Pidgins and Creoles

Abstract

This chapter suggests that Creoles evolved from pidgins, but this genetic scenario is questioned by the colonial history of the territories where these varieties emerged, independently of each other. It is plausible to argue that creoles, those that have evolved from European languages, are new Indo-European language varieties, but this position challenges the received doctrine in creolistics. The chapter focuses on what kinds of language varieties creoles and pidgins are, how they evolved, and some of what is entailed by the position the author defends. In any case, creoles evolved from nonstandard varieties, not the standard ones. Creolistics has been bridging with research on grammaticalization, an area that promises to be productive, as evidenced by Kriegel. Andersen was an important step to consolidate common interests between second-language acquisition and the development of creoles. DeGraff bridges research on the latter topic with research on (child) language development and on the emergence of sign language.