This volume contains revised and extended versions of a selection of the papers presented at “The Amsterdam Workshop on Language Contact and Creolization.” These studies apply the concept of relexification to creoles as well as other contact languages; highlight the relevance of strategies of second language learning for theories of pidgin/creole genesis; critically discuss the notions levelling (koine formation) and convergence; the relation between types of contact situations and processes of crosslinguistic influence; as well as the linguistic consequences of the social structure of the plantation system. In addition to discussing English-, French-, and Dutch-related creoles, the papers cover a wide range of contact languages spoken throughout Africa, Asia, and Europe. The breadth and coverage makes this an indispensable title for research in the field of contact linguistics.

This volume contains revised and extended versions of a selection of the papers presented at “The Amsterdam Workshop on Language Contact and Creolization.” These studies apply the concept of relexification to creoles as well as other contact languages; highlight the relevance of strategies of second language learning for theories of pidgin/creole genesis; critically discuss the notions levelling (koine formation) and convergence; the relation between types of contact situations and processes of crosslinguistic influence; as well as the linguistic consequences of the social structure of the plantation system. In addition to discussing English-, French-, and Dutch-related creoles, the papers cover a wide range of contact languages spoken throughout Africa, Asia, and Europe. The breadth and coverage makes this an indispensable title for research in the field of contact linguistics.

Ten years of research back up the bold new theory advanced by authors Thomason and Kaufman, who rescue the study of contact-induced language change from the neglect it has suffered in recent decades. The authors establish an important new framework for the historical analysis of all degrees of contact-induced language change.

This is an accessible book which makes an important contribution to the study of Pidgin and Creole language varieties, as well as to the development of contemporary European languages outside Europe.

Suitable for those who are looking for fresh perspectives on the process of creolization of language, this book demonstrates how enterprising women, rebellious slaves, insubordinate sailors, and a host of other renegades and maroons had a major impact on the creolized societies, cultures, and languages of the colonial era Atlantic and Pacific.

Destined to become a landmark work, this book is devoted principally to a reassessment of the content, categories, boundaries, and basic assumptions of pidgin and creole studies. It includes revised and elaborated papers from meetings of the Society for Pidgin and Creole Linguistics in addition to commissioned papers from leading scholars in the field. As a group, the papers undertake this reassessment through a reevaluation of pidgin/creole terminology and contact language typology (Section One); a requestioning of process and evolution in pidginization, creolization, and other language contact phenomena (Section Two); a reinterpretation of the sources and genesis of grammatical aspects of Saramaccan and Atlantic creoles in general (Section Three); a reconsideration of the status of languages defying received definitions of pidgins and creoles (Section Four); and analyses of aspects of grammar that shed light on the issue of what a possible creole grammar is (Section Five).

Global in scope and multidisciplinary in approach, Creolization as Cultural Creativity explores the expressive forms and performances that come into being when cultures encounter one another. Creolization is presented as a powerful marker of identity in the postcolonial creole societies of Latin America, the Caribbean, and the southwest Indian Ocean region, as well as a universal process that can occur anywhere cultures come into contact. An extraordinary number of cultures from Haiti, Martinique, Guadeloupe, the southern United States, Trinidad and Tobago, Madagascar, Mauritius, Seychelles, Réunion, Puerto Rico, Argentina, Suriname, Jamaica, and Sierra Leone are discussed in these essays. Drawing from the disciplines of folklore, anthropology, ethnomusicology, literary studies, history, and material culture studies, essayists address theoretical dimensions of creolization and present in-depth field studies. Topics include adaptations of the Gombe drum over the course of its migration from Jamaica to West Africa; uses of “ritual piracy” involved in the appropriation of Catholic symbols by Puerto Rican brujos; the subversion of official culture and authority through playful and combative use of “creole talk” in Argentine literature and verbal arts; the mislabeling and trivialization (“toy blindness”) of objects appropriated by African Americans in the American South; the strategic use of creole techniques among storytellers within the islands of the Indian Ocean; and the creolized character of New Orleans and its music. In the introductory essay the editors address both local and universal dimensions of creolization and argue for the centrality of its expressive manifestations for creolization scholarship.