Pidgins and Creoles

Pidgins are simplified contact languages that arise for limited communication between groups with no common tongue, and creoles are the fully developed native languages they can become.

Definition

Pidgins and creoles are contact languages: a pidgin is a reduced auxiliary language with no native speakers that develops where groups lacking a common language must communicate, and a creole is the expanded, nativized language that can result when a pidgin becomes a community's mother tongue.

Scope

This topic covers the social conditions that give rise to pidgins, especially trade and plantation contact, their structural simplification, and the process of creolization by which a pidgin acquires native speakers and a full grammar. It includes the post-creole continuum and competing theories of creole genesis such as the language bioprogram and substrate and superstrate influence. Broader contact-induced change is treated by the parent area, and the standing of creole varieties overlaps with attitudes and policy.

Core questions

• Under what social conditions do pidgins arise?
• How does a pidgin become a creole through nativization?
• What explains the structural features shared across creoles?
• How does a post-creole continuum develop in contact with a standard language?

Key concepts

• Pidginization and simplification
• Creolization and nativization
• Substrate and superstrate
• Language bioprogram hypothesis
• Post-creole continuum

Key theories

Pidgin-to-creole life cycle

A pidgin emerging from limited contact can expand and become a creole when it acquires native speakers, gaining the grammatical complexity of a full language, a developmental cycle described in standard accounts.

Language bioprogram hypothesis

Bickerton argued that the structural similarities among creoles reflect an innate language bioprogram drawn on by children when input is a structurally impoverished pidgin.

History

Once dismissed as broken languages, pidgins and creoles became a serious field after mid-20th-century work established their systematicity; Bickerton's 1981 bioprogram hypothesis sharpened debate over their origins, and Thomason and Kaufman situated creolization within a general theory of contact.

Debates

Origins of creole structural similarities

Theories disagree over whether shared creole features arise from an innate bioprogram, from substrate languages, from superstrate input, or from general processes of contact and simplification.

Key figures

• John Holm
• Derek Bickerton
• Sarah Thomason

Seminal works

• holm2000
• bickerton1981

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between a pidgin and a creole?

A pidgin is a simplified language used for restricted communication and has no native speakers, while a creole is a full, complex language that develops when a pidgin is acquired as a mother tongue by a new generation.