The social and linguistic development of contact varieties: from Pidgin to Creole to Post-Creole

Essay from the year 2006 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, University of Bayreuth, course: PS User - related and Use - related Varieties of English, 5 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: 1. IntroductionThe creation of a pidgin language is the result of language contacts between people who do not speak a common language but who feel the urge to talk with and understand each other. This might be the case in extreme situations such as war, colonisation or slavery but also simply in the context of international trade. Due to language contacts of groups of different languages, as it was especially the case during colonisation, the need to establish a mutual basis for communication arouse and lead to the development of pidgin languages. Whereas a pidgin has a rudimentary grammar and vocabulary and is never spoken as a first or native language, a creole language, which derives from a pidgin, has acquired native speakers and undergone non-contact induced expansion concerning a more complex grammar and vocabulary. A creole language can become subject to the process of decreolization with the result of a post-creole, which refers to the merge of the creole with the standard language it received its vocabulary from in the postcolonial situation.In the course of this paper I will elaborate on the social and linguistic development from a pidgin to a creole language and from a creole to a post-creole language. When focusing on linguistic features of creoles and on the phenomenon of the post-creole continuum, I will mainly refer to the Jamaican Creole, which is supposed to be the best-explained creole language. [...]