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Pidgin and Creole Languages

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lightbulbAbout this topic
Pidgin and Creole languages are contact languages that emerge in multilingual contexts. Pidgins develop as simplified means of communication between speakers of different native languages, while Creoles evolve from pidgins into fully developed languages with native speakers, incorporating elements from various linguistic sources.
lightbulbAbout this topic
Pidgin and Creole languages are contact languages that emerge in multilingual contexts. Pidgins develop as simplified means of communication between speakers of different native languages, while Creoles evolve from pidgins into fully developed languages with native speakers, incorporating elements from various linguistic sources.

Key research themes

1. How does contact with lexifier and substrate languages influence the formation and diachronic development of Portuguese-lexified creoles?

This theme centers on the historical emergence and long-term evolution of Portuguese-lexified creoles (PLCs) formed during Early Modern European colonial expansion. The research investigates how diverse substrate languages, varying social trajectories, and shifting degrees of contact with Portuguese as the lexifier have generated typological diversity and different sociolinguistic outcomes across PLCs. Understanding these dynamics is crucial as PLCs are among the oldest creoles and display a wide spectrum of structural and vitality patterns, offering valuable data for testing creolization theories.

Key finding: This detailed study outlines that Portuguese-lexified creoles emerged in multiple sociohistorical contexts (plantation, maroon, fort creoles) across vast geographical areas, influenced by substrate languages from Niger-Congo,... Read more
Key finding: Through detailed linguistic documentation of the near-extinct Malabar Indo-Portuguese creole, this work reveals substantial intracommunity variation in functional morphemes, affected by both language obsolescence and... Read more
Key finding: This paper classifies African Pidgin-Creoles by lexifier language and analyzes extensive linguistic data, revealing that these creoles show extraordinary variation in tense, aspect, and mood (TAM) expression due to rapid... Read more

2. Do pidgin and creole languages exhibit simplified grammatical complexity compared to non-contact languages, and how can this be quantitatively measured?

This research theme explores the grammatical complexity, particularly morphological paradigms, in pidgin and creole languages relative to non-contact languages. It critically examines claims about creole simplicity, focusing on paradigmatic (systematic morphological variation) versus syntagmatic (linear word combination) complexity. By applying rigorous quantitative metrics to large typological databases like APiCS and WALS, scholars can objectively assess complexity patterns in creoles and account for variation arising from sociohistorical formation processes. Clarifying these patterns informs broader linguistic theories of language evolution in contact settings.

Key finding: This work advances quantitative metrics, rooted in creolization models featuring transmission bottlenecks, to differentiate between paradigmatic and syntagmatic grammatical complexity. By analyzing data from the Atlas of... Read more

3. How do pidgin and creole languages intersect with broader linguistic and sociopolitical paradigms, including their role in postcolonial identities and language ideologies?

This theme investigates pidgin and creole languages as sociolinguistic phenomena deeply enmeshed within colonial histories, language policies, identity formation, and language ideology. It examines how creoles have been variously marginalized or valorized in Hispanic, Lusophone, and other postcolonial contexts, intersects with hybridization discourses, and develops as sites of resistance or integration. Understanding these dynamics is essential for comprehending creole linguistic usage patterns, language revitalization efforts, and their evolving status in multilingual settings.

Key finding: This paper charts the historical underrepresentation and recent integration of pidgin and creole languages within Hispanic and Lusophone linguistics. It documents how creolistics emerged as a subdiscipline in the 1980s and... Read more
Key finding: This essay historicizes pidgin and creole linguistics within broader discourses shaped by colonial and racial ideologies, focusing on Chinese Pidgin English as an exemplar. It demonstrates that foundational descriptions... Read more
Key finding: This chapter explicates how notions of ‘criollo’ and ‘creole’ functioned as epistemic and social tools articulating class, race, identity, and territorial logics in the Caribbean's colonial and postcolonial contexts. It... Read more

All papers in Pidgin and Creole Languages

Radio broadcasters are conscious speakers of language, and it has been observed that a good number of them have received training on speech articulation in the course of the job. Phonological researches have continued to probe into a... more
The present contribution is concerned with an area of grammar – that of modal verbs – which has shown and still shows a degree of variation across different forms of the English language. Modals are a subset of verbs which carry out... more
In this article I show how ubiquitous hybridity is in cultures. It is enabled by layers of population movements and contacts since the dispersal of Homo sapiens out of Africa around 50,000 years ago. I demonstrate how hybridization has... more
A recurring theme in  Derek Bickerton’s work on creoles focused on his observation, now somewhat controversial, that their morphosyntactic properties are surprisingly similar, which he attributed to a ‘language bioprogram’ bearing a close... more
The least understood aspect of Palenquero phonology is its intonational system. This is a serious gap, as it is precisely in the realm of prosody that the most striking phonological differences between Palenquero and (Caribbean) Spanish... more
O isolamento da ilha de Ano  Bom, na Guiné Equatorial, e as condições sócio-históricas de seu povoamento permitiram o surgimento de duas línguas: o fa d’ambô e a língua das cerimônias dos sangitan e das viuvas. Neste texto, apresentamos... more
In the old debate on the origin(s) of pidgins and creoles, non-European-based pidgins and creoles were presented as disproof of the "monogenesis" theory, supposing that they are not derived from (or even influenced by) Afro-Portuguese... more
The primary languages now spoken in the US Virgin Islands are English and Spanish. Yet this was not always the case. During colonial times, the Danish West Indies were a multilingual society. Five European languages were spoken; German,... more
This paper proposes a comparison of the properties of the definite determiners of Fongbe and Saramaccan. The definite determiners per se, the category Number, the demonstrative terms and the possessive phrases are discussed in turn. It is... more
To quantify the degree to which the structure of superstrate and substrate languages influence that of a creole, this paper compares the nearly 100 grammatical features of Guiné-Bissau Creole Portuguese surveyed in Baptista, Mello, &... more
This research paper looks at the role of geographical influences in the emergence of Creole languages and how colonization, trade routes, migration and contact of different linguistic communities contributed to the development of these... more
NLP Ghana is an open-source non-profit organization aiming to advance the development and adoption of state-of-the-art NLP techniques and digital language tools to Ghanaian languages and problems. In this paper, we first present the... more
. 1999. Constraints and Resources in Natural Language Syntax and Semantics, pp. 21-40. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications. 2 We leave aside the information structure and discourse properties which have been the main focus of the grammatical... more
우리나라에 전혀 알려지지 않은 언어들, 그리고 그런 언어들의 언어 구조에 관심을 두고, 연구하여 국내 학계에 소개하는 일 아프리카 언어에 대한 국내 연구는 스와힐리어 분석에 관한 것으로 권명식(1986, 1989, 1993, 1995, 1996, 1997a, 1998, 1999)이 있고, 아프리카 언어분류에 관한 것으로 권명식(1988, 1993a, 1997b, 2001)이 있다. 은 나름의 의의가 있을 것이다. 당장은... more
This interesting volume represents a collection of high quality essays that touch on some of the more recent and "controversial" topics in creole studies in the last 10 years. In some ways, this volume represents the shift away from... more
This paper argues that post-vocalic /ë/ must be posited in the underlying representation of certain lexical items in Haitian, even though it is absent from surface forms. Furthermore, postvocalic /ë/ is syllabified with the preceding... more
Sociolinguistic studies over the past ten years have demonstratcd time ancl again horv linguistic behavior changes as a person's social position changcs, and how language is thus an excellent indicator of social status and social change.... more
This paper describes the construction of the Ottawa Repository of Early African American Correspondence (OREAAC), a corpus of over 400 letters written by antebellum African American settlers in Liberia. Identifying the most speech-like... more
Simons 2003), and to the extent permitted by ethical considerations, shareable. Ensuing sections describe how we approached the ever-present tensions between the ideal and the feasible to achieve this. Recognizing that the linguistic... more
The first part of this chapter reviews the research on the Maroon Creoles of Suriname (and French Guiana) showing that research to date has primarily focused on genesis-based, structural linguistic issues to the detriment of... more
I thank two anonymous reviewers, Jack Sidnell, and the editors for valuable comments and criticisms. The research was supported by the IRD Cayenne (Laboratoire linguistique) and the Délégation générale à la langue française under the... more
HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific research documents, whether they are published or not. The documents may come from teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or... more
This paper discusses greeting routines in the Eastern Maroon community of Suriname and French Guiana. The paper argues that there are two broad sets of greeting routines. They have different origins, linguistic structures and distinct... more
The creoles associated with Suriname have figured prominently in research on creole languages. However, one variety, Matawai, has, to date, remained completely unresearched. This paper attempts to address this lacuna. It discusses its... more
This article reads O. A. Bushnell's Ka'a'awa as postcolonial travel writing grounded in the historicity of 1850's Hawai'i. The novel presents the polyvocal perspective of both Nihoa, an Indigenous Hawaiian, and Bristol, a haole (white)... more
The socio-historical realities of creole-speaking territories are deeply entwined producing at the same time, some distinct linguistic realities. The present study will attempt to give a broad panoply of the linguistic phenomena that have... more
Este trabalho estriba-se em perspetivas ecolinguísticas, em que apresentamos um inventário de termos muito correntes (estruturas e expressões) cuja semântica remetem ou partem de temáticas do ambiente, seres vivos e atividades económicas... more
Neste trabalho damos a conhecer alguns casos de eventual conversão (no caso, derivação imprópria) com os quais deparamos no processo de didatização do berdianu no âmbito de um doutoramento em linguística no qual estudamos propostas... more
Building on Bosquet-Ballah's (2015) work, this small-scale study takes both a quantitative and qualitative approach to the linguistic landscape of Mauritius to investigate whether place affects the languages present. Sample areas in Port... more
Although the last few years have seen an increased interest in the communicative power of Creoles (cf. Migge, 2020; Rickford, 2019), thus starting to shift the focus away from the traditionally dominant structural and historical research... more
No single test is robust or exhaustive enough to accurately establish the meaning of tense, mood and aspect (TMA) markers. This article explores the benefits of using canonical and statistical approaches and a variety of elicitation... more
Most research regarding Mauritian Creole future marking was carried out in the 1990s and assumed differences in 'certainty' dictated the choice of future marker (Baker 1993; Hazaël-Massieux 1993; Touchard & Véronique 1993). The consensus... more
As bibliografias são um instrumento de pesquisa imprescindível. No campo das línguas crioulas e dos pidgins, as publicações de Reinecke et al. (1975) e Tomás (1992) são referências incontornáveis mas necessitando actualizações urgentes.... more
This study examines the intersection of language, identity, and politics in Nigerian online discussion through a sociolinguistic analysis of Nairaland, Nigeria's largest internet forum. Drawing on Communication Accommodation Theory (CAT)... more
For centuries, linguists and scholars have debated the distinction between languages and dialects, often resorting to political and social considerations rather than purely linguistic criteria. Historically, the classification of... more
The debate on the origin of formal features that distinguish pidgins and creoles (PCs) from the contemporary standard versions of their lexifiers 1 will continue to preoccupy creolists for some time, in spite of the increasing and overdue... more
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Mauritian Creole is known to form polar questions in two ways: by using the utterance-initial particle eski, derived from French est-ce que 'is it the case that', or by applying a rising intonation to the declarative sentence. This paper... more
Global intonation contour slopes in Danish read speech have been found to vary systematically ac- cording to utterance type. Statements have the steepest gradients, wh-question contours are slightly less steep, questions with word order... more
RESUMO: Em diálogo direto com questões voltadas para a compreensão das dimensões linguísticas presentes em torno dos realinhamentos planetários, sociais, ecológicos, econômicos, políticos e imaginários impulsionados pela globalização... more
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