A Bibliography Of Pidgin And Creole Languages

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

The Atlas and three-volume Survey present by far the most comprehensive source of reference ever published on the distribution and linguistic characteristics of the world's pidgin and creole languages. On sale as combined item at a special prepublication price they comprise a unique resource of outstanding value for linguists.

This study identifies Creole ethnicity as a social and cultural sub-culture in the modern world.

This book defines and describes the linguistic features of these languages and considers the dynamic developments that bring them into being and lead to changes in their structure.

This book launches a new approach to creole studies founded on phylogenetic network analysis. Phylogenetic approaches offer new visualisation techniques and insights into the relationships between creoles and non-creoles, creoles and other contact varieties, and between creoles and lexifier languages. With evidence from creole languages in Africa, Asia, the Americas, and the Pacific, the book provides new perspectives on creole typology, cross-creole comparisons, and creole semantics. The book offers an introduction for newcomers to the fields of creole studies and phylogenetic analysis. Using these methods to analyse a variety of linguistic features, both structural and semantic, the book then turns to explore old and new questions and problems in creole studies. Original case studies explore the differences and similarities between creoles, and propose solutions to the problems of how to classify creoles and how they formed and developed. The book provides a fascinating glimpse into the unity and heterogeneity of creoles and the areal influences on their development. It also provides metalinguistic discussions of the “creole” concept from different perspectives. Finally, the book reflects critically on the findings and methods, and sets new agendas for future studies. Creole Studies has been written for a broad readership of scholars and students in the fields of contact linguistics, biolinguistics, sociolinguistics, language typology, and semantics.

This introduction to the linguistic study of pidgin and creole languages is clearly designed as an introductory course book. It does not demand a high level of previous linguistic knowledge. Part I: General Aspects and Part II: Theories of Genesis constitute the core for presentation and discussion in the classroom, while Part III: Sketches of Individual Languages (such as Eskimo Pidgin, Haitian, Saramaccan, Shaba Swahili, Fa d'Ambu, Papiamentu, Sranan, Berbice Dutch) and Part IV: Grammatical Features (such as TMA particles and auxiliaries, noun phrases, reflexives, serial verbs, fronting) can form the basis for further exploration. A concluding chapter draws together the different strands of argumentation, and the annotated list provides the background information on several hundred pidgins, creoles and mixed languages. Diversity rather than unity is taken to be the central theme, and for the first time in an introduction to pidgins and creoles, the Atlantic creoles receive the attention they deserve. Pidgins are not treated as necessarily an intermediate step on the way to creoles, but as linguistic entities in their own right with their own characteristics. In addition to pidgins, mixed languages are treated in a separate chapter. Research on pidgin and creole languages during the past decade has yielded an abundance of uncovered material and new insights. This introduction, written jointly by the creolists of the University of Amsterdam, could not have been written without recourse to this new material.