LING20010 Chap.11 Language Contact, Pidgins and Creoles
Language Contact, Pidgins and Creoles
Contact between languages is almost universal, and its outcomes range from a few borrowed words to entirely new languages. This chapter covers the situations in which contact happens, from routine dialect contact to colonisation and forced migration, and the social factors that shape outcomes: capital, the extent and direction of bilingualism, and attitudes to borrowing.
Thomason's scale links contact intensity to what can be borrowed. The chapter distinguishes lexical borrowing, calques, grammatical calquing and substrate influence, defines koines, mixed languages, pidgins and creoles, and explains lexifiers and substrates.
It then presents the traditional jargon to pidgin to creole story alongside the arguments against creole exceptionalism, and ends with regional variation in Australian Kriol. Throughout, the lecture stresses that contact outcomes depend on social as well as linguistic factors, and that mundane dialect contact, not only colonisation and migration, can change how a community speaks.
What this chapter covers
- 01
Contact situations and outcomes
- 02
Thomason's intensity scale
- 03
Borrowing, calques and substrates
- 04
Koines, mixed languages, pidgins and creoles
- 05
Rethinking creole origins
- 06
Variation in Australian Kriol
Worked example · free
Place a contact situation on Thomason's intensity scale
- 1Note the evidence: many bilinguals, favourable attitudes, basic vocabulary replaced, some grammar changing.
- 1Match it to the third level, more intense contact, where basic vocabulary and some grammar can change.
- 1Name the top level, intense contact: borrowing across the whole lexicon and major grammatical change.
Key terms
- Calque
- A calque is a borrowed structure whose individual parts are translated, as loanword translates German Lehnwort.
- Substrate
- A substrate is a group's earlier language whose traces persist after the group shifts to another language.
- Lexifier
- A lexifier is the language, usually dominant, that supplies most of a pidgin's or creole's vocabulary.
- Koine
- A koine is a variety that emerges when dialects of one language come into contact, usually with dialect levelling.
- Pidgin
- A pidgin is a contact language with reduced structure and limited functions that arises among people with no shared language.
Language Contact, Pidgins and Creoles FAQ
What is the difference between a pidgin and a creole?
Traditionally, a pidgin has reduced structure and limited domains, and a creole develops when a pidgin stabilises, expands its functions and becomes children's first language. Scholars such as Mufwene now argue that creoles arose more gradually and in different settings.
What is creole exceptionalism?
It is the view that creoles are a distinct structural type with special origins. DeGraff and others reject it, arguing creoles may resemble non-standard European varieties, and the debate matters because creole speakers are often stigmatised.
How does Irish English show substrate influence?
Irish English keeps traces of Irish after the community shifted to English. The after perfect, as in I am after cooking my dinner, closely mirrors an Irish construction meaning that someone has just done something.
What is lexical diffusion?
It is the spread of words over long distances by mobile groups such as sailors, workers and traders. Savvy, from a Portuguese or Spanish verb meaning to know, probably travelled from the Atlantic to the Pacific this way, and sabi appears in Australian Kriol.
Assessment move
Build two tables. The first lists the four contact languages with how each arises and one key trait. The second is Thomason's scale, with the level of bilingualism and the deepest kind of borrowing at each step. Then practise classifying lecture examples: billabong as borrowing, grattacielo as a calque, the after perfect as grammatical calquing and sabi as lexical diffusion.
Learn the creole debate as two positions with their arguments, and remember the lecture's point that it has real consequences for speakers. If your project involves a contact variety, describe the social situation of contact before analysing any feature.
When you revise the Kriol study, note how a single variable, the reflexive pronoun, was enough to reveal regional patterning, because the same logic of one well-defined variable drives any project.
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