"[A]ll interview transcriptions and almost 150 tables with calculations from the quantitative survey are made available on the accompanying CD-ROM."--Page 4 of cover.

This first volume of Holm's major survey of pidgins and creoles provides an up-to-date and readable introduction to a field of study that has become established only in the past few decades. Written for both students and general readers with a basic knowledge of linguistics, the book's original perspective will also attract specialists in the field seeking a broad overview of the linguistic relationships among these languages. Creolized, or restructured versions of English, French, Spanish, Dutch, Portugese, and other languages arose during European colonial expansion. These resulted in such creoles as Jamaican, Haitian, Papiamentu, and some one hundred others, as well as such semi-creoles as Afrikaans, non-standard Brazilian Portugese, Papiamentu, and American Black English. Scholars have tended to work on particular language varieties in relative isolation, making comparative research into the genesis, development, and structure of creoles difficult. In writing this book, Holm draws on broad studies of many languages to make clear how far-reaching creoles'similarities are and to challenge current linguistic theories on creoles and pidgins. The emphasis of this volume is largely empirical rather than descriptive. Its core is a comparative study of creoles based on European languages in Africa and the Caribbean that demonstrates the striking similarities among the languages in terms of their lexical semantics, phonology, and syntax. A forthcoming volume provides a socio-historic overview of variety development and text examples, with translations, of the restructured languages.

A clear and concise introduction to the study of how new languages come into being.

In this first book-length biography of the pioneering African American linguist and celebrated father of Gullah studies, Margaret Wade-Lewis examines the life of Lorenzo Dow Turner. A scholar whose work dramatically influenced the world of academia but whose personal story--until now--has remained an enigma, Turner (1890-1972) emerges from behind the shadow of his germinal 1949 study Africanisms in the Gullah Dialect as a man devoted to family, social responsibility, and intellectual contribution.

CaribbeanLanguage Issues Old and New was conceived as a tribute to ProfessorMervyn Alleyne-who is widely acknowledged as a pioneer in thefield of Caribbean language-on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday. A wide variety of issues are dealt with: phonology, syntax, discourse, creole genesis, language problems in education, among others. Some authors re-visit topics on which Alleyne himself has written, building his insights in many cases, while others explore areas which had not been investigated previously. This work provides access to recent research by Caribbean scholars, and goes some way towards filling a gap, particularly in its usefulness to students of linguistics and teachers of English. At the same time, the uninitiated reader who decides to explore its pages will not be unrewarded, since the the style is simple and direct and the content, for the most part, not highly technical.

The most authoritative guide ever published to the world's pidgin and creole languages. The 3-volume Survey describes their histories and linguistic characteristics. The Atlas of Pidgins and Creoles, published at the same time, shows how 130 linguistic features are distributed among the world's languages.

Traders around the world use particular spoken argots, to guard commercial secrets or to cement their identity as members of a certain group. The written registers of traders, too, in correspondence and other commercial texts show significant differences from the language used in official, legal or private writing. This volume suggests a clear cross-linguistic tendency that mercantile writing displays a greater degree of language mixing, code-switching and linguistic innovations, and, by setting precedents, promote language change. This interdisciplinary volume aims to place the traders' languages within a wider sociolinguistic context. Questions addressed include: What differences can be observed between mercantile registers and those of court or legal scribes? Do the traders' texts show the early emergence of features that take longer to permeate into the 'higher' varieties of the same language? Do they anticipate language change in the standard register or influence it by setting linguistic precedents? What sets traders' letters apart from private correspondence and other 'low' registers? The book will also examine bilingualism, semi-bilingualism, reasons for code-switching and the choice of particular languages over others in commercial correspondence.

Languages are constantly changing. New words are added to the English language every year, either borrowed or coined, and there is often railing against the 'decline' of the language by public figures. Some languages, such as French and Finnish, have academies to protect them against foreign imports. Yet languages are species-like constructs, which evolve naturally over time. Migration, imperialism, and globalization have blurred boundaries between many of them, producing new ones (such as creoles) and driving some to extinction. This book examines the processes by which languages change, from the macroecological perspective of competition and natural selection. In a series of chapters, Salikoko Mufwene examines such themes as: - natural selection in language - the actuation question and the invisible hand that drives evolution - multilingualism and language contact - language birth and language death - the emergence of Creoles and Pidgins - the varying impacts of colonization and globalization on language vitality This comprehensive examination of the organic evolution of language will be essential reading for graduate and senior undergraduate students, and for researchers on the social dynamics of language variation and change, language vitality and death, and even the origins of linguistic diversity.