An overview of the socio-historical development of some one hundred different pidgins and creoles.

This second volume of John Holm's Pidgins and Creoles provides an overview of the socio-historical development of each of some one hundred known pidgins and creoles. Each variety is grouped according to the language from which it drew its lexicon - Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, French, English, African and other languages. John Holm convincingly demonstrates the historical and linguistic reasons for this organisation, which also enables the reader to perceive with ease the interrelationship of all varieties within each group. The section devoted to each variety provides a discussion of its salient linguistic features and presents a brief text, usually of connected discourse, with a morpheme-by-morpheme translation. Readers thus have access to data from all known pidgins and creoles in the world, and the volume provides possibly the most comprehensive reference source on pidginization and creolization yet available. The emphasis of John Holm's first volume was on linguistic structure and theory. Each volume can be read independently, but together the two volumes of Pidgins and Creoles provide a major survey of current pidgin and creole linguistics which lays new foundations for research in the field.

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 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.