Lingua Francas, Pidgins and Creoles

1. India, Africa, Paupa New Guinea
2. Mobile, trade, migration

1. United States, Britain, China, Japan, some Europe

1. Latin

   Annotations:

   • Used in the church, education, scholarship was centered around monastery, became also language of court
2. French

   Annotations:

   • End of renaissance, modern court Louis 14 French became language of diplomacy  Some education still in Latin, but some in french Modern day, French is still growing because of an effort of the french, mainly in West Africa
3. English

   Annotations:

   • Contemporary interlanguage L1 speakers of English are 1/2 the L2 speakers of English 603 Billion L2 speakers Language of technology, tourism, higher education, medicine 
   • Charles giving talk in Stockholm essentially bilingual, English was predominant in the university Advantages: publish book only in English is ok, But other languages are at a disadvantage 
   1. Modern day English

      Annotations:

      • Will English become decentralized?  Some places have different versions of English, ex Nigerian English versus Singaporean English Might have to land on a more simplified version of English
      1. Circles of English

         Annotations:

         • Inner circle: largely settled by immigration of british i.e. Canada, US, Australia Outer circle: largely former British Empire where English is part of bilingual society i.e. India and Nigeria Expanding Circle: Most growth in English use, no previous historical presence but has been added as a lingua franca
4. Spanish
5. Malay
6. German
7. Borrowings
   1. English

      Annotations:

      • English has borrowed a lot of words from other languages but now as an interlanguage more languages are borrowing from it French radio ads Japlish: japanese business people adopting English words and rephonologized them Air traffic, Sports Lower enrollment in non-English courses
      • English might have largest vocabulary in the world because of all the borrowings

Annotations:

• May require the presence of 3 languages, with just 2 there is merely a struggle for dominance, with 3 you must find common ground Two non dominant language must speak to each other and to the dominant language Mainly distributed along the equitorial belt

1. Arises from multilingual context
2. Simplification

   Annotations:

   • Grammar, phonology, 
3. No one's native language
4. Lexifier

   Annotations:

   • Lexifier is the language that donates most of the lexicon and determines how to categorize the language
5. Atlantic Pidgins

   Annotations:

   • Most common, came out of the slave trade

1. Creole

   Annotations:

   • 7-17 million people speak creole or pidgin
   1. Examples
      1. Cree

         Annotations:

         • Cree population and French colonists 
      2. Hatian Creole

         Annotations:

         • French colonists and Hatian natives 
      3. Tok Pisin

         Annotations:

         • Now official language of New Guinea  Creolized in 1960's
   2. Diglossia

      Annotations:

      • Both lexifier and creole are spoken in stable situation and there is a strict separation between their domain of use
   3. Creole Continuum
      1. Gradual merger

         Annotations:

         • Different people speak different level  Usually upper class speaks the lexifier (acrolect), lower class speaks full creole (basolect) and middle class speaks in the middle
   4. De-creolization

      Annotations:

      • Continuum begins to dissapear from the bottom up Some think this is what happened with AAVE
      1. AAVE

         Annotations:

         • Some say communities started out with a creole and then slowly became closer to the lexifier (English) Others say that AAVE started out in slavery being more similar to white English because slaves were always with white people and white children learned from black caregivers AAVE might actually be closer to originally southern US speech and white changed 
   5. English v French Creoles

      Annotations:

      • English creoles are not mutually intelligible, but the French ones are
   6. Common features

      Annotations:

      • Diminutives, reduplicative patterns Lack of inflection in nouns pronouns, verbs and adjectives
   7. Aitchison types of change

      Annotations:

      • 1. Creole speakers talk faster, there is more assimilation and reduction 2. There is an expansion in vocabulary 3. Tense system in verbs 4. Greater sentence complexity
2. Possible origins
   1. Bioprogram hypothesis

      Annotations:

      • Structures in creoles are because of impoverished input pidgin lacks the complexity of a genetic language. Children then develop certain structures because of the defaults of human language without linguistic input
   2. Monogenisis

      Annotations:

      • Basic syntactic template originated and different lexifiers were put as input This is highly unlikely
      1. Afrogenisis

         Annotations:

         • Written up by McWhorter, common origin would be pidgin Portuguese  Beginning of slave trade/ French and English slave forts
      2. Nautical Origins

         Annotations:

         • Different nationalities on one ship, shipboard lingua franca with nautical jargon Lingua franca carried along shipping routes, theory is unfortunate because there aren't a lot of shipping based terms in pidgins and disregards structural similarities
      3. Relexification

         Annotations:

         • All European language based P and C are from Sabir Sabir is a language used in Mediterranean in the middle ages In 15th century the Portuguese reflexed the language, introduced Portuguese vocabulary into grammatical structure Relexified into pidginized French English and Spanish
         1. Todd

            Annotations:

            • Pidgins and creoles into family tree diagrams, originate with Sabir,  Atlantic Portuguese Pidgin and Indo Pacific Portuguese pidgin
         2. Issues

            Annotations:

            • Lack usual features linguists use to compare languages  Suggests independence of lexicon and grammar, i.e. learners would learn grammar but completely replace the lexicon
   3. Polygenetic origin

      Annotations:

      • Similarities of lexifiers (English, French, Portuguese etc.) all are quite similar

Annotations:

• Germanic split off to anglo saxon peninsula and was isolated byt had contact with Celtic and Danish Norman invasion meant overlayering of French as socially dominant Unlikely that English is as 'genetic' as Japanese Passed down in an unbroken line for 2000+years so English is a genetic language because it is old