physics
to Universa l Grammar in lingu istics. Feminist critics of Western sc.ience (Merchant 1980;
Shiva 200 l) have traced this tendency in part to a patriarchal preoccupation with lineage
and the identification of a single male ancestor from whom all members of a particu lar
group are descended, which has particular re levance for the family tree model in histori-
cal linguistics and its application by some (Chaudenson 2001; Mufwene 2001) to Creo le
varieties.
Given the contradictory results yielded by any attempt to account for the Creole facts
using any one of the four Creole genesis positions exc lusively, a growing number of cre-
olists have broken with this tendency to one degree or another, and have instead come
to a more multi-causal, multidirectional understanding of the emergence of the colonia l-
era Creoles. Some have proposed a more fem inist-insp ired matrix model which takes into
account multiple causa l factors which operate and intertwine in multiplex ways (Keesing
1988; Faraclas 20 12). That said, the theories of Cre.o le genesis that sti ll rece ive the most
recogn ition, exposure and d iscussion within the disciplinary confines of creolistics are those
which are mono-causally and mono-directionally superstratist, substrat ist, universalist or
monogenetic.
Another feature with important implications in terms of politics and identity that is shared
by all four of the positions which define the genesis debate is the erasure of marginalised
peoples as meaningful agents in the emergence of the colon ial-era Creoles. The superstratist
stance has almost always minimalised the inputs of all of those involved in colonial contact
situations, except for those ofEuropean-descended propertied men. This is sti ll very much the
case in the most widely recognised current versions of the superstratist position fornm lated
by Chaudenson and Mufwene from 2001 onward, who hold that the colonial-era Creoles are
nothing but dialects of their European lexifier languages. Universalists have for the most
part abandoned Bickerton's (1981 onward) radically Chomskian bioprogramme hypothesis,
which depended on the virtually complete erasure of both women and the languages of the
colonised in the creolisation process, in favour of w1iversa ls of language learn ing as the prin-
c ipal factor in the emergence of Creole varieties. But the agency and language practices of the
European co lonial classes is still privileged at the expense of those of marginalised peoples
in many of these new versions of the universalist stance, because the implicit asswnption
persists that during the colonial era, colonised peoples replaced their traditional mu ltip lex
and pluri-directional acquisitional schemas with a monolithic and mono-directiona l strategy,
which elevated one or another European colonial language to the status of their singular tar-
get for language learning.
The substratist stance ostensibly claims to acknowledge input on the part of the co lo-
nised, but the most generally accepted current version of the substratist position advanced
by Lefebvre from 1998 onward not only reduces the mu ltiplicity of non-European inputs
to that of users of a sing le West African language, but also effective ly reduces the agency
of co lon ised peoples to a mechanical proc.ess of re-labell ing . The most widely acknowl-
edged current version of the monogenesis stance is that advocated by McWhorter from
2000 onward. His African proto-Creole hypothesis also lim its the input of the colonised
into the emergence of the colonial-era Creo les to one or a few spec ific communit ies on the
Atlantic coast of Africa during the very earl iest years of colon isat ion, thereby erasing the
274
Identity politics
Table 14.1 Iterations over the centuries of the same underlying Platonic binary that underpins colonial
and neo-colonial discourse on the colonized and their languages, including Creole languages
People: {Colonisers vs. Colonised} Languages: {Colonising vs. Colonised}

15"- 16" C Reconquista: [Christian vs. Pagan) (Biblical/Written vs. VulgarNemacular)
17" C Calvinism: [Chosen vs. Damned) (Legitimate vs. Bastardised)
18" C Enlightenment: [Civilised vs. Savage) (Standard vs. Dialect)
19" C Romantic: (Natural vs. Monstmous) (Namral vs. Corrupted)
20" C Darwinist: [Advanced vs. Primitive) [Complex vs. Simplified]
20" C Universalist: [Developed vs. Developing) [Old vs. Young]
2 1• C Social Darwinist: [Competitive vs. Failed) (Viable vs. Unviable)
inputs of other non-European descended peoples, women and non-propertied European-

descended peoples on both sides of the Atlantic over the span of the several centuries that
fo llowed.
It is not only the agency of the margina lised peoples who created the colonial-era Creoles
that have been rendered invisible. Because they are largely spoken by colonised and margin-
alised peoples, because they are often spoken as languages of resistance, and because they are
minimally amenable to the dominant fonns of analysis that are pern1itted within the discipli-
nary confines of modem lingu istics, Cre.ole varieties themselves have been rendered invisible
as well, both in the eyes of linguists as well as in the eyes of their speakers. The colon ial dis-
courses that have served to erase the agency and labour of peoples of non-European desc.ent
have also served to erase the languages spoken by them. As shown in Table 14.1, whi le the
tern1s used to refer to the colonised and the ir languages, especially Creole languages, have
changed over time, the underlying mutually exclusive and conjw1ctively exhaustive Platonic
binary of [co loniser vs. colonised], which corre lates neatly with other binaries such as [true
vs. false] , [good vs. evi l], [important vs. trivial], [w1iversal vs. parochial], etc., persist up until
the present day.
In his survey of the emergence of creolistics as a recognised field of study, Holm ( 1988)
notes that while sporadic studies of the contact languages of the colonial era began in the 18th
century, it was not until the late 1960s that Creole languages themselves began to be recog-
nised by more than a handful of specialists as 'real' languages and the scholarly study of Cre-
oles began to be acknowledged as a legitimate area of academic inquiry ( 17- 50). Even after
it has become generally acceptable within their discipline for linguists to recognise Creole
languages as Saussurean/Chomskian linguistic 'systems' in their own right, the legitimacy of
Creole varieties has remained tentative. Until the 1980s, for example, it was sti ll a widespread
practice among linguists to oppose the set of Creole languages to the set of'natural'languages,
and today we often hear creolists themselves refer to Creoles as 'vernacular,' 'simpl ified' and
'young' languages, thereby (usually Wlwittingly) perpetuating dom inant colonial discourse
concerning the peoples of the colonies and neo-colon ies and their languages.

The consideration of Creo le languages by creolists and other linguists as a separate set of
varieties apart from the rest of the world's languages has g iven rise to the currently raging
275
Nid10las Faraclas
Creole exceptionalism debate. The most voc iferous proponent of Creole exceptionalism is
McWhorter (200 l onward) who claims that the grammars of Creoles are in several respects
simpler than the grammars of other languages. The most outspoken opponent to the idea of
Creole exceptiona lism is DeGraff (200 l , 2003 onward), who argues not only that Creole varie-
ties are structurally neither simpler nor more complex than other languages, but also that the
use of the term ' Creole' to denominate a language or set of languages is saturated with the rac-
ist and ethnocentric notions concerning the colonised and their languages listed in Table 14.1.
As mentioned in the section of this chapter that deals with definitions and terminol-
ogy, we fully acknowledge that the term 'Creole' is highly problematic and that to date
no one has been able to demonstrate that Creoles constitute a structurally distinct c lass of
languages. But instead of adopting a conventional anti-exceptionalist stance, we choose to
adopt a ' rad ical anti-exceptional ist' position that qu estions, unsettles and upends the basic
framework within which the entire debate has unfolde.d thus far (Faraclas 20 12). As we
have argued throughout this chapter, the fact that Creo le languages are, structurally at least,
no d ifferent from any other languages does not automatically mean that the colonial-era
Creoles are dialects of their European lexifiers and thus can be c lassified according to the
traditional family tree structure as 'daughter' nodes to one or another European ' mother'
node, or that the other conventional too ls used by lingu ists within the Platon ic and Cartesian
confines of their d iscipline can also be mechanically and unproblematically app lied to Cre-
oles. In the thoroughly Eurocentric tradition of the Enlightenment, where European stand-
ard ised norms masquerade as 'universa ls,' the resolution of racist binaries such as [white vs.
black] or [standard vs. Creo le] is only permitted in cases where those who are considered
'black' begin to behave as 'white' and where Creole languages begin to behave like stand-
ard languages. We break with this understanding to assert that the white/black binary, for
example, cannot begin to be resolved until those who have been considered 'white' begin
to regard those who have been considered ' black' as sign ificant historical, social, politica l,
econom ic, cultural and lingu istic agents, with important ideas and practices that need to be
acknowledged and taken on board by the rest of humanity, including those who have been
cons idered 'white.'
Creoles are unstandardised, living, heteroglossic languages (Bakhtin 1935), and time
and again, the linguistic analys is of Creole data has proved to be unusually difficult and
contradictory, often lead ing creol ists to question the tools provided by their European
standard-biased disc ipline to account for the extremely messy, ambiguous, contrad ictory,
context-dependent and multiple-voiced Creole facts in a coherent and responsible way.
We contend that the fundamentally Platonic binary of [coloniser's standard language vs.
colonised Creole] should not be resolved by permilling Creoles to be domesticated to the
point that they can a lso be a llowed into the c lass of ' respectable' standardised languages
which, because they are the artificial creation of grammarians and other symbolic e lites,
have proven in the past to be more amenable to domestication by the blunt tools of dominant
linguistic science.
Instead, we suggest that the logical conclusion to the Creole exceptional ism debate
shou ld include a complete overhau l of linguistics as a science, so that it can learn from
creolists and their struggles to make sense of Creole language practices in order to come
to grips with the fact that all of the world's non-standardised languages are fundamenta lly
messy, ambiguous, contradictory, context-dependent and multiple vo iced. This apprecia-
tion of the crucial contributions that Creo les and creolistics can make to linguistics as a
whole is necessary in order to equ ip linguists to make better sense of the language pract ices
276
Identity politics
of rea l living users of real living languages everywhere on the planet, rather than the ide-
a lised, mono-lectal, individual speaker of an equally idealised unambiguous and context
free language that those who do 'serious' linguist ics are supposed to contemplate from
their Chomskian armchairs. In this process, Creo les and creolistics can help lingu istics
to move beyond such sta le Platonic binaries as [langue vs. parole] and [competence vs.
performance].
Although most lingu ists wou ld agree that the speakers of Creo le languages still have
difficu lty acknowledging and va lorising these varieties, many of these same lingu ists
would also assert that they and their discipline have somehow moved beyond the colon ial
prejudices of the past. One only needs, however, to look at the ' league tables' constructed
by linguists of the world's languages to realise how little has changed and how invisible
Creole languages sti ll are. For examp le, the colonial-era English lexifier Creole Na ija
(a.k.a. Nigerian Pidgin) is spoken by half (but probably a greater proportion, and certain ly
an exponent ially growing proportion) of Nigeria's popu lation, wh ich, accord ing to United
Nations estimates (UN DESA 2015), reached 200,000,000 in 20 19. Yet th is language is
nowhere to be found on the lists of the world's largest languages, and is almost never
mentioned as one of the main languages of Africa, let alone as one of the world's major
languages.
According to the data in Table 14.2, which were extracted from Ethnologue (2018), Naija
should minimally rank today in at least 13th p lace, with some 100,000,000 speakers. IfNaija
is combined with the other colonial-era Afro-Atlantic English lexifier Creoles with which it
is at some level mutually intelligible, such as Cameroonian, Sierra Leonian Krio, some varie-
ties of Ghanaian Pidgin, Gambian, Equatorial Guinean Pichi, Jamaican, Gu llah, etc., (just as
was done on the chart for ' languages' composed of virtually mutually un intell igible varieties,
such as Arabic) into a single variety which might be called something like Afro-Atlantic
English lexifier Creole, it wou ld rank today at l lth with some 130,000,000 speakers, over-
taking Japanese and running neck-to-neck with German. Due to the rapidly growing volume
and spread of the West African and Caribbean diasporas, this variety is already one of the
most widely spoken languages on the planet, and given the high birthrates of the countries
where it is spoken, this variety is predicted to have more speakers than Russian (currently
ranked 7th) by 2050, when the population of Nigeria alone (projected at some 4 11 ,000,000)
wi ll surpass that of the U.S.A. (proj ected at some 398,000,000) to become the third largest
in the entire world after India (at some 1,730,000,000) and China (at some 1,460,000,000)
(UN DESA 20 15).
So, wh ile they are among the most important languages in the world in tem1s of the
number and geographic distribution of their speakers, Cre.o le languages and the study of
Creole languages are sti ll large ly marginalised and trivial ised by lingu ists and the general
public, including Creo le speakers themsel ves. Part of the colonia l legacy that continues to
haunt the modem Creo le-speaking nations of Africa, the Caribbean and elsewhere is the
exclusion of Creole varieties from pub lic and officially prestigious spheres of activity such
as education, the law, the media and government, with nothing short of devastating conse-
quences for Creole speakers at the ind ividual and co llective levels. Those for whom Creole
languages are an important means of expression are both expl icitly and impl icitly to ld
by those in positions of officially sanctioned authority that their creolised languages and
cultures are inferior and debased versions of colon ising standardised European languages
and cultures, giving rise to shattered identities and what Kamau Brathwaite terms: 'cu ltural
d isaster areas' (1984: 8).
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Nid10las Faraclas
Table 14.2 Rankings of the world 's 14 biggest languages (Ll , L2 and FL speakers combined) by size
in 20 18.
Rank 2018 Language Speakers

(LI, L2 and FL)
I English I, I 2 I ,000,000
2 Mandarin I, I 07,000,000
3 Hindi/Urdu 679,000,000
4 Spanish 513,000,000
5 Arabic 3 I 3,000,000
6 French 285,000,000
7 Russian 265,000,000
8 Bengali 262,000,000
9 Portuguese 23 7,000,000
10 Malay I 98,000,000
II German I 32,000,000
12 Japanese I 28,000,000
13 Kiswahili 98,000,000
14 Punjabi 93,000,000
Source: Numbers are from Ethnologue (20 18)
Although Creole speakers have created and continue to recreate traditions of constant, and,
in many cases, successful resistance to the imposition of colonising languages, cultures and
identities, institutions such as schools and the media have assured that this imposition becomes
internalised from an early age. In the fom1al education system, the ham1ful emotional effects
of this process are compounded by official language policies that punish students and teach-
ers for using Creole languages in the classroom, in flagrant violation of the most fundamental
princip le of education, which is to use w hat the students know best (their own Creole lan-
guage) to teach them what they do not yet know, as articulated in dozens of United Nations
declarations from the 1950s until the present (UNESCO 1953 and onward). The high rates of
attrition and low rates of success among students in these countries are in no small part due to
the fact that leamers'languages, cultures and identities are not acknowledged and/or valorised
in the schools.
Both individually and collectively, the political responses of Creole speakers to this state
of affairs manifest themselves through several modes of identification vis-a-vis the colonising
European language and culture, including: (i) identification, whereby Creo le speakers reject
their languages and cultures in favour of those of the coloniser; (i i) counter-identification,
whereby Creole speakers celebrate their Creole languages and cu ltures and reject those of
the coloniser; and (iii) dis-identification, whereby Creole speakers attempt to move beyond
Platonic binaries such as [coloniser vs. colonised] and [standard vs. Creole] altogether. As
observed by W.E.B. Du Bois (1903), in practice, most Creole speakers adopt all of these
seemingly contradictory stances simultaneously in a process that he calls ' double voicing' but
which we prefer to ca ll 'multiple voicing' in order to stress the fact that there are more than
two responses to colonisation and to highlight the politica l significanc.e of the identificational
spaces that Creole speakers create outside of the oppositional, zero-sum dynamics of the West-
em episteme.
278
Identity politics
Slow, but fairly steady progress is being made in integrating Creo les as languages of
instruction and in itial literacy at the primary, secondary and even the tertiary levels of for-
ma l education in many Creole-speaking commun ities worldwide, with sign ificant impacts
on the politics and ident ities of Creole users. The levels of acceptance of Creole varieties as
languages of importance among their speakers has increased significantly with their incor-
poration into the formal educat ion apparatus in places such as Aruba, Bonaire and Cura9ao,
where positive identification with local creolised cu ltures is a lso on the rise (Kester 20 I 0
and onward). In the South Pacific, the movement for the use of varieties of Me lanesian
English lexifier Creo le (such as Tok Pisin and Bislama) and other ind igenous languages in
the schools has expanded into a movement for broader decolonisation and social justice
(Faraclas et a l. 20 17). In the Caribbean, experiments with the use of Jamaican English
lexifier Creole (Carpenter & Devon ish 20 I 0) and Papiamentu Iberian lexifier Cre.o le in
Bonaire (Vita lini 20 18) have demonstrated that the identity crisis that has led ma le students
throughout the region to abandon primary and secondary schoo ls in alarming numbers
has the potential to be resolved, at least in part, by the use of their Creole varieties in the
c lassroom.
Movements for the recognition and use of Creoles in education and other fom1a l contexts,
however, are not without deep contradictions, since most of their proponents and most mem-
bers of the community question neither the artificial limits imposed by the dominant Enl ight-
enment discourses on politics and identities, nor the role of formal education in the co lonial
and neo-colonial processes. A major stumbling block encountered by those who wish to rec-
ognise and utilise Creoles in formal education is the conceptualisation of languages, identities
and culrures as part of a zero-sum game, whereby the use of Creole in the classroom is auto-
matically equated with the rejection of the official colonial language, along w ith the identities
and cultures associated with it. As a resu lt, in most cases programmes aimed at introducing
Creoles as languages of instruction and initial literacy in school have lim ited themselves to
a transitional model which preserves a zero-swn understanding of language, that is, they are
designed to provide students in the earliest years of pre-primary and primary education with
a finn foundation in reading, writing and basic academic concepts in the Creole language that
they speak at home, so that they will have better chances for success once they are evenrually
transitioned out of Creole classrooms and into official European language-only c lassrooms
before the end of elementary school, usually after one or two years of 'bridging' from Creole
to the official language.
In the case of the co lonial-era Creoles, this zero-sum game is even more pernicious,
since it is often the case that the official language of education is also the lexifier of the
loca l Creole, leading the publ ic to argue that the 'correct' standard European language
trad itionally used in forma l educat ion shou ld not be rejected in favour of a 'broken ' ver-
sion of that European language. It is therefore no accident that one of the first initiatives
to critically question the prevai ling wisdom among linguists and the genera l public that
mono-lingualism, mono-culmralism and mono-identification are the norm is now being
imp lemented on the Caribbean island of Aruba, where the local Creo le Papiamentu was
lexified mainly by Iberian languages, rather than by Dutch, the official language of educa-
tion. As in many, if not most colon ial-era Creole-speaking communities, in Aruba most
children grow up with more than one 'first' language and are able to ski lfully and effort-
lessly navigate a rich and diverse reperto ire of languages, cultures and identit ies. As a
resu lt of deep reflection on how to make the languages and identities promoted and uti lised
in the schoo ls match those of the students, the Proy ecto Scol Multilingual [Mu ltilingual
279
Nid10las Faraclas
School Project) (Croes 2010) was formulated and has been successfu lly implemented as
a p ilot programme to include a ll of the four main languages wh ich are spoken on Aruba
as languages of literacy and instruction, beginning with initial literacy and instruction
in Pap iamentu, the most commonly spoken home language, at the grade one leve l, then
expanding to literacy and instruction in Dutch, English and Spanish before the end of pri-
mary school. Besides breaking defin itive ly with the mono-l ingua l and bi-lingual models of
the past in favour of pluri- and trans-lingua l education, Sco/ Multilingual also rejects the
transitional model, because a ll four languages remain important languages of instruction
and literacy throughout primary and secondary schooling.
Another Enlightenment legacy of colonialism in Creole-speaking communities is the
assumption on the part of linguists, spec ialists in education and decision-makers that
before Creoles can be used in school, they must undergo the same processes of standardi -
sation that, accord ing to Bakhtin, have transformed living European languages into dead
instruments of hegemonic domination (1935). Ursulin Mopsus (in Faraclas et al. 2014)
comments on the situat ion in Martinique, where the significant strides that have been made
toward the incorporation of Martinican French lexifier C reo le into formal education have
been met w ith an unexpected and seem ingly contradictory publ ic response. On the posi-
tive side, instead of the rejection by the commun ity of the use of a 'corrupted' variety in
schoo l that such efforts have been met with in the past, the general reception to the use of
Martinican in the classroom has been quite positive, making Martinicans more comfortab le
with their Creole identities. On a much less positive note, however, there are widespread
misgivings about how the process is unfolding, with many complaining that the stand-
ardisat ion of orthography and usage which well-mean ing creolists and other academ ics
are imposing on Mart inican is 'kill ing' the language, depriving it of its 'soul' and 'spon-
tane ity' ( 192- 194). If we move beyond an Enl ightenment understanding of language and
education, however, these apparently incompat ible attitudes seem to fo ll ow a deeper logic.
As has been demonstrated in community-run programmes aimed at the use of varieties of
Melanesian English lexifier Creole and other indigenous languages in the schoo ls of Papua
New Guinea and Vanuatu, standardisation, even of writing systems, is largely unneces-
sary and usually requires the transfer of control over educational transformation from the
hands of the community to the hands of linguists and other 'experts,' not to mention the
re-imposition of colon ising understandings of what constitutes ' language' and 'education '
(Faraclas et al. 20 17).

One of the first challenges fac ing us as creolists in the future will be to come to some agree-
ment on how to replace the tem1s 'Creole' and 'creol istics,' in light of the fact that these
tem1s perpetuate both the colonial 'othering' of Creo le languages and their speakers, as well
perpetuating the notion of Creole exceptional ism. A clean break with Creole exceptiona lism
involves extending the paradigm-defying aspects of our work to other languages which are not
usually considered to be Creoles, first by continuing the studies that we have a lready initiated
on varieties such as African American English, Caribbean Spanish and other 'contact' varie-
ties, and eventually radically re-assessing a ll living languages as creolised varieties, that is,
varieties that have been significantly restructured over and over again by continuous contact
280
Identity politics
with other varieties. In order to carry out this task, we need to join forces with practitioners in
other areas of linguistics who are challenging the dominant discourses of our discipline, such
as th ird wave sociolinguists (Eckert 2018), second wave cognitive semanticians (Lakoff &
Johnson 1980, 1999) and those who are currently allempting to imagine a post-colonial lin-
guistics (Storch forthcoming).
Any carefu l study of Creo le varieties inevitably problematises and unsettles a host of
artificia lly static and neat assumptions, constructs, tools and definitions that have been
unquestioningly accepted in linguistics. It is time for us to use ou r experiences with
and und erstandings of Creo le languages to challenge and upend fundamental linguistic
notions, and to advance new ways of understanding how language works, including the
fo llowing:
(i) Linguistic contact and restructuring are the nonn, rather than the exception in human
history, i.e., all of the world's languages are 'contact languages' and have undergone
significant processes of 'creolisation' or restructuring.
(ii) Marginalised peoples, such as renegades, maroons, women, peoples of non-European
descent, non-propertied peoples of European descent, etc., have played and continue to
play a significant role in the emergenc.e of the colonial-era and neo-colonial-era Creoles
and their erasure from Cre.ole stud ies needs to be challenged and undone. For example,
women are key linguistic agents, and it is time to d iscard notions such as Bickerton's
'bioprogramme' (198 1), Chomsky's (1971) 'poverty of the stimu lus,' and many of the
dominant theories and w1iversals of language acquisition and transm ission, which gen-
erally invisibilise and trivialise the inputs of mothers and other women in the process of
language acquisition.
(iii) The fami ly tree model is grossly inadequate to represent the relationships among
languages, because it privi leges only one input into the contact situation: that of
the language on the node just above on the tree. This is particu larly true in the case
of colonial contact situations that involve conquest, such as those from wh ich the
coloni al-era Creoles emerged or those that gave rise to the ' Romance' languages.
When we apply it to the co lonial-era Cre.o les, the fam ily tree model cons istently
erases the mu ltip le inputs of women and non-European descended conquered peo-
p les and unduly exaggerates the singular input of the propertied male European-
descended conquerors.
(iv) Pluri-lingualism, pluri-culturalism and pluri-identification are the nom1, rather than the
exception in most Creole-using societies as well as in most other societies, and any
human encounter automatically involves the complex interplay among a diverse set of
linguistic, cultural and identification repertoires.
(v) Creo le users and most of the rest of humanity have more than one ' L I' and this fact
constitutes important counter-evidence aga inst 'universals' founded on the distinc-
tions made between such categories as Ll , L2 and FL, which themselves are based
on the idealised and standardised mono-lingualism, mono-cu lturalism and mono-
identification that serves as the norrn in neo-imperialist nation states and the ir ne.o-
coloni al empi res.
(vi) The cu ltivation of ambigu ity and the dep loyment of mu ltiple voicing strateg ies,
wh ich are widespread lingu istic practices among speakers of the colon ial-era Cre-
o les and many other languages, invalidate traditi onal models of communication
281
Nid10las Faraclas
as we ll as 'universa ls' of pragmatics, such as Grice's Conversational Postulates

( 1975).
(vii) Embodied imaginative logic such as metaphor is much more commonly utilised than
the traditional abstract fom1al logic of classical semantics to construct the linguistic
categories that humans use to understand the world (Lakoff & Johnson 1980). This fact
severe ly limits the capacity of conventional semantics to account for how speakers of
Creoles and the rest of the world's languages operationalise the relationships among
language, meaning and the world.
(viii) Perfom1ance, in both the Chomskian and theatrical senses, plays a central role in the
language practic.e s of colonial-era Creole users, and this is the result of important inputs
from West African language speakers into the contact situation. Chomsky's Universal
Granunar denies and trivialises this vital feature of living language, to the extent that
there is no syntactic slot in his framework that corresponds to the sentenc.e-fina l posi-
tion where such audience-engaging and performative items as ideophones and particles
regularly occur. The erasure of the crucial effects that audience and perfom1ance have
on all aspects of language from pragmatics to phonology needs to be challenged and
undone.
(ix) T he experience of colonial-era Creole speakers, who, as marginalised peoples have
been the target of the construction of binaries such as [white vs. black] and [developed
vs. developing], make the use of binary features in linguistics suspect. This is because
binary features are modelled after mutua lly exclusive and conjunctively exhaustive Pla-
tonic oppositions that artificially parse our understanding of the world in such a way
that makes us less accountable to the empirical facts, and more susceptible to hegem-
onic obedience to nonns and reflexive 'othering' of those who do not conform to those
nom1s.
There is also a need for creolists to challenge and transgress the artificial political and iden-
tificational distinctions that have had profound ly damaging effects on the peoples of such
regions as the Caribbean, West Africa and the South Pacific. Taking our inspiration from the
subversive work of specialists in cultural studies from the Caribbean such as Glissant ( 1997)
and Benitez-Rojo ( 1992), we could, for example, begin to bridge the chasm that seems to
separate the 'Spanish' 'non-Creole speaking' Caribbean from the 'Anglophone' or ' Franco-
phone' 'Creo le speaking' Caribbean, by includ ing all of the varieties spoken in the Caribbean
today as outputs from a common matrix defined by the social conditions that impacted the
colonial-era contact situation throughout the region (Lipski 2005; Faraclas 2012). This will
require vio lating the disciplinary and institutional bow1daries that have shackled us in the
past, and will oblige us to make a concerted effort to integrate the insights of a growing body
of paradigm-unsettling work be ing done in history, political science, sociology, anthropo logy,
cu ltura l studies, etc. and to expand our interests beyond the particular geographically, linguis-
tically or culturally defined regions that the colonial traditions of our specific universities have
designated as our 'tur f.'
In conclusion, we invite our fellow creolists and linguists to begin to visualise a future
w here the vibrant and resistant linguistic scienc.e s and practices of the speakers of Creole
varieties might be acknow ledged and valorised, both as sources of inspiration and as models
of grounded praxis in the process of the construction and celebration of new scientific para-
digms designed to broaden and deepen our understanding of languages and identities as open,
dialogical, dialectal and dialectica l living systems.
282
Identity politics
Further reading
Beckles, H. & Shepherd, V. 2000. Eds. Caribbean slavery in the Atlantic World. Kingston: Jan Randle;
Oxford: James Currey; Princeton : Marcus Weiner.
For those creolists who would like to begin to re-orient their understanding of colonial history to a
more Afro-Atlantic perspective, this edited volume is an invaluable resource.
Burke, L , Crowley, T. & Girvin, A. 2000. The Row/edge language and cultural theory reade1; First edi-
tion. London: Routledge.
This compilation of excerpts from key theorists is recommended for creolists who want a comprehen-
s ive overview of critical thinking about language and the study of language.
Linebaugh, P. & Rediker, M. 2001. The many-headed hydra: Sailors, slaves, commoners and the hidden
history of the revolutionary Atlantic. Boston: Beacon Press.
This volume provides an excellent staning-otr point for creolists interested in studying the role of
marginalised peoples in the emergence of the creolised societies of the colonial era.
Related topics
Creoles, Education and Policy; Identity and Mixed Languages; Pidgins and Creoles: New
domains, new technologies; Post-structura list Approaches to Language Contact; Cre.o le Arts
and Music; On the History of Pidgin and Creole studies
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Alleyne, M. 2002. The construction and representation of race and ethnicity in the Caribbean and the
world. Barbados: University of the West Jndies Press.
Alvares, C. 1992. Science, in The development dictionary, edited by \V Sachs. London : Zed Books:
2 19-232.
Bakhtin, M. M. 1935 (198 1). Unitary language, in The dialogic imagination: Four essays, edited by
M. Holquist and translated by C. Emerson and M. Holquist. Austin and London: University ofTexas
Press.
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15
CREOLES, EDUCATION
AND POLICY
Denise Angelo
15.1 Introduction
There is increasing international agreement on the importance of mother tongue and multi lin·
gual education for student success, engagement and retention (see Ball20 11; UNESCO 20 18).
Without a doubt, positive recognition of creoles in the c lassroom enhances creole speakers'
educational experiences too. In creole-speaking contexts, education can additionally func-
tion to heighten sociolinguistic awareness and acceptance of creoles which is often lacking
due to the long shadows cast by dominant, standard/lexifier languages. It is rare that educa-
tion systems grasp the pedagogical impl ications and opportunities of creoles and proactively
tackle mu ltil ingual responses to benefit their speakers, despite the obvious potential benefit
for these cohorts. As a resu lt, for students who speak creoles rather than standard languages
of classroom instruction, a lack of recognition and respect for their language background are
constant systemic hurdles to attaining equal educationa l opportunities and language rights
(Migge et al. 2010a; Siege! 2006a, 2006b). Education policy guides how education services
interact with students'language backgrounds, includ ing the use of a mother tongue and/or the
addition of other languages. Policy can thus be a prime tool for breaking the entrenched cycles
of educational exclusion experienc.ed by creole-speaking populations and for achieving the ir
educational aspirations. To support creole speakers' education, the field of language planning
for minoritised languages is highly re levant, particularly status planning both with the general
community and with teachers who are critica l players in implementing education policy (e.g.
Baldauf & Kaplan 2005; Kaplan & Baldauf2008).
15.1.1 Definitions and scope

For the purposes of this chapter, the expression cr eole includes not only creoles but also related
contact language varieties such as extended pidgins and mixed languages. Non-standard dia·
lects are not included in this treatment.
In its broad sense, ed ucation includes the entire sector, from po licy makers and administra·
tors through to institutions such as universities and schools. School education (or schooling)
notionally encompasses the early years, primary grades and high school (or secondary school),
although how these are designated and provided vary widely across jurisd ictions. Teaching
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Croo/es, educatio11 and policy
can be divided into cur r ic ulum, mandated target content knowledge and skills; pedagogy, the
manner and methods of classroom delivery; and assessment, ways of gauging swdent learning
and achievement. The curriculum is typically divided into (school) subj ects, such as mathe-
matics, science, history, etc. Medium of instr uction refers explicitly to the language in which
curricu lum subjects are delivered; an important and often overlooked implication is that this
language itself is often not taught. A ta rget language, on the other hand, is a recognised object
of teaching and learning and usually a school subject. A standard language serves official
purposes and is often deemed to increase swdents' academic and economic opporwnities and
is typically socio-economically aspirational. Minoritised language reminds us that in many
language ecologies, a creole is the dominant language in terms of speaker nwnbers but its
educational, economic and po litical agency is limited. Official refers to what is intentionally
resourced or enacted by education systems. In this chapter, (education) policy means the overt,
top-down, officially imposed documents and practices that influence education. Community-
led and/or bottom-up processes (McCarty 2008) will be attributed specifically. Imp lementa-
tion refers to the purposeful actions that support the enactment of education pol icy in schoo ls.
Broad distinctions about how creoles are uti lised in education programs, systematised by
Siege! ( l999a), are continued here: Formal, official instrumental programs use the creole
intentionally as a medium of instruction; awareness programs foster recognition of the creole;
accom modation allows the creole but it is not an official part of the curriculum. I also intro-
duce the concept of a contact language ecology, the constellation of languages, including the
creole, in a g iven local ity: An ecological approach is a practical heuristic for engaging com-
munity and education stakeholders with concepwalising the multiple language-in-education
responses fundamental to cre.ole-speaking contexts (Angelo 20 l l ).
Th is chapter does not attempt to reproduce the existing fine treatments of the topic of
creoles in education, which inc lude overviews of programs of different types and the chal-
lenges surrounding them (see particu larly Migge et al. 20!0b; Siegel 20!2). Rather, this chap-
ter focuses on bringing the fie ld into the current m ultilingua l turn in applied linguistics and
education (May 20 14) through a contact language ecology perspective.
This chapter first highlights critica l issues affecting creoles in education before moving to
a discussion of multilingual education that addresses the typical elements of contact language
ecologies, namely creole, standard and heritage languages. Selected case studies then illustrate
real-life education and policy configurations. The chapter closes on fuwre research directions.
15.2 Critical issu es

Like other minoritised languages, creole languages suffer from a prestige and power asym-
metry with standard languages which marginal ises them and privileges the others in educa-
tion, economic and political systems (Tollefson 20 13; Blommaert 1999; Shohamy 2006). As a
result, unid irectional bi lingualism is typical with creole speakers required to learn the stand-
ard language, but not vice versa. creole languages, if indeed they are recognised as autono-
mous and valid languages at all, are heavily disfavoured as a medium of instruction and are
rarely taught as a target language in schools and higher education settings (i.e. typica lly not
studied or cow1ted towards academic resu lts). Likewise, creole speakers' language needs in
the classroom are also frequently ignored, resulting in a fai lure to employ the creole mother
tongue and/or to intentionally teach a standard language when it is used for classroom instruc-
tion. This state of affairs is unpacked further in the following sections: first, briefly, from the
perspective of all minoritised languages in education; then, in more detai l, according to issues
specific to Creoles.
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Den ise Angelo
15.2.1 Minoritised languages in education

The history of education provision by nation states has by and large revolved around national,
standard languages and not minoritised languages such as Creoles (Wright 20 12). This his-
torical tendency is amplified in many education po licies which steer attention towards goals
and outcomes and away from the language(s) that support them, which particu larly affects
speakers ofminoritised languages. For example, an international development goal is liter acy
(UNESCO 20 16). However, literacy-oriented policies are often silent on students' actual lan-
guage repertoires and how these relate to the language(s) in which they are to develop lit-
eracy. Thus modern literacy education policy is often conce ived with monoglot and standard
language ideologies (Siege! 2006b): Speakers of hegemonic, dominant, standard languages
of literacy may benefit, but speakers of other languages, and their educational needs, are ren-
dered invisible or even positioned as fai led literacy learners. Typically, minoritised languages,
including Creoles, are subject to incorrect and prejudic ial beliefs that j ustify the status quo,
name ly their exclusion from education (May 2012). Less heard are the advantages ofminori-
tised languages in education for their speakers, such as how a mother tongue is the best under-
stood medium of instruction or how the vernacular inspires the speech community to engage
actively with schooling.
15.2.2 Special f eatures of creoles in education

One set of notions that pertains specifically to creoles in education is misrecogn ition due to
the creole-lexifier relationship. The perception of some shared linguistic material between
them makes it possible for creoles to be misrecognised as a (poorer) version of their lexifier.
This phenomenon of mistaken identity is a constant for cre.oles but not usual for other kinds
of minoritised languages. A mistaken identity can effectively render the creole entirely invis-
ible as an autonomous language in its own right, which means it catmot be considered for a
role in speakers' education (Siege! 2010: 385). Furthennore, if creole speakers are not seen as
speaking a separate language, then they cannot be recogn ised as learners of the lexifier, or as
having bi lingual resources in the creole and the lexifier. For th is reason, language awareness,
a constellation of linguistic and sociolinguistic understandings, is considered a necessary ena-
bling condition for recognising a creo le, which in turn is a necessary condition for deciding its
role in students' education (Angelo & Carter 20 15). Even if recognised, for education purposes
a creole is still often compared with its lexifier, unfavourably, especially in countries where
the lexifier is the norm for classroom instruction. Sometimes, the creo le-lexifier relationship
wi ll be invoked as the rationale for purposefully keeping a creo le out of education, on the
debatable grounds that it is the creo le which interferes with acquiring the standard, rather than
the insufficiency of the language curricu lum and pedagogy for the creole-speaking cohort
(Migge et al. 2010a: 11- 12).
Another set of creole-specific issues relates to the socio-historical provenance and contested
positioning of Creoles compared to the other languages in their language ecology. In most
language ecologies, Creoles occupy a different socio-cultural niche to both standard languages
and to other traditional or heritage languages. These kinds of languages are more likely to have
inherited settings as a result of their different provenance in contrast to creoles whose origins
lie in relatively recent language contact and shift processes. This means that a standard language
is much more likely than a creole to have an inherited continuous and assured place in educa-
tion institutions, simply on the basis of expectations set by past history. Modem national educa-
tion systems exhibit a strong tendency to favour inherited language settings, and so standard
languages, many with a colonial history, predominate. On the other hand, traditional cu ltural
288
know ledges and practices tend to have a long history ofbeing embodied in other languages, nei-
ther the standard nor the creole, but perhaps the language(s) oflocal Indigenous peoples, or the
original languages of enslaved peoples, indentured labourers and/or immigrant ethnic groups.
Regardless of the present-day proficiency with which creole speakers speak their traditionaV
heritage languages, they may sti ll be a powerful source of cultural, re ligious or spiritual identity
for creole speakers that reach back through time. Consequently, traditionaVheritage languages
might attract advocacy in education, for the purposes of ma inta ining or reviving cultural iden-
tity and practices, and standard languages might be supported as the (inter-)national educational
default, but also for their espoused socio-econom ic advantages. Discourses promoting either or
both of these language types can be at the expense of a role for a creole mother tongue, and so
may even be a fac.tor in overlooking creoles in language and education policy.
These issues, plus the litany of others that attend minoritised languages, continually under-
value creole languages thus reinforcing the ir exclusion from education. Official programs that
acknowledge creoles - accommodation, awareness and/or mother tongue instrumental - there-
fore require active and ongoing status planning to establish and/or maintain acceptance by
the speech conununity itself (plus the broader general public). This ensures a linguistic real-
ity check on the language means for anaining educational ends, and constitutes the basis for
recognising goals like learning a heritage language and/or the standard language (Siege! 1997,
1999b).
15.3 Ecological framework for cr eoles in multilingual education

For speakers of creoles, education almost always represents a heteroglossic, language con-
tact context, given that they are learners of additional, more prestigious languages, socio-
economically and/or cu lturally. For speakers of minoritised languages, mot her tongue-based
mu lt ilingua l ed uca t ion is the recommended approach, whereby schooling, including literacy,
commences in the mother tongue and transitions, partially or entirely, to a standard language
at a negotiated year level (UNESCO 2018). However, this general model for m inoritised lan-
guages fails to capture the sociolinguistic and socio-historical distinctiveness of creoles and
their language ecologies. In contrast, the ecological framework here assists stakeholders to
develop a forn1 of mother tongue-based multilingual education that takes account of the creole,
(socio-economically valued) standard language(s), and other possible languages of cultural
significance by considering:
(i) How the creole will be recognised and intentionally harnessed for students' benefit,
as a medium of instruction, the focus of a language awareness program or otherwise
accommodated.
(ii) How the add itional standard language(s) will be taught as a second or foreign language.
(iii) How other cu lturally significant language(s) will be included in the curriculum.
Each language element of the ecological framework - creoles, standard languages and other
significant languages - is unpacked next to illustrate their diverse parameters in different contexts.
15.3.1 Creoles in multilingual education

Some creoles m ight be spoken by almost everybody as their first language (e.g. Seselwa
on the Seychelles), but other Creoles might be spoken by a section of the populace, perhaps
Indigenous peoples (e.g. Kriol and Yumplatok in Austral ia) and/or another particular ethnic
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Den ise Angelo
or historica l group ing of people, such as immigrants. Sometimes it is commonly spoken as a

second language and lingua franca (e.g. Tok Pisin in Papua New Guinea), perhaps with fewer
mother tongue speakers.
For a creole to be harnessed for official schooling purposes, its recognition and acceptance
is paramount. Educators and the community must be onboard with its classroom benefits.
This presupposes language awareness and advocacy, perhaps developed through community-
based linguistic activities, or del ivered as part of purposefu l language status platming, per-
haps through teacher education institutions. Given a modicum of awareness about a creole,
the proportion of creole speakers in each school cohort, in the cow1try as a whole and/or
amongst a political elite will also influence the traction for education responses and the ir
shape. Implementing classroom programs requires trained teachers who are confident with
the selected approach, which might entail spoken and/or written proficiency in the creole or
only an awareness of it. Other constraints include the availability of materia l resources such as
practical spell ing systems, curriculum documents and teaching and learning resources across
the curriculwn.
Accommodation programs allowing informal use of a creo le in the classroom require
the least intensive investment in people and materials. They may promote an overtly positive
continuation of local commw1icative practic.es, and contribute to language awareness. Or they
may amow1t to little more than a laissez faire attitude of not actua lly barring teachers and!
or students from using their creole inforn1ally, perhaps to assist with learning through the
standard language. Although definitely a step better than banning the creole from school,
accommodation is essentially an unre liable approach to classroom learning because it is usu-
a lly unofficia l, without explicit curricu lum or staffing commitments. As a result, classroom
content can be left to bil ingual individuals to interpret for creo le-speaking students, typically
in an ad hoc fashion, thus continuing the margina lisation of the Creo le from teacher training,
employment strategies and education discourses (i.e. no development of common terminology
for curricu lwn content like maths, literacy, etc.).
Awareness programs are a status planning too l. Despite their many pennutations, they all
share the goal of recogn ising that the creole is a va lid language and a separate language from
the lexifier, and consequently that creole speakers are learners of the lexifier as a second/
foreign language. Language awareness for creole contexts may inc lude elements such as
respectful accommodation of the creole, contrastive analysis of the creole and the lexifier,
and critical analyses of power accorded to the languages represented in the local language
ecology (S iege! 2006b; Alim 2010), and may be ta ilored to teacher-student language asym-
metries and reciprocal learning (Angelo & Carter 20 15). Language awareness is thus a vita l
too l for recognising creoles and establishing creole-speakers' language and service rights in
education contexts.
Instrumental programs intentiona lly plan for the use of the creole as a mediwn of instruc-
tion for the purpose of! earning classroom curricu lum. Most creole instrumental programs run
for the first few years of school and include early mother tongue literacy, and then transition to
the standard language. Individual program parameters vary according to the number of years
a creole is the mediwn of instruction, the point at which another language is introdu ced, the
curriculwn subjects allocated to each language, etc. The resourcing of instrumental programs
differs, with some programs given specialist support and training, full curriculum in the creole
plus teaching and learning resources, while others require teachers to independently develop
the entire learning program that they deliver in the creole. Instrumental programs are most
likely of a ll to raise contention, as they invest most heavily and visibly in the creole for educa-
tion purposes.
290
15.3.2 Standard languages in multilingual education f or creole speakers

The national standard language is often the Jexifier of a country's creole(s), but not a lways,
and some countries cater for more than one national language in the ir education system. Ongo-
ing interaction between the standard and the creole might foster post-creole continua, a lin-
guistic context that might further obscure the language learn ing required for creole speakers
to a !lain proficiency in the standard. At the level of the local language ecology, students might
experienc.e the socio-economically prestigious, standard language of government institutions
as a foreign language only used in the c lassroom, but it could also be part of the fabric of
everyday life, a common second language, or perhaps just for a local elite. Regard less of its
p lace in the local language ecology, proficiency in the standard language will be an espoused
educational aspiration and this language will be a major player in the education policy space.
Concerns over academic achievement in the standard language can undenn ine classroom ini-
tiatives for the creole vernacular: It is a commonly held but mistaken belief that the greater
the time spent submersed in the standard language the beller the curricu lum learning results
will be (Siegel 2006a).
Education policies for standard languages, which intentionally respond to creole speakers,
are mindful of recognising and respecting students' language backgrounds while explicitly
teaching the standard language as a second or foreign language. The language of instruction
for teaching the curriculum for each school subject is overtly stated and expressly taught as a
target. At the very least, this requires language awareness programs that foster acceptance of
the creole amongst educators and community members so that the need for a target language
teaching methodology (i.e. second or fore ign language teaching) is established and accepted.
Where the standard language is used as the mediwn of instruction, content and language inte-
grated learn ing (CLIL) approaches support creole speakers to Jeam both the target, standard
language and the content of each subj ect. A staged language curriculum in the target stand-
ard language a lso focuses allention on the fact that creole-speaking students are learning the
standard language as a language add itional to their creole mother tongue. Second language
proficiency tools can be developed to track creole speakers' language Jeamingjourneys. These
steps intentionally steer human and curriculum resources towards the provision of an additive
language learning environment. Teaching the standard as a second/foreign language might
even be the on ly pragmatic educationa l response in the short tenn, perhaps due to community
sentiments; ongoing, unstable language shift processes; early stages of creole language instru-
mental isation; or the linguistic diversity of the student population. So even though standard
language programs or early exit bilingual programs would generally be considered less desir-
able than mother tongue or extended bi lingua l programs, in many contact language ecologies,
creole-aware, targeted standard language teaching would go well beyond the Jaissez faire
ignoring or submersing of creole speakers in a standard language classroom, and may be the
only practical response currently available (e.g. Winer 2006; Angelo & Hudson 20 18).
15.3.3 Heritage and other significant lang uages

in multilingual education f or creole speakers
Languages of ethnic and cu ltural identity are powerful motivators. Creole speakers might
therefore overtly value other languages which are used less prominently in the local ecol-
ogy in terms of speakership, but which serve as languages of identification and affi liation,
such as Indigenous languages or other cultural heritage languages. For example, Indigenous
vernacu lars with their connections to traditional lands, knowledges and practices might be
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Den ise Angelo
considered intrinsic to an Indigenous group's recognition, se lf-determination and cultural

survival (McCarty & Coronel-Mol ina 2017). Alternative ly, ethnic groups within a creole-
speaking speech commun ity might be heavily invested in their heritage languages as a vital
part of their own rel igious practices or formal education pathways, where they live or in the ir
ancestr al countries. Such languages of cultural significance might have a high profi le in the
community and m ight generate considerable advocacy. Where there is little awareness of a
creole, but affi liatory traditional/heritage language(s) have high visibility and prestige, it is
even possible for outsiders to believe that chi ldren are speakers of the higher profi le trad i-
tional/heritage language(s), rather than their own creole mother tongue.
15.4 Case studies

The following case studies cover a selection of contexts for creole speakers in a range of
program types, language ecologies and socio-political settings. Real-world dynam ics affect
creoles in education so these grounded snapshots reveal some of the variability in whether and
how programs are operationalised and maintained .
15.4.1 French-lexified creoles in the Indian Ocean

French-lexified Creoles are spoken by the majority of their popu lations in the independent
countries of Seychelles and Mauritius and the French overseas region (departement) of Rewl-
ion. These countries have plantation histories, with their populations historically drawn from
a wide variety of backgroWlds, particularly Africa, Ind ia and Asia. Each country has different
(sets of) official languages and is on a different mu ltilingual education pathway: The Seychelles
has an official mother tongue instrumenta l program, Mauritius treats Kreol as an optional lan-
guage subject, whi le Reunion implements predominantly language awareness programs.
Seychelles
Around 95% of the popu lation of the Seychelles speak Seselwa, the French-based creole, an
official language here along with English and French (M ichaelis & Marcel 2013). The creole,
Seselwa, also called Kreol, is used in mother tongue-based education which commenced here
in 1982 to stop miseducation in colonial languages not understood by children. High literacy,
graduation and continu ing education rates have been associated with this initiative (Laver-
such 2008: 378- 3 79). An offic ial trilingual language policy informs the Nationa l Curriculum
Framework. All learn ing until Key Stage 2 (Year 3 of primary schoo l) is in Seselwa. At this
jw1cture, a standard language, English, is added as a language of instruction for three subjects
and it remains the mediwn of instruction throughout secondary school. French, another stand-
ard language and the lexifier, is taught as a foreign language (Ministry of Education 2013:
16-19 particularly).
Today, the position ofSese lwa in education is still far from assured even though the mother
tongue-based language po licy has had positive educational outcomes and significant language
p lanning initiatives have been undertaken to build the prestige of the local creole and to
counteract prejudice. A major destabi lising factor is that Seselwa is not the language of inter-
national companies or powerful governments on whom the Seychelles depends directly and
indirectly for grants, investment and tourism. Th is socio-economic inequal ity complicates the
position of the local creole in education, often Wldenn ining it overtly or covertly (Laversuch
2008). The transitional positioning ofSeselwa in education reportedly contributes to its lack of
292
academic prestige amongst secondary students and teachers: After the early years of school ing
Seselwa is used only in non-academic subjects until it is dropped altogether, potentially bol-
stering perceptions that it is un important educationally. Furthermore, if fom1a l experiences of
Seselwa texts and discourse are predominantly for early didactic purposes, then speakers may
also feel insecure in using it fonnally as adults (Jones & Singh 2005: 128- 130). Seychelles
teachers are a lso susceptible to negative views of Seselwa and almost th irty years on may still
question the efficacy ofSeselwa medium education (Fleischmann Schwa12 & Nick 2018).
Mauritius
In contrast to the Seychelles, Mauritius only has one official language, English. Kreol Morisien
(Mauritian Creo le) is spoken by most people (86% of the population in the 2011 Census), a
percentage which has been steadily increasing since 1944 when these records began. English
is the main language of education and adm inistration, wh ile the lexifier of Kreol, French, is
socially prestigious (Baker & Kriegel 20 13; Owodally 20 14). Since 2012, Kreol has been
included in school curriculwn as one of the 'heritage language' options alongside Arabic, Urdu
and Hindi, amongst others. As a result there is now a suite of school resources for grades 1- 7
of teacher guides and student workbooks (e.g. Mauritius Institute of Education (MIE) 20 17).
There are also useful reference works including a grammar (Police-Michel, Carpooran & Flo-
rigny 2011 ), a monolingual Kreol dictionary (Carpooran 2009) and a guide to the standard
orthography (Carpooran 2011 ), all written in Kreol.
Although a latecomer to Mauritian school curriculwn, Kreol is now included, but amongst
the heritage language options. Whereas the other heritage languages are affi liated with spe-
c ific ethno-rel igious groupings and are often target languages for students, Kreol is the most
commonly spoken language on Mauritius, is spoken proficiently across all the different ethnic
groupings and rarely needs teaching. Pedagogically Kreol could be more useful for mother
tongue literacy or as a medium for del ivering classroom curricu lum. As Kreol is just one of
many heritage language options, it is unl ikely that parents affi liated to specific ethnic groups
would select Kreol over their ethnic heritage language and so its rate of selection (as an
optional school subject) may not refle.ct its large speakership (Owodally, 20 I 0, 2012, 20 14).
Reunion
Reunion is an overseas jurisdiction (departement) of France and French is the only offic ial lan-
guage here. The French-lexified Reunion Creole is spoken by around 90% of the population,
as well as by a diaspora population in France (Bollee 2013). Rew1ion Creole is one of four
Creoles recogn ised in 2000 by the French govenunent with the status of a ' regional language' ,
or Langue Vivante Regionale (often abbreviated to LVR in education documents). Th is legal
status pennits ReWlion Creole to be officia lly utilised in schools, and it was inc luded as one
of the target subjects in the secondary teacher accreditation examinations, CAPES, from 2003
(see Bolus 2010: 93- 95 for an accowll in a different jurisdiction). In Reunion, awareness of
Creole has been growing, as has its status as a marker of local Reunion identity, but initiatives
to include it in schools have moved slowly. Lofis la lang Kreol la Renyon advocates for Rellil-
ion Creole, including its potential benefits in schools (e.g. Gauvin 2009). It is also possible to
study Reunion Creole at the undergraduate and masters levels at the Universite de La Reunion.
There is a departmental plan for implementing LVR programs in Creole and Academ ie de
La Reun ion (the education council of Reunion) hosts a LVR website, with links to laws, pol-
ic ies and Creole language and cu ltural teaching resources, such as early childhood rhymes
293
Den ise Angelo
and storybooks, local culture and history and comparative grammar. In 2016, there were 267
LVR qualified teachers, del ivering awareness programs or language teaching in cyc les 1- 3
(early childhood, primary and junior secondary school), including twenty-six early years
bilingual programs (Georger 2016: 4). Language awareness assists students with discrimi-
nating between their Creole and the target French language, the lexifier and official medium
of instruction. In Reun ion, it has been suggested that these separate linguistic systems might
be obscured by the pronounced variation in Creole (Bollee 20 13) and/or hybridisation of French
and Cre.o le (Lebon-Eyquem, 2010, 2015). Pre liminary evaluations suggest students'
metalingu istic discrimination abilities and standard French test results benefit from LVR
approaches (Georger 2016: 6).
15.4.2 M elanesia
The Melanesian nations of Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands are highly
linguistically and ethnically diverse nations. Each has an English-lexified creole (or expanded
Pidgin), Tok Pisin, Bislama and Pijin respectively, wh ich functions as an important lingua
franca and increasingly as a mother tongue. Since gain ing their independence from colonial
rule (between 1975- 1980), each country has pursued its own education policies. In education
docwnents from this region, the term 'vernacular' sometimes refers exclusively to traditional
Indigenous languages, (i.e. not including the p idgin/creole), a potential source of misunder-
standing for researchers.
Papua New Guinea

In the 1990s, Papua New Guinea was considered a regional leader in providing early child-
hood education in the local language chosen by each community, which then in children 's sub-
sequent school years transitioned to English medium of instruction. This initiative included
Tok Pies, local traditiona l vernacular languages, as well as the English-lexified creole, Tok
Pisin, and Hiri Motu, another creole lingua franca. Both creoles are officially recognised
as national languages alongside English (Smith & Siege! 2013). Tok Pisin is expanding as
a mother tongue, and it has progressed considerably along an instrwnental isation pathway,
with public use in parliament, print and broadcast med ia, widespread signage, etc., and rela-
tively high levels of literacy. The early impetus of mother tongue medium education floun-
dered for a time with a move to English-on ly medium of instruction announced in late 2012
(Lo Bianco 2015: 605; Honeyman 2015). However, recent curriculum documents signal a re-
commitment to using students' 'home language' in elementary classes (the first three years)
and Tok Pisin is utilised frequently to word target curriculum content (e.g. Department of
Education (PNG) 2015). Complex reactions to the introduction of formal Tok Pies and/or
Tok Pisin programs in elementary schoo l have been reported from the outset, even though
student resu lts are reportedly better in some instances (Malone & Paraide 2011; Siege! 1996).
Within the one community setting, stakeholders can have different perspectives on the matter,
with students, more than their teachers and parents, considering Tok Pisin helpful as a bridge
into English learning in one study (Devette-Chee 2013, 20 15). Teachers generally rece ive
little professional development about managing languages for curricu lum learning and are
understandably uncerta in about how 'bridging' from first languages to English shou ld be
undertaken exactly. They nevertheless demonstrate considerable faci lity for harnessing their
own and their students' language repertoires, including Tok Pisin, for classroom learning
(Franken & August 2011).
294
Vanuatu
In Vanuatu the English-lexified creole, Bislama, has the statu s of national language, and it is
also one of the country's three official languages, along with the colonial languages English
and French. Bislama is spoken w idely as a lingua franca and increasingly as a first language,
and is employed frequently in the public domain in broadcast and print media. Until recently,
school ing was offered in English or French mediwn, parents choosing between options (if
actually available in their local ity) (Meyerhoff20 13; Willans 20 15). Impetus for a mu ltil ingual
language approach to education has, however, been growing here in recognition of the varying
language ecologies across the nation. There is now some support for del ivering Years l - 3 in
a mother tongue, be it a local traditional Indigenous vernacu lar and/or Bislama, whi le young
students simultaneously also learn one of the other official languages, English or French, in a
gradua l add itive dual language approach 'ademap lanwis sloslo' (Willans 20 18; Vanuatu Edu-
cation Support Program (VESP) 20 17). Even though early exit transitiona l bil ingual programs
are generally not considered optimal from an academic research point of view, this has been
seen as a turning point for Vanuatu education which has struggled to define mu ltil ingual, post-
colon ial education policies outside of its English and French legacy (Vandeputte-Tavo 2013;
Wi llans 20 l l, 201 4, 20 17). Considerable curriculum development has been undertaken in Bis-
lama, w ith a su ite of early years syllabus materials now written entirely in Bislama (e.g. Min-
istri blong Edukesen mo Trening 20 17). For some decades, Bislama has been a subject at the
tertiary level at the University of the South Pacific. Nowadays, it is the language of instruction
in a nwnber of courses in Vanuatu Studies, plus there are two semester length courses about
Bislama. Bislama reference materials include an extensive reference grammar and dictionary
(Crowley 2003, 2004).
Solomon Islands
Pij in functions as a lingtia franca across this island nation and, like the creoles in the other
Melanesian nations, speakership is growing. In towns it is the language of everyday life and
the mother tongue of the younger generations who might not speak a traditional Indigenous
language. In rural areas, most people gain at least some exposure to Pijin through their vis-
its to urban centres, radio programs, etc. Pij in appears seldom in print media, but is used in
social media often w ith idiosyncratic spellings. English is the official language of the Solomon
Islands, but it is not widely spoken, particu larly not outside urban areas and its use is confined to
official purposes or education. As the lingua franca, Pijin operates as a de facto national language
(Jourdan 1990, 2013). It is becoming a language of increasing value and utility for Solomon
Islanders because it provides a wider communicative reach, facil itating inter-island economic
activity and marriage arrangements (Hicks 20 17). Despite its lingua franca function and mother
tongue status for some, complex and conflicted positions towards Pij in are held amongst uni-
versity students and lecturers (Angeli 2008) and high school students and teachers (Tanangada
20 13), who are still largely not supportive of its use instead of English for fonnal purposes such
as education. Nevertheless, attitudes towards Pij in as a language for the classroom are report-
ed ly softening perhaps because of the growing number of urban youth who speak it as a first
language (Jourdan 2007, 2008, 2014). Education Department documents now also explicitly
include Pij in with traditional Indigenous languages as 'vernaculars' (e.g. Ministry of Education
and Human Resources Development (MEHRD) 20 l 0: 7) and short- and long-term plans refer to
the development of vemacular medium of instruction programs, particularly in early childhood
settings (e.g. Ministry of Education and Human Resources Development (MEHRD) 2016: 6, 9).
295
Den ise Angelo
15.4.3 Australia
Australia is a settler-colonial society where English is the historical colonial language and the
modem dominant language, including in education. Under twenty of the over two hundred tra-
ditiona l Indigenous languages originally spoken on this continent are still acquired as a mother
tongue (S impson & Wiggles worth 20 19). Two English-lexified creoles, Kriol and Yumplatok
(also known as Torres Strait Creole and Broken) are spoken by Indigenous Austral ians in parts
of the north, most ly as a mother tongue. While both these have been recognised for around
four decades other more localised Creoles and varieties ensu ing from recent language shifts
are slowly gaining acknowledgement too (Angelo et al 2019a: 116- 119). Two instrumental
bil ingual programs, one utilising Kriol in plac.e for two decades, the other of shorter duration
using Torres Strait Creole (as it was then known), have been reported in the literature (Siege!
1999a) but both ceased in the 1990s due to lack of system support.
To date, Creole languages in Australia have not received consistent or systematic attention
through Indigenous languages or education policies (e.g. Se llwood & Angelo 2013). Cur-
rently, early childhood settings, particularly pre-schools, are most likely to overtly encourage
the use of Indigenous students' first languages, inclusive of creo les, but this is largely at local
discretion (e.g. Department of Education Training & Employment (DET E) (Qld) 2013). The
national Framework for Aborig inal languages and Torres Strait Is lander languages acknowl-
edges that an Indigenous creole could be a legitimate language for study (Australian Curricu-
lwn Assessment & Reporting Authority (ACARA) 20 16) although the document discourse
more strongly evokes traditional Indigenous languages. Policies here also struggle to differ-
entiate between creoles and ethnolectsldialects of English spoken by Indigenous Australians
(e.g. Sandefur 1985). Overall, education initiatives typically focus on raising awareness of
Creoles and contact language ecologies, recognising students' creole mother tongues, and the ir
status as second/foreign language learners of English (Angelo 20 13; Angelo & Carter 20 15).
The invisibility of creole-speaking student cohorts remains a prime concern, particularly since
the 2008 advent of national high stakes standardised tests in English which distract from man-
aging students' first and second language proficiencies for their classroom learning (Angelo
20 12; Macqueen et al. 20 19). Various in-community language awareness initiatives have been
conducted to counteract the invisibility of creoles and their ecologies. The Community Ver-
nacular Language Poster projects develop a visualisation of loca l language use with commu-
nity members (Angelo et al. 20 19b). A Language Awareness Continuwn describes a pathway
for increasing language awareness in education settings, and has contributed to initiatives such
as the Critical Language Awareness curriculum for a senior high school English subject imple-
mented with Indigenous students from a variety of contact language backgrounds (Angelo
2006 cited in Carter et al. 2020). At the start of 2020, four schools in the Northern Territory
were officia lly utilising Kriol in an Indigenous Languages and Cultures curricu lwn pathway,
a positive recognition of Kriol (Department of Education (NT) 20 17). There has also been a
recent resurgence in publication of children's literature in Kriol (Meigim Kriol Strongbala
2020). Nevertheless, there is no tertiary level course on Kriol or Ywnplatok in an Australian
university at this point in time.

This chapter examines multi lingual educat ion and policy settings for creole speakers from
an ecologica l perspective. This ecological approach offers rich opportunities for translational
research looking at how each language is operationalised for students' educational benefit.
296
Crooles, educatio11 and policy
Baseline inforn1ation is requ ired about classroom learning needs of creole speakers in a
variety of contemporary education settings and language ecologies. How do srudent language
repertoires affect their classroom engagement and achievement? In this era of big data, how
much of this story is revealed or obscured in the data accessible to the relevant educational
jurisdiction (e.g. srudents' proficiencies and achievement data in each language)?
Rich docwnentation and evaluation of programs that intentionally craft classroom teach-
ing for creole speakers is of great assistance, especially how program designs fit particular
language ecologies and how they map to classroom curricu lum learning. Curriculum learning
should be at the heart of program evaluation, be it accommodation, awareness, instrumental
and/or multilingual (mother tongue, standard as an add itional language and/or heritage lan-
guage). How do such programs interact with policy, curriculum, pedagogy, assessment and
training (i.e. where and how are they embedded in pol icy and practice)? Teachers are pivotal:
They can w iden or close the gap between education policy and implementation, so how do
teachers acrually work with creole speakers in the c lassroom? What difficulties do teachers
themse lves experience in supporting their creole-speaking srudents' leaming and what do they
believe would assist their teaching?
Language awareness can be seen as a pivotal step in recognising the existence of a creole as
an autonomous language, but srudies are yet to confirm that creoles do indeed have common
language awareness pathways and trajectories. We need quality, contextua lised information
about language awareness programs that tells us what content has been taught and how (e.g.
through what language, by whom, to students of what age, with what language proficiencies,
for how much time, with what resources, etc.) and how it relates to curriculum learning. At the
very least this wou ld assist in gauging their potential applicability in other contexts.
Schools are a meeting place where educators and training instirutions, students and their com-
mWlity, government policy and wider society come together. These stakeholders may have var-
ied educational backgroWlds, language proficiencies, identities and ideologies. Researchers and
educators working with creole-speaking communities would benefit from publications describing
and evaluating initiatives that enable such diverse stakeholders to engage in constructive dialogue
about the creole and its language ecology and speakers' educational aspirations. Commwuty lan-
guage awareness is often seen as the lynchpin for initiating and sustaining programs for creole
speakers, so what kinds of information have commwuty members found useful?
Further reading
Siege!, J. 2012. Educational approaches for speakers of pidgin and creole languages, in Harnessing
linguistic variation to improve education, edited by A. Yiakoumetti. Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang,
259-292.
This chapter describes education programs from around the world that are specifically designed for
students from creole and expanded pidgin speech communities.
Migge, B., Leglise, I. & Banens, A. 2010. Creoles in education. A discussion of pertinent issues, in Cre-
oles in education: An appraisal of current programs, edited by B. Migge, I. Uglise & A. Battens.
Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1-30.
T his overview o f creoles in education illuminates historical and current issues and provides a road-
map to guide development, implementation and evaluation of creole school programs.
Hebblethwaite, B. 20 12. French and underdevelopment, Haitian creole and development. Educational
language pol icy problems and solutions in Haiti, Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages, 27(2),
255-302.
Language policy has excluded the creole mother tongue from education in Haiti with deleterious
social, economic and academic ramifications.
297
Den ise Angelo
Higgins, C. 2010. Rais ing critical language awareness in Hawai'i at Oa Pidgin Coup, in Creoles in edu-
cation: An appraisal of current programs, edited by B. Migge, I. Uglise & A. Bartens. Amsterdam:
John Benjamins, 31 - 54.
Initiatives to counteract stigmatisation of Pidgin (Hawai'i Creole) are taking a critical language
awareness approach into schools and community.
Morren, R (2010). Trilingual education. On the islands of San Andres, providence and Santa Catalina, in
Creoles in education: An appraisal ofcurrent programs, edited by B. Migge, I. Uglise & A. Battens.
Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 297- 322.
T his chapter outlines a sequential multilingual response to education in Kriol, an English-lexified
mother tongue, Standard English and Spanish, the official language of Columbia, and provides illus-
trative examples of Kriol program components.
Related topics
Identity Politics, Mobility and Migration; Indian Ocean Creoles; Austral ia and the South West
Pacific; Child Acquisition of Pidgins and Creoles; Pidgin and Creole Ecology and Evolution
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16
NEW IDENTITIES AND
FLEXIBLE LANGUAGES
Youth and urban varieties
Ellen Hurst-Harosh
16.1 Introduction
Multilingual ism has been suggested as the African lingua franca (Fardon and Fumiss 1994: 4).ln
postcolonial African countries, as elsewhere, linguistic complexity has led to a strong research
tradition focusing on multilingualism, particularly multi lingual urban centres as sites of !in·
guistic mixing, and the study and description of what have been variously described as urban
vernacu lars (McLaughlin 2009), emerging lingua franca (Makoni, Brutt-Griffier and Mashiri
2007), or 'mixed languages' (Finlayson and Slabber! 1997, 2003; Der-Houssikian 2009).
These urban vernaculars are also sometimes corre lated with languages of the 'youth ' (Beck
2010; Makalela 2013), which go by acronyms such as AYLs (African Youth Languages, the
preferred term in this chapter), AUYLs (African Urban Youth Languages), AYLPs (African
Youth Language Practices), and include named linguistic practices such as Sheng, Tsotsitaal,
Nouchi and Camfranglais (Nassenstein and Hollington 2015; Kiessling and Mous 2004).
Kiessling and Mous (2004) focused on these youth languages and argued that they are
a man ifestation of what Castells (1997) defines as 'project identities' ('when social actors,
on the basis of whichever cu ltura l materials are available to them, build a new identity that
redefines their position in society and, by so doing, seek the transformation of overall social
structure', Castells 1997: 8 in Kiessling and Mous 2004: 313) amongst African youth forging
new non-ethnic national identities.
In the end, the youths create a new local language community, a new ''loca lity,"
which cuts across obsolete boundaries of ethnic languages and contradicts the purism
of the colonial language regimes.
(Kiessling and Mous 2004: 332)
In their perspective, AYLs enable youth to transcend traditional ethnic barriers. However, as
described earlier, the line between vernacu lar and youth style has often been blurry in the litera-
ture, and it is important to separate youth practices from vernaculars when considering the types
of identities that different language practices are tied to. Identities here are defined both as social
categories and as features of an individual (Fearon 1999), and this understanding of identity is
influenced by social constmctionism and critica l realism, and takes the position that identities
are partly socially constructed but individuals also have agency within social stmctures.
302
New identities mrd flexible languages
This chapter will clarify the difference between youth language and vernacular (urban)
languages in African cities, the identities associated with them, and will furthennore consider
w hether e ither of these phenomena can be classed as 'mixed'languages in the way understood
by literature in the global north, particularly considering the interface with Pidgin and Cre.ole
studies. The chapter will make the case that while youth and urban language overlap in a
number of ways, they are different phenomena. While urban vernacu lars are a resu lt of contact
and used to transcend ethnic language distinctions, youth language is the product of deliberate
manipulation.
16.2 Persp ectives on AYLs

Hurst-Harosh and Kanana (2018: 3) describe AYLs as
language resources, registers or styles uti lized by a mu ltilingual youthful population,

and which fonn part of a repertoire, in which young people may also have access to
vernacu lars, 'standard' forms such as those taught in national education systems, and
indigenous languages spoken in the family and commun ity' .
Features of AYLs include:
• Extreme mu ltil ingualism in the source of linguistic resources, includ ing local African
languages as well as colonial languages and influences from popu lar culture such as hip
hop music;
• Innovation in lexicon, inc luding neologisms and borrowing (mainly from other African
languages and European colonial languages), accompanied by semantic transformation
and metaphor;
• A subversive relation to colon ial languages, wherein they borrow from colonial languages
but uti lise semantic transformation, or they are based on colonial languages but manipu·
late lexicon and some morphology.
(Hurst 2020)
In add ition, Hurst (2020) suggests that AYLs are used primari ly by males, often have links
to crim inal argot, are associated with urbanity and modern ity and feature extral inguistic
style involving wider commun icative strategies such as clothing styles, gestures, body
language, ways of wa lking and so on, wh ich serve to communicate modern, streetwise
ident ities.
Examp les of AYLs include the following: In South Africa the AYL is generally referred to
in linguistic research as Tsotsitaal, which originated with an Afrikaans-base in Sophiatown,
a rac ially mixed suburb of Joharmesburg in the 1940s, and is associated with tsotsis - urban
criminals (while taa/ is the Afrikaans word for 'language'). Today it is present in all the prov-
inces of South Africa, and literature has observed different lingu istic 'varieties' ofTsotsitaal,
for example isiZulu, isiXhosa, Setswana and Sesotho-based Tsotsitaa ls. Sheng in Kenya origi-
nated in poor residential areas ofNairobi, Kenya, sometime between the 1930s and 1970s. The
name Sheng is an acronym for 'Swahili-English slang' (G ithinj i 2006: 444), and it is based on
Swah ili, although recent research indicates other linguistic varieties may be emerging. Cam-
franglais is spoken in Cameroon, and is thought to have originated as a language of crimina ls
in the 1970s. It has now become widespread amongst youth (De Feral 2006; Schroder 2007:
282). It goes by severa l alternative names (Langage de bandits de Douala, Pidgin French,
303
Ellen Hurst-Harosh
Franglais, Camspeak, Francanglais). Grammatically, it can be used via Cameroon Pidgin

English or via French (SchrOder 2007).
The term Nouchi originally applied to a social category of street gangs or 'juvenile delin-
quents' in Abidjan, the largest city in Cote d'Ivoire (Ploog 2008: 253). It is based on Ivoirian
French, although other Ivoirian languages are involved. According to Bout in and Dodo (2018: 58):
From the point of view of form or structure, the links between Nouchi and French
are much more obvious than those between Nouchi and Dyula, or Baule or Bete. Yet
Nouchi is the outcome of an Ivorian urban multil ingua lism that has been in existence
for several decades. The French used as the syntactic base of Nouchi is a French
which has long been marked by the African languages of the Cote d' Ivo ire, and is
already independent from European French.
The term Nouchi now refers to ' the local [Ivoirian] linguistic identity, including non-marked
daily use of spoken, non-standard French ' which Ploog (2008: 253) calls 'Nouchi-French ' .
Other examples of AYLs include Luyaaye of Kampala, Uganda (Namyalo 20 17), Imvugo
u 'Umuhanda from Kigali, Rwanda (Nassenstein 2015) and various youth practices in Nigeria
(Oloruntoba-Oju 2018). Yarada K'wank'wa is found in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (Hollington
20 15), Kirw1di Slang in Bujumbura, BurWldi (Der-Houssikian 2009), Sncamtho in Zimbabwe
(Ndlovu 2018a) and Chibrazi in Malawi (Kamanga 2014). And yet, many more examples
remain unstudied (Hollington and Nassenstein 20 15).
In some cases researchers claim that these AYLs are becoming first languages, urban ver-
naculars, and languages of wider communication. However, a distinction needs to be made
between these AYLs and existing urban vernaculars in African cities.
16.2.1 Difference between urban vernaculars and youth languages

McLaughlin (2009) distinguishes between urban vernaculars and youth or spec ialised lan-
guages. She describes urban vernaculars as 'most often dominant African languages that show
evidence of contact with a fonner colonial language, but not the colonial (or official) lan-
guages themselves' (McLaughlin 2009: 2). She provides, inter alia, the following examples as
case studies: urban Wolof in Senegal; urban Lingala in the Congo basin; Swahili (the regional
vernacu lar in East Africa) in Oar es Salaam, Tanzania and Bujumbura, Burundi; and Akan in
Accra, Ghana. She further states that some of these urban languages have 'domains of use
that expand beyond the city. Wolof in particular has expanded to fill the role of a national
lingua franca in Senegal' (McLaughlin 2009: 2) and that in some cases the languages that
became urban vemaculars also became regional lingua francas (McLaughlin 2009: 8). On the
other hand 'youth and other specialized languages' (McLaughlin 2009: 8- 10), are described
as 'exclusive languages' that are a ' resu lt of processes of social differentiation'. The notion
of youth languages as differentiation is reproduced in a nwnber of studies of AYLs includ-
ing Kiessling and Mous (2004), who utilise Hall iday's ( 1976) concept of ' antilanguage' to
describe AYLs. Halliday uses the tern1 'altemation' rather than differentiation, but he focuses
on the status of anti languages as set up in opposition to the norm:
An anti-language, however, is nobody's ''mother tongue"; it exists solely in the con-

text of resocialization, and the rea lity it creates is inherently an altemate reality, one
that is constructed precisely in order to function in altemation.
(Ha lliday 1976: 575)
304
Focusing on languages spoken by prisoners and criminals, he states that ' The anti-language
arises when the altemative real ity is a cowiter-reality, set up in opposition to some established
nonn' (Halliday 1976: 576).
McLaughlin suggests that AYLs are 'short lived' and change rapidly, and are characterised
by lexica l borrowing, often from other languages or slang varieties and argots (McLaughl in
2009: 8- 9). However, despite these features, she goes on to claim that Sheng is an example
of a youth language that has been adopted by the general population and become an urban
vernacu lar itself. The contestation in this chapter is that this status is currently occupied by
urban Swahili, and that Sheng remains a register of speaking this urban vernacular. Kanana
and Kebeya (2018: 32) argue that whi le Sheng departs from standard K iswahili, 'these devia-
tions in grammatical features reftect the restructuring of the urban informal Swahili that is
spoken in Kenya'. Sim ilarly, a chapter in McLaugh lin (2009) on Nouchi (Kube-Barth 2009) is
claimed to be a 'good example of a youth language that has evolved into an urban vernacular '
(McLaughlin 2009: 15), yet Boutin and Dodo argue that the urban vernacular in Cote D'Jvoire
remains Jvoirian French (see earlier quote).
As an illustration of the argwnent that a youth language such as Tsotsitaal can be described
as a register, Mesthrie and Hurst (2013) provide the following examples of the sentence 'do
not go to town today' in, first, standard isiXhosa (la); second, two urban isiXhosa equivalents
( I b and I c); and a further six examples of the same sentence using Tsotsitaal.
(I) (a) Musa uku-ya e-do/oph-ini namhlanje

NEG INF-go LOC-town-LOC today (Std Xhosa)
(b) Su-ku-ya e-dorp namhltmje
NEG-INF-go LOC-town today (Urban Xhosa, with NEG contraction)
(c) Su-ya e-town namhltmje
NEG-go LOC-town today (more informal Urban Xhosa, with INF loss)
(d) Su-vay-a e-dorp
NEG-go-FV LOC-town (Tsotsitaal register of urban Xhosa)
(e) Su-qond' e-dorp-i ftmrduk rvtma
NEG-go LOC town-LOC today
(f) S-uku-phike/-e/a e-dorp vtmdag
NEG-INF-frequent (v.)-APP LOC-town today
(g) Su-yi-beth-e/a e-torvu11 namhltmje
NEG-OC-go-APP LOC-town today
(h) Suku-yi-bethel' e-dorp vtmdag
NEG-OC-go LOC-town today
(i) U-nga-phikelel-i e-dorp
2-NEG-frequent-NEG LOC-town
'Do no go to town
today.'
Despite some variation, the authors make the case that the grammatical frame of the Tsot-
sitaal examples closely follows or accords with that of the urban isiXhosa examples, which
depart from the standard variety through contraction and morpheme loss. On this basis, they
argue that the main departure of Tsotsitaal from urban isiXhosa is in the lexicon, making
register a suitable definition. They furthermore propose that: 'T he base of a tsotsitaal itself
is not a standard variety, but always a partially restructured urban one' (Mesthrie and Hurst
2013: 125- 126). T hey suggest that Tsotsitaa l draws on the most urban syntax, but that in terms
305
Ellen Hurst-Harosh
of lex is, only some words are relexical ised, so many lexica l items are also provided by the
vernacu lar.
As a register, youth language can exhibit a lithe grammatical features of an urban vernacu-
lar w hich has evolved in conditions of mu ltilingualism such as Ivoirian French, urban Swahil i
or urban isiZu lu, as it utilises the vernacular as the base language. Yet the features typical of
youth language - semantic manipulation, metaphor and lexical borrowings and neologisms-
are more specific to the youth register of speaking the vernacular.
A number of authors fall into the temptation of conftating urban and youth language. Beck
(2010: 24) for example distinguishes between 'old' urban languages such as Wo lof, and 'new'
urban languages, of which she says, 'While they have a definite connotation of be ing youth
languages, they are showing an increasing tendency to develop from youth languages into
urban languages'. She names Sheng in Na irobi, Lugha ya Mitaani in Oar es Salaam, Tsotsi-
taal in Cape Town and Johannesburg, Camfranglais in Cameroon, Indoubil in Kinshasa and
Lubumbashi, and Nouchi in Abidjan. As we have seen, however, researchers working on these
AYL registers tend to argue that they are based on the urban vernaculars, rather than becoming
urban vernaculars themselves.
On the other hand, Makalela (2013: 112) in his research in Johannesburg takes exception
to the use of the tern1s Tsotsitaal 'which means "language of a thug"', and Flaaitaal 'which
means "street-" o r "smart language'", and advances that:
I use the labe l "kasi-taaf' to refer to evolved forms of both Iscamtho and Flaaitaal/
Tsotsitaal in order to account for weakening boundaries between Sotho, Ngun i,
Afrikaans and English language forms and to understand how its speakers, who
claim kasi-taa/ as their home language, redefine their identities. Therefore, kasi-
taal, which means a language of the locat ion or township, is preferred to emphasise
weaken ing boundaries between languages in space rather than to refer to a social
behaviour as the previous labels [Tsotsitaal/Fiaaitaal and Iscamtho) suggested.
In this case, I would contend that kasi-taa/ is a term that represents the urban vernacular in the town-
ships of Johannesburg, while Tsotsitaai/Fiaaitaal would be registers thereof. Makalela in his analy-
sis does not distinguish between the youth register and the urban variety, thus confiating the two.
16.2.2 AYLs as mixed languages?

This confusion in the literature has led to claims that youth languages are mixed languages.
For example, Ethnologue categorises Iscamtho (a regiona l name for South African Tsotsitaal
from Johannesburg) not as a Pidgin but as a mixed language. The question of whether urban
vernacu lars are m ixed languages depends on the definition of m ixed language. The defin i-
tion of 'mixed language' in the literature generally refers to a 'bilingual m ixture, w ith split
ancestry' (Matras and Bakker 2003: I). Bakker proposed the following restricted definition
of mixed languages: 'languages in which component parts are from distinct language fami lies
or branches' (Bakker 2013). For example, in a mixed language, the vocabulary may be drawn
from one language and the grammar from another, unrelated language; or noun phrases may
be drawn from one, and verb phrases from another; or everyday vocabu lary may be drawn
from two different languages. Bakker says 'Mixed languages are stable and should be distin-
guished from spontaneous language mixture (code-switching) in bilingual communities' (Bak-
ker 20 13). He also suggests that languages with more than average lexical borrowing such as
English, do not fit the m ixed language definition.
306
A broader definition of m ixed language comes from Thomason (200 I) who says a mixed
language is a case where lexicon and grammar do not derive primarily from the same source
language. T his definition includes Pidgins and Creo les, while Bakker 's definition does not - as
T homason allows for vary ing levels of fluency in the source languages, and so m ixed lan-
guages in her sense could arise from conditions of contact, whi le Bakker 's definition assumes
full bil ingual fluency in the two source languages. T homason refers to Bakker 's type of mixed
language as 'bilingual mixed languages'. Finally, Matras (2000: 79) suggests that 'mixed lan-
guages differ from conventiona l cases of contact in the density of different contact phenomena
and their cumulative effect on the overall structure of the system'.
However defined, the assumption is that mixed languages are exceptions to the idea that
in most languages, vocabu lary and grammar derive from a single source. This idea itself is
problematic as evidenced by research on language practices in highly multil ingual communi-
ties. In practice, Africans growing up in mu ltil ingual contexts do not necessari ly separate their
language use out into separate monolingualisms, and are not necessarily fluent, bi- or mu lti-
lingual in the languages in qu estion. They may have what Blommaert (2010) problematically
describes as 'truncated' knowledge of the different languages involved in a vernacular (prob-
lematic because ' truncate.d ' implies lacking or insufficient). So existing definitions of mixed
language are not adequate for these contexts. An adapted defin ition from Thomason may be:
A mixed language is a case where some features of lexicon and grammar do not
derive primarily from the same source language and may be drawn from two or more
languages, in which speakers have a range of proficiency [my definition].
However, although th is definition may apply to urban vernaculars such as those found in Afri-
can urban centres, it may be too broad, as it could be applied to all types of code-switching and
borrowing practices, as well as Pidgin and Creoles (see a lso Sippola in th is volume).
T he question remains whether a 'mixed language' such as an urban vernacular of Johan-
nesburg's townships could be considered to transcend ethnicity as Kiessling and Mous (2004)
suggest, or whether ethnicities persist in communities as categories for linguistic and social
d ifferentiation. Current research implies that while the urban vernaculars arise from contact
and may lead to ethnic levelling, AYLs are a result of manipu lation, not contact, and ethnicity
remains a key indexical resource.
For youth growing up in Southem Africa's highly multi lingual urban centres, there are some indi-
cations that ethnicities are becoming less linguistically salient - for example Finlayson and Slabbert
( 1997) in their article 'We Just Mix': Code Switching in a South African Township' describe a code-
switching practice between the related languages Southem Sotho and Setswana, alongside English
and Afrikaans, and they suggest that an interlanguage has developed which is a merger between the
two African languages. Similarly, in Soweto, part of metropolitan Johannesburg, residents speak
Soweto Zulu (Gunnink 2014), a mix ofisiZulu, Sesotho and English. Aycard (2014) has shown that
this mixture is the urban vemacular in White City, Soweto, and further suggests that:
the mixed urban speech analysed in the case of White City is only a local reflection of
the larger urban variety of Zulu found around Johannesburg, and sometimes referred
to as Johannesburg Zulu or Soweto Zulu.
(Aycard 2014: 63)
Yet in both cases, these 'm ixed languages' are the vernacular, not the youth register, and are
spoken by everyone in the township, not just the youth.
307
Ellen Hurst-Harosh
An AYL such as Tsotsitaal, as described, is a stylised register of speaking the urban

vernacu lar - so Tsotsitaal may use the urban vernacu lar as its grammatical base - as do urban
isiXhosa in Gugulethu, an isiXhosa-dominant township in the Cape Town metropole (Mesthrie
and Hurst 2013); urban isiZu lu in Kwamashu, an isiZulu-dominant township in the Durban
metropole (Hurst and Buthelezi 2014); or an urban ' mix', for example in the case oflscamtho
in multilingual Soweto which is based on the mixed urban vernacular (Aycard 2014). English
and Afrikaans often provide logica l co1111ectors and discourse markers in the urban vernaculars
(Dewnert 2013); while the syntax may involve code-switching or may be based on one region-
a lly dominant language. A speaker drawing on the Tsotsitaal -stylised register then replaces key
lexical items with relexicalisations from Tsotsitaal. Today, Tsotsitaal is an amorphous stylistic
practic.e that is present in all of South Africa's languages includ ing isiZu lu, Sesotho, isiXhosa,
Afrikaans, Setswana, mixed varieties such as Soweto Zulu, and even English (see Mesthrie
and Hurst 20 13; Mesthrie 20 14; Hurst 20 15; Ditsele and Hurst 20 16). It can be described as
a stylised register 'used "through" another language' (Ntshangase 1995: 291) - whichever
language is the first language of its speakers.
Kioko (20 15) highlights how the base language or grammatical frame of Sheng was in i-
tially Swahil i, but that the use of Sheng has spread beyond Nairobi and in the process Sheng
has developed ' regional varieties' - he gives the example of a Kamba-based Sheng in Macha-
kos cow1ty, in the Eastern Province of Kenya. Namyalo (20 17) similarly observes regional
'sub-varieties' of the Kampala youth language Luyaaye, which are based on the area language
'such as Kabale youth language variety based on Rukiga, Gu lu youth language variety based
on Achol i among others' (Namyalo 2017: 226), but stresses that these sub-varieties borrow
heavily from the main variety of Luyaaye from Kampala wh ich is based on Luganda.
In each AYL case, there have been very few research findings to suggest that youth lan-
guages are develop ing new 'mixed' syntax. If code-switching is present, it is present in the
urban vernacular, such as Soweto Zu lu (Mesthrie and Hurst 20 13). The few studies which have
made claims of granunatical features specific to youth languages, over and above the features
of the urban varieties they are based on, inc lude Gwmink (20 14), and Kanana and Kebeya
(20 18). However, any features of this type tend to be nOWl class shifts for stylistic effect, or
phonetic stylisation. Add itionally, grammatical variances may also feature in the urban variety
but may not have been noted in the authors' data.
Urban vernacu lars, on the other hand, may be considered 'mixed' in both the lexical and
syntactic sense. In the popular sense where speakers claim 'we just mix', they may not be
aware of the syntactic process of code-switching, borrowing (e.g. logical connectors, dis-
course markers), and as youth languages are denser in tenns of relexicalisation they may
seem more 'mixed' . Indeed, the main difference between the urban vernacu lars which youth
practices are based on, and youth practices themselves, appear to be primarily lexical. Youth
engage in relexica lisation for styl istic purposes, for in-group or peer interaction and humour,
and possib ly for secrecy.
Ogechi (2005: 334) suggests that the main difference between Swahi li-based Sheng and
Swahil i appears to be 'a distinct and an unstable vocabulary'. This vocabulary takes its lexi-
con from Swahili and English but a lso from Kenyan languages such as Dholuo, Kamba and
Gikuyu as well as Hindi and American Westerns (Ogechi 2005: 335; Githinj i 2006: 445).
Lexical strategies inc lude borrowing, coinage, syllable inversion, compounding and clipping
(G ithinji 2006: 450f.). In terms of the Tsotsitaa l lexicon, borrowings come from Afrikaans,
English and the African languages of South Africa, along with some other European languages
and American slang (Hurst and Mesthrie 20 13). It also features co inages, often metaphorical
(Hurst 20 16) (see Table 16. 1).
308
Table 16.1 Examples ofTsotsitaal lexicon and origins
Item Meaning Origin Example

blom stay, wait Afr. 'bloem' Hosh Lapho! Yimin' uMamba. Ngibloma la ehood.
(flower) 'Hi there! This is Mamba. He hangs out here in the hood. '
(East London)
brlronqo girlfriend Eng. Otherwise ooMabrbonqo bethu basishiye siyiloo way.
' bucking 'Otherwise our girlfriends have left us j ust like that.'
bronco' (Cape Town)
gaz 'lam friend Zulu 'gazi Uyabona nje; ulibele kunxila ngamaluxury gaz'lam.
lam' (blood ' You are busy getting dmnk with luxuries, my friend.'
of mine) (Cape Town)
nrasha to go/to walk Eng. 'march' yabo mina ndoda urna sengiduzukile, ngiya masha ngiya edladleni
'you see man when I am high, I take a walk all the way home. '
(Durban)
obaba police Zulu 'obaba' makufika ob aba la sibathela ngayo, ayikho into esingayenza
(fathers) 'when the police come here we will splash it all over them,
there is nothing we can do.'
(Durban)
outie (alt. guy, man., A fr. 'ou' La outie wayegrand umjita yabo
spellings young (man) 'The young man was fine you see.'
a 'urlri, awie) man (Cape Town)
qlwnra leaving, Zulu 'qhuma' usuya qhuma?
laughing (an are you leaving?
explosion) (Durban)
ringa talk, tell, Eng. 'ring' Sibaringele bona ba yeyantoni.
speak 'We told them what it's all about. '
Tsotsitaal (Cape Town)
rouge A R50 note French mhlambe uzothi rouge
'rouge' 'maybe he will ask for R50.'
(red) (Durban)
(i)singlr matchbox or Eng. 'singe' iphi isingh?
matchstick 'where is the match (box or stick)? '
(Durban)
shaya Hit Zulu ngiz' sbaya ngetaal yase kasi uya' ngthola?
(multiple 'ukushaya' 'I'm hitting/using township language, you get me? '
usages) (to hit) - (Durban)
o ften bathi ' hhayi besi shaya i-plaki kanjalo'
used with 'they said ''no we are just hitting a couple ofbeers."' (Durban)
semantic ngabekungcono kuthiwa sisbaya ibhakede
shift 'it would have been better if we were hitting the bucket.'
(Durban)
Ekse uBlaza washay'iiweyi uBlaza.
'I say Blaza beat up someone.'
(Cape Town)
smoko trouble, Eng. 'smoke' Qha liyabambeka ke ma nesmoko, uyabo?
problem 'but this one can control berselfwben she's in a problem, you see?'
(Cape Town)
spana, ispmri work, jobs Afr. 'span ' kukhona tsotsi engangi span a nayo Emhlanga e-actor
(team) kuMuvhango kanjalo
' there is a guy I used to work with at Emhlanga who stars in
Muvhango.'
(Durban)
Source: Hurst (2016: 163- 164)
309
Ellen Hurst-Harosh
Many Tsotsitaal terms are longstanding with some even persisting since the 1940s (Mo l-
amu 2003). Nouchi similarly features lexical borrowings from other languages includ ing Eng-
lish, Spanish, Gennan, Dioula, Baoule and Bete (Newe ll 2009; Vakunta 201 1). It also includes
new coinages. Lexical features of Luyaaye include borrowings from English, Swahili, Sheng
and some Sudanese languages, new coinages, semantic change, metaphors, synonyms and
polysemy (Namyalo 20 15).
Borrowing also takes p lace in the urban vernacu lars - as noted, urban isiZulu may feature
borrowings from English, Afrikaans, Sesotho, Setswana and so on. In this case, youth relexi-
calisation can be seen both as a matter of degree (Slabbert and Myers-Scotton 1997: 330), and
a matter of manipulation. This d ifference primari ly appears to relate to the function or purpose
of youth language practices - peer interaction and ' identity' perforn1ance, or construction,
within communities of practice and particu lar social contexts.
163 Critical issues: identity

As we have seen, the terminology of mixed language m ight apply to the urban vernaculars
as a way to categorise comp lex patterns of code-switch ing and borrowing (of grammatical
featu res and regu lar borrowings of lexica l items in contexts where there has been close and
sustained contact between a number of languages, such as in ex-colonial countries), but it is
not adequate to explain the stylistic practices of youth. In the case of the urban vernaculars
there are certainly identity implications in their use - for example, English borrowings may
mark urbanity, or education. But borrowings may equally be an unmarked choice - indeed
these varieties are the first language of many pe.o p le growing up in highly multi lingual
suburbs and townships in Africa's urban areas. Perhaps in the case of the urban vernacu lars,
Kiessling and Mous's (2004) cla im that they transcend ethnicity may also be imp lied, for
example in a highly mixed context such as Soweto. However, th is is less like ly in more
monolingual townships or reg ions such as the townships of Cape Town or Durban (Gugu -
lethu was 89% isiXhosa-speaking while Kwamashu was 9 1% isiZulu-speaking in the 2011
census data).
Youth practices are more strongly correlated in the literature with identity, particu larly the
'perforn1ance of identity'. Drawing on socia l constructionist paradigms which treat identity as
mutable per formance, authors such as Kiessling and Mous (2004) and Hurst (2009) have pro-
posed that these language practic.es are manifestations of youth identities aligned with global
modemity.
Kiessling and Mous describe how youth take from both traditional and modem in a process
ofbricolage:
Urban youth experience in Africa confim1s that new project identities do not arise
from traditional identities (which are confined to the rural setting, restricted to ethnic
and linguistic minority communities, and emblematic of a way of life that is fe lt to be
incompatib le with modem challenges), nor do they arise from imported Westem (or
rather Northem) identities; instead they arise from resistance identities that could be
seen as opposed to both other identities, which are legitimizing identities in Castells's
tem1s. These resistance identities are composed in a bricolage fashion . . . taking in
markers from both opposed identities, forming a new kind of patchwork, redefining
real ity.
(Kiessling and Mous 2004: 330)
310
Karanja (2010: 1), simi larly to Kiessling and Mous (2004) suggests that Sheng a llows youth
to renegotiate their identities and cu ltures, 'moving them beyond unitary, fixed identities and
binaries of traditional versus urban, and local versus global'. Newell associates Nouchi with
a postcolonial identity, which she argues involves the 'enregistern1ent of modernity in lan-
guage'. Regarding the users ofLuyaaye, according to Namyalo (2015):
Luyaaye is now synonymous with the urban-youth, a powerful social identity char-
acterized by a unique linguistic expression, a un ique lifestyle which is manifested in
hair style, mode of dressing, excessive use of gestures, music and dances, names and
subversion of norms.
Imvugo y'Umuhanda is used throughout Kigali and other Rwandan c ities, and is linked to hip
hop/rap and street identities (Nassenste in 20 15). In Nigeria, Mensah (20 12) describes the lan-
guage of the Agaba boys in Ca labar South, where the language is used for in-group cohesion
and solidarity, as well as in the pursuit of an anti-establishment identity. It is associated with
other factors such as the emerging Naija hip hop and the oke/e music genre, dance styles, dress
sense and ideology or 'worldview' (Mensah 2012: 389). From Ethiopia, Yarada K'wank'wa
(Holl ington 20 15), spoken in Addis Ababa, is Amharic-based, and serves as a marker of group
identity for streetwise urban youth.
Schroder similarly describes how Camfranglais is a marker of youth identity, and is used
as a 'secret in-group language' (Schroder 2007: 293) by 'urban juvenile francophones in the
francophone part of the country' (SchrOder 2007: 294).
The concept of identity itself has rarely been interrogated - whether the identity being
described is individual, group, tied to nation or ethnicity has thus far been mostly overlooked.
Some of the normative assumptions regarding youth identities in Africa are critiqued in the
following sections.
16.3.1 Modernity
It is firstly important to problematise the form of modernity that is being assumed in descrip-
tions of African youth. Decolonial theorists such as Mignolo (2010), Grosfoguel (2008) and
Quijano (1999) have highlighted how modernity can be understood as a particular European
enlightenment construction which serves the coloniality of power - a structure of power based
on racism and created and controlled by Western men and institutions. Modemity in this think-
ing, a long with Western civilisation, are presented as the endpoints of historical time with
Europe as the centre of the world. The notion of civilisation lies at the heart of modernity.
Modernity is constituted by colonialism and enlightenment ideals, and paints a history of
Europe at the centre of the 'development' of hwnankind, reducing to the periphery the knowl-
edges and histories of other parts of the world (Dussel 2000). Modemity is thus a European
project which promotes particular political, social, scientific and religious hierarchies. This
framing also promotes 'a linguistic hierarchy between European languages and non-European
languages that privileged commun ication and knowledge/theoretical production in the former
and subalternized the taller as sole producers of folklore or culture but not of knowledge/
theory' (Mignolo 2000 in Grosfoguel).
The identities associated with mixed urban vernaculars and AYLs may be referencing a
very different sense of modernity than that assumed in the literature. The linguistic processes
taking place in the language of youth in Africa, both in terms of vernacular and youth register,
311
Ellen Hurst-Harosh
can be seen as a d irect challenge to notions of language and identity perpetuated in Europe and
the global north, and can be thought of in a sense as 'decolonial' language practice.
For example, Wilson (2015: 299) describes the use of the AYL Kindoubi l in the DRC,
which is spoken primarily by those known as Yankees. Yankee characteristics include street
wisdom, assertiveness and resourcefulness. These tools, she says, 'allow the city dweller to
transcend boundaries, to make a living in an urban jungle and to project himself on the desired
path of social becoming' (Wilson 20 15: 299). She continues:
A Yankee will be recognized by the way he noncha lantly tilts his shoulders slightly
forward and lowers his chin towards his torso in order to utter a row of eyebrow
raising synonyms, while swallowing consonants and exaggerating high pitches and
low tones . . . whi le being delicately intertwined with Kindoubil's covert prestige,
performance boosts and amplif[ying] the practice of UYLs. Both the language and
its performance are important constituents in the process of bui lding the identity of
its speakers, which is much needed in order to redefine the ir position in a fast chang-
ing city.
(Wilson 20 15: 303-304)
The identity of be ing 'streetwise' assumes a particular understanding of the 'street', which
may have links to the sense of 'street' used in African American popu lar culture (and links
to other references to locality and to authenticity in hip hop such as being from, belonging to
or being born in the 'hood', or 'ghetto'). Tsotsitaal and other AYLs are also associated with
extra-lingu istic semiotic practices such as clothing styles (with a focus on imported American
brand names) and musical preferences (particu larly hip hop/rap and local musical genres such
as kwaito in South Africa), as well as aspects of body language such as gestures and ways of
walking (Brookes 2004; Hurst 2009; Hurst and Mesthrie 20 13). What is this modernity that
is be ing indexed? Identity perfonnances related to the use of AYLs involve brands and con-
sumerism so they are influenced by neoliberalist conswner culture- but also link to musical
genres which often have a strong anti-establishment emphasis; youth draw from the global
but utilise the local and trad itional or ethnic (Kiessling and Mous 2004; Hurst 2009; Deumert
20 13). The modernity being indexed then would have e lements fam iliar to Western youth but
would be simultaneously unfamil iar.
16.3.2 Urbanity
These youth practices are mainly considered urban in opposition to rural and standard ver-
sions of African languages (Hurst 2009) as the modernity called on in studies of AYLs is often
assoc iated with the 'urban' and carries urban indexicality. However, although this dichotomy
is referred to widely by speakers (Hurst 20 17), such a dichotomy is less evident in actua l lan-
guage practice. Speakers draw from ruraVethnic languages and cu lture, as is being highlighted
in a number of recent publications (Deumert 20 13; Hurst 2017; Kanana and Hurst-Harosh
20 19).
There are inherent prob lems with notions of'urbanity' as d ichotomous with 'rural' areas,
and the binary of urban/rural is part of the European construction of modern ity. In this
construction, rural and trad itional were painted as inferior compared to urban and modem
(Mudimbe 1988), while the city was presented as the ultimate 'civi lisation' and a manifes-
tation of enlightenment ideals (Hurst 20 17). These orientations reflect in some AYL lan-
guage practices. For example, Hurst (20 17) contrasts various terms for AYLs which imply
312
that the users are 'streetwise' , for example Tsotsi means 'city-wise and sl ick' Ntshangase
1995: 292), while in Yarada K'wank'wa from Ethiopia, Arada means 'dangerous person' ,
'crafty', 'cool ', ' thief', 'outwitting' , 'city centre', 'playboy' or 'person who knows' (Koj i
2006: 793 in Ho ll ington 2015: !51). On the other hand, rural people are represented nega-
tively, such as in Tsotsitaal, wherein Cowza means 'someone from rura l areas' (Bogopa
1996: 126) and .Jambok refers to 'a foo lish guy especially from rural areas' (Bogopa 1996:
129). Bari means 'a stup id', and is the label township dwe llers give to people from rural areas
w ho are considered backward and tribal (Brookes 2014: 63). Simi larly, in Zimbabwean youth
language gwash means ' not cool, rura l' (Hollington and Makwabarara 2015: 266), and in
Luyaaye, the word kataala - literally meaning ' a small lantern ' in Luganda- means 'a villager/
semi-mad' (Namyalo 2015: 329).
At the same time, Deumert (2013) and Hurst (2017) both suggest that rural language
resources are central to urban language practices in Africa, wh ile Kanana and Hurst-Harosh
(20 19) show that rural youth also utilise and innovate language practices in dialogue with
urban centres. Example (2) from Kanana and Hurst-Harosh (20 19) provides an example of
Sheng from a rural town (Kirinyaga) in Central Kenya.
(2)
X Aje aje arif?
'How are you friend?'
Y Sina ngori kakren, nchapie
'I am ok. Talk to me.'
X Riba ziko kibao. Ka sa hii denge Fulani llmetuuchllpill zll mukoro wake
'There are many stories, like right now, a girl has just told us about her mother.'
Y Aklldai?
'What was she saying?'
X Vile mukoro wake ni A TM mbovu
'The way her mother is daft' (a fau lty/ non-functiona l AT M).
Y S ektll gtmi?
'on what issues/ in wh ich sector?'
X Kaa ile mllneno yll .Jaymo k uchtifull rlldll juzi afu llk llhllmhwll Ill/ m osllnse.
' Like the issue of Jaymo messing up things the other day then he got (himself) arrested.'
Here, traditional and modem resources are drawn on, such as w ith mokoro 'o ld woman' ,
an archaic Gikuyu fom1 for 'woman ', and denge 'bird', from the Kiswahili word dege ('bird')
which is also g iven a Gikuyu pronunciation with a prenasalised stop; and on the other hand,
sekta 'sector' and ATM (Automatic Teller Machine), both indications of modernity but used
in a metaphorical sense.
Th is example is in agreement with Kiessling and Mous's (2004: 330) suggestion that
' resistance identities are composed in a bricolage fashion . . . taking in markers from both
opposed identities, forming a new kind of patchwork, redefining real ity'.
16.3.3 Masculinity
AYLs have typically been associated with a performance of mascu linity. Mascu linity in Africa
was historically constructed as 'other ' - resulting in discourses such as the 'black peril' which
refers to the fear of co lonial settlers that black men are attracted to white women and desire
or engage in sexual relations with them. This was based in class and race prejudices, and a lso
313
Ellen Hurst-Harosh
relates to the representation of black males as prone to crime. The mascu linity being associated
with AYLs in much of the literature is often unproblematised and simplified.
Sheng is understood to be used primarily by male youth (Githinji 2006: 453) and is
described by Ogechi (2005: 353) as a 'peer group language [which) succeeds in isolating the
non-initiated speaker ' through innovation of new lexicon, suggesting an ingroup/outgroup
dynamic and a covert mascu line prestige 'associated with toughness, masculinity and local
solidarity' (Githiora 2002: 174). Githinj i (2006) conducts an analysis ofSheng which exposes
how women are often disempowered and objectified by Sheng lex is. For example, he shows
that
girls are depicted as childish and immature through the use of generic words for
babies and children. The word mtoto 'child' , toto 'big child' and mtoi (derivation
from mtoto) are all derogatory because they evoke images of powerlessness, help-
lessness and vulnerabil ity. It is by no accident that mtoto, which is generic is not
extended to boys.
(G ithinj i 2006: 23)
Researchers have argued that Nouchi is primari ly used by ma le youth between ten and thirty
years old and that it is linked to masculinity, a lthough not used exclusively by men (Kouadio
N'guessan 2006). In the case ofTsotsitaal, according to Hurst (2009: 250), 'Speakers are pri-
marily male - and define themselves in the sense of a particular masculinity, which involves
being "streetwise" or "clever"' . In many AYLs, there is overlexica lisation of words relating to
women and women's bodies.
Yet the mascul inity be ing assumed - heterosexual, aggressive masculinity (or hyper-
masculinity in hip hop studies)- is challenged by other identities associated with these reg-
isters. For example, in South Africa, the Izikhothane disrupt 'African masculinities' as they
have been described in the literature by challenging consumer culture via bright clothes and
dancing (Richards 20 15; Ngcobo 20 16). Reggae and Rastafarianism, popu lar across the Afri-
can continent, provides another counterpoint for mascul inity constructions (Hollington 20 18).
In the case of Sheng, whi le it is associated with mascul inities typical to hip hop/rap and genge
in Kenya, Wairungu (20 14: 298) reports that:
Male speakers of Sheng and lugha y a mtaa also challenge local conceptions of mas-
cu linity. For example, recall students Tinga and Mkinango from Mombasa reported
that some male students modified their school uniform in order to look like celebri-
ties such as Lil Wayne, who put on skinny trousers and sag them. Others like Tinga
put on tightened shirt sleeves in order to emphasize their biceps. These modifications
contravene socially acceptable modes of dressing for males both in schoo l and in the
wider society.
Additionally, AYL resources are powerfu l and meaningful within a community of practice
and social context regardless of the gender of the speaker. Women may use these registers to
engender agency in typically masculine spaces as Rudwick, Nkomo and Shange (2006: 57)
describe of isiTsotsi (Tsotsitaal) in KwaZulu-Natal:
The masculinity historically and traditionally linked to isiTsotsi is the reason why
there exists the common perception among men that females who do employ
314
isiTsotsi-varieties must be lesbians. While many urban lesbians may indeed make
use of the variety, [ ...]the female use of isiTsotsi does not represent an exclusive ly
homosexual register, but rather a context-dependent sociolect that African street-
wise women emp loy to empower themselves.
The varieties are also resources in the gender performances of lesbian women who 'draw
on features associated with male ways of talking as sem iotic resources to express aspects of
their identities as well as enact sexual roles, re lationships and desires' (Maribe and Brookes
2014: 199).
16.3.4 Criminality
Many AYLs have been linked to criminality, with researchers c iting origins in argots, and
the use of AYLs by criminals for secrecy. The term tsotsi referred to a style of trousers, and
later to the petty crim inals who wore the style (Glaser 2000). The term is still common ly
used today to refer to street hooligans or members of street corner gangs in South Africa's
townships. Sheng is a lso c laimed to have criminal origins and is linked to the language of
p ickpockets (Mazrui 1995; Ogechi 2005). Camfranglais is thought to have originated as a
' language of criminals' (SchrOder 2007: 282) in the 1970s. Although it has now become
widespread amongst youth, one of its several alternative names is Langage de bandits de
Douaia. The tenn nouclri origina lly applied to a social category of street gangs or 'juvenile
delinquents' in Abidj an. According to Ivorians, these street gangs deve loped Nouchi in the
1980s as a secret language to prevent the police from understanding them (Newel! 2009).
Yarada K'wank 'wa (Hollington 20 15) from Add is Ababa possibly has its orig ins in argot,
and so on.
However, this association with crime comes from a colonial perspective on African youth.
For example, in South Africa the construction of a Tsotsi aligns with what Foucault ( 1979)
describes as the constmction of 'delinqu ency' (Hurst 2008). Del inquency is often correlated
with youth, as in the case of 'juvenile delinquents'.
The bracket of del inquent associated with Tsotsi relates back to the ideology which
permeated South Africa under apar theid, the belief that crime was primarily comm itted by
a certain soc ial group. The concept ofTsotsi was emblemat ic of young urban black men;
converse ly, in the ideo log ica l terms of the apartheid d iscourse, all young urban b lack men
were embod iments of Tsotsis. Laws were made and app lied to control and contain this
threat.
Perceptions of AYLs often arise from this 'othering' of young black men. How-
ever, authors such as Ndlovu (2018a) emphasise how AYLs (Nd lovu 2018a focuses on
S'ncamtho from Zimbabwe) are used more widely by youth and not related to criminal
activity. Tsotsitaa l use is certainly not restricted to speakers invo lved in crime; Calteax
describes a continuum of Tsotsitaals (Ca lteax 1994) which range from 'deep' usage spo-
ken by cri mina ls to ' light' use of Tsotsitaal terms by everyone in the township. Calteax
suggests it can be seen as a cont inuum of practice. Alternatively, it can be understood as
a repertoire, where speakers draw from their fu ll linguist ic resources. In Tsotsitaa l, for
example, a speaker who has access to prison lex icon may use these items in particu lar
contexts and with particular speakers. In example (3) from Hurst-Harosh (2020), a speaker
describes part of his repertoire that he would on ly use when speaking to members of the
'28' and '26' prison gangs.
315
Ellen Hurst-Harosh
(3)
S: Uyabo ezaweyi zokutshayisana, uyabo, zokugilana, uyabo. Zisuka ngapha e-prison ezaweyi.
'You see those th ings of tshayisana, you see, and gilana, you see. They are from prison
those things.'
Q: Ohh. Ukuthini uku gilana?
'What does gilana mean?'
S: Hayi ukuba ek se hayi ne, kufimaka sidibane endaweni ethi/e, uyabo. Laweyi yoku
gilana isentyenziswa ngama-28, eyoku tshayisana isentyenziswa ngama-26.
'No it's, no right, we must meet at such and such a place, you see. That thing of gilana
is used by the 28s, and tshayisana is used by the 26s.'
(Sandile (26), Guguletbu 2006)
The respondent in th is excerpt quickly term inated the discussion, when he became nerv-
ous that a 28 or 26 gang member may be passing and bear him talking - as be testified:
yinto ya/amadoda anagapha ngaphakathi, angapha e-prison. Nangokuku ek se ndinga
senxakini ek se ndingathi ne, mh/awumbi ndithetha /awayi, kube kuqhitha mh/awubi ama-
28 okanye mh/awubi ama-26 apha ' it's for the man there inside, there in prison. Even now
I would be in trouble if I'm ta lking that language when a group of28s or a group of26s is
passing here.'
It is possible that criminal registers are drawn on as one of the sources of lexical additions
and innovations for AYLs. AYLs, it must be emphasised, are primarily used for fun, camarade-
rie and humour in peer group contexts, and it is unlikely that secrecy is the ma in purpose - as
Halliday ( 1976: 572) describes of anti languages: 'Secrecy is a feature oftbejargon rather than
a detern1inant of the language'. While secrecy is a necessary strategic property of AYLs, it is
unlikely to be the major reason for their existence.

Taking as our starting point the urban vernacu lars in African cities, and contesting the typical
representations of youth language as indexical of black mascu line modernity, bow then can
we describe the AYL phenomenon? Hurst-Harosh (2018) argues that Tsotsitaal is decolonial
practic.e: rebellious language linked to rebellious identities. AYLs involve and utilise poetics
and metaphor (Hurst 2016; Hurst-Harosb and Kanana 2018), language change and creativity
(Nassenstein and Holl ington 20 15; Mensab 20 16), and decolon ial identities (Hollington, Nas-
senstein and Storch 20 18) - and are employed by the youth, the biggest demographic in Africa,
to represent a range of complexities of non-normative decolonial identities across gender, race,
c lass and geography (urbanity).
Looking at the histories of African Youth Language Practices, they often emerge out
of decolonial impulses. Rather than thinking of youth language practices in the Afri-
can continent as arising from urban crime therefore, we can imagine them as arising
from conditions of inequality in colonial, and later, postcolonial societies, in imposed
nation states where the dominance of European languages and capitalist conswner-
ism further disadvantages those outside the Western episteme. As such, these grass
roots language practices amongst youth can be seen as deco lonial practice, a cha l-
lenge to coloniality.
(Hurst-Harosh 2018)
316
Current research such as those studies cited previously suggests that the linguistic processes
taking place in the language of African youth, both in tern1s of the grammatica l base (vernacu-
lar) and the youth register, are a direct challenge to normative representations of and assump-
tions about language and identity.
16.5 Conclusions and future directions

While the urban vernaculars may conceivably fit the descriptor of ' mixed language', the
notion of mixed languages and other 'language alternation' models has been critiqued for its
reliance on an assumption of unitary languages, such as code-switching and other models (see
Auer 1999; Matras 2000 as examples of these models), and mu ltil ingualism, which assumes
speaker proficiency in multiple discrete languages. An adapted definition of mixed language
would need to acknowledge a range of 'fluencies' by speakers in the languages they draw on
for linguistic resources.
AYLs on the other hand are registers of the urban vernacu lars, used by youth to style identi-
ties and construct themselves creatively and innovatively through their use of register (LOpke
and Storch 2013). In this chapter, I have emphasised the need for a distinction between urban
vernacu lars on the one hand, arising from contact, and which can bridge ethnic language dis-
tinctions, and AYLs on the other, which involve del iberate manipu lation and language play, in
order for youth to distinguish themselves.
Further research into the deployment of registers and the identities associated with them
would extend our understanding of the interactions between youth and language, while recent
theoretica l developments in sociolinguistic studies of the global south, and an emphasis on
language resources, repertoires and styles, may pave the way to a decolonial linguistics.
Further reading
Hollington, A. , Nassenstein, N. and Starch, A. 2018. Critical youth language studies- Rethinking con-
cepts, The Mouth, 3.
This special issue on critical youth snrdies takes a critical perspective on recent studies of youth lan-
guage, particularly in Africa, in order to address the ways that youth languages have been constructed
as 'special ' in terms of their creativity. The editors take the position that all language is creative, and
suggest a number of different approaches to the study of youth language.
Hurst-Harosh, E. 2020. Tsotsitaal in Sowlr Afi'ica: Style and nreraphor in yowlr language practices.
Cologne: ROdiger Koppe Verlag.
This book represents the first attempt to draw together the findings of Tsotsitaal Studies by both
mapping the field and describing the linguistic phenomenon. Tsotsitaal is approached from several
perspectives - socio-historically, syntactically and lexically, as well as in relation to the attinrdes
and perceptions of s peakers ofTsotsitaal. The book highlights the key features ofTsotsitaal - style
and metaphor.
Liipke, F. and Starch, A. 20 13. Reperroires and choices in African languages. Berlin: Mouton de Gnryter.
This book investigates changing patterns of multilingua lism and the effects on African minority
languages. It focuses on repertoires and registers of African languages, presenting among oth-
ers, research on speech registers s uch as youth languages, respect languages, ri tu al and spirit
languages.
Matras, Y. 2.009. Language contact. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
This textbook presents Matras's theoretical approach to language contact. It also provides an intro-
duction to contact linguistics, and covers topics such as language convergence, grammatical borrow-
ing and mixed languages.
317
Ellen Hurst-Harosh
Related topics
Sub-Saharan Africa; Variation in Pidgin and Creole Languages; Multilingual ism and the
Structure of Code-mixing; Post-structuralist Approaches to Language Contact
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321
17
PIDGINS AND CREOLES
New domains, new technologies
Theresa Heyd
17.1 Introduction
The mediatisation of linguistic practice (Androutsopoulos 2014) is now widely under-
stood to be a fundamenta l condition of human communication in the 2 1st century. The
notion that mediatisation is not just a key factor of globalisation (Fairclough 2006), but
that it is also deeply imp licated in language variation and change (see e.g. Sayers 2014
and the response papers in Journal of Sociolinguistics 201 4) has continued in many lin-
guistic disciplines. It is not surprising, then, that Pidg ins and Creoles, and the ir systemat ic
lingu istic study, would be touched by phenomena such as mass med ia and the entertain-
ment industry, soc ial media, and other forms of mediated language use . Although the
field of mediated Pidg in and Cre.o le studies is sti ll in its infancy, it is apparent that future
stud ies of contact linguist ics wi ll have to take into account these new doma ins and new
technologies. As Deuber, Le imgruber and Sand (2018: 84) argue in the ir study on digita l
lingu istic practice in Singapore,
in addition to spoken face-to-face interaction as the trad itional domain of sociolin-

guistic study, social med ia needs to be given more attention in th is connection as an
increasingly important site of social life where linguistic variation and indexicality
can profitably be studied.
Therefore, this chapter gives an overview on the existing research in th is fie ld, and
sketches some emerging fields of inquiry. The paper is structured as fo llows: Section 2
situates the study of med iatised Pidgins and Creo les in the larger field of language, media-
tisation, and mobility. Section 3 gives an overview of new domains and new technologies
understood in a broad sense- that is, including traditional linear media, and cultural com-
modities such as movies and pop music. After that, Section 4 zooms in on med iated lan-
guage in a narrower sense, that is, digital linguist ic practice and language on and through
social media. Within this framework, topics covered are the multilingual interne!, the
notion of digital space as a lingu istic contact zone, recurring structural features of medi-
ated Pidgins and Creo les, and finally language ideologies found in digita l communities of
Pidgin and Creo le speakers.
322
New domains, new tech11ologies
17.2 Theoretical framework: globalisation and mobile communication

Attention to mobile and globalised communication has gradually made its way into analyses
focused on the linguistics of globalisation and mobility (Biommaert 20 I 0; Coupland 20 I 0). In
these approaches, language use through digital media is simply seen as one important factor
amongst others (such as global migration and the affordability of long-distance travel) that
shapes our late-modem, superdiverse societies. Thus Blommaert and Rampton (20 11: 3) point
out that 'migration movements from the 1990s onwards have coincided with the development
of the Internet and mobile phones, and these have affected the cultural life of diaspora com-
munities of all kinds' - a condition that also deeply impacts the linguistic practices in such
communities. Even more explicitly, Varis and Wang point out this cotmection:
The Internet can be seen as a major mechanism in global isation processes. . . . The
World Wide Web opens up entirely new channels of communication, generating new
linguistic and cu ltural fom1s, new ways of fonn ing and maintaining contacts, net-
works and groups, and new opportunities for identity-making.
(Varis and Wang 20 11: 71)
This approach is also well-equipped to interpret new technological realities such as ubiqu itous
computing through mobile devices and the gradual disappearance of the online/offline bound-
ary. Thus as early as 2007, Coupland (2007: 28) notes that 'the med ia are increasingly inside
us and us in them'. This development is sure to have an impact on the way we think about
language contact, spread and change in digital usage.
As a result, the study of digital linguistic practice has slowly moved from the fringes
of sociolinguistic study to become a genuine and relevant object of inquiry. In the analyti-
cal scope of current sociolinguistics and contact linguistic studies, it is not too bold a c laim
that mediated language has become naturalised and is on its way to become a legitimate and
unchallenged data resource. This is not to say that some of the big controversies regarding
mediated language and its relation to linguistic variation and change have been resolved. The
question of whether and how computer-mediated communication is a factor in processes of
language contact and variation has prompted eager debate from early on. Does the interne!
act as a place of language contact and spread? Can it be a motor of linguistic innovation and
change, or does it merely mirror processes that are ongo ing in a given language ecology? Do
linguistic innovations from ' real-life' usage migrate into the digital domain, or is it possible
that indigenously digital forms of language use spread into the non-digital realm?
These debates are sti ll very much ongoing, as evidenced by a recent issue of the Journal
of Sociolinguistics with a focus on media influence on language change (Sayers 2014 and
accompanying debate articles, e.g. Trudgill 20 14; Tagl iamonte 20 14). While the approaches to
the topic are still varied - Sayers (20 14) identifies at least five stances that vary from an overall
scepticism about the role of mediated language to its full embracement in the analysis of lan-
guage change - the on-record nature of th is discussion does indicate that med iated language
has become a substantial factor in variationist approaches.
Regardless of these fundamenta l and more programmatic questions, the recent years have
seen a constant and growing stream of research output that is centred on the analysis of
computer-mediated discourse. In these approaches, the high variabi lity of digita l language
use itself is taken for granted, and patterns of innovation and variation have been studied
with increasing methodological and empirica l sophistication. These 'second -wave' CMC
studies are thus committed to ' highlighting the social diversity of language use in CMC',
323
Theresa Heyd
as Androutsopou los (2006: 421) remarks in his seminal introduction to the sociolinguistics
of CM C.
No establ ished research program or standalone publication exists as of yet which wou ld
extend these connections between mobile communication and globalisation into the realm of
contact linguistics. Nevertheless, the societal importance - and methodological avai lability-
of dig ital data and practices has also been noted in the study ofPidgins, Creoles, and all forms
of language contact research. As a consequence, the research overview in Section 4 will chart
and document a number of different research questions, exploratory studies, and sometimes
very innovative contexts of inquiry into new doma ins of mediated linguist ic practice.
17.3 New domains, new technologies

Before examining the linguistic effects and implication of mediated communication on Pidg-
ins and Creoles, it is important to differentiate further the notion of 'new technologies'. Spe-
c ifica lly, the idea of newness, often associate.d with technological aspects of social li fe quite
generally, can refer to different situations. On the one hand, it can refer to the itmovation of
technology and, consequently, new practices and patterns of communication. This is certainly
the case with the different waves and phases of digitisation of the past decades, the emergence
of networked and mobile commun ication technologies and its w ide societa l and even global
implications. On the other hand, existing forms of techno logy and mediated communication
may become relevant and visible as societal conditions change, and as lingu istic analysis
becomes aware of them. T his may be the case for mediated practices such as T V, radio, and
related forms of broadcasting, whose role in language contact has changed through the increas-
ing global avai lability of mass med ia to diverse aud ienc.es. It may also relate to the increasing
use and circulation of media products (from VHS tapes and COs to the use of calcu lators and
phones in interaction). In this latter sense, the commodification of mediatised formats such as
popular music and audio- visual material may also cow1t among the ' new domains' that have
become relevant to contact linguistic inquiry in recent years.
In other words, the intersection between language contact and new or perceived-as-new
technologies may be w1derstood in a broader and a narrower sense. T he broad sense encom-
passes the.ories and empirical sntdies which are couched in broad perspectives on mediatisa-
tion, Wlderstood as 'a ll semiotic means by which people re late to each other within frameworks
of communicative activity' (Androutsopou los 201 4: ll). The narrower sense is concem ed
with mediated communication seen particularly through the lens of most recent technological
iru10vations, i.e. the digitisation of everyday life and its intersection w ith Pidgins and Creoles.
This distinction is not always clear-cut, and the two domains sometimes overlap - see e.g.
Sebba's study on the use of British Creole feantres in the med iatised performance of the Ali G
persona in T V comedy routines, and the ensuing uptake and metalingu istic discussion in dig i-
tal fonnats (Sebba 2003). The overview in Section 4 will focus on specifically digital linguistic
practices, preconditions, and emp irical findings surround ing language contact and digitisation.
The rest of this sect ion summarises briefly some maj or areas of research into Pidgins and Cre-
oles and other areas of mediatisation.
One maj or site of me.d iatisation relevant for (contact-) linguist ic sntdy are music formats -
the production of pop music and its different genres, its dissemination through radio and
related platfonns, but also its embodied performance in concerts and other live sintations (see
Managan, th is volume). This encompasses different genres: from Canto-pop in Singapore and
its emerging patterns of heterogene ity (Khiun 2003), to practices of incorporating contact vari-
eties into Hip Hop lyrics, includ ing Nigerian Pidgin (see Akande 20 13; Gaudio 20 ll; Omoniyi
324
2009) or ' Blinglish' in Korea (Lee 20 l l ). In particular for Caribbean contact varieties, there
is a lso a growing body of research on musical perfonnance as sites of linguistic perfonnance,
including the study of dancehall events (Devonish 1996; Westphal 20 18), as well as choral
singing (Wilson 20 14). The radio as an audio channel, both for the broadcast of music and
spoken discourse, has been generally recognised as a source of contact language mediatisa-
tion, and has been explicitly studied for varieties such as Jamaican Creole (Westphal 20 17)
and St Lucian Creole (Garret! 2007). For a wider contextualisation of music as a med iated
practice, and its recent rise in importanc.e and sociolinguistic inquiry, the special edition of
Language & Communication edited by Sippola, Schneider, and Levisen (2017) is insightfu l.
Based on empirical studies focused on Bislama, Nigerian Pidgin, Trinidadian English Cre.o le,
and others, the authors point out that 'language, music, and social ties are eo-construed in the
age of transnationa lism' (Schneider, Sippola and Levisen 2017: l ), and that this transnational
understanding of linguistic resources such as contact languages may lead to their increasing
commodification.
By comparison, the role of audio-visual media as a new domain for contact languages
and their exam ination is relatively w1derexplored, but a small body of research is emerging.
Th is concerns particular movie industries wh ich have entered the transnationa l sphere, such
as Indian Bollywood and Nigerian Nollywood productions, which have been studied through
broader understandings of language contact such as code-switching (see Si 20 l l ), through
their sociolinguistic interpretation (Adedun 20 l 0), or also through their transnational recep-
tion through translation practices such as dubbing and subtitl ing (Ugochukwu 2013).
Finally, other forms of mediatisation may provide the basis for ongoing and future studies
of language contact. This includes the entire field of visua l semiotics such as advertising (see
Hiramoto 2011 on the use ofHawai ' i Creole in advertisements), global customer service such
as offshored call centres (see e.g. Cowie 2007), and other forms of linguistic practice that are
both mediatised and inserted into transnational and commodified contexts.
17.4 Pidgins/Creoles and digital communication

This section focuses on contact varieties and their intersection with digitisation in a narrow
sense, encompassing d ifferent forn1s of digital linguistic practice such as text-based and mul-
timodal interaction, socia l media, and mobile devices, and online communication both as an
everyday linguistic practice and as a theory and field of engagement for contact linguistic
study. Areas not included in th is overview concern issues of digitisation in linguistic method-
ology, in particular corpus linguistics, big data, and digital humanities approaches (see Huber,
this volume). Instead, the section surveys the four following fields of inquiry: (i) the contested
notion of the multilingual internet and issues of diversity vs. homogenisation; (ii) digital pub-
lic space as a (potential) linguistic contact zone; (iii) patterns and practice of Pidgin and Creole
use in digital environments; and (iv) ideo logies of and in digital contact linguistic settings.
With regard to the literature review given here, it shou ld be pointed out that there exists
a (still relatively small) research trad ition where the notion of mediated communication and
d igital linguistic practice is conceptually central and operationalised in the research approach,
i.e. studies in which Pidgin and Creole studies are embedded in a conceptua l and explanatory
framework of digital technology. There is a rapidly growing body of other studies that have
d ifferent conceptual and empirical interests and use d igital data primarily as a convenient and
globa lly avai lable resource. Both ways of integrating digital communication into Pidgin and
Creole research are valuable and insightful; the latter tendency speaks to the increasing 'nor-
malisation ' of digita l data, and their acceptance and recognition in Pidgin and Creole stu dies.
325
Theresa Heyd
Nevertheless, the following research overview puts a focus on those approaches which explic-
itly engage with notions of digital communication.
17.4.1 The multilingual internet: linguistic diversity vs. homogenisation

A first way into understanding the role of digitisation for Creoles and Pidgins and their scho l-
arly ana lysis is to consider the wider debate surrounding the (potentially) mu ltilingual interne!.
Given the origins of the interne! as an American project instigated by a Department ofDefense
program within a restricted number of American research institutions, it is not surprising that
the digitally networked connection reta ined a Western (and, indeed, very often w hite, male,
urban, and highly educated) bias for a long time. While the global digital divide diagnosed in
the 1990s (Norris 200 l ) is slowly waning, this in-built bias has also led to long-tern1 effects
with respect to linguistic diversity and the representation and visibility of languages and varie-
ties online. Two seminal publications paved the way for a principled sociolinguistic and con-
tact linguistic engagement with this situation. The special edition on sociol ingu istics and CMC
in the Journal of Sociolinguistics (Androutsopou los 2006) was the first substantial collection
of texts addressing issues of linguistic variation and related sociolinguistic aspects of digital
communication. Dane! and Herring's (2007) seminal volume on The Multilingual Internet
explicitly set out to document studies and positions on the emerg ing fonns of mu ltilingual
practic.e and linguistic diversity in online contexts. While Dane! and Herring's publication
conta ins no explicit focus on contact languages, it can nevertheless be seen as the first sys-
tematic acknowledgement of multilingualism and linguistic diversity and of the internet's
ambivalent role of si lencing or enabling nonstandard linguistic resources. This ambivalence
can essentially be understood as a polarity between two scenarios.
On the one hand, the interne! can be seen as a democratising space that enables a multiplic-
ity of voic.es, and which offers ample room for the practice and representation of vernaculars,
minority languages, and importantly Pidgins and Creoles. This optimistic view is inherent in
Mair and Ptlinder (20 13), who point out that '(t)he study of vernacu lar and multi lingua l prac-
tices in CMC thus provides one important window on how diasporic and migrant communities
define and position themselves' (Mair and Ptlinder 2013: 552).
On the other hand, it is a conceivable scenario that the increasing digitisation of linguistic
practice will in fact lead to an increased homogenisation toward national languages, habitual
mono lingualism, and in particular the further spread of English as the d igital 'ki ller language'
as described in theories of linguistic imperialism. This scenario is in particular linked to the
increasing and heavily algorithmed patterns of digital communication, so that algorithms of
lingu istic filtering, translation, and recommendation may lead to a bias towards a small hand-
ful of majority languages (see Gram ling 2016: 74ff.).
For the topic ofPidgins and Creo les, most studies which address this scenario have focused
on the potential benefits of the interne! as a multilingual space. Warschauer and de Florio-
Hansen (2003), in an early study on electronic resources and their use in and for the language
ecology of Hawai'i, spell this out very explicitly: 'the broad mix of international, national,
regional, and local discussion channels on the Internet first accelerated the spread of global
English and now provides opportun ities for those who challenge English-language hegem-
ony' (Warschauer and de Florio-Hansen 2003: 177). Similarly, Parham (2005) surveys digital
resources such as on line journals and mailing lists of the Haitian diaspora. While she points
out the danger of homogenising tendencies of the interne!, in the sense that 'one of the real
challenges of the Internet for diaspora groups is the dominance of English and other Western
languages on the Web' (Parham 2005: 354), she nevertheless identifies multilingual onl ine
326
w riting as a relevant resource, where ' insistence on trilingualism symbolizes a refusa l to place
Creole at the bottom of Haiti's linguistic hierarchy' (Parham 2005: 355).
In sum, a certain consensus emerges in which the benefits of on line communication as
faci litating linguistic diversity and making it visible and accessible outwe igh the potential
drift toward English and other global languages. This is a lso noted in studies which focus on
the technical ava ilabil ity of contact linguistic resources in different d igital envirorunents (see
e.g. Schneider 2016 on YouTh be as a resource for the performanc.e and analysis of World Eng-
lishes, or Heyd and Mair (20 14) on the gradual insertion of contact varieties such as Nigerian
Pidgin into the infrastructure of platforn1s such as Google language settings).
17.4.2 Digital public space as a linguistic contact zone

The framing of the interne! as a (potential) enabler of mu ltil ingual practice and the perfor-
mance of Pidgins and Creoles, as described earlier, unsurprisingly gives rise to related ques-
tions. In particular, this concerns the very nature of language contact and how it is promulgated
in traditional and possible new dimensions of space. The notion of language contact almost by
definition includes assumptions of geospatial interaction- languages come in contact because
of geospatial proximity, or because of the movement of popu lations across space in acts of set-
tlement or exploitation. Yet the interne! is theorised by many scholars, and perce ived by many
users, as a new fonn of space (e.g. as a digital third place in the sense ofOldenburg 1999, as a
d igita l extension of public space, and the like). As a consequence, new challenges for research
into Pidgins and Creoles emerge: does on line communication constitute a new spatial dimen-
sion acting as a contact zone for different languages and varieties? And will this challenge our
understanding of the genesis and precond itions of contact languages?
Research into this field of inquiry is still in its infancy, and thorough empirical evidence
is lacking as of yet. Nevertheless, the idea of digita l language contact is a recurrent theme in
accounts of sociolinguistics and globalisation. For example, Blommaert (20 11) points out in
his account of global 'supervernaculars' that
the Internet and mobile conununication devices ... have of course been the driving
forces behind such patterns of distribution, as they enable people to enter into (often
intense) contact with interlocutors they will never physically encounter and whose
cultural, social and linguistic backgrounds may be literally worlds apart.
(Blommaert 2011: 3)
For Blommaert, this form of digital language contact produces local variants of repertoires
that are imagined as global, such as texting language. Other studies have previously positioned
computer-mediated communication as a potential contact variety (see Greiffenstern 2010,
chapter 3 for an overview). In a slightly different take, Mosquera Castro (20 14) treats texting
language not as a contact language, but like one, by suggesting an ana logy in the patterns of
emergence of both. She thus suggests that we 'consider texting language as a sort of Creole
that simplifies the characteristics of the dom inant language - in this case the standard writing
code - to adapt it to a particular context of commw1ication' (Mosquera Castro 2014: 93).
All of these approaches hold interesting implications for research into the internet as a
d igita l linguistic contact zone. Beyond this notion, however, there may be room for develop-
ments where ge.ospatial and digital w1derstandings of language contact are no longer seen as
separate and independent from each other, but which take on a position of convergence. In
such an understanding, the distinction between 'virtual' and ' real' communication becomes
327
Theresa Heyd
increasingly meaningless as digital artefac.ts such as smartphones and digital assistants such
as Siri and Alexa are increasingly integrated into geospatial real ity. One approach which fore-
shadows this understanding of converged language contact is Bodomo's (20 12) study of Afri-
cans in China and the ir forms of linguistic interaction . The technological artefact in Bodomo's
account is simple - a calcu lator - but he describes how this device takes on a crucia l role in
initiating and facil itating language contact:
Many Africans in Guangzhou often joke that even though they don't speak C hinese
they have no communication problems when trading with Chinese people because
they can commun icate through their calculators in combination with basic body ges-
tures . . .. I be lieve that this calcu lator commw1ication, or calculator language, is an
essential part of a nascent African-Chinese Pidgin or Pidgins. These elements have
not coalesced into established Pidgins yet; they are still in the very early stages of
developing, and there are mixes of African English and Chinese as well as African
French and Chinese.
(Bodomo 20 12)
17.4.3 Pidg in and Creole use in dig ital environments:

patterns and practices
The topics and research questions discussed so far touch upon fundamental questions regard-
ing the societal role of digitisation and its influence on language contact and contact lan-
guages. As a resu lt, some of the publications surveyed so far are programmatic rather than
descriptive, theoretica l rather than empirica l in their scope. However, the by far largest body
of research is made up of empirical forays into digital lingu istic practice. Very often, these
approaches do couch themselves in theoretical frameworks as discussed in Section 2, and thus
offer imp licit or explicit commentary on the relation between globalisation and digitisation.
But their prime interest usually is of an empirical nature, so that the description and linguistic
analysis of Pidgins and Creoles under digital conditions takes centre stage. An interesting
and diverse set of methodologies is evolving under this shared research interest, including
quantitative approaches (from small purpose-built corpora as in Hinrichs 2006, to large-scale
corpus projects as described in Mair and Pflinder 20 13) as well as qua litative approaches (from
questionnaires, as in Rajah-Carrim 2009, to digita l ethnography, as in Zhang 20 15). In terms
of topics, many different areas have been explored, e.g. digital naming practices (see Heyd and
Honkanen 20 15). But unsurprisingly, a smaller nwnber of topics attract recurring attention, as
they seem to be particu larly relevant to the sociotechnical givens of digital linguistic practice.
These topics are (i) issues of code-switching and code-mixing, language shifting and multi lin-
gual repertoires; (ii) standardisation and codification, in particu lar orthographic practice; (ii i)
linguistic variation and patterns of digital linguistic practice.
One of the first book-length studies to put the notion oflanguage contac.t and d ig ital prac-
tice on the map at all is the seminal work by Hinrichs (2006) on code-switching in Jamaican
email communication. In this study, based on a small purpose-bu ilt email corpus, Hinrichs
describes in detail pa!lerns of digitally med iated code-switching, and how switches between
English and Jamaican Creole are linked to (amongst other factors) identity per formances
online. This led to ensuing smdies, such as Deuber and Hinrichs (2007), where patterns in
Jamaican Cre.o le and Nigerian Pidgin are compared (see the following on aspects of ortho-
graphic variation), or Hinrichs (2018), where other genres such as blogs are focused on.
Zhang (20 15), in a longimdinal study on the language of a Shanghai microblog, surveys
328
Chinese-Engl ish code-mixing and analyses it in the wider context of language play and
creativity, so that it
not only analyses the ways in which English words and phrases are inserted into the
matrix of Chinese, but a lso discusses the related process of 'hybridization', where
such items are adapted phonologically, and morpho-syntactically in the matrix texts,
together with the blending of different genres and styles in the practice of multilin-
gual language play.
(Zhang 2015: 233)
Finally, Vandeputte-Tavo (2013) investigates patterns of language use around mobile phones
and social media on Vanuatu and finds that, in addition to patterns of code-switching, effects
of language-shi fting are perceptible so that Bislama becomes indexically identified with
modernity (and hence, with preferred usage for digital interaction) - read on for the language-
ideological implications of such language shifts.
Codification and standardisation (on the one hand) and linguistic creativity and variability
(on the other hand) are recurring topics in studies of Pidgins and Creoles in digital linguistic
practice. Most of all, orthographic variation is seen to be relevant to studies in th is field. This
is understandable given the sem iotic specificities of digital discourse. Online communication
constitutes an unparalleled sounding board for the practice of written Pidgins and Creoles
because of its fluid status between spoken practices and a text-based medium, the way it wid-
ens the accessibil ity of a range of everyday linguistic practices (carried out in socia l settings
such as on line communities or social networks), and its potential for heterogeneous, multilin-
gual encounters between different groups of users.
Compared with the historically lim ited environments in which written contact varieties
could even become visible - in vernacu lar literature or specific text collections, in occasional
signage in the linguistic landscape of certain urban environments - the widespread usage of
contact languages in digital contexts has led to entirely new dimensions for these varieties,
and WlSurprisingly has fascinated and inspired researchers working in this field. Deuber and
Hinrichs (2007) point out that 'CMC has provided an additional channel' for written Pidgins
and Creoles, which does not only invo lve the digitisation of existing spoken texts or genres,
but 'has also given rise to new written text types such as e-mails and discussion forums'
(Deuber and Hinrichs 2007: 24). In their comparison of digital fonns of Jamaican Creole and
Nigerian Pidgin and their effects on orthographic standardisation, Deuber and Hinrichs (2007)
find overlapping patterns but also points of contrast, suggesting that local norms and linguistic
influences p lay an important role.
Similar studies include Oenbring (2013), on orthographic patterns in Bahamian Creole Eng-
lish, based on a corpus of discussion forum data; Rajah-Canim (2009), on use and standardisation
of Mauritian Creole in CMC, with a specific focus on users' attitudes; Moll (20 15, chapter 4) on
orthographic practices in a Jamaican online forW11; and Ifukor (2011), on 'simulated shibboleths'
(in the sense of phonological representations) in Nigerian blogs. While all of the sn1dies outlined
here approach orthographic practices in digital contact language use from a perspective of stand-
ardisation and the emergence of rules, others have focused on the ludic, w1conventional, and
anti-standard oriented potential of digital linguistic practice. As pointed out earlier, Zhang (20 15)
explores this dimension of linguistic creativity in Chinese/English microblogging.
Deumert and Lexander (20 13) present a multi-locale stu dy of text ing in sub-Saharan Africa,
including uses of West African Pidgins, and highlight the variability of linguistic resources that
'allow writers to perfom1 different personae, to write themselves " into being" as a particular
329
Theresa Heyd
kind of person (skill full, loving, sexy, etc.), and to negotiate their re lationships with others'
(Dewnert and Lexander 2013: 540). Hillewaert (2015), in her ethnographic study on Facebook
usage in Kenya, explicitly highlights 'the perfonnative quality of nonstandard digital orthog-
raphy' (Hillewaert 2015: 198).
Finally, a set of studies have pointed to more general aspects of linguistic variation and
patterns of digital linguistic practice, without an exclusive view on orthographic standard or
anti-standard practices. In some cases, these are explicit comparisons of digita l vs. non-digital
linguistic practices, as in the contrastive study by Deuber, Leimgruber, and Sand (20 18) on
features of Sing!ish in digital and spoken situations, or Ong (20 17) on the interaction between
Singlish and features of 'textese'. In other cases, studies have attempted to chart the entire dig-
ital field of a given contact-linguistic situation. Such encompassing approaches are few and far
between, but Barasa 's (20 I 0) overview on texting, email, !M, and SMS chats in Kenya, with a
lot of analytical attention given to Sheng and Engsh, stands out as an example. Finally, a recent
trend in the ana lysis ofPidgins and Creoles in new technological settings is the increasing role
of audio and aud io-visual formats- completing the circ le, in a way, to the existing forms of
mediatisation such as pop music and video outlined in Section 3. The interne!, as an increas-
ingly audible place, focused on the production and consumption of video, spoken interfaces
such as voice chat and interne! telephony, and human-machine interaction through generated
speech, is a topic which will gain in prom inence in the fie ld of Pidgin and Creole studies in the
future. Initial overview studies, such as Schneider (20 16) on the role ofYouTube for the study
of World Englishes, and innovative methodologies, such as Wrobel's (20 12) analysis of plural
marking in St Croix or Leung's (2017) use ofYouTube comments as metadata for the study of
Trinidadian Creole English are first forays into this growing field.
17.4.4 Language ideologies in digital communities

ofPidgin and Creole users
The points made so far have all focused, to a certain degree, on issues of language contact in
and through digital contexts, and the ensuing fonns of variation and related structural aspects.
But scholars from sociol inguistics and anthropological linguistics have also pointed to the
wider relevance of digitisation for contact languages and the ir role in the forn1ation of com-
munities, individua l and group identity, and the associated constructions of soc ial meaning
and language ideology. Where digital commun ication is construed as a space, be it separate
or intensely tied to geophysical space, the notion that linguistic interaction in its communities
is understood as socially meaningfu l becomes self-evident (see Androutsopoulos 2006 for a
fow1dational swdy of multi lingualism in onl ine communities). This is particu larly re levant at
a time when being the speaker of a Pidgin or Creo le is no longer territorially restricted to the
use of highly loca lised vernaculars situated in clearly bounded and identifiable territories. As
people, technology, and linguistic resources have become globally mobile, so have Pidgins
and Creoles. As a result, digital communities have become socially re levant spaces of practic-
ing and perfonn ing contact languages. And because such onl ine commWlities bring together
heterogeneous crowds - from local to diasporic, from geophysically anchored to high ly deter-
ritorialised users - the linguistic interactions that take place in such commun ities can be read
in the light of globalised and mobile sociolinguistics (B lommaert 20 I 0).
This intersection of contact varieties, on line communities, and their sociol inguistic con-
structions has been explored in depth in studies around large-scale corpora of diasporic onl ine
communities as described in Mair and Pflinder (20 13). For example, Moll (20 15) examines the
notion of an on line Jamaican community as a 'digital yaad' and examines, besides orthographic
330
and other structural issues, the digital linguistic rituals produced and enacted by this commu-
nity. Honkanen (2020) focuses on the role of Nigerian Pidgin in an on line commun ity of
d iasporic Nigerians in North America, and their linguistic constructions of Naija through the
interaction of different linguistic resources. Heyd and Mair (2014) point to different linguistic
aspects to be found in diasporic online communities, such as grassroots strategies of language
teaching and leam ing; Heyd (20 15) focuses on their use of metalingu istic tem1s to del ineate
and manage linguistic authentication amongst users in such a commun ity.
T he notion that ideologies about Pidgins and Creoles are tied to mediatised forms of com-
munication has been established before - see in particular the collection of studies edited by Sip-
pola, Schneider, and Levisen (20 17), discussed in Section 3. Intriguingly, Vandeputte-Tavo (20 13)
points out that the connection between new technologies and ideologies arowtd contact languages
may be constitutive. In her study of digitisation and the language ecology of Vanuatu, she points
out that ' Bislama in Vanuatu is partly associated with modemity. It is the use ofBislama in fonns
of mobile phones' conununication which strongly contributes to this language shift ideology'
(Vandeputte-Tavo 2013: 174). In other words, there is a conjunction between contact language use
and digital conununication through the indexicality of 'modernity'. Where such constellations of
social meaning persist, the use of new technologies will do more than affect lingu istic structure or
the sociolinguistic makeup of online communities, they will have ramifications for the very social
construction of contact languages in globalised and mediatised contexts.
17.5 Conclusion: from new technologies to the new normal

As this review of existing literature and ongoing debates has sought to highlight, the fie ld of
d igital contact languages and their structural and soc iolingu istic inqu iry is st ill in its infancy;
yet it is growing fast. In particular in the ligllt of onl ine communication understood in con-
jtmction with trajectories of globalisation and deterritorial isat ion, it seems clear that digital
scenarios offer unprecedented views into Pidgins and Creoles as mobile resources, rather than
locally grounded vemaculars. And the different forms of variation, including audio and audio-
visual fonns of mediated commun ication, are only a snapshot of current developments; future
studies will have to address next-generation technologies and digital linguistic pract ices.
In this sense, then, the integration of new domains and new technologies into Pidgin and
Creole research has, become the ' new nonnal' - no longer a peripheral or special-interest
topic, but one that is at the very centre of linguistic interaction and analysis. However, this
new normal is bound to remain a moving target - one that needs to keep abreast not just
with the developments in lingu istic varieties, but with aspects of technological innovation. In
this sense, future contact linguistic studies may focus their interest on issues such as hwnan-
machine interact ion and Artificial Intell igence, on lingu istic diversity in t imes of platform
capitalism and algorithmed pattems of interaction. Thinking such aspects of technological
innovation through the lens of language contact and Pidgin/Creole studies will, w ithout a
doubt, create new domains of contact linguistic inquiry.
Further reading
Danet, B. & Herring, S. C . (eds.). 2007. The Multilinguallmernet: Language, Culture, and Commrmica-
tion Online. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
This edited volume was the first comprehensive treatment of multilingualism and linguistic diversity
in online contexts. Although it is not explicitly focused on contact languages, it conta ins many foun-
dations! texts and valuable points o f depamtre for the digital sntdy of pidgins and creoles.
331
Theresa Heyd
Deumert, A. & Lexander, K. V. 2013. Texting Africa: Writing as performance. Journal ofSociolinguis-
rics, 17(4): 522-546.
This comparative smdy on texting in sub-Saharan Africa provides insight on working with digital and
mobile linguistic practice, both from a methodological point of view and with regard to simating the
findings in contemporary sociolinguistic theory.
Hinrichs, L. 2006. Codeswitching onrhe Web. English and Jamaican Creole in £ -mail Communication.
T his monograph was the first book-length smdy of a contact language in digital settings. Hinrichs
(2006) remains a central text for understanding code-switching, but also many other linguistic impli-
cations o f pidgin and creole use in digital settings.
Related topics
On the History of Pidgin and Creole Studies; Creole Arts and Music; Multilingualism and the
Structure of Code-Mixing
Bibliography
Adedun, E. A. 2010. T he sociolinguistics of a Nollywood movie. Journal of Global Analysis, 1(2):
111-138.
Akande, A. 2013. Code-switching in Nigerian hip-hop lyrics. Language Mauers, 44(1): 39-57.
Androutsopoulos, J. 2006. Introduction: Sociolinguistics and computer-mediated communication. Jour-
nal ofSociolinguistics, 10(4): 419-438.
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18
IM/MOBILITIES
Lisa Lim
18.1 Preamble
A contemplation of pidgin and creole languages - a reflection of the outcome of contact
between different communities and the languages spoken, primarily in the context of colonisa-
tion or trade - is necessari ly a recognition of the centrality of mobility.
Not quite, in fact. A consideration of p idgin and creo le languages has usually, tradition-
ally, involved discussions of migration, particularly in the context of imperialism and slavery.
Migration has of course long been a theme addressed in various fields: for example, new
d ialect fom1ation is explored as one of the linguistic effects of migration (Kerswill 2006),
along the parameters of spac.e, time, motivation, and socio-cultural factors in migration studies
(Lewis 1982: 9- 19; Boy le et al. 1998: 34-38); and World Englishes are examined with atten-
tion to modem-day migration patterns and the diaspora (Zipp 2020).
This chapter goes beyond what is trad itionally encompassed in migration stud ies. The
concepts of migration and mob ility certainly intersect, but are not synonymous. Migration
is broadly understood to have at its core human movement across an international border
or within a state away from individuals' habitual place of residence, with widely varying
mot ivations identified for moving. The notion of migration and migration stud ies however
is often recogn ised as suffering from lim itations (e.g. see Sirkeci and Cohen 2011, 2013;
Dawson 20 16; Salazar 20 19). These include: the dom inant transnational lens which privi-
leges forms of identification (i.e. ethnicity and national ity) that are fundamentally seden-
tary; the issue of"m igrant exceptionalism" (Hui 2016) with a focus almost exclusively on
migrants, and a bias towards lower-skilled migrants; the negative connotations that tend to
associate such movements as involving more risky, questionable persons; the proliferation
of new and d iscrete migrant and migration types and subtypes which are not considered;
and, most importantly, the fact that the dynamic nature of human mobi lity is simply not
fully captured.
Indeed, recent decades have witnessed a turn to the "new mobilities paradigm" in the social
sciences (Sheller and Urry 2006; Urry 2012), in which human mobility is viewed as entailing
a complex assemblage of movement, social imaginaries, and experience (Cresswe ll 2006). In
linguistics, interdiscip linary and mu ltidiscipl inary perspectives have been brought to bear on
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Lisa Lim
the examination oflanguage and human mobil ity, particu larly in today's global ised world (e.g.
Canagarajah 20 17).
Some may immed iately baulk at foregrounding the idea of mobility and re framing the ori-
g ins and histories of pidgin and creole commw1ities in terms of mobility, since being forcibly
dislocated from one's home land and relocated to an oppressive situation, as with the slave
plantations, can hardly be associated with the connotations of agency that "mobility" holds.
Indeed Kihm (2007) writes emphatically about how the emergence of creole languages is
an entirely different phenomenon, quite different from the usual linguistic consequences of
migration. The crucial po int, for Kihm, is that there is an initia l catastrophe that defines creole
language emergence, which migrations, he ho lds, do not nom1a lly involve, and as a conse-
quence elective migrations do not produce the kinds of linguistic novelties that catastrophic
relocations foster.
Be that as it may, the aim of this chapter is to asswne a broad, catholic approach to what
mobility entai ls. Movement, after all, in all its forms is an essential characteristic of this day
and age (Rapport and Dawson 1998). Expanding our notion of mobility beyond the geographic
to also encompass social and symbolic mobility in turn enhances our appreciation of how
p idgin and creole languages are positioned in their commun ities, and the practices surrounding
the use of pidgins and creoles. Such considerations are increasingly acknowledged as a major
factor in reference to the traditional accounts of the genesis and formation of these languages;
but, perhaps more importantly, they can also enrich our analysis and theorising about the ir
continued evolution in today's world.
How is mobility conceived then? Several frameworks may stand us in good stead for view-
ing pidgin and creole languages and communities.
As already intimated, mobility is best understood as broadly encompassing a wide range
of movement in space and place, and referring not simply to movement, but movement with
meaning, which are situated in relations of geopol itical, cultural, economic, and historical
power, all of which typically work together (Massey 2004; Cresswell 2006). At the same
time, the conceptual analytic of mobility shou ld involve a recognition of various immobilities
underp inning mobi lities (Dutta and Shome 2018: 3961).
It is also usefu l to conc.eive of mobility as capital (Kaufmann et al. 2004; Flamm and
Kaufmann 2006; Kaufrnann 2009) - based on Bourdieu 's theoretical expansion of the notion
of capital - which conceptualises "the capacity of entities (e.g. goods, infom1ation or person)
to be mobi le in socia l and geographical space, or ... the way in which entities access and
appropriate the capacity for socio-spatial mobility according to their circwnstances" (Kauf-
mann et a l. 2004: 76). This is understood through three interrelated factors: access, skills, and
appropriation. First, actors' access to different types and degrees of mobility is linked to oppor-
twJities and constra ints shaped by the structural conditions in which they are embedded, as
well as their social location within them. Second, being mobile requ ires particular skills (and
other capital) to organise the movements and carry them out. Finally, the cognitive appropria-
tion of opportunities to realise projects is crucial, involving ways in which agents (including
individuals, groups, networks, or institutions) interpret and act upon perceived or real access
and skills to actually transfonn mobility into a type of capital. Such appropriation is further
shaped by the needs, plans, aspirations, and understandings of agents, as it relates to strategies,
motives, values, and habits (Kaufrnann et al. 2004). Also see studies of the transformation of
mobility into academic and institutional cap ital in the neoliberal, global knowledge economy
(Bonisch-Brednich 20 18).
The rest of this chapter is organised around different kinds of im/mobilities by which we
can position pidgins and creole languages and/or their communities.
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Im/ Mobi/ities
18.2 Geographical mobility
18.2. 1 Genesis
In the consideration of geographical or spatial mobility, we revert here for a moment to the
notion of migration - the pern1anent or temporary movement of pe.o ple from one geographical
area to another, whether across the boundary of or within an area! unit - which is, after all, well
established as be ing a constant of human history since earliest times (Deumert 2006: 635).
Migration- in addition to leading to language diversification and spread, which underpin the
histories of the major language fam ilies- creates the conditions for inter-group contact, which
leads to the formation of new language varieties, inc luding new dialects by the process ofko i-
neisation (see e.g. Kerswill 2006), second-language varieties, as well as trade jargons, pidgins,
Creoles, and m ixed languages.
Pidgin and creole languages are typically linked to the expansion of European maritime
power and tr ade in the Age of Discovery, starting in the 15th century. This already underscores
the connections between both geographical and economic mobility, as Europeans sought to
increase their wea lth and power through increasing their trade routes and territories around
the globe.
Severa l kinds of migration are usually recognised as having formed the ecology for the
genesis of these contact varieties.
18.2.1.1 Trade and labour

The movement of different communities for the sake of long-distance trade led to the emer-
gence of several we ll-known lingue franche or pidgins. Many trade colonies involving the
exchange of commodities between Europeans and indigenous peoples flourished in the 17th
century along the West African coast, as well as on the Ind ian subcontinent, and in Southeast
Asia and the Pacific in the 18th and 19th centuries. In such trading colonies, contact tended
to be short-lived and limited to fulfi lling specific goals. Some trade colonies did develop into
exploitation colonies.
Indeed the earliest known recorded p idgin, Lingua Franca, was a maritime or nautical
p idgin. This emerged as a medium of trade and commerce in the Levant as an outcome of
contact in the eastern Mediterranean in the med ieval period as early as the 9th century and it
drew on words from Italian, Provencal, French, Spanish, Greek, and Arabic, among other lan-
guages. Lingua Franca was used in ports along the Med iterranean coast w1til the 19th century.
The original "pidgin" was also a trade language, the name a Cantonese-influenced pronwl-
ciation of the English word business. This pidgin, known as Chinese Pidgin English or Chinese
Coast Pidgin (CCP), emerged in Canton - present-day Guangzhou in southern China - and
functioned as the lingua franca between the Chinese merchants and the Westerners who had
travelled to trade in Chinese coastal ports and some inland markets (Ansaldo et al. 20 l 0).
Other well-known examples of trade varieties include: Russenorsk (Lw1den 1978), which
developed in Russian-Norwegian fishing commw1ities that met seasonally in coastal areas
during the whaling season; West African Pidgin English (e.g. Huber 1999), which developed
in the late 17th through 18th centuries between the sailors and slave traders and the locals and
long-d istance traders along the West African coastl ine; and Melanesian Pidgin in Oceania
w hich emerged from transactional contact in Eastern Austra lia (Meakins, this volume).
The movement of persons within their own country or from one state to another for the pur-
pose of (the seeking of) employment has also resulted in the development of pidgin varieties.
337
Lisa Lim
Gastarbieterdeutsch, "guest worker German", the reduced Gennan variety spoken in Ger-
many by foreign workers, generally from southern European countries, including Thrkey, who
constituted some 12% of the workforce, is an outcome of the 1950s wave of immigration due
to Gern1any's rapidly expanding economy (Clyne 1968; Holm 1988: 6 18ff.). A more recent but
similar situation is seen in the countries on the western coast of the Arab Gu lf, where the oi l
boom saw sign ificant labour migration, with most immigrant workers coming from South and
Southeast Asia (Manfredi, this volume). With none of the groups of foreign workers normally
acquiring a variety of Arabic, and with English not be ing spoken by these imm igrant com-
munities (with the exception of Filipino domestic helpers) nor by the local population, several
varieties of Gulf Pidgin Arabic have emerged as lingua franca in the past40 years.
18.2.1.2 Forced and mass labour migration

While most if not all migration can be considered broadly to be "forced", insofar as one is
forced to migrate in search of employment (as in trade m igration) or an improved qua lity of
life (as in settler migration), here the focus is on forced mass migration associated primarily
with the movements involved in slavery, which it is instructive to contrast with the sem i-
forced migrations associated with the system known as indenture.
Perhaps the best known case of forced migration involved the massive and frequently
forced dislocation of large populations, usually in the fonn of chattel slavery of an estimated
l 0-12 mi llion Africans to the plantation colonies of the Caribbean, West Indies, and the Amer-
icas, as well as Portugal, in the 16th through 19th cenruries. This supported the colonial expan-
sion of (mostly) European powers. The plantation system in particular involved an ecology
where captured slaves spoke a variety of diverse native languages but did not share a lingua
franca and had min imal access to the dominant colonial language of the ir masters. Also cmcial
and relevant in our consideration of mobil ity is the fact that the migration undertaken was not
only forced but a lso final, that is, there was no contact and certainly no rerum to the homeland.
Clearly a marked sociohistorical circwnstance, these conununities faced immobilities of both
a geographical as well as a socia l kind.
The semi-forced movements of indenrured labourers provide interesting comparisons, from
different perspectives.
Labourers from South Asia, for example, brought to European colonies in different parts
of the world - often into the very terra ins from wh ich slaves had been freed in the early
19th century- though often coerced into employment, were in principle able to return home
upon completion of the contract. In such cases, language maintenance was possible, and South
Asian languages survived in new forn1s that showed robust traces of migration, social realign-
ments, and language and dialect contact.
Within the East Indies, sizeable nwnbers of peoples were moved, by the Dutch and subse-
quently the British, from their origins in the Southeast Asian Malay world to other locations
in their possession - for example, to Sri Lanka (what was then Ceylon), who would eventu-
a lly forn1 the Sri Lanka Malay community. Of those from Indonesia (the Dutch East lndies)
and Malaya who were settled on the island through various waves of deportation, two large
groups comprised the nobility and the garrison (the latter would become the Ceylon Rifle Reg-
iment under the British), both commw1ities typically accompanied by their wives and fami lies
(Ansaldo 2009). In other words, the mobil ity - the mobilisation - of these peoples constituted
not just single individuals but also included fami ly, retinue, and network ties. Perhaps unsur-
prisingly then, when in 1799, when the British took over the island and made arrangements
for the repatriation of all the Malay soldiers, the Ma lays as one refused to be repatriated,
338
Im/ Mobi/ities
having settled and made Ceylon their home (Lim and Ansaldo 2007). Three interesting les-
sons may be noted here. That entire communities with networks were moved would seem to
be significant, making for greater readiness to remain in the new territory. Agency was able
to be asserted, and the possibility for return m igration was not taken. The decision to remain,
and thus be more pennanent, in the new, adopted territory - the foregoing of geographical
mobility - actually offered the community further social mobility - this will be examined in
a later section.
18.2.2 Secondary migrations

Even whi le creoles are languages which owe their existence to the movement of populations,
they themselves frequently become languages on the move, as noted by Mair (2010: 442ff.),
w ho cites several examples as follows.
The sem i-industrial plantation estates of the Caribbean islands, one of the world's focal
areas of creole genesis in the 17th and 18th centuries, after the p lantation phase, witnessed
out-migration: workers from the British West Indies helped build the Panama Canal, and pro-
vided labour for US agribusinesses; and after World War 11, creole-speaking communities'
relocation led to thriving diaspora communities in Britain, and the birth of London Jamaican,
around the 1950s to 1970s (Sebba 1993; Patrick 2004). Haitians have fled from Haiti since the
1970s for economic and pol itica l reasons, migrating to other islands in the West Indies or to the
USA. Sim ilarly, for reasons of econom ic pressure and political tllrnloi l, a sizeable proportion
ofSuriname's Sranan-speaking community relocated to the Netherlands.
The linguistic impacts of these secondary migrations remain somewhat w1der-researched
(Erker et al. 20 17). Recent work on circular migration (speakers who migrate to the UK and
Canada as adu lts but then return with some financ ial security to their natal communities in the
Caribbean) suggest that there are limits on what aspects of the linguistic system are restruc-
tured in these mobility patterns. Speakers often depress the overall frequency of markedly
local, creole variants in their speech, without changing the fine-grained linguistic constraints
they acqu ired whi le growing up (Meyerhoff and Walker 2007). But occasionally they seem to
boost non-standard, creole variants (Meyerhoff and Walker 20 13). Further research is needed
to determine what inclines certain speakers to different strategies, and how awareness or lin-
guistic markedness of specific features plays into different outcomes in such contexts of c ir-
cu lar migration.
18.3 Sociolinguistic mobility

As is now clearly recognised and emphasised in research, what may be seen as "creole space"
is first and foremost socio linguistic space (M air 20 I 0: 446). Crucially, this enta ils acknowl-
edging movement - mob ility or Jack thereof- within such a social space.
In older views, this has been presented in largely unidimensional mode ls. For instance,
Creoles in classic diglossic situations - such as in Haiti (Ferguson 1959) - which tended to
be mass vernaculars, saw immobility in being re legated to the Low variety. Otherwise, Cre-
oles are re lated to standard -like vers ions via a gradual, ordered cre.ole continuwn - such as
in Jamaica (DeCamp 1971; Deuber 2011) and Guyana (Rickford 1987) - with such a model
accounting for intra-speaker stylistic variability and inter-speaker variability associated with
social status and education through the cho ices avai lable to speakers via " implicationally
scaled and unidirectional moves between opposite poles of"creoleness" and "standardness""
(Mair 20 I 0: 446).
339
Lisa Lim
Such models have been critiqued as not being fit to account for the full complexity of
social and ethnic variation, with a multidimensional creole space being proposed (as has been
defined by e.g. Carrington 1992: 98). In recognising the multi-systemic repertoires of the
individuals inhabiting this creole spac.e, and the density of networks of commun ication which
detenn ines the stabi lity and identifiability of systems within this space, the model highl ights
the range of mobility that creole communities have. Further, such a multidimensional space
coheres because networks of conununication overlap - underscoring not just mobi lity of ind i-
vidua ls but the crossing of movements into others' space.
Another kind of mobility is observed in more recent stud ies of mu lticultural urban varie-
ties: Multiethnic Vernacu lar English, for instance, is analysed as a variety which very often
incorporates Jamaican Creole e lements as stylised and highly mobile linguistic resources,
which are only very loosely connected to the creole continuum postulated for Jama ican Creole
itself (Kerswill et al. 2008).
18.4 Social mobility

If we focus on the p idgin and creole language varieties themselves, even while speakers of
the varieties often hold positive attitudes towards their vemacular as a marker of solidarity and
loca l social identity, with the languages valued in the private domains of fami ly and friend-
ship - good examples inc luding Louisiana Creole (Dubois and Melanyon 2000) and Hawai' i
Creole English (Eades et al. 2006) - a wide ly recognised phenomenon is nonethe less the ir
Jack of overt sociolinguistic prestige in public or more forma l domains, with speakers of such
varieties facing a Jack of socia l mobility in the mainstream.
Several situations are certa inly notable: official language status is held by Tok Pisin in
Papua New Guinea, where there are more than 800 languages, and by French-lexicon Creoles
in the Seychelles and Haiti. In Vanuatu too, with more than 100 languages, Bislama is an
official language - still, as is regularly pointed out, its legitimacy in the country's educational
system has been long debated (Vandeputte-Tavo 20 13; Willans 20 16). Indeed these are more
the exception than the rule.
An expanded pidgin like West African Pidgin English, as noted by Mair (20 I 0), for exam-
ple, although routine ly used by tens of mi llions of Nigerians and other West Africans and a
natively spoken creole for several mill ions more, is nonetheless refused any kind of official
recognition and support in multi lingual and multiethnic states (Schroder 2003; Deuber 2005).
Similarly, in Jamaica, Creole is the vernacular and the first language of the majority, but is
viewed as a problem and an obstacle (Farquharson 20 15), with only Standard English deemed
acceptable as a medium of instruction or administration.
Sri Lanka Malay - a restructured Malay variety showing Sinhala and Tami l influence -
whi le sti ll showing vitality in the peripheral communities on the south coast of the island, was
in a state of endangerment in the metropolitan Sri Lanka Ma lay commw1ity of Co lombo (Lim
and Ansaldo 2006, 2007). On the one hand, there was much activity in the symbolic mainte-
nance of the ancestral language, through pub lications about SLM, its use in the commun ity's
Malay Language Days, and symbo lically in the SLM Association's committee meetings. On
the other hand, when it came to the revitalisation of the ir Malay vernacu lar, the choice was
made to acquire Standard Malay (of Malaysia) instead, for better access to educational and
employment opportllilities in the larger Malay world. This shift has been analysed as enabling
a minority commun ity to gain access to economic resources while sti ll preserving and rep-
resenting their position through identity alignment (Lim and Ansaldo 2007; Ansaldo 2009).
Standard Malay - compared to Sri Lanka Malay, typologically more similar to Sinhala and
340
Im/ Mobi/ities
Tamil, and, crucially, considered a creole language (Lim and Ansaldo 2007) - was considered
by the community as affording them greater capacity for soc io-spatio mobi lity.
TUrning to the communities themselves also reveals how they are more often than not in a
position of disadvantage, associated as they often are with a certain amount of stigma. While
the issue of cu lture is hugely controversial in the study of the differential soc ial mobility, in
particular of imm igrant groups - and it is generally desirable to avoid the cultural istic fallacy
(namely, to depict cu ltures as sharply bounded, homogeneous, and relatively unchanging enti-
ties transmitted from generation to generation) (Vermeulen 2000: I) - the relative immobil-
ity of cre.o le communities has been noted. A telling example comprise the Afro-Surinamese
creole immigrants to the Netherlands, who have long been viewed as a socially disadvantaged
group, and, who were (especially in the 1970s and early 1980s) depicted in the media as prob-
lematic. This is particularly interesting when contrasted with another large ethnic immigrant
group, the Hindustanis, who sim ilarly originated from Surinam and migrated during the same
time frame. The Hindustani migrants thus had comparable legal status and were able to access
comparab le structura l opportunities upon arrival, but have, in contrast to the Afro-Surinamese,
been considered successfu l rather than problematic (van Niekerk 2000).
On the other hand, we can also identify instances of creole commw1ities who have been
able to leverage the ir position for greater soc ial mobi lity. The Sri Lanka Malays and the Per-
anakans of Singapore (also known as Straits-born Chinese or Babas) are good cases in point,
as is clear in the accow1ts in Lim (20 16a, 20 16b). It is instructive to see how both these
communities maxim ised the ir potential for spatio-social mobility along all three dimensions
(Kaufrnann et al. 2004) - of access to different fonns and degrees of mob il ity, competence to
recognise and make use of access, and appropriation of particular choices (Lim and Ansaldo
2020, 202 1). This is not least due to the politics of segregation introduced by the Dutch in
Southeast Asia (Reid 2000) and continued by the British, where individuals of mixed origin
were used as midd lemen, merchants, and interpreters between the colonial administration and
local popu lation and newer arrivals.
The Malays of Sri Lanka had in their repertoire their restructured variety of Sri Lanka
Malay, as well as the major languages spoken on the island, namely Sinhala and Tami l, and,
in some strata, the language of the colonial power - this, as outl ined in Lim and Ansaldo
(2007) and Ansa ldo and Lim (2014), gave them the opportunity to function in both Dutch and
British Ceylon as intennediaries between colonisers and locals, as they were proficient in the
languages needed to interact with all parties concerned. The proficiency in Dutch of the older
Javanese - whose ancestors were Javanese nobility exiled during the wars of succession in
Java during Dutch rule - allowed them to be appointed Hoofd de Maha Badda (Sinhala maha
badda "great trade", referring to the cinnamon industry first established by the Sinhala king in
the 1500s for Portuguese trade) or Hoofd de Cinnamon, namely, the "captain" supervising the
cinnamon gardens, the spice being one of the most prec ious commodities during Dutch rule.
With increased production of cinnamon, these superior officers wou ld be rewarded with more
power, promotions and privileges. Most of the exiles became enlisted in the mi litary, and were
later retained under the British as members of the Malay Regiment (as well as in the Polic.e and
the Fire Brigade), where, although they dropped their royal titles, they did nonetheless main-
tain their status. After the disbandment of the regiment in 1873, many of the Ma lays joined
the tea estates and, with their proficiency in English, functioned as intern1ediaries between the
English superintendents and the Indian labour force.
In similar manner, the Peranakans - descendants of the early southern Chinese seafar-
ing traders to the Ma lay archipelago who married local women and settled in the region
in the 17th/ 18th centuries - took advantage of the opportunities that their early arrival and
341
Lisa Lim
permanence in the region afforded them, and the access that their mixed heritage and multi-
lingual repertoire, comprising Baba Malay, Bazaar Malay, Hokkien, and possibly one or two
other Chinese languages, gave them. They were also in a position to access Engl ish education,
which meant closer contact with British administrators and merchants. This together with Per-
anakans' business acumen enabled them to predominate in the commercial sectors, and they
established identities for themse lves, such that they were viewed the best educated, wealthiest,
and most intelligent section of the Singapore Chinese community.
Crucially, the Peranakan community were able to do this across different times and chang-
ing ecologies. Fast forward to the 2 1st century, and the Peranakans have continued to maintain
a prominent position in Singapore society: while now in a postvernacular situ ation - with Eng-
lish their dom inant variety, and the ir original vernacular, Baba Malay, now considered endan-
gered - the ir historical social mobility and continued social status affords them opportunities
to influence the arts, media, and politics of Singapore, which in turn translates into support
for cu ltural establishments and events. Most cruc ially, prec ise ly because of their mixed - cre-
ole - heritage, they have been held up as "multiracial emblems of [Singapore's] social m ix",
as proclaimed by Singapore's Arts and lnforn1ation Minister in 2010 (quoted in Simon 2010,
c ited in Lim 20 14), with Peranakan cu lture and perfonnances consistently showcased on the
globa l stage as the essence of be ing Singaporean (Lim 20 16b). This has resulted in the Per-
anakan commw1ity continuing to enjoy success through social mobi lity during both colonial
and postcolonial times.
185 Symbolic mobility

As pointed out by Mair (2010: 447), not only are Creoles frequently considered corrupt and
therefore expendable versions of their lexifiers, but they also lack the prestige of traditional
indigenous languages as the symbolic corre lates of a supposedly authentic indigenous cu lture.
There are however increasing examp les of cre.ole varieties which demonstrate symbol ic
mobility on a number of fronts, primarily as a consequence of globalisation which has afforded
opportunities in domains such as the entertainment industry and computer-mediated com-
munication. One of the best known and much investigated examples is Jamaican Creole or
Patwa, considered a hyper-mobile variety (Hinrichs 2011: 3) in this regard, remaining in use in
many diasporic communities and crucially frequ ently transmitted to the second generation of
immigrants, as well as used in digital commw1ication for the construction of diasporic identity.
Several interesting aspects involving mobility may be recognised here. First, in the
diasporic communities in urban centres, for example, London, first- and second-generation
Caribbean imm igrants from small-island commw1ities such as St Lucia and Antigua have
tended to assimilate to Jamaican norms to some extent. One can thus speak of the deterritori-
a lisation of creoles, in that the creole language can be seen to have a mobility beyond its own
community. Second, the attractiveness of crossing into Jamaican Creole by Asian and white
adolescents in the UK (Rampton 1995) is explained by Jamaican Creole's fimction as the code
of a multiethnic street cu lture in contemporary Britain, affording its users symbo lic capital and
mobility within that culture.
Third, Jamaican Creole, in its specific manifestation as a conduit of Rastafarian slang, has
become established as a lifestyle choice on the back of the success of reggae music and its con-
temporary successors of dancehall and ragga (M air 20 I 0: 447). lt has, in turn, been globalised
by the entertainment industry, and become a code that is available for appropriation by others
for symbo lic capital in certain contexts. An illustration is found in a close smdy of Patwa as
a code which is carefu lly deployed for primarily symbolic purpose by a Jamaican Canadian
342
Im/Mobi/ities
radio host of a Canad ian Reggae show - to broker between those amongst her studio guests
and audience who are fully competent in Patwa, and those who wish to be part of the cultural
practice of Canadian Reggae (Hinrichs 201 1).
Finally, there is the use of Jamaican Creole- and also Nigerian Pidgin and Haitian Creole-
in computer-mediated communication, in particu lar in chat rooms (Moll 2015: 40; Heyd, this
volume). Frequented by members of the public in the diaspora who are frequ ently educated
and midd le class and thus fully competent in English and French, the use of the creole varie-
ties comprises an optional stylistic reperto ire, a code available for the purposes of more effec-
tive identity and discourse work (M air 20 I 0: 448).
18.6 Moving forward

This chapter has had as its aim an appreciation of pidgin and creole languages and communi-
ties in tenus of mobility, in particular the new mobilities paradigm.
One clear take-home message lies in the va lue of approaching this fie ld in such a frame-
work. In looking at the early period of pidgin and creole communities and language forma-
tion, a reanalys is through the lens of mob ility, as in Sections 2 and 3, helps to foreground the
moves, primarily geographic, undertaken by communities, and the subsequent mobility, or
Jack thereof, that the communities and/or their languages cou ld avail themselves of. Then,
it is in the examination of pidgin and creole communities in the present day where the new
mobilities parad igm clearly proves its worth - allowing us to appreciate nuances in the
soc ial and symbolic mobi lities ava ilable and accessed by the communities in the global ised
world.
The second and related point is one that has been made now by many scho lars: that phe-
nomena being considered for creole languages are not always exceptional to them. Issues in or
outcomes of contact language formation, for example, are often also observed for other contact
language varieties, whether they fall into other "categories" that our discip lines assume, such
as World Englishes or mixed languages (e.g. Lim 2009; Lim and Ansaldo 2016). Issues per-
taining to mobility, such as those explored in th is chapter for pidgin and creole language com-
munities, are observed and stud ied in a diversity of groups, including minority and migrant
language commw1ities (e.g. Homer and Dailey-O'Cain 2019).
Future work wou ld benefit from moving across boundaries - not only to bring together
multidisciplinary perspectives from, inter al ia, migration studies, geography, sociology, but
a lso to transcend the divide within lingu istics between traditionally distinct areas of creole
studies, World Englishes, dialectology, and sociol inguistics at large.
Further reading
Ansaldo, U. 2009. Comact languages: Ecology and evolution in Asia. (Cambridge Approaches to Lan·
guage Contact). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
This book highlights the relationship between geography and language contact, especially for the
Indian Ocean and South and Southeast Asian region. It looks at the role that climate, trade, and popu·
lation movements play in the emergence of new languages, w ith a focus on slavery, indentured labour,
and intermarriage practices in pre· and colonial times.
Canagarajah, S., ed. 20 17. The Rout/edge handbook ofmigration and language. Routledge.
This comprehensive sun •ey explores language and human mobility in today's globalised world, and
brings together interdiscipl inary and multidisciplinary perspectives from a range of scholars, drawing
on subjects such as migration smdies, geography, philosophy, sociology, and anthropology.
343
Lisa Lim
Homer, K. & Dailey-O'Cain, J., eds. 2019. Multilingualism, (im)mobilities and spaces of belonging
(Encounters). Multilingual Maners.
While this collection which centres around imlmobilities and belonging primarily targets scholars
taking ethnographic and critical sociolinguistic approaches in the context o f globalisation, it holds rel-
evance for those smdying pidgin and creole languages - in the spirit o f our crossing sub-disciplinary
boundaries - in its explorations in minority and migrant language communities, involving issues of
heritage, authenticity, agency, hierarchies, and trajectories.
Hundt, M. & Sharma, D. 20 14. English in the Indian diaspora. (Varieties of English Around the World
G50). Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
This collection of sociol inguistic smdies o f English use across the Indian diaspora is instmctive for
creole smdies in its account of diverse sociohistorical contexts and its examination of questions o f
linguistic outcomes, community stmcmres, transnational ties, animdes, and identity.
Mair, C. 2010. The consequences of migration and colonialism 1: Pidgins and creoles. In Language and
space: An international handbook oflinguistic varation (HSK - Handbllcher zur Sprach- und Kommu-
nikationswissenschaft/Handbooks ofLinguistics and Communication Science) 77teories and Methods ,
edited by Peter Auer and Jfirgen E. Schmidt. Vol. I. Berlin/ New York: Mouton de Gruyter: 440-45 1.
T his accessible, forward-looking article comments on pidgins and creoles from the perspectives of
geographical space, culmraVsocial space, movement in space, and transnationalism (dimensions of
spatiality identified in the Handbook in which the chapter is found), discusses "creole space", high-
lights the deterritorialisation of some creoles through popular culmre and computer-mediated com-
munication, and sketches the outlook for creolophone spaces in the 2 1st cenmry.
Related topics
T he Arab World; South and South East Asia; Australia and the South West Pac ific; Caribbean,
South and Central America; Pidgins and Creoles: New domains, new technologies; Variation
in Pidgin and Creole Languages; Language Contact and Human Dispersal
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347
19
VARIATION IN PIDGIN
Miriam Meyerhoff
19.1 Introduction
Language variation features in most, if not a ll, accounts of the formation of pidgin and cre-
ole languages (PCs), but the variation inherent in PCs is seldom seriously engaged with as
an object of study in its own right. This chapter explores why there are good reasons for
a structured engagement with synchronic, language-internal variation, and we wi ll see that
engagement with variation is central to a solid historica l description of PCs (their emergence
and subsequent patterns of grammaticalisation) and that principled and replicable methods
for analysing variation are essential for addressing some of the (ongoing) fundamental issues
SUITOW1ding PCs.
Through the systematic study of variation in PCs, sociol inguists have (i) achieved greater
c larity about the nature of the Creole continuum, (ii) contributed sign ificantly to debates over
the historical genesis of PCs, the ir re latedness and change over time, and (iii) provided empiri-
cally rich sociolinguistic descriptions of PCs as languages in their own right. Many studies
simultaneously make contributions to more than one of these areas. For instance, detailed
explorations of the Creole continuum m ight rely on careful consideration of different genres
and contexts of language use (whether established or emergent, e.g. Le Page & Tabouret-
Keller 1985; Deuber 2014).
19.2 Why language variation matters

The quantitative study of language variation has, sinc.e its inception in the 1960s (Labov 2006
[1966], 1969, 1972), been understood to be part of the study of language change. That is, the
patterns of variation that can be observed in a speech community (Patrick 2002) at any given
point in time may be the gern1 of language change over time. Synchrony ultimately feeds
diachrony. The startling finding behind the study of language-internal variation and change is
that (i) there are systematic patterns underlying the synchronic distribution of semantically or
ftmctionally equivalent variants, (ii) this variation is neither free, nor categorical, and (ii i) the
constraints on the distribution of those variants may be linguistic, cognitive or soc ial.
Many variationist sociolinguists may be unaware today of the deep links between vari-
ationist sociolinguistics and pidgin and creole (PC) studies, but equally, creolists are often
348
Variation in pidgin and creole languages
entrenched in feature-by-feature comparisons across PC languages.' This gap between vari-

ationist methods and PC stud ies is regrettable on two grounds. First, it erases the important
contribution that PC languages/varieties played in establish ing variationist sociolinguistics as
a field of linguistic enquiry, and second, we wi ll see that a quantitative, empirical perspective
on variation is crucial for making sound generalisations about the genesis and development
ofPCs.
19.3 Language variation as an object of study

It's necessary to first delimit what we are talking about when we talk about studies of language
variation and change. In this chapter, variation will (unless spec ified otherwise) focus on the
internal variation that characterises every natural language, that is, the fact that all speakers
in a commw1ity differ somewhat from each other in the way they talk and in what they find
acceptable, norn1al or appropriate linguistic forms for use in different contexts. This is known
as inter-speaker variation. In addition, individual speakers do not have a single uniform man-
ner of speaking, that is, there is intra-speaker variation which reflects every norn1al speaker's
abil ity to tailor their speech to different soc ial domains or to position themselves differently in
relation to changes in their addressee.
There are, of course, commonal ities in the way people from the same community behave
and identifying these commonal ities is the central enterprise for variationist sociol inguists.
Just as all normally function ing members of a speech community know which fonns are lin-
guistically predictable allophones or allomorphs of a phoneme or morpheme, all normally
functioning members of a speech community know a considerable amount about which forms
are probabilistic variants of an underlying, abstract variable. Most quantitative sociol inguists
would consider this probabil istic knowledge to be as much part of a speaker's linguistic com-
petence as the ir knowledge about syntax and phonology (Eckert 2018; Meyerhoff2019).
Linguists have long recognised that variation within a language is a necessary (though
not sufficient) condition for language change, so the variationist sociolinguist can be seen as
working at the opposite end of the temporal scale from the historical linguist. Clearly, his-
torical reconstruction is also concerned with language variation, but there are some crucial
d ifferences in how variation is operationalised by historica l linguists and socio linguists. The
reconstruction of historical relatedness between languages and dialects generally does not
consider inter- and intra-ind ividua l variation - such data is often lacking and even where it
is ava ilable, researchers often elect to extrapo late from the variation and compare forms that
represent a community-wide norn1. That is, the methods of historical reconstruction (whether
the traditional comparative method or the more recent phylogenetic approaches) progress by
researchers making (informed) categorical generalisations about the presence/absence of a
linguistic feature in idea lised, homogeneous and discrete varieties. Inter- and intra-speaker
heterogeneity is seldom incorporated into the models that reconstruct language splits and diver-
gence. Embracing inter- and intra-speaker variability requires (i) isolating semantically or
functionally equiva lent forms, and (ii) the use of quantitative methods that can handle proba-
bilistic patterns, i.e. the tendency for speakers to use more or less of a particular variant in
some (l inguistic or social) contexts than they do in others.2
There is general acknowledgement (shared by creolists of many stripes) that there must
have been intense variability in the input to PCs (e.g. Bickerton 2016 [1981]; Mufwene 2001),
and that the subsequent outcomes in later stages of PC development reflect some kind of
resolution of that variation. Variationist sociolinguistics takes the empirical facts of varia-
tion seriously and moves beyond statements of simple presence or absence. One purpose of
349
Miriam Meyerhoff
undertaking detailed quantitative analyses of variation is to be able to better understand how

speakers make sense of the variability they are exposed to.
19.4 Variation and the vernacular

Sociolinguistic studies of language variation draw on the most naturalistic speech it is possible
for the researcher to obtain. There is reason to believe that when people are asked d irect ques-
tions about the acceptability of forms, language ideologies and the ir fami liarity with educated,
superposed variants may cloud their response, leading them to produce (or claim they pro-
duce) fonns qu ite different to how they usually talk (Labov 2006 [1966]). Since our purpose
is to discover what forms and constructions occur naturally in a language, this is clearly an
issue, and spontaneously produced, unmon itored speech will provide more valid data. (This
is not to say that self-conscious reflection on what is acceptable or normal usage may not also
be revea ling about how speakers understand the d ifferent variants in play; it means that such
intuitions provide a different kind of data.) The speech pa!lems produced when people are
talking in casual contexts are taken to most closely approximate the variety they first learned
in their community, and can be called their vernacular.
If the chief goals in studying PCs is to (i) document the systematicity and structural richness
ofPCs as natural languages in and of themselves (e.g. not as deviant varieties of a lexifier), and
(ii) understand what structural properties (if any) define PCs as a natural class among human
languages, then it is perhaps surprising that so much of the literature on PCs has been based on
e licitation, introspection or idiosyncratic observation. The empirically grounded work on the
structure of PCs done within the paradigm of variationist sociolinguistics seeks to address this.
19.5 Variation and the Creole continuum

Any researcher studying PCs is obliged to decide how they will handle the multiplicity of
varieties at play within the speech community they are studying and how they will dea l with
speakers' capacity to move readi ly between those many varieties in their daily interactions
(Le Page & Tabouret-Keller 1985). Most PCs exist in highly complex sociol inguistic ecologies
(Ansaldo 2016) characterised by extensive multilingualism, practices of lingu istic hybridity
and continued contact (or diglossic relations) with one or more lexifier language. This means
that a snapshot of the speech commw1ity will inevitably result in a p icture of intense variation -
some codes and some speakers will appear to be more closely linked to the Standard language
variety of the lexifier, some that are different from the lexifier on multiple linguistic measures
and many that appear to be intem1ediate codes in between. Because of the facility with which
speakers move in this variation space and because of the combinatorial productivity of many
of the fonns, creolistics has characterised this fluidity in terms of a creole continuum - where
continuum emphasises the gradient nature of the speech styles under consideration, and also
suggests two poles (a Standard-like acrolect, a highly divergent basi/ect and nwnerous mes-
olects between them). The notion of a continuwn is impressionistically attractive. Indeed,
Bickerton ( 1973) asserts that a continuwn-based approach is the most appropriate ana lysis
"for every language situation that is not wholly and indisputably homogeneous - which in
effect means every language situation" ( 1973: 668). However, it has proven challenging to oper-
ational ise. Quantitative methods have been extremely important in providing the empirical data
that can confirm the validity of conceptualising speakers'linguistic knowledge as a continuum.
Richard Day's (1973) PhD thesis on variation in the vernacu lar English spoken in Hawai' i
was an important milestone in the use of variationist methods to address problems in the
350
description and analysis of a PC. Day compiled a corpus according to sociolinguistic prin-
c iples (though by today's standards his sample is small and overly skewed to younger male
speakers) and then used this corpus of natural recorded conversation and casual interviews
to tackle some fundamental problems. These included whether the vernacu lar was a vari-
ety of English in competition with a Creole, the syntactic relationship between marked and
unmarked past tense, and the relationship between zero forn1s of the copu la, the vernacular
copula stay /ste/, and the contracted and full fonns of Standard Engl ish be. Day assessed the
relative frequ ency of semantically equivalent fonns in a range of linguistic contexts and in the
speech of a number of speakers, and he argues that the best model of the linguistic compe-
tence displayed by speakers in his corpus is a series of overlapp ing, co-existent systems. He
makes this case by representing the results for three variables in implicational scales and by
showing that the eo-occurrence patterns were not distributed in all possible combinations. In
doing this, Day predates the current interest in the clustering of variables (across languages, as
d isplayed in phylogenetic studies of language variation, and within languages in sociolinguis-
tics) - something we will return to shortly.
After reviewing the distribution of different forn1s for expressing the Standard English
copula in Hawai'i, Day constructed the implicational scales shown in Table 19.1 .
Tab le 19.1 shows three contexts in which Standard English requires some form of the
verb be. Within each system, there are implicational relationships. For example, if we know
a speaker uses an lizl forn1 of the copula before locatives, we know that he or she also uses it
before predicate adjectives and NPs, but we do not necessarily know if the speaker uses it in
progressive contexts. When Day considered how individual speakers use these three systems
(/ste/, lizl, lgttl with existentials), he found that only about half of all possible combinations
of leers actually occur (1973: 138). The way the lects for all three systems combine could be
ordered as a further implicational array, and Day used this as the basis for exploring what
might be the best syntactic representation of the copu la in the varieties of English spoken in
Hawai'i. In other words, the exercise of arranging linguistic contexts and speakers in impli-
cational arrays is not so lely a descriptive tool, but can a lso be used as a basis for exploring
syntactic theory.
Table 19.1 Systems identified in copular contexts in Hawai ' i
System Lect Conrexr or form

Locative _ Progressive
/stel copula A X X
B X 0
c 0 0
NP _ Adjective Locative _ Progressive
l izf copula I 0 0 0 0
2 X 0 0 0
3 X X 0 0
4 X X X 0
5 X X X X
/grt/ /de;a/ (+/bit)
existentials s X 0
€ X X
Nore: X = present in this context/this form present; 0 = absent.

Source: Adapted from Day ( 1973: 137)
351
Miriam Meyerhoff
The arrangement of how the lects in these three copular systems interact cou ld equally have
been used to interrogate the social characteristics of the speakers. For example, the speakers
who use lect 5 of the lizl copula never use /ste/ before both locatives and progressives - this
is a syntactic fact. They are also (with one exception) from Maui and the Big Island - a social
fact. Day provides only basic demographic infonnation on the speakers in his corpus and
modem sociolinguists would perhaps want to consider their overall personae or their moment-
by-moment stances in conversation to see whether these contribute to a richer understanding
of the social meaning assoc iated with the eo-occurrence of these features (e.g. Eckert 20 18).
Nevertheless, Day highlights the heuristic potential that implicational scales have in guiding
researchers' exploration of many aspects of the sociolinguistic eco logy of their data.
John Rickford (2002) notes, "The use ofimplicational scales in sociolinguistics . . . declined
after an auspicious start" (2002: 142), and what is true of sociolinguistics generally is also true
of creol istics. Many of the early advocates of implicational sca les as a descriptive and explana-
tory too l are names that would be fam iliar to creolists; indeed, it seems that the approach was
introduc.ed to sociolinguistics by the creolist David DeCamp (Rickford 2002: 144). 3 Many
other creolists evidently saw their potential for exploring the structure and limits of the sty-
listic variation inherent in creole speech commw1ities, especially for exploring the empirical
validity of a creole continuum (though Sankotf ( 1974) raised early concerns about the need
for sociolingu ists to exercise caution when drawing inferences from impl icational scales).
Bickerton ( 1973) uses variation in Guyanese personal pronouns to argue that, given appro-
priate theory and appropriate methods, a continuum of varieties can be reliably described. And
Day (1973) argues that in Hawai' i, there is indeed a continuum between the deepest forn1s of
Creole and ways of speaking that more closely approximates Standard Engl ish. His analysis of
the quantitative data from his corpus of conversationa l speech conc ludes that language varia-
tion is the surface man ifestation of a series of overlapp ing, co-existent systems.
The idea of co-existent systems (Fries & Pike 1949) as the basis for PC variability and
was endorsed in principle in Tsuzaki 's ( 1971) accow1t of language variation in Hawai ' i. Both
Bickerton (1973) and Day (1973) use quantitative data to creatively explore how one might
tabulate and visua lise a continuwn across speakers, contexts and linguistic variables. Both
conclude that modelling the continuwn of variation as overlapping, co-existent systems is
empirically and theoretica lly explanatory for Hawai' i, at least. Aga in, it is clear in this early
work on PCs that the continuwn was not seen as a purely descriptive fact, but rather as a poten-
tial window on speakers' linguistic competence; Day and Bickerton employ the continuwn in
order to infer what the underlying syntax is that gives rise to the variation they observe. Early
exponents of implicational scales emphasised the potential that implicational scales have for
enabl ing researchers to interrogate the social attributes of speakers as they end up arranged in
relation to each other. It was also argued that the way different linguistic contexts are ordered
in relation to a particular feature could indicate the speed and direction of historical change,
not just represent a synchronic snapshot of speakers' preferences.
One of the objections that can be levelled at variationist research on PCs is that it assumes
that the variation expresses a fundamental contrast between Standard forn1s of the (main)
lexifier and the PC, and that all variation represents the speaker distancing herself more or
less from the lexifier Standard or from the vernacular PC, i.e. that there is always a con-
tinuum between lexifier and PC where there is language variation. Dagmar Deuber (2006)
uses quantitative reasoning based on an 800,000 word corpus of Nigerian Pidgin English to
problematize the universality of the creole continuum. She observes that much of the earlier
work on the creole continuum strongly implied that a continuum is the necessary result of
continued contact between a PC and its lexifier. However, although her corpus contains ample
352
evidence that individuals and the speech community use both Engl ish and Nigerian Pidgin
English, her analysis of past tense marking, the copula and negation all suggest that there is
an abrupt shift between combinations of fom1s that are ungrammatica l in English but are fine
in Nigerian Pidgin English and forms that are nom1a l in Standard English but are unattested
in Nigerian Pidgin. She suggests, therefore, that creole continua are a Caribbean phenomenon
(and best examined empirically in relation to the historical and synchronic sociolinguistic
ecology there), whi le in Nigeria, the quantitative evidence suggests that speakers are switching
between different systems, as bilingual speakers anywhere can and do.
Co-existent systems, like implicational scales, may have fallen out of fashion but they
refuse to disappear entirely, perhaps speaking to their essential usefu lness in accounting for
some facts about PC languages. Labov's ( 1998) analysis of African American Vernacular Eng-
lish and Standard American English invokes co-existent systems, as does Mufwene's (1999)
account ofGullah determ iners, and Mufwene's (2001) general theories about language evolu-
tion and contact languages. In addition, Day's analysis of how three variables eo-occur and
his effort to use the ir eo-occurrence pattems to d ivine more abstract generalisations about
linguistic knowledge foreshadows later research that has used the eo-occurrence of linguistic
variables as a basis for probing the social meaning of variation (Patrick 1996), the underlying
representation of sociolinguistic knowledge (Podesva 2008; Guy 2013) and the typological
d istinctiveness of creoles (Bakker et al. 2011; Fon Sing 20 17; Meakins et al. 20 19).
Rickford (2002) notes that implicational scales that represent frequency measures of vari-
ation have the potential to be even more power ful than those that reduce the variation in a
speaker (or in a context) to present vs absent. Generalisations based on the mere presence
or absence of a feature in a text or corpus are restricted in what they can tell us: this is in
some measure because when we measure the proportional frequency of a feature in relation to
another social or lingu istic variable (one at a time), the process is subject to the (consc ious or
unconscious) biases and fi ltering of researchers and to the biases of sparse data.
Percentages are a very simple way of expressing someth ing's re lative frequency, where the
denom inator includes all and only the possible places where it m ight have appeared. More
comp lex statistics adjust for something's relative frequency given not only how often it might
have occurred, but also how often it tends to eo-occur with other linguistic features, or in the
speech of particular individua ls and social groups. This is what's known as multivariate analy-
sis. Simple percentages are more widely used in creolistics than multivariate analysis. This is
because researchers' use of statistics is constrained by the kind of data available to them and
many creolists have to deal with qu ite sma ll datasets, or datasets that have been preserved by
chance, and these may not be suitable for multivariate analysis. In short, people do the best
with what they've got.
Even modest quantitative measures have proven to be enormously influential in mov-
ing the field of creolistics forward and in articulating how creolistics might offer valuable
insights into the nature of human language more generally. From the earliest work on PCs,
proportional frequencies have helped provide some context and we ight to researchers' analy-
ses. For example, percentage frequencies are the basis for Sankoff and Laberge's (1973)
analysis of the grammaticalisation of bai as a future marker in Tok Pis in in which they argue
(rad ically, at the time) that Tok Pisin exhibits regularity and syntactic complexity akin to
other natura l languages. Proportional frequencies are also the basis on which Bickerton (20 16
[ 1981]) postu lates a set of core features for Creole grammars, thereby establishing the ter-
rain on which debates over the universality of these features across PCs wou ld be fought for
the next 20- 30 years. Bickerton's Bioprogram Hypothesis became, for better or worse, the
loads tar for a lot of the research into PC structure and it establ ished strong commonalities of
353
Miriam Meyerhoff
interest between creo lists and other lingu ists interested in un iversal theories of language, e.g.
Chomskyan linguistics.
Another, equally influential, early quantitative paper forged connections between creolis-
tics and functional syntax. Sankoff and Brown 's ( 1976) analysis of the grammatica lisation of
the de ictic ia (< English 'here') as a marker of relative clauses in Tok Pisin note.d that there
is a semantic and typological naturalness to the development of a deictic/demonstrative to
bracket off the edges of relative clauses, but that this strategy cou ld well have been reinforced
by the use of deictics for the same suite of functions (deictic, demonstrative and relativiser)
in some Me lanesian substrate languages. This synthesis of multiple sources for the varia-
tion in a PC has proved attractive and explanatory in subsequent quantitative analyses of
Melanesian PCs.
For example, Sankoff's (1977) analysis ofthe Tok Pisin verb c litic i adopts a simi larly syn-
thetic approach. She shows how the subject pronoun in the lexifier (Engl ish he) was gradually
reana lysed, through repeated instances ofNP topicalisation, as a grammatically required clitic
in Tok Pisin in the mid-20th century. Similarly, drawing on historical records indicating when
and how full and phonologically reduced forn1s of pronouns were used in Bislama from the
late 19th through to the mid-20th century, Crowley ( 1990) likewise concludes that both the
inherited semantics of the lexifier forn1 and d iscourse usage influenced the emergence of i and
oli as regular agreement markers (Meyerhoff 2000) in Bislama. Crowley notes that several of
the substrate languages in Central Vanuatu have phonetica lly sim ilar prefixes marking third
person singular verbs. Crowley therefore concludes that the forms that emerged from the vari-
ability of early Bislama have three sources: substrate models, lexifier inheritance and w1iversal
pragmatic tendencies in regard to the top icalisation of subjects. Meyerhoff likewise argues that
a ll three sources continue to be relevant to how Bislama speakers alternate between pronom i-
nal and null subjects (Meyerhoff 2000, 2009) and objects (Meyerhoff 2002, 2009). Insofar as
this fo llows from Crowley's diachronic research, these analyses of synchronic variation show
that factors influenc ing one variable may feed the subsequent development of others.
Sankoff's (1993) classic paper on the grammatica lisation of yet as a focus marker in Tok
Pis in considers not only the frequency ofyet with different syntactic/pragmatic functions over
time, but also its sim ilarities to the functions of cognate forms in the lexifier (yet in English)
and the main substrate (iat in Tolai). Her analysis concludes that the history ofyet in Tok Pis in
involves a convergence of inheritance from the English lexeme, the influence of substrate lan-
guages, and the discourse-pragmatic needs of speakers of natural languages.
Singler 's ( 1988) study of relative clauses in Liberian English compares the relative fre-
quencies of several key properties in several languages in order to probe the extent to which
the distinctive typological patterns in a PC language m ight result from ongoing contact with
substrate languages. Singler 's quantitative approach allows him to propose that there are sys-
tematic, albeit subtle, ways in which creoles differ from extended/expanded pidgins; he there-
fore argues that this classificatory distinction can be justified empirically, if sol id quantitative
reasoning is deployed.
19.6 Variation and language history, language change

Quantitative studies of language variation have also made a steady contribution to creolists'
interests in the history and development ofPCs. Creolists have long been concerned with iden-
tifying principles that detern1ine which structural traits will ge l in any given PC. In particular,
the fie ld has debated how large a role substrate languages, lexifier(s) and cognitive (processing)
factors or language universa ls play in determining which forn1s survive in a contact language.
354
Th is necessarily entails a comparative approach: the structure of the PC under investigation

(or a specific feature) is compared with the substrate or the lexifier (or both) to detennine
w hether there is a match between the varieties. When comparisons of the presence or absence
of a feature are backed up by a sensitivity to how often a given form or a structure appears and
in what contexts, the conclusions are much less vulnerable to accusations of investigator or
sampling bias. The importance of comparing like with like cannot be under-estimated. Hack-
ert (2006), for instanc.e, notes that overt past tense marking in Bahamian Creole shares some
superficial similarities to AAVE, but th is similarity breaks down when we take a closer look
at the data. Baham ian and AAVE are both sensitive to sentential aspect in the use of overt past
tense verb forms, but they differ in whether or not habitua l clauses favour overt marking. The
use of more complex, multivariate statistics is one way to address this problem.
Multivariate analyses of PCs in the variationist sociolinguistics tradition have largely been
inocu lated from the most passionate debates about the ro le of universals versus substrates ver-
sus lexifier(s) in PCs. Probably, this is because variationist methods go beyond the percentage
nonnalisations of frequency to explore which predictors among many are exerting the greatest
effect on the variation observed. Multivariate analyses inc lude, by definition, a wide range of
possibly salient predictors of the variation and these will include possible predictors that might
be inherited from the substrate, the lexifier and from language universa ls or universal tenden-
cies in infonnation packaging and processing.
It is beyond the scope of th is chapter to explain in detai l how the multivariate statistics typ i-
cally used in variationist soc iol inguistics work (see introductions in Tagliamonte 2006; Walker
20 l 0; Meyerhoff, Schleef & Mackenzie 20 15). However, understanding how they work in
princip le is not hard: percentages nom1al ise over how often a form is distributed over all the
p laces where it might have occurred (e.g. we can ask "How often is past tense overtly marked
on a verb that has past temporal reference?"), while mu ltivariate analysis nonnalises across
other linguistic and soc ial factors that could be contextually relevant. That is, it asks questions
like: "How often is past tense marked on verbs with past temporal reference:
(i) in clauses with/without a temporal adverb?

(ii) w hen the verb has weak or strong past inflection?
(ii i) w hen the final segment in the stem is a stop or a fricative?
(iv) w hen the speaker is female or male?
(v) w hen the speaker has more than primary education, etc?"
(e.g. Patrick 1999; Hackert 2004)
It then considers the frequency with which a variant occurs given the distribution of all these
other possible predictors. Where research is based on corpora of naturally occurring speech,
there's a high likelihood of chance imbalances in the distribution of a variable. In contrast to
experimental data, conversation and everyday speech does not resu lt in every speaker using
the same fonns at the same rate. So multivariate analyses offer greater confidence in the
results. By using multi variate analysis, researchers can be more certain that when they assert
that some syntactic or phonological context favours the use of overt tense marking, what they
have observed is not an artefact of the chance over-representation of some linguistic contexts
in their corpus.
The methods of comparative sociolinguistics have played a central role in the debate over
w hether African American Vernacular English (AAVE) started out as a creole and has decre-
olised over the past centuries or whether AAVE has diverged from White varieties of Ameri-
can English in that period. Poplack and Tagliamonte (1991) and Rickford and McNair-Knox
355
Miriam Meyerhoff
( 1994) establ ished princip les for comparing the patterns of variation in different languages in
order to exp lore how similar or different they are. There are three lines of increasingly sophis-
ticated comparison:
(i) Frequency - Is the same variant the most common one in different PCs or in a PC and its
lexifier?
(ii) Constraints on the distribution of the variants - Do the same linguistic factors predict the
use of the same variant in different PCs or in the PC and its lexifier?
(iii) Ordering of specific features within a linguistic class - If the use of an inflected past tense
verb is significantly influenced by the sentential aspect of the clause in two PCs, is it the
case that the same aspect favours the same variant? E.g., do speakers in both PCs favour
use of an infle.cted past fom1 of the verb when the sentence has habitual aspect, or does
one favour it in habitual clauses and the other in punctual c lauses?
Poplack and Tagliamonte ( 1991, 1994) use these three lines of evidence to argue that variation
in the use of the copula, tense marking and -s marked NP plurals in modem AAVE is funda-
mentally different from how all three of these variables are distributed in early texts of African
American Engl ish and in relic varieties of African American English in the African diaspora
(Samana and Nova Scotia). They argue strongly, therefore, that AAVE has not decreolised but
rather that it has diverged from Standard English over time. However, Rickford (1996, 1999)
uses the same comparative variationist approach to d ispute their conclusion, argu ing instead
that " there is a typological and possible historical/genetic relationship" ( 1999: 154) between
AAVE and Jamaican Creole. The details of the constraints on copula deletion in AAVE and
other Caribbean English Creoles lead him to suggest that AAVE is a decreolised fonn of a
plantation Creole, one that would have been something like Jamaican Creole (Rickford 1996).
The comparative variationist methods allow researchers to explore hypotheses about the
similarities and differences between varieties with considerable sensitivity. Sanchez (2006),
for instance, argues that in the Papiamentu spoken in Aruba, the -ndo fom1s of verbs may have
their origin in (and share a surface fom1 with) the lexifier, Spanish, but the increasing probabil-
ity that -ndo forms will express progressive aspect does not reflect the influence of Spanish;
rather it more likely reflects the increasing inftuenc.e of English. While Meyerhoff (2009) uses
the methods to argue that transferring the detai led constraints on a variable from the substrate
to a PC is quite a complex linguistic task. As a consequence, speakers frequently reanalyse
the variation even when the same abstract variable and superficially similar fom1s occur in the
substrate language and the PC.
Walker and Meyerhoff (2006), Meyerhoff and Walker (20 13) and Da leszynska-Slater,
Meyerhoff and Walker (2019) also use these methods to highlight the internal diversity of
speech on the small island of Bequia, one of the Vincentian Grenadines. Walker and Meyer-
hoff (2006) ana lyse the presence or absence of the copu la in Bequian, and show that although
speakers from all villages on the island sometimes use overt, reduced and zero fonns of the
copula, different grammars seem to govern the distribution of variants for speakers from dif-
ferent villages. Table 19.2 shows the results of a comparison between speakers from Ham ilton
(a predominantly Afro-Bequiarian village near the harbour) and Mount Pleasant (a predom i-
nantly White commun ity located in the hi lls above the harbour).
Table 19.2 shows that there are two major po ints of difference in the variability between
overt and null fonns of the copula among speakers from the two villages. First, a quantitative
analysis of the variation suggests that the underlying grammar for speakers in Mount Pleasant
356
Table 19.2 Multivariate analysis of factors contributing to the occurrence of zero copula in Bequia in
third-person singular contexts
Hamilton Mount Pleasa111

(0 vs full + contracted) (0 + contracted)
Total N 587 309
Input .270 .248
Factor weight % N Factor weight % N
Following grammatical category
gonna KO 100 7 .92 81 16
Verb + -ing .93 84 67 .91 79 75
Adjective .71 47 161 .48 24 54
Prepositional phrase .49 27 37 .22 10 10
Noun phrase .25 12 228 . 15 6 115
Locative adverb .09 4 26 KO 0 7
Subject type + Preceding segment
Noun phrase, vowel .68 47 51 .46 18 61
Pronoun .56 37 219 .53 34 240
Noun phrase, consonant .42 25 283 .39 14 7
Source: Walker & Meyerhoff (2006)
Note: Factor weights show the relative contribution o f each factor to the occurrence of zero copula. Fac-
tor weights above 0.50 favour zero copula; those below 0.50 disfavour zero copula. T he input probability
is the overall tendency for zero to occur in each village. KO indicates categorical presence or absence,
i.e. 'knock out' contexts with no variation.
is rather similar to that of Standard English, i.e. where there are zero fom1s of the copula
it would appear that these are an extension of the phonological reduction that in Standard
English produces contracted forms of the copu la. This is shown by the model of zero and
contracted copu la versus fu ll forms (i.e. "0 + contracted").• However, in Hamilton it wou ld
appear that there is no copu la in speakers' underlying grammar; instead it is variably inserted
and following its insertion, it is variably contracted (i.e. "0 vs full + contracted"). This is
shown by a model of zero copula versus full and contracted forms. (Details of how these
mode ls were determined to best express the grammar of each village are given in Wa lker &
Meyerhoff 2006).
The second point of d ifference lies in the conditions under which speakers in the two vil-
lages favour zero forms. Weightings highlighted in bold show contexts where a zero fom1 of
the copula is even more like ly to occur than in the corpus overall. In Hami lton, we see that
a following adjective (e.g. My aunt is/0 kind; That child is/0 noisy) strongly favours a zero
copula, while in Mount Pleasant it does not. This suggests that another point of difference
between the grammars of speakers in the two villages is in how speakers classify adjectives: in
Hamilton speakers' grammar, adjectives pattern with verbs, while in Mount Pleasant, they do
not (and seem to be more like nouns).
Daleszynska-Siater, Meyerhoff and Walker (20 19) use the same comparative methods to
explore generational d ifferences on Bequia, arguing that the linguistic constraints that favour
past tense expression on verbs may ebb and flow across generations as well as varying between
villages. This lack of continuity across linguistic and social contexts highl ights problems that
may arise if variation is re ified in terms of the metaphor of a creole continuum.
357
Miriam Meyerhoff
The same comparative approach can be used to shed light on individuals' developmental
trajectories. Ric.kford et al. ( 1991) use differences in significant constraints to infer that some
speakers of AAVE may switch between different variable grammars for copula deletion over
their lifespan.
Such subtle differences among PCs can only be teased out of the data with mu ltivariate
analysis. This is one reason why Meyerhoff (2008) argues that debates over the complexity of
PCs and whether or not they constitute a natural, typological class shou ld take variation into
consideration, as superficial analyses of complexity based on the presence or absence of forms
may fai l to recognise the extent of the variabil ity and the many points of divergence within
and among PCs.
19.6.1 On measures of language complexity and simplicity

The most febrile debates within creolistics in recent years have centred not so much on the
specific question of the relative importance of substrate, lexifier and universals, but instead on a
derived question of whether creoles constitute a natural class of languages characterised by less
complexity than other languages. Measuring complexity in a language (like in many other natu-
ral systems or organisms) is not at all a straightforward matter, and different criteria can be used
to classify forms as complex/simple. ln addition, how complexity should be measured is also
open to debate (e.g. whether complexity shou ld be treated as a gradient or essential property).
lt 's worth remembering that semantic complexity is not at issue: we assume that all normal
functioning hwnans have the same capacity for expressing complex ideas; what varies is how
semantics is overtly realised in a language, that is, its phonology, morphology and syntax. Of
these, morphology is seen as the crucial domain for assessing complexity (Meakins et al. 20 19).
Recent research on the matter of creole complexity does not typically embrace a view of
language that includes intra- and inter-speaker variation. ln some respects, the methods used
to empirically test the claim that creoles are structurally less complex than other languages are
simi lar to those adopted by creolists in the 1970s - the visualisation techniques and statistics for
clustering features may be more sophisticated than the proportional frequencies and impl icational
scales we reviewed earlier in this chapter; however, the data used as input for inter-language com-
parison is generally reduced to the presence or absence of features in a given language.
This is, for example, the basis for the studies in Bakker et al. (20 11) and Fon Sing's (20 17)
reana lysis of the same data. Both these papers re ly on software designed to allow easier visu-
a lisation of phylogen ies. Bakker et a l. (20 11) conc lude that, with respect to wide range of lin-
guistic features, creoles do pattern differently from non-creole languages. However, Fon Sing
(20 17) reviews several issues with the coding and selection of features in Bakker et al.'s stu dy.
His reanalysis of the same data (p lus some non-creo le languages added by Fon Sing) leads
him to conclude that Creoles do not cluster as one group. This exchange highlights problems
with using presence/absence of features as the basis for analysing inter-language variation.
l f variation within and across languages will be collapsed as categorical generalisations, it is
crucial that coding be transparent and rel iable.
There are two important exceptions to the use of simple assessments of presence vs absence
as the basis for argumentation over creole simplicity. Velupillai (20 15, Part ll) presents an
extremely systematic enqu iry into mu ltiple structural measures of complexity (not just mor-
phology)' in p idgins and creo les compared to a wide and balanced sample of other languages.
Ve lupillai attempts to add subtlety to the analysis by introduc ing multiple leve ls for many
features. So, rather than stipulate that a vowel inventory of 7 or more vowels is 'complex'
and fewer than 7 is 'simple', she compares small inventories (2-4 vowels), average ones (5-6
358
vowels) and large ones (7-1 4). Or with respect to p lural marking in NPs, she distingu ishes not
only between languages with no plural marking but those that mark plural optionally, or only
on human Ns. Supported at each point by simple statistical tests, Velupi llai's work is a trans-
parent and objective assessment of PC complexity, with the principal findings summarised at
the end of each chapter. She finds pidgins or Creoles are more comp lex on some structural
features and less complex on others, and the lasting message is the need to look across a wide
range of features, in a well-balanc.ed sample of languages.
Meakins et al. (2019) is an even more notable enrichment of the debate over cre.ole com-
p lexity. Meakins et al. use highly sophisticate.d statistical tests to shed light on linguistic com-
p lexity. The paper analyses variation in 120 features produced by 78 Gurindj i people spanning
three generations of speakers; they show that there is no tendency for simpler fom1s to survive
as the youngest generation of speakers resolve the highly variable input of their parents and
grandparents.
19.7 Conclusion
Th is chapter introduced key aspects of the quantitative parad igm that characterises variation-
is! sociol inguistics. It a lso introduced concepts central to the Labovian methods for analysing
language variation and change that have particular relevanc.e to the study ofPCs: inherent vari-
ability, the relationship between inter- and intra-speaker variation, the vernacular. It showed
that stu dies ofPCs played a major role in the foundational years ofvariationist sociolinguistics
and reviewed theoretical constructs such as the Creole continuum in the context of the notion
of co-existing linguistic systems. One of the strengths of a variationist approach is that it can
enable the researcher to model the relative contribution made by substrate features, features of
the lexifier(s) and features that may be materia lising broader linguistic or cognitive principles.
It is perhaps not coincidental that many analyses of variation in PCs do not po int the finger at
any one set of constraints, but rather emphasise the multiplicity of constraints on the formation
and subsequent development of PCs.
Notes
Though Michaelis et al. (2013) try to move beyond this tendency by collecting in one place data on
multiple feamres across multiple PCs.
2 At one level, the analysis of variation is also based on categorical statements because the quantification
starts from the presence of absence of a form in any given utterance, but s ince utterances are aggre-
gated, these become statements abollt the probability w ith which a form will be used.
3 Rickford (2002: 155) provides a list of creolists from the 1970s and 1980s who used them, including
Derek Bickerton, Gillian Sankotl; C.-J. Bailey and R.B. Le Page.
4 T his is reminiscent of the notion of drift, whereby a language can inherit a propensity for change in a
certain direction, even if the tendency was latent in the inplll varietylies (cf. Trudgill 2004). Panerns of
palatalisation of syllable initial velar stops in Jamaican may partly reflect inherited drift (Patrick 1996).
5 Velupillai (20 15) is unusual in considering pragmatic features, such as politeness markers, as well as
different aspects of phonology, morphology and the syntax of main and subordinate clauses.
Further reading
The journal Asia-Pacijic Language Variation is a good source of descriptive and variationist smdies
in PCs and other contact languages outs ide the Atlantic/Caribbean. Micro-variation studies within
the framework of formal (generative) linguistics - all of which have fallen outside the scope of this
chapter - can be found in monographs by Marlyse Baptista, Jacqueline Gueron, Diana Guillemin.
359
Miriam Meyerhoff
Deuber, D. 20 14. English in rhe Caribbean: Variarion, Sryle and Srandards in Jamaica and Trinidad.
This book expands the foc us o f analysis to not only the more basilectal and ' exotic'-looking aspects
o f varieties o f English in the Caribbean, but also to forms that are closer to the lexifier.
Hinrichs, L and Farquharson, J. ( eds.) 200 I. Variarion in the Caribbean: From Creole Cominua ro Indi-
vidual Agency. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
The editors of this volume have tried to collect contributions analysing variation that span the first- ,
second- and third-wave approaches to sociolinguistics.
Patrick, P. L 1999. Urban Jamaican Creole: Variarion inrhe Mesolecr. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
This book is a classic both for the empirical data in presents but also because of the careful exposition
o f the methods needed to undertake a linguistically responsible analysis of variation in a non-standard
language.
Related topics
Pidgin and Creole Ecology and Evolution; Multi lingua lism and the Structure of Code-Mixing;
T he Typo logy of Pidgin and Creole Languages; Identity and Mixed Languages; Pidgins and
Creoles: New doma ins, new technologies
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362
PART Ill
Framing
Taylor & Francis
~· · · ~;~. :..t, ,UJi.! CRr1nci1..com
20
ON THE HISTORY OF PIDGIN
AND CREOLE STUDIES
Rachel Selbach
20.1 Introduction
Pidgin and Creole (PC) srudies are not all that much younger than the field of modern linguis-
tics itself.' Their birth - beyond individual descriptions to the scientific srudy of a broader phe-
nomenon - is embedded in the formative stages of the entire discipl ine. From the beginning,
the srudy of PC languages has raised fundamental questions about established bel iefs about
language; the younger contact languages challenging the lessons learnt from older prestige
languages.
The field of srudy of Pidgins and Creole languages was bom with Hugo Schuchardt
( 1842-1927), the strong-willed fow1ding father of the discipline, on a sense of individualism.
Schuchardt was there at the rum ing point of modem linguistics itself, teasing itself away from
classical philology. Speaking out against the burgeoning neogrammarians and the upcom ing
strucruralist tendencies, Schuchardt claimed, against the grain of the day, that we needed to
look beyond the bare rules of strucrural linguistics, and examine the whole picrure, taking into
account the histories and cu ltures of the speakers, if we wanted to understand the nature of
language.
With a certain 'founder's princ iple' in mind -we are speaking here about Hugo Schucha-
rdt's trailblazing, singular ways - we will etch out a story of the maruration of PC srudies to
present date, briefly noting its main discoveries, pitfa lls and advances; with the love for lan-
guage and the lure of theory, as well as the focus on empirical data collection. We look both
at the individualism of the scholars and the (perhaps concomitant) lack of generally accepted
definitions of our terminology. In particular, we examine the rise of the generic term 'Pidgin' ,
so prominent even in the name of the field of Pidgin and Creole srudies, more conven iently
referred to as PC stu dies - and so notoriously underdefined.
20.1.1 Prehistory of the field

Creolistics as a theoretica l subject of scientific investigation was bom as the science of lin-
guistics itself was crystallizing at the rum of the 19th cenrury; Pidgin and Creole studies as an
autonomous subfield had to wait over half a cenrury more for the conferences and societies,
joumals and book series to emerge and foster it (see Hancock 1990; Gilbert 2005); but PC srudy
365
Rachel Selbach
as a philological activity began much earlier (for fascinating in-depth explorations of the early
descriptive works, see Kramer 2013a, 2013b; de Sousa et al. 2019; and the essential Holm 2000:
14-26).
The bulk of the earliest PC documentation at our disposal is found in European travel
reports, though this is by no means to say that contact languages arose only with their Euro-
pean docwnentation (cf. Thomason & Elgiba li 1986, who discuss evidence for an I Ith-century
Arabic Pidgin). Europeans begin widely remarking on language contact issues from the 16th
century on, wherever contact was involved in either travel or trade. Data often come along as
travellers' reported fragments of speech, though sometimes years after the purported hearing,
and to some greater or lesser extent, fictionalized. Early PC documentation also comes in
drama and literary, often comica l representations, especially languages like Lingua de Preto,
known on the basis of primarily 16th-century theatre plays in which Africans in Portuga l were
speaking reduced varieties of Portuguese (Kihm & Rouge 20 13). To a sl ightly lesser extent,
early Lingua Franca was also documented predominantly in literary settings, in theatre and in
verse (e.g. Encina 1520, in Se lbach 20 17). Traders as well noted the ways of speaking of the ir
business partners, as early as there was contact (for instance see data ofDelaware-based trad-
ers' jargon from 1642, 1648, 1654, 1683 in Thomason 1980). Though all these representations
are to be taken with a grain of sa lt, they clearly reveal the fascination that contact languages
have long he ld to the European observer.
The expression of this curiosity then moved from literature and playfulness into the realms
of sc ience. Judging from our avai lable documents, the mid-19th century showed a sudden
peak in the fascination for systematic Pidgin description, documented in organized glossary
form rather than more freely in the travel report and literary genres. Four important Pidgin
docwnents come from this time: the anonymous Dictionnaire de la tongue franque on Lingua
Franca (Anon 1830); 1835 Chinese Pidgin English: The Language of the Red/wired Foreign-
ers (Anon. c. 1835); alongside the Chinese and English Instructor (Tong 1862), a six-volume
work, not a glossary (references in Ansaldo et al. 20 I 0); and the Chinook Jargon Glossmy of
1853 (Anon 1853). Some of these forays were as much data oriented as, it would appear, sup-
plemented by fantasy; PC description was both a popular curiosity and gentlemen past-time,
as well as a communicative necessity, at the end of the period of Romanticism.
Fuller, often (but not always) more careful grammatical descriptions of individua l contact
languages date back to early missionary work, motivated by but often going beyond the pure
functional needs of colonial Christianization. Virgin Islands Dutch Creole, or Negerhollands,
was amongst the first to be described in full, first by the Moravian Brother Oldendorp in his
unpublished dictionary documentation of 1768, and then by the Danish Lutheran missionary
Magens in 1770: His Grammatica over det creolske sprag .. . was the earliest published gram-
mar of a Creole language. Schumann soon thereafter describes Saramaccan ( 1778) and Sranan
( 1783). These documents well exemplify impressive early missionary work (see Holm 2000:
18-21). Many other missionary grammars followed (see Holm 2000: 21ft).
The late 19th century was a high time of publication of many varied full-fledged Creole
grammars. Kriimer and de Sousa (20 17) analyze the tight network of knowledge of these very
early creolists (inter alia 1864 Teza, 1868 Russell, 1881 Pontoppidan). Examining a profuse
number of sources of French and Portuguese Creole descriptions, Kramer (20 13a) looks at
the creolists of the 18th and 19th century, trac ing their ideological bases. He makes clear how
many of the field's ideas and conceptions about PCs date back to these early centuries of Cre-
ole description; or, how little of what we think came as later theory was actually new (Krlimer
2013a, 2013b). Most certainly, it is true that 'Creole studies blossomed in the 1880's' (Holm
2000: 27).
366
011 the history of Pidgilt, Creole studies
These early mentions, literary representations, descriptions and grammars in all their for-
mats, insights and biases not only serve us in our efforts to explore the history of PCs, but
underscore the vivid and continued interest that PCs have raised with Europeans coming into
contact with the outside world throughout the days of documentation - expressed in different
ways but as old as the printing press. Deplorably, the role of the Creole speakers in describing
Creole language came only much later.
20.1.2 Comparative study

The earliest comparative work of Creoles is produced in 1868-69 by Van Name, a Yale Librar-
ian who sets side by side four Creole grammars in a one-time investigative stint. Coelho ( 188 1),
commissioned by the Geographical Society of Lisbon to inform of the linguistic situation in
the colonies, calls comparative creolistics to life, revealing a universalist approach in his sys-
tematic dialect study of Portu guese Creoles that was to quickly call Schuchardt's attention to
the matter within the field of Romanistics (Holm 2000: 24- 28).
Schuchardt's reaction goes beyond the dialect comparison of Romance varieties: He was
impacted by the genius of these yow1g languages, as well as by the ir theoretical relevance in
face of the dogma of regular sound change of the neogrammarians and Stammbaum theories
of the philologists.
Schuchardt publishes extensively in Zeitschrift jlir romanische Philologie and Literatur-
blatt fiir Germanische und Romanische Phi/ologie; it was thus via Romanis! study that PC
study found its way into theory. Yet not only Romance lexified PCs were studied; Schucha-
rdt scrutinized a broad empirical base including English, Dutch and Malay-lexified varieties.
Schuchardt's contemporary and correspondent Hessel ing, another contributor to early creolis-
tics, compares Afrikaans, Virgin Islands Creole Dutch, and Papiamentu, making the picture of
early contact language description yet more complete (Meijer & Muysken 1977 compare the
work of Hessel ing and Schuchardt).
20.1.3 Hugo Schuchardt: on individualism in linguistics

Schuchardt ( 1925) is a playful autobiographical piece entitled Ober den lndividualismus in der
Sprachforschung ('About Individualism in Linguistics'). Here, he owns up to the well-known
fact that he was an outstanding character who did not feel incl ined to fit either himself nor
language into preconceived boxes. Schuchardt ( 1925: 7) suggests a psychological study of lin-
guists, yearning, as he says, for the occasional warn1 wind of subjectivity - characteristically,
not making it o bvious to what degree he is j oking or serious:
!eh empfinde es immer wohltiitig, wenn unter dem ldlhlen Panzer der Objektivitat
hervor mich e in wanner Hauch von Subjektivitiit anweht, dieja doch nie fehlt. (I find
it soothing when the warn1 wind of subjectivity reaches me from undem eath the cool
coat of o bjectivity. Subjectivity is a lways there.)
(Schuchardt 1925: 7)
It was Schuchardt's conviction that much that is intensely argued for in science is accounted
for by the personality of the scientists. I shall playfully pick up on the equally playful, century-
old dare of a psychologica l study in this brief overview of the development of the field, claim-
ing: PC studies are marked and driven by individualists! We return to Schuchardt's challenge
more soberly WJder Section 8.3.
367
Rachel Selbach
Truly, both Schuchardt's affinity to the vast mu ltipl icity of factors relevant to fully under-
standing language, and his character type of the mild outlaw, boldly crossing some precon-
ceived lines, continued to characterize quite well a large nwnber of researchers determining
the progression of our fie ld of enquiry. Nonconfom1ing languages attracted quite some non-
conform ing scholars. Yet, a generalized sense of nonconformity brings advantages and disad-
vantages. While there is plenty of room for investigative openness, newness and discovery,
the lack of fixed procedure, consensus and definitions continues to both inspire and hawlt our
field, until today. Indeed, where else could one claim: 'I think it's safe to say that the only thing
all Pidgin/Creole specialists agree on is that we don't agree on much of anything' (Thomason
2008: 243)? Crucially, it shou ld be noted, this has not hindered the cooperation and collabora-
tion that have driven the field forward in its common endeavour.
20.1.4 Zeitgeist and rise of linguistics

At the time of Charles Darwin's Origin of Species (1859), language description ushers in
a time of realism - a time shaded by less obvious racist ideologies, according to Kriimer
(2013a). Language scienc.e was already in the process of establishing natural laws, spear-
headed by Grimm's (185 1) Uber den Ursprung der Sprache ('About the Origin of Language').
In 1861 , Max MOiler presents the Gifford lectures in Oxford, where he defines the burgeon-
ing young science of lingu istics as searching for 'the what, whence and the why of language'
(MUller 1861: 73). He bold ly claims that 'languages can be analysed and classified . .. without
any reference to the individuals, fami lies, clans, tribes, nations or races by whom they are or
have been spoken'. Declaring grammar to be the most essential e lement of language, he also
lays down an axiom that 'denies the possibility of a m ixed language'.
MOiler was not without contemporary criticism, even in the public realm. Fifteen years later,
the layman Sir Arthur Clough (1876) publishes a prize-winning essay in response to Mllller's
approach, entitled 'On the Existence of Mixed Languages'. Indeed, MUller has quite naturally
irked the field of PC studies ever since his lectures, his axiom making it onto the introductory
page of the milestone (Thomason & Kaufman 1988), where it is juxtaposed to Schuchardt's
equally bold counterclaim: 'Es gibt keine Mischsprache' - "There is no mixed language" (Mlll-
ler 1871: I, 86, in Thomason & Kaufman 1988: 1), against 'Es gibt keine vollig ungemischte
Sprache' - "There is no entirely non-mixed language" (Schuchardt 1884: 5, ibid.).
The world was intrigued by the unorthodoxy of certain languages at the same time as WlCOv-
ering the orthodoxy and regu larity, especially of sound laws, of others. The basis for a continued
dialectic was thus set, as well as for open dispute and disagreement (see Thite 2006 for discus-
sion of the dialectics between 'Neogrammarian' and 'Schuchardtian' thought). On the one side,
the law enforcing mechanistic grammarians; on the other side, the mavericks crossing borders,
call ing for an examination of social, historical and other fuzzy, unorderly, hwnan factors.
Acknowledging the existence of PCs, we must also acknowledge the lim its of many pre-
conceptualizations based on the idea of the pristineness of language (see Enfield 20 14 for
discussion of the latter). PCs have forced the science of linguistics to face a deep ambivalence
between some of our core beliefs about language and the reality we can observe when lan-
guages come into contact, from the very start.
20.1.5 PCs officially enter linguistics

Among Schuchardt's many contacts is Otto Jespersen, with whom he is joined in what tran-
spires from their communications (Hurch & Costantini 2007, Schuchardt Archives Graz)
368
as deep mutual respect. Jespersen is to be the first to be so bold as to devote a chapter to

contact languages in his book on language entitled Pidgin and Congeners (Chapter XII
1922: 216). With Jespersen 's (1922) Language - Its Nature Development and Origin, PCs
have officially entered the scientific and mainstream domain of ' Language'. Says Re inecke
(1977: vi i): ' Besides Schuchardt's influence, we must count that of Jespersen's widely read
Language (1922), a book at once scholarly and popu lar, wh ich devoted a chapter to ' Pidg-
ins [sic ] and Congeners'. Jespersen thus first unwittingly contributes to the evolution of the
generic tenn ' Pidgin', albeit retrospectively, through a series of subsequent misquotations
(see Section 4.3).
A decade later again, Bloomfield's Language (1933) reinforces the status of relevance of
PCs in his chapter on 'Intimate Borrowing'. Ha ll (198 1: 442) acknowledges 'the important
role ofOtto Jespersen and Leonard Bloomfield in assimi lating Schuchardt's and others' find-
ings into genera l linguistic theory' . Both authors thus include what we now label as PCs in
their overviews of what language is, ensuring creolistics an official status within the science
of linguistics, and anthropology. Though at first frequently under the heading of 'lingos' and
'dialects', contact languages are, since Jespersen and Bloomfield, phenomena to be reckoned
with by all those interested in the nature of language.
Yet after having made this important entry, PCs enter the backwaters of linguistics again.
There are not many linguists notably interested in devoting their careers to the subject during
the time span immediately following Schuchardt - a period encompassing two world wars.
However, anthropologists in the USA had indeed taken notice, continuing the work of Bloom-
field; for instance with the Herskovitses making important advances in their discernment of
the role of the substrate - an important concept in future theoretical debates about the nature
ofPCs (cf. Holm 2000: 36-38).
20. 1.6 Grappling for terms

At th is point in lime, and up until the mid-20th century, it should be underscored, the
terminology of Pidgin/Creo le was not yet estab lished. Schuchardt, writing in German,
had used the labe ls Vermittlungs-, Hiilfs- and Notsprachen, trans lated by Gilbert as 'go-
between languages, auxiliary languages and languages of exigency' (Gilbert 1980: 91 , cited
in Ho lm 2000: 32), to refer to what we today group together under the heading of Pidgin;
generally reserving Kreolsprachen for what we, generally, still call Creoles. Too busy with the
data to care, Schuchardt was not overly concerned with d iscussing his classificat ion and
terminology (to the dismay of later generations, says Hall ( 1981 )). Schuchardl's vocabu-
lary worked we ll for his purpose, however, his writing showing no signs of terminologica l
d istress.
With Jespersen ( 1922), the search for a useful, anglophone tern1inology has just begun.
Under the heading of Pidgin and Congeners, he is looking to group together 'a whole class of
languages now found in many parts of the world where peop le of European c ivilization have
come into contact with men of other races' (Jespersen (1922: 216)), languages he somewhat
clumsily refers to individually as 'lingo' , and sums up under the description 'makeshifi lan-
guage or minimum language' (Jespersen (1922: 232)). ' Pidgin' in the title refers quite spec ifi-
cally to Chinese Pidgin English; 'congeners' are the other PCs discussed: Bislama, Mauritius
Creole, Ch inook Jargon. Bloomfield ( 1933) uses the tenns jargon, lingua franca, creolized
language, w1der the heading of ' intimate borrowing'. Neither the generic tenn ' Pidgin', nor
the concept's opposition to 'Creole', had evolved. That dichotomy would be firn1ly established
only with Hall (1962, 1966) (see Section 2.2).
369
Rachel Selbach
20.2 The beginnings of modern Creole studies
20.2.1 John E. Reinecke: A Man Must Stand Up

John E. Reinecke, a teacher in Hawaii with a very long patience, was a true social activist
and another maverick who single-handed ly might have catapulted PC study into the future,
decades before linguistics was again ready for this. He completed his PhD thesis in 1937, a
survey of ' marginal languages' that would not be matched for at least half a century, at least
unti l Holm (1988), or WALS (Haspelmath et al. 2005) and APiCS (Michaelis et al. 2013). His
work (Re inecke 1937), however, lay dom1ant for decades, as the McCarthy era had Reinecke
removed from the research and teaching environment of all democratic US teaching institu-
tions - due to his political convictions of equal ity, another non-mainstream manifestation.
(See Reinecke's ( 1993) posthumous autobiography aptly entitled A Man Must Stand Up - The
Autobiography ofa Gentle Activist.) His labour in PC studies finally came to fruition in 1975 in
the joint publication with Tsuzaki, DeCamp, Hancock and Wood of A Bibliography ofPidgin
and Creole Languages (Reinecke et al. ( 1975).) Reinecke ( 1937, 1975) thus infused linguistics
with a new knowledge base of contact languages for years to come. Holm (2000: 38), Hancock
( 1990: 507) rightly call him the modern, or 20th-century, father of Creo le studies.
Says Gilbert ( 1987: 11), 'John Reinecke embodied a rare combination of qualities: hwnan-
ism, scholarship, and activism. The very act of studying Pidgin and Creole languages consti-
tutes a form of social protest against the injustice done to their speakers'.
But Reinecke's concerns d id not end with language description and the fight for social
equal ity. He was a carefu l and exact thinker at all levels. In his dissertation (Reinecke 193 7),
he vehemently calls for a sound tenn inology for the field:
[T] he field is left very vague. Pidgin, jargon, Creole language, are more or less syn-
onymous tenns in general usage, and the most commonly applied of these, Creole,
is extended according to the particular writer 's fancy to a wider or a narrower field
of language. A sow1d tenn inology, based on lingu istic or sociological considerations,
is bad ly needed.
(Reinecke 193 7: 40)
Under the heading of ' Marginal Languages: A Sociological Survey of the Creole Languages
and Trade .Jargons', Reinecke discusses in greatest erud ition a total often categories of'make-
shift languages', whereof 'the most important .. . are the plantation Creole dia lects, settlers'
Creole d ialects, and trade j argons' (Reinecke 1937: introduction, no p. munber). As for the
last of the three categories, 'trade jargons' - today labelled ' Pidgins' - he admits in a footnote
being tom between the tenns Pidgin and jargon, but defers to and adopts the widely estab-
lished trade jargon instead (Reinecke 1937: 82, ft3). Regardless of the labels, he has identified
three major subgroups of ' makeshift or minimal languages', where there would be only two
conceptual greats later in his day: Pidgins and Creoles.
Reinecke formed a bridge between early Creole studies and modem PC study. In his lifetime,
he would get a terminology, though perhaps a more simple one than he expected in his early work.
20.2.2 Miniature objects and the Pidg in-Creole dichotomy:

Hall (1 962, 1966)
The resurgence of PC study after World War 11 with Hall brings with it both a shift from
the O ld World to the New (Holm 2000: 421), as well as important tenn ino logical-conceptual
370
changes. Robert A. Hall, another Romanist, was stationed in Melanesia during the war, where
he learnt Tok Pisin and then published a descriptive teaching manual of 'Melanesian Pidgin'
for the US anny in 1943. His interests in PCs roused, he went on to determine much of the
theorical base to come, culminating in the first textbook on Pidgins and Creoles (Hall 1966),
whose influence is felt until today.
Heavy on generalizations derived from the blossoming research catalyzed by World War 11,
Hall exalts: 'There is, in analyzing and using a Pidgin, something of the same pleasure that one
gets in looking at or using a skillfu lly made miniature object' (Hall 1966: xv).
Hall emerges from the American structuralist tradition. He firmly establishes 'Pidgin' as
a generic tenn, a usage that becomes frequent after the war (e.g. Hockett 1950), and sets the
stage for a theory which relies on the dichotomy of Pidgins versus Creoles (for discussion see
Jourdan 1991). Out of a rather mess of unruly 'marginal'languages, he streaml ines the two
categories, Pidgins and Creoles, proposing the latter always come from the former (Hall l962,
1966). This reductive paradigm shift reaches down to the present, and the deeply entrenched
dualism is, from here on, inc luded in the very name of the field: Pidgin and Creole stu dies.
Linear development, from Pidgin to Creole, and further extended by the possibi lity of decre-
o lization (Creole continuum, DeCamp 1977) becomes the bread and butter of much of PC
study.
Since Hall, research has nevertheless shown that it is not at all evident how we ll these cat-
egories face up to the reality of the diversity of contact languages. From the start, there were
sceptics: 'The finding of adequate criteria for defining the fonn -classes of Pidgin and Creole
languages is not always so simple as Hall would have us be lieve; and some of his definitions
leave us far from satisfied' (Taylor 1967: 820).
2 0 .3 Theory, excitem ent, erudition, speculation

Researchers now started coming together. At a first rather small gathering of l3 participants
in Jamaica 1959, instigated by Robert LePage, ideas and data were first bounced around.
This was followed up on a decade later, again in Mona, Jamaica, 1968, by a sizeable research
community of over 50 scholars. That conference resulted in an important publication, Hymes
( 1971 ). This was followed by another important collective volwne, Valdman ( 1977), featuring
papers by the leading names in creol istics for years to come. Valdman (1977) in particu lar has
high hopes for opening linguistics to social factors- beyond variation and change, to a more
fundamental reth inking of what language is. The.ories began to emerge, camps were set up and
exchanges were vivid.
20.3. 1 Monogen esis

Monogenesis, though often ridiculed by future generations of creol ists, was empirically
fow1ded in the recognition of the similarities of Creoles worldwide. It was the leading theory
under discussion throughout the 1960s, though it has now been ruled out as a satisfactory
explanation for Creole genesis. Fine-grained historical connections were trac.ed, and a com-
mon anc.estor to modem Creoles postu lated. Similarities that were being uncovered in PCs
across the globe were assumed to be due to common inheritance by researchers whose think-
ing was still largely govemed by Stammbaum models.
In retrospect, monogenesis is often brushed away as a silly theory basing itself on faulty
tree metaphors. In actual fact, the erudition of scholars like Whinnom, Taylor and Naro is hard
to overestimate (for a summary see Holm 2000: 44-49). While the hypothesis was untenable
371
Rachel Selbach
in its full version, the data amassed was valuable, and had raised some interesting questions
that remain unresolved to date. Following the debates revolving around historical relatedness,
the top ic was large ly dropped when something better - and more exciting - came along with
Bickerton.
20.3.2 Language Bioprogram Hypothesis: even more theory

The Language Bioprogram Hypothesis (LBH, Bickerton 1981 , 1984) brought still more
guidelines about how a language should be, and still more hardening of the line on Pidgins
(cf. G ilbert 1986). It claimed that Pidgins, codes akin to proto-language, were transfonned into
Creoles by children whose hard-wiring for language kicked in when presented by the ir care-
takers with reduced Pidgin input. From said nativization, there emerged the Creole, which then
potentially reflected the basic settings of the brain's/Chomsky's Universal Grammar (UG).
This required an extreme ly strong form ofUG, which not even Chomsky subscribed to, but, as
a hypothesis ideally should, ra ised a lot of interest inside and outside the fie ld, and stimu lated
much further research within.
Excitement was at a peak: Could PCs reveal the inner workings of the mind? The linguistic
blueprint? The default settings of parameters, next to the principles? PC study became a highly
theory-driven field in the 1980s and remained so for the majority of the century.
Said Bickerton about ' immaturity of the field': 'The view that theorists are mere grand-
standing prima donnas, while the real work of the trade is done by the modest empirical plod-
der, is a widespread misconception in Creole studies that mere ly underl ines the immaturity of
the field' (B ickerton 1981: 42). Theory was paramount in the creolistics of the 1980s.
The va lidity of the LBH, as it applies to Bickerton's own test case, Hawaiian Creole Eng-
lish (HCE), has been repeated ly fa lsified by Roberts (e.g. Roberts 2000, this volume), in her
painstakingly thorough historical-linguistic empirical plodd ing. Her work, exploring histori-
cal records that evidence prolonged mu ltilingualism of speakers, highlights the rich substrate
influence on Hawai ian English, and shows that the development ofHCE from Hawa iian Pidgin
English took decided ly longer than the one generation postulated by the LBH.
20.3.3 Substrate, Superstrate or Universal Grammar

But within the field of creolistics, few were satisfied with the LBH, as it was apparent that PCs
showed structural similarities also to the ir lexifiers and to the ir substrates. The camps were
divided into three main factions: substratists, superstratists and the universalists (some but not
all subscribing to Bickerton's LBH), each bluntly challenging the other wherever possible.
In the beginn ing, the underdogs were the 'substratophi les', as they were sneeringly denoted,
but they qu ickly made ground. By the end of the millem1ium, very few adherents to the LBH,
the strongest form of UG, rema ined in the field. It took longer for a majority of researchers
to accept that these three major factors must all interact in Cre.ole language formation, as
Schuchardt had assumed long ago (Baptista 20 16).
20.3.4 Room f or variation

Once again, it was recognized that PCs behaved quite d ifferently from standardized prestige
language, exhibiting far greater variability. Labov's research, assisted by e.g. Sankoff, Laberge,
Meyerhoff, took large strides to describe this variation in the soc iolinguistic variationist model,
stimulating research on the Creole continuum. Le Page and Tabouret-Keller ( 1985) delved even
372
further into uncharted territory, rejecting the linear models altogether, and arguing that speech
acts were to be seen as individual Acts of Identity. Also rooting for the importance of speaker
creativity in language creation was a small group of researchers later referred to as the 'crea-
tionists', arguing that the agency of the Creole speakers in creating a language fit for their needs
was being overlooked (e.g. Baker 1990). The newly established orthodoxy of various -ists was
again challenged by those foregrounding individual agency, and multiplicity.
Yet even into our mi llenniwn, constant reminders to the mu ltipl icity PCs face us with are in
order: 'Every Creole has its own history' (Bollee 2007: 173 in Kriimer 2013a: 47).
20.4 Pidgins and Creoles
20.4.1 Origin ofthe term Pidgin

The tenn ' Pidgin' first appears as the name for Chinese Pidgin Engl ish, with a disputed but
generally accepted etymology postulating a corrupted pronunciation of 'business' (for discus-
sion see Velup illai 2015: 22-24). There follows a trend of gradual extension of the tem1, often
to first include other contact languages close to China, namely the Melanesian Pidgins: Bis-
lama, Tok Pisin and Solomon Islands Pij in. Reinecke, too, is tempted to generically extend the
meaning of the tenn, from Hawai ian Pidgin (Reinecke 1937: Preface i; footnote x). Only when
'Pidgin' becomes a fixed generic concept after World War 11 is this label extended to include
all early non-Creole contact varieties.
20.4.2 Defining Pidgin and Creoles

Defin ing the basic categories of our field has been problematic throughout. 'The point has
already been made that creolists themselves are not in agreement as to what a Pidgin or a
Creole language, or the process of p idginization, actually consists of', says Hancock ( 1990:
508). Jourdan ( 1991) discusses 'the blurring of categories', emphasizing rather the character-
istic 'souplesse' ofPCs, representing 'ongo ing negotiations of meaning and of code'. As early
as 1983, Sankoff suggested [we had] 'about reached the limits of the potential usefu lness of
the terms Pidginization and creo lization' (Sankoff 1983: 242, cited in Jourdan 1991: 191).
Almost four decades later, and although the calls for better definitions have not waned (e.g.
Lang 20 17), we have held on to some fuzzy notions resting on the concepmal basis supplied
by Hall in 1966.
Instead of unified definitions, personal definitions have come to be de usage. Starting with
Bickerton's 'true Pidgins', we sometimes tu m in argwnentative circles, adding or redefining
tem1s to suit our needs, and runn ing the risk of overarticu lating gradient conc.e pts. Among the
least controversial are 'expanded Pidgin ' (Milhlhiiusler 1986), to which has been added 'pidg-
increole' (Bakker 2008), which is indeed adopted in Velupillai (20 15). Parkvall and Bakker
(20 13) critically discuss the definition of Pidgin. They diagram the extension of the tenn, by
charting both core examples and outliers (Parkvall & Bakker 2013: 3 1). Parkvall (2020) more
straightforwardly allows for the vagueness or fuzziness of tem1s. Others, such as Mufwene
(200 I), rej ect both 'Pidgin ' and 'Creole' as valid or useful tem1inology. The fie ld, despite
valiant efforts, is not moving much closer to consensus in its definitions, rather only in its
/aissez-faire attimde, agreeing to disagree, and focussing on data instead.
Guided by Schuchardt ( 1925), one might even ask: Cou ld it be that in the end it is fitting
that in creo listics, a field driven by individua lism and individualists, we have no set of terms
that we can all agree on defining in the same way?
373
Rachel Selbach
20.4.3 Repairing the past

It may well be true that 'Schuchardt anticipates Robert Hall 's distinction between Pidgin lan-
guages and Creole languages' (Gi lbert 1980: 65) and that 'The idea of the Creo le life cycle
was clearly developed by 1909, when Schuchardt's article on the Lingua Franca appeared'
(Me ij er & Muysken 1977: 30). However, hindsight bears its risks. Taking our current knowl-
edge for truth, we project the present onto the past. Later scholars often implicitly assume that
Schuchardt wou ld have adopted the tenn inological system we know so wel l. Yet the term and
the concept of Pidgin arose considerably later than the term and concept Creole.
Holm (2000) practices particularly well-meaning repa ir of the past in his brilliant in-depth
review of the history of Creole studies: 'Although the word [Pidgin] with its current ling
meaning was apparently not known to him [Van Name], its referent c learly was' (Holm 2000:
25); 'Schuchardt had a clear understanding of the Pidgin to Creo le lifecycle' (Holm 2000: 32);
and '[B loomfie ld] gave a clear definition of Pidgins and Creoles (without using those tenns)'
(Holm 2000: 38).
Historical repair is thus unwillingly used by Holm, Meijer and Muysken, and others, mak-
ing generous amends to Schuchardt, Hesseling, Van Name, crediting them for foreseeing cat-
egories and life cycle concepts before they had been postulated and received labels. A more
c learly erroneous though similar case in point is the consistent mis-citation of Jespersen's
chapter as ' Pidgins and Congeners', where hind-vision provides a plural ending. Reinecke
( 1977: vi i), Hall ( 1981: 442), Holm (2000: 36) are but three examples of the pervasive misquo-
tation of Jespersen 's Chapter 12 as 'Pidgins and Congeners'. All refer to Pidgins in the plural,
as if the tenn Pidgin had acquired generic status by 1922.
Gilbert introduces his translation ofSchuchardt (1909) with the following note: '[Schucha-
rdt]tries to distinguish between stable, soc ially transmitted Pidgins, and idiosyncratic Pidgins.
His remarks betray considerable uncertainty however. The work ofLabov, Bickerton and others
lay far in the future' (Gilbert 1980: 65). Such comments are another refte.ction of the strength
of the assumption of these underlying categories, an asswnption that persists despite years of
criticism. Yet our 20120 hindsight is always under the bias of the present standards, and it is easy
for repair of the past to sl ip in. In actual fact, the early creolists made considerably more room
for a variabi lity of 'paths to creolization' , as Jourdan ( 1991: 193), too, urges us to recognize.
Schuchardt's views in fact were not so rigid as of those with the generous hindsight. His
recognizing a qualitative difference between Creole languages and those contact languages that
were better not qualified as Creoles- Vermittlungs-, Hii/fs- and Notsprachen - does not imply an
obligatory developmental path of one group to the other. While we can thus see from retrospect
the first seeds of a perceived difference between (a large set of languages now grouped together
as) Pidgins as opposed to Creoles- and it is the winners who write history- the Pidgin-Creole
dichotomy and the life cycle it implies is clearly a product of the 1960s. Indeed, as Jourdan says,
'By representing the life-cycle of Pidgins and Creoles . .. we have trapped ourselves into an
evolutionary model that has become excessively rigid and dogmatic' (Jourdan 1991: 194).
20.5 Promises, promises

PC study had come to be seen as the key to w1derstanding more about language. A magnet
for researchers from various avenues, such as sociol inguistics, cogn itive linguistics, historical
linguistics, anthropo logy, the field was enriched by the brightest stars working from adj acent
fields. No question: Creoles had crucial relevanc.e to understanding language- in the promis-
ing high times of the 1980s.
374
20.5.1 Conferences and publication venues: getting together

Many advances in PC studies are marked by the conferences and their subsequent publica-
tions, from the very get-go. Espec ially the early conferenc-es were unique happenings and had
great impact. With the growth of the field, they are now fruitful semi-annual practice. For a full
chronology of creolist events until 1990, see Hancock ( 1990); here, we abbreviate.
The First International Conference in Creo le Language Studies was held in 1959 at the
Un iversity of West Indies, Jamaica, followed by the Second International Conference 1968,
again in Mona, Jamaica. Here, studies become embedded in a research community, and take
off for good. The 1972 International Conference on Pidgins and Creoles in Trinidad leads
to the formation of the Society for Caribbean Linguistics (SCL), and in 1973, the Carrier
Pidgin is founded as a quarterly newsletter for creol ists. The Journal ofCreole Studies was
launched as a sem i-annual publ ication in 1977, but was discontinued the following year,
when, incidentally, Etudes Creoles was founded with success to stay in Aix-en-Provence
( 1978). The fie ld had to wait almost another decade for its anglophone journal to appear
and to stay.
The 1980s were also the high time for new structural beginnings in creol istics. The 1985
international workshop he ld in Amsterdam especially got stones rolling, fast and furious.
The resulting publ ication of the proceedings, Universals versus Substrata in Creole Gen-
esis (Muysken & Smith 1986), was the first volwne in the newly created John Benjamins
series, Creole Language Library (CLL). In 1986, the Journal ofPidgin and Creole Languages
(JPCL), another idea Iaw1ched at the Amsterdam conference, is fow1ded with Glenn Gilbert as
ed itor-in-chief. The birth of both top publication venues, and the impetus and in itiative of the
Amsterdam foWiders, are beautifu lly described in Gi lbert's (2005) retrospective.
With Gilbert as a purveyor to the US, the Society for Pidgin and Creole Lingu istics (SPCL)
is laWiched and begins having joint meetings with the Linguistic Society of America (LSA) in
1989. In 200 I, Dona ld Win ford moves JPCL to Ohio. Baulebridge, based in London, becomes
a low-key but exclusive publication venue at the turn of the millennium, launched and main-
tained in a powerful one-man-stint by the late Phi lip Baker. While the 1980s were still in the
lure of ' Pidgin and Creo le', and proud of that name, recently some titles were changed. In
2017, the Jolm Benjamins series Creole Language Librmy was continued as Contact Lan-
guage Library, as of Volume 54. These are but some of the key stable meeting and publication
venues allowing the field to thrive.
Ep icentres of Creole stud ies had shifted from Graz, to Hawaii and Canberra, to Jamaica, to
Amsterdam, passing through Montrea l, Miami, Chicago, Ohio, Lisbon, Aix and Paris, mov-
ing between the old world and the new, and between Creole speaking and, predom inantly,
non-Creo le speaking centres, with a strong emphasis on the Anglo-American tradition.
Through the active hands of such catalysts as Robert LePage in the earliest days of modem
Creole studies, and Pieter Muysken from the 1980s onwards, face-to-face meetings became
not only possible but highly desirable and fru itful. Today many subgroups a ll over the world
meet, in add ition to the main societies of SPCL, SCL, Etudes Creoles and ACBLPE (Asso-
ciayiio de Crioulos de Base Lexical Portuguesa e Espanhola founded in 200 I). The meet-
ings within and amongst these networks take on d ifferent forms, characterized by the strong
wi ll for cooperation. Some language-specific traditions that have independently crystallized,
within the Engl ish, French and Iberian research groups, are fortunate ly more often com ing
together as well. What holds the field together now is undeniably also a tightly knit web of
individua l friendships, and occasional fiendships, encompassing, but going well beyond, the
love for contact languages.
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Rachel Selbach
20.5.2 Textbooks
The early years had produced Hall ( 1966), boldly breaking grow1d, and then Todd ( 1974) and
Adler (1977) taking the next tender steps towards supplying PC studies with a text, followed
by a surge of introductory publications with an increasingly solid base. Mllhlhausler 's ( 1986)
introduction set a new standard with his important textbook. T he year of 1988 stood out espe-
c ially w ith a number of important publications, producing Romaine ( 1988), Holm ( 1988), as
well as m ilestones from historical and anthropological linguistics, Thomason and Kaufman
( 1988) and Keesing ( 1988) respectively.
The following decade reached PC students across the globe with Arends et al. (1994), with
a 1997 reprint of the highly influential introductory text by Mfihlhausler (1986), and with
Sebba ( 1997), students now had a range of choices. A one-volume republication of Holm (vo l-
umes I and 11 1988) in Holm (2000) sums up both the history of study and the broad strokes of
the state of the art of PC knowledge. More textbooks continued to produce va luable overviews
not only for newcomers to the field. In Velup illai (20 15), recent advances are brought together
for the newest generation, in an empirical masterpiece that can be readily consulted by all.
Even the short list of textbooks is a long one:
Adler, M.K. 1977. Pidgins, creoles and lingua francas - A sociolinguisric swdy. Hamburg: Helmut
Buske Verlag.
Arends, J., Muysken, P. & Smith, N. (eds.). 1994. Pidgins and creoles. An imroducrion. Amsterdam: John
Benjamins.
Bakker, P. and Matras, Y. 20 13. Comacrlanguages: A comprehensive guide. Berlin: Mouton de Gmyter.
Hall, R.A. 1966. Pidgin and creole languages. lthaca, NY: Comell University Press.
Holm, J. 1988. An imroducrion to pidgins and creoles. Vol. I & 11. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Holm, J. 2000. An imroducrionro pidgins and creoles. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kouwenberg, S. & Singler, J. 2008. Pidginslcreoles and historical linguistics, in 77re handbook ofpidgin
and creole swdies, edited by S ilvia Kouwenberg and John V. Singler. Oxford: Wiley- Blackwell: 242-
262. doi: I0. 1002/978 1444305982.ch 10.
Le Page, R.B. and Tabouret-Ke ller, A. 1985. Acts of identity: Creole-based approaches to language and
ethniciry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
McWhorter, J. 1997. Towards a new model of creole genesis. Studies in Ethnolinguistics 3. New York:
Lang.
Miihlh!iusler, P. 1986. Pidgin and creole linguisrics. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. (reprinted 1997)
Muysken, P. & Smith, N. (eds.). 1986. Substrata versus wriversals in creole genesis. Papers from the
Amsterdam Creole Workshop, April 1985. Creole Language Library I. Amsterdam: John Benjam ins.
Romaine, S. 1988. Pidgin and creole languages. London: Longman.
Sebba, M. 1997. Contact languages: Pidgins and creoles. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Siege!, J. 2008. 17re emergence ofpidgin and creole languages. Oxford : Oxford University Press.
Singh, L 2000. Pidgins and creoles: An introduction. London: Amold.
T homason, S.G. 2001. Language contacr: An illlroduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Thomason, S.G. & Kaufmann, T.S. 1988. Language comacr, creolization, and generic linguistics. Berke-
ley: University o f California Press.
Todd, L. 1974. Pidgins and creoles. Abingdon: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Velupillai, Viveka. 20 15. Pidgins, creoles and mixed languages: An introduction. CLL 48. Amsterdam:
John Benjamins.
Win ford, D. 2003. An introduction to contact linguistics. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
To this summary we may briefly add a sho rt se lective list of recent handbooks ofPCs, con-
tacl languages and language contact: Kouwenberg and S ing! er (2008), Hickey (20 I 0), Bakker
and Matras (2013), Grant (2020), Ansaldo and Meyerhoff (this volume). While the remaining
literature has become far too vast to cursorily cover, Holm and Michael is (2009) and Migge
376
and Farquharson (20 17) provide multi-volwne co llections of key papers and publications from
the 18th century and from Hymes ( 197 1) onwards respectively, thus conveniently and fasci-
natingly summ ing up the history of important theoretical advances of modem PC smdy.
2 0 .6 1990s: denouem ent

While research of the 1990s expressed first doubts on whether we were always on the right
track (e.g. Jourdan 1991), the decade was still a high point for the field. Wars were healthily
waging: substratist, a.k.a. substratophi le, was still a bad word for some. Many creolists were
finn in their beliefs: searching for a one-size-fits-a ll model, the answer to Creole genesis was
e ither this, or that. Introductions to PCs divided the numerous hypotheses - superstratist, sub-
stratist, universalist - into neat boxes. While of course making room for the possibility that
a number of factors were involved, the view was seldom taken that the natural interplay of
these factors could be seen as complementary, and highly compatible - as Schuchardt had
made them out to be (Baptista 2016: 186). The thrashing of the -ists continued. CreoList was a
prime venue, and was closed, largely in dismay, by the editors, having become a fierce fighting
ground (Mikael Parkvall and Jens Ed lund founded the Creolist Archives 1997; Ed lund 2010).
The excitement and the e-venue simply crashed.
But debate again became more measured, and more emp irically driven. Gradua lly, more
attention was be ing paid to what the acmal historical input languages were, and how the sub-
strate and the superstrate were to be identified; demographic facts on where the caphlred slaves
had originated; and what specific European dialect the superstrate speakers most probably
brought into the contact. Superstratists, still largely limited to France, where they were headed
by strong-minded Robert Chaudenson, were being increasingly heard in the Anglo-dominated
centres. At the same time, Bickerton's and Chaudenson's anti-substratism lost momenmm.
Lefebvre dared leve l a serious attack of substratophilia with her substratist relexification
hypothesis (Lefebvre 1998). Other fields continued to ferment PC study, especially Second
Language Acquisition (summed up in Siege! 2008).
By the end of the 20th cenhlry, creol istics was a bustling young fie ld - epistemological
quibbles aside. Enough data had come in, the forwns were vigorous and wi ldly alive. While the
mid- 1980s had been a major turning point with JPCL, CLL, Carrier Pidgin and the many text-
books, these venues were now in place and thriving, augmented, temporari ly, by the CreoList.
Young scholars were att racted to a vibrant field. 'Third generation creolists' (cf. McWhorter's
( 1997) self-denomination) were happi ly bashing in each other 's heads, as superstratist and
substratist and generative ideals and ideologies were being fought out.
The battles continued, from Atlantic to Pacific; the research mounted, on the ground.
20.7 Attempted suicide

But disappointment had to come, and disappointment came. Some answers to some old ques-
tions were hard to come by. The field itself began to show self-destructive tendencies. By
the 2 1st century, some were jwnping ship. It seemed that creol istics was 'sawing off its own
branch' . Parkvall (2002) was perhaps amongst the first to take notice, but soon others followed
su it, wanting to see clear results of PC research efforts. In Deconstructing Creole, Ansaldo
et al. (2007) question the very notions hold ing the field together until then. Criticism of the
field from within mounted, while new modes and avenues of analysis continued to be tested,
from Feamre Pool models, borrowing from ecology (Mufwene 2001), to the statistical meas-
ures of quantitative clustering models (Bakker et a l. 201 1).
377
Rachel Selbach
Business neverthe less continued as usual, but the field had lost some of its speed. Many
researchers decided to focus on describ ing the varieties of PC under investigation, with an
increased attention to social issues. In a way, we did saw off the branch, and have landed on
our feet - sobered up.
20.8 Chin s up! for the new millenium

Glenn Gi lbert, looking back on a long career in creolistics, taking off in Amsterdam with Pieter
Muysken in the 1980s, raves in his 2005 retrospective: 'The waning years of the last century
showed definite signs that our discipl ine had matured and was being taken with increasing
seriousness by everyone' (Gilbert2005: 168), and: 'The success of SPCL says it a ll. Cre.olis-
tics has become part of mainstream linguistics. It has come of age' (Gilbert 2005: 173).
20. 8.1 Changing labels

The shift from the John Benjamins CLL series from denoting 'Creole Language Library' to
'COntact Language Library' is one sign that we are trying to move away from some ill-defined
tem1inology, and open the field up to the vast spectrum of resu lts of language contact. Yet
debates, now centring around Creole exceptiona lism, continue to wage: At stake is not just the
typology of Creole, but the entire category Pidgin, as well as some very self-assuring thinking
that we can quite broadly and effectively cover much of what were once known as ' marginal
languages' with the two basic concepts of'Pidgins' and 'Creoles' .
We have the camp 'Creoles are exceptional' very closely tied up with the be lief that Pidg-
ins prefigure Creo les (e.g. McWhorter 2019). The other camp, 'Creoles are unexceptional '
(e.g. DeGraff 2003), obviously does not subscribe to a Pidgin precursor. Instead, Creoles
would arise from nonnal d ialect change, or from a hybrid ization process, which a ll languages
undergo to a greater or lesser extent. The Pidgin-to-Creole life cycle has thus become equated
with creolistics, tout court. It need not be. We could a llow for Creoles to not be derived via the
same deve lopmental pathways, as suggested much earl ier on (e.g. Jourdan 1991). The cha l-
lenge is to be both fine grained and critical in our taxonomy and use of tenn inology.
20.8.2 Data collection

While controversy has helped fuel the fie ld, all along, there have been the more silent 'empiri-
cal plodders', not to be forgotten, at the heart of the advances PC studies have made. Working
together has resulted in the greatest gains. Not in the least unaware of theoretical issues, the
research community knows how to join their efforts to push the field towards new insights
and data. The perhaps greatest unified achievement has been the Atlas Pidgin and Creole Lan-
guage Structures (Michaelis et al. 2013).
In the 21st century, WALS (World Atlas of Linguistic Structures) and APiCS herald an era
of empirically oriented statistical research. 'APiCS marked a turning point in creolist research
with regards to its geographica l reach, but also in its comm itment to statistical analysis' (Lang
2017: 443).
Controversy continues to fuel the field, in parts. But we may instead focus on the advances:
data collection, interdisciplinarity, self-refte.ction. We have accepted our lack of consensus and
are looking at the data, though sometimes as if we didn't need a toolbox. But we do, and we
are always, mavericks or not, caught in the value system of our own times: 'We should bear
in m ind, though, that data-mining and the resolution of data into operative postulates, now the
378
dominant arbiter of what is true and false, nonetheless comes with an epistemology and value
system based on its own assumptions' (Lang 2017: 444).
20.8.3 A psychology ofthe fi eld?

Schuchardt (1925) playfully launched his dare to examine the psychology of linguists when
attempting to understand the young field of lingu istics, saying: ' Daraus kormte eine neue Wis-
senschafi erblilhen, ...: die Erforschung des Forschers' - "This could resu lt in a new sci-
ence, ... the research ing of the researcher" (Schuchardt 1925: 7). His reasoning was that the
deep d ivisions in linguistic points of view are rooted in the differences between individua ls
('Es handelt sich . . . urn Spaltm1gen die in die letzten Tiefen hinabreichen, nam lich in der
Verschiedenheit der lndividuen \VUTZeln'; Schuchardtl 925: 1).
We have here proposed that PC study was always carried by strong-willed individuals with
strong ideas, with a desire to grasp, acknowledge and do justice to what seems marginal. They
have often been idiosyncratic. We have further noted that we have not reached consensus even
on some very basic concepts. But can a psychology of the field get us further? Probably not.
A rare, recent take on this idea is nevertheless offered in Kilani-Schoch (2019), whose
review of the field has attempted to do this, with some disquieting results . She sketches the
recent developments of a fie ld fuelle.d by scathing controversy, and accounts for opposing
positions in the Creole exceptionalism debate by personal deficits and strengths. Wh ile th is
is qu ite in line with Schuchardl's jocular proposition, this foregrounding of the most heated
debates does little e ither for the researchers involved, nor for the field of PC study. Seri-
ously pursuing this avenue would mean sl ipping too far away from science and too far into
subjectivity.
20.9 Conclusion
From the historical depths of travel reports and missionary grammars, to Schuchardt fathering
a field, to Reinecke's calm steady hand leading it out of its 1930s 'adolescence' (Reinecke
1977: vi ii), to the heated debates of the 1980s (a.k.a. its ' immaturity' (Bickerton 198 1: 42)),
to the field's 'coming of age in this millenn ium' (Gilbert 2005: 173): Are PCs still in a special
position to explain the nature of language? The field continues to reflect on this, as well as
refocussing on the ethical issues of Creole language description and its purveyors. The field
has grown to introspect.
PC study continues to be carried by a group of individualists, exceptionally strong ties of
friendship and collegiality, and some vicious vendettas, all joined in their common endeavour
to understand a fuller scope of language, from its purported margins to the heart of the matter.
Note
I am deeply indebted to Peter Bakker, Christine Jourdan, Margot van den Berg, Viveka Velupillai and,
last but not least, to Umberto Ansaldo and the editors for their wonderful patience and support.
Further reading
Jourdan, C. 1991. Pidgins and creoles: The blurring of categories, Annual Review ofAnthropology 20( I):
187-209.
This article presents a visionary state-o f-the-art review of pidgin and creole studies during last phase
of the height of excitement and momenmm of creolistics. Its clear discernment of both the promises o f
379
Rachel Selbach
potential insights and o f the lasting troublesome issues w ithin creolistics continues to be valid almost
three decades later.
Hancock, I. 1990. Creolization and language change, in Research guide on language change, edited by
Edgar C. Polome. Berlin: Mouton de Gmyter: 507- 525.
Another review article of the field written towards the end o f the pidgin and creole languages boom,
by a scholar well aware of the lack of clear terminology in the field, Hancock traces the evolution o f
the vaguely defined discipline in a succinct, data/event-oriented manner.
Holm, J. 2000. An introduction to pidgins and creoles. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chap-
ter 2: The development of Theory: 14-67.
C hapter 2 of the late John Holm 's introductory work contains the classic haul of the history of creole
studies, and is an unavoidable read in its fhll breadth. Republication o f the 2-volume Holm ( 1988).
Kramer, P. 2013. Creole exceptionalism in a historical perspective- From 19th century reflection to a
sel f-conscious discipline. Language Sciences 38: 99-109.
An emdite knowledge source of early pre-Schuchardtian creolists' interests to today, from a modem
highly self-reflected vantage point 'sheds new light on the epistemological heritage of the field'. Kramer
traces the ideological bases into which all intellectual thinking, past and present, is necessarily embedded.
Schuchardt, H. 1925. Der lndividualismus in der Sprachforschung, Sitzungsbericlue der Wiener Akad-
emie 204(2): 1- 21.
A little known but very worthwhile, highly personal, individualistic contribution by the father o f
creolistics, which inspired the main take of the present article: Individualists have intensely promoted
the study o f PCs, formerly referred to as ' marginal languages' .
Related topics
Identity Politics; Pidgins and Creoles and the Language Faculty; Language Contact and
Human Dispersal; Variation in Pidgin and Creole Languages
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383
21
THE TYPOLOGY OF PIDGIN
Viveka Velupillai
2 1.1 Introduction and definitions

One of the most central debates in Pidgin and Creole studies has been whether it is possible to
identify a language as a Pidgin or a Creole simply by looking at the structure of the language.
The question hinges on a number of core issues related to Pidgin and Creole languages: does
language contact trigger a predictable set of mechanisms? Does language contact lead to a
predictable outcome? Or is any given outcome of language contact dependent on the particular
social, econom ic and historica l factors that contribute to the emergence of a given Pidgin or
Creole language? In other words, the question has been: can we identify certain features of
Pidgin languages and equally of Creole languages that allow us to classify these languages
as 'Pidgins' or 'Creoles' without having any access to the sociohistorical background of the
particular language in question, and without knowing anything about any of the potential input
languages? This can only be done by try ing to identify features which are commonly found
among Pidgin and Creole languages, but which are not universally common features among
the languages of the world. Any discussion on the typology of Pidgin and Creole languages
must therefore rest on a typological comparison with other languages that have not been clas-
sified as Pidgins and Creoles.
In this chapter the term Pidgin refers to a secondary language with a set structure that can
be learned, but that is not the mother tongue of its users. It is a language which emerged in a
situation where speakers of mutually unintelligible languages needed a way to communicate
with each other, and it is typically used only in a limited set of contexts. A Creole is here
defined as a language which emerged in a situation of intense contact and which has become
the mother tongue of an entire speech commtmity. It is a fu ll-fledged language which can be
used in any and all contexts and is on par with any other natural language in the world. A
lexi fier is the language from which a contact language derives most of its vocabulary. This
is often, but not always, the same language as the superstrate, which is here defined as a
socially dominant language that has sign ificantly influenced the structure and use of a less
dom inant language or variety in a commwtity. An example of a language where the lexi-
fier and superstrate differ is Sranan, an English-lexified Creole dom inated by Dutch, which
was the colonial superstrate language for most of Sranan 's history. Similarly, Pichi is an
English-lexified Creole with a Spanish superstrate. A substrate language is here defined as
384
Typology ofpidgirr and creole languages
that language or variety w hich has influenced the structure or use of a more dom inant language
or variety in a commwtity.
This chapter is structured as follows: I will fi rst bring up two major positions in the debate
on the typology of Pidgin and Cre.ole languages. I will then list some of the features that have
traditionally been put forth as typ ical for Pidgins (as opposed to non-Pidgin languages) and for
Creoles (as opposed to non-Creole languages) and test whether these assumed typical features
are in fac.t typical for Pidgins and Creoles respectively, before suggesting future directions for
the study of the typology of Pidgin and Creole languages.
21.2 Historical perspectives on the typology of Pidgin

and Creole languages
Interest and systematic smdy of Pidgin and Creole languages dates back to the 19th cenh!ry
(see Selbach, this volume). From the very beginning some of the core issues have been whether
there are specific and identifiable fomtation processes involved in the emergence of Pidgin and
Creole languages, and if these processes might lead to predictable linguistic outcomes.
The last 50 years of creolistics have to a large extent been dominated by the contentious
issue of whether Creoles are a spec ial type of language. A major contributing (and contro-
versial) factor to this discussion was Derek Bickerton's Language Bioprogr am Hypot hesis
(LBH). The hypothesis puts forth that Creoles emerge from Pidgins in that chi ldren born into
Pidgin-speaking households were only exposed to an unstable and reduced contact variety,
w hich could not fill the basic human linguistic needs. The children thus resorted to their basic,
innate, human language faculty and created a new, fully functional and referentially adequate
language. The process of creo lization was thus posmlated to be abrupt and take place over only
one generation. Bickerton argued that the reason Creole languages are so similar is because the
creators of the languages went back to retrieve the linguistic blueprint encoded in any human
brain. Creoles are thus, according to the LBH, manifestations of the generally human, tmiver-
sal linguistic systems. For a main deve lopmental path of the LB H, see Bickerton ( 1974, 1977,
1980, 1981, 1984, 1988). For a very accessible overview of the LBH, see Veenstra (2008).
A modified continuation of the LBH is the idea of a C reole Prototype (a lso called C reole
exceptionalism) put forth primarily in the work of John McWhorter (e.g. 2002,2005, 201 1).
The aim with the Creole Prototype is to identify a limited set of diagnostic features that will
allow us to identify languages as Creoles without having access to their developmental history.
The Creole Prototype theory proposes that all Creo les, and only Creoles as opposed to non-
Creoles, have a combination of three feamres that essentially Hag that they "were born recently
ofPidgins" (McWhorter 2011: 5):
phonological: little orno use of tone to distinguish monosyllables or grammatical categories

morp hosyntactic: little or no inflectional morphology
sema ntic: little or no noncompositional combinations of derivational markers and roots
(Me Whorter 20 11: 6)
Creole exceptionalism thus argues that Creoles are in fact a separate type of language, and
that is due to the fact that they were developed recently out of Pidgin languages (Bakker et al.
2011; Daval-Markussen & Bakker 20 17; Daval-Markussen 2018).
There has been, and continues to be, criticism levelled against both the LBH and the
notion of a Creole Prototype. A forcefu l counter-theory of the LBH and the Creole Prototype
is the Founder Pr inciple, put forth initially by Robert Chaudenson (e.g. 1992, 2001) and
385
Viveka Velupillai
further developed by Salikoko Mufwene (e.g. 1996, 200 I). The main argument here is that
Creole languages first of all did not develop abrupt ly out of Pidgin languages, but started out
as varieties of the lexifier languages of the colonial sett lers and gradually became less sim ilar
to the se!ller's language as the labour popu lation (speaking substrate languages) grew. The
linguistic properties of any given Creole are therefore not predictable, but the outcomes of
a spec ific contact situation rest on the particu lar varieties involved in that particular contact
situation.
This framework has been further developed into evolutionary accounts of Creole lan-
guage fonnation, which argues that the linguistic ecology of a particular contact situation,
and the various input languages involved, is what will determine the particular linguistic
system of any given contact language (e.g. Croft 2000; Aboh & Ansaldo 2007; Aboh 2009;
Ansaldo 2009). Here, again, a gradual developmental path is postulated, and, as with the
Founder Principle, a Creole can only be labelled a 'Creole' based on the sociohistorical fac-
tors that led to the emergence of the language, and not based on a set of diagnostic linguistic
features.
21.3 Are Pidgins and Creoles distinct from other languages?

In order to be able to identify whether Pidgin and Creole languages are typologically dis-
tinct, i.e. have a set of features that make them w1iquely identifiable as ' Pidgins' and 'Cre-
oles' respectively, distinct from other natural languages, they have to be systematically
compared to languages not classified as ' Pidgins' and 'Creoles': a diagnostic feature is not
relevant unless it is contrastive. In other words, a statement such as "all Pidgin languages
have vowe ls" is of no va lue as a classifying feature: all spoken languages of the world have
vowels, irrespective of w hether they are classified as Pidgins, Cre.o les or something else.
If, on the other hand, a feature can be ident ified that is overwhelmingly present among the
known Pidgin or Creole languages of the world, but is rare or absent among most other
natural languages of the world, then it is a structural feature that could be used to identify
potential Pidgin or Creole languages. But such a feature and such patterns can only be
identified by looking at Pidgins or Creoles and other natural languages. In other words, we
must establ ish (i) whether the features in question are commonly found in Pidgins and in
Creoles respectively and (i i) whether they are less commonly found among non-Pidgin and
non-Creole languages respective ly.
A further issue to take into account when it comes to potential similarities between the
known Pidgins and Creoles is their sociohistorical background: most of the known Pidgin and
Creole languages emerged in sim ilar situations and with simi lar input languages. For exam-
ple, most known Creole languages have Western European lexifiers (in particular English,
Dutch, French, Portuguese and Spanish), which themselves share a high number of structural
similarities (Haspelmath 200 I). And a nwnber of Creole languages can also be argue.d to have
substrate languages of similar origins, especially the Atlantic Creoles. Furthern1ore, in many
cases there was intense contact between these Pidgins and Creoles, which means that they may
have influenced each other. Tru ly diagnostic features for a 'Pidgin' or 'Creole' type would thus
be features that are not typical for the input languages (or indeed just very common throughout
the languages of the world) and that can be found among Pidgin or Creole languages that have
not been in close contact w ith each other during their forn1ation.
The following lists features that have traditionally been assumed as typical for Pidgins
and Creoles respectively and tests these claims. It is to a great extent a condensed version of
386
the findings in Velup illai (20 ! 5). Notice that only those features which can be systematically
quantified will be discussed. This discussion of features does not engage with the modell ing
based on phylogenetic trees used by Bakker et al. (20 l l ); Fon Sing (20 !7) provides a system-
atic response to the conclusions Bakker et al. draw based on their methodology.
21.4 Comparing Pidgins with non-Pidgin langu ages

Throughout the history of Pidgin studies the general view has been that Pidgins are simplified
versions of their lexifiers: " the grammars ofPidgins were characteristically less complex than
the granunars of their sourc.e languages. Re lative grammatical simpl icity is thus one of the dis-
tinguishing marks of a Pidgin" (Sebba ! 997: 37). What exactly 'simplified' and 'lack of com-
p lexity' means is rare ly defined, though the implication tends to be that th is refers to reduced
overt morphological inflection and variation, as well as increased regu larity of morphological
forms. Notice, however, that a lexifier such as English itself has a highly reduced overt mor-
phologica l marking compared to other languages of the world. For lengthy discussions on
the linguistic features of Pidgins, see Bakker ( !994, 2008), Milh lhausler ( !997), Parkvall and
Bakker (20 ! 3), Romaine ( ! 988) and Sebba ( !997).
PH ONOW GY:
Assumption: Pidgin languages have fe-.ver phonemes than their lexifiers.

Test: In a sample of ! 5 Pidgin languages, nine had reduced the consonant inventory
and seven had reduced their vowel inventory compared to their main lexifier lan-
guage. In all cases, the tendency was that if the lexifier language had a small or aver-
age sized inventory, then it would remain intact in the Pidgin. Tay Boi is an example
of a Pidgin with an average sized inventory, with 25 phonemes (Reinecke !97 !),
but with both fewer consonants (! 5, /b, m, f, w, t, d, n, s, l, r,Jl, J,j, k, y/) and fewer
vowels ( I 0, l i, e, £, ~. 3, a, A, :>, o, u/) than the lexifier French, with its 2! consonants
and l l vowels.
Assumption: Pidgin languages have only five vowels.

Test: In a sample of ! 5 Pidgin languages, !8 (72%) have an averaged size inventory
of five--six vowels. However, this is a lso the most conunon vowel inventory size
for the languages in WALS (Maddieson 20!3b) and the difference in proportions
between Pidgins and non-Pidgins is not statistically sign ificant.
Assumption: Pidgin languages have no contrastive length in vowels.

Test: Because the data we have for most Pidgins is based on written sources, informa-
tion about vowel length is lacking. This claim is therefore difficult to test.
Assumption: Pidgins have predominantly CV syllable struChJres.

Test: ln a sample of20 Pidgins, !2 (60%) allow moderately complex syllable struc-
tures as defined in Maddieson (20 l3c). However, this is also the most commonly
allowed syllable structure among the languages in WALS (Maddieson 20!3c), and
the proportions in the Pidgin sample is not statistically significantly different from
those in the WALS sample. Chinuk Wawa, for example, allows a CVCCC structure,
such as mak•-st 'two' (Grant20!3: !52).
387
Viveka Velupillai
Assumption: Pidgin languages do not have tone.

Test: As with contrastive vowel length, the information availab le is not enough to
properly test the claim.
MORPHOLOGY:
Assumption: Pidgin languages mainly have analytic mOJphological strategies.

Test: Quantifying the synthesis of a language is not straightforward; most languages
make use of several kinds of morphological strategies. The question of whether to
include derivational strategies is debated, as is the question of whether or not to
include a llomorphy.
Assumption: Pidgin languages do not have reduplication.

Test: In a sample of34 Pidgin languages, 14 (41%) of them do have reduplication.
The asswnption therefore does not hold. However, the proportions between the
Pidgin sample and the sample in WALS (Rubino 20 13) is statistically significant:
redupl ication is much more common among non-Pidgin languages than among Pidg-
ins. Romanian Pidgin Arabic shows redup lication in, for examp le, kulu 'each' versus
kulukulu 'all, completely' (Avram 20 I 0: 28).
Assumption: Pidgin languages have little or no al/om01phy.

Test: There is not enough data to test this assumption.
Assumption: Pidgin languages have no mOJphologica/ agreement.

Test: There is not enough data to test this assumption.
TheNP:
Assumption: Pidgin languages have no grammatical case.
Test: There is no Pidgin database allowing us to test this assumption.
Assumption: Pidgin languages have no grammatical gender.

Test: Again, a Pidgin database would be needed to test this assumption.
Assumption: Pidgin languages have no grammatical number.

Test: In a sample of36 Pidgins, 23 (64%) Jack nom ina l p lural marking, while 11 have
optional p lural marking and only two obl igatory plural marking. This differs con-
siderably, and statistically significantly, from the languages in WALS (Haspelmath
20 13), where the highest proportion of languages do have ob ligatory number mark-
ing and only I 0% Jack it altogether. Thus, while there are a few examples of Pidgins
with number marking, the likelihood is high that a given Pidgin will Jack nominal
plurality, such as in Romanian Pidgin Arabic.
Romanian Pidgin Arabic (Pidgin (Arabic-Jexified): Iraq):
(I) sadik la ani work la sonda

friend PREP ] SG work PREP rig
' My friend works on the rig.'/'My friends work on the rig.' (Avram 2010: 22)
388
Assumption: Pidgin languages lack articles.

Test: In a sample of 32 Pidgin languages, 23 (72%) lack both the definite and the
indefinite artic le. The proportions differ statistically significantly from the languages
in WALS (Dryer 20 13b), where only 32% Jack articles altogether. Thus, whi le there
are some Pidgins that do have definite and indefinite artic les, the like lihood is high
that a given Pidgin language will lack them, such as Eskimo Pidgin.
Eskimo Pidgin (Pidgin (Eskimo languages-lexified): North-eastem Siberia to
West Greenland):
(2) (a) wai 'hinni artegi aJ1Jlai1a1111a piigmiimmi

woman coat sew now
'The woman is sewing a coat now.'
(b) ak'liiJia me'k-fast kiiima
rope tie dog
'Tie the dog with a rope.' (Stefl\nsson 1909: 223f)
The VP:
Assumption: Pidgin languages have no grammatical tense.
Test: In a sample of 37 languages, 25 (67%) lack grammatical tense, while 12 (32%)
have tense. This differs considerably and statistically significantly in proportion from
the sample in Velupi llai (20 16), where 76% of the languages have tense and 24% lack
it. In other words, whi le about a third of the Pidgin languages do have tense, it is much
more common for Pidgins than for non-Pidgins to Jack tense, such as in Chinuk Wawa:
Chinuk Wawa (Pidgin (Chinook-lexified): Canada, USA):
(3) nayka iskam kanim

lsG take canoe-
' I took/am taking/will take the canoe.' (Grant2013: 153)
Assumption: Pidgin languages have no grammatical aspect.

Test: In a sample of 30 Pidgin languages, 23 (77%) lack grammatical aspect and
23% have it. Whether this differs in proportion to non-Pidgins is as yet not possible
to establish, as there is no major typological survey to compare with. However, it
remains the case that whi le there are examples of Pidgin languages that do have some
form of grammatical aspect, such as Maridi Pidgin Arabic, the likelihood is high that
a given Pidgin will lack it.
Maridi Pidgin Arabic (Pidgin (Arabic-lexified): Mauretania):
(4) ?m-ny dy nvl~ Xd-ny by mhl

2-ou l PFV/ coNT go sit/stay-ou LOC place
'They (two) were go ing to stay in a place.' (Thomason & Elgibali 1986: 324)
SIMPLE SENTENCES:
Assumption: Pidgins have a .fixed word order.

Test: In a sample of 35 Pidgin languages, 30 (86%) have a dominant word order
and only five (14%) can be c lassified as not having any dominant word order by
389
Viveka Velupillai
the definition in Dryer (20 131). This does not at all differ from the proportions in Dryer's
(20 131) sample, where 86% of the languages have some kind of dominant word order
and 14% do not. Ndyuka-Trio Pidgin is an example of a Pidgin with fixed word order.
Ndyuka-Trio Pidgin (Pidgin (Ndyukaffiriy6-lexified): Suriname):
(5) Tano mati ondoo kolu so teke

PN partner 100 gui lder ? take
s 0 V
'Tano's partner took 100 guilders.' (Huttar & Velantie 1997: 105)
Assumption: polar questions are indicated by rising intonation only.

Test: A sample of 24 languages were coded according to the principles set out in
Dryer (20131) so as to be able to compare with the WALS sample therein. Of these,
14 Pidgin languages (63%) ind icate polar questions through intonation only while
the rest had some other strategy. T his d iffers from the proportions in Dryer (20131),
where only 18% mark polar question through intonation only. Thus, while there are
examples of Pidgins that have other strategies, it is more likely that a given Pidgin
language, such as Fanakalo, wi ll mark polar question through intonation only than a
non-Pidgin.
Fanakalo (Pidgin (Zu lu-lexified): South Africa):
(6) yena khan-a lo gane?

she have-v ART child
' Does she have children?' (Mesthrie 2013: feature 103)
Assumption: Pidgin languages predominantly make use of bimorphemic question

words.
Test: There is not enough data to test this assumpt ion.
Assumption: Pidgins make use ofa free form preverbalnegator.

Test: In a sample of34 Pidgins, 3 1 (91 %) have a negative particle as their dominant
strategy to negate statements. This differs considerab ly and statistically signifi -
cantly in proportion from the languages in WALS (Dryer 2013d): while a negative
particle is indeed the most common strategy among the languages in WALS, it is
by far not as common, comprising 43% of the languages. It is thus more like ly that
any given Pidgin language, such as KiSetla, will have a negative particle than a
non-Pidgin.
KiSetla (Pidgin (Swahili-lexified): Kenya):
(7) yeye hapana oe

3sG NEG marry
' He hasn't gotten married.' (Vitale 1980: 57)
Assumption: Pidgins lack the passive voice.

Test: In a samp le of 20 Pidgin languages, 13 of them (65%) do have some form of
passive voice, while the remaining seven do not. This sample is too small for statisti-
cal testing, but it should be noted that the proportion of languages in WALS that do
have some fonn of passive construction is only 44% (Siewierska 20 13), meaning that
390
the proportion of Pidgin languages which have passive constructions is in fact higher
than that of non-Pidgins. Fanakalo is an example of a Pidgin with a passive voice.
Fanakalo (Pidgin (Zulu-lexified): South Africa):
(8) lo skafu yena phek-iwe (ga lo .lane)

DEF food it cook-PASS AG DEF PN
'The food was cooked (by Jane).' (Mesthrie 2013: feature 90)
PREDICAT ION:
Assumption: Pidgin languages lack copula constructions.

Test: In a sample of27 Pidgins, the majority (18 languages or 67%) lack a copula for
predicative NPs. This d iffers statistically significantly from Stassen's (2013) sample,
where zero copula constructions are only possible for 45% of the languages. In a
slightly larger Pidgin sample of33 languages, the vast majority (271anguages or 82%)
lack the copu la for predicative adjective constructions. Pidgins, such as Broome
Pearl ing Lugger Pidgin, thus seem more likely than non-Pidgins to lack the copula.
Broome Pearling Lugger Pidgin (Pidgin (Malay-lexified): Australia):
(9) po.rr kicchi:-ya

pearl smaii-PRED
'The pearl is small.' (Hosokawa 1987:288, 291)
COMPLEX S ENTENCES :
Assumption: Pidgins have little or no subordination, marked through juxtaposition

if at all
Test: ln a sample of 18 Pidgins, 14 (78%) mark relative clauses through a gap strat-
egy, as defined in Comrie and Kuteva (2013). This does not differ significantly from
the proportion in WALS, where 75% of the languages make use of a gap strategy to
express relative clauses. ln other words, Pidgin languages are equally likely to make
use of a gap strategy for relative clauses as non-Pidgin languages are. Tai Boi is an
example of a Pidgin with a gap strategy.
Tai Boi (Pidgin (French-lexified): Vietnam):
(I0) la fi/le moi voir

DEF girl lso see
'The girl whom I saw.' (Stageberg 1956: 169)
As can be seen, whether a given feature can actually be used as a diagnostic feature for a
Pidgin type first of all (i) requires that the feature assumption about the feature holds true for
Pidgin languages in general, which is not always the case onc.e tested on actual data, and (ii)
requires that the pattern for Pidgin languages differs significantly from the pattern for non-
Pidgin languages. Table 21 .1 summarizes the findings.
Table 21.1 shows that of the 22 features listed, only seven can be used as diagnostic fea-
tures to apply to a given language in order to check whether it may be a Pidgin or not, without
knowing anything about its developmental history. For most of the features there is simply not
enough infonnation available to make any assertions one way or another.
391
Viveka Velupillai
Table 21.1 Summary of the assumptions about typical Pidgin features, their test result and whether the
particular feature can be used as a diagnostic to set Pidgins apart from non-Pidgin languages
Assumed diagnostic feawre Test result Sets Ps apart from

non-Ps?
Ps have fewer phonemes than lexifier if lexifier has above average (not relevant)
number of phonemes
5 vowels True No
no contrastive length ? ?
CV syllables False No
no tone ? ?
mainly analytic morphological strategies (linle or ? ?
no synthesis or affixation)
no reduplication False Yes
linle or no allomorphy ? ?
no agreement ? ?
no case ? ?
no grammatical gender ? ?
no grammatical number True Yes
no articles True Yes
no tense True Yes
no aspect True ?
fixed word order True No
polar questions indicated by rising intonation only True Yes
bimorphemic question words ? ?
free form invariant preverbal negator True Yes
. .
no passtve votce False No
no copula True Yes
linle or no subordination (if at all, marked through True No
juxtaposition)
Note: '?'indicates that there is not enough data to test the assumption.
2L5 Comparing Creoles with non-Creole lan guages

A munber of attempts have been made to set up diagnostic lists of features typical for Creole
languages. Most commonly these lists rest on the assumption that Creoles are morphosyntac-
tically less complex than non-Creole languages. However, again, what exactly 'simple' and
' less complex' means is generally left undefined. It is not uncommon that those features of a
given Creole language that set it apart from its lexifier will be assumed to be typical for Cre-
oles as opposed to non-Creoles, which in etrect makes the indirect assumption that the lexifier
languages are structurally similar to other non-Creole languages. For summaries and d iscus-
sions of the linguistic features associated with Creoles, see, for example, Romaine ( 1988),
Milhlhausler ( 1997) and Bartens (20 13).
PHONOLOGY:
Assumption: Creole languages have a smallerphoneme inventOJy than their /exifiers.

Test: In a sample of 46 Creole languages, the majority had consonant inventories
ranging from moderately small to moderately large accord ing to the definitions given
392
in Maddieson (2013a), while the WALS sample has a higher nwnber of outside that
mid-range. In the same Creole sample, the majority of the languages have a large
vowel inventory as defined in Maddieson (2013b), whi le the majority of the WALS
languages have an average sized vowel inventory. However, in most cases both the
consonant and vowel inventories are smaller in the Creole than in the lexifier (Velu-
p illai 2015: 30 I), such as with Pichi, with only 16 consonants (/p, b, m, f, t, d, n, s, I,
!f, cl3, j, k, tJ, w, g/) and six vowels (/i, e, a,:>, o, ul; cf. Yakpo 2013), compared to the
24 consonants and 13 vowels of the lexifier English.
Assumption: Creole languages only allow CV syllables.

Test: In a sample of 51 Creole languages, the majo rity, 35 (69%), allow comp lex
syllables as defined in Maddieson (20 13c). This differs statistically significantly from
the languages in WALS, where the majority (57%) only allow moderately complex
syllables, whi le 31% allow complex syllables. Virgin Islands Dutch Creole, for exam-
p le, has venstar 'window' (CVC.CCVC) o r skrew 'scream' (CCCVC; van Sluij s
2013: 2721). It is thus more likely that a Creole will allow complex syllable structures
than non-Creoles and the assumption about Creole syllables is not justified.
Assumption: Creole languages make no or vety marginal use of tone; if they have
tone it is only lexical.
Test: In a sample of 50 Creole languages, the maj ority (34 or 68%) lack tone while
16 (32%) have simp le tone systems as defined in Maddieson (2013d). While the
majority (58%) of the languages in WALS also lack tone, the proportions between the
samples differ statistically significantly in that non-Creoles are more likely to have
tone than Creoles. The assumption that, if a Creole should have tone, it will be lexical
tone only that does not hold: of the 16tona llanguages in the sample, seven have both
lexical and grammatical tone, such as Krio.
Krio (Creole (English-lexified): Sierra Leone):
(11) (a) a wan fo go IUI OS

ISG want COMP go LOC house
'I want to go home.'
(b) wt go ebul am
I PL FUT able it
'We will overcome (the difficulties).' (Finney 2013: 1641)
MORP HOLOGY:
Assumption: Creoles predominantly make use of analytic morphological strategies.

Test: As with Pidgins, th is assumption is difficult to test, for the reasons g iven
previously.
Assumption: in case ofmultiple affixation, Creoles make use ofconcatenation.

Test: There is not enough data available to test this assumption at this stage.
Assumption: Creoles regularize their morphological strategies more thannon-Creoles.

Test: As with morpho logical strategies, quantifying regularization is not straight-
forward and would first of all demand a measurable definition of what exactly
393
Viveka Velupillai
' regularization' denotes. There is therefore as yet not enough data to test this
assumption.
Assumption: Creoles have little or no redundancy.

Test: Similarly to the previously stated, this assumption would first need a rigorous
definition of what exactly 'redundancy' denotes, in measurable tem1s, before it can
be coded and collected into database fonn. Thus, there is as yet not enough data to
test this assumption.
Assumption: Creoles have no or few portmanteau m01phemes.

Test: Here too collected typological databases would be needed in order to be able to
test this assumption.
Assumption: reduplication is more common in Creoles than in non-Creates.

Test: In a sample of 48 Creole languages, the absolute majority, 45 (87%) have redu-
plication. This hardly differs at all from the proportion in Rubino's (2013) WALS
sample, where 85% of the languages have reduplication. The asswnption thus does
not ho ld: non-Creole languages are as likely as Cre.oles to have morphological redu-
plication. An example of a Creole with reduplication is Sranan.
Sranan (Cre.ole (English-lexified): Suriname):
( 12) No1ju e ferfi-ferfi

PN PROG paint- RED
'Norval is painting a bit.' (Adamson & Smith 2003: 891)
TheNP :
Assumption: Creoles do not have grammatical case.
Test: There is as yet no database available for Creoles to test this assumption.
Assumption: Creoles do not have grammatical gender.

Test: Similarly, there is as yet no database avai lable for Creoles to test this assumption.
Assumption: grammatical number is optional in Creole languages and is expressed

analytically.
Test: In a sample of 53 Creole languages, 4 1 (77%) of them have optional plural
marking, while 10 (19%) have obligatory plura l marking. This contrasts statistically
sign ificantly with Haspelmath's (2013) sample in WALS, where 46% of the lan-
guages have obligatory while 19% have optional plural marking. Creole languages
are thus more likely to have optional plural marking than non-Creo les. Of the lan-
guages in the Creole sample, 3 1 (59%) mark plurality with a free form and 11 (21 %)
mark plural ity through affixation. Th is also contrasts statistically significantly with
the languages in Dryer's (2013a) WALS sample, where the majority (60%) express
plurality through affixation and only 16% use a free form to mark nom ina l plural.
Creoles, such as Palenquero, are thus more likely to mark plura lity analytically than
non-Creoles.
Palenquero (Creole (Spanish-lexified): Colombia):
394
( 13) (ma) ngombe ase nda leche rima

PL cow UAB give milk a.lot
'Cows give a Jot of milk.' (Schwegler 2013: 185)
Assumption: the indefinite article is more commonly identical to the numeral 'one' in
Creole languages than in non-Creates.
Test: In a samp le of 53 Creole languages, the indefinite article in the majority 34
(61%) is identical with the numeral 'one', while for 15 (28%) is it distinct from the
numeral 'one'. This differs statistically significantly from Dryer 's (2013c) sample in
WALS, where the majority of the languages (37%) Jack an indefinite article, while
for 21 % the indefinite article is identical to the numeral 'one' and for 19% the indefi-
nite is distinct from the numeral 'one'. The assumption thus holds, in that Creoles
are much more likely to have an indefinite article than non-Creoles, and it is also
more likely in Creoles than in non-Creoles that it will then be a form identical with the
numeral 'one', such as in Cape Verdean Creole.
Cape Verdean Creole (Creole (Portuguese-Jexified): Cape Verde Islands):
( 14) un bes un 6mi di lonji M kilsa di w1 mud)er

one time one man of far.away go house of one woman
'One t ime, a man from far away went to the house of a woman.' (Lang 20 13a: 6)
The VP:
Assumption: Creoles have only one tense marker; which denotes the anterior tense.
Test: In a sample of 52 Creoles, 37 languages (71 %) have more than one tense
marker, while 11 (21 %) have one anterior tense fom1, such as Jamaican, which has
an anterior tense as well as a future tense (Patrick 2007). The assumption therefore
does not hold.
Assumption: Creoles have only one aspect marker; which denotes the progressive.
Test: Of the same 52 languages as earlier, the vast majority (47 or 90%) have more
than one overt aspect marker, while only five have a single aspect marker (denoting
progressive or imperfective). The assumption therefore does not hold. An example of
a Creole with more than one aspect marker is Creolese, with the progressive/habitual
marker a, the general habitual marker dozl das, the past habitual yuustu and the com-
p letive don (Devonish & Thompson 20 13).
Assumption: Creoles have only one mood marke1; which denotes the in·ealis.
Test: Of these same 52 Creoles, again the vast majority (47 or 90%) have more than one
overt mood marker while three (6%) have only one mood marker (denoting the irrealis).
Berl>ice Dutch, for example, had the irrealis ma, the improbable sa and the two coun-
terfactuals wa ma and wa sa (Kouwenberg 20 13) Again, the assumption does not hold.
Assumption: the TMA markers combine in the same fixed order in Creole languages.
Test: In a sample of 50 Creoles, 17 languages have a fixed order for their TMA
markers, with the order T-M-A being the more common one (12 languages or 24%).
However, for the majority of the Creoles (33 languages or 66%) this feature does
395
Viveka Velupillai
not apply, for various reasons. For example, in Gullah three tense, mood and aspect
markers do not tend to eo-occur (Kiein 20 13) and in the Cape Verdean Creoles the
tense marker is a suffix while the mood and aspect markers are preverbal particles
(Lang 20 13). The assumption therefore does not hold.
Assumption: the lexical aspect of the verb affects the reading of the base form in
Creole languages.
Test: In a sample of 49 Creo les, the lexica l aspect affects the tense reading of the
verb for 33 (67%) of the languages but does not for 16 (33%) of the languages. This
distribution is statistically significant and it is thus likely that the lexical aspect of a
given Creole will affect the tense reading in that language. As there is no database on
this feature for non-Creole languages, it is not possible to establish whether this sets
Creoles apart from other natural languages.
Assumption: Creoles do not have any non-finite verb forms.

Test: There is as yet not enough data to test this assumption.
SIMPLE S ENTENCES:
Assumption: Creoles have a fixed SVO word order.

Test: In a sample of 53 Creole languages, the vast majority (49 or 93%) have a
dominant SVO words order according to Dryer's (20 13e) definitions. This contrasts
statistically significantly with Dryer's (20 13e) WALS sample, where only 35% of the
languages have a dom inant word SVO order and 4 1% a dominant SOY word order.
The asswnption thus holds: Creoles are likely to have a fixed word order of SVO,
such as Fad' AmbO.
Fad' AmbO (Creole (Portuguese-lexified): Equatorial Guinea):
(15) mai /aba mina Sunzu

mother wash child dirty
s V 0
'The mother washed the dirty child.' (Post 2013: feature I)
Assumption: polar questions in Creole languages are indicated through intonation only.
Test: In a sample of 52 Creoles, coded according to the principles set out in Dryer
(20131), half of the languages (26 or 50%) form polar questions by means of a ques-
tion particle, while 25 (48%) indicate polar question through intonation only. This
differs statistically significantly in proportion from Dryer's (20131) WALS sample, in
that 6 1% of the languages make use of a question partic le whi le only 18% make use
of intonation only. Therefore, while the assumption is false in that it is equally com-
mon for Creoles to form polar questions by means of question particles, it is true that
Creole languages, such as Lingala, seem more likely to form polar questions through
intonation only than non-Cre.oles.
Lingala (Creole (Bobangi-lexified): Congo, OR Congo):
( 16) a-zal-aki na ndako?

3sG-be-PST in house
'Was she home?' (Meeuwis 2013: feature 103)
396
Assumption: Creoles predominantly have bimorphemic question words.

Assumption: Creoles have a free and invariant preverba/negator.

Test: In a sample of 51 Creoles, 39 languages (77%) negate their statements by means
of a negative particle. This contrasts statistically significantly w ith the sample in Dryer
(20 I3d): while a negative particle is the most conunon strategy, it is only found in 43% of
the WALS languages. Creoles, such as Papia Kristang, thus seem more likely than non-
Creoles to negate their statements with a negative particle than non-Creole languages.
Papia Kristang (Creole (Portuguese-lexified): Malaysia):
( 17) M aria 1igka kumi mangga

PN NEG eat mangoe
'Maria doesn't eat/is not eating mangoes.' (Baxter 20 13: feature I 00)
Assumption: negative concordance is more common in Creoles than in non-Creoles.

Assumption: Creoles lack the passive voice.

Test: In a sample of 52 Creoles, 30 (58%) of the languages lack the passive voice as
defined in Siewierska (20 13). This differs hardly at all in proportions from Siewier-
ska's (2013) sample in WALS, where 56% of the languages lack the passive vo ice.
T he earlier assumption thus first of all does not hold (since 42% or the Creoles sam-
p le do have the passive voice), but also, the pattern among Creoles and non-Creoles
does not differ. An example of a Creole with the passive voice is Linga la.
Lingala (Creole (Bobangi-lexified): Republic of the Congo, OR of the Congo):
( 18) papa a-kund-am-aki na bandeko

father 3so-bury-PASS-PST by family.member
'The father was buried by the family members.' (Meeuwis 2013: feature 90)
PREDICATION:
Assumption: Creoles lack the copula.
Test: In a sample of 52 Creoles it is more common (39 languages or 75%) that a
copula exists for predicative NPs. In half of the sampled languages this copula is
obligatory, meaning that zero copu la constructions is possible for 50% of the Creoles
samples. This does not contrast significantly with the languages sampled in Stassen
(2013), where a copu la is obligatory for 54% of the languages and zero copula in
predicative NP constructions are possible for 46% of the languages. The assumption
therefore does not hold for predicative NPs. T he picture is somewhat different for
predicative adjectives: here half of the Creoles sampled have no copula in predicative
adj ective constructions. T his is in many cases due to the fact that adjectives may have
a verbal encoding, that is, they behave like verbs, in which case a copula wou ld be
superfluous. Even so, the assertion that Creoles lack the copula does not hold.
Assumption: in Creoles the form for existential constructions is identical to the form
for possessive constructions but different from /ocative constructions.
397
Viveka Velupillai
Test: There is as yet not enough data for non-Creole languages to adequately test
this asswnption.
CO MPLEX SENTENCES:
Assumption: Creoles have little or no subordination.

Test: In a samp le of 46 Creoles, relativization, a fonn of subordination, is expressed
through a gap strategy as defined in Comrie and Kuteva (20 l3) in 3 7 languages
(80%). This d iffers somewhat from the languages in Comrie and Kuteva's (2013)
WALS sample, where 75% of the languages indicate relativization through a gap
strategy. It is thus marginally more likely that a g iven Creole language indicates
relati vization through a gap strategy than a non-Creole.
Assumption: serial verbs are more common in Creole languages than innon-Creoles.
Test: In a sample of 50 Creole languages, it is somewhat more common (29 lan-
guages o r 58%) for the languages to have serial verb constructions than to lack them.
However, as there is no typological database available for non-Creoles on the exist-
ence of serial verb constructions, it is not possible to establish whether or not Creoles
differ from non-Creoles with respect to this feature.
As with the Pidgins earlier, whether a given feature can actually be used as a diagnostic feature
for a Creo le type first of all (i) requires that the feature assumption about the feature holds true
for Creo le languages in general, which is not always the case once tested on aclUal data, and
(ii) requires that the pattern for Creole languages differs significantly from the pattern for non-
Creole languages. Table 21 .2 summarizes the findings:
Table 2 1.2 shows that of the 27 features, only seven can be used as diagnostic features to
apply to a given language in order to check whether it may be a Creole or not, without knowing
anything about its sociohistorical backgrow1d. For 12 of the asswnptions there is not enough
data to test whether they hold or not.
2 1.6 Future directions

As the earl ier section has shown, there are still many unanswered questions about the potential
uniqueness of Pidgins and Creoles. These open questions tend to boil down to lack of data:
in order to be able to test whether a particular linguistic feature can be used as a diagnostic
to identify a Pidgin or a Creole language, we need a multitude of data on that feature, not
only across Pidgin or Creole languages, but also across non-Pidgin and non-Creole languages.
This demands large-sca le typological databases, which in turn rest on reliable documenta-
tions and descriptions of as many languages of the world as possible. The increasing acces-
sibility of technology will allow further development of databases and larger corpora. Here
we must make as much use of that as possible, as well as encourage as much documentation
and description as possible of any and all kinds of languages. This inc ludes the all-important
archival data, collecting and making digitally available older texts from different archives.
Only by gathering as much data as possible will we be able to trace the deve lopmental paths
of Pidgin and Creole languages. Likewise, it is only by testing features across languages that
we will be able to answer the fundamental question of whether Pidgin and Creole languages
form types of their own.
398
Table 21.2 Summary of the assumptions about typical Creole features, their test result and whether the
particular feature can be used as a diagnostic to set creoles apart from non-Creole languages
Assumed diagnostic feawre Test result Sets Cs apart from non-Cs?

have a smaller phoneme inventory than their lexifiers True (not relevant)
CV syllables False No
no or very marginal use of tone False Yes
mainly analytic morphological strategies (little or no ? ?
synthesis or affixation)
concatenation in case of multiple affixation ? ?
regularization ? ?
little or no redundancy ? ?
few or no portmanteau morphemes ? ?
reduplication is more common than in other languages False No
no case ? ?
no or marginal grammatical gender ? ?
optional and morphologically analytic grammatical number True Yes
indefinite article is identical to numeral ' one' True Yes
one free form preverbal invariant anterior tense marker False No
one free form preverbal invariant progressive aspect marker False No
one free form preverbal invariant irrealis mood marker False No
TMA markers combine in a fixed order False No
lexical aspect aftects the reading of the base form True ?
no non-finite verb forms ? ?

fixed word order: SVO True Yes
polar questions indicated by rising intonation only False Yes
bimorphemic question words ? ?
free invariant preverbal negator True Yes
negative concordance ? ?
. .
no paSSIVe VOICe False No
no copula False No
form for existential constructions is identical to form for ? ?
possessive constructions but different from locative
constructions
little or no subordination True Yes
serial verbs are more common than in other languages ? ?
Note: '?'indicates that there is not enough data to test the assumption.
Further reading
Dryer, M. S. & Haspelmath, M. (eds.) 2013. 77ze World Atlas of Language Structures Online. Leipzig:
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. (Available online at http://wals. info, Accessed
on 20 19-01 -29).
Michaelis, S. M., Maurer, P., Haspelmath, M. & Huber, M. (eds.) 2013. Atlas ofPidgin and Creole Lan-
guage Srntctures Online. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. (Available
online at http://apics-online.info, Accessed on 2019-0 1-29.)
Typological smdies are dependent on large-scale survey and databases. T hese groundbreaking typo-
logical databases both provide an invaluable wealth o f data.
Velupillai, V. 2015. Pidgins, Creoles and Mixed Languages. Anlntroducrion. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
399
Viveka Velupillai
T his gives background definitions and information to the basic concepts and theories in pidgin and
creole studies, and thoroughly tests a number o f claims about typical features for these languages, as
well as provides sketches of a number of contact languages.
Bakker, P. & Matras, Y. (eds.) 20 13. Comacr Languages. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Very deta iled discussions to topics related to contact linguistics.
Holm, J. A. & Patrick, P. L. (eds.) 2007. Compararive Creole Symax. Parallel Ourlines of 18 Creole
Grammars. London: Battlebridge.
A collection of systematic datasheets for 18 creole languages.
Related topics
Sub-Saharan Africa; Arab World; Indian Ocean Creoles; South and Southeast Asia; Austral ia
and the Southwest Pacific; Contact Varieties of Japan and the North-West Pacific; North Amer-
ica and Hawai' i; Caribbean, South and Central America; The Atlantic; Pidgins and Cre.oles in
Eurasia; On the History of Pidgin and Creole Studies; Diachronic stud ies of PCs: Exploring
PCs over time; Pidgin and Creole Ecology and Evolution; Variation in Pidgin and Creole Lan-
guages; Multilingualism and the structure of code-m ixing
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403
22
LANGUAGECONTACTAND
HUMAN DISPERSAL
Roger Blench
22.1 Introduction
22.1.1 The object of study; should we expect Creoles to be widespread?

The current tally of the world's languages is 7097 according to Ethnologue (Eberhard et al.
20 19). 1 This does not include extinct languages for wh ich there is plausible documenta-
tion, which are listed in the Glottolog.2 Among these are some 77 Creoles, as gauged by
the languages typically discussed in volumes devoted to the subject (Table 22.1 ), a number
which at fi rst sight seems somewhat implausible. The situations which typically lead to
the genesis of Creoles, invasion, dom ination, slavery, long-distance trade and so on, are
we ll documented at many eras and for many situations where Creoles are not typ ically
identified. Similarly, even cases where a substantial substrate has been identified, such as
in Ancient Greek, where less than 50% of its lexicon can be attributed to inheritance from
Indo-European (Beekes 201 4) and the rest presumably originating with the semi-mythical
Pelasgians, do not usually lead to Greek being treated as a Creo le. Old Chinese, simi larly,
has a relatively small number of Sino-Tibetan roots, and a large percentage of borrowings
from regional languages (Schuessler 2007). The status of these languages and their large
written corpus excludes them from discussions of Creoles, but this is a cultural definition,
not based in linguistics.
If this is the case, then it is p lausible that various forms of language mixing are his-
torically very common and the problem is rather with lingu ists, who typ ica lly have an
investment in the purity of the language they describe. Etymological analysis, often d ismissed
as 'ph ilology', has now all but d isappeared from many modern lingu istics departments,
but it is a key to the understanding of language mixing. For example, the archaeological
and historical evidence makes it plain that the island of Java must once have had a large
number of diverse Austronesian languages. Merger and levelling processes over more
than two millennia have gradually created 'Javanese', often pra ised by its scholars for
its beauty, etc. In rea lity, however, it must be a Creo le, bundling together features from a
large number of disappeared languages. But for essentiall y non-linguistic reasons, it wi ll
never be labelled as such.
404
Language amtact and human dispersal
Table 22.1 Creoles recognised in standard literature
Source No. Comme/11

English-based 19
Malay-based 17 Often treated as 'dialects'
Pom•guese-based 9
Dutch-based 8 All extinct
French-based 7
Spanish-based 4
Arabic-based 4
Other languages 9
Total 77
Opposed to this is a more radical view, namely that all languages are Creoles, that is, the
core of language innovation is about the interaction of peoples. This statement is somewhat
hyperbolic, since, Polynesian seafarers at least settled previously uninhabited islands, and the
languages they speak today are the direct descendants of the language of the first migrants.
Nonetheless, the proposition encapsulates an important truth, which is that the great majority
of languages in large continental areas inevitably interact with one another and usua lly with
languages of wider commun ication, initiating linguistic change. It used to be considered that
'm ixed' languages did not occur, that every language was essentially or underlying one lan-
guage and was relexified from another. Thomason and Kaufman ( 1988: I) counterpose Max
Muller's categorical assertion that there are ' no' mixed languages with Hugo Schuchardt's
claim that there are no 'w1mixed' languages.3 Linguists' resistance to the idea of mixed lan-
guages has rather broken down with increasing evidence that such languages do exist (Bak-
ker & Mous 1994). Bechhaus-Gerst ( 1996) documented the evolution of Nile Nubian (where
some written sources do exist) and was able to illustrate a pattern of borrowing and language
mixing over time in a way that is exceptional for Africa.
Many languages not on any usual list show signs of comparable language m ixing as main-
stream Cre.oles and for much the same reasons, cu ltura l dominance. The Nyam language,
a Chadic language in Centra l Nigeria, has undergone extensive phonological, grammatical
and lexical restructuring in contact with the neighbouring but unre lated Adamawa languages
(Andreas 2012). Our reasons for not listing Nyam as a Creole are cultural, not linguistic. In
other words, language mixing and persistent bi lingua lism is a core element in both d iversifica-
tion and change.
The structure of this chapter is as follows. Section 1.2 considers the possible scenarios
for language mixing and some proposed application of terms. Section 2 then proposes some
palaeosociolingu istic scenarios which can lead to mixed outcomes. Section 3 outlines current
thinking on the global dispersals of language families and in particu lar considers the problem
of the disparities between continents in terms of numbers of phyla. This is interpreted as varia-
tion in the range of language levelling and cultural dominance. Section 4 considers some case
studies, exploring situations which pose problems for typical definitional problems. Section 5
asks how far this type of language mixing might be reflected in the archaeo logical and indeed
ethnographic record and discusses the surprising developments in ancient DNA which have
rapid ly overturned some long-held asswnptions. Finally, the conc lusions in Section 6 explore
the way ahead in terms of palaeosociolinguistics.
405
Roger Blench
Table 22.2 Potential definitions of language mixing scenarios
Term Proposed definition
Creole A language which has become a primary speech o f a community

which incorporates e lements of two of more distinct languages
Pidgin A language which incorporates elements o f two of more
distinct languages used for intercommunication between two
communities with ditrerent primary languages
Substrate An underlying language, either as the 'indigenous ' language or the
LJ in a multilingual context language
Mixed Janguagelmacaronic A language which mixes elements from two or more primary
languages, with varying amounts of systematicity, and which
might be either a Creole or Pidgin using the previously stated
definitions. Types o f poetic convention may be macaronic,
mixing multiple languages
Register language A language where speakers switch between two or more registers,
e ither forms of a single language, or (more rarely) between two
unrelated languages
Language levelling Related languages converge syntactically and lexically due to the
prestige of a particular Ject (or possibly government promotion)
22.1.2 Some definitions

Although the definition of Creoles and Pidgins is not exactly an unexplored top ic, once the
focus is global, and the perspective encompasses all the possib le interactions of language,
more nuance may be required. Table 22.2 lists a variety of possible scenarios for language
mix ing, together with definitions used in this chapter.
Pidgins have usually been analysed as a result of the interaction of two languages, but
more complex scenarios are clearly possible. An example of a problematic language with such
a history is Laal. Laal (also Gori) is spoken by several hundred fishennen in Central Chad
(Boyeldieu 1977). Its vocabulary and motphology seem to be partly drawn from Chadic (i.e.
Afroasiatic), partly from Adamawa (i.e. Niger-Congo) and partly from an unknown source,
perhaps its original phy lum, a now-vanished Central African grouping. For this to develop,
Laal speakers must have been in situations of intense bi lingualism with different neighbours
over a long period, without be ing in a relationship where cultural dominance wou ld cause
them to lose their language. Similarly, this does not suggest pidginisation, since Laal speakers
have a very full ethnoscientific vocabulary, as would be expected from a remote inland fishing
community.
22.2 The historical sociology of lan guage mixing

Earlier writing on creolisation tended to focus on Creoles that evolved between European
(i.e. co lonial) languages and indigenous languages, often through conquest or slavery. But as
perceptions have shatpened, it is increasingly clear that these are broad processes affecting
human language at all times and places (Thomason & Kaufman 1988). We know about these
processes because they have occurred in the recent, observable past. But there is every reason
to think that various types of language mixing also happened prior to modern documentation.
406
Table 22.3 Characteristics of interactions which result in language mixing
Situarion Description
Military dominance A more powerful culture controls a minority culture through conquest, but
has no immediate interest in enforcing language shift. It is in the interest
of both sides that a language of communication develops
Enslavement Individuals or populations are moved, usually forcibly, from their home
areas, and compelled to communicate, both with others in the same
situation and with their owners/overseers
Cultural dominance A culture with a perceived ideological/social advantage is so prestigious
for a minority culture, that incomplete language shift, or heavy lexical
and structural borrowing occurs. Media dominance represents an evolved
version of this
Trade interaction A trading culture needs to develop a means of communication with its
commercial partners. Where the technological imbalance is extreme, the
consequence may be extensive relexification of the minority partner
Peaceful intermingling Populations intermingle geographically, most typically foraging bands or
farmers seeking new land. Multilingualism is the norm in cementing
interaction and linguistic features transfer across these boundaries
Linguistic exogamy The practice whereby women marry into other, perhaps unrelated linguistic
groups, in areas of the world where numerous small ethnolinguistic
groups occur, such as the Amazon and New Guinea. The children are
often brought up to be bilingual, causing transfer of linguistic features
Based on our understanding of the rec.ent past, we can develop a broad characterisation of such
interactions (fable 22.3).
The consequence of many of the scenarios is language restructuring, sometimes radical.
Many languages which have never been regarded as Creoles have nonetheless undergone radi-
cal changes under the influenc.e of bilingualism. Dimmendaal (200 I: 97 ff.) shows that the
Ni lotic Luo language of Western Kenya has acquired an incipient system of noun-classes
through contact with neighbouring Bantu-speakers. The degree of contact necessary for this
major restructuring to occur is also reflected in many other aspects of Luo cu lture, which
resembles those of the Bantu farn1ers more than their pastoral relatives in the Western Nilotic
group.
As with language shift, processes of language change observable in the present clearly also
took place in the past, although they muddy the waters of conventional language d iversifica-
tion models. One important process is pidginisation and the related creolisation (Thomason &
Kaufman 1988). The conventional definition of a Pidgin is a simp lified language that grows
up for speakers with different mother-tongues to communicate with each other, and a Creole
is when such a speech-form becomes the mother-tongue of a particular group. The boundary
between these two is not always clear; presumably in transitional households, the parents
speak a Pidgin and the children a Creole. Moreover, the elevation of Pidgin Englishes to codi-
fied speech-forn1s in various parts of the world (e.g. Bislama in Vanuatu, or Pidgin in Camer-
oun) means that what linguists would call Creoles are known as Pidgins.
Creoles and Pidgins have grown up in Africa in a variety of situations, most notably for
trade, as a consequenc.e of slavery, in ann ies, as the Arabic Pidgin kiNubi spoken in Uganda
(Luffin 2005) and for communication between employers and employees (as in the mine-
speech Fanaga lo in South Africa) (Mesthrie 1989). The characteristic of Creo les is that they
407
Roger Blench
mix vocabulary, phonology and syntax from their source languages. Earlier descriptions often
characterise them as highly simplified, but simplification is a rather culturally loaded tem1.
A language may be simplified from the point of view of a speaker of a particular language,
partly because they do not recogn ise complexity in an area that is undeveloped in their own
language. It is true, however, that most Pidgins and Creoles are very weak on ethnoscientific
vocabulary. Deve loping in contact or urban situations, the need for detailed tenn inology to
describe the natural world is lim ited. Still, when a Creole persists over centuries, as on some
Caribbean islands, this terminology evolves anew, in part through borrowing from the domi-
nant written language.
Related to, but distinct from Pidgins and Creoles, are linguaji-ancas or vehicular languages.
The development of larger pol ities and the extension of long-distanc.e trade networks requ ired
the evolution of networks of speakers of languages that were by no means creolised but were
su itably developed for the expression of politica l authority and trade. Lingua francas were
highly significant in pre-colonial Africa, but they have seen cons iderable extension since the
growth of the nation-state, as formal and informal languages of communication are requ ired
over a wide area. Islamisation was clearly an important element in the spread of vehicular lan-
guages. Hausa, Chadian and Sudanese Arabic, Swahili, Soomaali, Kanuri, Fulfulde and Dyu la
spread in the context of military and trade expansions. But not all large vehicular languages
were the products of Islamisation; Linga la, Sango, Kikongo, Amharic, Moore, Yoruba, Efik,
Akan/Baule and Wolof seem to have spread, often in a m ilitary or trade context, but prior to
or unrelated to Islam (B lench 2007). Interestingly, many of these languages have become
less important in the post-colonial phase of cultural expansion, suggesting a failure to make
the transition to a trade and adm inistrative language. Hausa, Soomal i and Bambara, by being
transfonned effectively or actually into national languages, have extended their reach still
further.
Vehicu lar languages come and go, leaving their traces in the culture of the peoples who
once spoke them. For example, Kanuri is a language in manifest retreat. Kanuri-speakers once
controlled an empire that had suzerainty over much of northeast Nigeria, adjacent Niger and
Camerow1. Speakers of Chadic languages immediately due south of Yerwa (i.e. Maiduguri)
spoke Kanuri as a second language, and adopted Kanuri titles, dress and other aspects of
Kanuri culture. Colonialism managed to subvert th is highly effectively, for not only has Kanuri
collapsed as a second language, but Hausa is making inroads even in Maiduguri, their capital
(Broll2002). Desp ite this, Kanuri cu lture remains highly visible among the pe.o ples they once
dominated; the ir languages retain Kanuri loanwords, their chiefs reta in Kanuri titles.
22.3 What do we know about the global patterning of the world's

language phyla?
Most scholars now regard early Homo sapiens as having a form of language comparable to
those spoken today. ln parts of Eurasia and Africa, new phyla have arisen repeatedly, erasing
a ll but traces of prior language famil ies. However, in Papua, Australia and the New World,
language diversity is so high that it is plausible the languages spoken today may sometimes
represent the direct inheritors of the first settlers. Figure 22.1 shows our current understanding
of the dispersals of Homo sapiens across the world. The annow1cement of new early dates for
Morocco (Hublin et al. 20 17) has caused a major revision of our thinking about intra-Africa
processes. Even more startl ing is evidence that hominids (Homo erectus) may have crossed
the open sea to Luzon as early as 700,000 BP (before present), although what type of language
they may have possessed can only be a subject for specu lation.
408
Figure 22.1 Earliest human dispersals across the world (kya = thousands of years ago).
The most striking aspect of world language phyla is their uneven distribution. Africa, despite
being the continent where modern humans originated, has the fewest phyla, and the New
World, most recently settled, has by far the most. Table 22.4 tabulates the phyla by continent,
excluding language isolates (Blench 20 17b). The explanation for this is far from established,
but it is apparent that the regions with most phyla are those where there has been virtually no
evolution of larger political structures, and limited assimilation of hyper-diverse small phyla
(cf. Blench 2012, 20 13b). The New World, Melanesia and Australia have not seen the endless
passage of m igrants passing through, driven by conquest or trade, which has encouraged the
expans ion of major phyla. By contrast, both Africa and Eurasia have been revolutionised by
the spread of iron, large-scale polities and world religions, all of which reduce diversity. In
historic time, the seventh-century Arab expansion out of Saudi Arabia must have been respon-
sible for the disappearance of hw1dreds of languages spoken from Morocco to Iraq.
Back migration is an important aspect of Cre.o le genesis. For example, during the period
after the passage of anti-slavery laws in the nineteenth century, ' Brazilian ' traders of African
origin returned to West Africa. They no longer spoke their original language but one of the
many mid-Atlantic Creoles. These in turn acted to restrucmre the Pidgins spoken all along the
West African coast and contributed significantly to the lexicon of the indigenous languages.
22.4 Some case studies
22.4.1 The development of complex register systems

and shamanic language
Ma' a or Mbugu, a language spoken in Tanzania, was originally thought to be a Creole, mixing
elements of indigenous Bantu languages with Cushitic elements (Mous 2004). Although now
generally referred to a 'm ixed language', it is really a language with two registers, one drawn
from a Bantu language related to Pare, and the other a now-vanished Cushitic language. How
409
Roger Blench
Table 22.4 Language phyla by continent

Africa Tai-Kadai 95 Caddoan 5
Dravidian 85 Chapacuran 5
Afro-Asiatic 375
Turkic 41 Guajiboan 5
Khoe-Kwadi 13 Hmong-Mien 38 Guaykun~an 5
Kx'a 4 Uralic 38 Kiowa-Tanoan 5
Niger-Congo 1538 North Caucasian 34 Misumalpan 5
Nilo-Saharan 205 Andamanese 14 Sahaptian 5
Tuu 6 Mongolic 13 Zaparoan 5
Total 214 1 Japonic 12 Barbacoan 4
Tungusic 11 Huavean 4
Pacific Kartvelian 5 Jivaroan 4
Chukotko-Kamchatkan 5 Maiduan 4
Trans-New Guinea 480 Koreanic 2 Yanomaman 4
Australian 378 Yeniseian 2 Aymaran 3
Torricelli 57 Yukaghiric 2 Bororoan 3
Sepik 55 Kwomtari 3
Ramu-Lower Sepik 32 Total 2724
Mongol-Langam 3
Tor-Kwerba 24 New World Salivan 3
West Papuan 23 Tsimshian 3
South-Central Papuan 22 Otomanguean 177
Wintuan 3
Lakes Plain 20 Tu pian 76
Uto-Aztecan 61 Cahuapanan 2
Border 15 Chinookan 2
East Geelvink Bay 12 Maipurean 60
Chipaya-Uni 2
South Bougainville 9 Quechuan 45
Eyak-Athabaskan 44 Cholonan 2
East Bird's Head-Sentani 8 Chon 2
Skou 8 Algic 42
Cariban 32 Haida 2
East New Britain 7 Harakmbut 2
Arai Left May 6 Mayan 31
Panoan 27 Jabutian 2
Yuat 6 Katukinan 2
Nimboran 5 Sal ish 26
Tucanoan 25 Keresan 2
Pauwasi 5 Mapudungu 2
Central Solomons 4 Chibchan 20
Mixe-Zoquean 17 Maxakalian 2
Eastern Trans-Fly 4 Palaihnihan 2
Kaure 4 Jean 16
Pidgin 16 Purian 2
North Bougainville 4 Tarascan 2
Arafundi 3 Siouan-Catawban 14
Totonacan 12 Tequistlatecan 2
Mairasi 3 Yaguan 2
Yele-West New Britain 3 Eskimo-Aleut 11
Cochimi-Yuman 9 Yukian 2
Amto-Musan 2 Zamucoan 2
Bayono-Awbono 2 lroquoian 9
Chocoan 8 Botocudoan
Fas 2 Chimakuan I
Lower Mamberamo 2 Miwok-Costanoan 8
Paezan 8 Coosan I
May brat 2 Jicaquean I
Piawi 2 Matacoan 7
Pomoan 7 Kamakanan I
Senagi 2 Karaja I
Somahai 2 Puinavean 7
Witotoan Kaweskaran I
7
Total 1213 Chumashan 6 Lencan I
Mascoyan 6 Mosetenan I
Eurasia Muran
Muskogean 6
Austronesian 1257 Nambiquaran 6 Takelman
Si no-Tibetan 457 Tacanan 6 Tiniguan I
lndo-European 444 Wakashan 6 Yokutsan I
Austro-Asiatic 169 Arauan 5 Total 995
410
Table 22.5 ldu speech registers
Register ldu name

everyday speech a~a ' IIya
hunting [no ldu name]
shamanic Tgu a.~a' pTya
mediation ashuba
cursmg ipii
humorous ahinii itshcee
mounung anja
babytalk [no ldu name]
and why speakers switch between what Mous calls ' Inner ' and 'Outer ' Mbugu depends on
complex sociolinguistic factors. Mbugu stands out because the two source languages are so
morphosyntactically distinct. Even more complex situations arise when ind ividual languages
have multiple registers, and the sources of the lex is are not established.
The ldu language is spoken around Roing town in the northeast ofArunachal Pradesh, itself
in the extreme northeast oflndia. Despite its small size, ldu has a remarkably complex system
of language registers apart from everyday speech (ciya 'llyti). Table 22.5 lists the registers cur-
rently identified in ldu.
These have ditrerent degrees of divergence from everyday Jdu. Shamanic speech is quite
incomprehensible, using lex ical substitution, periphrastic expressions and divergent syntax.
Hunters' speech, intended to avoiding alerting the animals to hwnan presence, is a simple
system of lex ical substitution. The origin of many substitute lexemes cannot be identified; it
is specu lated they are either archaic Jdu or are drawn from languages which have now disap-
peared. Mediation and cursing consist mostly of inserting set fommlae, which are themselves
replete with complex symbolism and expressions with backstories, into otherwise functional
negotiations. Not all ldu command all these registers, but most people are aware of individual
e lements. Everyday speech is enriched by ' register-Ripping' , the use of words and expres-
sions drawn from other registers. The motivations for this are not explicit, but in an oral soci-
ety, command of a wide range of linguistic expression remains highly prestigious. Cruc ially
though, the implication is that ldu is not a 'stable' language, that it is internally creolised, or is
code-switching with versions of itself.
22.4.2 The 'Macro-Philippines' hypothesis

The languages of the Philippines are part of the larger phylum, Austronesian. All the languages
(some 127) are held to fonn a single subgroup of Austronesian with the exception of the
Samalic languages (Yakan etc.). However, as Blust (2005) points out, their intemal diversity
is far lower than expected and they can be characterised by a set of pan-Phil ippines lexical
items. The level of diversity can be gauged by measuring it against the language densities of
other islands, such as Malekula in Vanuatu, which have developed greater numbers by area
over a significantly shorter period. Blust concludes that the Phi lippines must have been sub-
ject to a language levelling process subsequent to its primary settlement from Taiwan around
4000 years ago. In other words, a systematic process of social and cu ltura l change brought
together already related languages leading to convergence and reduced diversity. Blust does
4 11
Roger Blench
not specu late on the causes of this process, but it is plausible it was contemporary with the
introduction and spread of iron, some 2000 years ago (B lench 20 17a).
Not all lingu ists accept this view, but there is no doubt of the surprising unity of Ph ilippines
languages. By an irony of chronology, we can see this levelling process occurring anew in
the present. The national language of the Philipp ines in Tagalog, also referred to as Pilipino.
Tagalog is re lated to the other Austronesian languages and most inhabitants of the archipe lago
are fluent in it as a second language. However, the simi larity in grammar and lexicon with
their native speech is causing the analogical restructuring of indigenous languages, so they
converge ever more closely on Tagalog (B lench 2014).
22.4.3 Berber: a trade-based Creole which rediversified?

The Berber languages spoken in the Maghreb and the Sahara constitute one of the longstand-
ing puzzles ofAfroasiatic linguistics. Spoken from southwest Mauritania to the oases of Egypt
(Figure 22.2), they are so simi lar to one another as to be nearly mutually intell igible. Berber
is one of the six branches of Afroasiatic, and structurally and lexically very remote from the
other branches, a lthough the presence of numerous embedded Arabic loans g ives it a superfi -
c ial resemblance to Semitic. If it indeed split from Afroasiatic long enough ago to account for
this separation it should be divided into nwnerous distinct languages. The assumption is that it
went through a maj or levelling process, eliminating diversity in the recent past. One model to
account for this is the establishment of the Roman limes in the second century AD. As nomadic
Berber were kept beyond the limes and developed trade relations, their lects coa lesced, form-
ing a mutually intelligible linguafranca. This would explain the presence ofnwnerous Latin
loanwords apparently reconstructible to proto-Berber. The co llapse of the Roman Empire in
North Africa led to a new dispersal of Berber, driven by the adoption of pastoralism, and
accounting for the presence of outliers such as Zenaga in Mauritania (and the adoption of
Berber as Siwa in the Egyptian desert). Such a model wou ld account for the surprising lack of
diversity in modem Berber lects (Blench, in press).
.-,,...
. I
·-
··- Libya
. T
• •
., .'
•
•
Figure 22.2 The Berber languages.
4 12
22.5 Can we build hypotheses based on the archaeological

and DNA record?
22.5. 1 Language diversification

Palae.osociolinguistics is the construction of models of language diversification and interac-
tion in the past, using processes attested in the present (B lench 20 13a, 20 14). Interpreting
these models through the archaeological (and more recently DNA) record has had a contro-
versial history but in some regions of the world, notably the Pacific, consensus is slowly being
reached. A key element in understand ing language interaction in the past is the concept of
'expecte.d diversity'.
It can seem from standard texts that all language phyla diversify neatly into branch-
ing trees, a view re inforced by the output from ' new' mathematical phylogenies. In some
p laces and times this does indeed occur, especially in the Pac ific, where migrants were set-
tling previously uninhabited islands. But a more nuanced historical linguistics po ints to an
array of more comp lex processes, including simultane.o us multip le splits, language merger,
levelling and others. Simple models of diversification would certainly be convenient for
proponents ofdemicexpans ion. If people would stick to their own language and not engage
in mu ltilingual behaviour, life would be easier for the archaeolinguist. But language shift is
one of the central processes of cultural change and bound up with prestige institutions and
material cu lture. A plus about language shift is that it can be seen and documented in the
present, which makes it easier to seek its traces in the past. All over the world, ethnic minori-
ties are under pressure to yield their own speech to a national language and in many cases
this is occurring. The consequences for material cu lture, though, can be highly variable.
In many developed economies, for minority languages such as Breton, Scots Gaelic or the
Amerindian languages of North America, the shift in material cu lture has already occurred.
Language loss trails behind it, perhaps artificially retarded by literacy programmes or we ll-
meaning linguists.
The parallels within Africa can be seen by exploring the effects of the spread of lin-
gua francas and the cultural sh ifts assoc iated with them (Blench 2006). Two of the most
predatory languages in Africa are Hausa and Chadian Arabic. In Nigeria, many minority
languages are g iving way to Hausa (B lench 2007), while in Chad, speakers of small Chadic
languages are switching to Arabic (Connell 2007). Obviously, the association of these lan-
guages with Islam is related to this expansion, although in Nigeria, the languages of other
powerful and well-established Is lamic peoples such as the Kanuri and Fu l6e are losing out
to Hausa (BroB 2002). The decision to speak Hausa as a primary language has two sources:
multi-ethnic marriage in towns and a conscious decis ion to 'become' Hausa in rural areas.
Children of urban marriages in northern towns usually have a very limited command of
their parents' languages, speak English more or less and an urban, simp lified Hausa. Their
speech consists of constant code-switching and it is safe to say they cannot really speak any
language well. Inasmuch as they reta in their ethnicity, they are likely to identify with the ir
fathers. In rural areas, the situation is quite different. Hausaisation is usually associated with
switches in dress-codes, the development of Islamic ceremonies, adoption of Hausa music,
etc. Much of this may occur wh ile the previous language is still spoken, usually during a
period of intense code-switching before the younger generation gradually drops the speech
of their parents.
To relate this to archaeological interpretation, it is usefu l to consider a process such as the
Swahilisation of the East African coast. The islands off the northern coast of Kenya seem to
4 13
Roger Blench
have been settled by about the eighth century (Horton 1996). The earliest settlers were prin-
c ipally cattle-keepers, probably pastora l peoples from the rangeland areas, either Cushitic- or
Ni lotic-speaking. This was a curious occupation on islands where fish were so abundant
and over time, their settlements were transformed into the fishing-oriented Muslim, Swahili-
speaking settlements found there today. The transition is not abrupt and it is likely that the
resident population gradually became Swahilised through a mixture of settlement, trade,
import of new technologies and the gradual spread of Islam, all processes that can be seen at
work today in Northem Nigeria in the context of the Hausa expansion. Modem Swahili, with
its high level of lexical borrowings from Omani Arabic and other regional languages, and
hybrid syntactic structures, reflects this history. Interestingly, Swahili, although an important
language of communication in Kenya and Tanzania, has not tended to displac.e the mainland
vernaculars in the same way as Hausa, just as Islam has not spread inland in East Africa to
any significant degree.
The relevance for pa laeosociolinguistics is that creolisation must surely refte.c t the min-
gling of cultures and as such, should be visible in the archae.ological record. This type of inter-
action between attested linguistic and archaeological data has been more thoroughly studied
in Oceania, where the c lash of Austronesian and Papuan languages and their highly distinctive
material culture has been docwnented in some detail. For example, Dutton ( 1999) studied the
relationship between language mixing and pottery in the archaeological record on the island of
Mailu. Although the material culture of Mailu points to settlement by Austronesian navigators
some 2000 years ago (Irwin 1985), the language of Mailu today is non-Austronesian, po inting
to rad ical language shift Yet the archaeology provides no evidence for what wou ld shou ld
have been an important disruptive event. Dutton (1999) notes that:
a well-known feature of the Austronesian and non-Austronesian languages of the

Mailu area is that they contain large amounts of vocabulary borrowed from one
another. Thus, for example, the Mailu Island dialect of Magi contains about 20%
Austronesian vocabulary and Magori about 50% Magi vocabulary.
Clearly the languages from two very different language phyla underwent extremely long-term
gradual creol isation, at a rate which would not be reflected in the archaeological record.
Similar sc.enarios have also played out in Southem Africa, where the contact between the
resident Khoisan speakers and the incoming Bantu has left d istinctive traces in both language
and material culture. The clicks in Southern Bantu languages such as Zulu and Xhosa are
often cited as evidence, but a language such as Yei in Botswana is a demonstration of a much
richer interaction (Sommer & Vossen 1992). Yei has borrowed some 28 click sounds from
neighbouring Khoisan languages, particu larly //Ani, and the clicks are generally borrowed
directly with their prosodies intact. A great many tern1s refer to objects in the natural environ-
ment, particularly plants and animals, which the Khoisan speakers wou ld certainly be more
fam iliar with than incoming Bantu-speakers. Unlike Zulu, the Yei have not normal ised the
c licks within the ir phonological system, as if the sound-system of the language was intention-
ally m im icking their experience of interacting cultural systems.
Ana lyses of the archaeology of Namibia by Kinahan ( 1991) illustrate a long and complex
interaction between hw1ting populations and pastoralists, pointing to trans itional social orders
that no longer exist. It is easy to imagine how this type of social nexus could result in intricate
patterns of linguistic mixing. Nurse (2000) looked at two languages in East Africa, Daiso and
Ilwana, from this point of view, trying to detern1ine which types of vocabulary were inherited
from the fund of common Ban tu and how borrowed and other extraneous forn1s had arisen.
4 14
22.5.2 The ancient DNA revolution

Since 2016, the study of ancient populations has been upended by the extraction of rel iable
quantities of DNA from skeletal material fo llowing the identification of the petrous bone in
the ear, which acts to concentrate DNA (Reich 20 18). Publications such as Skoglund et al.
(20 16) have already produced counter-intuitive results, suggesting that populations identified
by archaeology were not as assumed . The earliest populations in Vanuatu, witnessed in the Te
Ouma cemetery, turn out not be the ancestors of those resident in the archipelago today, but
rather represent direct migrations from the Austronesian source area, the Luzon Strait. Both
the archaeology and the physical anthropology suggest that within two generations they were
d isplaced by migrants representing a phenotype far c loser to the niVanuatu . Presumably then
both a genetic and linguistic merger occurred, accounting for the 'Papuan' features identified
in what were considered to be mainstream Austronesian languages.
More exciting still is the recent hypothesis that the Denisovans played a ro le in the ancestry
of modem humans. Denisovans represent a third species of archaic Homo, first reported from
a cave in the Altai mountains in 20 I 0. So far we have little in the way of full skeletal material,
but the evidence from genetics is mounting that there was interbreeding with modem humans
(Sankararaman et al. 20 16) and that the resultant genes were carried to New Guinea and Aus-
tralia, where up to 6% of the genome is derived from Denisovans. In a startling claim, Cox
and Sudoyo• argue there may have been residual populations ofDenisovans in New Guinea as
late as 15,000 years ago. If this is the case, then admixture of languages from two completely
d istinct sources may go some way to explaining the diversity found today in Melanesia. How-
ever, this is currently still highly speculative, but we can predict considerable changes to the
p icture of human dispersal in the coming years.
22.6 Conclusions
22.6.1 Summary
A broader overview of the potential scenarios for language m ixing globally suggests that far
from being rare, various types of creolisation process are not only common but strongly con-
nected with an underlying process of language diversification. Creoles are also unstable; either
they d isappear with the contact situation they refte.ct or they develop and are considered a
mainstream language, as memories of the circumstances whereby they developed attenuate.
One reason mainstream Creoles are so well understood is because their parent languages are
densely docwnented. A Creole such as Nyam (Section 1.2) develops in a context of neighbour-
ing languages which are equally poorly known, so our account of its genesis will inevitably
be correspondingly weak.
22.6.2 Where next?

Palae.osociolinguistics depends on a uniforrnitarian presumption, namely that much the same
processes of language change occurred in the past as in the documented present, and that these
can be used to model the past. Crucially, however, we need a more wide-ranging characterisa-
tion of the sociolinguistic drivers of language mixing, which plausibly account for observed
languages, as well as the framework of their genesis. In the light of this we can relate complex
archaeological sc.enarios and evidence from ancient DNA to models of language d iversifica-
tion and change.
4 15
Roger Blench
Related topics
The Typology of Pidgin and Creole Languages; Pidgin and Creole Ecology and Evolution;
On the History of Pidgin and Creole Studies; Variation in Pidgin and Creole Languages; Sub-
Saharan Africa; The Arab World; Austra lia and the South West Pacific
Notes
I www.ethnologue.com/
2 https://glottolog.orgl
3 Originals: Es gibr keine Mischsprache and Es gibr keine v61/ig rmgemischte Sprache.
4 www.sciencemag.org/news/20 19/03/our-mysterious-cousins-denisovans-may-have-mated-modem-
humans-recently- 15000-years-ago
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4 17
23
DIACHRONIC STUDIES OF
PIDGINS AND CREOLES
Exploring pidgins and creoles over time
Magnus Huber
23.1 Introduction '

The genesis, development and the question of the genetic classification of contact languages
(pidgins, creoles and mixed languages) have from the beginn ing been central issues in creolis-
tics (see Thomason 2008; Velupillai 20 15: chapters 5-6; Selbach, this vo lume). Creolistics, the
study of contact languages, emerged during the heyday of historical lingu istics, in the second
half of the 19th century. For example, Hugo Schuchardt ( 1842-1927), one of the founding
fathers of modern creolistics, was by tra ining a historical linguist. Accordingly, the interest
in pidgins, Creoles and mixed languages had a diachronic slant from the beginning. Scholars
assumed (and they still do) that pidgins, creoles and mixed languages were a litmus test of
one of the main tenets of the historical framework, namely that languages can be grouped into
a tidy Stammbaum, suggesting neat splits of daughters from one mother language. As a con-
sequ ence, the evolution of contact languages was of major interest from the beginning and is
discussed intensively and often emotionally even today. Contact languages are especially suit-
able for the smdy of the origin and development oflanguages as well as of grammaticalization
and language universa ls because they emerged in what are traditionally considered 'exotic'
simations and in many areas of their structure they underwent a compressed development as
compared to languages with more modest histories of multilingual ism and language contact.
This chapter d iscusses the importance of diachronic studies of contact languages with par-
ticu lar reference to English-lexicon varieties. Other valuable overviews of the subject, high-
lighting different aspects, areArends (2002), Holm (2012), Migge and Milhleisen (20 10) and
Thomason (2008).
23.2 Linguistic theory and the diachronic study of contact languages

The significance of the discussion on the nature and position of contact languages as com-
pared to other languages can be illustrated by Derek Bickerton 's theory on Creole genesis.
For almost 40 years, the Language Bioprogram Hypothesis (B ickerton 1981, 1984, 1988, etc.)
fuelled the scholarly debate regarding the origin and historical development of contact lan-
guages. Bickerton maintained that creolization is the result of first language acquisition with
deficient input. Such linguistically extreme situations are said to have characterized plantation
4 18
Diachro11ic studies ofpidgins a11d creoles
societies in, for example, the colonial Caribbean. Because plantation slaves spoke different
African languages and because there was only restricted access to the language of the colo-
nizers and their representatives, pidgins emerged as lingua francas. According to Bickerton,
children receiving only deficient pidgin rather than natura l language input had to fall back on
their genetically encoded, un iversal linguistic knowledge, the Language Bioprogram. The fact
that this Language Bioprogram is innate and the same for all human beings would explain
paralle l linguistic structures in historically unrelated creoles, e.g. Hawai ' i Creole English and
Guyanese Creole. Bickerton's hypothesis has been criticized by a number of creolists (cf. the
overview in Veenstra 2008: 228- 234). Among other reasons, the criticism hinges on the fact
that a number of creoles do not conform to the Language Bioprogram. The standard rebut-
tal of the Bickertonian camp is that such non-bioprogram characteristics can be explained by
better access to the lexifier/superstrate during the emergence of the creole (e.g. on Reunion)
or that they are the result of post-formative developments which have transformed structures
that originally confom1e.d to the Language Bioprogram. Crucially, such arguments cannot be
falsified without recourse to historical data. To answer theory-re lated issues regarding the
emergence and evolution of pidgins and creoles with some degree of certa inty, an extensive
and systematic collection of historical language data is indispensable.
Other influential theories in creolistics can also benefit from solid historica l data. John
McWhorter's works have been discussed intensively in creolistics (see the reactions in e.g.
Ansaldo, Matthews & Lim 2007; DeGraff 2003, 2004; Gil 2001; Grant 2007; Klein 2006).
McWhorter 's Creole Prototype The01y proposes that creole languages are simpler than
natural languages in that they show less complex structures (McWhorter 2001, 2005). This
is because they are comparatively 'young' languages and because they underwent a pidgin
phase in their development. As, according to McWhorter, the growth of linguistic complexity
requires lengthy time periods, Creoles (being young languages) do not exhibit structures as
comp lex as those of older languages. This reasoning implies that creole languages today are
barely more complex than in the ir earlier stages, which only reach back a few centuries. It also
implies that as a rule the development is from less to more complex. 2 Surprisingly, McWhorter
bases his argument almost exclusively on synchronic data. Again, w hat is needed to support or
refute this theory is the extensive collection and analysis of historical data.
Nevertheless, the debate on the origins and the nature of creoles based on synchronic, and
often very restricted, data has shaped far-reaching theoretical claims about language evolu-
tion. This need not be so. There are a number of thorough diachronic studies on the structural
characteristics of individual creole languages (e.g. Bruyn 1995; Drechsel 20 14; Huber 2004;
Jacobs 20 12; Kautzsch 2002; Weber 2008; or the contributions in Baker & Syea 1996 as
well as in Selbach, Cardoso & van den Berg 2009, to name just a few) as well as some cross-
linguistic studies (e.g. Baker 1987, 1993, 1999; Baker & Huber 2000, 2001; Hacker! & Huber
2007; Clark 1979; Huber 1999; Kautzsch & Schneider 2000; Keesing 1988). One reason why
the wide-ranging theoretical debates are based mainly on synchron ic data is that most contact
languages were from the very beginning stigmatized, non-standard languages that contem-
poraries hardly deemed worthy of a serious description. Consequently, early grammars and
longer texts are relative ly scarce and often provide only an incomplete, fragmented and some-
times distorted picture of the language or the lingu istic simation. A more important reason for
the neglect of historica l data is probably that the hunt for early language material demands a
lot more eH"ort than relying on synchronic data. Theoretically oriented creolists have therefore
tended to shy away from arch ival work. Bickerton himself mentions his "reluctance to dive
into the stacks ('Library research? Our students will do that for us!')" (B ickerton 2008: 2 11).
4 19
Mag11us Huber
A historical or diachronic approach is thus essential to address some of the key issues in cre-
olistics. The analysis of data from earlier stages of contact languages has the potential to infonn
central theories of Creole origin; these include the Feature Pool Hypothesis (e.g. Aboh 2009;
Ansa ldo & Nordhoff 2009; Mufwene 200 l, 2006), the Founder Principle (Mufwene 1996,
200 l) or the lnter/anguage Hypothesis (Plag 2008a, 2008b, 2009a, 2009b, 20 l l; Siege! 2008).
23.3 Describing the history of contact languages

Most serious work in this field recognizes the importance of solid sociohistorical data. Reinecke's
( 1937) pioneering doctoral dissertation provides descriptions of the external histories (i.e. set-
tler groups, settlement patterns, economy of the territory, sociohistorical aspects, etc.) of a large
number of contact languages. Holm (1989) gives an overview of more than 120 contact lan-
guages, including their sociohistories. Many of the articles in the monwnental Atlas ofLanguages
of!ntercultural Communication in the Pacific, Asia, and the Americas (Wunn, Milhlhausler &
Tryon 1996) also lay particular emphasis on the varieties' histories. The 74 contributions in the
three volumes of the Survey ofPidgin and Creole Languages (M ichaelis et al. 20 13) each have a
section on the language's sociohistory. The external histories of five more contact languages can
be found in the Mouton World Atlas of Variation in English (Kortmann & Lunkenheimer 20 12).
While the sociohistory of contact languages is thus relatively well described, there are fewer
stud ies on the structura l diachrony of pidgins, creoles and mixed languages. Even though the
textual situation is not always ideal, historical data of pidgins and creoles does exist in many
cases and it has been collected and used by various scholars. In the mid -1980s, some creol ists
began systematic searches through travelogues, memoirs of colonial adm inistrators, traders
and missionaries, court records, etc. for early attestations of linguistic features and evidence
of the sociohistorical context in which contact languages emerged. One difficu lty in accessing
early data is that the previously mentioned stigmatization of pidgins and creoles led to a very
heterogeneous data situation. For example, early Sranan (in Suriname) is well documented
because of missionary linguistic activity (see the text collection in Arends & Per! 1995); for
Eskimo Pidgin, on the other hand, there are comparatively few sources and only short texts
(van der Voort 20 13). Both with regard to the quantity and the quality of historical texts, there
is thus no comparable basis for cross-linguistic or feature catalogue-based studies of early con-
tact varieties. In spite of th is difficulty, one of the pioneers of the diachronic study of pidgins
and creoles, Philip Baker, has shown that the systematic gathering and analysis of scattered
early attestations can provide important clues as to the genesis, development and fami ly rela-
tionships of contact languages. On the basis of the earliest attestations of structural features,
Baker (1987, 1993) demonstrated that Chinese Pidgin English was not the ancestor of other
English-lexicon contact languages in the Pacific, rather that early Eastern Austral ian pidgins
had a significant influence on Me lanesian Pidgin English. Focussing on the tense-mood-aspect
system, Baker ( 1995) showed that the study of lingu istic material in early sources can yield a
very detailed picture of the temporal sequ ence in grammaticalization processes. Based on the
earliest allestations of 235 features, Baker and Huber (200 I) calcu lated affinities between 13
early pidgin and creole Engl ishes and identified features that characterized early Atlantic and
Pacific varieties, respectively, and features that were found in contact languages world-wide.
23.4 Collections of early texts

At the time of writing, most collections of early Pidgin and Creole data are scattered 'offline',
in the care of individual researchers, who have collected them painstakingly and over many
420
years. Because these collections have taken shape id iosyncratically, they have not been con-
structed with a mind to any kind of standardized annotation system, which complicates data
extraction across different languages. However, a number of electronic databases are either
in planning or under construction, for instance the Early Suriname Creole Archive (SUCA,
www.suca.hosting.nl) or the Database of Early Pidgin and Creole Texts (DEPiCT, www.uni-
giessen.de/cms/depict). Others are already online, like the Negerhollands Database (corpus l.
mpi.nVds/asv > NEHOL).
23.4.1 Early written data

Because early longer texts are generally scarce, there are no historical or diachronic corpora of
contact languages in the strict corpus linguistic sense of carefully sampled, highly structured
and representative text compilations. Some valuable longer texts and text collections should be
mentioned, though: Arends and Per! (1995), referred to earlier, is a valuable annotated compi la-
tion of Sranan and Saramaccan texts from Suriname, starting as early as 1718. For Jamaican
Creole, D'Costa and Lalla ( 1989) and La lla and D'Costa ( 1990) brought together and discussed
a wea lth of early texts from ea. 1700 onwards, on the basis of which they reconstructed suc-
cessive early stages of Jamaican. Texts in the Dutch-based Negerhollands from as early as
the 1730s were glossed and annotated in van Rossem and van der Voort ( 1996). The articles
in Baker and Bruyn (1999) investigate ll early 19th-century texts of St Kilts Creole, writ-
ten by Samuel Augustus Mathews, and the primary texts are also reprinted in the volume.
Winer ( 1993) contains a description and texts of the English Creole of Trinidad and Tobago
and contains sources from the early 19th century onwards. Early Tok Pisin texts from the 1840s
onwards are brought together and ana lyzed in MUhlhausler, Dutton and Romaine (2003).
While their primary interest is not strictly linguistic, early 20th-century anthropologists'
collections of folktales also offer precious and sometimes very extensive textual documenta-
tion of contact languages. For example, Elsie Clews Parsons collected an abundance of folk-
tales in Caribbean Creoles (19 18, 1933, 1936, 1943) and Gullah (1923), while Melville and
Frances Herskovits recorded tales in early West African Pidgin English (193 1, 1937) and in
Surinam Creoles (1936). The Journal ofAmerican Folklore, published from 1888, and its book
series offer a wealth of early folktales narrated in contact languages. There are also - possibly
linguistically less rel iable - compilations by non-experts aimed at a wider readership, like
Cronise and Ward's ( 1903) collection of folktales rendered in acrolectal Sierra Leone Krio.
Most early texts were recorded by outsiders but in a few cases material written by speak-
ers of the varieties survives: Antera Duke, an Efik slave trader at Old Calabar, Nigeria, kept
a diary of which extracts covering the years 1785-1788 have survived. They are published in
Behrendt, Lath am and Northrup (20 l 0). The text of the diary amounts to some l 0,800 words
and represents the earliest substantial record of non-standard/pidginized English written by a
West African. Some 19th-century travel accounts conta in individual letters written by other
Nigerian traders (or their scribes), but these awa it systematic compilation. Slave letters in
1730s Negerhollands can be found in van Rossem and van der Voort ( 1996) and three early
Saramaccan letters written between 1790 and 1818 are published in Arends and Per! ( 1995).
Fyfe (1991) contains letters from ex-slaves who fought on the British side in the American
Revolution (the Black Loyalists) and who eventually settled in Sierra Leone in the 1790s.
Although rather acrolectal, there are some Creole features in the 12,000 words of this col-
lection. There are similar letters written by 19th-century black settlers in Liberia in Wiley
( 1980) and Miller ( 1978). This list is far from complete and shows that historical or diachronic
research is possible for a number of varieties without laborious archival work.
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Mag11us Huber
23.4.2 Early grammars and scholarly articles

The earliest contemporary descriptions of contact languages date back to the 18th century (e.g.
Herlein 1718 for Sranan, or Magnes 1770; Oldendorp l776a, l776b for Negerhollands) and
they become more frequent in the second half of the 19th and early half of the 20th cenmries.
This period also sees the publication of the first scholarly articles on the subject, Addison van
Name's ( 1869- 1870) "Contributions to Creole Grammar" being an early comparative smdy.
Adolpho Coelho ( 1881) considered several smdies of Portuguese-lexified Creoles around the
world and Hugo Schuchardt also began research on various pidgins and Creoles in the 1880s
(cf. the publication list in the Hugo Schuchardt Archive, https://schuchardt.uni-graz.at).
23.4.3 Early spoken data

Early audio material of contact languages is sparser than written evidence, but a complete
list would still go beyond the scope of this chapter, so only a few representative examples
can be mentioned here. To my knowledge, the earliest recording is the one-and-a-ha lf min-
ute description in Tok Pisin of the hunt for birds of paradise, from 1904 (Lechleitner 2000).
To mention some important collections in the US, Lorenzo Dow Turner made recordings of
50 Gullah speakers in 1932 and 1933. These are stored in the Dow Turner Collection of the
Archives of Traditiona l Music at Indiana University Bloomington (https:l!l ibraries.indiana.
eduldow-mmer). Interviews with American ex-slaves are kept at the Archive of Folk Song of
the Library of Congress. They were conducted from 1935 to 1974 but since the speakers were
bom between 1844 and 1861, the interviews represent the earliest evidence of Earlier African
American English (Bailey, Maynor & Cukor-Avila 1991). Starting in the 1930s, the folklorist
Harry Midd leton Hyatt (1970-1978) recorded material relating to Hoodoo witchcraft, thus
also capturing an earl ier fonn ofAfrican American English. For a short overview of other early
recordings of African Americans, see Thomas (2017: 350-351 ).
An as yet tmderused type of audio data is early popular music sung in pidgins or Creoles.
For Ghana, the present author has a collection of more than 50 so-called Highlife songs from
the 1950s and 1960s, some of which are in Pidgin English (see Huber & Schmidt20l l for
a first analysis) and similar songs were produced by Nigerians and Sierra Leoneans. On the
other side of the Atlantic, Win er ( 1993: 268- 288) has looked at Creole use in Calypso record-
ings of Trin idad and Tobago. The BLUR Corpus (Blues Lyrics collected at the University of
Regensburg) contains transcripts of the lyrics from 7,341 songs (almost 1.5 million words)
recorded in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s (www.uni-regensburg.de/language-literamre-culture/
english-linguisticslworld-englisheslearlier-projectslblurlindex.html). BLUR has been used to
investigate the strucmre of Earlier African American English (e.g. Miethaner 2005). While
song lyrics are scripted language, they can still give us important insight into the phonology,
morphosyntax and the lexicon of earlier stages of contact languages in the absence of other
recordings.
The specific problems encountered in the analysis of early audio records pertain, among
other factors, to the identification of speakers and to the quality of the recordings. Biographi-
cal infom1ation may be incomplete or lacking, making it difficu lt or impossible to say whether
we are acmally dealing with a speaker of a particu lar variety. Also, depending on the quality
of the original mechanica l or analogue recording, on the recording practices, on the age of
the record and on storage conditions before digitization, the sound signal may be so impaired
that an acoustic or auditory analysis is severely hampered: the sound may have been clipped
or otherwise distorted in the original recording, the analogue media (wax or tin cyl inders,
422
reel-to-reel tape, etc.) may have deteriorated considerably over time, and there may be ambient
noise and voiceovers that make transcription and phonetic or phonological analysis impossible
(cf. Huber 2017: 450-45 1).
23.4.4 Other early d ata

For obvious reasons, pictorial evidence has been almost completely untouched in the analy-
sis of earlier stages of p idgins and creoles. However, it can provide important clues, espe-
cially for the reconstruction of the nature of the contact situation, regarding e.g. ethnic groups
involved, labour assignment on plantations or commun icative settings. To mention just one
resource, the more than 55,000 photographs of the Deutsche Ko/onia/gesellschaft (German
Colonial Society) have been digitized by the library of Goethe-University Frankfurt and are
available onl ine (www.ub.bildarchiv-dkg.uni-frankfurt.de).
Antique decorative plates and cups are sometimes omamented with creole texts and may
be used to supplement other data.
23.5 Collecting and analyzing early texts3

In this section, I will use Huber and Velupilla i's (e.g. 2016, 2018) research on Pidgin English
in Gennan colonial sources by way of example to illustrate the importance of data collection
and the analysis of early texts. We will consider some of the issues associated with the methods
and practices of data collection and interpretation using early sources. We wi ll see what we
might be able to learn from contemporary sources about the usage, structure and function of
contact languages in their earlier stages.
Starting in the 1990s, in order to document early Pidgin English in West Africa, I began
collecting attestations of uses of Pidgin English between African and European traders from
the mid- 17th century on. This involved reviewing holdings of English language travel writ-
ing, traders' notic.es, missionary and colonia l authority reports held in various libraries and
archives. This was later expanded to include collections with examples of other English-based
Pidgins and Creoles, particularly in the Atlantic, but also in the Pacific.
Some of the colonial-era sources have since become avai lable on line (e.g. through Project
Gutenberg, the Intemet Archive or the Gennan Colonial Library), however by far not all. This
means that actual archival research is necessary in order to pursue this kind of research. The
following sections discuss methods, experiences and results with regard to the analysis of the
sources.
23.5. 1 Sources and methods of analysis

As mentioned earlier, in the last 30 years there has been considerable progress and we have
learnt a lot about the conditions under which contact languages emerge, their linguistic struc-
ture and the interrelationship of various pidgins and creoles. This has all been thanks to the
d iscovery and analysis of early sources of data on these languages. Nonetheless, in many cases
the fu ll picture of what earlier stages in most contact languages looked like remains opaque;
this is because in most cases, only a small proportion of the materials relating to the history of
these languages has been identified and brought to light.
German colonial sources have the potential to play a particularly valuable role in fur-
thering our understanding of the historical development of Pidgin Englishes in the Pacific
and West Africa. This is because German traders, missionaries and co lonial authorities were
423
Mag11us Huber
most influential during the critical phase (19th and early 20th centuries) in these languages'
development.
23.5.2 Practical matters: identifying and sifting through

potential sources
No matter whether online or offi ine archives are consulted, in many cases the sheer amount
of text that has to be examined necessitates a methodical and structured approach. Library
c lassifications will give a fi rst overview of the materials held and help narrow down to the
sections that seem most promising for the research question. Once thematically interesting
sections have been identified, the researcher needs to decide on the order in which the ind i-
vidual sources in those sections should be skimmed for contact language-related passages. If,
for example, the topic of enqu iry is the very early stages of the contact language, it may make
sense to start with the oldest sources and work forward by date of publication or composi-
tion. If, on the other hand, the study is diachronically oriented and there are a lot of sources,
choosing a set number of sources each from several time periods may be called for. Titles are a
good, though not fool-proof, guide line in the selection of material to be read through. Reports
by authors who themse lves spent time in the region promise valuable data. Travel accounts,
reports of exped itions, diaries or descriptions of the author 's residence in the area can prove
especially helpful.
To best organize data mining and to maintain an overview of progress, it is helpful to enter
the sources that are going to be ana lyzed in a database. In the simplest case, this can be a list
in a word processor with entries copied from the library catalogue. There are, of course, more
sophisticated and powerfu l software too ls like spreadsheets or reference management systems.
Works that have already been sifted through shou ld be ticked off in this list and you can add
notes. Keeping such a database will prove useful when the number of sources consu lted grows
over time as it allows the researcher to verify quickly whether a particu lar work has already
been checked.
23.5.3 Excerpting and saving data

Excerpts from the originals should, wherever possible, be typed directly into a computer. In
the interest of time, longer passages should be scanned, photographed or photocopied (assum-
ing the library allows this). It is essential to include the work's title page and to annotate any
copies with the source. Similarly, digital photos or scans should be assigned an understandable
name rather than the device-generated code (l ike docwnents, see later). Handwritten excerpts,
scans or photocopies should be digitized as soon as possible. Ideally, this data should feed
directly into a database but that may necessitate complex mark-up (cf. the 1,600-page Text
Encoding Initiative manual, www.tei-c.org/releaseldoc/tei-p5-doc/en/Guidelines.pdf). This
can be very time-consum ing, and generally if researchers want to maxim ize their time in a
library, the mark-up can be done further down the track.
Every excerpted work should be saved as a separate document (or as a separate entry in
the database). Documents should ideally be identified with a standardized naming system in
order to faci litate later retrieval and use. Personally, I use the convention of author's_lastname
publication_year, e.g. Detzner 1920.docx. Document names can be extended by e.g. a, b, c,
etc. to differentiate publications by the same author in the same year. Whatever system is used,
the principa l desiderata are brevity and transparency.
424
The process of reading through and excerpting from sources should be systematic and
docwnented in deta il. Naturally, there are a nwnber of possibilities, but the guid ing principle
should be informativeness. In order that documents and especially printouts can be easi ly
identified, a standardized block of important information should be provided at the beginning
of every document. In my system this includes:
• Complete bibliographic referenc.e;

• Name of the library and the work's catalogue identifier;
• Name of the person who made the excerpt and date;
• Year or period that the work relates to.
The last point is important as it facilitates comparison with other sources and allows research-
ers to correctly reconstruct the development of the language. Often editors or authors tell
readers in a Foreword or in the first chapter when they were in the colonies, and there is often
mention of specific years in the text itself. If this is not the case, it is genera lly possible to use
indirect evidence to place the work in a rough time period. The names of people, ships and
d iscussion of natural catastrophes, wars, events in other parts of the world and so forth can all
help locate a text on the timel ine.
Excerpts should reproduce the original as closely as possible, e.g. by indicating changes
of typeface in your excerpt or by replicating orthographic conventions of the time. Mistakes
should not be corrected but can be marked by [sic!] to signal that they were in the original
and not introduced while making the excerpt. Where material has been omitted, th is should be
noted with the usual [.. .] convention. It is essential to remember to mark in page breaks and
page numbers from the original, so that subsequent citations of the data can be correctly linked
to the original source.
When working through whole library sections, the goa l is to review as much as possible in
as little time as possible. In general, the collection of primary data is quite time-conswn ing.
Based on my experience, it is not possible to review more than two-three works per person per
day. Experience speeds this up. Someone who has already excerpted several sources will be
quicker than a complete novice. Knowledge of the subject area also he lps. For examp le, some-
one unused to working with contact languages or who has not worked on a specific territory
before will be slower. After conscientiously going through a number of sources, a researcher
can develop enough background knowledge or a 'nose' for where there are most likely to be
useful passages. These can then be read more closely, and the rema inder can be skimmed over.
Experience also affords the researcher more of a sense of the parallels within text types. At
this point, new sources can be speed-read for key words that signal interesting passages or
read selectively by choosing promising chapters (consult the table of contents or summaries
at chapter beginnings).
If sources are available on line or in e lectronic fom1at, this allows for automated searches for
keywords, which increases the speed and reliabi lity of the search. While automated searches
may help to locate useful material, they cannot replace reading since only read ing opens up
the content in its entirety. Researchers also need to be mindful that an automated search only
finds the search string. If there are no hits, this does not necessarily mean there is nothing in
that particu lar work on that topic. For example, a search for Pidgin would not find the com-
mon variants also used in Gennan colonial sources, e.g. Pidgen, Pidgeon, Pidjin, Pidschen
and Pitschin. Similarly, Pidgin-Englisch in West Africa is also referred to as Neger-Englisch,
Kiistenenglisch and so forth in Gem1an sources.
425
Mag11us Huber
23.5.4 Thematic focus in data collection

Exactly which passages should be excerpted depends of course on the research question. As
a rule of thumb, anything is of interest that can shed light on the historical circumstances of
contact language genesis, on the social context of language use and on the structure of the
language. In what follows, l will discuss selected topics that deserve attention.
23.5.4.1 Population structure and social hierarchies

Which ethic groups are mentioned? Ind igenous peoples but also Europeans, etc.? How big are
those groups and in what social order do they stand? For example, is there segregation between
plantation workers from different ethnic groups and what are the stereotypes attributed to each
group? Do the groups per form different tasks? What is the relationship between the groups?
23.5.4.2 Language use

Who speaks which language to who and w hen? Which languages are mentioned or described
in the source? The fac.tthat particu lar languages are not mentioned can also be important. lf,
for instance, Pidgin is not mentioned in an account of an expedition into the interior, but it is
clear that interpreters were taken along, then this can be an indication that Pidgin was not used
in the hinterland.
23.5.4.3 Language ecology

Is there complex multilingualism in the territory and what kind of mu ltilingualism was fow1d?
Or were only a few languages in use? Were there lingua francas? Were interpreters employed,
and if so, which languages did they speak and in which languages d id the colonizers commu-
nicate with them?
23.5.4.4 Language attitudes

What kind of attitudes does the author have towards the ind ividuals and groups described
in the source? What kinds of attitudes do the speaker groups have towards each other and
towards the languages used by them?
23.5.4.5 Recruiting workers

In many territories there was a scarcity of local labour, which meant that workers had to be
procured abroad. This led to increased multi lingual ism and favoure.d the emergence and use
of contact languages. Questions relating to this are: where did the workforce come from, how
were they recru ited, when d id they come and in what numbers, which languages did they
speak and how long did they stay?
23.5.4.6 Language samples

Last but not least, actual specimens of contact languages are of major interest since they
can give us an insight into an earlier state of the variety. Finding such quotes is sometimes
426
facilitated by the type face. In some works (but unfortunately not in all) language quotes are
set off from the running text by boldface or italics, which makes them stand out when skim-
ming a text.
For every language specimen as much contextual infonnation as possible should be pro-
vided, so that it can be properly interpreted. For example, when and where was the utterance
made, who the addressee was, who the speaker was (ethnic group, mother tongue(s), biogra-
phy- e.g. was the speaker in contact with the colonizers or maybe even in their employ)? It is
essential to separate this metatextua l infonnation from the excerpt itself. Usually this is done
by the use of square or angle brackets, to avoid confusion of text and metatext.
23.5.5 The reliability of sources

For the interpretation of early data an appraisal of the reliabi lity of the sources is crucial. Every
text is subjectively tinted and the portrayals of events in it are shaped by a multitude of factors,
some of which can be summarized as follows:
23.5.5.1 The author's prejudices and agendas

Just like other authors, the creators of early sources were influenc.ed by certain factors and
guided by intentions that went beyond the neutral representation of facts. For example, observ-
ers had different opinions about Pidgin English in Gennan colonies like Cameroon or New
Guinea. While some considered it a helpful lingua franca, others campaigned for its aboli-
tion. These attitudes naturally had an influence on the representation of Pidgin English in the
sources. In his description of the Gennan colonies in the South Pacific, von Hesse-Wartegg
( 1902: 52f; my translation) refers to " the grotesque Pidgin English language, . . . the hotch-
potch of the German protectorate in the South Seas. . ., this most nonsensical of a ll languages"
and argues that there is "still time to eradicate Pidgin Engl ish". Given this negative stance,
we can hardly expect the author to represent the grammatical complexities appropriately and
objectively. And indeed, von Hesse-Wartegg's Pidgin examples mostly consist of stereotypical
and inauthentic specimens, to be found in many South Seas travel accounts, like bigfel/ow box
spose white man fight him, he cry too much for 'piano' (1902: 53).
A similar situation pertains to prejudices towards indigenous Pidgin speakers. Some
authors saw the language as proof of the inferior inte lligence of its users. Jacques ( 1922: 96;
my translation), for instance, considers Pidgin "a successfu l caricature of English. Which other
language would have subjected itself to this cannibal istic expression of primitiveness!" Such
argwnentation strategies formed part of a colonial discourse that was often characterized by
a detenninistic viewpoint and interpreted the seeming simplicity of indigenous languages as
symptomatic of the immaturity of their speakers and of cultural crudeness. Geiser ( 1929: 71 ,
73; my translation) maintains that
the menta lly low and underdeveloped cu ltura l leve l of the aborigines is matched by
the Jack of their language in reason-related concepts and expressions... . Given the
limited horizons and the restricted menta l activity of the Papuas, it is unsurprising
that abstract notions are rare in their word-stock.
Obviously, examples of the language and characterizations of the grammar in works like this
should be treated with extreme caution.
427
Mag11us Huber
23.5.5.2 Linguistic and observational skills of the observers

The rel iab ility of the sources also varies according to the observational skills of the authors.
Many representations of language in the colonial literature were made by lingu istic laypersons,
and we can find examples ranging from those that are linguistically umeliable through to ones
that are linguistically informed. Max Buchner 's descriptions ofCameroon Pidgin English fall
into the latter category; he wrote several articles on the grammar of the language. Neverthe-
less, even he made m istakes: his example sentence Plenty people don~ come is syntactically
well-fom1e.d Cameroon Pidgin English but his translation 'Lots of people come/came' (Buch-
ner 1886: 216) is not entirely correcl. Buchner's comment on don t in the previous sentence
("Negation often serves as emphatic affirmation"; Buchner 1886: 216) shows that, like many
early observers of West African Pidgin English, he m istook the Pidgin preverbal, completive
particle done for don'l. A better translation would have been 'Lots of people have/had arrived'.
23.5.5.3 Time gap between observations and publication

Generally speaking, the longer the period between the observations and their docwnentation/
publication, the more careful we have to be in appraising the representations. Memories can
deteriorate. Otto Schellong recogn ized this in his 1934 autobiography, in which he described
his life in New Guinea between 1886 and 1888:
When I now, nearly ha lf a century later and almost the last survivor from those times,
try to recall events and persons invo lved in them, I am acute ly aware of the imperfec-
tion of such an undertaking . ... Certainly, my personal memories have blurred in the
intervening years.
(Schellong 1934: 4; my translation)
However, Schellong was working from the basis of the d iary he kept during those years, and
this makes his report a reliable source desp ite the lengthy period between his sojown in New
Guinea and the publication of his book: "What nonetheless encouraged me to publish this
book is the fact that once a fresh impression has been committed to paper, it will keep its
value" (Schellong 1934: 4; my translation).
23.5.5.4 Genre and subsequent editing

Generally, eyewitness reports are preferable over second-hand reports. Titles like A Narrative
of the Expedition to the River Nige1; in 1841 (Alien & Thompson 1848) shou ld be favoured
over titles that are essentially syntheses of other works, such as Cameroon: Land, People and
Commerce as Reflected in the Most Recent Sources (Hager 1885). Fictional texts like colonial
novels also tend to be less trustworthy than, for example, travel accounts, especially if the
authors never travelled to the regions they describe.
23.5.5.5 Authenticity of the descriptions

What is meant by authenticity here is the idea that the description should be that of the author
her/himself and/or originate from the time o r place that is the subject of the linguistic description.
Plagiarism is not a new problem and in colonial and precolonial sources we find examples of
people copying from one another. \Vhy authenticity is an important factor in the critical appm isal
428
of sources can be illustrated with the following example: in the mid-1990s, a diplomat gave me
a typewritten manuscript with the story of the expulsion from Paradise (Genesis 1- 3) in Pidgin
Engl ish. The manuscript had been given to him in Ghana in 1966, and one might reasonably have
assumed that it represented Ghanaian Pidgin English. However, a search of the literature brought
three other copies to light, ascribed to Sierra Leone, Liberia and Nigeria. By comparing the texts
and analyzing their linguistic structure, I was able to determine that the texts probably originated
in a single 'Ur-text' that must have been publ ished in the early 20th century in Lagos. Hence, it
most likely represents early Nigerian, not Ghanaian, Pidgin Engl ish (Huber 1997).
23.5.5.6 Intinerary and length of stay in the area

Closely related to the question of authenticity is the matter of how long the author stayed
in a g iven place. Atkins's description of the Grain Coast (now Liberia) includes the Pidgin
sentence You didee, you kicatavoo 'If you eat, you die presently' (1735: 58). One m ight take
this for an example of early Liberian Pidgin English. However, if one carefully reads Atkins's
travel account, it becomes c lear that he spent only a week on the Grain Coast, essentially only
passing through during his travels in West Africa. His longest stay (five months) was on the
Gold Coast (today's Ghana). It is likely, therefore, that the sentence instead represents Gold
Coast Pidgin. And as it transpires, didee 'eat' is derived from Fante (a Kwa language in the
Niger-Congo family), a language spoken in and arow1d Cape Coast in Ghana.
2 3.6 Final remarks

Th is chapter has presented a case for the importance of proper socioh istorical analysis of
p idgin and creole documentation, including texts, whether in the language or about the lan-
guage's culture and history; songs; and images. Without such Wlderstanding, our theories of
p idgin and creole formation remain at the level of speculation, often captured in the literature
as educated guesses, but not really rooted in real, historical data. Such data, as demonstrated
here, is becoming increasingly available and can be abw1dant. There is therefore no excuse
to ignore it. I have also aimed to offer a methodology for how such data can be approached.
The future of the field wi ll hopefully see a much more robust, data-driven historical approach.
Notes
The author would like to thank Viveka Velupillai and Miriam Meyerhotl' for their input on this chapter.
2 This evolution-based understanding oflanguage change goes back to 19th-cenmry lndo-European lin-
guistics and cannot be maintained in its extreme form. Compare, for example, English, whose inflex-
ional system has developed from more to less complex.
3 This section is based on Huber and Velupillai (2016). I am grateful to Viveka Velupillai for permission
to use the article as a basis for this section.
Further reading
Miihlhausler, P. 20 12. Sprachliche Kontakte in den Missionen auf Deutsch-Neuguinea und die Entste-
hung eines Pidgin-Deutsch. In Stefan Engelberg & Doris Stolberg (eds.), Sprachwissenschaji und
kolonialzeirlicher Sprachkomakt: Sprachliche Begegmmgen und Auseinanderseczrmgen. Berlin: Aka-
demie Verlag. 71-100.
This work provides a historical reconstruction for the emergence of Pidgin German in New Guinea. It
shows how instimtionallanguage policies facilitated the emergence of new pidgin varieties. Examples
of linguistic feamres in texts are complemented by historical documents related to language policy.
429
Mag11us Huber
Huber, M. 1999. Ghanaian pidgin English in its West African comext. A sociohistorical and structural
analysis. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
This work considers the origins of several related West African pidgins drawing on data from over
200 historical sources. lt shows how important repatriated New World slaves were to the development
o f these varieties. The structural description of Ghanaian Pidgin English pays special attention to tone
and intonation and substrate influence from Akan.
Baker, P. 1987. Historical developments in Chinese pidgin English and the nature of the relationships
between the various pidgin Englishes of the pacific region. Journal ofPidgin and Creole Languages
2: 163-207.
T he essential reading for anyone interested in the use of early textual materials for elucidating the
development of contact languages.
Related topics
The Atlantic; Caribbean, South and Central America; North America and Hawai' i; The Arab
World; The Typology of Pidgin and Creole Languages
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433
24
PIDGINS AND CREOLES AND
THE LANGUAGE FACULTY
Marlyse Baptista, Danielle Burgess and Joy P. G. Peltier1
24.1 Introduction
The last couple of decades have witnessed both debates and advances on the topic of Creoles
and the language facu lty, which we will address here from several perspectives. First, we lay
out a working definition of the language facu lty, elaborating on the underly ing theoretical
and empirical assumptions that originally gave rise to the concept of the language faculty
(see Chomsky 1957, 1965). Second, we offer a concise and targeted review of studies that
refte.c t the various positions that Creol ists (and non-Creo lists) have taken in connection with
Creoles and the language facu lty. We also state our own position, which is based on our
joint experience in language documentation and description and infom1ed by the generative
theoretical stance we adopt. Third, we provide empirical evidence at the grammatical level
supporting the view that, as is true of any other natural language, the variation observed in
Creole languages reflects competing 1-grammars, as part of )-Language (Chomsky 1986).
)-Language refers to a system that is represented in the mind and in this sense, intemalized.
In other words, I stands for internalized linguistic knowledge. Finally, we introduce the latest
framework (the exoskeleta l model) that has been used to exam ine how Creoles instantiate
the language facu lty. In this respect, this paper supports an non-exceptionalist view of Creole
genesis and development.
This paper is organized as follows: in the second section, we propose a working definition
of the language faculty/Universal Grammar (UG) and discuss how Creoles instantiate both
invariant and p lastic properties of UG. In the third section, we survey influential papers that
reflect distinct and at times opposing views on where Creoles stand with respect to each other
and to non-Creole languages. We summarize the takeaway points from studies by Bickerton
(1980, 1981, 1984), Mufwene (1986, 1990, 2007), DeGratf (1999), Lightfoot (1999, 2006),
Aboh (20 15), Aboh and DeGratf (20 14, 20 17), Baptista (20 17), Borer (2003) and Sugimoto
(2019a, 2019b), among others.2 Synthesizing these stu dies' insights paves the way to our con-
clusion that processes invo lved in Creole development are fow1d in any situation of language
contact. We discuss empirical evidenc.e of language variation across Creoles and within the
same Creole, argu ing that Creole languages are not exceptional; we therefore highl ight the ir
diversity, of the kind found in their non-Creole counterparts. ln the final section, we summa-
rize our conclusions.
434
Pidgins, Creoles m~d the language faculty
24.2 The language faculty
24.2.1 On the nature of the language faculty

We start with the basic idea that for any given grammar a chi ld acquires, that chi ld is endowed
with a biological blueprint allowing such acquisition. This inborn capacity, which as pointed
out in Boeckx (2006: 2), has been variously labeled the language faculty, the language organ,
the language instinct (Pinker 1994) and UG, 'restricts the number of functions that map
between situations and utterances, thus making language learnable' (Carnie 2006: 19).
Since the 1950s, linguists and other cognitive scientists have striven to demonstrate that this
component ofhwnan biological endowment must be posru lated in order to account for children's
capacity to understand and produce oral and signed language in record time. Although the exact
content and inner workings of the language faculty are yet to be determined, a sufficient number
of core properties have been identified to convince researchers that they catmot be learned simply
through imitation, correction, memorization or reinforcement (Boeckx 2006: 2). Two key pieces
of evidence for the innate language fuculty are children's ability to (i) turn acoustic disturbances
(i.e., words) into meaningful units allowing for effective conununication, and (ii) generate sen-
tences they have never heard before. Indeed, a question that remains central to linguistics is
how, upon being exposed to a limited set of sentences (i.e., a generally impoverished stimulus),
children are able to generate an infinite set of granunatically well-fonned sentences they have
never heard before while developing strong grammatical judgments about their native language.
It is precisely this undeniable gap between impoverished, imperfect linguistic input and infinite
grammatical output that lingu istic theory strives to account for by investigating the content of the
biologically endowed cognitive component, UG (Boeckx 2006: 19).
Any word (lexical item) that a speaker generates (a noun, a verb, a preposition, etc.) pro-
jects a phrase (lexical category: NP, VP, PP, etc.). These phrases branch in binary fashion,
according to the X-bar theory schema in ( l ) or the Minima list Program operation Merge in (2).
X-bar theory assumes that any lexical item projects three levels, represented by X, X' and
XP, making a distinction among the head (which projects the lexical category), the comple-
ment (sister to the head) and the specifier (sister to the intermediate projection X').
Merge takes two syntactic objects a and p, which yields a new SO (syntactic object). The
new SO is called K = {15, {a, P}} (Chomsky 1995: 223, second edition) and 15 identifies the kind
of object it is. Most recently, this has been called ' label'. Chomsky (2013) proposes the sim-
p lest version of Merge wh ich is formulated as Merge(X,Y) = {X,Y}. In this new version of
Merge, 15 is no longer present and what is emphasized is mere ly the labeling algorithm (a lso
see Epstein, Kitahara and Seely (20 14) for a brief history of labeling by minimal search).3
(l) X -bar theory
Specifier X'
~
X Complement
(2) Merge•
c
~
A B
435
Marlyse Baptista et al.
In addition to being binary-branching, both (I) and (2) allow for recursive operations (mean-
ing that a linguistic item or grammatical structure can be used repeatedly and sequentially. For
instanc-e, '[John thinks [that Mary assumes [that her cat believes [that dogs are fierce]]]]').
The difference between (I) and (2) is that (I) is viewed as a primitive whereas (2) is derived.
Crucially for present purposes, many linguists postulate that the abstract representation
of invariance in (I) or (2) is foundational to the language faculty and illustrates the apparent
paradox between the general principles of UG and the variation observable in the world's
languages (Boeckx 2006: 54). In the 1970s through the 1990s, generative linguists strove to
account for this paradox by postulating a fixed set ofprinciples with open values (parameters)
that the language teamer sets in the course of language acquisition (Chomsky 1981 ; Boeckx
2008: 2).
More recently, linguists working within the Minimal ist Program approach (Chomsky 1995)
have been investigating to what extent principles and parameters can be reduc-ed to a computa-
tionally optimal and efficient design (Boeckx 2006: 4).' The Min ima list Program distinguishes
between what is invariant across languages (i.e., specified independently of input) and what
is plastic (i.e., flexible and dependent on the chi ld's linguistic environment). This crucial dis-
tinction between the invariant and plastic properties of the language facu lty allows linguists
to investigate core properties of UG while abstracting away from cross-linguistic variation
(Boeckx 2006: 2).
As Creoles have both invariant and plastic properties, like any other natural language, it
stands to reason that they are subject to the same 'principles and parameters' and general
operations like Merge. In this sense, Creoles are not exceptional; they are linguistically indis-
tinguishable from non-Creoles except for the multi lingua l settings in which they emerge.
Furthermore, since adu lts as well as children have full access to UG (Epstein, Flynn and
Martohardj ono 1996), creolization rests upon UG whether one believes that its key agents
are children, primarily involving first language (Ll) acquisition, or adults, involving second
language (L2) acquisition.
24.2.2 Our stand on Creoles and the language f aculty

As stated, our basic prem ise is that Creoles, like all other natural languages, instantiate the lan-
guage facu lty- the innate biological endowment that allows infants to acquire their first lan-
guage in a minimal amount of time. We do not believe that Creoles are lingu istically distinct
from non-Cre-ole languages or that they fonn a 'type' of language based on a distinct set of
linguistic features (Bakker et al. 2011); that is, we will argue against the view that Creoles are
in some way exceptional. Instead, we adopt a soc iohistorical definition of Creoles (Mufwene
2000) in the sense that these languages emerge in a mu ltilingual setting and are innovative
systems that result in part from the interactions between multiple source languages. Therefore,
they are subject to the same processes observed in any situation of language contact leading
to variation and innovation.
Having elaborated on syntacticians' perspectives on the language faculty and our general
non-exceptionalist view of Creole languages, we turn to some key studies that have focused
on Creoles and the language faculty.
24.3 Creoles under the UG lens: different perspectives

In this section, we introduce stud ies that view Creole formation through different lenses and
with complementary approaches: authors variously emphasize processes of Ll acqu isition
436
in children (Bickerton 1980, 198 1, 1984, 1999; Lightfoot 1999, 2006), processes of L2
acquisition (Piag 2008) or the complex dynam ic between the two, giving rise to Creoles as
hybrid grammars (Mufwene 200 I; Ab oh and DeGraff 20 14; Ab oh 20 15; Sugimoto 20 19a,
2019b). It goes without saying that the literature on this topic is vast and rich, but we con-
fine ourselves to specific works that in our view represent these various positions regarding
Creo les and UG.
24.3.1 UG and the role of children in Creole genesis
24.3.1.1 Bickerton (1980, 1981, 1984, 1999): how to acquire language

without positive evidence
The Language Bioprogram Hypothesis - the claim that Creoles emerge when children rely
exclusively on the ir innate language faculty to develop a new grammar out of adu lt Pidgin
input - was one of the first proposals granting children a primary role in creolization. The
proposal itself underwent several changes. Bickerton presented the fi rst version as a 1975
conference paper, eventually publ ished in 1980. In this paper, Bickerton explains what kind of
linguistic input creolophone ch ildren may have received on plantations and why he believes
that Creo les desc.end from Pidgins.
Later, Bickerton ( 198 1, 1984) presented a second version of the hypothesis, according to
which every parameter specified in UG has an unmarked setting, and the unmarked setting is
adopted w1less the child receives evidence to the contrary.
Under the Language Bioprogram Hypothesis, chi ldren play a critical role in Creole forma-
tion because they access innate, compensatory mechanisms in the face of restricted and highly
variable language input. It is important to note that Bickerton understands Creoles (or at least,
the Creoles of interest) as nativized Pidgins, 'fonned in the space of a single generation from
input that can be characterized as j argon or early-stage Pidgin with little if any grammatical
structure' (1981: 49).
Bickerton ( 1984) emphasizes that the process of first-generation Creole acquisition is the
same as that of other instances of Ll acquisition. It is the re lative availability of grammatical
morphemes, whether bound or free, that accounts for the d ifferent outcomes in these cases.
Bickerton proposes 12 features prototyp ical of Creoles, among them serial verbs, preverbal
tense, mood and aspect (TMA) markers, subject-verb-object (SVO) basic word order, prever-
bal negation, and use of the third person pronoun as a nominal number marker. However, in
a later publication (B ickerton 1999) he rejects this list because many of the syntactic features
deemed characteristic of Creo les, like serial verbs and an eightfold category division of the
TMA system, are not acquired early or easily by children, as would be expected if these fea-
tures refte.cte.d unmarked settings of UG. Instead, Bickerton assumes that parameter-setting
takes place at the lexical level and that 'default' (not 'unmarked') settings of UG come into
p lay only when no relevant grammatica l morphemes are present in the input. The distinction
that Bickerton draws between unmarked and default settings is crucial to understanding his
claim. Given an unmarked setting, one would expect learners to have a strong innate bias
towards that setting, so that it will be selected in a majority of Creole languages. In contrast,
a default setting does not imply a strong bias on the part of learners; it will be chosen only
when a learner has no evidence for any other setting. It is, as Bickerton describes it, the ' lin-
guistic "court of last resort" ' ( 1999: 59). Under this theory, it is unsurprising that chi ldren who
encounter primary linguistic data with 'sufficient' grammatical structure fail to go through a
stage where acquisition is strongly influenced by Language Bioprogram values, because they
437
will quickly acqu ire non-Language Bioprogram fearures and there will be no need to employ
default settings.
Central to his hypothesis, Bickerton advances the proposal that the semantic oppositions
purportedly characteristic of Creole TMA systems (anterior/non-anterior, rea lis/irreal is, punc-
ruallnon-punctual) are default settings of semantic parameters. According to his hypothesis,
upon encountering a morpheme that eo-occurred regu larly with verbs referring to previous
states and actions, a child would not be under pressure to map it onto the semantics of 'ante-
rior' rather than 'past' or 'completive'. However, in the absence of such evidence, the chi ld
would assume that there needs to be a lexical item with default 'anterior' semantics and wou ld
seek out a word in the linguistic input to convey this meaning.
Bickerton's proposal has attracted much criticism, in part because it does not give much
weight to the input from source languages. For instance, some scholars (e.g., Aboh 2015)
take issue with Bickerton 's ( 198 1, 1999, 2008) c laim that Creoles emerge when children rely
exclusively on the ir innate language faculty to develop a new grammar out of adult Pidgin
input (Calvin and Bickerton 2000). This is because the linguistic data the Pidgin provides is
presumed to be so degenerate that '[i]t cannot serve as input for Ll acquisition' (Aboh 2015:
84). Hence, Cre-o les are viewed as 'direct expressions of the human capacity for language'
(Aboh 2015: 85) that consistently develop supposed ly unmarked UG sett ings, such as SVO
word order and the use of a third person pronoun as a nominal nwnber marker (Aboh 2015:
85). This argument, Aboh (20 15: 87) points out, is circular: if Creoles consistently display the
basics of human language, then they are the resu lt of the Language Bioprogram; and if Creoles
are the result of the Language Bioprogram, then the fearures they display must constirute the
basics of human language. Even more problematic is that Creoles display considerable varia-
tion (as discussed later) and do not un iversally conform to the traits this hypothesis presumes.
Next, we consider work by Lightfoot (1999, 2006), who also views children as key agents
of creolization but proposes a cue-based model of language acquisition and Creole formation.
24.3.1.2 Lightfoot (1999, 2006): a cue-based model of language

acquisition and Creole formation
Lightfoot (1999) investigates Cre-ole fom1ation by modeling how chi ldren in general identify
the proper UG parameter settings determined by the ir Ll. He points out that any model of this
process based on input-matching wou ld be especially ill-equipped to account for creolization,
in which 'children are exposed to unusual amoWltS of artificial and degenerate data6 •• . [and]
go way beyond their input in some ways and in other ways fai l to reproduce what they heard'
(Lightfoot 1999: 432). He likens these circumstances to those of children exposed to manu-
ally coded sign systems or other fom1s of signed input that do not constitute natural languages
(distinct of course from sign language). Under such circumstances, chi ldren tend to " 'natura l-
ize" the system, altering the code and inventing new fonns that are more consistent with what
one finds in narural languages' (Lightfoot 1999: 445). Hence, like Bickerton, Lightfoot views
children as primary agents of creolization and assumes that ch ildren born into settings where
they experience 'artificial and degenerate data' cannot rely on the chaotic multilingual input
around them to acquire their native language (a view that is altered and refined in Lightfoot
(2006), as discussed later). However, w1l ike Bickerton, Lightfoot seeks to account for creoli-
zation without resorting to the notion of markedness. Instead, he uses a cue-based theo1y of
/earnability, based on work by Dresher and Kay ( 1990), in which children scan structurally
simple (w1embedded) domains of their input for certain strucrures. Particular 'parameter set-
tings are cued by [these] grammatical structures regardless of what the emerging grammar can
438
generate' (Lightfoot 1999: 433). In order to trigger a parameter setting, a cue must achieve a
critical level of robust and frequent attestation in the child's input. Rather than suggesting that
many Creoles lack particular strucrures because they instantiate universally Wlmarked options
within UG, Lightfoot ( 1999) proposes that they lack them because the relevant cues are not
sufficiently robust in children's input.
In later work, Lightfoot (2006) substantially modu lates his earlier proposals and further
elaborates on the cue-based mode l of ch ild language acquisition as applied to Creole emer-
gence. He proposes that 'the restrictedness of experienc.e of the first Creole-speaking chil-
dren' is not a considerable hindrance to acqu isition, because cues generally make up only a
sma ll subset of the chi ld's total linguistic experience in 'usual ' acqu isition circwnstances. The
first Creole-speaking chi ldren have still received sufficiently robust language input to attain a
'marure capacity'; it is just that this input contained less redundancy than that of children with
'more extensive and un ifonn experiences' (Lightfoot 2006: 14 1).
Lightfoot (2006) contends that chi ldren need not be subject to any kind of 'markedness'
bias built into UG. Elements of Creoles that were previously assumed to be the resu lt of chil-
dren rum ing to unmarked options can be reana lyzed as resulting from the nature of the input
available in only narrow sets of simple syntactic strucrures that cue-seekers are attentive to.
For example, Berbice Dutch developed SVO order while its source languages, Dutch and
Ijo, were underlyingly V2 and OV, respective ly. Rather than claiming that SVO was adopted
because it is the unmarked UG order (B ickerton 1981 ), Lightfoot proposes that chi ldren set
the verb-order parameter on the basis of evidence in unembedded domains. In Dutch, the verb
moves to the left of the object in unembedded clauses, but indirect evidenc.e from the distri-
bution of separable particles and the location of negative elements is a cue to Dutch-learning
children that the language is likely OV. However, in the case of Berbice Dutch, such indirect
evidence marking the underlying position of the verb is assumed to have been erased in the pri-
mary linguistic data avai lable to the child. Thus, Light foot argues that if one assumes that the
linguistic data relevant for language acquisition are structurally restricted, one can understand
how a Creole can emerge with properties different from those of both languages on which it is
based, without needing to resort to notions of markedness.
While scholars like Bickerton and Lightfoot view Creole emergence as driven by chi ld
language acquisition and believe that Creoles arise from siruations in which ch ildren may not
have access to stable and rel iable primary linguistic data, other scholars contend that adu lts are
the primary agents of creolization. The work of Plag (2008) represents this view.
24.3.2 Plag (2008): adults as the pr imary agen ts of creolization

Plag (2008) proposes that processes of L2 acquisition may be at work in Creole genesis
and argues that Creole structures are derived from interlanguage processes that can best be
accounted for by theories of L2 acquisition such as Processability Theory (Pienematm 1998,
2000, 2005a, 2005b). To make his point, he uses three syntactic domains- clausal negation,
basic word order and question fom1ation - as case studies to show that modem theories of
L2 acquisition can explain the predom inance of preverbal negation, SVO word order and
wh-fronting across Creoles. With respect to word order, Plag notes that cross-linguistically,
L2 learners start to produce predom inantly sentences with a canonical word order (i.e., SVO
or SOY); crucially, they do so irrespective of Ll and L2 (see Hakansson, Pienemann and
Sayehli 2002: 253). He refers to Pienemann, Di Biase and Kawaguchi (2005), who account
for this word order by positing that at first, learners have a fixed association between argu-
ment structure, functional strucrure and constituent structure, labelled 'unmarked a lignment'
439
(2005: 229). The Unmarked Alignment Hypothesis posits that in L2 acquisition, leamers
first organize syntax by mapping the most prominent semantic/grammatical role avai lable
onto the subject, with the consequence that the subject is structurally expressed in the most
prom inent - that is, initial - linear position. This direct mapp ing takes place independently
of any language-specific processing procedures, enabl ing learners to produce SOY or SVO
utterances even if their native language has a different underlying word order. Although such
selections can be perceived as illustrating 'universal tendencies', Plag recognizes that this is a
vague notion and argues instead that 'universal tendencies' such as preverbal negation, SVO
word order and wh-fronting in Cre-oles can best be explained in terms of limited processing
capacities in L2 acquisition.
Having looked at studies proposing that children or adults are the key agents of cre-oliza-
tion, we now turn to studies that showcase the role of both chi ldren and adults.
24.3.3 The role of both adults and children in Creole f ormation

In this section, we discuss perspectives on Creoles and UG that highlight the role of both
adu lts and children in Creole forn1ation, while emphasizing that the way features from the
Creole source languages recombine is subject to the same principles and parameters that gov-
ern non-Creoles. Because not much d ifferentiates Creo les from non-Creoles except for the
linguistic ecology in which they emerge, Creoles can instantiate all possible parameters avail-
able to the language facu lty.
24.3.3.1 Creoles as hybrid grammars: Mufwene (1990)

Very much in the spirit of this paper, Mufwene ( 1990) takes as his starting po int the assump-
tion that Creoles 'are natural languages and must be determined by UG in the same way as
non-Creole languages' (Mufwene 1990: 785). It is simply ' the highly multi lingual contexts of
their deve lopments' (Mufwene 1990: 785) that make Creoles un ique, and this aspect of the ir
development makes them fit to cha llenge certain assumptions about the structure of UG.
One such assumption is that certain parameters within UG (e.g., the presence of a CP
superstructure or the classification of predicates as VPs) are universa l though their absence in
many of the world's languages hints that they may actually be 'typological . .. contingent on a
higher-order parameter' (Mufwene 1990: 786). Creoles provide useful insight into this debate,
since they often illustrate typological mixing. For example, Creoles like Gullah demonstrate
that
in some languages the semantic material associated with INFL or T delimits syntacti-
cally not necessarily a verb but any unit that heads a predicate phrase (PredP), regard-
less of whether or not it is a verb, an adjective, a noun or a preposition.
(Mufwene 1990: 790)
In such languages, INFL or T features may be expressed by means of free morphemes rather
than inflections, making the proposal that a VP is universally underlyingly present a mere
'analogy to Indo-European languages' (Mufwene 1990: 791).
Mufwene (1990) also takes issue with the notion that certa in parameter settings within UG
are preferred while others are universally marked. Since cre-olization involves the 'formation
of a new language in a context which entails choic-es from among alternative parametric set-
tings' (Mufwene 1990: 792), Mufwene rejects the idea that Creoles have a spec ial tendency
440
towards unmarked settings; he argues that this idea rules out context-spec ific factors w1ique to
each Creole's development and raises the question of why any language would d isplay marked
options at all (Mufwene 1990: 795). If creol ization displays a tendency towards unmarked
options at all, he argues (Mufwene 1990: 800), it must be a more relative notion, where mark-
edness is based on a comparison of the features present in the particular languages in contact,
not viewed as a universal component of UG itself.
By showing how Creo le grammars shed light on what structural configurations UG per-
mits, Mufwene emphasizes that ' [t]here is evidence ne ither for the assumption that Creoles are
necessarily less complex than noncreole languages nor . .. that there is a set of features which
are typical of Creoles only' (Mufwene 1990: 797, citing Mufwene 1986).
Following the idea that just as there is much variation among Creoles, there are also many
routes to Creole genesis (Thomason 2002), and rejection of a Creole prototype seems to go
hand in hand with dismissal of the traditional 'Pidgin-to-Creole' cycle. Mufwene rejects the
idea that Creoles are Pidgins that - as a resu lt of children creating or imposing a grammar
on them - have WJdergone catastrophic restructuring, as Bickerton 's Language Bioprogram
Hypothesis would have it. Instead, he supports the view that Creo les and Pidgins both develop
gradually (Arends 1989) and that neither children nor adu lts play an exclusive role in creat-
ing them. He theorizes that children influence the development of Creoles by selecting from
among the adults' innovations (often associated with substrate influence) and by helping some
of the alternatives prevail over others, thereby contributing to the stabilization of the com-
munity language.
Notably, Mufwene rejects the hypothesis that these selections reflect 'unmarked' paramet-
ric options of UG. Rather, he takes the stance that all parametric options are equiva lent and
that a given option is marked on ly relative to a particular linguistic system, such that the 'mak-
ers of Creoles are likely to have se lected options that were less marked in the structura l and
ethnographic contact ecologies of their developments, not necessarily in UG' (2007: 25, fn.
15). In sum, Creoles, like any other natural language, display variation that proceeds from all
the possible settings that are avai lable in UG (see Yang 2002; Epstein 20 16).
In the sections that follow, we explore how the variation among Creoles can be viewed as
arising from different feature recombinations (Mufwene 200 I; Aboh 20 15) and the variation
within Creoles can be argued to instantiate distinct !-grammars within the same individual
(Roeper 1999; Yang 2002; Baptista 20 17).
24.3.3.2 Hybrid grammars: feature recombinations

and Creole grammar: Aboh (2015)
Like Mufwene ( 1990), Aboh (20 15) approaches creolization as the emergence of a natural lan-
guage, a hybrid grammar to which both superstrate and substrate grammars contribute. Within
a competition-and -selection framework,' Aboh proposes that a given rule from a particular
source language can be selected only partially, with the consequence that substrata! gram-
matical features do not remain intact as they are passed down to the emerging Creole (Aboh
2015: xiii). This gives rise to innovations based on feature recombinations. More precisely, for
Aboh (2015: 136-137), selection and competition occurs at two leve ls: selection of variants
and selection of the rules that recombine such variants. In his view, externa l ecological factors
such as frequency, markedness and transparency of features may constrain the competition
and selection of variants in the input; however, they do not directly dictate how these variants
are combined in the syntactic component, hence do not determine how feature recombina-
tions take place. In sum, in the same way that morphemes (variants) compete with each other,
441
the abstract grammatical properties associated with these morphemes also compete with each
other (Aboh 2015: 136). This dua l competition and its fonnu lation a llow Aboh to focus on
syntactic recombination (Aboh 2015: 137). Ultimately, he concludes that, for both Creoles
and non-Creoles, language acquisition always involves contact between linguistic subsystems
lead ing to the emergence of hybrid grammars. This conclusion is further elaborated by Aboh
and DeGraff (20 17), who emphasize the interp lay between Ll and L2 acquisition, based on
the interactions of children, adu lts and newly arrived L2 leamers with L2 learners who arrived
earlier. This is the focus of the next section.
24.3.3.3 Creolization as an L2-Ll cascade: Aboh and DeGraff(2015)

According to Aboh and DeGraff (20 15), the emergence of any new language or language vari-
ety in the context of language contact sheds light on the interplay of Ll and L2 acquisition as
new grammars are built from complex and variable input. More precisely, following DeGraff
(2002, 2009), they argue that interaction among different types of leamers in the early history
of Cre-oles created an L2-Ll acquisition cascade: newly arrived L2 learners and newly born
L l learners were exposed to primary lingu istic data from a m ix of Creole varieties (i.e., data
partly from previously arrived L2 learners, often the seasoned slaves alongside older native
Creole speakers). Aboh and DeGraff propose that Ll learners contribute to emerging Creoles
by setting the re levant parameters of their own native and stable idiolects on the basis of pat-
terns that in turn are influenced by L2 leamers' reanalyses and innovations.
It is important to note that in the ir view, the rise of innovations through language acquisi-
tion is not exclusive to Creole fonnation (Aboh and DeGraff2017: 38). Innovations are part
of language acquisition, and many acqu isitionists take the stand that language acquisition is
language change (e.g., Crain, Goro and T hornton 2005). According to this approach, the early
nonns of Creole varieties emerge and become more stable over time, converging on sets of
parameters (Aboh and DeGralf 2017: 35). As a result, Creoles do not represent an exception:
they develop in the same conditions that have generally led to language change.
In summary, for Aboh and DeGralf, 'it is through these "recursive L2 [acqu isition) and Ll
[acquisition) cascades" that certain patterns among the output ofLl -inftuenced inter languages
become selected, through prior competition, as key triggers for the subsequent setting of stable
properties in the !-Creoles' (Aboh and DeGralf 2017: 62). Regarding the use of the notions of
competition and !-Creoles (or !-grammars) in this quote, it is worth noting that such notions
have provided a particularly usefu l lens through which to consider the grammatical proper-
ties of Creoles and other mixed languages. As we will outline, Baptista (20 17) has used these
notions as theoretical tools to account for the observable variation fow1d in Cre-ole languages.
24.3.3.4 Variation in Creoles as competing I-grammars:8 Baptista (2017)

Baptista (20 17) explores the competition-and-se lection framework as a tool to account for
variation in Creoles in terms of competing !-grammars. Using both synchronic and diachronic
data, she illustrates how such competition plays out and results in competing !-grammars in
the verbal domain of Cape Verdean Creole (CV C). She proposes that the observable varia-
tion in Creoles like CVC results from diachronic accumulation of forn1s and from reanaly-
sis by successive generations of chi ldren acquiring the language. Competing grammars can
be instantiated across members of the speech community or within the same speaker, thus
accounting for inter-dialectal and intra-dialectal variation. Consequently, the observable vari-
ation reflects competing !-grammars rather than leers on a Creo le continuum.
442
To demonstrate how lasting variation between competing forms can play out, Baptista care-
fully examines synchronic data, diachronic data and acquisition scenarios targeting the aux-
iliary system of eve. Currently, the aspect marker signal ing progressive in the present tense
can be rendered by multiple variants: sa (3), sa [ . .. ] ta (4k5), sta ta (6) and sta (7). For the
past tense, there is only one possible forrn: staba ta (8).
(3) E sa fa/a ku se mudjer manenti. (F.ST)9

he AUX speak with his wife still
' He is still talking with his wife.'
(4) E sa so ta dizenha manenti. (F.ST)

he AUX always ASP draw still
' He is always drawing.'
(5) Gosi go e sa ta ben pa kuzinha. (F.ST)

now now he AUX ASP come to kitchen
'Now, he is coming to the kitchen. '
(6) E sta ta kume se aros.

he AUX ASP eat his rice
' He is eating his rice.'
(7) E sta kume se aros.

he AUX eat his rice
' He is eating his rice.'
(8) E Stftbtt ta kume.

sheAUX+ANT ASP eat
'She was eating.'
Historically, sixteenth-century texts (Lingua de Preto ' Black speech' in the plays of Gi l
Vicente) revea l two fom1s, sta(r) and sa, that are rem iniscent of the two markers sta and sa
fow1d in Santiago eve today. While sa is a constant across the three speech varieties that
Gi l Vicente portrayed in his plays (Black speech, Jewish speech and peasant speech), '0 sta(t)
occurs only in Lingua de Preto. Sa can be translated into Portuguese as both estar and ser, as
shown in (9) and ( 10).
(9) Sa riabo aquel/a home! (Lingua de Preto) (Teyssier 1959: 242)

is devil that man
E o dittbo aque/e homem! (Portuguese translation)
is the devil that man
'That man is the devil!'
(10) camisa que sa na muro (Lingua de Preto) (Teyssier 1959: 242)

shirt that is on fence
a camisa que estti no muro (Portuguese translation)
the shirt that is on fence
'the shirt that is on the fence'
443
The versatile nature of sa and its wide distribution may accowll for its survival as a dom i-
nant marker in Creole varieties like Santiago CVC.
The fom1 star is illustrated in ( 11).
(11) Aquy star juyz no fora . (Lingua de Preto) (Teyssier 1959: 230)
here is Jew outside
'The Jew is outside.'
In addition to star, the other marker exclusive to Lingua de Preto in Gil Vicente's plays
is -ba.
(12) ... coma mi saba primeyro. (Lingua de Preto) (Teyssier 1959: 235)
... coma eu era primeiro. (Portuguese translation)
how I was first
' .. . how I was the fi rst one.'
Baptista proposes that in the early stages of the Creole, sa may have been analyzed as a
more transparent counterpart to estar and therefore perceived as a legitimate carrier of the
past tense, resulting in saba in ( 12). As new variants emerged, later generations of speakers
may have analyzed the simplex fom1s sa and sta as root infinitives," prohibiting the suffixa-
tion of the anterior suffix -ba (*saba V l*staba V (without ta)) but allowing the analysis of sta
ta (which may have emerged later) as two distinct forms. This view of variants as reflecting
!-grammars can accowll for the presence of competing fom1s synchronica lly and for the ir
gradual emergence diachronically, as some of the func.tional items are attested in the old texts
while others are absent.
We now turn to another approach that pays particu lar attention to the fom1ation of markers/
functional categories in Creole languages.
24.3.3.5 An exoskeletal approach to Creole functional categories:

Borer (2003), Sugimoto (2019a, 2019b)
Borer (2003) introduced the exoskeletal approach to syntax: it is based on the view that struc-
ture, rather than given lexical items, detem1ines both the grammatical properties and the mean-
ing of lexical items themselves. Departing from the traditiona l derivation that starts out with
the lexical item, as in ( 13), she proposes a derivation that starts out with the syntactic structure,
as in ( 14).
( 13) Semantics of lexical item ~ Predicate ~ Argument structure ~ structure (syntactic or

lexical)
(14) Syntactic structure ~ Event structure ~ Interpretation of arguments (Borer 2003: 32)
Borer 's main claim is that the conceptual system is the appropriate input to the sound-
meaning pairing; the sound-meaning pairs are thus drawn from what Borer labels the reservo ir
of encyc lopedic items. For each sow1d-meaning pair, meaning simply refers to the appropriate
notion of a concept and sound to the abstract phonological representation. Each encyc lopedic
item (listeme in Borer's tenn) is category-less and argument-less and is initially selected to
contribute to a conceptual array. A key assumption is that structures are generated indepen-
dently from lexical items which are endowed with lexico-semantic, syntactic and phonological
444
features. Borer has labeled the latter 'endoskeletal' because lexical items have their own argu-
ment structure and other properties prior to entering syntax.
Borer 'sexoske letal model (Borer 2003, 2005, 2013, 20 17) has been called neo-constructivist
because as with the constructivist approach, it takes the form-mean ing pa ir to be the basic lin-
guistic unit and 'constructions' play an important role in the grammar (Go ldberg 1995, 2003,
2006). It is called 'neo-constructivist' because, whereas constructivists consider constructions
to be language-specific products that are stored in the lexicon, Borer's approach is endowed
with a generative, structure-building operation (Sugimoto 2019b).
More recently, Sugimoto (20 l9a, 20 l9b) has adapted the exoskeletal framework (Borer 2003,
2005, 2013, 2017; Grimstad et al. 2018; Riksem 2018) and the Distributed Morphology frame-
work (Halle and Marantz 1993; Marantz 1997) to propose a scenario for the emergence of func-
tional categories in Creole languages. His exoskeletal model is grow1ded on the following tenets:
(i) Syntactic categories are determined by the comb ination of a root (an uncategorized cat-
egory that inc ludes only the concept itse lf) and a categorizer (a nom ina lizer for n, aver-
balizer for v, etc.) via a single engine, Merge.
(ii) Next, the categorized phrase is merged into the syntactic structures determined by the
functional projections (e.g., CP, vP, DP).
(iii) Functional categories serve as a spine/backbone to determine the domain of syntactic
operations.
Sugimoto's answer to the question of how functional categories emerge in Creoles rests on the
hybrid nature of Creole languages. Sugimoto proposes that a priori, it is possible for functional
categories to be determined by one of the languages in contact and stems (categorizer plus
root) by another (cf. Myers-Scotton 2002). Hence, he argues, in Creole languages functional
categories can be recombined derivationally, resu lting in their hybrid nature. In his view, func-
tiona l categories in Creole languages need not be fixed or borrowed from one single language
(lexifiers, substrates, etc.); rather, the linguistic features may be recombined throughout the
derivation (cf. Aboh 2015). Sugimoto proposes that, like other languages, Creole languages
are the I(ntemal)-language system, and the order in which rules apply in syntax is 'underspeci-
fied' (Obata, Epstein and Baptista 2015; Obata and Epstein 2016; Epste in, Kitahara and Seely
20 16). He argues that the same underspecification that he finds in syntax can also be found in
the lexicon, where the features come together. He proposes that it is through this process that
the stmctural spine/backbone of a given language is built. In the case of Creoles specifically,
given the multilingual setting in which they typically emerge, features compete and some are
selected while others die out.
In examining mixed languages or code-switch ing between two languages, Alexiadou and
Lohndahl (20 18) and Grimstad et a l. (20 18) argue that in the case of bilingual mixed lan-
guages, it is possible for a functional category to be chosen from one language system and
a stem from another; however, such comb inations are restricted. By contrast, in the case of
Creole languages, Sugimoto proposes that the formation of functional categories can be flex-
ible, due in part to the intense competition and se lection that result when languages come into
contact. The formation of such functiona l categories typically involves feature recombinations
that can (but need not) be traceable to source languages, while a lso being innovative.
Sugimoto, whose objective is partly to account for language change, is explicitly anti-
exceptionalist. He states that the framework he adopts is not specific to Creoles; rather, it
is equally app licable to monolingual speech, language mixing and creolization, as they all
instantiate UG. His position finds support in a number of recent formal studies focused on
445
accounting for the properties that languages develop due to contact. For instance, Grimstad
et a l. (2018) use the exoske letal model to accow1t for the mixing patterns that they observe in
English-Spanish mixed noun phrases (based on Moro 20 14) and English-Norwegian m ixed
noun phrases and verbs. They show convincingly that Chomsky's ( 1995) lexicalist model can
account for only a small number of the mixing patterns in the ir data whereas the exoske letal
model elegantly explains all of them, thus supporting the view that syntactic structures are
generated independently from the lexical items that come to realize them.
Such studies show that the exoskeletal model - initially developed to account for the
language faculty and specifically for monolingual data - actually accounts successfu lly for
bil ingual data and the emergence of Creoles in multilingual ecologies. Along the same lines,
scholars who have investigated other contact phenomena (L6pez, Alexiadou and Veenstra
2017; Sedarous 2019c) defend the idea that code-switching should be studied using the same
tools used for monolingual phenomena.
In sum, these recent fonnal accounts of language contact involving two or more languages
do not make a distinction between bilingualfmultilingual situations and their monol ingual
counterparts, as they all instantiate the language faculty.
24.4 Conclusion
Recent approaches that explore Creoles and the language faculty conclude that Creoles behave
like non-Creo les, which is not surprising given that they are natural languages, but which leads
to a non-exceptionalist stance regarding the ir forn1ation. For instance, Aboh (20 15) shows
that, for Creoles and non-Creoles alike, language acquisition involves contact between linguis-
tic subsystems, leading to the emergence of hybrid grammars. Similarly, for Aboh and DeGratf
(20 15), the rise of innovations through language acquisition is not exclusive to Creole forma-
tion. Innovations are part of language acquisition, and many acquisitionists take the stand that
language acquisition is language change (e.g., Crain, Goro and Thornton 2005). According to
this approach, the early norms of Creo le varieties emerge and become more stable over time,
converging on sets of parameters (Aboh and DeGratf 20 15). As a resu lt, these authors justifi -
ably (in our view) argue that Creoles do not represent an exception: they develop in the same
conditions that have generally led to language change.
Other studies show that the variation observable across Creoles can be viewed as aris-
ing from d ifferent feature recombinations (Mufwene 200 I; Ab oh 20 15) and that the variation
within Creoles can be argued to instantiate d istinct !-grammars within the same individual or
across individuals (Roe per 1999; Yang 2002; Baptista 20 17). Finally, the exoskeletal model is
a promising framework first deve loped to account for monolingual speech but turning out to
be a powerful tool to accowll for both contact phenomena such as code-switching and contact
languages such as Creoles (Sugimoto 20 19a, 20 19b).
Notes
The authors' names are listed alphabetically. All three authors took equal part in the research and
writing of this paper, from its inception to its final stages. We are deeply gratefhl to Yushi Sugimoto
for his careful reading and for his insightful and detailed input on the last version of this paper and to
Anne Mark for her meticulous copy-editing. This is a much improved and clearer paper, thanks to the
feedback from these two individuals.
2 There are many more studies we could have discussed, as this area o f research has been fertile and
fruitful. However, for reasons of space we restrict ourselves to a few that we consider representative
of the approaches to Creoles and the language faculty that can be found in the creolistics literature.
446
3 We are grateful to Yushi Sugimoto for these clarifications and for the references.
4 As Yushi Sugimoto remarks (p.c), it is imponant to emphasize that under this view, word order is
not a core property of syntax, it is subject to externalization. '(T) Order and other arrangements are a
peripheral pan of language, related solely to externalization at the SM interface, where of course they
are necessary' (Chomsky 2013: 36). We thank Yushi Sugimoto for pointing us to this quote.
5 Yushi Sugimoto (p.c) observes that such ' computationally optimal and efficient design' can boil down
to what Chomsky (2005: 6) calls 'third factor principles.' T he core objective of the Minimalist Pro-
gram for linguistic theory is to reduce UG to its bare bones and considers it as being possible that
recursion (Merge) is the only thing UG truly has. A similar approach has applied to parameters which
some linguists believe can be eliminated (see Obsta, Epstein and Baptista (20 15) and Richards (2008)
for arguments in favor of eliminating parameters). We are grate ful to Yushi Sugimoto for his input on
this maner.
6 T he present authors do not bel ieve in that premise, as we would argue that the Pidgin wou ld
be one of many languages in the child's multilingual environment. Hence, the child would be
s imultaneously exposed to a number of other full-fledged natural languages that do not constitute
degenerate data.
7 The idea behind the notion of competition and selection is that in the rich linguistic ecology where
multiple languages come in contact with each other, the interaction among speakers from diverse
linguistic backgrounds generates an intense competition between linguistic features, leading to the
survival of some and the demise of others.
8 Baptists's definition of )-grammars corresponds to 'internalized' and ' individual' grammars, as her
paper focuses on inter-dialectal (between individuals) and intra-dialectal (within each individual)
variation.
9 This abbreviation identifies a specific consultant. F stands for the consultant's name and ST for the
island of Santiago, where the data were collected.
10 See Baptista (2015: 254-255) for examples illustrating the language o f the peasants and the language
of the Jews, as ponrayed and caricaturized by the playwright Gil Vi cente.
11 This maner is far from resolved in creolistics. Some scholars deny that there is a distinction between
finite and non-finite clauses in Creoles (e.g., Mufwene and Dijkhotr 1989), whereas others try to
identii)' the source o f such infinitives (Lipski 1987).
Further reading
Alexiadou, A. 20 17. Building verbs in language mixing varieties. Zeitschrift fiir Sprachwissenschafr
36(1): 165- 192.
T his paper examines verb phrases in several cases of language contact (Greek-German, Cypriot
Greek-English) and argues that bilingual speakers have very deta iled knowledge of their two linguis-
tic systems. T he outcomes o f language mixing are consistent with UG , i.e. qualitatively no different
from monolingual grammars.
Alexiadou, A. & Lohndal, T. 2018. Units of language mixing: A cross-linguistic perspective. Frontiers
in Psy chology 9: 1719.
What are the minimal units for language mixing? This paper looks at language mixing w ithin the word,
looking at a range of European languages in contact. It argues that roots and inflections from difl.er-
ent languages can combine, but only in principled ways. The framework is Distributed Morphology.
L6pez, L., Alexiadou, A. & Veenstra, T. 2017. Code-switching by phase. Languages 2(3): 1- 17.
The theoretical concept o f the ' phase' is applied to code-switching/language mixing data. lt includes
a brie f introduction to ' phases' in generative syntax, and how they relate to roots and functional cat-
egories. It concludes that code-switching data can be analyzed using the same tools as are used for
monolingual data.
McSwan, J.(ed.) 20 14. Grammatical theory and bilingual codes witching. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
A collection of 12 chapters examining formal constraints (largely within the Minimal ist Program) on
code-switching. lt includes detailed analyses of code-switching drawing on a broad typological sam-
ple, chapters exploring to what extent code-switching is permitted word-internally, and explorations
of the semantics of code-switching.
447
Related topics
Pidgin and Creole Ecology and Evolution; T he Typology of Pidgin and Creole Languages; On
the History of Pidgin and Creole Stu dies; Child Acquisition of Pidgins and Creoles; Multi lin-
gualism and the Structure of Code-Mixing; The Atlantic
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25
CHILD ACQUISITION OF
PIDGINS AND CREOLES
Michele M. Kennedy
25.1 Introduction
This chapter contextualizes the acqu isition of Pidgins and Cre.ole languages in terms of the
sociohistorical origins of the language systems, of existing or competing theories of Creole
genesis, and of contemporary language situations. The discussions form the backgrow1d for
an overview of existing acquisition studies of the languages. The chapter ends with considera-
tions of the implications of these trends for language education. The emphasis is on Creole
languages which are the vernacular, and therefore the first language of the majority of children
in the post-colonial communities where they are spoken.
A common prevai ling view of Pidgins, and the one adopted in this chapter, is that most are
reduced or ' restricted' language systems wh ich emerge out of the need for specialized com-
munication such as that required for trade. As Alleyne (1985: 157) puts it, "They are simple
(or simp lified) codes matching the simp licity of the communicative context (e.g. bartering)
in which they are used". With few exceptions, then, they at least initially serve as non-native
' lingua francas' to users who continue to use their native vernacu lars in other, regular day-to-
day interactions (Mufwene 2015: 349).'
Thus, the traditional definition of a Pidgin includes that it is not spoken natively. The Eth-
nologue (Eberhard et al. 20 19) lists a total of 16 Pidgins. Of these, all but one are reported
e ither to have no known Ll speakers, or to be extinct, nearly extinct or threatened. The only
Pidgin with more than 'very few' native speakers is Liberian Pidgin English, with 1,613,000
speakers, of which 113,000 were recorded in 2015 as be ing Ll speakers. As a result, Pidgins
would not have been the focus in studies of 1st language acquisition. Such restricted Pidgins
wi ll not therefore be discussed in this chapter.
The terms 'expanded' or 'stable' have been used to refer to Pidgins whose forms and func-
tions have extended into regular vernaculars, especially in urban settings. These include lan-
guages of the South Pac ific, such as Pidgins spoken in the Me lanesian countries of Fij i (Pidgin
Fij ian), Papua New Guinea (Tok Pisin), Solomon Islands (Pijin) and Vanuatu (Bislama).
Such languages are sa id to be as structurally complex as Creole languages (see, for example,
Mufwene 2006: 31 4; Siege! 2008: 4). Nonethe less, they do not serve as the vernacu lar lan-
guage of the vast majority of their speakers, who still speak other languages as well (Siege!
451
Miche/e M. Kermedy
2008: 4). Known literature on child acquisition of these languages is limited; work on the
acqu isition ofTok Pisin is briefly discussed in the chapter.2
The focus of the chapter will be on child acquisition of Creoles spoken in anglophone and
francophone territories of the Caribbean and beyond. 3 These are varieties which emerged in
and around colonial and slave-based plantations as a result of extreme language contact (De
Graff2005: 541- 542). Following Ansaldo (2009: 4), the approach taken is that in such speech
communities, external factors such as the size of the community, the types of soc ial networks
and mu ltilingual practices within them, detem1ine linguistic outcomes. Accord ingly, I look to
demograph ic trends and the nature of social interactions on the plantations, viewing the pre-
sent day societies as be ing "products of high-contact environments in spec ific sociohistorical
settings" (Ansaldo and Matthews 2007: 4).
Plantation life is reviewed with territories chosen so as to represent a range of different
sociohistorical cond itions. Specifically, I include Jamaica, Barbados and Trinidad as well as
Hawaii,' where the official language is English; and Ha iti, Martinique and Guadeloupe, as well
as Mauritius, where the official language is French.'
Sociohistorical conditions are considered to be relevant for an w1derstanding of the dynam-
ics of child acquisition of such languages today, since the ir outcomes constitute the input
for acquisition. The sociohistorical discussion Jays the foundation also, therefore, for that of
child language acquisition which fo llows. Predictions based on the sociohistorical conditions
reviewed are suggested, and acquisition studies (as available) are analyzed in terms of the
theoretical approaches taken to the investigations. Implications for the 2nd language acqu i-
sition6 of the language of instruction in these communities are next explored, and the ways
forward for (language) education, which the linguistic realities suggest, are reviewed in the
final section.
25.2 Historical perspectives on contemporary language situations

Since at least Alleyne ( 1971 ), creolists have used sociohistorical conditions on p lantations
of the 17th through the early 19th centuries to ga in insights into both Creole genesis and
present-day language situations (see Mufwene 1986; Singler 1990; Arends 1995a among
others). Feasible explanations have been found in history, for instance, for differing dis-
tances between Creole languages and the ir Jexifiers, explaining why Jamaican Creole is more
removed from English than is Bajan in Barbados, and Haitian Creole is more removed from
French than are the Creo les ofGuadeloupe and Martinique. 1 Further, the notion of the Creole
continuum,& used originally by DeCamp (1961) to apply to the language situation in Jamaica
(Patrick 2002), has been shown to have its roots in the social stratification which character-
ized plantation life.
With regard to Hawaii, we must look to a more recent history, between 1876 and 1920
(B ickerton 1999: 51), since it was during that period that large numbers of predominantly
male workers speaking mutually unintelligible languages were brought from a number of
different areas and forced to live and work together. Though the workers were indentured
labourers and not slaves, Bickerton indicates that there are no grounds for supposing that
linguistic interactions were any different, particularly since there was a similar linguistic
outcome, Hawaiian Creole English, "a novel language, drawing its lexicon from the dom i-
nant language but showing grammatical structures distinct from those of the dominant lan-
guage, . .. [and sharing] striking simi larities with other new languages created under sim ilar
c ircumstances" (ibid.).
452
Child acquisition ofPidgins a11d Crw/es
25.2.1 Historical p ersp ectives

I now explore the generalizations which can be made about factors affecting the growth and
development of Creole languages, and how these can lead to pred ictions about current lan-
guage situations. Factors which I take into account are the purpose of colonization, demo-
graphics, including considerations of the stability in the population, and social stratification.
Importantly, there is no unitary explanation for present-day conditions. Instead, the linguistic
lay of the land today is viewed as having been influenced by these (and other) factors concur-
rently. A brief look at major theories of the genesis or historical origins of Creole languages
which have involved views on child language acquisition follows in section 2.1.4.
25.2.1.1 The purpose of colonization

The goals of colonization may be said to be trading, exploitation or settlement (Mufwene
2003: 8R).9 Each goa l will determine the style of settlement, the types of dwellings and conse-
quently a lso the types of human interaction. The kinds of soc ieties which concern us here are
(plantation) settlement colonies in the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans where Creoles have
typically deve loped. Importantly, there were different patterns in how settlement was carried
out, partially dependent on the structure of the economy, which was in its turn driven by the
means of revenue earning.
If tobacco was a major economic driver for extended periods of time, as it was for exam-
p le, in Virginia, no Creole emerged . This is because tobacco was not at all labour intensive,
typically able to function with 40-80 labourers. Chaudenson (200 l ) refers to the social w1its
formed in tobacco-producing cow1tries as 'homestead societies'. A homestead typically com-
prised several huts a ll made of wood and leaves with scarc.e ly any distinction made between
the homes of masters and slaves (2001: 103). This suggests that masters and slaves were in
constant contact, a setting in which we would expect linguistic adaptation. The homestead
phase characterizes the early stages of fom1ation of French Creoles in territories such as Mar-
tinique, Guadeloupe and Mauritius, where there was a high degree of integration, and where
whites and blacks were in constant interaction (2001: 12).10
Econom ies in the Caribbean were initia lly fuelled by tobacco a long with cocoa and
p imento. The introduction of sugar led to a radical soc ial transformation, characterized by
enormous increases in slave populations due to the intensive labour requirement. The length
of time during which the homestead period with tobacco cultivation lasted wou ld have impor-
tant linguistic consequences. No Creoles developed, for instance, in either the Dominican
Republic or in Cuba, where the homestead period was protracted - l 00 years for the former,
and 150 years for the latter.
25.2.1.2 Demographics
Factors bearing linguistic consequences with regard to labour requirements of the industry are
related to demographics, including the ratio of slaves or indentured labourers to colonists. With
regard to numbers, the assumption is that when the enslaved or indentured population became
the majority, there was consequent limited exposure to the lexifier, with more divergence from
it being the result. Also bearing on the degree of language divergence was the rate of growth
in different ethnol inguistic groups. I now examine these trends in the territories w1der review.
Whereas in 1662 the African population in Jamaica accounted for 13.2% of the total popu-
lation, 30 years later in 1693, it had grown to 84.7% (Burnard 1996: 772). The nwnbers were
453
Miche/e M. Kermedy
as, if not more, dramatic in St Dom ingue, now Ha iti. St Domingue was colonized in 1659.
Twenty years later, there were almost twice as many whites as blacks, but th is reversed rather
dramatically 58 years later in 1717, with blacks forming 83.0% of the total population. This
near exponential growth trend was maintained through the 18th century, rising to 92.6% in
1739 (Singler 1993: 241) and 93.5% in 1789, with most of the slaves having been born in
Africa, and most of the whites in France (Figueredo and Argote-Freyre 2007: 64~5).
The period leading up to numerical equa lity between whites and blacks was also relatively
short in Mauritius. After several aborted attempts at build ing the Mauritian economy, the tide
turned with the appointment of a new governor in 1735. Agriculture was developed; within
30 years, slaves accounted for over 80% of the popu lation (Stanford University, no date).
Importantly, Adone and Vainikka (1999: 77) report that by 1780 there were more locally born
slaves than w hite settlers, and that there is evidence, from court records primari ly, clearly
showing that a stable Creole existed in Mauritius by the 1770s.
In contrast to these territories, in Barbados, though the white popu lation declined and the
black popu lation rose (20,000-23,000 in 1655 vs 15,966-41,970 in 1712), the ratio of black to
w hite was far smaller, at 2.6: I (Dunn 1972: 87). Similarly, in Martinique, the white and black
populations reached equal proportions after approximately 30 years, and after nearly half a
century, blacks outnwnbered whites, but comprised only 61 .2% of the population (Chauden-
son 200 I: 55).
With regard to what might have constituted the target language in commw1ication, I now
discuss the typ ical social organization of life on a sugar plantation, and follow Chaudenson
(200 I) in my conclusion that this was not a straightforward case of there being any single
lexifier language serving as target, but that input varieties wou ld have been many and varied,
dictated by the various levels of social stratification. As Mufwene (2003: 171) puts it, "[I]
anguage was typically transmitted without an across-the-board constant model".
25.2. 1.3 Social stratification

The social structure on a Caribbean or Indian Ocean sugar plantation was rigidly stratified.
Each social group was divided into occupational subgroups, and each with differing linguistic
experiences in tenns of input. By far the largest group on any plantation were the field slaves.
These wou ld have been furthest removed from the great house. In the field they were organ-
ized into gangs, with each fieldgang led by a driver. There was no fonnu la governing the
number of slaves in a gang, but they did tend to be large: Craton and Walvin (1970) report
that at the end of the 18th century at Worthy Park in Jama ica, there were just over 50 slaves
to one driver. A head driver wou ld act as supervisor for drivers. Skilled workers in the factory
included bo ilers, distillers, potters and coopers; each of these groups was supervised by a sen-
ior. Similarly, each artisan trade such as carpenters, sawyers, masons and blacksmiths had its
headman. The slaves stationed in the great house as house slaves would have been the closest
to the speakers of the European languages, and they were supervised by overseers.
A hierarchy existed, therefore, with occupational differentiation roughly divided into field
workers, artisans and domestics, with immediate supervisors in charge of each subgroup. This
a llowed for a degree of occupational mobility, but that was limited only to a handful, since the
greatest need was in the field. The supervisors, blacks themselves, and not native speakers of
the lexifier languages, provided the input for the labourers, the largest group on the plantation,
and were responsible for their training.
The plantation Great House was typically set apart from operations. At Worthy Park, for
instance, it was 200 yards away from the factory and a quarter mile from the slave quarters.
454
Whites, as we have seen, were few in number. Absenteeism of owners is often cited in the
literature as cause for econom ic concern, and there was a shortage generally of white per-
sormel on plantations. Indentured whites served as book-keepers, distillers, carpenters and
millwrights, but there is a reported high turnover among them. Their provenance was typically
mixed both in French and English territories, and as a result, they did not forn1 a homogenous
linguistic group. For example, Mufwene (2003: 31), citing Le Page (1960) and Le Page and
Tabouret-Keller ( 1985), speaks of the "several geograph ically distant metropolitan varieties of
the lexifier [which] came into contact with each other in the colonies".
Social distance between masters and labourers restricted social interaction between them,
and therefore also restricted language contact to some extent (Siege! [ 1987] 2009: 12). This
social distance was reflected as we have seen in vary ing physical distances on the plantation
from whites and hence from the lexifier language. In addition, the mix of varieties which con-
stituted the so-ca lled target language meant that it was in fact a moving target.
The Creole varieties which emerged in this context led Chaudenson (200 I: 125) to define
creolization as being "marked by a continuum of approximations of approximations".
As discussed by Deuber (2014: 28-29) and sources cited by her, Trinidad's history was dif-
ferent to that of other Caribbean islands. In the 17th and 18th centuries, it remained a Span ish
colony, and was sparsely populated unti l the late 18th century when immigration of a large
number of planters with their slaves from francophone islands began. As a resu lt, by the time
the British captured the island in 1797, the population was mainly French and French Cre.ole
speaking. In the 19th century, after the British conquest, there was an influx of migrants from
the Lesser Antilles, particu larly Barbados.
25.2.1.4 Acquisition in models ofCreole genesis

Bickerton, a proponent of what came to be known as the Universalist approach to Creole
genesis, claims ( 1981 among others) that there are basic sim ilarities between the develop-
ment of first generation Creo les and child language acqu isition. Th is proposal was based
on his work with the languages spoken on Hawaiian sugar plantations. It placed emphasis
on issues surrounding the acquisition of language in the assumed absenc.e of well-formed
input, on the following basis: finding the pidginized varieties of the European language in
the input to be linguistically inadequate, children drew on their innate linguistic capacity -
the language 'bioprogram' - to create an adequate language in a single generation (Baker
2000: 42).
A contrasting view, the gradua list model such as that proposed by Arends (1995a, 1995b)
challenged the assumption of creolization as a single-generation event, and, calling on socio-
demographic factors such as those a lready discussed, claimed instead that it was gradual,
extending over several generations (Roberts 1998), proceeding as it did incrementally and
driven primarily by L2 acquisition (Cardoso 2009: 18).
Aboh (20 15: 60) suggests that proposals regarding Creole genesis, though fundamen-
tally different in their po ints of departure, are all based on the idea that creolization involves
unsucc.essful or incomplete learning of the target. Building on work by Mufwene (1986; 2003
among other publications), De Gratf (2005) and his own earlier works, such as Aboh and
Ansaldo (2007), Aboh (20 15) develops an account of the emergence of Creole languages in
tern1s of the competition between and subsequent selection of features and patterns of the lan-
guages in contact (2015: 136). For Aboh, competition and selection take place at two levels:
''the structuring of the input, and the combination of variants selected from the input into a
coherent syntactic system" (20 15: 137).
455
Miche/e M. Kermedy
Kouwenberg and Singler (20 18: 226) in a rather comprehensive review of theories of Cre-
ole genesis, maintain that monocausal accounts do not suffice. Instead, creolists must rely
on models of I st and 2nd language acquisition as we ll as linguistic typology and historical
linguistics.
25.2.2 Contemporary language situations

We see today the effects of p lantation history on language. In describing contemporary lan-
guage situations in such communities, DeCamp (197lb: 350) spoke of the existenc.e of a
"continuous spectrum of speech varieties", and used the tem1 Creole continuwn to capture
the variation. The continuum is a theoretical constmct which " locates all variation, including
socially conditioned variation on a un idimensional scale that extends from the most English-
like to the most Creole-like" (Kouwenberg and Sing!er 201 1: 293).
In continuum theory, the language considered to be the official language is termed the
acrolect. The language at the other end, comprising the most Creole forms of the Creo le is
known as the basilect." These are the fom1s which are considered to be 'very' Creo le, often
referred to as broad Creole (DeCamp 197la: 28).
Speakers do not fit so neatly into these labels or categories, however. Using Jamaica as
an example, Nero (20 14: 225) explains that, "[i]n everyday language use in Jamaica, 'pure'
forms of JC or S[tandard]JE are rare. Rather, there is a seamless mixing of both fom1s".' 2
Thus, instead of consistently using only fom1s which are considered to be either basilectal or
acrolectal, forms reflecting more or less 'Creole-ness' are regu larly used as wel l. People using
such 'm idway' fom1s have been tem1ed mesolectal speakers. Winford (1997: 236) indicates
that for Jamaica, the meso/ect is used to refer to an area of interaction between a relatively
basi lectal Creo le and the local standard. It cannot be associated with any one variety, and
appears, therefore, to have no distinct status as a system. The term area of interaction was
perhaps originated by Craig ( 1971 ), who refers to it as such because ''its existence has been
and continues to be, dependent on the cross influences from the two extremes" ( 1971 : 372).
A continuum exists in Trinidad today, but its history led to a different linguistic outcome. The
'Trinidadian English Creole' which emerged with input from the Engl ish-lexified varieties of
migrants who were predominantly from Barbados (see section 2.1 .3 above), had deve loped by
the early 20th century into a mesolectal Creole, with English co-existing with English Creole.
Jamaica of the 1960s and 1970s was identified by DeCamp ( 1971 a) as a post-Creole com-
munity, undergoing decreolization. The status of post-Creole is possible only when the dom i-
nant official language is the same as the Creo le vocabulary base, and when the social system
provides for suffic ient social mobility and sufficient corrective pressures from above in order
for the standard language to exert real influence on Creole speakers (197la: 29). Factors
such as radio, television, internal migration and education have contributed to the pressures.
DeCamp notes that these pressures do not operate unifonnly, but act on individual speakers
pull ing them in differing degrees towards the standard end of the continuum (ibid.).
DeCamp was speaking about a Jama ica of almost 50 years ago. It is assumed that the
post-Creole status of which he spoke wou ld have progressed over the years, with boundaries
between the two language systems becoming more blurred, as speakers continue to acquire
so-called standard forms to varying degrees.
The notion of the continuum is foundational here, since the presumption is that the input
which children hear as they acquire language in Cre.ole commun ities is characterized by vari-
ation. As we have seen, the roots of the variation lie in the aspects of the plantation system
in which the languages emerged. It is recognized, of course, that variation exists in natural
456
d iscourse in any speech commw1ity, and that, being inherent to every speaker, it cannot be
factored out in any analysis of language (Poplack 1993: 253). However, analyses of Creole
languages consistently point to variant forms which exist, reporting on the Creole context as
being complex, and characterized by extreme variation (see Patrick 2004: 202, for instance).
Such considerations led Mufwene (1999: 158) to comment that the significance of the contri-
bution of creolistics to variation analysis is incontrovertible.
Linguistic consequences of languages in contact and attested also therefore in Creole
communities, include phenomena such as code-switching and code mixing. Code-switching
(CS) is the tenn used to refer to the ability of a bilingua l to use both languages within a dis-
course or within an utterance (Can tone and MUller 2008: 81 1), and may involve mixing of
whole phrases, or particu lar features. It is said to be a typica l or norma l aspect of bilingual
development, and is known to be a virtually necessary result in the language of children
who grow up bilingua lly (Nicoladis and Genesee 1997: 259). Meisel ([2004] 2006: 96)
indicates that sociolinguistic factors play an important role in CS, which he defines as "a
form of language use determined by a complex network of sociolingu istic variables and con-
stra ined by grammatica l properties of the utterances". With regard to CS among ch ildren,
Meisel ([2004] 2006: 97)' 3 ind icates that by age 2;0 bi lingua l children choose the language
accord ing to the addressee, and soon afterwards they begin to adapt to other soc iolingu istic
requirements.
Recall, however, that it is not the case in Creole-speaking territories that there are two dis-
crete language systems. Instead, the existence of a Creole continuwn arising from the acqui-
sition of approximations of approximations on plantations means that there is a spectrum of
speech varieties (DeCamp 1971 b: 350)." I look now at the varied approaches to the study of
the acquisition of child language in such a linguistic environment.
25.3 Child langu age acquisition in this context

We now have a basis on which to know that variation is an expected characteristic of the
speech to which children are exposed today in communities with plantation histories. This
section looks at studies of acquisition by such children from the perspective of the theoretical
approaches used. First, I review what may be considered to be the major approaches to the
analysis of language, the fonnal and the sociolinguistic approaches, in tem1s of variation, and
address how these have been applied to the study of child language acquisition. The usage-
based theory oflanguage has also been applied to the acquisition of child language; a review of
the maj or tenets of this theory follows. I then provide an overview of studies of the acquisition
of Pidgins and of Creoles, and end with a summary review of acquisition studies intended to
serve the field of speech pathology. The final section addresses aspects of the (2nd language)
acquisition of the lexifier in an instructional context.
25.3. 1 Approaches to the study of child language acquisition

Methodologies associated with the sociol inguistic approach have their origin in work by
Labov from as early as the 1960s." Such studies typically require large numbers of infom1ants,
ensuring adequate representation of each variable group. They require also the collection of a
substantial quantity of data in order to ach ieve descriptive and observational adequacy (Cor-
nips and Corrigan 2005a: 132). Variation is viewed as being internal to language, giving the
speaker the opportunity to say the same thing in different ways, with the usage frequency of
competing variants being conditioned by intra- and extralinguistic factors (Nardy et al. 2013:
457
Miche/e M. Kermedy
255). As Meyerhotf(2013: 24) indicates, ''the purpose of the sociolinguist is to tease apart the
factors (linguistic or social) which exert a significant effect on the variation observed". For
the analysis of variation, there is heavy reliance on quantitative methods, with the end goal of
detenn ining "the relative probability that a form will occur in a given set of linguistic contexts,
all other things considered" (ibid.: 25).
The study of the acquisition of variable linguistic forms by sociolinguists, a stu dy there-
fore of the interaction between psychol inguistics and sociolinguistics, is a relatively new field
(Roberts 2005: 154). Challenges cited have been the difficulty in discriminating between
developmenta l errors and genuine (socio linguistic) variability, as well as the methodological
requirements of large subject groups and many hours of data collection alongside issues asso-
c iated with the record ing of young children (Cornips and Corrigan 2005b: 3). Smith and Dur-
ham (20 19) is one such study. It uses a mixed methods approach, testing a range of variables,
including both linguistic and social constraints on acquisition. Examples of types of variables
tested include caregiver input, age, being scolded, linguistic complexity, playing, perceptual
salience and linguistic maturation (20 19: 59). This is based on the premise that variation is the
resu lt of multiple competing effects in the ambient language (20 19: 58).
Generative approaches have as their aim explanatory adequacy, achieved by having a focus
on native-speaker introspection in an idealized environment (Comips and Corrigan 2005a:
132). This is on the basis that insofar as it is possible to say that a linguistic community speaks
the same language, what this suggests is that a group of people share more or less the same
!-languages (Kennedy 2012: 12). An !-language is an internal grammar. It refers to an inner
state of an individual's mind, the mentally represented linguistic knowledge which a native
speaker of a language has. Experience (primary linguistic data) triggers the fonnation of a
particu lar grammar (!-language) in the mind of an individual, as a result of a biological predis-
position to language which is un ique to and characteristic of humans. The outcome is that the
acquisition of linguistic knowledge is structured in a highly specific way, detenn ined as it is
by innate principles (Newmeyer 1996: 45). Thus, generativists seek to investigate language in
tern1s of principled explanations (Chomsky 2005: 2), with a goal of simplicity, economy and
explanatory power.
The conc.e pt of !-language is used by Chomsky to highlight the idea that the object of
study in linguistics is " internal" or person-specific and not directly concerned with "external"
phenomena (Ludlow 200 l: 419). Thus, variation is viewed as having "no external existence"
(Cornips and Corrigan 2005a: 96), and is not therefore socially motivated. Chomsky makes
the contrast with E-languages, which are external languages used by popu lations. These are
socially constituted, and as a result, considered to be idealizations ( 1986: 19-2 1).
Anderssen et al. (20 l 0: l) indicate that (variationist) language-internal optionality consti-
tutes a challenge for a linguistic theory based on economy principles, such as generativism.
This is because generally one of the options should be more economical than the other and thus
should be the only grammatical one.
There may be common ground for the two camps, however. In promoting an integrated
approach, Chomsky ( 1999: 34) states that "The investigations do not confl ict; they are mutu-
ally supportive". Integration m ight be effected by an accommodation of viewpoints - vari-
ationist analysis using fonnal insights from generative the.ory, and generativists viewing the
organization of grammar as reflected in patterns of usage (Cornips and Corrigan 2005b: 7).
In a similar ve in, Lacoste and Green (20 16), as guest editors of a special issue of Linguistic
Variation, ind icate in their introduction that they seek in the issue to move towards an account
which unifies the two major paradigms, providing a more ho listic approach to the acquisition
of variation in child language.
458
Usage-based (functional) approaches could also benefit from an integrated approach.

Tomasello (2009: 69) presents the tenets of a usage-based theory as meaning being use, and
structure emerging from use. In this framework, linguistic communication is the attempt of
one person to manipulate the intentional or mental states of other persons (Tomasello 2003:
3). The idea is that when we use symbols, and string them together to communicate with each
other, patterns of use emerge and become conso lidated into grammatical constructions (2003:
5). In applying the theory to language acqu isition, all constructions may be acquired with
the same basic acquisitional processes, namely intention-read ing and pattem-finding. This is
considered to involve domain-general skills such as "the ab ility to create analogies (structure
mappings) across two or more complex wholes, based on the similar functional roles of some
e lements in these d ifferent wholes" (Gentner and Markman 1997, cited in Tomasello 2003:
4). How this is said to work is that acqu isition begins with ch ildren's comprehension and
production of whole, meaningfu l utteranc.es. They then extract words with the ir functions,
from utterances, wh ile finding analogical patterns based on communicative function, across
utterances. It is in this way that they abstract meaningful grammatical constructions (Toma-
sello 2003: 76).
25.3.2 First language acquisition studies ofPidgins and Creoles

There are few studies specifically on the acquisition of Pidgins as first languages. The litera-
ture includes, instead, sociol inguistic surveys of the evo lution of Pidgin languages, and discus-
sions of how the emergence ofPidgins may infonn 1st and 2nd language acquisition.' 6 I begin
this section by looking at two studies relating to the acqu isition ofTok Pisin, and proceed to
d iscuss work on the acquisition of Creole languages in so-called English-speaking territories
and French-speaking territories.
25.3.2.1 First language acquisition ofTok Pisin

Interestingly, Sankoff and Laberge ( 1980) examine Tok Pisin at a time when it was still consid-
ered to be w1dergoing 'depidginization', with a view to discovering the ways in which the new
generation of native speakers was different from that of their non-Ll speaking parents. They
looked specifically at changes in the fom1, by way of reduction, and functions of baimbai in
its transition from an adverb to a future marker bai, in line with Labov's ( 1971) comment that
''When Pidgins become Creoles, the system of optional adverbs gives way to an obligatory
tense marker next to the verb" (cited in Sankoff and Laberge (1980: 200)).
A second study, Romaine ( 1992), focuses on the acquisition of relative clauses in Tok Pisin.
She finds that explicit marking of relative clauses decreases with age for urban speakers, par-
ticu larly, though the trend is also exhibited in the speech of children from rural areas. This is in
sharp contrast to Ll English, where with age, there is a steady decrease in the use of de letion
( 1992: 165).
25.3.2.2 First language acquisition of English-lexified Creoles

Perhaps the earliest work on I st language acquisition in a Caribbean Creole environment was
Youssef's (1990) PhD thesis. This was a longitudinal study of verb phrase development in
three children from Trinidad each with exposure to different varieties as follows: mesolectal
Creole, mostly Standard English, and balanced exposure to Standard English and mesolectal
Creole. Data were collected in a variety of contexts, in an altempt to access a full range of
459
Miche/e M. Kermedy
variation. This and later work by her, explored how language develops in response to lan-
guage variation as it exists in a Creole-speaking environment such as that in Trinidad. Her
account is descriptive, and uses statistical tests to lead to findings of trends in deve lopment.
Youssef concludes that analysis of data in such a context must take into accoWlt the social
c ircumstances of the children as well as interaction details of the record ing situation, such as
addressee-related fac.tors ( 1991: 79-80). Other factors found to interact with socially deter-
mined variab les were semantic intent, discourse orientation and phonological and syntactic
factors. Variation was found to be systematic, and importantly, showed evidence of initial
differentiation which appeared to be related to the nature of the variation in the input ( 1991:
97). She co ined the term varilingualism to refer to this capacity of the chi ld for the variable
production of codes in contact in diverse situationa l contexts, and the ability to respond
stylistically.
For Youssef, 'varilingualism' captures the variation which exists in post-colonial environ-
ments. This leads to code-switching and -m ixing involving the acquisition of individualized as
well as conununity-based appropriacy ru les (1996: 3). In such situations, speakers must " learn
to alternate codes according to their complementary social values and the dynamics of indi-
vidual relationships in specific interactions" ( 1996: ll ). This is opposed to the mere stylistic
variation which might be typical of other environments ( 1996: l 0-ll ), and resu lts, according
to Youssef, in the development of a unique kind of language competence (Youssef 20 l 0: 65,
66). Whether or not spec ial mechanisms would need to be called upon to account for acquisi-
tion in Creole-speaking environments remains an open question for Youssef. 17
Mea de (200 l ) makes fundamenta lly different assumptions about the language situation
in Jamaica from those made by Youssef of Trinidad. In his study, he traces the phonological
development in 24 children ranging in age from l ;0 to 4;6, from two communities in Jamaica,
one rura l where primary caregivers had no more than primary level education (the Pre-Sec
group) and the other urban, with primary caregivers having more than secondary leve l educa-
tion (the Post-Sec group). The expectation was that the Post-Sec group may have included
speakers more competent in JE than the Pre-Sec speakers, and that the JC of the Pre-Sec group
would be closer to the basi lectthan that of the Post-Sec group (2001: 62). A third group con-
sisting of four children from a separate community constituted a reserve. With regard to the
continuum mode l, Mea de (200 l : 25) views all varieties appearing between the basi lect and the
acrolect as forming a separate language, the mesolect, itself therefore a mixed system. Those
who command two of these three languages are considered bilingual, and those commanding
a ll three, multi lingual. This approach allowed Meade to organize development around three
varieties, and to asswne separate inventories of sounds for each. Analysis is based on Optima l-
ity Theory, with different rankings for the same constraints (rather than different constraints)
accounting for different language varieties. The rankings for the basilect and for the acrolect
are relatively fixed. Since in Meade's schemata of language varieties the mesolect is distinct,
but allows for variation towards the basilect as well as the acrolect, it was conce ived as having
a grammar sim ilar to each at either extreme, with a variable grammar accounting for attested
variations between them (200 l: 51-53). Meade's findings for the acquisition of syllab le type,
of segments and of distinctive features a ll po int to the chi ldren following the same path in
tern1s of order of acquisition, despite differences in ages at which acquisition took p lac-e. He
reports further that the majority of children in both groups acquired both the JE and the JC
phonemes, suggesting bilingual development. 18
Studies of the acqu isition of Jamaican Creole syntax include De Lisser (20 15) and Ken-
nedy (20 17). De Lisser (20 15) is a longitudinal study of aspects of the syntax of six children
from Creole-speaking communities in Western Jamaica. The focus is on early acquisition,
460
with children ranging in age from I ;6 to 3;4.' 9 De Lisser's theoretical framework is Universal
Grammar (UG) (Chomsky 1981), gu ided by the Principles and Parameters approach to lan-
guage development. Variation, then, is presented as being restricted by UG, taken to be the
set of constraints which is the hwnan endowment responsible for language acquisition (De
Lisser2015: 10). The basilect is said to serve as a baseline of the target being acquired by the
children in her study, but she speaks of the three varieties constituting the Creole continuum,
and notes that the interaction between speakers of these varieties results in "significant lin-
gu istic variation and overlap in their grammars" (20 15: 19). She nonetheless divides the
population into monolinguals and bilinguals, and c ites the Language Competence Survey
of Jamaica as reporting that 46.4% of its sample were (self-declared) bi linguals, while the
languages of the mono linguals were English ( 17.I%) and JC (36.5%) (ibid.: 20). Her focus
is primari ly on the variety found at the basi lectal extreme of the continuum (20 15: 21 ). De
Lisser reports ''huge individual variation" (see pgs 85 for modals, 99 for overt tense mark-
ers, 258 for serial verb constructions). In the course of her analysis of variation, she relies on
frequency of use as well as qualitative analysis, an approach wh ich allows for an assessment
of productivity. As an example, for TMA markers, consideration is given to the number of
d ifferent predicates a marker is used with, which is then set against age and by extension a
word-based Mean Length of Utterance. 20 I note, however, that De Lisser does not seek to
relate variation e ither to language varieties, or to situational contexts. This is not the goal of
the research. Instead, the concern is to map the process of development by which children
acquire specific grammatical structures.
Kennedy (20 17) presents a profile of aspects of the speech of Jamaican three-year-o lds
(aged 2;9 to 4;2) in their first year of entry into the public school system, the Basic SchooJ.2' It
involved 80 chi ldren from 13 schools across the island. The speech of the children is analyzed
using a feature-based Minimalist approach (Chomsky 1995, 1999). Variation is taken to be a
characteristic of speech in Jamaica, and not reserved only for speakers who may be identified
as mesolectal. Instead, it is a part of the input to which children are exposed, even in the most
rural communities.
Despite this variation in the input, it is possible to ascribe features as 'belonging to' JC or
JE, the varieties which exist at the poles of the continuum, abstract and idealized though that
may be. Her approach with the analysis of selected constructions in the nom ina l and verbal
doma ins, is to detail the differences between the two languages, and to analyze the ways in
which JC and JE features are merged or 'woven' in the children's speech (Kennedy 2017:
15- 16). Following Craig ( 1980) she distinguishes between pronunciation and lexical differ-
ences between JC and its lexifier on the one hand, and those in the morphosyntax on the other,
said to exist at a "deeper level". She uses the (pre-theoretical) terms superficial weaving to
refer to the former, and structural weaving for the latter (Kennedy 2017: 8, 13 and through-
out). Although weaving prevailed in the speech of the chi ldren, it was determined that their
dominant language was JC (2017: 175-178).
Importantly, there were predicted patterns in the weaving of features, suggesting that some
features were more distinctive ly associated with one language or the other in the minds of the
children. It was found, for example, that there is a high degree of association of the JE definite
article 'the' with JE: 'the' was seldom used (fewer than 50 occurrences) and was never fol-
lowed by a JC noun (20 17: 175). In contrast, the JE indefinite 'a' was used over 400 times,
selecting a near equal number of JC, JE and shared nouns, suggesting that it is not associated
necessarily with JE (see 2017: 183 for discussion). For Kennedy this signals, along with other
cultural indicators, the existence of a certain language awareness among the children (2017:
185- 188), despite the attested variation.
461
Miche/e M. Kermedy
She discusses at some length factors other than forn1al syntactic features which may play a
role in language choice, concluding that this would be detern1ined by sociophonological and
pseudo-Gricean principles as well as by language-internal factors (20 17: 185-188, endnote 18).
25.3.2.3 First language acquisition of French-lexified Creoles

With regard to studies on the acquisition of French-lexified Creoles, Genelot et al. (2006)
speak of the Martinican 5-year-olds who they studied as be ing bil ingua l, with a presumed
(rather clear-cut) situation where Creo le is known to be the native language of children, but its
use varies according to social context. They chose a cognitive and sociol inguistic account for
an analysis of the speech of228 bilingual 5-year-olds in Martinique, testing the competencies
in production and comprehension of the chi ldren in the two languages, and correlating these
with socio linguistic indicators. Interestingly, French lexical items appear in Creo le speech,
but not the reverse, girls score higher than boys, but only in French, and the level of diploma
which the mother has auained is the greatest determinant of scores in both languages.
Isabelle Barriere and colleagues (2016, 2019 among others) address the acquisition of
aspects of the morphophonology and the syntax of subject-verb agreement in production and
comprehension. T he investigations involve Haitian Creo le, with data from children in the
diaspora in New York, but also English, Spanish and French. The approach is interdiscipli-
nary, including research methods associated with theoretical syntax, psycho linguistics, corpus
analysis and speech perception.22 Assumptions across languages inc lude that the same linguis-
tic features have the same effects on the acquisition of different languages and different varie-
ties of the language, pointing to the importance ofw1derlying princip les, as well as of surface
features and the distribution of relevant features in the input (20 19: 14). Interesting differences
between subject and object pronouns in the child language of Ll French and Haitian speakers
were revealed. For instance, although in French agglutination to the host verb involves proclit-
ics which are subject to phonological, syntactic and lexical constraints, reduction in Haitian
Creole is optional invo lving both enc litics and proclitics which are subject to phonological
constraints (Barriere et al. 20 19).
Adone (2004) is a cross-sectional study observing 21 chi ldren aged 1;9 to 5;4 in one or two
naturalistic data collection sessions (2004: 19).23 The chi ldren are said to forrn an etlmically
homogenous group, all being speakers ofMauritian Creole (MC), with parents from similar social
backgroWlds. The presumption was that the children had been fully exposed to MC, and, since
they lived in rural areas, the Rural Creole which they spoke would have been "rather free from
French influence when compared to Urban Creole" (2004: 22). Adone indicates further that there
is no evidence for the existence in Mauritius of either a Creole continuwn or variation resulting
from possible decreol ization. Instead, her asswnption is that MC and French are two separate
systems existing in a diglossic situation. She does distinguish between Rural Creole and Urban
Creole, but suggests that differences between them are attested on the lexical and phonological
levels, but not on the syntactic level, and that Urban Creole ''might be more French than rural
Creole", since it is subject to pressure from French. Variation, then, is not a concern in this study.
Using a generative approach, Adone traces the stages of acquisition of a range of sim-
ple as well as complex syntactic constructions, including Tense, Mood and Aspect; verbal
complements and negation. The approach to the analysis is to first lay the foundation for a
construction by presenting both existing the.oretical accounts as we ll as acqu isition stud ies of
non-Creole languages relating to it. In her presentation of the Mauritian acquisitional data, she
is then able to situate her findings in the mainstream literature. She concludes that there are
no functional categories in early MC grammar, and that although Universal Granunar makes
462
functional projections available, without sufficient evidence in the input the acquisition of
functional categories is de layed for these children.
Adone (2012) is an accow1t of the l st language acquisition of Creoles, again from a genera-
tive perspective, with a focus on the nature of input and its consequences for acquisition. She
follows the structure-building hypothesis as advocated by Radford (1990, 1996) and Clahsen
et al. (1996) among others (Adone 2012: 17). Despite the fact that the acqu isition ofMauritian
Creoles is considered to take place in nonnal circumstances, Adone (20 12: 28) speaks of the
variability and ambiguity of input in Creole-speaking COinmw1ities, and gives as an example
the omission of functional categories such as tense and determiners. Many can be om itted with-
out causing problems in interpretation, as is expected with discourse-oriented granunars. She
considers that there is no conventional language model for the acquirers of a Creole since it is
not the target ofl iteracy, since it is predom inantly oral, with no grammars available, and no cor-
rective pressures in interactions with parents. As a resu lt, studies on the acquisition of these lan-
guages will provide "some deeper insights into the role of children in acquisition" (20 12: 28).
Adone looks at structures which are known cross-lingu istically to be difficult to acquire,
namely pronouns and reflexives, as we ll as double object, passi ve and serial verb construc-
tions. She concludes that the Creole chi ldren regularize the variable and ambiguous input
to wh ich they are exposed, thus surpassing their input, and demonstrating creativity during
acquisition (20 12: 172).
In addition to the works outl ined here, there have been recent nom1ative studies intended
to lay the foundation for work by speech language pathologists. Phonological stu dies include
Washington et al. (2017) primarily for the (w1derstudied) Jama ican diaspora in the U.S., Jack-
son (20 19) on the acquisition of varieties in Trinidad, as well as Archer et al. (20 18) for Ha itian
Creole. Such work makes crucial contributions, since in the previous absence of develop-
mental guidelines for Creoles as a first language, nonns for the Ll acquisition of the lexifier
languages have had to be used.
25.4 Implications for 2nd language acquisition

In this section, I discuss the educational implications for countries with histories which have
led to language situations where the vemacular is the Creole, a language in its own right and
therefore the Ll of the majority of their populations. The contemporary indigenized varieties
of the lexifier languages, such as Jamaican English, for instance, are second languages, yet
literacy is typically taught in the L2.24
T he literature on the cognitive advantages of literacy in the home language is vast. Cum-
mins (200 l) summarizes these advantages, indicating that mother tongue promotion in the
school helps develop not only the mother tongue, but also children's abilities in the majority
school language (200 l: 18). Further, he underlines the negative effects of rejecting a child's
language in the school, by pointing to the integral links between identity and language: "When
they feel this rejection, they are much less likely to participate actively and confidently in
classroom instruction" (200 l : 20).
Considerations such as these motivated the Bilingual Education Project targeting Grades l-4
in three Govenunent Primary Schools in Jamaica. The progra1nme was endorsed by the Ministry
of Education and was conducted by the Jamaican Language Unit in the years 2004-2008. Car-
penter and Devon ish (20 12) contend that boys benefitted more from instruction in Creole than did
girls, perhaps due to the well-known trend for girls to favour more standard fom1s than boys.25
The MIT-Haiti initiative spearheaded by Michel DeGraff is based on the premise that
Kreyol, the language of 95% of the population must be the language of instruction in Ha itian
463
Miche/e M. Kermedy
education. The initiative promotes active learning in science, technology, engineering and
math (STEM) using Kreyol as the medium of instruction, and has included the hosting of
workshops for 250 teachers. Results have shown that Kreyol is indispensable for quality edu-
cation that can be accessible to all in Haiti (De Graff 2019: 80-81 ).
The benefits of literacy in the Ll cannot be denied. It has been claimed, however, that moving
from a policy of literacy in the L2, to literacy in the Ll would require vast resources for training
and the production of teaching materials, resulting in it being practically unreachable. Though
the draft 200 l Language Education Policy (LEP) of the Ministry of Education recognized JC
as a language in its own right, and accepted in theory the value of full bilingualism, transitional
bilingual ism was put forward as the policy approach. Transitional bilingualism recognizes the
mother tongue, and advocates its use in the classroom, but only insofar as it will promote the
acquisition of the L2. This is Craig's ( 1980) Monol iterate Bilingualism. It was advocated not
only on the basis of a lack of an adequate supply of literacy resources, but also on the basis of
political and soc ial attitudes towards the use of JC as a medium of instruction, as well as of the
absenc.e of a recognized orthography for JC26 (Ministry of Education LEP 200 l : 24).
These concerns apart, a close look at the realities of the language situation can inform
language pol icy. The type of bi lingua lism which prevails is successive, where children are
exposed to the L2 in a systematic way when they enter the public school system at age 3. In
successive bil ingualism there is most commonly a dom inant and a weaker language. In the
case of Creole environments, it is a given that the Creole is the dominant language.
A further consideration, as we saw earlier, is that different sociohistorical situations in these
communities wou ld have led to different linguistic outcomes, and within them, the post-Creole
continuum where speakers continue to acqu ire so-called standard forms to varying degrees. As
a resu lt, it does not seem possible to propose a single 'Creole solution' .
As we saw, in the case of Haiti, for instance, the linguistic distance between the lexifier,
French, and Haitian Creole is expected to be far greater than that between English and the
English-lexified Creoles. Further, there would be a range of expected differences between the
loca lized Engl ishes and the Cre.oles in different territories, given differences in sociohistorical
backgrounds. The significance of this is that the less the (linguistic) distance existing between
the Ll and the L2 in these situations, the less clear or distinct the delineations between them
will be in the minds of speakers. Carrington ( 1996: 52) po ints out that in a Creole-speaking
environment such as that in Trinidad, a learner faces a moving target, which remains ill-defined
due both to a lack of grammatical studies taking into account the variability in speech, and to
an inability to predict the mix of linguistic features existing in any one sociolinguistic envi-
ronment. This inabi lity prevents the assignment with more than gross probability of a specific
coherent grammar associated with a given sociolinguistic profi le (1996: 54).
Lacoste (2012) examines phonetic variation of classroom speech among 24 7-year-old
Jamaican chi ldren and their three teachers. She finds that her subjects fail to exhibit consist-
ency or retention of the patterns under analysis, indicating shifts between the phonological
systems of the two languages (20 12: 2), and suggests that their use of vowel quality is rem i-
niscent of the Jamaican continuum, in that "they show that they are active, productive contro l-
lers of a range of phonetic realizations which the language spectrum places at their disposal"
(2012: 2 10).
Youssef( l996: l l ) captures very clearly the basic educational issue arising from the Creole
continuum as far as the acquisition of the lexifier as a 2nd language:
since the lexicons of the contact codes are substantially shared and grammars are
equ ivalent at some points, equivalence is assumed in other areas, and individuals
464
ascribe Creole functions to standard English forms, fusing the two and blurring cut-
off points between them . .. . The lower down the educational ladder an individual is,
the more (s)he will be limited to the Creole, with limited and erroneous shi fts towards
standard English when the context demands it.
Further implications of variation in the input for education have been cited. The degree of
variation, for instance, has been taken to be a defining factor in the quality of input in 2nd
language acquisition: Paradis (20 11: 68) takes input quality to refer to "how much variation
exists in the form and use of morphosyntactic structures in a ch ild's lingu istic environment".
In such a case, the result of variation in the form and use of a structure in the input could lead
to "optionality [or 'errorful' usage] in the leamer's use and processing of that structure and/
or influence a leamer's w1derly ing linguistic representation for that structure, leading to non-
convergence with the monolingual grammar" (20 11: 68). Byers-Heinlein (2009) also provides
evidence27 that exposure to mixed language impedes English vocabu lary development at 18
and 24 months, and suggests that this may be due at least in part to increased difficulty in lan-
guage separation resulting from the mixed input.
Difficu lty in language separation also results in boundaries between the Ll and L2 being
blurred. Blurred boWidaries may mean that such children are often not able to correctly iden-
tify the code to which a fonn may be long, and therefore may not be able to successfully
manipulate codes. This in tum may cause speakers to be lieve that they are speaking the L2
when in fact they are not (see Kennedy 2017: 16, 57).
In such language situations, Language Awareness has been promoted as the preferred
way forward for the "un-blurring" of boundaries (Kennedy 2017: 253ft). Tom linson (2003:
251) defines Language Awareness as a mental attribute wh ich develops through paying
mot ivated attention to language in use . This attention enables language learners to gradu -
a lly gain insights into how languages work, and is a lso a pedagogic approach wh ich aims
to help learners to gain such insights. It is considered to constitute the professional knowl-
edge base of the L2 teacher. In effect, therefore, it is sa id to be the subject matter rel-
evant to language teachers (Andrews 2003: 82). This was the rationale of the Professional
Development of Primary School Teachers (PDPST) initiative, a workshop series in Jamaica
designed to enhance the language awareness of teachers. It was piloted in 2015, with a
model delivery in 2019 invo lving the training of trainers and the execution by them of
workshops for the teachers. 28 Feedback from teachers ind icated that the acceptance of Cre-
o le as a language was liberating, and the linguistic and pedagogical tools imparted, usefu l
(Kennedy et al. in preparation).
Advocates of this approach in a Creole context also include Craig ( 1999, 2006) for Carib-
bean students in territories where English is the official language; Nero and Ahmad (20 14) for
speakers of vernacu lar Englishes, inc luding in the Diaspora; and Bryan (20 I 0, 20 14), with a
focus on Jamaica.
25.5 Concluding remarks

The approach taken in this chapter has been to look to the sociohistorical backgrounds of
Creole communities for insights into their contemporary language situations, shown to be
comp lex, and characterized by variation, as predicted by the existence of Creole continua
there. An understanding of the complexities infonns aspects of the acquisition of languages in
these environments, which in their turn enlighten approaches to solutions in language educa-
tion. Given the variation foWid to exist, the Language Awareness approach is thought to be
465
Miche/e M. Kermedy
essential, regard less of whether the chosen policy is one where the language of instruction is
the Ll , the L2 or both.
Notes
As a reviewer points out, a notable exception is Naija or Nigerian Pidgin, one o f the native tongues
of (most) Nigerians.
2 I note that there has been a lack of consensus regarding the classification ofTok Pisin. Bickerton ( 1984:
187), for instance, rules it out as a "true Creole" since the circumstances giving rise to its emergence were
quite different from those that gave rise to what he considers to be true Creoles. As pointed out by a reviewer,
tbe Atlas of Pidgin and Creole Language Structures (APiCS) online refers to it as an " English-lexified
pidgin/creole". I do not enter the debate, but follow Mufwene and others in labelling it an 'expanded pidgin'.
3 This focus means that Creoles lexified by other European languages are excluded, and in particular,
Papiamenm, the languages ofSuriname and the Cape Verdean Creoles among others. Following is a
select list of references, for the interested reader. A wide-ranging account of the sociohistorical back-
ground o f the languages of Suriname is provided in Carlin and Arends (2002), and Migge (2003).
A brief overview of the contexts in which Papiamenm emerged may be found in Kouwenberg and
Muysken (1995) and a history o f its role in education, in Dijkhotl'and Pereira (20 10). With regard to
Cape Verdean Creoles, I refer the reader to work on their sociohistorical origins (Baptista 20 15), on
their strucmre (Baptists 2002), as well as on their acquisition (Pratas and Hyams 20 I0).
4 There are no known smdies of the acquisition of Hawaiian Creole. A brief sociohistorical account o f
the Creole is presented in the introduction of the following section, however, s ince it has feamred so
significantly in discussions centred around language acquisition and Creole genesis led primarily by
Bickerton (see Bickerton ( 1981 ), for example). These discussions are reviewed briefly in section 2. 1.4
' Acquisition in models of Creole genesis'.
5 A rather complete listing o f Creoles by lexifier language is presented by Chaudenson (2001: 14-16).
See also Mufwene (2006: 314) for an overview, again by lexifier language.
6 There has traditionally been a distinction between acquisition, a namral process, and teaming, a con-
scious process which implies the involvement of instmction of one form or the other (Krashen 198 1,
1982, among other publ ications). I speak here of acquisition, with the acknowledgement that the
classroom can accomplish both learning and acquisition s imultaneously to the extent that the target
language is used realistically (Krashen 1981: 47), and with the recognition that the automatization of
consciously learned knowledge is possible (Tmscott20 14: 142).
7 I refer the reader to the Neumann-Holzschuh and Schneider (2000) volume for discussions of di f-
fering distances from the lexifier, and in particular, Parkvall (2000) and Win ford (2000). In addition,
Singler ( 1995) provides a detailed review of demographic factors which determine the degree o f
' radicalness' o f a creole, as measured by its distance from the lexifier, indicating that Haitian Creole
is "consistently considered to be the most radical of French-lexifier creoles" (pg 220).
8 The continuum is discussed again in section 2.2 in terms of contemporary language situations. Note
also that Bryan (20 I0: 2-8) and Win ford ( 1997) trace in some detail the origins and development of
the notion o f the continuum in Creole studies. T he interested reader may wish to refer to these works
to supplement the discussions here.
9 Much of this section is based on Mufwene (2003).
I0 Chaudenson (200 I: 27) comments further that levels o f early integration are reflected today in the
very mixed phenotype o f the average Martiniquais.
11 These terms have been attributed to Stewart ( 1965). A full discussion of the acrolect, with particular
reference to the acrolect in Jamaica, may be found in Irvine-Sobers (2018: 1-23). Bailey ( 1966) is an
early transformational-generative account o f the syntax of the basilect, and Durrleman-Tame (2008),
an application of the Cartographic Approach. An account of mesolectal varieties which lie between
the basilect and the acrolect on the continuum may be found in Patrick ( 1999).
12 The abbreviations JC for Jamaican Creole and JE for Jamaican Engl ish will be used throughout.
13 For this insight, Meisel references a review of the literature in Koppe and Meisel ( 1995).
14 As we will see in the final section on 2nd language acquisition, this will have particular consequences
for the acquisition of the official language by Creole-speaking children.
15 A rather comprehensive review oflabov's 196 1 seminal smdy of variation in Martha 's Vineyard may
be found in the Meyerholf (2006) text Introducing Sociolinguistics, pgs 161f.
466
16 See, for example Meyerhoff and Nagy (2008) and Siege I ( 1997).
17 Here, we are reminded of the caution by De Graft· (2005) against Creole Exceptionalism, as well as
Ansaldo and Matthews's (2007: 3) call to integrate the study of creolization phenomena into the study
of language variation and language creation.
18 Meade is not committed to this finding, however. He presents it as requiring " further analysis for
confirmation" (pg 125).
19 De Lisser et al. (20 16), based also on her 20 15 data, analyzes subject omission by the children, and
uses this as empirical support for the " Privilege of the Root" hypothesis and for Rizzi 's Truncation
Hypothesis ( 1992 among others), w ith a suggested revised approach incorporating analyses made
possible by Spell Out.
20 A Mean Length of Utterance (MLU) count is a measure for the development of language. It may be
calculated by counting the total number of morphemes or words in a sample o f utterances and divid-
ing that total by the number of utterances being sampled. lt is expressed as a percentage. It is consid-
ered to be an indicator of the stage the child is at, and is considered far more reliable than age since it
is well known that normally developing children develop at di fferent rates and so reach milestones at
very different ages.
2 1 In addition to this smdy, Stewart (20 I0) reports on the comprehension of wh- questions by 2-year-olds
in urban Kingston (Stewart began publishing as Kennedy in 2013 ). The smdy on which the 20 I0 arti-
cle was based was a pilot for the substantive 20 17 work.
22 The project received funding from the NSF. Other details may be found at the NSF s ite at www.nsf.
gov/awardsearch/showAward? AWO_ID= 1548 147.
23 In addition to this study, Adone and Vainikka ( 1999) analyze the use of wh- question-asking by the
same children used in the 2004 study, as well as three groups of children aged 3; I0 to 8;7 interviewed
under experimental conditions.
24 I refer the reader to Migge et al. (20 I0) which provides a detailed appraisal of educational pro-
grammes across the Caribbean and beyond which have attempted to honour the first language in the
education system. In the article which opens the volume, they outline the issues involved; this will
provide an excellent background.
25 See Cheshire (2003) for discussion of this trend.
26 I note that subsequent to the publication of the Draft LEP, the Jamaican Language Unit (JLU) o f
the Department of Language, Linguistics & Philosophy developed and has been popularizing the
Cassidy-JLU Orthography for JC.
27 Note that Byers-Heinlein indicates that these results are preliminary. Note also that her methodology
did not involve direct observation of parental mixing, but on mixing as reported by parents.
28 The PDPST workshops were funded by the Ministry o f Education, Youth and Information and a New
Initiatives Grant awarded by the Office of the Principal at the UWJ, Mona. The feasi bility of opening
them up to the wider education community is being explored.
Further reading
Arends, J. 2005. Demographic Factors in the Formation ofSranan. In The Early Stages ofCreolization,
edited by Jacques Arends, 233-285. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: University o f Pennsylvania Press.
This article provides a detailed example of how sociohistorical considerations may be used by the
creolist to inform issues of Creole genesis.
Adamson, H. D. 2009. lnterlanguage Variation in Theoretical and Pedagogical Perspective. New York
and London: Routledge Taylor & Francis.
This work provides general background on the study of variation in the speech of native and non-
native speakers, on theories of linguistic variation, and considers implications of this for the teaching
o f language.
Robertson, I. and Simmons-McDonald, H. (eds.). 20 14. Education Issues in Creole and Creole-Influenced
Vernacular Contexts. Kingston: UW! Press.
This volume honours the contribution of Denis Craig to language education in Creole and vernacular
contexts. It covers issues associated with the language situations in the Caribbean, as well as the chal-
lenges facing the Creole-speaking child and their teachers in the Caribbean and in the diaspora as they
acquire English as a second language.
467
Miche/e M. Kermedy
Related topics
Indian Ocean Creoles; Pidgins and Creoles and the Language Facu lty; Creoles, Education and
Policy; Identity Politics; Caribbean, South and Central America; Australia and the South West
Pacific; North America and Hawai' i
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26
MULTILINGUALISM
AND THE STRUCTURE
OF CODE-MIXING
Eeva Sippola
26.1 Introduction
This chapter exam ines code-mixing from a strucrural perspective in multi lingual settings.
Code-mixing is here understood as the mixing of two or more varieties in the same utterance.
It may happen between two distinct languages as well as between dialects, registers, or styles.
Code-mixing has mostly been srudied in spoken contexts, but more recently, also in w ritten
texts (e.g. Sebba et al. 20 12).
Multilingual ism is a prerequisite for code-mixing, as speakers need to be able to access sev-
eral repertoires in order to create mixed codes. There are different levels and types of language
mixing, from borrowing in relatively monolingual contexts to code-mixing that is produced
by fluent bilinguals and to stable mixed languages. These reflect different strategies and com-
municative purposes, resu lting in a variety of strucrural outcomes (Matras 2009). The aim of
this chapter is to give an overview of the strucrural pattems of code-mix ing w ith examples
from difl'erent mu ltil ingual settings around the world.
The terms code-mixing and code-switching are often used interchangeably, especially when
the fonnal, grammatical, and lexical properties of codes drawing from several languages are under
srudy. Muysken (2000: I) uses code-mixing to refer to cases that show evidence of morpho-
syntactic and/or lexical material from two different languages in one sentence. By itself, this defi-
nition excludes the important domains of semantic, stmcrural, and phonological interference also
found in contact settings. Code-switching, on the other hand, is used "for the rapid succession
of several languages in a single speech event" (Muysken 2000: I), and is understood mainly
as taking place across sentences or clause boundaries. Much of the research on code-switching,
however, uses the tem1 in a general sense, overlapping w ith the definition of code-mixing used in
this chapter. Generally speaking, siruational or domain-based code-switching means that speakers
choose a specific code according to the siruation or context they happen to be in, while addressee-
based code-switching has to do with who the speaker is talking to. In addition, identity, group
belonging, etc. can have an effect on the choice of the codes and/or switching between them.
As circumstances and motivations for multi lingualism and code-mixing vary greatly
around the world, code-m ixing practices have to be contexrualized historically and soc ially,
while also taking into consideration the properties of the languages in contact. Consider,
for example, European settings where long-tenn bilingualism is the norm and supported by
474
Multilingualism, structure of code-mixing
state policies, such as Belgium (French-Dutch), Finland (Finnish-Swedish), and Switzerland

(German-French-Ital ian-Romansh). ln Africa, Asia, and Latin America, colonial languages
are often used as official languages and co-exist with local, indigenous languages. In addition,
many migrant groups in Europe and the Americas are bilingual in their heritage language and
the language of their new environment. However, mixing can also happen at a d ialectal level
or on a creole-lexifier continuum. Speakers of dialects often have access to a standard code
to varying degrees, resulting in bid ialectalism, as for example in Gennan-speaking countries
or in Italy. Similarly, in many creole contexts, such as in the Caribbean, creole speakers use
the lexifier in many language domains. In these varied and at times complex sociolinguistic
settings, speakers have d ifferent attitudinal and ideological positions that might influence the
meaning-making processes in code-mixing. ln some commw1ities, most speakers are bil ingual
and mix codes frequently, so that it is a normal mode of discourse; in others, code-mixing
is used only in specific contexts for conveying special communicative mean ings. Finally,
code-mixing d iffers significantly from diglossic situations where languages or varieties are
fimctionally compartmentalized into different social domains. While in diglossia language
selection is determined by community nonns, code-mixing is an individual phenomenon at the
level of the speaker (Bullock & Toribio 2009: 6).
Other terms and concepts related to code-mixing are borrowing, mixed languages, slangs
and jargons, and Ll transfer in second language acqu isition (SLA). These differ from code-
mixing not so much at the level of contact processes, but in what perspective we take on the
language system and the role of the input and target languages. Borrowing is an outcome of
code-mixing at the level of the language system (cf. Section 3). Mixed languages (as well as
p idgins and creoles) are stable codes, whi le code-mixing is a situational practice (cf. Sec-
tion 6). Likewise, slangs and jargons often show processes that overlap with code-mixing,
but their input is ma inly lexical and comes from severa l languages.' Transfer in SLA can be
similar to code-mixing in some ways; in SLA, however, the aim is to reach a target language
at the individual level, while the mixed code is a target on its own.
26.2 Code-mixing research and critical issues over time

Code-mixing was recognized as a common way of speaking in bilingual communities in stud-
ies from the 1960s onward (e.g. Gumperz 1964; Clyne 1967). Since then, code-mixing research
has grown into its own subfield of linguistics, which includes various perspectives and meth-
odologies (cf. Gardner-Chloros 2009: 10). ln the sociolinguistic tradition, the general focus is
on investigating the functional and social motivations for why speakers switch between lan-
guages, usually in fu ll clauses or larger grammatical constructions (e.g. Gwnperz 1982; Helier
1988; Stell & Yakpo 20 15). Work in the pragmatic tradition generally relies on identifying the
meanings brought about by code-switching in conversations (e.g. Auer 1995). There is also a
grammatical tradition (e.g. Poplack 1980; Muysken 2000; Myers-Scotton 2002) of examin-
ing the combinations and constraints in code-mixing and the ru les that motivate their occur-
rence. Finally, the psycholinguistic tradition, often using experimental methods, addresses
how bilingual mixed data is stored and accessed in the cognitive system (cf. Kootstra 20 15).
These traditions have followed largely separate ways, although the need for holistic insights
and research has been articu lated (e.g. Gardner-Chloros 2009; Backus 20 15).
Early studies on code-mixing focused on proving the non-randomness of the code-switched
utterances by proposing grammatical constraints that could be empirically tested on a nwnber
of language situations (e.g. Timm 1975; Poplack 1980; Sankoff & Poplack 1981) or by using
theoretica l syntactic principles to explain code-mixing data (e.g. DiSciullo et al. 1986). ln the
475
Eeva Sippola
1990s, the Matrix Language Frame mode l (Myers-Scotton 1993, 2002) became a prominent
framework for studying code-switching. Based on formalist principles, the linguistic com-
ponents in code-mixing are divided between a Matrix Language (ML) responsible for the
grammar and system morphemes and an Embedded Language (EL) representing the lexicon,
and predictions about the switching points are made. The MLF model has seen several further
developments (e.g., the Four-Morpheme Model of morpheme classification; Myers-Scotton &
Jake 2009). A lthough this approach has been criticized due to its rigid fonnalist principles
and divisions, it brought the study of code-mixing to a deeper exp lanatory level, connecting
structural approaches to psycho linguistic and sociolinguistic ones (Muysken 2000: 18). It still
remains an influential paradigm in the study of code-mixing.
The predictive power of these approaches has been cha llenged over the years by providing
evidence of violations to the constraints and principles proposed based on individual case stud-
ies. It has become evident that code-mixing outcomes can differ in systematic ways depending
on the setting they occur in, leading towards the deve lopment of a typology of code-switching.
Muysken (2000) identified three distinct patterns of m ixing: insertion of material from an
L2 into an Ll base language, alternation between two codes, and congruent lexicalization of
codes into a shared structure. A fourth strategy, back-flagging, where Ll material is inserted
into an L2 base language, was later added to the model (Muysken 2013a). These strategies
show that d ifferent types of lexical and structural m ixing are affected by typologica l distance,
the properties of the languages involved, and sociolinguistic factors (see Section 4).
Issues of the competence of individual speakers, typological differences, and sociolinguistic
parameters are of central importance for the explanations ofcode-mixing phenomena at the struc-
tural level (cf. Gardner-Chloros 2009: 91). For example, Matras (2009) offered an integrated,
functional approach that combines language processing requirements, communication goals, and
conununity-level practices. In addition, there are probabilistic approaches based on the idea that
language practices shape code-mixing. Such studies are based on the variationist framework
(e.g. Poplack & Dion 2012; Torres Cacoullos & Travis 2015, 2016) or usage-based approaches
(e.g. Crofl2003; Backus 20 15). In the usage-based approaches, the integration of code-switching
into a given base language is identifiable on the basis of frequencies of occurrence and speakers'
acceptability judgements. They try to answer questions about the motivations for code-mixing
through selection (i.e., how a change initiates and is propagated) and entrenchment (i.e., how fur
a long the change is). Experimenta l and computational methods for studying code-mixing have
a lso gained attention in the field (cf. Gullberg et al. 2009; Toribio 2017).
Case studies and more theoretical accounts have been published about code-mixing, involving
a number of language pairs, speaker types, and sociolinguistic sett ings. Over the decades, it has
become clear that code-mixing does not occur randomly but rather follows regular patterns and
occurs at specific switching points. The different linguistic levels where mixing occurs, as well as
its different contextual motivations and conununicative purposes, are also largely acknowledged.
However, there is less agreement as to the general properties of the process, and none of these
structural or explanatory models has received universal acceptance. Different approaches highlight
different explanations, based on sociol inguistic, typological, pragmatic, and cognitive factors.
26.3 Heavy borrowing and code-mixing

One prom inent view sees code-mixing on a diachronic continuum with respect to borrow-
ing and convergence, where loans into one language start off as synchronic code-mixes that
gradua lly, through diachron ic change, become established as part of the system. T he degree of
integration of an item into a linguistic system, and the fact that borrowings start w ith bil ingual
476
speakers but are later used also by monolinguals within the recipient language's system, often
d ifferentiate code-mixing from borrowing. Code-mixing usually takes the form of overt, unin-
tegrated elements from different language varieties, while borrowing is usually integrated into
the recipient linguistic system, thus extending the vocabulary with new items. In code-mixing,
inserting elements into a clause often has a symbo lic function, e.g., expressing a cu lturally
mixed identity (Muysken 2000: 69).
An interesting case is presented by languages that show heavy borrowing, i.e. structures
that somehow resemble code-mixing due to the great nwnber of borrowed items that have
been incorporated into the language. Languages that present heavy borrowing, and are occa-
sionally miscategorized as mixed (Bakker 2003: 121 ), include Chamorro (e.g. Stolz 2003),
Maltese (Drewes 1994; Stolz 2003), Spanish-influenced Quechua (Hout & Muysken 1994),
and Tetun Di li (Williams-van Klinken et a l. 2002; Hajek 2006).
Chamorro, spoken in the Marianas, underwent three centuries of intense colonial con-
tact with Spanish. These languages co-existed in a diglossic situation, and at least part of the
population was bilingual in the indigenous language and Spanish (Rodriguez-Ponga 2009).
As a result, about 55% of the Chamorro lexicon is derived from Spanish (Stolz 2003: 290),
although the figures might differ according to text type.
(I) Chamorro (Stolz 2003: 272)

Ya kada man-risibi ~ s1empre kada sim{ma nuebu magaga=hu
and each tNDEF.o-get I SG. ABS FUT each week new dress=PSR. I SG
'And every time I get paid I' ll have a new outfit every week.'
In (I), the underlined portions show that the majority of the lexical matter is derived from
Spanish. Not only nouns but also other types of content words have been borrowed into
Chamorro. The meanings and func.tions are relatively c lose to the original Spanish, although
the items follow Chamorro inflection and generally conform to Chamorro phonology (Stolz
2003: 272). ln addition, functional elements were borrowed from Spanish into Chamorro.
These include conjunctions, the comparative and superlative markers, the indefinite article,
pronouns, grammatical gender marking, the habitual past marker, and the irrealis and future
markers, such as siempre in (I) (Bowen 1971; Pagel2010: 146-147). These borrowings can be
considered to be part of the more core areas of grammar than lexical borrowings. However, the
degree of mixing is not significant enough to have transformed the basic structures of the lan-
guage: the Hispanization of the grammar affected mostly optional elements, and Chamorro's
grammatical system remains essentially Austronesian (Stolz 2003).
Similarly, Tetun Dili, a lingua franca spoken in East Timor, presents massive lexical bor-
rowing from Portuguese, the eo-official language of the country. Many Tetw1 Dili speakers
are multilingual in local languages and Portuguese (Hajek 2006: 166-167). The frequency of
Portuguese loans is estimated at more than 60% in complex, high-level docwnents, such as the
country's constitution, whi le in spoken discourse, the nwnbers are at most 30% (Hajek 2006:
169). ln (2), the forms and meanings for servisu 'to work' (appearing as part of a nominal
compound with nain 'master' to mean ' hard worker'), the adverbial negator nunka 'never' ,
and the verb deskansa ' to rest' are borrowings from Portuguese.
(2) Tetw1 Dili (Williams-van Klinken et al. 2002: 88)

Servisu !Will ne nunka deskansa
work master this never rest
'This diligent worker never rests.'
477
Eeva Sippola
The borrowed e lements include vocabulary items, especially in the forma l registers, and
a lso phrases with full Portuguese grammatical agreement (e.g. primeira klase 'grade one'),
large numbers, greetings, and idioms (e.g. sentidus pezames 'I'm sorry for your loss').
However, beyond these cases, Tetun Dili is resistant to morphologica l borrowing, and gen-
erally it is ma inly the Portuguese lex ical items that are affected by borrowed functional
e lements (Hajek 2006: 173). Morphology can be taken as a defining factor for establishing
the genetic affi liation of the language, thus plac ing Tetun Dil i firmly in the Austronesian
family tree.
In both Chamorro and Tetun Di li, the historical situations of contact and bilingualism moti-
vated extensive mixing practices in the past, which over time have converted into borrowings.
In the case ofChamorro, the bilingual ism was not extensive (or meaningful) enough to secure
the maintenance of Spanish in the Chamorro community after the colonial period, beyond the
Spanish component that was integrated into the Chamorro language as borrowings. Although
showing heavy borrowing from Portuguese, Tetun Dili is also clearly Austronesian in its struc-
ture and affi liation. The situation differs from Chamorro, however, in that Portuguese is still
used among certain soc ial groups, meaning that code-mixing processes may sti ll be ongoing,
a lthough such practices still need to be confirmed and analyzed in future stu dies.
26.4 Types of structural mixing

The following formal properties of different types of code-mixing strategies and the social
conditions of the multilingual settings where these emerge are presented in this section: inser-
tional and alternational code-mixing, congruent lexica lization, and back-flagging (Muysken
2000, 20 13a).
26.4.1 Insertional code-mixing

In insertional code-mix ing, one language determines the overall structure into which constitu-
ents from another language are inserted. Categorical or semantic congruence, or equivalence
between the inserted element and the properties of the slot into which it is inserted, constrain
the process (Muysken 2000: 95, 230). For insertional mixing, it is common for the inserted
e lements to be single constituents or fixed phrases, nested in a grammatical structure of the
other code, often se lected elements, such as objects or complements instead of adjuncts, and
often morphologically integrated if the recip ient language's typology requires it (Muysken
2000: 64). Insertional code-mixing regu larly occurs in asymmetric situations where speakers
are more proficient in one of the languages, such as with heritage languages or (post)colonial
linguistic settings (Gardner-Chloros 2009: I 06).
In (3), which comes from a heritage language situation, Turkish-Dutch mixing has Turk-
ish as the grammatical base language. The content morphemes are from Dutch, and they are
morphologically integrated into the Turkish sentence with the adjectiva l markers -/i and -lu.
(3) Turkish-Dutch (Backus 1996: I 02)

$6vle
•
hoek-li, sclwin vorm-lu
such comer-ADJ slanted shape-ADJ
'With a corner like this, with a slanted shape'
In (4), the inserted Spanish e lement is nested in a Quechua structure, where the locative
expression 'there' and the verb 'we arrive' belong to the same clause. The colonial language
478
and the indigenous language are spoken in Bolivia, in a postcolon ial situation with asymmetric
power relations.
(4) Bolivian Quechua- Spanish (Muysken 2000: 63)

Chay-ta /as dos de la noche-ta chaya-mu-yku.
that-AC the (WO of the night-AC arrive-CJS-1 PL
'There at two in the morning we arrive.'
Material from one language is inserted into the structure of the base language. However,
it is often hard to determine which language is the base, and different criteria may be applied,
ranging from discourse factors to morpheme counting, the code of the ma in verb, governing
mode ls, etc. (Muysken 2000: 64-68). These have specific challenges and have to be carefully
defined case by case, for example, by examining the ma in language of the conversation for
the d iscourse factor, or by focusing on selected elements of the c lause and their properties for
more structural-functional and quantitative approaches. As to the challenges, one should keep
in mind that the criterion of morpheme counting, for example, is heavily dependent on the
typology of the languages involved. Naturally, highly isolating or analytic languages will get
a lower morpheme count than synthetic languages showing inflection. Similarly, although the
functions of the main verb of the clause in assign ing the semantic roles and detern1ining the
state or event are prominent, it should be kept in mind that verbs can be borrowed and inserted
into a structure with the recipient language's functional morphemes. In addition, because
many bilingual communities are experiencing rapid soc ial and linguistic changes, the base
language is not necessari ly a lways the same for the whole community but can vary according
to various extra linguistic factors.
26.4.2 Alternational code-mixing

The second code-mixing type is alternation. In this type, different languages occur alternately,
each with its own structure, with the switch point being located at a major syntactic bound-
ary. Several constituents are switched in non-nested mixing, where there is no structural rela-
tion between the sequences. Furthennore, the switches are often long and complex (Muysken
2000: 96-97). At exactly which point an alternation takes place is governed by both gram-
matical constraints and interactional princ iples. A well-known example in (5) shows how the
speaker starts a sentence in English and switches to Spanish at the adjoining conjunction
y 'and' , mixing long stretches of English and Spanish. Each language stretch has its own
language-specific syntax and morphology, with ne ither language providing an overall struc-
tural frame for the utterance.
(5) English-Spanish code-switching (Poplack 1980: 594)

Sometimes I'll start a sentence in Spanish y termino en esp01iol.
and finish in Spanish
Alternation is typical of stable bilingual communities (Gardner-Chloros 2009: l 06). In the

Puerto Rican commun ity studied by Pop lack ( 1980), the close contacts with Puerto Rico and
a back-and-forth pattem of migration between Puerto Rico and the United States have created
a situation where Spanish is ma intained as a 'mother tongue' alongside English, the language
of the receiving society. The commw1ity did not shift towards Engl ish but showed stable bi lin-
gual language use w1til the third generation. 2
479
Eeva Sippola
Clause-peripheral elements, such as adverbial phrases and d islocated constituents, are

frequently involved in alternational patterns (Muysken 2000: 230), as in the code-mixing
between the Austral ian Aboriginal language Gurindji and the creole language Kriol in the
1970s, which later gave rise to a stable mixed code (see Section 6). In (6), a dislocated dative-
marked nominal adjunct is eo-referenced with a pronoun, while in (7), the adverbial demon-
strative kuya is switched.
(6) Gurindji-Kriol (Meakins 2011: 133)

gib-it langa 1111 murlu-wu Malingu-wu
g1ve-TR LOC 3SG thiS-OAT NAME-OAT
'Give it to this to Mal ingu.'
(7) Gurindji-Kriol (Meakins 2011: 134)

put-im-dan kuya na, Jampin
put-TR-down thus FOC KINSHIP.TERM
' Put it down like this, Jampin.'
Altemational switches are also often flagged with correction and se lf-repair (Muysken
2000: 102), as in (8), where the hesitation particle eh marks the switch from French to Dutch.
(8) Brussels Dutch-French (Treffers-Daller 1994: 209)

Et
and
comme
like
r;a
that
on
one
est
is
bien
really
eh
H
.
-oerfect
perfect
t\lleetalig.
bil ingual
'And like that one is really eh perfectly bilingual. '
Discourse marker switching is often very similar to a lternation, as discourse markers are
seen as pertaining to the periphery of the c lause. ln (9), a Basque speaker mentions the incor-
rectness of code-switching and, while doing so, accidentally introduces the Spanish discourse
markers hombre 'well' and o sea ' I mean'. The discourse markers appear in an otherwise
flowing Basque turn.
(9) Basque-Spanish (Lantto 2015: 757)

Hombre jatorra da erabiltzea euskarak berez dituen
well good.OET COP.3SG use.NOM.OET Basque.ERG itself.INST AUX.POSS
esanwldeak. 0 sea, adibidez o sea hori ez esatea.
expression.PL l.mean example.tNSTR l.mean that NEG say.NoM.OET
'Well the good way is to use the expressions that are originally Basqu e. I mean, for
example, not to say that "I mean".'
26.4.3 Congruent lex icalization

In congruent lexica lization (Muysken 2000: 122), two languages share the grammatical struc-
ture, either fully or partially. The lexical items come from different languages and are selected
seemingly randomly, and the languages are assumed to partly share their processing systems.
There is no dominant base language, and back-and-forth switches are frequent. Switching of
selected elements, such as prepositions and objects, is typ ical because the governing elements
and their restrictions are largely shared between the languages (Muysken 2000: 132).
480
Th is type of code-switch ing tends to occur between typologically and lexica lly similar lan-
guages, for example, between a dialect and a standard. However, sim ilarity between languages
can also take other forms. For example, with English and Dutch, only lexical congruence takes
p lac.e, since the lexicon is relatively sim ilar but the grammatical structure differs (e.g., word
order). In the case of English and Spanish mixing, the lexicons differ but the overall linear
equ ivalence is simi lar enough for lexical congmenc.e to happen (Muysken 2000: 146). Con-
gment lexica lization accommodates much of the problematic code-switching data that ' all-or-
none' structural models stumbled over because the sim ilarities can occur at various structural
and lexical levels.
Sociolinguistically speaking, it is typical for congment lexicalization to invo lve languages
of roughly equal prestige, or to occur when there is no tradition of overt language separation.
Creole continuum situations frequently present congruent lexical ization. In ( l 0), code-mixing
between Nigerian Pidgin and English shows that because the forms are often very close to
each other, it is occasionally difficu lt to distinguish between the languages. Nigerian Pidgin
is spoken by several mill ion people across southern Nigeria and in urban areas throughout
the country. Some of its L2 varieties are heavily influenced by its lexifier, English, the official
language of the country. As the languages or codes in contact can be very similar or even iden-
tical, homophonous diamorphs, i.e. morphological elements equal in their phonologica l shape,
and morphologica l integration are other features that often characterize congruent lexica liza-
tion (Muysken 2000: 133- 134). This means that there can be significant nwnbers of intemledi-
ate forms that m ix material from both codes.
(10) English-Nigerian Pidgin (Agbo & Plag 2018)

I'm sure W na the guy spoil
•
that room
I'm Sure COMP FOC the guy Spo il.PST that room
' I am sure that it's the guy who mined that room.'
Congment lexicalization is also found in the mixing of Afrikaans (or Cape Dutch) and
Dutch in the letters of the early 20th century in ( ll ). Afrikaans replaced standard Dutch in
South Africa at the turn of the 20th century, and it was fully standardized within a short time
span (it is one of the few contact languages to have done so). Writing in Afrikaans was nev-
ertheless variable, and the data presents several code-mixing practices with Dutch (Deumert
2004).
( l l) Dutch-Afrikaans (Deumert2004: 256)

zaterdag hee.,O ons bazaar[,] dan ver wacht wij veel menschen [} zij hebben mos een
plan om hier een ge meenten te stigt [,} maar ofsij het zal regcht krijgen wee/ ik niet
'we are having a bazaar on Saturday, then we expect many people. They have indeed a
p lan to establish a congregation here, but I don't know if they will get this right.'
In addition, second-generation migrant groups also typically show congment lexica liza-
tion, such as Spanish-English bilinguals in certain commw1ities in the US, as in ( 12). Here, the
switch bow1daries do not always correspond to the clause boundaries, but the overall structure
of each language is similar enough for these elements to appear in rapid succession.
(12) English-Spanish (Poplack 1980: 589)

Why make Carol sentarse atras pa' que eve1ybody has to move
sit.REFL at-back so that
481
Eeva Sippola
pa' que se salga?

for that REFL get.out.SBJV
'Why make Carol sit in the back so that everybody has to move for her to get out?'
Mixed co llocations and idioms a lso appear in congruent lexicalization, as in ( 13), where the
content words are Dutch, and the frame and function words are Sranan, or in verb+ noun co l-
locations such as gi voorlichting 'to give infonnation' or taki lering 'to leam a lesson ', where
a Sranan verb is combined with a Dutch noun (Muysken 2000: 14 1).
(13) Dutch-Sranan (Bolle 1994: 97)

1111 Q pak a draad op
I FUT pick the thread up
'I will take over.'
26.4.4 Back -flagging

Back-flagging is the insertion of heritage language elements into the maJ On ty language
(Muysken 2013a). In back-flagging, the grammatical and lexical properties of the language
that the speakers have shifted to form the base language of the clause. Flagging e lements from
the original community language are inserted into this frame. The elements can be, for exam-
ple, discourse markers, greetings, kinship tenns, or other elements that are connected with the
heritage identity of the community. The elements are nomlally clause-peripheral, single items
that are simple and frequent (Muysken 2013a: 713).
In (14), from a Cajun nove l from Louisiana, the e lements grand-pere 'grandfather ' , com-
ment r;a va 'how is it going' and r;a va 'it's ok' are from the heritage language, French, and the
greetings are inserted at the periphery of the Engl ish utterance. The Cajw1 French community
has mainly shifted to English.
( 14) English-French in Louisiana (Gautreaux 1998: 10, cited in DuBois & Horvath 2002: 276)
In a minute his grand-pere appeared in the open door. . ..
grandfather
Hey boy. Comment ~Ya va?
'How is it going?'
Cava. Why don t you rewire this place and get some regular light switches?
'It's okay.'
In ( 15), from Metro Man ila, Philippines, where English prevails in certain social groups
and domains, the Tagalog discourse marker na 'already' appears at the right periphery of the
English clause. The ma in language of Metro Mani la is Tagalog, but in some contexts, simi larly
to a heritage language, it serves to express local identities.
( 15) English-Tagalog (Bautista 2004: 230)

After my meeting, I'll go home na.
already
Many sim ilar cases are found in mu ltiethnolects in urban contexts in Europe. However, the
identities assoc iated with certain items have transcended the original ethnic connotations and
moved towards more mixed identities and social affiliations.
482
265 Strategies and constraints for code-mixing

The code-mixing patterns presented in Section 4 occur in different mu ltil ingual settings,
involve severa l strategies for combining material from different codes, and differ in how the
base language is determined, as shown in the overview in Table 26-l . Different combina-
tions of these factors favour particular mixing patterns but do not exclude the use of others
(Muysken 20 l3a: 7 14).
Beyond these extralinguistically defined factors, typological similarity and grammatical
factors also inftuenc.e m ixing patterns. Although almost anyth ing can be mixed, some items
are more easily prone to mixing, and certain structural and categorical constraints favour or
d isfavour it. For example, function words are not easily switched, because languages show
considerable variation in this class of words, and thus less categorical equ ivalence that wou ld
allow for switching them. In addition, they score low on the specificity scale (Matras 2009:
133-134).
Matras (2009: 133) presents an overview of different hierarchies that have been proposed
in the code-mixing literature for different language pairs. As a general outcome, it is clear that
nouns rank high on these hierarchies, while pronouns rank low. This can be explained by the
fact that nouns, which be long to an open word class, are less tightly integrated into grammati-
cal subsystems than functiona l items, thus making them more accessible for borrowing and
code-mixing (cf. Win ford 2003: 5 1). Similarly, Backus ( 1996) identified specificity and aware-
ness as factors promoting insertional switches. Specificity is typical of w1ique referents, such
as nouns, and thus supports the high placing of nouns in mix ing hierarchies. Awareness, on
the other hand, relates to words with more transparent meanings. New products and concepts
expressed by nouns are also easily transferable, whi le pronouns often do not fill a lexical gap
and are rare ly associated with a specific context of interaction, and thus present little semantic
motivation for switching to the other code (Matras 2009: 134). According to Matras (2009:
134-136), other categories are more difficult to rank in the hierarchy in relation to each other,
and their avai lability for switching probably depends on both language-dependant structural
aspects and functional motivations. For example, the placement of verbs on the hierarchies
shows considerable variation. This can be explained by the fact that a verb's structural com-
p lexity is highly language dependent. From a functional perspective, the predication sets the
base language for the mixed code, and different strategies for integrating verbs depend on the
languages participating in code-mixing and the strategies avai lable in the speech community,
i.e. the creativity that speakers have to use their multilingual repertoire in mixing situations.
Table 26.1 Sociolinguistic factors and strategies in code-mixing
Code-mixing pauern Sociolinguistic factors Proficiency Strategies

Insertion Asymmetric power relations, Low proficiency L I as the base language
postcolonial settings
Alternation Political competition High bilingual Universal principles for
proficiency combinations
Congruent Relaxed language norms, High bilingual Shared properties of L I
lexicalization closely knit network, long proficiency and L2
contact
Back-flagging Language shift in second or High proficiency L2 as the base language
third generation in L2
Source: Adapted from Muysken (20 l3a: 720)
483
Eeva Sippola
26.6 Mixed langu ages
26.6.1 Code-mixing and mixed languages

The code-mixing patterns discussed so far are common in multil ingual settings, but they are gen-
erally not stable varieties. Mixed languages, on the other hand, are stable varieties that fom1 a
subclass of contact languages. They result from the fusion of two or more identifiable sources
and present a split in the sources of their morphemes, which remains visible in their synchronic
make-up. These splits can challenge theories of genetic classification and contact-induced change.
The category of 'mixed languages' presents considerable typological variation that cannot
be predicted from the sociohistorical contexts in which they emerged or continue to be spoken
in (Matras 2000). Mixed languages range from varieties that display primari ly lexical mixing,
such as Angloromani, Ma'a, and Media Lengua, to languages that have significant amounts of
structural resources from two languages, such as Michi f, Gurindj i Kriol, and Light Warlpiri
(Meakins 20 13b: 164-165). The mixing of structural resources can also vary, from relatively
c lear splits to more complicated patterns (Bakker 20 17). So far, around forty languages from
diverse backgrounds have been identified as "mixed" (Meakins 2013b).
Code-mixing has been proposed to be an early stage of mixed language formation (Auer
1999, 20 14; Croft 2003; Myers-Scotton 2003; Meakins 201 1), although not all experts agree
with this view (Bakker 2003). Well-known cases where the path from code-m ixing to a sta-
ble mixed language has been documented are Gurindji Kriol (McConvell & Meakins 2005)
and Light Warlp iri (O'Shannessy 2011). ln these cases, young speakers stabilized their par-
ent's code-mixing of Kriol with Gurindj i and Warlpiri, respectively. However, the origins of
most mixed languages are not well understood, and whether code-mixing lies at their source
remains an issue of debate.
There is a general consensus that a severe social upheaval is an important factor in the
formation of m ixed languages. They typically emerge in situations of commun ity bi lingua lism
and in relation to the expression of identity, reflecting e ither a new social category or an anc.es-
tral group membership, often as a conscious linguistic operation led by a group of speakers.
The roles of the different languages that participate in their fom1ation are sociolinguistically
diverse, ranging from limited presence in the community to full bilingualism, and from lan-
guage shift to language ma intenanc.e situations (see Table 26.2).
26.6.2 Structural types of mixed languages

Mixed languages can be classified into intertwined languages, languages with a mixed lexicon,
and converted languages (Bakker 2003; for further subc lassifications, see Bakker 20 17).
Table 26.2 Sociolinguistic factors and strategies in mixed languages
Type ofmixed language Socialinguistic factors Strategies

L !-oriented mixed languages, Lexifier language with a very limited Ll base language
e.g. Media Lengua presence in the community
Compromise mixed languages, Bilingual senings with a clear division LIIL2 base language
e.g. Michif between the two languages
L2-oriented mixed languages, 'New' language provides essential L2 base language
e.g. Gurindji Kriol components through language shift
Source: Adapted from Muysken (2013a: 720)
484
Intertwined languages have grammatical morphemes and genera l predication strucrure

from one language, and stems or free lexical morphemes from another, thus showing simi-
lar patterns to insertional code-m ixing (Bakker 2017: 229). Examples of this group include
Grammar-Lexicon (G-L) languages, such as Bilingual Navajo (Schaengo ld 2004) and Media
Lengua (literally 'half language' or 'halfway language'). Variation among intertwined lan-
guages is found mostly in the class of free grammatical morphemes, meaning that they do
not a ll share exactly the same make-up or division between codes (Bakker 2003: 118, 20 17).
Media Lengua has Spanish words inserted into Quechua grammar, as in ( 16), where the
Spanish items are embedded in the Quechua morpho-syntactic frame. Virrually all Quechua
roots in Media Lengua, including core vocabulary, have been replaced by Spanish words,
which differentiates it from other varieties of Quechua that contain many Spanish words
(Muysken 20 13b). The word order is OV from Quechua, whi le Spanish is mostly described as
an VO language. Media Lengua is used as the language of da ily life in communities that are
located between the Spanish-speaking and Quechua-speaking areas in Ecuador. It is the first
language of its speakers, though they are shifting towards Spanish.
( 16) Media Lengua (Muysken 20 13b: 145)

papa fi-ita-da-mi kiri-ni
potato fried-ACC-AFF want- lso
'I want fried potatoes.'
In contrast to the intertwined languages, languages with a mixed lexicon have a split
between the two codes in a Noun-Verb (N-V) dichotomy or another point of difference. Exam-
p les inc lude Gurindj i Kriol and Michif(Bakker 1997, 20 13), among others.
Gurindj i Kriol is a mixture of Gurindj i, a Pama-Nyungan language, and Kriol, an English-
lexified creole language. It represents an attempt to preserve the ancestral language while
under the pressure of shifting to Kriol (Meakins 2013b: 174). The verbal grammar is from
Kriol, wh ile Gurindj i suppl ies most of the nominal structure, as in ( 17). In this clause, we find
nouns both from Gurindj i and Kriol, whi le the verb phrase git bait 'get bitten', which shows
the loss of the transitive marker from the main verb, is from Kriol. The agent also loses erga-
tive case marking as an adjunct and acquires ablative case instead (see Meakins, this volume).
( 17) Gurindj i Kriol (Meakins 20 13a: 135)

Man L bin gi1 bait warlalw-nginyi wartan-ta.
man 3SG.SBJ PST get bite dog-ABL hand-we
'The man got bitten by a dog on the hand.'
It is relatively easy to identify the source languages of the lexical and grammatical items
in Gurindj i Kriol. However, Gurindji Kriol does not simply reproduce the features of the
source languages, but shows innovative uses. For example, ergative marking is obligatory
in Gurindj i, but optional in Gurindj i Kriol, because the ma in means of marking arguments is
word order, as in Kriol. The ergative marker has acquired new functions in Gurindj i Kriol,
where it now marks prominence and agentivity (Meakins 2013b: 175).
The group of converted languages (also sometimes called fom1-strucrure [F-S) or frame-
roots [F-R) mixed languages) can be further added to this structural classification. In place of
a G-L spl it, these languages draw the general frame (word order, general typology, morpheme
functions) from one language, and the roots come from another. Some languages of this type
include Sri Lanka Malay (Nordhotf 2009) and Wutu n (Sandman 20 16) (Bakker 2017: 222).
485
Eeva Sippola
Wurun is spoken in Qinghai Province in China by a minority group wh ich is bilingual in

Amdo Tibetan and also self-identifies as Tibetan. Its lexicon and morphemes derive mainly
from Mandarin Chinese, while the strucrure is largely Amdo Tibetan and Bonan (Sandman
2016: 2-3). Example ( 18) shows clausal converb structures typical of Amdo Tibetan. The
verb is nominal ized by means of the nom ina lizer -de, together with the use of the comitative-
instrumental case marker -/iangge:
( 18) Wurun (Sandman forthcom ing)

dak jhan-lio-de-liangge
tiger See-PFV-NMLZ-SOC
ren yidaze haipa-gu-lio ze-li
person all (be) afraid-COMPL-PFV EXEC·SEN.JNF
'Because of seeing a tiger, all the peop le were frightened.'
26.7 Concluding remarks

Code-mixing pattems are determined by both strucrural and extralingu istic factors that con-
strain the mixing process in diverse multilingual settings. The relationship between code-
mixing and borrowing can be understood as a maller of perspective, where the latter could be
seen as a diachronic outcome of the former, but both are still conditioned by the same factors
that affect language contact in genera l. The role of code-mixing as a stage leading towards a
stable mixed language is uncontroversial for some languages, whi le it is disputed for others. In
general, smdies on code-mixing shed light on contact patterns and the extralinguistic factors
that condition them on a more general level, adding to our w1derstanding of the mechanisms
of language contact and the origins of new languages.
Notes
Examples of urban youth s langs include, e.g., Engsh and Sheng (Barasa & Mous 20 17) or Old Helsinki
Slang (Jarva & Mikkonen 2018).
2 For a different view on language shift among Puerto Ricans and other Spanish-speaking groups in the
US, see e.g. Torres (20 10).
Abbreviations (not included in the Leipzig glossing rules)

AFF affirmative
CIS cislocative (near or toward the speaker)
EXEC executive auxil iary
H hesitation
SEN.INF sensory inferential
soc sociative
Further reading
Gardner-Chloros, P. 2009. Code-Switching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
This book introduces students to code-switching (CS) and the difterent ways it is understood and operation·
alized in difterent research traditions, such as stmcturallinguistics, psycho linguistics, and sociolinguistics.
Matras, Y. 2009. Language Contacr. Cambridge University Press.
This introduction to language contact explains the elfects of multilingualism on society and language
policy, as well as the consequences that long-term bilingualism within communities can have for the
486
structure of languages. T he book analyzes phenomena such as language convergence, grammatical

borrowing, code-mixing, and mixed languages.
Mazzoli, M. & Sippola, E. (eds.) forthcoming. New Perspectives on Mixed Languages: From Core to
Fringe. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
T his volume examines the current state of the debate on mixed languages and presents new advances
from a diverse set of mixed language varieties. T he contributions deal w ith different aspects of mixed
languages, including descriptive approaches to their current status and origins, theoretical discussions
on the language contact processes in them, and analysis of different types of language mixing practices.
Muysken, P. 2000. Bilingual Speech. A 'Jjlpology ofCode-Mixing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
T his book foc uses on the grammar and structure of code-mixing, bringing together a variety of lan-
guage pairs from different communities and social comexts. It presents in depth Muysken 's three-way
classification of code-mixing phenomena: insertion, alternation, and congruent lexical ization.
Related topics
Australia and the South West Pac ific; Caribbean, South and Central America; Identity and
Mixed Languages; Pidgins and Creoles: New domains, new technologies; Variation in Pidgin
and Creole Languages
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489
27
POST-STRUCTURALIST
APPROACHES TO LANGUAGE
CONTACT
Kara Fleming
27.1 Introduction
A model of languages as discrete, bounded, easi ly definable systems has come to seem, for
many linguists, increasingly incompatib le with the real ity of language use. Instead of seeing
languages as objects with some kind of a priori ex istence that can be discovered and described,
researchers interested in post-structuralist approaches have argued for a shift to understand-
ing language in a more processual, integrated way that emphasizes the heterogeneity of real
language use (Canagaraj ah 2013; Garcia and Wei 2014).
This chapter will attempt to give a brief outl ine of the field, in a broadly conc.e ived sense,
as it currently stands. Work on post-structuralism cannot be said to represent a single, defined
scholarly tradition; it is wide-ranging and draws on diverse theoretical and methodological
resources. Though post-stmcturalist work is often grouped with research on multi lingual ism,
such approaches are not necessarily limited to describing the contact between two or more
named languages - indeed, such a limitation wou ld undercut its basic principles.
The chapter begins with a discussion of the deve lopment of post-structuralist approaches.
It then moves to survey the range of terms, approaches and studies in this area, highlighting
points of general consensus. The next section will consider critical issues in the field, particu-
larly accusations oftenn inological and conceptual incoherence and the promotion of an overly
positive view of the transforrnative potentia l of heteroglossic language use. These criticisms,
and responses to them, will be d iscussed. Finally, the chapter will outl ine a few areas of active
research and future directions for the field, such as its potential implications for education, or
the role and significance of computer-mediated commtmication, and sem iotic systems beyond
the lingu istic, and suggest further reading. Overall, this chapter aims to consider what a "post-
language" lingu istics of contact might look like, and provide a basis for further exploration of
this growing body of work.
27 .2 Historical p erspectives
Linguists have increasingly problematized the concept of easily distinguishable named
languages, and accordingly, models of mu ltil ingualism and contact which rely on such
concepts are simultaneously being critically examined and rethought. Although bounded
490
Post-structuralist approaches
conceptualizations of language may have significant social force, it has become c lear to many
that named languages are a social construction, not objectively discoverable objects.
An understanding of language as something other than strictly de lineated systems is not
a recent development in linguistics- as Otheguy, Garcia and Re id (20 15: 287) note, it was
''already clearly enunciated in the work of Ferdinand de Saussure, who insisted that neither
languages nor dialects have natural boundaries." Similarly, Haugen ( 1972: 64) writes, "The
concept of a language as a rigid, monolithic structure is false, even if it has proved to be
a useful fiction in the development of linguistics." Mikhail Bakhtin's work on heteroglos-
sia has been very influential for many linguists in establishing the theoretical groundwork of
post-structuralism. Bakhtin ( 1981) defined heteroglossia as the inc lusion of different voices,
ideologies, signs, etc. in a text, but the tem1 has been extended to include an understand-
ing of heterogenous language use (Bailey 2007; Turner and Lin 20 17). Notions of repertoire
appear in the work ofGumperz ( 1964), who defines the verbal repertoire of a particu lar speech
community as something which "contains a ll the accepted ways of fommlating messages. It
provides the weapons of everyday commw1ication. Speakers choose among this arsenal in
accordance with the meanings they wish to convey" (Gumperz 1964: 138).
Likewise, many researchers working with terms such as code-switching or code-mixing
have been well aware that multilingual language use is complex and often resistant to simple
categorization, and have problematized such issues (see e.g. Auer 1999). Similar conclusions
have also been reached by scho lars of language contact, such as Mufwene (2001: 193): " Lan-
guages have been overly reified and have been attributed lives that seem to be autonomous of
their speakers, even though it is the latter 's speech acts that fashion them."
Nevertheless, for many linguists engaged with post-structuralist approaches, linguistics has
not done enough to deconstruct foundational asswnptions which privilege monolingualism
and more traditional conceptualizations of what a language is. Criticisms of a monolingual
bias in linguistics have appeared across a number of subfields, such as neurolinguistics and
second language acquisition (e.g. Grosjean 1989; Kachru 1994). A major issue is the treatment
of monolingualism as an unmarked defau lt, and multi lingua lism as something which must be
explained. Multilingualism, it has been emphasized, is actually a more common state of affairs
than monol ingualism (Nagy and Meyerhoff 2008; Edwards 20 12; Lim and Ansaldo 20 16).
Yet linguistic research has often sought to explain multil ingual language use in ways that are
not seen as necessary for monolingualism; "such research impl icitly reinforces the folk and
linguistic beliefs of monolingua l speech as the natura l form" (Bailey 2007: 258).
Such approaches to multilingualism have also been criticized for ignoring the way that the
objects we understand as named languages like Engl ish, Russian, or Swahili are themselves
social ach ievements (Makoni and Pennycook 2007; Bauman and Briggs 2003). Gal and Irvine
( 1995: 980) discuss how this was accomplished in the frame of missionaries describing three
d istinct languages in West Africa- Fula, Wolof, and Sereer:
Descriptions of these languages were motivated by notions of their distinctness. Dif-

ferences between them were highlighted; variation and overlap were erased. Varie-
ties that had to be called " mixed" were never further described at all, and registers
incorporating lexicon deemed "borrowed" from the other language were stripped
away. Lamoise's descriptions of Sereer, and his text c itations, remove (among other
things) much ofthe political discourse and most of the lexicon identified with Wolof.
Sim ilarly, descriptions ofWoloftende.d to purge those registers connected with non-
Jslam ic ritual (such as the language of local circumcision ceremonies), whose dis-
course included expressions identified as "Sereer." Each language was represented in
491
Kara F/eming
an impoverished way to differentiate it from the other and accord it with an ideology
about its essence. T hus, the role of the linguist was to find languages, each of which
cou ld then be assigned or assumed to belong to a single social group.
Gal and lrvine (1995: 981- 985) also describe how linguists and soc ial scientists throughout the
19th and 20th centuries were involved in constructing Macedonian and delim iting other bowld-
aries of language and social groups in the Balkans, from a sociolinguistic context characterized
by a high degree of variation, mixing, and multilingualism. The distinctiveness of particular
languages should not be taken for granted - it is a social process and product, not a preexisting
objective reality: "while code-switching research commonly treats the distinctiveness of codes
as a given, from a phenomenological perspective, languages or codes can only be Wlderstood
as distinct objects to the extent they are treated as such by social actors" (Bai ley 2007: 258).
Additionally, linguists have objected to a conceptualization of multilingual ism as a simple
increase in the nwn ber of named distinct languages in a particular context - the perception that
multilingualism is just a set of distinct, discrete monolingualisms (Otsuji and Pennycook 2010:
243). Linguistic diversity may in many cases be represented simply by counting the number
of named languages present in a context or social group (Makoni and Pennycook 2007), with-
out consideration for the social roles or fom1s that those languages might take. Terms such as
"multilingualism" and "code-switching" can thus suggest merely a pluralization of language,
not a complexification. In other words, multilingualism may be understood merely as "parallel
monolingualism" (Helier 1999) or " two solitudes" (Cwnmins 2007), where "competent" mul-
til inguals are expected to act like monolingual speakers in each of the languages they know,
without mixing or cross-linguistic transfer. These linguists argue that monolingua lism itself and
the foWidations on which it rests must be challenged - that language should be concepwalized in
ways which are much more dynamic, processual, and inclusive of the fact that language use does
not always respect the boWidaries of distinct ''languages." These objections to multilingualism
understood in monolingual tenns have led to the development of post-stmcwra list approaches.
27.3 Overview of current work

Models of language as a hybridized, fluid, processual phenomenon have taken a wide range of
forms, w ith differing approaches and attendant tem1inology. For the pwposes of this chapter
we can group them w1der the heading of post-stmctura list approaches, but the scholars whose
work is described here would not necessari ly consider themselves all a part of the same tradi-
tion, or as sharing all of the same assumptions, methods, or goals. What these scholars do have
in conunon is a commitment to destab ilizing traditional understandings of language, and a view
of language as a repertoire or set of practices on which speakers may draw in complex ways.
This is the analytical enviromnent which has fostered the development of post-stmcmra list
approaches such as translanguaging. "Translanguaging" is a tem1 originally coined in Welsh
(trawsieithu) by Cen Williams (1994, 1996). His usage was intended to reflect an intentional
pedagogical process of alternating languages with in the classroom. The tenn has since been
taken up by other scholars, including in influential work by Li We i and Ofelia Garcia (e.g.
Garcia 2009; Garcia and Wei 2014; Wei 2011), and Col in Baker (2006), who have expanded
its denotational scope (for more on the term's trajectory, see also Lewis, Jones, and Baker
2012). Wei provides the fo llowing description of his understanding of translanguaging:
For me, translanguaging is both going between different linguistic stmcmres and sys-
tems, includ ing different modalities (speaking, writing, signing, listening, reading,
492
remembering) and going beyond them. It includes the full range of linguistic perfor-
manc-es of multilingual language users for purposes that transcend the combination
of stmctures, the alternation between systems, the transmission of inforn1ation and
the representation of values, identities and relationships.
(201 1: 1223)
Major assumptions in this paradigm include the idea that an individual possesses a repertoire
of lingu istic features which are integrated, not kept neatly separate, and that an individual 's
linguistic competence thus cannot be determined language-by-language but as an integrated
whole (Canagarajah 201 1b: I). This means that mu ltilingualism does not require " full" compe-
tence in each language, but rather invo lves the acquisition of features that a speaker finds use-
ful or necessary (Canagarajah 2011b: I). Therefore, the concept oftranslanguaging is intended
to encompass a range of mu ltilingual and contact phenomena, including "code-switching,
code-mixing, crossing, creolization, etc." (Wei 2011: 1223). Languages in this sense are not
purely linguistic entities, but rather groups of linguistic practices of individuals which have
been linked together on some social basis (Otheguy, Garcia and Reid 2015: 291).
Additionaltern1s set forward include polylanguaging (J0rgensen et al. 201 1), metrolingual-
ism (Pennycook and Otsuji 20 15), transidioma or transidiomatic practic-es (Jacquemet 2005),
codemeshing (Canagarajah 20l la), transglossia (Dovchin, Pennycook and Su ltana 2018),
contemporary urban vernaculars (Rampton 2011 ), truncated or fragmented multilingualism
(Blommaert2010), and others. These tenus have been developed with different emphases and
underlying theoretica l framings, some of which will be discussed in this chapter. However, for
the purposes of general discussion, this chapter will use "translanguaging" as a cover tenn for
these approaches, not out of any particu lar theoretical allegiance but because it seems to be a
successfu l and widely adopted tern1 at this moment in history.
As discussed, these scholars have argued that previous orientations to language use such
as code-switching were insufficient to capture the way that the linguistic practices of many
speakers did not fit neatly within the boundaries of particular languages. Code-switching, for
instance, often invol ves the assumption there are two (or possibly more) clearly identifiable
''codes" invo lved, and that the code-switching speaker has a reasonable degree of competence
in both of the varieties being drawn upon. Researchers have demonstrated, however, that in
many cases this competence can be restricted to just a few words or phrases (Blommaert
20 I 0; Canagaraj ah 20 13). Speakers may selectively use features of a social group they do
not belong to, e.g. "crossing" (Rampton 1995; CUtler 1999). In other cases, it can be difficult
to identify the moment a "switch" occurs, as some linguistic material may have multiple or
unclear indexical links, or be difficult to link to a particular " language" at all (Ben or 20 I 0;
Blommaert 20 10). In genera l, much language use does not stay within the boundaries of a
singular language, but instead "[t)he repertoires of people absorb whatever comes the ir way
as a useful - practical and/or pleasant - resource, as long as such resources are accessible to
them" (B lommaert and Backus 2012: 16), and these resources can then be combined in wide-
ranging, unpredictable ways.
Linguists have sought to not only deve lop new understandings these types of language
use, but to emphasize their ordinariness (Dovchin 2016; Pennycook and Otsuji 2015) - " to
take away the ' markedness' of the linguistic phenomenon that is traditionally called 'code-
switching' and reconceptualize it as a social practice that is part and parcel of everyday social
life" (Lin 2013: 196). Thus, although some definitions of translanguaging and re lated terms
have been restricted to or primarily focused on multilinguals (see e.g. definitions from Wei
2011; Garcia and Lin 20 16), for many lingu ists post-structura list approaches can be used to
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Kara F/eming
understand the lingu istic behaviors of both speakers traditiona lly classed as "multil ingual" as
well as "monolinguals" (Canagarajah 2013; Otheguy, Garcia and Reid 2015). "Monol ingual"
speakers may also engage in processes of creative "bricolage" (Hebdige 1984; Eckert 2008a),
draw on multiple varieties and styles of "one" language, incorporate material from "other"
languages, and in general engage in lingu istic practices that evade easy c lassification. This
inclusion of all language users provides for a more unified theory of language use and one
which does not cast multilinguals as an exception in need of special explanation; as Bailey
(2007: 258) writes, " the fact that heteroglossia encompasses both mono- and mu ltil ingual
forms allows a leve l of theorizing about the social nature of language that is not possible
within the confines of a focus on code-switching." In this sense, "the idiolects of monolinguals
and bilinguals are not qual itatively different, only quantitatively different" (Otheguy, Garcia
and Reid 2015: 292) - bi linguals simply possess a different range of linguistic features which
are indexically bow1d to multiple languages.
Translanguaging and related approaches have, in many cases, been developed in close
relation to educational settings - both in terms of the empirical data upon which they are
based, and because many scholars working in these fields have been deeply concemed with
educational and social equity. Drawing bow1daries around a ''language" necessarily leaves
out speakers and variants judged to be "non-standard," "impure," or "inauthentic"; these pro-
cesses, as sociolinguistics has amply demonstrated, play a major role in the fonnation and
maintenance ofWiequal social structures (see e.g. Dorian 1994; Rosa 2016; Snell2013; Stroud
2004). Thus, many researchers have taken a critical stance to boundary formation in language
use and have argued for a reconceptualization of"appropriate" and officially sanctioned lan-
guage use, particularly within the education system (Creese and Blackledge 20 l 0; Homberger
and Link 2012; Garcia and Lin 2016). These scholars have argued that in many cases, the
school's focus on narrowly defined versions of language can lead to the fu ll linguistic practices
of many speakers to be excluded, which can then cause their abi lities to be unfa irly negatively
judged (Otheguy, Garcia and Re id 2015: 299). Additionally, an understanding of language in
which speakers of non-standard varieties are said to be monolingual in the non-standard vari-
ety can lead to mislead ing and negative characterizations of the linguistic competence of these
speakers. For instance, Wee (2011) argues that debates on Singlish in Singapore misrepresent
it as a "fully extensive social language" in which some people are monolingual, and Singlish
speakers are thus described as linguistically deficient. In fact most users of Singlish combine
Singlish features with more or less standard English. Accepting that what it means to "know"
a language is not always clear-cut has potentially quite a wide range of implications for educa-
tion - from assessment to writing to policy (Blommaert 20 l 0: l 02; Canagaraj ah 20 13).
27.3.1 Repertoire
Other scholars have drawn on a somewhat different set of tem1s, which nevertheless retain
some key theoretical features that are compatible with the approaches outl ined previously.
These scholars have shown that "languages" are not the only concept which needs to be desta-
bil ized - "dialect" and other non-standard varieties are likewise not so easy to pin down. Snell
(20 13), for instance, draws on the conc.ept of repertoire to demonstrate that children from
non-standard dialect backgrounds have a repertoire of features includ ing both the dialect and
the standard language, which are not separate but combined by speakers to achieve various
social goals.
A considerable body of work within this discussion has been centered on varieties and
features linked to ethnicity, and the concept of an "ethnolect" has been challenged on similar
494
grounds to that of"language" (Benor 20 10; Eckert 2008b; Jaspers 2008; Sham1a 20 l l ). A nar-
row focus on linking linguistic features with ethnicity cou ld be reductive and essentialist, sug-
gesting that the only function of the entire variety is to express ethnic identity - the concept
of an ethnolect ''refte.cts a view of language as a fixed rather than fluid identity, and of identity
as compartmentalized, allowing one to think of an ethnolect as a discrete system indexical of
ethnicity alone" (Eckert 2008b: 26). Such conceptualizations leave many questions d ifficult to
answer, as Benor writes:
Where do we draw the line between speakers and non-speakers of an ethnolect? How
many HebrewNiddish elements must a Jew use to be considered a speaker of Jewish
English? . . . Should linguists' judgments of participation in a speech community be
made on linguistic or extra-linguistic criteria? In the repertoire approach, this ques-
tion is no longer necessary: we can analyze any individual 's use (or non-use) of a
group 's distinctive repertoire, whether or not she cons iders herse lf part of the group.
(2010: 164)
Thus instead of referring to discrete ethnolects, an ana lyst wou ld describe a speaker as using
features of both the Chicano English and Standard English repertoire (Ben or 20 l 0), for exam-
p le, instead of code-switching from one to the other and back again. As mentioned, more
traditional descriptions of code-switching could also be compatible with repertoire-based
approaches- in this case code-switching could be seen as just one instantiation of the kind of
combinatory processes that all speakers engage in, rather than as something in need of special
explanation. Such work can provide further support for the position that the divide between
" multil ingua ls" and "monolingua ls" is also, for analysts, not necessarily justifiable- we can
exam ine sim ilar kinds of phenomena within the language use of all speakers.
27.3.2 Lang uage contact

Many scholars working in the field of language contact have also been argu ing that a reper-
toire, feature-based approach is better suited to describe linguistic practices, for instanc.e when
describing the fom1ation of new urban contact varieties such as Multicultural London Eng-
lish (Cheshire et al. 20 ll ) . Researchers have described these processes in tenus of a "feature
pool" (Mufwene 200 l; Cheshire et al. 20 l l ) or a "pool of resources from which members of a
speech community draw the linguistic tools they need" (Fought2006: 2 1). In many such cases,
the fom1ation of a new variety is not the result of two well-defined named languages com-
ing into contact, but contact between potentially quite a wide range of linguistic phenomena,
"from nationa l languages to minor dialects, Pidgins, Creoles, and other complex objects of
linguistic enqu iry" (Lim and Ansaldo 2016: 189). In this explanation, variants in the "feature
pool" of a particular context or group of speakers may circu late in competition or coexistence
with one another; certain variants may become dominant, or lose out, in this process, but this
conceptualization does not rely on contact between "languages" as such. Languages are not
transferred as whole, complete un its, but " rather, deconstructed and gradually recreated to
meet the ever-increasing conuuunicative needs of every speaker. Its transmission can be said
to proceed piecemeal and no speaker perfectly recreates one particular idiolect nor the ensem-
ble of idiolects they targeted" (Mufwene 2001: 195). Different processes of dialect contact,
creolization, and language formation may be described in tenus of differences in the degree
of heterogeneity of the feature pool, not of qualitatively different phenomena (Cheshire et al.
20 ll; Mufwene 200 l ).
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Kara F/eming
Such approaches also potentially have impl ications for debates on Creole exceptiona l-
ism - many scholars have argued that Cre.o les are not actually different in the ir underlying
processes and structures from any other language (Mufwene 200 I; Lim and Ansaldo 20 16).
Post-structuralist approaches, which broadly emphasize a lack of structural constra ints and the
bringing together of linguistic materia l of potentially many different origins, could certainly
be inclusive of Creoles and Pidgins as just another type of heteroglossic language use (Pen-
nycook 2007).
Though these strands of research have not always been explicitly linked together, much of
this work is broadly compatible in its major theoretical asswuptions and goals. Nevertheless,
there are still many areas of active debate and development, as the next section wi ll highlight.
27.4 Critical issues and topics

Although post-structuralist approaches to understand ing pluril ingual practices and language
contact settings are becom ing increasingly widely accepted, natura lly there are still many
areas of discussion, development, and controversy. This section will survey some of those
issues, particularly the competition between terms and the accompanying accusation that there
are too many muddied tem1s; concerns that post-structuralist approaches can in some cases
reify category boundaries they intend to disrupt; and criticisms that some authors overstate the
transfonuative potentia l of w1derstanding language in this way.
27.4.1 Terminology
As noted in the previous section, post-structuralist approaches have been characterized by
a wide variety of competing tenu inology seeking to precisely describe and characterize this
understanding of language. The prol iferation of terminology and competing theoretical frames
has led to accusations of both terminological and conceptual incoherence, i.e. that there are too
many tem1s, and that the tenus that exist are muddled, overlapping, or poorly defined.
Various authors have offered their own rationale for their preferred tenus. For instance,
some scholars have argued that tem1inology like "hybridized" and "mixed" perpetuates the
same kind of social boundary reification that it intends to disrupt. For something to be "hybrid"
implies it is a combination of two previously d istinct entities. This is part of the rationale
behind the more widespread adoption oftem1s such as " translanguaging," but such terms have
a lso faced criticism, as will be discussed later. Other scholars havejustifications for or against
particu lar terms; for instance, "metrolingualism" (Pennycook and Otsuji 20 15) was defined
with a particular emphasis on spatial orientations and the city. Canagarajah (2013: 10) writes,
"I also have reservations against terms like fragmented or truncated multi lingua lism (B lom-
maert 20 10). These tenus treat transl ingual practice as deficient. They assume a purported
'whole' language as the nom1."
Some scholars have argued that this proliferation oftem1inology as a whole is unnecessary,
merely creating terms for their own sake or for the sake of academ ic branding and not out
of analytic usefu lness (Edwards 2012: 33- 38; also compare Pavlenko 2018). As discussed,
there is considerable precedent in linguistics for treating " languages" as social constructs,
and therefore work which c laims post-structural ist positions are entirely new shou ld be met
with a reasonable degree of skepticism. This has led some authors to argue that the new ter-
minology is not needed (Edwards 20 12). Other critiques have been made on the grounds
that post-structuralist approaches have not always clearly defined what exactly is included
in their terminology (Jaspers 2018; Jaspers and Madsen 2018; Pennycook 2016). Because
496
translanguaging is often linked to pedagogical and political goals, it is sometimes used not
simply as a theory of language, but as the name for a political proj ect and a transformative
approach to education. Tem1s like translanguaging have at various points been used to "denote
a universal instinct, the fluid language of bilinguals, an approach to language, an educational
philosophy, and resistant linguistic practices - not to mention that it retains its original peda-
gogical sense as the planned alternation of different languages in class" (Jaspers and Mad-
sen 2018: l 0). In addition, as discussed earlier, it is certainly possible for post-structuralist
approaches to inc lude the language use of monolinguals as part of their the-orizing, but it is a lso
not always clear whether translanguaging and related tenus are being used in this inclusive
sense or if they are intended to refer to language use that specifically goes beyond a single
named language (Jaspers 20 18). Though translanguaging is one of the more succ-essful of the
tem1s introduced thus far, debates about which terms should be used and what prec ise ly those
tem1s inc lude are likely to actively continue.
27.4.2 The limits offluidity

While it is important and exc iting to explore the wide creative potentials of language use and
language users, many scholars have also cautioned against viewing language use and contact
as totally free and absent of boundaries. It is c lear that named languages, and ideologies of
language as bow1ded, definable obj ects have significant social impact. We shou ld be wary of
overstating the potentia l of translanguaging - both in terms of the novelty of post-structuralist
theory and in terms of the possib il ities oftransfonnation that such theories might afford.
Some definitions of translanguaging have placed particular emphasis on the freedom and
creativity that can characterize multi lingual language use, as in the following:
Translanguaging, in the definition offered above that we now know is applicable to

bilinguals and monol inguals, refers to the act of deploying all of the speaker 's lexi-
cal and structural resources freely. To repeat, translanguaging refers to using one's
idiolect, that is, one's linguistic repertoire, without regard for socially and politically
defined language labels or boWldaries.
(Otheguy, Garc ia and Reid 2015: 297, emphasis in original)
Though the authors acknowledge that no one speaks in such an unconstrained way a ll the
time, this definition seems to draw a d istinction between translanguaging as free, umestrained
language use, or as "conspicuous plurality" (Lee 2017: 8), and more restricted language prac-
tices that seem to respect language boundaries. Yet there are two major issues with this type of
approach to translanguaging. For many speakers, the concept of named languages, and a strong
link between particular forms of language and identity categories, is still extremely powerful -
many people, for instance, are deeply invested in a particu lar language or languages, "even
when holding onto such languages has specific negative social and politica l consequences for
their speakers, most often via active discrimination and/or oppression" (May 2005: 330). It
is important to include this reality in a full linguistic analysis (B lackledge and Creese 2008).
Such perspectives of translanguaging as "free" and therefore in some sense superior can cast
''monolingual" language use, or an investment in boundaries between languages, as problem-
atic, backward-looking, and inferior (Jaspers and Madsen 20 18). For instance, trans languag-
ing has been defined as " a the-ory that truly shows majority speakers that minority language
speakers have a greater annory, so to speak, or a greater linguistic repertoire" (Turner and
Lin 2017: 2). If one goa l of many translanguaging researchers is "the disruption of language
497
Kara F/eming
hierarchies" (Turner and Lin 2017: I) and to move toward a more inclusive conceptualization
of all linguistic practices, such a privileging of multilingual ism - what Lee (20 17) calls "poly-
glot exceptionalism" - may not be helpful.
In addition, as seen previously, post-stmcturalist approaches sometimes foreground speaker
agency, emphasizing the creativity and hybridity of language use. However, many researchers
have cautioned against an overly free and limitless view of language use. Linguistic resources
may not be inherently divided into "languages," but it is certainly not the case that speak-
ers can just do whatever they want with no restrictions or social consequences. There are
still many ideologies about borders and of the relative value of linguistic resources which
place hierarchies and restrictions on language use - "repertoire can be seen as a space both of
restrictions and of potentialities" (Busch 2012: 7). For example, the Teesside (U.K.) speakers
exam ined by Snell (20 13) use language in ways that reflect their strategic decision-making
and social goals, not ignorance of standard English as they are sometimes accused. Yet Snell
cautions that
it would be mislead ing to suggest that [the speakers in question] were entirely free
in their stylistic choices.... They were subject to constraints imposed upon them
by their teachers, who were themselves constrained by the wider institution within
which they work,
(2013: 120)
and notes that some of these speakers' resources were more or less valued in the educational
domain. The ab ility of particular speakers to make their voices heard in a particu lar context is
not solely dependent on what linguistic fonns they have access to (Snell 2013) and concep-
tualizing access to language in an overly barrier- free way risks a naive invocation of "happy
hybridity" (Otsuji and Pennycook 20 I 0).
In general, overstating the transfonnational potential of translanguaging and linguistic cre-
ativity (or post-structuralist theoretical approaches to language) can result in an overly rosy
view of what this kind of language use, or its official valorization, can accomplish. It is not
necessarily the case that simply recogn izing mixed linguistic practices or a multiplicity of lan-
guages will result in greater social equity - in fact, such moves can be constraining (Fleming
2018; Jaspers and Madsen 2018; Stroud 2004). As Busch puts it, "To simp ly wish away cat-
egories is not sufficient. ... That would entail forgetting that dealing with categories is a lways
a matter of hierarchies, opposites, and conflicts" (20 12: 17). Likewise, an overemphasis on
"hybridity" and fluidity risks constmcting hybridity as a re ified category itself (Jaspers and
Madsen 20 18; Lee 2017; Pennycook and Otsuj i 2015; Pennycook 2016).
Kramsch, for instance, argues that such a focus on the possibilities of hybridity and move-
ment across space risks the construction of "trans-spatial utopias" that ignore the constrain-
ing forces of history and time - " repertoire is conceived here mainly as a discourse structure
attached to a context, not the result of a sociohistorical process that limits a user's choice of
structure" (2018: 4). Some research broadly in the post-structuralist framework, like Rampton
(20 11) and Sham1a (20 11), has looked across the lifespan at how repertoires m ight change
across time, and considered the role of time and trajectories in condition ing language use, but
this is perhaps an area where more extensive work is yet to be done.
The reality that many speakers do invest in more bounded ideas of language thus must be
accounted for by post-structuralist theory, but the two are not necessarily incompatible. Many
authors have constructed definitions of translanguaging that would include both language
498
practices that obviously transgress language boundaries as well as those that align much more
closely with standard or prestige languages:
While translingual practice might find expression in codemeshing for mu ltil ingua ls
in certain contexts, in others it might find representation in a text that approximates
and reconfigures "standard English." The translingual paradigm then does not disre-
gard established nom1s and conventions as defined for certain contexts by dominant
institut ions and social groups. What is more important is that speakers and writers
negotiate these norms in relation to their translingual repertoires and practices.
(Canagaraj ah 2013: 8- 9)
In other cases, speakers may command a repertoire which appears to be "mixed" from a per-
spective of distinct languages but which may be in a process of enregistem1ent (Agha 2005;
cf. Auer 's 1999 fused Jects). The extent to wh ich speakers can agentively manipu late the ir
reperto ires is an empirical issue and certa in degrees of creative freedom should not be assumed
a priori (Senor 2010: 173), but rather investigated in relation to particular soc ial structures
(Sham1a 2011: 465).
Lastly, in some cases, defining and nam ing a particu lar variety can be a useful decision to
gain respect and status for certain groups of speakers. For instance, work on African American
English has made use of ''strategic essentialism" to emphasize the systematiciry and legiti-
macy of a variety widely stigmatized as just "slang" or "bad grammar." In such cases, although
it is ultimately not intended to be a Jong-tenn strategy or the endpoint for linguists or activists,
essentialism can serve as "among other things, a tool for redressing power imbalances, as
when the group under study is seen by the dom inant group as illegitimate or trivial" (Bucholtz
2003: 401).
27.5 Conclusion and future directions

Though models, terminology, and implicat ions continue to be put forward and debated, many
scholars are coming to a broad consensus that some form of post-structuralist the-o ry is neces-
sary for a more accurate and representative description of language use. Within this body of
work, a number of key issues are likely to underpin future research for scholars working on
how exactly post-structuralism shou ld be understood and applied. Namely, these include fur-
ther research on the role oftranslanguaging theory in the education system and its pedagogical
implications; the role of technology in condition ing language use; and the interaction between
language and semiotic systems beyond the lingu istic.
As outlined in the previous sections, one of the most active areas of research has been
investigations of the connections between heteroglossic language use and education. Many
researchers have been interested both in emp irical investigations of heteroglossic language
and in considering implications of such practices for pedagogy and education policy. Some
argue that education po licy should be rethought to incorporate more visibility and accept-
ability for language practices that do not fit monolingual norms. T hough some awareness
and invo lvement of bow1daries between languages, even if these are artificial, is likely not
to evaporate any time soon (Jaspers and Madsen 20 18), many scholars have suggested that
post-structuralist approaches could lead to new goals and new practices in pedagogy - ones
which seek to expand students' repertoires and sensitize them to linguistic diversity rather than
keep language use within one strictly defined standard (Rymes 201 4: 23). The implications
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Kara F/eming
for schoo l interaction, not limited to the language classroom but across the curriculum, are in
many ways still being explored (Creese and Black!edge 20 I 0).
Researchers have also been particu larly interested in the implications of computer-mediated
communication and other fom1s of technology. The rise of these technologies has created new
affordances for transnational communication and the spread of and contact between linguis-
tic features with a reach and speed not previously experienced. Many scholars have been
interested in the effects of such phenomena, particularly in the domains of translocal media
(Leppanen et al. 2009; Pennycook 2007). Examining the de-/re-territorialization of various
persons, ideologies, and linguistic resources will likely continue to be an important part of
linguistic research infom1ing post-structuralist theory (Jacquemet 2005; Blommaert 2010).
Recently, there has also been increasing interest in drawing links between language and other
types of semiotic systems beyond the linguistic, including work on multimodality and embodi-
ment (Bucholtz and Hall 20 16; Pennycook 20 17; Kusters et al. 20 17). This research seeks to
place language use within a broader system of semiotic meaning, beyond language, including
spaces, objects, sounds, images, etc.; in other words, exploring what " translanguaging might
look like if it took up an expanded version of language and attended not only to the borders
between languages but also to the borders between semiotic modes" (Pennycook 2017: 270).
The tens ion between fixity and fluidity, how these overlap and interact with each other,
and the role that named languages still play in both linguistic theory and the social lives of
language users are topics which continue to att ract a great deal of attention and debate. The
careful development of post-structuralist theory has the potential to unite a range of linguistic
phenomena which have largely been the purview of different disciplines, and to provide a
more representative dep iction of the linguistic practices of all language users.
Further reading
Garcia, 0., & Li Wei. 20 14. Translanguaging: Language, bilingualis m, and education. London: Palgrave
Macmillan Pivot.
An influential articulation of the concept of translanguaging, with panicular emphasis on its implica-
tions for education.
Makoni, S., & Pennycook, A. 20 I0. Disinvellling and reconstilllting languages. Clevedon, UK: Multi-
lingua l Matters.
A collection of studies on how "languages" are socially and discursively produced.
Jaspers, J., & Madsen, L. M. (Eds.). (20 18). Critical perspectives on linguistic fixity and fluidity: Lan-
guagised lives. London: Routledge.
A collection providing critical discussion of the tension between theories and practices of language as
a more fluid process, and the continued social power of fixed concepmalizations of language.
Related topics
Creoles, Education and Policy; The Rise of Pidgin Theatre in Hawai' i; Creoles in Literature;
Pidgin and Creole Ecology and Evolution; Variation in Pidgin and Creole Languages; Mu lti-
lingualism and the Structure of Code-Mixing
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28
PIDGIN AND CREOLE
ECOLOGY AND EVOLUTION
Umberto Ansaldo and Pui Yiu Szeto
28.1 Introduction
The ecological approach within the field of linguistics is most often associated with the work
of Einar Haugen ( 1972). In th is approach one strives to look at languages and speech com-
munities as fully contextual ized with in their environment, taking into accow1t society, cu l-
ture, history, education, mu ltilingual practices, politics, etc. The notion of ecology entered the
field of Pidgin and Creole studies (PCS) most notably with the work of Mfihlhausler ( 1995).
Mllhlhausler is more concerned with a literal interpretation of languages as ecosystems, but
another use can be found in which ecology is used as a metaphor to look at how Pidgin and
Creole languages (PCL) develop, or ''evolve". It is in this latter sense that this chapter unfolds.
More specifically, the use of ecology that is considered in this chapter harks back to the work
of Lass ( 1997) and later Croft (2000) in the field of language change. These works borrow
largely from the field of evolutionary biology and develop an evolutionary model of language
change in which languages are regarded as adaptive systems. In this sense, it is difficult to
dissociate notions of ecology from notions of evolution. If we follow the basic tenets of Croft
(2000), the idea is that the fundamental aspect of language is its inherent variation. In everyday
language use, speakers are exposed to a range of variables housed in ind ividual idiolects. As
these variables are exchanged in conversation, they can affect each other and lead to change.
This is because, in evolutionary terms, the variables enter into a competition and selection
process, whereby some are maintained, or passed on, and others are discarded. Within the field
of PCS this approach is further developed in the work of Mufwene (200 I). Mufwene uses the
metaphor of a "feature pool" to represent the kind of lingu istic ecology that typ ifies a linguisti·
cally diverse setting. This feature pool is asswned to represent a high number of very different
features, rendering the process of competition and selection more complex, and thus offering
the opportunity for a much higher degree of change than what we expect from a homogeneous
linguistic context.
28.2 Methodological perspectives

Methodologically it is important to bear in mind that PCL emerge in informal, mu ltil ingual
contexts for the purpose of interethnic/cross-linguistic commun ication. Whether varieties
504
Pidgin and Creole ecology and evolution
known as mixed languages (see Sippola; Hurst-Harosh, this volume) ever emerged in a pure
bilingual context rema ins an item of discussion, but it is safe to say that PCL arise out of con-
texts where three or more languages are being used. In fact, Cre-ole languages especially, it
has been proposed, are some of the socio linguistically most complex languages that we know
(Ansaldo 2017). As already established in Mufwene (2015), this realization moves us away
from the old assumption that Creoles necessarily evolved from a Pidgin antecedent. T his rela-
tionship, if it exists, is more complex, as we will see in Section 3. The fact that Creoles evolve
in a linguistica lly diverse context in which great typological variation can be found, defines the
rest of the ecological factors that we must take into serious consideration in our work on these
varieties. Note that when we think of PCL deve lopment, we must understand that the context
of transmission is most often highly infom1al (see next section and Ansaldo 2009); there are
few or no actual schools or language teachers involved. In certain historica l contexts, the only
rudimentary fom1 of instruction is found in the form of phrasebooks, as in the case of Chinese
Pidgin English (Ansaldo et al. 20 l 0). As we know informal transmission in multilingual con-
texts naturally leads to code-mixing (Tay 1989). It is in these code-mixing practices that we
must assume the early features of the developing Creo le are negotiated. In the evolutionary
approach to the emergence of Creole grammars, we can study this in terms of the process of
negotiating, or "se lecting" features that are in some kind of competition (see Aboh 20 15) given
the d ifferent languages jostling for emergence in the multilingual ecology.
28.2.1 Transmission in a multilingual ecology

From an eco logical perspective the starting point for any sound study of PC languages must be
the soc iological, historical, and cu ltural dimensions within which the language develops. We
are here ta lking about many hundreds of languages spread around the world and so it is diffi-
cu lt to generalize. In princ iple, a typical Creo le ecology has the dynamics of a classic co lonial
setting. There is a population, often small, of European descent, that is in power; these are the
colon ialists. T heir language is usually referred to as "lexifier" or "superstrate", in recognition
of the fact that it influences significantly the lexicon of the emerging Creole language. A sec-
ond population is also present, the subjugated popu lation, whether slaves, servants, or other.
T his group can be very heterogeneous, especially where transplanted, rather than indigenous
to the territory. Their varieties are usually referred to as "substrate" languages (see next sec-
tion). In classic Creole contexts, the lexifier and the substrates are extremely d ifferent in terms
of grammar. We will say more on this in the next section. Other populations may also be
present, these can be middle-peoples in various positions of power, who may also bring in a
further element of linguistic diversity, sometimes in the form of mixed codes (see Section 3.1 ).
Specific ecologies have been identified in the literature (see Arends et al. 1994). Classic
ones include the plantation ecology, where a small number of colonial masters oversee a large
group of slaves; the fort ecology, w here large, heterogeneous populations of slaves are kept for
periods of time; homesteads, where small groups of masters and servants live in proximity. In
this chapter we will not tr eat each in detail, but rather highl ight a number of general traits of
methodological relevance. What is essential in understanding the socia l dynamics of PC for-
mation is first that, by and large, they develop in context of great inequality. The distribution
of power is skewed towards the colonial (or otherwise) masters. They are in power, while the
rest of the popu lation in a given Creole ecology is disempowered. Second, and related to th is,
is the fact that there is a considerable distance between the group in power and the subjugated
group. This distance can be physical, in the fom1 of inhabiting different and segregated spaces;
it can be social, in the form of lim ited encounters; and it is certa inly linguistic, in the fonn of
SOS
Umberto A11sa/do and Pui Yiu Szeto
radically different languages used, which must be somehow bridged, at least for basic com-
munication. Third, most or all linguistic negotiation, and therefore transmission of linguistic
features, happens in informal, unconstrained, unsupervised spac.es. There is hardly any school,
no overt instruction, no obvious target. The groups involved must arrive at a common medium
of communication if there is not one already, and this happens in the most emergent of ways,
through replication and adaptation of the linguistic features to which they are exposed. This
requires a shift in our orthodox thinking of what it means to develop a language. In order to
visualize the nature of transmission in different ecologies, Ansaldo (2009: I 00--10 I) proposes
the Figures 28.1 and 28.2. Note that the presence of some kind of school or institutionalized
transfer is present in these figures, and constitutes probably an overrepresentation in the light
of the earlier discussion.
The idea here is to show that, despite the fact that variation is everywhere, in the transmis-
sion process that occurs within, say, a monolingua l ecology, variables are expected to be at a
Norms
Figure 28.1 Monolingual ecology nature of transmission.
Parents
Parents
Lea mer
Figure 28.2 Multilingual ecology namre of transmission.
506
very low level of diversity, i.e. typologically very c lose, belonging indeed to the same "lan-
guage". While there is a se lection and replication process involved, due to the different inputs,
the output is not expected to diverge significantly from the inputs.
Conversely, in a multilingual ecology, inputs are highly diverse. They belong to different
languages, different famil ies, and present a transmission context where competition is fierce,
and selections can vary dramatically. Here we can expect a grammatica l output which may be
a typological hybrid that deviates considerably from the various input grammars.
28.2.2 Pidg in and Creole development and (second) language acquisition

Mufwene (2001) formulates a compell ing theoretical framework which not only describes
the competition and selection of linguistic features in a mu ltil ingual ecology but also explains
why all kinds of linguistic innovations and changes observable at the communal level must
logically stem from the idiolectal level. With such a generally recognized notion in the field,
it is natural to have a considerable amount of scholarly work addressing the link between lan-
guage acquisition (an individual phenomenon) and contact language formation (a communal
phenomenon). Among the different kinds of language acquisition, transfer in second language
(L2) acquisition is most widely acknowledged to play a role in PC development and other
kinds of contact-induced language change (Lefebvre 1998; Chaudenson 200 I; Siege! 2006,
2008; Clements 2009) (see also Baptista 2016 for a critical overview). Understanding how
PCL develop requires fundamentally a thorough understanding of how L2 acquisition occurs.
Th is is because develop ing a Pidgin or Creole follows similar processes to those observed in
the development of an L2. The connection between the two was first observed in Mufwene
( 1990), who compares substrate influence to transfer. Substrate influence means that in acqu ir-
ing new linguistic patterns, the speaker relies on the categories of their first language, the
substrate, and thus some aspect of first language features end up modifying the new patterns
being acquired (i.e. contact- induced language change happens). Transfer is used in L2 acquisi-
tion literature to signify the process by which the mother tongue influences the acquisition of
a target language, thus leading to some kind of interference (see Siege! 2006). It is important
to recognize that substrate influence and transfer share the same underlying mechanisms, as
a theory of language change and language contact should apply to a ll speakers of hwnan lan-
guage, irrespective of the ecology in which we find them.
Examp les of parallels between substrate influence and transfer abound. Siege! (2006)
shows for example how substrate and mother tongue can influence the word-order of Pidgins
and second languages respective ly. The English Pidgin spoken by Japanese immigrants in
Hawai'i is verb-final, following Japanese OV structure rather than English VO ( I). Likewise,
early phases of L2 acquisition report many cases where the L2 sentence follows Ll order, e.g.
in German-English bilingual usage (2).
( I) da pua pip! awl poteito it

the poor people all potato eat
'The poor peoplejust eat potatoes.' (B ickerton 1981: 11)
(2) /eh bin gliiek/ieh hier zu sein [German)

I am happy here to be
/eh bin gliiek/ieh sein hier [LI English, L2 German)
I am happy be here
'I am happy to be here.' (modified from Krashen 2002 [198 1): 65)
507
Another widespread and much studied area is the parallels between the type of functional
transfer we observe in Creole formation and L2 acquisition. In this proc.ess we see that a
lexical item from the target language is selected, but is used with the grammatical function
of the substrate or mother tongue . In many varieties of Creoles we see this phenomenon in
pronominal systems. While the actual lexical forms are those of the target language, the ir
referential properties follow those of the substrate/mother tongue. This can be seen in Bis-
lama and other Pacific Creoles, as well as Sranan and other Afro-Caribbean varieties (Siege!
2008). Other grammatical systems well known for this are markers of tense, moda lity, and
aspect (TMA), such as the perfective "already" observed in Southeast Asian Creoles (Szeto
et al. 20 19).
Although L2 acquisition and PC genesis are intimately connected, it would be overly sim-
plistic to consider a given PCL to be an L2 variety of its lexifier language. First, unl ike in a
typical scenario ofL2 learning, where there is an obvious target language, in many cases of PC
genesis, the priority is to create an interethn ic medium of commw1ication rather than acquire
the lexifier as a target language (Baker 1994; Muysken 200 l ). Given this cmcial difference, it
may be a misguided notion to use the absence of the lexifier morphologica l features in Creole
languages to argue for simplification or "incomplete" acquisition (Baptista 2016) (see also
Section 4.1). Second, a Creole language, by definition, has native speakers. As demonstrated
by DeGraff (1999, 2002, 2009), Creole genesis necessarily involves both adults and ch ildren
in a mu ltil ingual setting; therefore, late L2 acqu isition, early L2 acquisition, and bilingual Ll
acquisition are a ll at play, in what DeGraff tern1s the L2- L l cascade. Such a distinction is no
trivial matter, because as Kouwenberg (2006: 205) observes, "Ll transfer in Creole genesis
may have the effect of assigning new grammatica l functions to superstrate material", which
is not a phenomenon commonly found in L2 acquisition (see also Szeto et al. 20 17, 20 19). In
short, the well-attested parallels between L2 acqu isition and PC formation notwithstanding,
there are nontrivial differenc.es between the two processes because other kinds of language
acquisition are invariably at play in a multilingual ecology where a Creole emerges. It is
therefore a promising direction to integrate works on different kinds of language acquisition
into PCS.
28.2.3 A uniformitarian ecological perspective

In the remainder of this chapter, we look at the two fundamental dimensions of ecology
that characterize PCL: (i) the social, cultural and historical contexts and their role in PC
development; and (ii) the nature of the diverse typological patterns in contact, which shape
the structural output of a given ecology. Some scholars, e.g. Mufwene (2001) and Ansaldo
(2009) have at times suggested that we can distinguish between so-called "external" and
" internal" ecologies of language change. We suggest here that this is unnecessary and in fact
a false distinction (cf. Chamoreau & Leglise 2012). It is a dichotomy that rests on an old
structuralist w1derstanding of language, namely the idea that some things happen internally,
in an alleged lingu istic facu lty, and other things may happen externally, i.e. in society, in
terms of language deve lopment. However, in the current, min imalist interpretation of the
language faculty (Chomsky 1995), we no longer expect any specific, internalized grammati-
cal patterns, or constraints, to exist. Furthermore, if we accept a post-Chomskyan era of
linguistic analysis, we no longer need to posit a distinction between internal and externa l in
any area, as everything is external, i.e. in the grammars of the language spoken. This means
that all grammatical dynam ics are ultimate ly negotiations that boi l down to considerations of
sociol inguistic nature.
508
28.3 Critical issues: the relationship between Pidgin

and Creole societies
The fact that PCL are often treated in the same space originates in the fac.t that both types
of languages were observed to emerge from similar historical contingencies sketched previ-
ously. At the same time, as d iscussed in Mufwene (200 l ), Pidgin and Creole languages tend
to develop in rather different types of ecologies. Still, in much literature to date, we find that
Pidgin and Creole languages are considered as part of one and the same developmenta l path.
This goes back to the idea of nativization of an original j argon that has become the only avail-
able means of communication in a given community found in the early writings of Bloom-
field (1933) and Hall (1962). Desp ite how widely entrenched this idea remains, we have to
date precious little evidence of any Creole evo lution that can be linked to one unique Pidgin
origin. Whi le Bickerton (1981, 1984) invoked such a scenario for Hawaiian Creole English,
subsequent work in particu lar by Roberts ( 1998) showed that HCE developed in a very rich
multi lingual setting, where surely a Pidgin variety was present, but where also other, fully
Hedged languages influenced the developing Creole grammar. In the next two sections, we
will see an example of a Pidgin and a Creole ecology, respectively, and will discuss the funda-
mental ecological and functional differences between the two. Crucially, one is an example of
a Pidgin with no Creole development, and the other is an example of a Creole with no Pidgin
antecedent.
28.3.1 Pidgin without Creole - Chinese Pidgin English

Chinese Pidgin English (CPE), also known as China Coast Pidgin, is o ften viewed as the best
docwnented Pidgin variety due to the availability of deta iled written sources (Ansaldo et al.
20 l 0). These sources were produced in the fom1 of phrasebooks compiled by traders for the
purpose of acquiring the j argon, both in English and written Chinese, and testify to the usefu l-
ness and reach of the Pidgin at the time (see Li et al. 2005: 79). CPE developed along the Pearl
River Delta in trading ports such as Macau, Hong Kong, and Canton (Guangzhou) in the early
18th century, before spreading to other Treaty Ports that opened as direc.t results of the Opium
Wars (1839-1860) along the coast of China.
The most likely cradle ofCPE can be found in the "Canton System", a tem1 used to describe
the naval passage as we ll as the structures in place to regulate it that was set up by Chinese
authorities to control trade with British, American, and other foreign nations. Essentially the
Canton System regu lated the traffic between Macau and Canton and required larger boats
to transfer their cargo onto small ones along the way before reaching the final destination.
A crucial stop on the way was Whampoa where foreign crews were required to stop and wait
unti l final delivery was completed. Here we have historical records attesting to the interactions
between sa ilors of different provenance, Chinese middle-men, and loca l prostitutes, that con-
stitute some of the earliest examples ofCPE (Ansaldo et al. 2005: 63).
Another setting in which we know CPE was used can be fow1d in the "factories" of Can-
ton, the official quarters where foreign trading companies were allowed to reside. Here again
interactions between traders, servants, and local merchants were recorded which attest to the
existence of a Pidgin of wider use. CPE can be broadly defined as an English-lexifier variety
with a strong influence of Chinese in its grammar. In some lexica l items we also detect an
early influence of Portuguese, the language of the very first traders to arri ve in the region.
Depending on whether we consider Chinese or English sources, we find more basilectal or
more acrolecta l phonologies in place, as is to be expected. To give the reader a feel of it, note
509
the following sentence, with the use of 'p iece' as a typical classifier of Chinese origin: You
wantchee catchee one piecee lawyer, 'You will have to engage a lawyer ' (Instructor IV.32 in
Ansaldo et al. 2005: 77).
In both Whampoa and the factories, the key players in the contact ecology include (i)
Western merchants who may have resorted to some fonn of English for intercultural com-
munication; (ii) Chinese middle-men from diverse linguistic backgrow1ds; (iii) servants and
prostitutes most likely speaking Cantonese or other regiona l languages; and (iv) missionaries.
The interactions were necessarily constrained in time as well as in subject matter. A majority
of the data we have points to exchanges of a commercial or legal nature. We have good reason
to believe that both within these groups, and between these groups, CPE acted as the dominant
jargon of intercu ltural exchange (see Ansaldo et al. 2005; Ansaldo 2009). The Anglophone
Canton commw1ity at the time can be estimated at around 200 individuals, but taking into
account the number of local merchants and servants would increase this number three- or four-
fold. In add ition, we know that it spread to other Treaty Ports far removed from its origins.
Despite a sizable population and a wide regional coverage, however, CPE never evo lved
into a fully fledged language, nor did it survive the specific eco logy in which it originated.
CPE entered its decline in the 20th century. This can be attributed to the dissolution of the trad-
ing environment that had led to its development in the first place. First, there was the decline
of the Canton trade around 1830, as a result of the East India Company c losing their activities
there (Van Dyke 2005: 175). Second, World War 11 caused a dramatic social change, especially
in Hong Kong (Baker & Milhlhausler 1996: 518). The Japanese occupation disp laced a whole
c lass of expatriates who might have still maintained knowledge of CPE. After World War 11,
Hong Kong rapidly moved towards a modem and cosmopol itan society in which the transient,
infonnal ecologies of the Canton system, illegal trading, interaction of different European ver-
naculars and Chinese languages, and the mediation of more or less competent middle-men all
disappeared. From the 1960s, English-medium education and bilingual schooling in Chinese
and English became fully established within the schoo l system and were probably the final
step in the disappearance of CPE.
28.3.2 Creole without Pidgin -Singapore English

A well-documented Creole of Asia is Singapore English, or Singlish, widely used in Singa-
pore as everyday language and with strong connotations of Singaporean identity, as opposed
to the two official languages that dominate the landscape: English and Mandarin Chinese.
Despite draconian language policies, prolonged "Speak Good Engl ish" campaigns, Singapo-
reans choose to communicate by and large in what can be described as a mixed language with
predominantly English, Sinitic, and some Malay traits. Interestingly, in the emergence of Sin-
glish a relatively big role of institutions and formal education can be observed, as documented
in Lim and Ansaldo (20 16).
Singapore was acquired by the British East India Company in 18 19 as part of the Straits
Settlements. At the time it already had a heterogeneous popu lation, which consisted of over
5,000 inhabitants by 1820. These included Malays, Javanese, Balinese, and Buginese from
Indonesia, Indian Tamils, Malayalees, Punjab is, and Sikhs, as well as Hokkiens, Te.ochews,
Cantonese, Hakkas, and Hainanese from China, in addition to mixed groups such as the Per-
anakans and the Eurasians (Lim 2007; Ansaldo 2009). Initially the largest proportion of the
population were "Malays" from various parts of Malaysia and Indonesia followed by Chinese
traders. Over time the Chinese communities grew rapidly in number to comprise half of Sin-
gapore's popu lation by the beginning of the 20th century (Lim 2007). During the 19th century
510
a fonn of Bazaar Malay was used as the primary interethnic lingua franca, with Hokkien
the main intraethnic lingua franca for the Chinese (Lim 2007). Over time, English grew as a
mediwn of instmction and gradually replaced other languages as a new language of intereth-
nic commw1ication. But as it did so, it inevitably absorbed elements of the existing languages
through contact-induced transfer, and evolved into S inglish (see Plait & Weber 1980; Gupta
1994; Ansaldo 2004; Lim 2004).
Lexically S inglish is characterized by a substantial English input, though S initic, Malay,
and Tami l are also well represented. Granunatically though the influences are primarily Sinitic-
Malay, which can be seen as the substrates and the oldest influences especially in the fonn of
Hokkien, the original dominant Sinitic variety of the early colony. Their strong influence has
been explained not merely as a substrate phenomenon, but as an outcome of typological domi-
nance of two grammars that operate in a number of significant ways in very sim ilar manner, and
thus reinforce each other (see Ansaldo 2004). For example, Singl ish uses zero copu la/predica-
tive adjectives, topic-conunent stmcture, passives introduced by the preposition 'to suffer', and
reduplication, all common features to Sinitic and Malay. Triplication, a rare typological trait, is
also fow1d; notably, this is reported in Min varieties, to which Hokkien belongs (Ansaldo 2004).
Furthem1ore, Singl ish presents intriguing suprasegmental characteristics. It retains Sinitic·-type
tones - specifically Cantonese - in a number of lexical items, notably its sentence-final par-
ticles, and it exhibits an overall high-low prosody pattern of the Malay type, which has been
described as a typica l "founder" feature- i.e. a feature lefi over from the original population
(see Mufwene 1996; Lim 2014). This could apply to the presenc.e of tripl ication as we ll.
What is important to note is that the Singapore ecology can be well captured through Fig-
ure 28.2. And that despite the presenc.e - rather rare in PCL development - of schools as
formal environments of transmissions, the high degree of variability in the ecology, or feature
pool, inevitably leads to the emergence of a novel, mixed grammatical system, through dif-
ferential selection of diverse lingu istic features, that are recombined into a hybrid grammar.
28.3.3 Summary
In Ansa ldo (20 l 0) a hypothesis is put forward inspired by the early work of Le Page and
Tabouret-Keller ( 1985). In that work, the authors put forward an argwnent that established
identity construction as a key element in diverse and variable contexts such as Creole and
d iasporic communities. Based on this, Ansa ldo (20 10) argues that in many Creole communi-
ties of Asia, the constant renegotiations of language use, which express themse lves in the form
of emerging mixed languages, the sh ifts from one language to another, and even attrition and
loss, go along with the repositioning of identity that Creole groups undergo. The dynamics that
detenn ine these alignments can be found in two fundamental aspects of language use: the wish
to ma intain a certain static cultural and linguistic identity, and the natural drift of language use
due to power dynam ics of economic imbalance, cu ltura l prestige, globalization, and more.
28.4 Current r esearch: the role of typology in Creole gr ammar

A crucia l dimension to understanding how grammatical systems of Creole languages come
about conc.e ms the typology of languages in contact. Because PCL are created in the interac-
tion between speakers of radica lly different languages, identifying the sources of input is no
simple task. In much of the early scholarship, great attention was g iven to the differences
between a Creole variety and its European input language, usually known as the lexifier.
A large amount of scholarship looks at differences between, say, a French-lexifier Creole, and
511
the acrual French language as we know it. Here the focus is on trying to understand why and
how the Creole diverges from its lexifier.
However, as our w1derstanding of linguistic d iversity increased, scholars started to have a
better insight into other grammars that were involved in the contact eco logy out of which the
Creole arose. In recent years the work on languages spoken by the disempowered populations
in Creole contexts, typica lly known as "substrates" has significantly increased. We can now
say with good certainty that substrate grammars drive a majority of the changes in Creole
development, and substrate grammars are often the source of most fundamental differences
between the Creole and its alleged lexifier (Lefebvre 1998, 2004; see also Section 2.2).
Fundamentally this means that in Creole ecologies the subjugated population adopts the
colonial variety through its own substrate grammar. Why would they do that? The idea is that
there may be a reasonable interest among a subjugated population in having some mastery of a
language that allows them to conununicate w ith the group in power. However, because this hap-
pens in a highly unconstrained context, the "native" grammatical knowledge naturally drives
the adaptation, or the process of transmission. This has been ca lled in various ways: imperfect
or altered replication, innovative replication, substrate transfer. Some tem1s are more felicitous
than others; what they all share is the basic recognition that in this process of transfer change
occurs. The advantage of an ecological and typologically driven approach is the neutrality it
affords; we are here not biased by assumptions of how ''proper" transm ission shou ld occur, or
speculations by what might or might not have been the ideal target. We are neutral about the
ability of speakers involved, which we expect to be of equa l level re lative to opporrunity.
In order to conceprualize the typo logical eco logy in wh ich PCL form, Ansaldo (2009) intro-
duces the notion of "typo logical matrix", based on the idea of pools of features proposed
in Croft (2000) and Mufwene (200 l ). In these works, the authors use the idea of a pool of
features to encompass the diversity of grammatica l features found in a given contact eco logy.
They argue that looking at a contact siruation in terms of a pool of features ava ilable for repli-
cation offers a more nuanced, and rea listic, picture of variation in such environments. Within
a typo logical matrix, Ansaldo stresses that it is really the narure of the typologies in contact
that drives the direction of change, and therefore detennines salient aspects of the emerging
PCL. Among other things, this can explain why by and large most Creoles are typologically
analytic: this is due to the dom inant analytic trait found in many typological matrixes (Ansaldo
2009, 20 l 0, 20 l l ). We elaborate on this in the following section.
28.4.1 On linguistic complexity

Much of the debate in lingu istic complexity has focused on two areas: (i) the classification
of Creole languages, and (ii) the nature of analytic or isolating grammars. What these have
in common, if we follow the debate, seems to be the fact that they represent aspects of early
or young grammars. More spec ifica lly, Creoles have been presented as languages still lacking
the maruration process visible in morphologically elaborate languages (McWhorter 20 l l ).
And analyticity of a certain type has been related to an early stage of language in older as
well as more recent srudies (G il 2009). The question we are interested here is: do Creoles and
analytic languages actually have something in common? No matter how guarded and quali-
fied our assumptions are, any framework that ascribes a deeper significanc.e to morphological
e laboration must come to terms with the fact that Creoles and analytic languages require an
explanation for the state of their grammars. So either we accept that morphological e laboration
is basically acc idental and holds no explanatory power, or a common explanation can be found
for why Creoles and analytic languages are the way they are.
512
McWhorter (20 11) presents a compell ing theory. In his view, the natural state of language is
highly complex. When such complexity is not found, it is a sign of L2 acquisition in the past.
In this sense, Creoles are the languages that show least complexity of all as a consequence of
the large proportion of L2 learners involved in Creole forn1ation (see Section 2.2). However,
this asswnption can be challenged. Although Parkva ll's (2008) findings can be construed as
support for McWhorter 's position, showing that Creole languages forn1 a distinct group which
is less complex than many other grouping of non-Creo le languages, in his ranking of linguistic
comp lexity, there are non-Creole languages such as Indonesian, Vietnamese, Hmong Njua,
Piraha, all of which score lower than a number of Creole languages. Are these all alleged to
have evolved through a process of large-scale L2 acquisition? Most likely not. If the level
of morphological elaboration is not a measure of age of language, how do we explain why
Creoles and analytic languages share so many features? The case study presented in the next
section holds an important lesson to answer this.
28.4.2 A case study of Sri Lanka Malay

Sri Lanka Malay (SLM) is a Creole or mixed language with mu ltip le inputs developed in a
Malay/Indonesian diaspora of soldiers, servants, and exiles during Dutch and British rule of
Sri Lanka (17th to m id-19th century). From a highly isolating variety of Malay - more likely
from a diverse pool of Malay-Indonesian colloqu ial varieties, the original diasporic popula-
tion shi fted to the use of SLM still in use today. SLM is morphologically agglutinative with
fusional tendencies, very much like the dominant languages of Sri Lanka: Sinhala and Lankan
Tamil. Like them it is V-final, rather than V-med ial as Ma lay varieties are. It has a mixed Tense-
Aspect system, w1like Malay which is aspectua l, and it has a case system. ln many ways, SLM
can be captured as a Malay-lexifier with Sinhala!Tamil grammar and sow1d system.
The evolution of SLM can be neatly explained by the notion of metatypy (Ross 2006: 97,
2007: 13 1). Metatypy is a change in typological profile that occurs through language contact.
ln a bil ingual - or for that matter multi lingual context - speakers may restructure (aspects of)
one of the languages in their repertoire using another language of that repertoire as a model.
While it is most often the case that the emblematic language (i.e. the language which symboli-
cally represents its speakers' identity) in a multi lingual context undergoes metatypy under the
effect of a dominant language, the opposite can occur, as illustrated by the case of Singlish.
The most obvious illustration of metatypy in SLM is to be found in the nominal domain,
in particular the case system (see Table 28.1 ). The emblematic language- a Malay variety
Table 28.1 Case in Sri Lanka Malay, Sinhala and Lankan Tamil
Case Functions
SLM Sinhala Tamil
Dative Exp, G, Ben, Poss Exp, G, Ben, Poss Exp, G, Ben, Poss
Nominative Agent Agent Agent
Accusative Patient Patient Patient
Genitive Possession Temp.poss, Loc Temp.poss, Loc
Instrumental lnstr, Source lnstr, Source Source
Comitative Association Association Association
Abbreviations: Experiential (Exp), Goal (G), Benefactive (Ben), Possessive (Poss), Temporary posses-
sion (Temp. poss), Locative (Loc), Instrumental (lnstr).
513
variously referred to as Trade or Vehicular, more correctly a Pidgin-derived Malay (PDM)

variety following the typology of contact Malay varieties put forward in Adelaar ( 1996, 2005)
- has, in line with other Austronesian languages of the Malayic subgroup, no morphological
marking of case on the noun. The dominant languages in the multilingual feature pool ofSLM,
Sinha la and Lankan Tam il, both show typ ical case systems of the South Asian type. Due to the
known congmence between these two languages, there is a certain degree of functional over-
lap in the two systems (Ansaldo 2009, 20 10). What is cmcia l here is that SLM shows system-
atic restmcturing of its NP to map the case systems of a Lankan type, as shown in Table 28.1
(synthesized from Ansaldo 2009: 129- 131).
Worth noting for our purposes here are the following points:
(i) The overwhelming typological restmcturing that leads an original Malay variety without
morphological case marking (typical for Malayic in general) to develop a case system of
the South Asian type, with a dominant, mu ltifunctional and obligatory Dative case and a
weak Accusative case mostly used to mark definite objects.
(ii) The complete structural overlap in the first three core cases.
(iii) The particu lar stmctural parallel in the SLM and Sinhala Instmmenta i-Ablative
syncretism.
(iv) SLM case markers are reanalyzed PDM prepositions or verbs (Ansaldo 2009: 129).
This overwhelm ing typological restructuring can be explained through the typological
pressure that Sinhala and Tam il both exercise over the emblematic original Ma lay variety,
in a typical metatypic scenario. Furthennore, note that there are three noteworthy syntactic-
semantic a lignments happening here in the emblematic language:
(i) General VO > OV shift; from Austronesian to Lankan word-order.

(ii) Following (i), the granunaticalization of [Prep + N] into [N-Case Marker].
(iii) In parallel with (i i), the semantic obligation to express (core) cases.
It is not easy to claim that these changes must occur in the order presented earlier. It is highly
plausible that (i) is the first step; word-order is extremely susceptible to change in contact
situation and in the trilingua l pool in which SLM evolves OV is dominant as it is present in
both Sinhala and Lankan Tam il. Thus Malayic VO is overru led. It is also quite safe to say that
(ii) follows (i), since we know that [OV - N-PP] is a robust typological corre lation. But this
does not necessarily enta il that (iii) happens only after (ii) is completed. In a sense, (iii) has
to eo-occur with (ii) if we want to explain how prepositions end up being reana lyzed as case
markers. Stage (iii) is, cmc ially, a semantic shift, one in which speakers reorganize cogn i-
tively in order to align themselves with a Lankan way of doing things, i.e. by obligatori ly
expressing a nwnber of thematic roles on the Noun. In that sense, there must be an overlap
of (ii) and (iii) at some po int.
It has been pointed out (Ansaldo 2009) that this is a rather radical restructuring for anum-
ber of reasons:
(i) What we see is a case of development of morphology, i.e. an increase in morphologi-

cal comp lexity not usually associated with contact-induced change (Ansaldo & Nordhotf
2008).
514
(ii) The development of case systems is nonnally a complex gradua l process that requires
many generations of speakers.
Another noteworthy issue is the fact that we do not see the same degree of systemat ic restructur-
ing in the VP. There are various ways to explain this (seeAnsaldo 20 l l for further discussion):
(i) Ansaldo (2009) analyzes this situation in tenns of type frequency. He notes that there is
overwhelming overlap in the two dominant languages in the nominal domain; this cre-
ates a "gang-up" effect which results in a nearly complete adherence of the Malay NP
to the Lankan type. On the other hand, in the VP, the two dom inant languages are more
d ivergent, causing competition in the multi lingual pool. T his allows for a higher degree
of retention of emblematic features.
(ii) Ross (2006) puts forward a strong hypothesis of metatypy, which implies that, when
metatypy happens, it tends to run to completion throughout the grammar under restruc-
turing. Apply ing this view to SLM, we wou ld assume that the SLM VP does not show full
metatypic effect for the time being. Either it is happening, or it has happened but has not
been detected yet. In other words, the onus is on us to find metatypy in the verba l domain.
Indeed, as shown in Ansaldo (2009: 135), a change that can be seen in the SLM domain
is that from a predominantly aspectual system to a mixed Tense-Aspect system, with a
past-non-past distinction of the South Asian type.
28.4.3 Reflections
What a case such as SLM shows is that the stmctural outcome of a language contact situation is
heavily determined by the nature of the grammars in contact. In other words, the typological matrix
detem1ines by and large the direction and outcome of change. This seems to be the straightforward
explanation to account for the morphological complexity observed in SLM, despite the fact that
the dominant population in which it evolved originally spoke an analytic language. Conversely, the
reason why so many Creoles that develop in ecologies heavily influenced by analytic languages of
West Africa show lilt le morphological inflection, is detem1ined by the predominant typologies of
these substrate languages, and undoubtedly reinforced by the fact that the European lexifiers do not
contribute to the matrix with much sal ient morphology either (see Szeto et al. 2019).
28.5 Final remarks

What the works reviewed in Section 4 aim to advance is a methodology to study languages,
here specifically language change, through the lenses of evolutionary theory. Simply put, this
approach recognizes that change in any given system occurs broad ly through the dynamics of
replication and adaptation. Translated into linguistic tem1s, the idea is that language change
occurs through the replication of linguistic features from speaker to speaker. Whi le in principle
a linguistic feature can be replicated identically in communication, in reality more often than
not its replication is altered from the original. We observe these easily in the natural change
that occurs between generations of speakers of the same language (change over time), or the
natural variation that occurs within the same " language" in terms of regional dialects (change
across space). When we turn to the field of language contact, and PCS, the notion of adapta-
tion becomes crucial because here another dimension beyond time and space increases the
likelihood of altered replication: the mu ltilingual ecology within which speakers of different
515
languages pass linguistic features to each other. As this transfer occurs, a number of variables
concur in increasing the factors that can alter repl ication: these include social distance, infor-
mal transmission, grammatical variation, substrate transfer. What these highly variable and
rather unconstrained contexts of transm ission mean is that high degrees of altered replication
are expected in contact ecologies; they are the norm, not an exception. As posited in Ansaldo
(2009), the fact that language change is a natural aspect of language overall leads us to the
question of what it takes to constrain change.
Attempts to constra in change are found in many linguistic cultures: they requ ire strong
nonnative regulations about how to speak (and w rite); they rely on schools and society to
keep non-standard usage at bay and lim it it; they employ scholars, in the form of academies,
to regulate language use; and they uphold strong narratives of monolingual ism in order to curb
variation. It is through this army of linguistic normativity that change is constrained, though it
catmot be avoided, as the observation of any standard European language over the last century
revea ls. Today's French and English are not identica l to the ir 20th-century counterparts. In this
sense, we could say that if there is anything anomalous, or surprising, in terms of language
dynam ics, it is the lack ofchange. Language maintenance is indeed an artificial, human-made
exerc ise. It is usually highly costly and se ldom entirely efficient. The clear advantage of an
evolutionary take on the study of language is exactly this: within an evolutionary mindset,
constant change, adaptation, and the resulting innovation is the norm. This framework encour-
ages us to find explanations that fall in line with this normality, rather than painting a p icture
of anomalous conditions or contexts to go with it.
Further reading
Ansaldo, U. 2009. Contact Languages: Ecology and Evolution in Asia. Cambridge: Cambridge Univer·
s ity Press.
Develops an evolutionary fra mework for language contact and its outcomes.
Croft, W. 2000. Explaining Language Change: An Evolutionary Approach. London: Longman.
Introduces a usage-based theory of variation and language change in evolutionary perspective.
Lim, L. & Ansaldo, U. 2016. Languages in Contact (Key Topics in Sociolinguistics). Cambridge: Cam·
A sociolinguistic and ecological approach to the stud y of contact.
Mufwene, S. 2001. 17ze Ecology ofLanguage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Introduces an ecological and evolutionary view of the history of languages specifically creoles.
Mufwene, S. S . 2008. Language Evolution: Comacr, Competition and Change. London: Bloomsbury.
Develops a view of contact and change in tenns of competition and selection.
Related topics
On the History of Pidgin and Creole Studies; Pidgins and Creoles and the Language Facu lty;
South and Southeast Asia; Language Contact and Human Dispersal; The Typology of Pidgin
and Creole Languages
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519
INDEX
Note: Page numbers in italics indicate figures and bold indicate tables in the text.
Aboh, E. 0 . I, 434, 438, 44 1-442, 455 agglutination 57, 140, 462

accommodation programs 290 agglutination, IOC 57
acquisition, language see language acquisition Ahmad, D. 465
acquisition in models of Creole genesis 455-456 Aix 375
acrolect 167, 456 Akademi Kreol Moris (AKM) 63
acts of idemity, music 225-226 Akademi Kreol Repiblik Moris (AKRM) 63
Adamawa 406 Akan!Baule 408
Adamawa-Ubangi 36 Alexa 328
Adelaar, A. 5 13 Alexiadou, A. 445
Adler, M. K. 376 Ali, M. 36
Adone, D. 462-463 Alleyne, M. C. 269, 451-452
adults and children in Creole formation 440-446 Almoaily, M. 44
adults as primary agents of creolization 439-440 Aloha Los Vegas and Other Plays (Sakamoto)
Africa 20-27, 292, 405, 407,409, 413, 454, 475; 237
see also sub-Saharan Africa alternational code-mixing 479-480, 483
African American 422 Ambon Ma lay 8 1, 82
African American English 273, 281 , 356, 422, 499 Amdo Tibetan 486
African American Vernacular English (AAVE) American English 355-356
2 17, 355-356,358 American Indian Pidgin English (AlPE) 138
African-Chinese Pidgin 328 American Revolution 421
African Diaspora 142-143 Amharic408
African Urban Youth Languages (AUYLs) 302 Amin, S. 22
African Youth Language Practices (AYLPs) 302 analyticity 185, 5 12
African Youth Languages (AYLs) 302-3 10,312 anaphora42
Afrikaans 26, 308, 310, 367, 48 1 ancestral languages 63
Afrikaaps 27 ancient DNA revolution 4 15
Afroasiatic phylum 33 Anderssen, M. 458
Afrobeat, music 225 Androutsopoulos, D. 324
Afro-Caribbean 508 Anglophone 4-5,452
Afro-Caribbean English-lexifier Creoles (AECs) Angloromani 484
179-181, 184-189 Annab6n 26
A fro- European contact languages 184-185 Ansaldo, U. 341, 377, 452, 506; contact
Afro-Surinamese creole 34 1 languages 74; Creole languages 455;
Agalega 52, 54 hypothesis 5 11; language change 508, 516;
520
I11dex
transm ission of the Jexifier 75; type freq uency Ayafor, M. 26

5 15; typological matrix 512 Aycard, P. 307
antilanguage 304, 316
apparent grammaticalization 167 Baba Malay 75, 76, 8 1, 342
applied linguistics 6 back-flagging 482, 483
Arab Gulf 338 Backus, A. 483
Arabian Peninsula 34 Baggara Arabic 35, 40
Arabic dialects 33- 36 Baggioni, D. 64
Arabic pharyngeal 44 Bahamian Creole 355
Arabic Pidgin kiNubi 407 Bahamian Creole English 329
Arabic SPCs 38 Bailey, B. 494
Arab World 33-47; Arabic dialects 33-36; Baker, C. 492
creolization 33-36; non-strata) feamres in Baker, P. 52, 54-55, 57-60, 62, 89-90, 375,
SPCs 39-42; pidginization 33- 36, 42-46; 420,421
sociohistorical background 36-38; strata) Bakhtin, M. 272, 280,49 1
feamres in SPCs 39-42 Bakir, M. 44
Archer, J. 463 Bakke~P44, 46,306-307, 373,387
archetypal pidgin 75 Bakongo 25
area) hypothesis 16-17 Balinese 5 10
area) perspectives 184-185 Balkans 492
area o f interaction 456 Bambara 408
Arends, J. 376, 4 18, 42 1 Bamboo English (BE) I08, 115-11 6
Armand, A. 62 Banm 4 14
Arunachal Pradesh 41 1 Baptists, P. 434,442-444
Asia 292, 475 Barasa, S. N. 330
Asian foreign workers 43 Barbados 452,454, 455, 456
Asian Migrant Arabic Pidgins 42 Bari 40
Asmara Pidgin Italian 20 I Barriere, I. 462
Associa~ilo de Crioulos de Base Lexical Banens, A. 392
Pormguesa e Espanhola (ACBLPE) 375 Basic School 46 1
Atlantic 20, 179-192, 420,423, 453; AECs basilect 456
185- 188; A fro-European contact languages basilectal erosion 57
184-185; area) perspectives 184-185; contact Basque-Icelandic Pidgin 200, 205
and convergence area 180; contributions and Basque-Jexifier Pidgin 206
research 180-188; critical issues 188- 19 1; Basque-Spanis 480
genealogical perspectives 18 1- 184; Ingredient Bazaar Malay 81, 342, 51 1
X 181-184, 182- 183; Jexifier in Creole BBC Pidgin 26
language change 189-191; Proto-AEC 189; Bechhaus-Gerst, M. 405
stratal-areal contact model 185-188 Behrendt, S. D. 42 1
Atlantic Creoles 20, 386 Belgium 475
Atlas ofPidgin and Creole Language Stntctures Bengali 43, 46
(APiCS) 18- 19,206,370,378 Benitez-Rojo, A. 282
Australia 296, 408-409, 4 15 Benjamins, J. 375, 378
Australia and the South West Pacific 88- 100; Bennholdt-Thomsen, V. 271
NSW Pidgin into Melanesia 95; NSW Pidgin Benor, S. B. 495
into northern Australia 92-95; origin 9 1-92; Benton, J. 22 1
overview 88-89; shared feamres 89-91, 91; Bequia 356-357, 357
substrate influence 95-100 Berber languages 4 12, 412
Australian contact languages 93 Berbice Dutch 395, 439
Australian Kriol 88, 94, 99 Benile, W. 56
Australian National University (ANU) 88 Best ofBooga Booga, 77ze (television program) 239
authenticity of descriptions 428-429 Bhojpuri 63
auxiliaries 6 1 Bibliography ofPidgin and Creole Languages, A
Averill, G. 217, 223 (Reinecke) 370
Avram, A. 44-45 Bickenon, D. 385, 4 18-419,434, 437-438, 509;
awareness programs 290 anti-substratism lost momenmm
521
htdex
377; Bioprogram Hypothesis 94-95, 100, Bunmdi 304

144; Creole genesis 455-456; Creoles 74; Busch, B. 498
Guyanese personal pronouns 352; hypothesis Byers-Heinlein, K. 465
3; Language Bioprogram Hypothesis 8,
133, 372; linguistic continuum 64; linguistic cafeteria principle 17
interactions 452; Pidgin-to-Creole 3; Caid, L. 60
proportional freq uencies 353; true Pidgins 373 Calteax, K. 3 15
bidialectalism 475 Camden, W. 95
Big Island 352 Cameroon 303 , 427
bil ingualism 64, 155,407, 464 Cameroon Pidgin 26
bil ingual mixed languages 307 Cameroon Pidgin English 304, 428
Bilingual Navajo 485 Canada 339
Bimbashi Arabic 36 Canadian Reggae 343
bioprogram 4 55 Canagarajah,S.496
Bioprogram Hypothesis 94-95, 100, 144, 162,353 Canberra 375
Bislama 90, 294-295, 325, 329, 331, 340, 354, Cannanore creole Portuguese 76
373 , 451' 508 Canova, P. 66
Bizri, F. 42-43 Canton 509
blackbirding 88 Cantonese 5 10
black peril 3 13 Canton System 509-5 10
Blinglish 325 Cape o f Good Hope 24
Blommaert, J. 323, 327 CAPES de Creole(s) 68
Bloomfield, L 369 Cape Verdean Creole (CVC) 226-227, 395-396,
BLUR Corpus 422 442-444
Blust, R. 41 1 Cape York Creole 93
Bodomo, A. 328 Carayol , M. 64
Boeckx, C. 435 Cardoso, H. C. 77
Bolivia 479 Can!nage 55
Bolivian Quechua - Spanish 479 Caribbean 20, 325, 419, 452-454,475
Bollee, A. 53, 55-56, 58, 60, 62, 65-66 Caribbean, South and Central America 15~ 170;
Bombo 37 Caribbean Creoles 169-170; contact
Bombo Ki-Nubi 40, 42 languages 155-162; Creole genesis 162- 167;
Bonan 486 Dutch-lexified Creoles 157; education
Bongor Arabic 37 169-170; English-lexified Creoles 157;
Bonin Creoloid English I08, 119-120 European languages 158; French-lexified
Borer, H. 434, 444 446 Creoles 157-158; geographical context
Bourbon 53- 54, 58 151-155; history 15 1- 155; languages
Bourbonnais 54-56 155-158; map 152; sociolinguistics of the
Bourbon-Reunion 54-55 Caribbean 167- 169; Spanish!Portuguese-
Boutin, A. B. 304, 305 lexified Creoles 158; standardization 169-170
Boyer, C. 67 Caribbean Creoles 24, 2 18,421,459
Braithwaite, K. 21 8 Caribbean English Creoles 356
Brazilian Portuguese immigrant koine 122-123 Caribbean French Creoles 57
Breton 413 Caribbean/South American Creoles 168
British Creole 324 Caribbean Spanish 28 1
British Crown Colony 54 Carib Coastal Pidgin 155
British East India Company 510 Carpenter, K. 463
Broken 18 Carpooran, A. 62
Broome Pearling Lugger Pidgin 89, 39 1 Carrier Pidgin 375, 377
Brown, P. 354 Carrington, L D. 464
Brussels Dutch-French 480 Cartesian Linguistics 27 1
Bruyn, A. 421 case studies 292-296; Australia 296; Berber
Bryan, B. 465 languages 4 12, 412; complex register
Buchner, M. 428 systems 409-4 11; French-lexified Creoles
Buginese 5 10 in the Indian Ocean 292; language contact
Bureau o f Catholic Education 67 and human dispersal 409-4 12; Macro-
Burgher ethnicity 77 Philippines' hypothesis 4 11-4 12; Mauritius
522
I11dex
293; Melanesia 294; Papua New Guinea 294; borrowing and 476-478; mixed languages
Reunio n 293- 294; Seychelles 292- 293; 484, 484-486; research 475-476; strategies
Solomon Islands 295; Sri Lanka Malay (SLM) 483, 483; stmctural m ixing 478-482
513, 5 13-5 15; Vanuatu 295 code-switching (CS) 64, 66, 325, 329,413, 446,
Caste lls, M. 302 457,460,474,493,495
Castro, M. 327 Coelho, A. 422
Cavite Chabacano 78 Coelho, F. A. 367
Central Africa 19 cognitive linguistics 374
Chabacano 78; see also Philippine Spanish Cohen, D. 34
creoles co-lingualism 54, 62, 64-65
Chadian 408 collectionslanalyzing of early texts, diachronic
Chadian Arabic 4 13 studies 420-429; authenticity of descriptions
Chagos Islands 52, 54 428-429; early grammars and scholarly articles
C hamorro 4 77-4 78 422; early spoken data 422-423; early written
Cham pon in Yokohama China Town 116, 116-- 118 data 42 1; excerpting and saving data 424-425;
changing labels 378 genre and subsequent editing 428; intineraty and
Charpentier, J.-M. 88 length of stay in area 429; language attitudes
Chaudenson, R. 52, 54-55, 58-60, 62, 64, 377, 426; language ecology 426; language samples
385, 453-455 426-427; language use 426; linguistic and
Chibrazi 304 observational skills of observers 428; o ther early
Chicago 375 data 423; population stm cture 426; potential
Chicano English 495 sources 424; practical matters 424; prejudices
child, language acquisition 9, 439, 452, 455, and agendas 427; recruiting workers 426;
457-463 reliability of sources 427-429; social hierarchies
child acquisition of PC 451-466; child language 426; sources and methods of analysis 423-424;
acquisition 457-459; contemporary language thematic focus in data collection 426-427; tim e
s ituations 456-457; first language acquisition gap between observations and publication 428
459-463; history 452-456; second language Collen, L 65
acquisition 463-465 colonial contact varieties 110-115
child language acquisitio n 457-459 colonialism 20-23, 408
children in Creole genesis 437-439 colonizatio n 453
China 486, 509, 5 10 comedic perforrnance, Creole arts and music
China Coast Pidgin see Chinese Pidgin English 2 19-223
(CP E) Comite de la Culture, de I 'education et de
Chinese 5 11 /'environnemenr (CCEE) 66
Chinese and English Instructor 366 Common Sudanic Pidgin Arabic 36--37
Chinese Coast Pidgin (CCP) 337 communication see digital comm unication;
C hinese dialects 63 mobile communication
Chinese Pidgin English (CPE) 89, 9 1,200,337, community biling ualism 484; see also
366, 369,373,420,505,509-5 10 bilingualism
C hinese Pidgin Russian 203- 204, 206--207 Community Vernacular Language Poster project
Chinook Jargon Gloss01y 366 296
Chinuk Wawa (C\V) 133, 138,387,389 comparative study, Pidgin and Creole studies 367
Chitty Malay 8 1 complementizer 14 1, 167, 184, 186--189
Chomskian bio programme hypothesis 274 completive 142, 395, 428,438
Chomsky, N. 272, 372, 446, 458 complexity and simplicity, language var iation
Chomskyan linguistics 354 358-359
Chrestien, F. 65 complex register systems 409-4 11
Christianizatio n 366 Comrie, B. 34, 398
Chukchi-lexifier Pidgin 205 conferences and publication venues 375
Clahsen, H. 463 congruent lexicalization 480-482, 483
Classical Arabic 34 consonantal agglutination, IOC 57
Clough, A. 368 conspicuous plurality 497
Coastal Karinya Pidgin 155 constraints, code-mixing 483; see also code-mixing
code-mixing 493, 505 contact: convergence area and 180; induced
code-mixing in m ultilingualism 474-486; trans fer 5 11; phenomena 493; varieties
constraints 483; critical issues 475-476; heavy 111- 112, 119-12 1
523
htdex
contact language(s) 33, 35, 48; diachronic studies 289-292; future 296-297; heritage 29 1- 292;
4 1H20; Dutch-based 80; ecology 287; minoritised languages in education 288;
English-based 7!>-80, 82; European-based multilingual education 289-292; scope
76-80; French-based 80; Malay-based 81-82; 286-287; special features 288- 289
Non-European-based 80-82; North America Creoles grammar 441-442; case study of Sri
and Hawai' i 133-134; Portuguese-based Lanka Malay (SLM) 513, 513- 5 15; linguistic
76-78; Spanish-based 78; see also language complexity 512-513; reflections 515; role of
Contact Language Library 375, 378 typology in 511- 5 15
contemporary language s ituations 456-457 Creoles in literature 250-265; context for the
content and language integrated learning (CLIL) interview 252- 253; Tonouchi, L. 253- 265
291 creolization/creolisation 33- 36,55,75,385,414,
continuum: basilectal and acrolectal Ryukyuan 437,438, 455, 493; as an L2-Ll cascade 442;
I08; basilectal and mesolectal Creole 190; Juba Arabic 38; (Ki-) Nubi 4 1-42; rejection
Bourbonnais 55; Creole 348, 350-354, 48 1; 36; of Spanish-based pidgin 78; Sudanic
j argon 136; language mastery 236; linguistic Pidgins and Creoles (SPCs) 47
55, 64; mixed language 64; Pidgin-koine 201; creoloid 79
Post-Creole 167- 168 criminality 3 15-3 16
contributions: Atlantic 180-188; Eurasia critical issues: Atlantic 18!>-191; code-mixing
204-207; identity politics 276-280; new 475-476; Creole arts and music 2 18-219;
identities and flexible languages 3 16-3 17 identity politics 273- 275; new identities and
convergence 180, 185, 411 , 465 flexible languages 310-316; post-structuralist
Conversion ofKa 'ahumanu, The (Kneubuhl) 238 approaches 496-499
converted languages 48~85; see also language Critical Language Awareness Curriculum 296
Cooper, C. 2 19 criticism, Pidgin and Creole studies 377- 378
copula: MC and SC without 61; negation 353; Croft, W. 504, 5 12
negative/zero 90, 357, 391, 397, 51 1; predicate Cronise, F. M.42 1
nominals and possessives 159; Standard crossing 493
English 351; tense and 116 cross-linguistic transfer 492
Coral ie, J. 65 Crowley, T. 88, 354
Come, C. 52, 54-55, 58, 60 cultural dominance 407
counter-identification 279 Cummins, J. 463
Craig, D. R. 456, 461, 465 curriculum 287
Craton, M. 454 Curriculum Kreol Morisien 67
creationists 373 Cypms 34
Creole(s): o f Bourbon 56; compared w ith non-
Creole languages 392-398, 399; continuum Daiso 4 14
339-340,350-354,357,372, 456, 461; Daleszynska-Siater, A. 356-357
defined 384; exceptionalism 276, 281, 378, Daman Creole Portuguese 76
379, 385; fitnctional categories 444 446; Danet, B. 326
genesis 455-456, 508; grammars 353, 366, Da oddah theatres 243-244
505, 509; as hybrid grammars 440-441; North Dapoli Creole Portuguese 75
America and Hawai ' i 135, 142-144; rhetoric D 'Arcy, A. 22
75; space 339; speakers 29 1- 292 Darwin, C. 368
Creole arts and mus ic 2 17-228; comedic Database of Early Pidgin and Creole Texts
perfonnance 219-223; critical issues 2 1!>-219; (DEPiCT) 42 1
film 2 19- 223; history 2 17-2 18; music data collection, Pidgin and Creole studies
223-228; research 2 17- 2 18; !heater 219-223 378-379
Creole-French bilingualism 66 Day, R. 350-353
Creole Language Library (CLL) 375, 377-378 Day of Hunter (Averill) 2 17
Creole-language use, music 227- 228 D 'Costa, J. 421
Creole Naija 277 DeCamp, D. 352, 452, 456
Creoleness 339 Deconstntcting Creole (Ansaldo) 377
Creole-ness 456 decreolization 34-35, 38, 47, 167, 456, 462
Creole Prototype 385, 419 definite detenniners 58
Creoles, education and policy 286-297; case de Florio-Hansen, I. 326
studies 292-296; Creole speakers 291-292; DeGrafl·, M. 276, 434, 442, 455, 463, 508
critical issues 287- 289; ecological framework De Lisser, T. N. 460-461
524
I11dex
Democratic Republic of Congo 25-26 East Africa 19, 33-42, 38

demographics 453-454 East Asia 42-43
demonstrative determiners 58 Eastern Banm 56
den Besten, H. 24 Eastern Nilotic 36
Denis, D. 22 East India Company 5 10
denouement, Pidgin and Creole smdies 377 Eckert, P. 272
depidginization 38, 47, 459 ecological framework 289- 292
de Robillard, D. 64 ecology and evolution of PC 504-5 16; critical
de Rooj, V. 25 issues 509- 5 11; methodological perspectives
de Saussure, F. 491 504-508; research 5 11- 5 15
de Sousa, S. M. 366 education 67-68, 286, 288
determiners, JOC 58-59, 59 Efik 408
Deuber, D. 322, 329-330, 352, 455 Egyptian dialects 39
Deumert, A. 313, 329 electronically mediated communication 66
Deutsche Kolonialgesellschaft 423 Embedded Language (EL) 476
Devonish, H. 220, 463 English-based Caribbean Creoles 158
Dholuo 308 English-based contact languages 78-80, 82
diachronic continuum 476 English-based Creole languages I00
diachronic smdies 418-429; collections/ English-based Pidgins 24
analyzing of early texts 420-429; contact English Chinese 5 10
languages 4 18-420; linguistic theory 418-420 English Creole 328,421, 456
Di Biase, B. 439 English-French in Louisiana 482
Dictiomwire de la languefranque 366 English-influenced Pidgins of Micronesia 123-126
digital communication 325- 33 1; digital public English-lexified Creole 89, 18 1,294-295, 384,
space 327- 328; language ideologies in 459-462
330-331; linguistic contact zone 327- 328; English-Nigerian Pidgin 481
linguistic diversity vs. homogenisation English Pidgin 203, 507
326-327; multilingual intemet 326-327; English-Spanish 479-482
panems and practices 328-330 English-Tagalog 482
digital public space 327-328 enslavement 180, 239, 407
diglossia 64 Ermita Chabacano 78
Diksyonner kreol-franse 66 erudition, Pidgin and Creole smdies 37 1- 373
Dimmendaal , G. J. 407 Eskimo Pidgin 389, 420
dis-identification 279 Ethiopia 304
Diu Creole Portuguese 76 ethnolect 494-495
Dodo, J. C. 304, 305 Emdes Creoles 375
D'Otl'ay, D 66 Eurasia 199-2 10, 409; characteristics 207- 209;
domains, Pidgins and Creoles 324-325 contributions 204-207; future directions 2 10;
Dominican Republic 453 history 204; overview 199-200; Pidgins in
Dread Talk (Pollard) 217, 224 Europe 200-204; related fields 209-210;
Dresher, B. E. 438 research 204-207
Dryer, M. S. 390, 394-396 Eurasians 5 10
Du Bois, \V. E. B. 279 Europe 475
Duke, A. 421 European-based contact languages 76-80
Durham, M. 458 European-based Creole 156
Dutch-Afrikaans 48 1 European languages I 35
Dutch-based contact languages 80 European lexifier 75
Dutch-Sranan 482 European-lexifier Creoles 200
Dunon, T.88,95,4 14,42 1 evolutionary accounts 386
Dyula408 exceptionalism see migrant exceptionalism;
polyglot exceptional ism
Earlier African American English 422 excerpting and saving data 424-425
early contact zones, sub-Saharan Africa 23- 24 excitement, Pidgin and Creole smdies 371 - 373
early grammars and scholarly articles 422 expanded Pidgin 200, 373
early spoken data 422-423
Early Suriname Creole Archive (SUCA) 42 1 Facebook 330
early wrinen data 42 1 Fad ' Ambo 26, 396
525
htdex
Fa d'Ambu2 1 geographica l mobility, imlmobil ities 337-339

Fanakalo 25,390-39 1 Germany 338
Faraclas, N. 24 G hana 422,429
Farquharson, J. T. 2 19, 225 Ghanaian Pidgin English 429
F eamre Pool Hypothesis 420 Gikuyu 308
F erguson, C. 34 Gilbert, G. G. 374-375, 378
Fiji 451 Gilman, C. 16
film, Creole arts and music 219-223 Githinji, P. 3 14
Finland 475 Glissant, E. 282
Finlayson, R. 307 glo balisation 323-324, 327
First International Conference in Creole glo bal paneming, language contact 408-409
Language Smdies 375 Goanese Creole Po rtuguese 75
first language acquisition 459-463; of English- Gold Coast Pidgin 429
lexified Creoles 459-462; o f French-lexified Gonzales, W. D. W. 82
Creoles 462-463; ofTok Pisin 459 Goodman, M. 34
fixity 499 grammar: Creoles 353, 366, 505, 509, 51 1-5 15;
Flaaitaal 306 hybrid 437; Indian Ocean Creoles (IOC)
fluidity 350, 497-499 57-62; lexicon 307; Q uechua 485; Sinhala/
Fon S ing, G. 58, 60, 358, 387 Tamil 513; see also Universal Grammar (UG)
forced labour migration 338-339 grammaticalization 4 1; see also apparent
form-strucmre (F-S) see convened languages gramm aticalization
fort Creoles 74 grammatical words, JOC 62
fort societies 2 1-22 Grant, A. P. 57, 59, 62
Foucault, M. 3 15 Great Brita in 54
founder principle 365, 385, 420 G reen, L. 458
F ran.;ais Tirailleur see Petit Negre Green, M. 26
France 454 G rimm, J. 368
Francophone 4-5, 452,455 Grimstad, M. B. 44 5
F rancophone Car ibbean 220 Grosfoguel, R. 3 I I
French 54-56, 58, 61-66 G uadeloupe 224, 452, 453
French-based contact language 80 Guillemin, D. 58
French-based Tayo 89 G ujarati 63
French Creoles 58,60-61 , 453,455 G ulf Arabic 46
French Guiana 156 G ulf Pidgin Arabic (GPA) 33, 42-46
French-lexicon Creoles 292, 340, 462-463 G ullah 142, 353, 396, 421
French-lexified Reunio n Creole 293 G umperz, J. J. 49 1
French-lexifier Creoles 156, 5 11 G unnink, H. 308
French-related Creoles 52, 68 G urindji 359
French Republic 53, 63 G urindji Kriol 480, 484,485
French West Indies 56 G uugu Yimidhirr 92
Flick, J. 34 G uyana 64, 339
Fula 491-492 G uyanese 269
Ful6e4 13 G uyanese Creole 269, 41 9
Fulfh lde 408 gwoka, music 224
fulle r 366
Fyfe, C. 42 1 habitation 53, 55-56
Hacken, S . 355
Gal, S. 491-492 Hainanese 5 10
Garcia, 0 . 491-492 Haiti 339-340,452, 464
Gaudio, R. P. 2 18 Haitian Creole 343, 452, 462-464
Gauvin, A. 66 Haitian pwen songs and rara, music 223-224
Geiser, B. 427 Hakkas 5 10
gender, JOC 58 Hall, R. A. 369-371 , 374, 376,509
genealogical perspectives, Atlantic I 81-I 84 Halliday, M. A. K. 304,3 16
Genelot, S. 462 Hamam atsu English-Japanese Pidgin (HEJP) I 07,
genesis, imlmobilities 337-339 115-1 16
genre and subsequent editing 428 Hancock, L 20, 22-23, 3 73
526
I11dex
Harris, J . 94 lbero-Asian Creole 78

Haspelmath, M. 394 identi fication 279
Haugen, E. 491 identity politics 269-282; contributions
Haugen, L 504 276-280; critical issues 273-275; fumre
Hausa 408, 413-4 14 280-282; history 271-273; research 276-280
Hawai 'i No Ka Oi: The Kamiya Family Trilogy idiosyncratic Pidgins 374
(Sakamoto) 237 Jdu language 4 11
Hawai'i 2 18,220, 326, 351, 375,452 Jdu speech registers 4 11
Hawaiian Creole 220-22 1 I -grammars 446
Hawaiian islands 139-140 1-Language 434,458
Hawaiian Pidgin 373 lie de France 53-56
Hawaiian Pidgin English 372 lie de France Creole 56
Hawai'i Creole (HC) 250, 251, 255- 258 lie de France-Mauritius 54
Hawai'i Creole English (HCE) 144,233, 340, llwana 4 14
372,4 19,452 immigration, Nonh America and Hawai' i
Hawai'i Pacific University (HPU) 261 143-144
Hawai'i Pidgin 232, 267- 268 imlmobilities 335-343; forced and mass labour
Hawai'i 's Pidgin theatre 232-247; current migration 338-339; genesis 337-339;
status 237-238; Da oddah theatres 243-244; geographical mobility 337-339; preamble
fumre 246-247; histoty 232-233; Kiinaka 335-336; secondary migrations 339; social
238-24 1; Kumu Kahua T heatre 241-243; mobility 340-342; sociolinguistic mobil ity
local theatre 235-237; type 233-238; 339-340; symbolic mobility 342-343; trade
University of Hawai ' i at Miinoa (UHM) and labour 337-338
244-245 imperialism 23
heavy borrowing and code-mixing 476-478 lmvugo u'Umuhanda 304
Herring, S . C. 326 Imvugo y'Umuhanda 3 11
Herskovits, F. 42 1 indenmred varieties 12 1-1 23
Hety, L 65 India 54, 63, 76, 79, 292, 4 11
Hesseling, C. 374 Indian Bollywood 325
heteroglossia 49 1, 494 Indian English 79
Heyd, T. 33 1 Indian ethnolinguistic groups 63
Hindi/Urdu 43 , 46, 63, 75, 308 Indian Ocean 19-20, 52, 453, 454
Hindustanis 62, 34 1 Indian Ocean Creoles (IOC) 52-68; conflicting
Hinrichs, L 328-329 linguistic 54-55; convergent findings 56;
Hiri Mom 89, 294 education 67-68; electronically mediated
historical linguistics 374; see also linguistics communication 66; grammars 57-62; history
Hmong Njua 513 52-56; linguistic aspects 56-62; in media 67;
Hofmeyr, L 20, 23 in multilingual settings 62-65; onhographies
Hokkiens 342, 5 10 65-66; phonetics/phonology 57; socio-
Holm, J. 17-20,55,75, 275,370,374,376,4 18 historical data 52-56; writing 65-66
homesteads 2 1, 53-56,453, 505 Indian Ponuguese Creoles 78
Homo erecws 408 Indian Tamils 5 10
homogenisation vs. linguistic diversity 326-327 Iodic languages 62
Homo sapiens 408 Indigenous Creole 296
Honavar-Bhatkal Creole Portuguese 75 Indigenous languages 22
Hong Kong 510 individualism 365, 367-368
Hookoomsing, V. Y. 62, 65 Indonesia 5 10
Huber, M. 24,420, 423 Indonesian 5 13
human dispersal see language contact and human Ingredient X, Atlantic 18 1-184, 182-183
dispersal insertional code-mixing 478-479, 483; see also
Hurst,E.305,3 10,312-314 code-mixing
Hurst-Harosh, E. 303,3 13,315-316 instrumental programs 290
Hyan, H. M. 422 Interlanguage Hypothesis 420
hybrid grammars 437, 440-442 lnterlecte 64
hybridity I International Conference on Pidgins and Creoles
hybridization 329 in Trinidad ( 1972) 375
Hymes, D. 37 1 International Monetary Fund 270
527
htdex
intertwined languages 48~85 Javanese 43-44, 404, 5 10

lnrhe Alley (Sakamoto) 237 Jespersen, 0. 368- 369, 374
intonation 209, 245, 390, 396 Jharwa Pidgin 75
lmroducrion ro Pidgin and Creoles, An (Holm) Johannesburg Zulu 307
17- 20 Jourdan, C. 3, 373, 374
IOC see Indian Ocean Creoles (IOC) Journal ofAmerican Folklore 42 1
Iraq 33,409 Journal of Creole Swdies 375
lrvine, J. T. 491-492 Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages (JPCL)
isiTsotsi 314 74,375,377
isiXhosa 305 Journal ofSociolinguistics 322, 323, 326
isiZulu 306, 307, 308 Juba Arabic 26, 35-40, 42
Islam 408, 413
lslamisation 408 K-12 256-257
Isle of France 55 Kaaps 27
lvoirian French 304, 306 Kachru, B. B. 78-79
Kamba 308
Jackson, S. 463 Kii.naka 238- 24 1
Jacques, N. 427 Kanaka English 90
Jamaica 339-340, 371,375,452-454,456, 46 1, Kanaka Komedy 239
463 , 465 Kii.naka Maoli 232-234, 238, 239
Jamaican Creole 180, 2 19-220, 342-343, 356, Kanana,F. E. 303,305, 308
42 1, 452, 460; code-switching 328; colonial- Kanuri 408, 4 13
era contact varieties 269; contact language Kaufman, T. 376, 405
mediatisatio n 325; in London 225; Multiethnic Kawaguchi, S. 439
Vernacular English 340 Kaye, J. D. 438
Jamaican Creole English 227 Kebeya, H. 305, 308
Jamaican Language Unit 463 Keesing, R. 91, 95,376
Jamaican Maroons 2 1, 24 Kennedy, M. M. 460-461
Jamaican Patwa 224 Kenya 22, 330, 407,413
Jamaican reggae and dancehall, music 224-225 Khambat Creole Pom•g uese 75
Japan and the North-West Pacific I 06-126; Kibera 37
Bamboo English (BE) 115- 116; Bonin Kibera (Ki-) Nubi 41
Creoloid English 119-120; Brazil ian Kiessling, R. 302, 307, 3 10-31 1, 3 13
Portuguese immigrant koine 122- 123; Kigali 31 1
Champon in Yokohama China Town 11 6, Kihm, A. 336
116-118; colonial contact varieties 110-1 15; Kikongo 408
contact varieties l l l- 112, 119-121; English- Kikongo-Kituba 25
influenced Pidgins of Micronesia 123- 126; Kikongo ya bula-maradi 25
Hamamatsu English-Japanese Pidgin Kikongo ya /era 25
115- 116; indentured varieties 12 1- 123; Kilani-Schoch, M. 379
Japanese colonial koine in Palau l l 0-l l l; killer language 326; see also language
koines 116-118, 121 - 123; Korean immigrant Kimberley Kriol 99
koine in Greater Tokyo 118; language contact Kinahan, J. 4 14
history l 06- l 09; mixed languages 116-118; Ki-Nubi 37, 39, 42,47
Nauru Pidgin English 123- 125; new Kioko, E. M. 308
immigrant communities 116-118, 12 1- 123; Kirundi Slang 304
Ngatikese Men's Language(NML) 125- 126; KiSetla 390
Ogasawara Koine Japanese 120-121; Kiswahili 26, 305
Ogasawara Mixed Language (OML) 120; Kneubuhl, V. N. 238
Yilan Creole Japanese in Taiwan 112- 115; Kodrah Kristang 77
Yokohama Pidgin Japanese 109- 110 koines 121-123; Brazilian Pom•guese immigrant
Japanese Brazilian Portuguese (JBP) 122 l 08; contact varieties l 06; indentured
Japanese colonial koine in Palau l l 0- l l l varieties and 121 - 123; Japanese l 06; Korean
Jargon Kauma 89 immigrant l 08; mixed languages and I 06,
jargons and pidgins, North America and Hawai' i 116-1 18, 126; see also Japan and the North-
134-135 West Paci fic
Jastrow, 0. 33 Korea 325
528
I11dex
Korean immigrant koine in Greater Tokyo 118 Phil ippines' hypothesis 4 11-4 12; shamanic
Korlai Creole Portuguese 76 language 409-41 1
Kouwenberg, S. 456, 508 Language Education Policy (LEP) 464
Kramer, P. 366, 368 language faculty and PC 434-446; Creoles and
Kramsch, C. 498 436; namre 435-436; perspectives 436-446;
Kreol292, 293 Universal Grammar (UG) 436-446
Kreyol 218, 220, 222, 224, 463-464 Language - lrs Narure Developmenr and Origin
Krio 393 (Jespersen) 369
Kriol 93, 296, 480, 485 language variation 348-359; as an object of
Kriolu 226-227 study 349- 350; change 354-359; complexity
Kristang 74, 77 and simplicity 358-359; Creole continuum
Kumu Kahua 220 350-354; histoty 354-359; imponance
Kumu Kahua Theatre 24 1- 243 348-349; vernacular and 350
Klisrenenglisch 425 Lankan Tamil 513, 5 13-514
Kuteva, T. 398 Lass, R. 504
Kuwait 42 Latham, A. J. H. 421
Kweyol 199 Latin America 475
Ledegen, G. 67
L I acquisition 436, 442 Ledikasyon pu Travayer 65
Ll transfer 475 Leeward Maroon Creole 19 1
L2 acquisition 437, 442, 455, 507-508, 513 Le imgmber, J. R. E. 322, 330
L2 Arabic 35-36 Le Page, R. 273,371-372,375,455, 5 11
L2 learners 5 13 Lesser Antilles 455
Laal406 Leung, G. A. 226, 330
Laberge, S. 353,459 Levisen, C. 325, 331
labour exploitation, sub-Saharan Africa 25 Lexander, K. V. 329
Labo~ \V. 273, 353,457 lexicon: African AECs 181; Chamorro 477;
Lacoste , V. 458, 464 Dutch 80; German 204; grammar 307; Gul f
Lagos429 Pidgin Arabic 44; JOC 62; Italian 210; limited
Lalla, B. 42 1 200; Lower Chinook 138; Malagasy 55;
language: attitudes 426; contact 4, 106-109, 325, Melanesian and Australian Pidgins 89; mixed
495-496; diversification 4 13-4 14; ecology 484-485; Romani 209; Russian 206; SPC 39;
426; exploitation 25; ideologies in digital Swahil i and English 308; Tsotsitaal 308, 309;
communication 330-33 1; mixing 404-408, variety 201
406-407, 4 15; phyla 408-409, 410; samples lexifier 189- 19 1,384
426-427; sub-Saharan Africa 15-16; use 426; Lexifier, African-based 18
vitality 82 Lexifier, Dutch 18
Language (Bioomfield) 369 Lexifier, English 17-18
language acquisition: Ist and 2nd 456; child Lexifier, French 18
9, 439, 452, 455, 457-463; cue-based Lexifier, Ponuguese 18
model 438-439; implications 21 , 463-465; Liberated Africans 24
innovations 442; Pidgin and Creole Liberia 421,429
development 507- 508 Liberian English 354
Language Arias of rhe Pacific Area 15 Liberian Pidgin English 429,45 1
Language Awareness 465 Lightfoot, D. 434, 438-439
Language Awareness Continuum 296 Light Warlpiri 484
Language Bioprogram Hypothesis (LBH) 8, 133, Lim, L. 74-75, 34 1
372, 385,418-419,437-438, 44 1 Lingala 23, 26, 304, 396-397, 408
Language & Commtmicarion (Sippola, Schneider linguistics 6; aspects ofJOC 56-62; complexity
and Levisen) 325 5 12- 5 13; contact zone 327- 328; diachronic
language contact and human dispersal 404-4 15, studies 4 18-420; diversity vs. homogenisation
409; ancient DNA revolution 4 15; Berber 326-327; ecology 386; exogamy 407; IOC,
languages 4 12, 412; case studies 409-4 12; conflicting 54-55; observational skills of
complex register systems 409-4 11; global observers 428; Pidgin and Creole studies
patteming 408-409; language diversification 368-369; utopias 16
4 13-4 14; language mixing 404-408, Linguisric Variarion 458
406-407; language phyla 408-409; Macro- linguists 20
529
htdex
Lionnet, G. 66 mass labour migration, im/mobil ities 338- 339

Lipski, J. M. 78 Mathews, S. A. 42 1
Lisbon 375 Matras, Y. 476, 483
local theatre, Hawai'i 's Pidgin theatre 235- 237 Matrix Language (ML) 476
Lohndal, T. 445 Matrix Language Frame (MLF) 476
Louisiana 482 Manhews, S. 74
Love,S.80 Maui 352
Luganda 37, 39 Mauritania 33 , 4 12
Lum, D. H. Y. 237 Mauritian Creole (MC) 52, 54-55, 57- 59,
Lusophone 4-5 293, 462, 463; as an optional subject 67;
Luyaaye 3 11 auxiliaries 61; diglossic relations o f SC with
Luzon Strait 415 64; diglossic relations to English and French
62; grammatical words 62; in Mauritius 66;
Ma'a 409, 484 multilingualism 63; negation 6 1; orthography
Macau 509 63 , 65-66; verbal a lternation 60
Macro-Phi lippines 411-4 12 Mauritius 52- 54, 56, 63-66, 293,452-454
Maddieson, l. 393 Mauritius and Reunion, music 227
Maghreb412 Mauritius Broadcasting Corporation (MBC) 67
Magi 4 14 Mauritius Institute of Education (M! E) 67
Magori 4 14 Mbugu 409,41 1
Mahmoud, U. 36-37 MC see Mauritian Creole (MC)
Maiduguri 408 Mclntosh, J. 23
Mailu 4 14 McLaughlin, F. 304-305
Mair, C. 326, 330-33 1, 339-340, 342 McNair-Knox, F. 355-356
Makalela, L. 306 McWhoner, J. H. 385, 4 19,5 13
Malaccan Creole Pom•guese 74, 76 Meade, R. 460
Malagasy 55-57, 64 Meakins, F. 359
Malagasy and Indian 55 Mean Length of Utterance 461
Malagasy and Jndo-Portuguese women 54 Media Lengua 484-485
Malawi 304 mediatisation 322
Malay 5 11 Mediterranean Lingua Franca 200-20 I
Malayalam 43 Meijer, G. 374
Malaya lees 5 10 Meisel, J. 457
Malay-based contact languages 8 1-82 Melanesia 89-92, 95- 96, 294, 409, 4 15
Malay Language Days 340 Melanesian and Australian Pidgin 89-92
Malays 5 10 Melanesian Creole languages 97
Malaysia 79,5 10 Melanesian English 279
Malekula 4 11 Melanesian Pidgin(s) 337,37 1,373
Maltese477 Melanesian Pidgin English 95, 420
Mandarin Chinese 486, 510 Mensah, E. 0. 3 11
Mangalore Creole Portuguese 75 Merge 435-436
Manila Bay 78 mesolect 456
Man-of-rile-Words in rhe Brirish West lndies Mesthrie, R. 305
(Averill) 217 metalanguage, music 225-226
Maquista 77 metatypy 5 13
Marathi 63 Meyerhotf, M. 88, 354, 356-358, 458
Marbot, F. A. 65 Miami 375
marginal languages 370 Michif 484
Marianas 4 77 Middle East 42
Maridi Pidgin Arabic 389 Mies, M. 271
markedness 439, 493 Migge, B. 4 18
Maroon Creoles 74, 156 Mignolo, W. 311
Maroon Spirit Language (MSL) 19 1 migrant exceptional ism 335
Maninican French lexifier Creole 280 military dominance 407
Maninique 452-454, 462 Miller, C. 35
Mascarenes 52- 53, 56, 62, 64, 67 Miller, R. M. 42 1
masculinity 3 13- 3 15 miniature objects 370-371
530
I11dex
Minimalist Program 436 227- 228; global and local music and identity
minoritised language 287 in Mauritius and Reunion 227; Guadeloupe
missionaries 23 224; gwoka 224; Haitian pwen songs and rara
mistaken identity 288 223- 224; Jamaican reggae and dancehall
mixed languages 116-118, 302, 3 17, 409, 475, 224-225; Kreyol 224; Kriolu 226-227;
505; code-mixing 484, 484-486; North America metalanguage 225-226; Nigerian hip hop 225;
and Hawai' i 135; sociolinguistic factors and N igerian Pidgin 225; Pacific reggae in Bislama
strategies 484; structural types 484-486 in Vanuam 227; Papua New Guinea 224; ragga
mixed lexicon 484-485 soca 225- 226; Tok Pisin 224; Trinidadian
mobile communication 323- 324 soca 225- 226
Mobilian Jargon (MJ) 134, 136-137 Muslim 414
modem Creole studies 370-371 Muysken, P. 2 1, 374, 375, 476
modernity, new identities and flexible languages
3 11- 312 Nress, U. G. 44-45
Moll , A. 330 Naga Pidgin 75, 82
Mombasa 37 Najia 26
Mombasa (Ki-) Nubi 40-4 1 Nambikwara-Portuguese Pidgin 155
monogenesis 371 - 372 Namibia 22, 4 14
monogenetic theory 34 Namyalo, S. 311
monolingualisms!monolinguals 307, 49 1, 494, National Curriculum Framework 67, 292
495, 5 16 Native American 135- 142, 157
Monoliterate Bilingualism 464 native grammatical knowledge 5 12
Montreal 375 Naudillon, F. 220
Moore 408 Naum Pidgin English 109, 123- 125
Moorghen, P. 55 Ndyuka-Trio Pidgin 390
Mopsus, U. 280 necropolitics 22
Moravian Brother Oldendorp 366 negation 61-62
Morocco 409 Neger-Englisch 425
morphosyntactic 385 Negerhollands 366, 421
mother tongue-based multilingual education 289 Negerhollands Database 421
Moun Koubari (play) 220 neo-African language 20
Mous, M. 302, 307, 310-31 1, 3 13 Neo-Arabic 34, 36
Murwene, S. 386, 434, 454, 457, 504-505, Nepali 43
507- 509, 5 12; Baba Malay 75; Creoles as Nero, S. 456, 465
hybrid grammars 440-44 1; Gullah 353; nested bilingualism 64; see also multilingualism
Kikongo-Kimba 25 ; Kimba 18; language Netherlands 199, 34 1
contact 49 1 New Guinea 415, 427
Miihleisen, S. 418 new identities and flexible languages 302- 3 17;
Miihlh§usler, P. 90, 95, 376, 387, 392, 42 1, 504 African Youth Languages (AYLs) 303- 3 10;
Muller, M. 368, 405 contributions 316-3 17; criminality 3 15- 3 16;
Multiculmral London English 495 critical issues 3 10-3 16; future 3 17;
Multiethnic Vernacular English 340 masculinity 3 13- 3 15; modernity 3 11- 3 12;
multilingual ecology, transmission in 505- 507, 506 overview 302- 303; research 3 16-3 17;
multilingual education 289- 292 urbanity 312- 313
multilingual intemet 326-327 new immigrant communities 116-118, 121 - 123
multilingualism 5, 25, 43, 90, 155, 302, 306, new mobilities paradigm 335
3 17, 350, 372, 492, 493, 498; contactand New South Wales (NSW) 88
490; JOC in 62-65 ; linguistic diversity 326; new technologies 324
MC 63; motivations for 474; RC 63; see also New World 408, 409
monolingual isms!monolinguals Ngatikese Creole 109
Multilingual School Project 280 Ngatikese Men's Language (NML) 109, 125- 126
multilingual mm 287 Nguni 25
Munro, J. 94 Nigeria 18, 20, 34, 218, 353, 4 13, 429
Muraz, G. 37 Nigerian hip hop, music 225
music, Creole arts and music 223- 228; acts Nigerian Nollywood 325
of identity 225- 226; Afrobeat 225; Cape Nigerian Pidgin 180, 2 18-2 19, 222, 225,
Verdean Creole 226-227; Creole-language use 324-325, 328, 33 1, 343 , 353 , 481
531
htdex
N igerian Pidgin English 352-353 Pacific Pidgin English 119, 124

N ile Nubian 405 Pacific reggae in Bislama in Vanuatu 227
N ilotic languages 39-40 palaeosociolinguistics 4 13-4 14, 4 15
niVanuatu 4 15 Palenquero 394
Nkomo, K. 3 14 Palm Island Aboriginal English 93
non-Creole languages 399, 5 13; see also language Papia Kristang 397
non-European-based contact languages 80-82 Papiamentu 356, 367
non-lndo-European contact languages 48 Papua New Guinea 2 18, 224, 294, 340,451
non-Language Bioprogram 438 Paradis, J. 465
non-national workers 43 paradoxical francophonie 64
non-Pidgin languages 392 parallel monolingualism 492; see also
Nootka Jargon (NJ) 138 multilingualism
North Africa 4 12 Parham, A. A. 326
North America 134, 331,413 Paris 375
North America and Hawai' i 132- 144; African Parkvall, M. 44, 46,373,377,387,5 13
Diaspora 142-143; contact languages Parsons, E. C. 421
133-134; Creoles 135, 142-144; European Pashto 43
languages 135; Great Lakes and Plains Patrick, P. 75
137; Hawaiian islands 139- 140; jargons Patwa 342
and pidgins 134-135; mixed language peaceflll intermingling 407
135; native Americans 135-142; northeast Pearl River Delta 509
region 136; northwest and northern subarctic pedagogy 287
138-139; Pidgins 143-144; sociohistorical Peranakans 75, 81,341,342,510
context 13Crl40; southeast region 13Cr l37; Perez, M. 78
southwest 137-138 Persian Gulf 33,42-46
North American French Creoles 58 personal pronouns, IOC 59, 59
Northern Kerala Creole Portuguese 75 Petit Negre 23
Northern Territory (NT) Pidgin English 89 Petjo 80
Northrup, D. 42 1 Pfander, S. 326, 330
Nouchi 304-305, 3 11,3 14 , 3 15 Philippine Hybrid Hokkien 82
Nouchi-French 304 Philippines 78, 79,482
noun and noun phrase, lOC 57-59 Philippine Spanish creoles 75
Noyau, R. 65 philology 404
NSW Pidgin 92-95 phonetics/phonology, JOC 57
Nurse, D. 4 14 phonological 385
Nyam 415 Pichi 384, 393
Pidgin(s) 200, 392; compared with non-Pidgin
Odo orthography for Hawai'i Pidgin 267- 268 languages 387-392; defined 384; in Europe
Oenbring, R. 329 200-204; literature(s) 26 1- 265; Native
Ogasawara Koine Japanese I08, 120-12 1 American 157; North America and Hawai'i
Ogasawara Mixed Language (OML) 108, 120 143-144; without Creole 509-5 11
Ogechi, N. 0 . 308, 314 Pidgin and Congeners (Jespersen) 369
Ohio 375 Pidgin and Creole 322- 33 1, 365-379, 504-505,
O ld Arabic 34, 36 507-509, 51 1, 5 15; changing labels 378;
Olelo Hawai'i 232 comparative study 367; conferences and
Oman42 publication venues 375; criticism 377-378;
Omani Arabic 4 14 data collection 378-379; defining 373;
Ong, K. K. W. 330 denouement 377; development 507-508;
Opium Wars ( 1839-1860) 509 digital communication 325- 33 1; domains
Oranges Are Lucky (Lum) 237 324-325; ecology and evolution 504-5 16;
Origin ofSpecies (Darwin) 368 emdition 37 1- 373; excitement 371-373;
orthographies 63 , 65-66 globalisation 323-324; individualism in
Otheguy, R. 49 1 linguistics 367-368; Language Bioprogram
Owens, J. 35-37 Hypothesis (LBH) 372; linguistics 368-369;
miniamre objects 370-37 1; mobile
Pacific Creoles 508 communication 323-324; modem Creole
Pacific Ocean 413, 420, 423 , 453 studies 370-37 1; monogenesis 371-372;
532
I11dex
Pidgin-Creole dichotomy 370-37 1; prehistory prehistory, Pidgin and Creole smdies 365- 367
365- 367; promises 374-377; psychology 379; prejudices and agendas 427
repairing the past 374; speculation 37 1- 373; preverbal markers 60-61, 60-61
substrate 372; superstrate 372; technologies Prevok- BEK (pre-vocational Biro Edikasyon
324-325,331; textbooks 376-377; theoretical Katholik) 67
framework 323- 324; theory 371-373; Principe 2 1
universal grammar 372; variation 372-373; Principese 26
Zeitgeist and rise o f linguistics 368 Processability Theory 439
Pidgin and Creole Englishes 420 Professional Development of Primary School
Pidgin Arabic 44 Teachers (PDPST) 465
Pidgin-Creole dichotomy 370-37 1 Prokosch, E. 36
Pidgin-derived Malay (PDM) 513 promises, Pidgin and Creole smdies 374-377
Pidgin-Englisch 425 Proto-AEC 189
Pidgin English 95, 233, 422,423,427, 429 proto-typical plantation societies 2 1
Pidgin Fijian 45 1 Pmdent, L. F. 64
Pidgin Grammar: An Introduction to the Creole psychology, Pidgin and Creole 379
Language ofHawai 'i (Sakoda) 252 Puerto Rico 479
Pidgin Hawaiian 140, 232 Punjabis 43, 46, 5 10
Pidgin Hindustani 89
pidginization 33- 36; o f Arabic 35, 37; area! Qatar 42
ditl'usion 41; Persian Gulf 42~6; prosodic Quechua grammar 485
outputs 39; rejection 36; theory 35 Queensland Pidgin English 88,90-91,93,95
Pidgin Macassan 89 Quijano, A. 3 11
Pidgin Madame 47n6
Pidgin Ngarluma 89 racist oppression 23
Pidgin-to-Creole cycle 441 Radford, A. 463
Pidgin to da Max 233 ragga soca, music 225-226
Pienemann, M. 439 Rajah-Carrim, A. 329
Pijin 294, 295, 45 1 Rampton, B. 323, 498
Piraha 5 13 Rastafarianism 3 14
Plag, I. 439 RC see Reunion Creole (RC)
Plains S ign Language (PSL) 137 Reciprocity Treaty o f 1875 232
plantation Creoles 74 recruiting workers 426
plantations 2 1, 53- 54, 56 Reggae 3 14
political act of defiance 258-26 1 Regional Council of Reunion 66
politics see identity politics register-flipping 4 11
Pollard, V. 2 17, 2 19,224 Re id, W. 49 1
polygenetic model o f diffusion 34 Re inecke, J. E. 369-370, 374, 420
polygenetic theories 34 Re inforcement Principle 97
polyglot exceptionalism 498 relabelling 163
Poplack, S. 355- 356, 479 relexification 163
population structure 426 reliability of sources 427~29
Pom1guese-based contact languages 76-78 Rene, A. 54
Pom1guese Creoles 74-76, 367 repairing the past, Pidgin and Creole 3 74
Pom1guese-lexified Creoles 422 repertoire, post-stmctural ist approaches 49~95
possessive determiners, IOC 59, 59 Republic of Mauritius 54, 62-63, 67
Post-Creole Continuum 168 Republic of Seychelles 54, 62-68
post-diglossia 64 research: Atlantic 180-188; code-mixing
post-structuralist approaches 490-500; critical 475-476; Eurasia 204-207; identity politics
issues 49H99; fluidity 497~98; fhture 276-280; new identities and flexible
499-500; history 49~92; language contact languages 3 16-3 17
495~96; overview of current work 492~96; Research School of Pacific Studies 88
repertoire 49~95; terminology 49H97; Reunion 52, 54,62-64, 65, 67, 292- 294
see also language contact Reunion Creole (RC) 54-55, 57-58, 293;
potential sources 424 auxiliaries 61; diglossic relations to English
practical matters 424 and French 62; in French Republic 63;
preamble, im/mobilities 335-336 multilingualism 63; orthography 66; regional
533
htdex
language in French school system 67-68; Setswana 307, 310

verbs 59; writing 66 settler colonialism 22
Reunion French 55 Seychelles 52-54, 56, 62, 64-66, 292- 293 , 340
Reunion Is land 54, 63-64 Seychelles Broadcasting Corporation (SBC) 67
Rhydwen, M. 89 Seychelles People's Progressive Front (SPPF) 54
Rickford, J. R. 273, 352- 353, 355- 356, 358 Seychellois Creole (SC) 54, 56; auxiliaries 61;
Roberts, S. J. 3,372 diglossic relations of MC with 64; diglossic
Rodrigues 52- 56, 62 relations to English and French 62; negation
Rodrigues Creole (RoC) 56; diglossic relations 6 1; orthography 65-66; in Republic of
to English and French 62; negation 6 1; verbal Seychelles 63-64, 68; verbal a lternation 60
alternation 60 Shaba Swahili 25
Romaine, S. 376, 387, 392, 421,459 Shakespeare, \V. 221 , 238
Romanian Pidgin Arabic 388 shamanic language 409-411
Roper River Kriol 96 Shange, M. 3 14
Ross, M. 5 15 Sharma, D. 498
Rubino, C. 394 Sheng 305, 308, 3 14
Rudwick, S. 314 Siberian Pidgin Russian 207, 209
Rughoonundun-Chellaperrnal , R. 67 Siegel, J. 507
Rural Creole 462 Sierra Leone 2 1, 24-26, 42 1, 429
Russenorsk 200, 202, 207 Sierra Leone Krio 421
Russian 491 Sikhs 510
Rwanda 304 Simonin, J. 64, 67
simulated shibboleths 329
Sahara 412 Singapore 79, 494, 5 10
Sakamoto, E. 237 Singapore English 510-51 1
Sakoda, K. 252 Singler, J. V. 354, 456
Salmons, J. 39 Singlish 79, 330, 494, 5 10,5 11
Sanchez, T. 356 Sinhala 43-44,46, 81, 340-34 1, 5 13, 5 13- 5 14
Sand, A. 322, 330 Sinhala!Tamil grammar 5 13
Sango 26, 408 Sinitic 5 11
Sankoff, G. 353, 354, 459 Sinitic-Malay 5 11
Sao Tome2 1 Si no-Tibetan 404
Saramaccan 366 Sippola, E. 325, 33 1
Saudi Arabia 42, 409 Siri 328
Sayers, D. 323 Skoglund, P. 415
Schitrman, H. 74 Slabbert, S. 307
Schmitz, J. R. 79 SLM see Sri Lanka Malay (SLM)
Schneider, B. 325, 33 1 Smart, J. 42
Schneider, E. W. 330 Smith, J. 458
school education 286 Smith, N. 20,75-76
schooling 286 Sncamtho 304
Schuchardt, H. 80, 88, 20 I, 365, 367-368, Snell, J. 494, 498
373- 374,377,379,405,4 18, 422 social hierarchies 426
science, technology, engineering and math socially transmitted Pidgins 374
(STEM)464 social mobility, imlmobilities 340-342
Scol Mu/ti/ingua/280 social stratification 454-455
Scots Gaelic 4 13 Society for Caribbean Linguistics (SCL) 375
Sebba, M.224,324,376, 387 socio-history, IOC 52- 56
secondary migrations 339 sociolinguistics 6, 21,327,339- 340,348, 374,
Second International Conference 1968 375 494
second language acquisition (SLA) 2 1, 33- 36, Solombala English 203
4 1,43-44,377,463-465,475,507-508 Solomon Islands 295, 45 1
semantic 385 Solomon Islands Pijin 373
Sereer 491-492 Solomons Pij in 90
serial verb constructions (SVCs) 162 Soomaali 408
Seselwa 292 Souprayen-Cavery, L. 64
Sesotho 307, 3 10 South Africa 2 1, 26, 308, 481
534
I11dex
South and Southeast Asia 74-82; Dutch-based substratophiles 372

contact languages 80; English-based contact substratum 204
languages 78-80; European-based contact Sudan 33, 36-37
languages 76-80; French-based contact Sudanese Arabic 408
language 80; language vitality 82; Malay-based Sudanese dialects 39
contact languages 81-82; Non-European-based Sudanic Pidgins and Creoles (SPCs): Arabic 38;
contact languages 80-82; overview 74-76; colonial expansionism 36; Common Sudanic
Pom•guese-based contact languages 76-78; Pidgin Arabic 37; creolization 47; GPA and 47;
Spanish-based contact languages 78 non-strata! features in 39-42; strata ! features
Southeast Asian Malay 338 in 39-42
Southern A frica 19-20 Sugimoto, Y. 434, 444 446
Southern Kerala Creole Portuguese 76 Summer Instimte of Linguistics (SIL) 20, 88
Southern Maharashtra Creole Portuguese 75 superficial weaving 461
Southern Sotho 307 superstrate 372, 384, 505; European 185, 187,
South Pacific 427, 45 1 192; French 165; inheritance 4 1; Japanese 122;
South Seas Jargon 92 non-lexifier 187, 190; reanalysis 33; Romance
South Sudanese Pidgin-Creole 35 and Germanic 180
SOV languages 46 Sural Creole Portuguese 75
Soweto 308 Surinam 199,34 1
Soweto Zulu 307, 308 Surinam Creoles 42 1
Spanish 356,477, 48 1 Suriname Creoles 191
Spanish-based contact languages 78 Swahili 39, 304, 308, 408, 414, 491
Spanish-English bilinguals 48 1 Swahili-English 303
Spanish-influenced Quechua 477 Switzerland 475
Speak Good English campaigns 5 10 Sydney languages96-97
Sranan 156, 366, 394, 508; Afro-Caribbean Syea, A. 58
varieties 508; Creole language 184; Dutch syllabic agglutination, IOC 57
187, 482; grammaticalization 166; Maroon symbolic mobility, imlmobilities 342- 343
AECs 19 1; Maroon Creoles 156; Saramaccan syntax: divergent 4 11; fhnctional 354; Jamaican
texts 421; superstrate 384; texts 165-166; Creole 460; language 80; language-specific
Tongo 156, 159; verb 482 279; mixed 308; morphology 80, 303, 358;
Sri Lanka 76, 5 13 morphophonology 462; phonology 349, 408;
Sri Lanka Malay (SLM) 75- 76, 8 1, 338, theoretical 462; T ohoku I l l
340-341,485, 513,513-5 15
Sri Lanka Pom•guese 75-76 Tabouret-Keller, A. 273, 372,455, 51 1
Standard American Engl ish (SAE) 5, 250, Tagalog 43-44
255- 256 Tagliamonte, S. A. 355- 356
Stassen, L. 397 Taglish 79
Staudacher-Valliamee, G. 60 Tai Boi 391
St Lucian Creole 325 Tamil43, 46, 63, 81, 340-34 1, 5 11
Straits Settlements 5 10 Tango! orthography 66
stratal-areal contact model, Atlantic 185-188 Tanzania409, 414
strategic essentialism 499 target language 287
structural mixing, code-mixing 478-482 Tay Boi so, 387
structural weaving 461 Teesside (U.K.) 498
subject-verb-object (SVO) 437, 439-440 Telegu 63
sub-Saharan Africa 15- 27; area! hypothesis Tete Kreol (non-profit organisation) 67
16-17; labour exploitation 25 ; language tense, mood and aspect (TMA) 60, 60-6 1, 160,
15- 16; language exploitation 25; lexifiers 437, 461 , 508
lists 17- 20; shorelines as early contact zones Teochews 5 10
23- 24; sociohistorical context 20-23 ; space T homason, S. G. 307,376,4 18
15- 16; typology of colonialisms 20-23 T homason, S. K. 405
substrate(s) 372, 384-385, 512 Tibetan 486
substrate influence 95- 100; Australia and T MA see tense, mood and aspect (TMA)
Melanesia 95-96; local languages 99-100; Todd, L. 376
regional languages 97- 98; Sydney languages Tok Pisin 90,2 18, 340, 353, 37 1, 373, 422;
96-97 Bislama 125, 279; classroom learning 294;
535
htdex
first language acquisition 459; Hawaiian 440-446; adults as primary agents of

Creole 22 1; Hiri Mom 88; Kriol and 89; creolization 439-440; Creoles as hybrid
language contact 8; lingua franca/language grammars 440-441; Creoles functional
2 18; Papua New Guinea 90, 224, 290, 45 1; categories 444 446; Creoles grammar
verb clitic 354 441-442; Creolization as an L2-Ll cascade
Tomasello, M. 459 442; hybrid grammars 441-442; Pidgin and
Tomlinson, B. 465 Creole smdies 372; role of children in Creole
Tonouchi, L. 253-265; educational experience genesis 437-439; variation in Creoles as
256-258; Hawai' i Creole (HC) 255-258; competing !-grammars 442-444; see also
Hawai' i Pacific University (HPU) 26 1; K- 12 grammar
256-257; local ethnic literamres 261 -265; Universals versus Substrata in Creole Genesis
personal Pidgin history 253-255; Pidgin 375
literamre(s) 26 1- 265 ; political act of defiance University ofHawai'i at Mii.noa (UHM) 233- 234,
25&-261 ; Standard American English (SAE) 237,244-245,247,252-253
255-256; teaching Pidgin literamre 261 ; University of West lndies, Jamaica 375
writing exclusively in HC 258-261 Unmarked Alignment Hypothesis 440
Torres Strait Creole 90 unmixed languages 405
Tosco, M. 36-37 Unserdeutsch 89
trade and labour, im/mobilities 337-338 Upper Guinea Coast 24
trade interaction 407 urbanity 3 12- 3 13
Transfer Constraints approach 97 Uzbekistan 34
transidiomatic practices 493
transient learner variety 42-44 Valdman, A. 37 1
transitional bilingualism 464 Vandepune-Tavo, L. 329, 33 1
translanguaging 492, 493,496-497, 499 van der Voort, H. 42 1
transmission in multilingual ecology 505-507, 506 van Name, A. 367, 374,422
Trinidad 452, 455, 456, 459,460, 464 van Rossem, C. 42 1
Trinidadian Creole English (TCE) 225-226, 330 Vanuam 295, 4 15, 451
Trinidadian English Creole 325, 456 variation 372-373,442-444
T rinidadian soca, music 225-226 variationist sociolinguistics 349
Troy, J. 89, 92 varilingual ism 460
true Pidgins 373 Varis, P. 323
Tmth and Justice Commission 67 Vedda Creole 82
Tryon, 0. 88 Vega Pidgin 205
Tsots itaal 303, 305, 308, 3 14 velar fricative 44
Tsots itaal lexicon 309 Velupillai, V. 358,373, 376, 387, 389, 423
Tunisia 33 verbal alternation 60
Turco-Egyptian Sudan 36 verbal morphology 59
Turkey 34, 338 verb phrases, IOC 59-62; auxiliaries 61;
Turkish-Dutch 478 negation 6 1-62; preverbal markers 60-61,
Turku 37, 40 60-61; verbal alternation 60; verbal
Twelfth Night (Shakespeare) 22 1, 238 morphology 59
typological matrix 5 12 Verkehrssprache 34
typology, Creoles grammar 5 11- 515 vernacular 350
typology of Pidgin and Creole 384-399; Veronique, 0 . 60-61
comparing Creoles with non-Creole languages Versteegh, K. 34-35, 44-45, 82
392-398, 399; comparing Pidgins with non- Vietnamese 5 13
Pidgin languages 387-392; distinct from other Virahsawmy, 0 . 65, 67
languages 386-387; future 398; history 385- 386 Virginia 453
Virgin Islands Dutch Creole 366-367, 393
Ober den Ursprung der Sprache (Grimm) 368 von Werlhof, C. 27 1
Uganda 37, 407
uniformitarian ecological perspective 508 Waha, A. 238
United Arab Emirates 42 Wainmgu, M. G. 3 14
United States 479 Walker, J. A. 356-357
Universal Grammar (UG) 372, 434, 436-446, WALS see World Atlas o f Linguistic Strucmres
461; adults and children in Creole formation (WALS)
536
I11dex
Walvin, J. 454 World Bank 270

Wang, X. 323 World Trade Organization 27 1
Ward, H. \V. 421 World War 1 I08, 20 I
Warschauer, M. 326 World War U 339, 370, 373, 510
Washington, K. N. 463 writing 65-66, 258-261
Wee, L. 494 Wrobel, E. 330
Wei, L. 492 Wurm, S. 88
West Africa 19- 20, 54, 409, 423, 49 1-492, Wutun 485-486
5 15
West African Pidgin(s) 329 X-bar theory 435
West A frican Pidgin English 337, 340, 421 , 428 Xhosa 414
Western Australian Pidgin English 89
Western European lexifiers 386 Yakpo, K. 26
Western Indian Ocean 52, 53 Yankees 3 12
Western Maroon Creole 191 Yarada K' wank' wa 304, 315
Western Nilotic 36, 407 Yei4 14
Western Sudanic Arabic dialects 40 Yerwa 408
West Indian French-related Creoles 54 Yilan Creole 114
West lndies 24, 55 Yilan Creole Japanese in Taiwan 112- 115
Whampoa 509-5 10 Yokohama Pidgin Japanese 107, 109-110, 208
Whinnom, K. 78 Yoruba408
Wiley, B. I. 42 1 Young, R. 65
Williams, C. 492 Youssef, V. 459-460, 464
Wilson, C . 3 12 youth and urban varieties see new identities and
Windward Maroons of Jamaica 19 1 flexible languages
Winer, L. 421 YouTube 330
Win ford, D. 375, 456 Yumplatok 296
Wolfe, P. 22
Woltl', E. 64 Zeitgeist and rise of linguistics 368
Wolfram, \V. 273 Zenaga 4 12
Wolof304, 408, 491-492 Zhang, \V. 328- 329
World Atlas of Linguistic Structures (WALS) Zimbabwe 304
370, 378, 387- 39 1, 393- 398 Zulu 4 14
537
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THE ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF

PIDGIN AND CREOLE LANGUAGES

• Space and place - area) perspective on p idgin and creo le languages

Miriam Meyerhoff is Senior Research Fellow at A ll Souls College and Professor of

THE ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF PHONETICS

THE ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF VOCABULARY STUDIES

THE ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF NORTH AMERICAN LANGUAGES

THE ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF LANGUAGE AND SCIENCE

THE ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF LANGUAGE AND EMOTION

THE ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF LANGUAGE CONTACT

THE ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF PIDGIN AND CREOLE LANGUAGES

THE ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF COGNITIVE LINGU ISTICS

Further titles in this series can be found on line at www.routledge.com/series/RHJL

Edited by Umberto Ansaldo

Rout/edge is an imprint ofthe Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Not in retrospective: the future of pidgin and creole studies 1

2 The Arab world 33

3 Indian Ocean Creoles 52

4 South and Southeast Asia 74

5 Australia and the South West Pacific 88

6 The contact varieties of Japan and the North-West Pacific 106

7 North America and Hawai'i 132

8 Caribbean, South and Central America 150

9 The Atlantic 179

10 Pidgins and Creoles in Eurasia: the consolation of philology 199

11 Creole arts and music 2 17

12 The rise of Pidgin theatre in Hawai' i 232

13 Creoles in literature: Talking story with Lee A. Tonouchi, 'Da Pidgin

14 Identity politics 269

I 5 Creoles, education and policy 286

I7 Pidgins and Creoles: new domains, new technologies 322

19 Variation in pidgin and creole languages 348

20 On the history of Pidgin and Creole studies 365

21 The typo logy of Pidgin and Creole languages 384

22 Language contact and human dispersal 404

23 Diachronic studies of pidgins and creoles: exploring Pidgins and

24 Pidgins and Creoles and the language faculty 434

25 Child acquis ition of Pidgins and Creoles 45 1

26 Multilingual ism and the structure of code-mixing 474

27 Post-structuralist approaches to language contact 490

28 Pidgin and Creole ecology and evolution 504

2. 1 The emergence and diffusion of Arabic SPCs in East Africa 38

2. 1 Origin of Asian foreign workers in Gu lf countries 43

Tammy Haili'ilpua Baker, playwright/director, is Associate Professor of Theatre at the Uni-

Marlyse Baptista, Uriel Weinreich Collegiate Professor of Linguistics at the University of

Roger Blench is a linguist, anthropologist and ethnomusicologist. He has worked primarily

Ka r a Fleming is Assistant Professor in the College of Humanities and Education at KIMEP

Anthony P. G r a nt is Professor of Historical Linguistics and Language Contact at Edge Hill

Magnus Huber is Professor of English at Justus-Liebig University in Giessen. He has led a

NaJa H. Lee is Assistant Professor of Linguistics at the National University of Singapore.

Kathe Ma nagan is Instructor of Linguistic Anthropology at the University of Louisiana at

Micheline M . Soong is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at Hawai' i Pacific Un i-

Georges Daniel Veronique, born in Port-Louis, Mauritius (1948), is Emeritus Professor of

Chapter 23 of this volume draws in parts from previously published works:

Umberto A nsaldo and Miriam Meyerhoff

0.1 Scope of this Handbook

human communication systems among other human communication systems. Continuing

0.1.1 Space and place

0.1.2 Usage, fun ction and power

0.1.4 Concluding remarks

Space and place

1.1 Introduction: space and language