Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Figures
- Maps
- Tables
- Words, words, words…
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations used in the glosses
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Indo-European languages
- 3 Non-Indo-European languages of Europe and India
- 4 Languages of the Caucasus
- 5 Languages of Northern Africa, Middle East and Central Asia
- 6 Languages of sub-Saharan Africa
- 7 Languages of eastern Asia
- 8 Languages of the South Sea Islands
- 9 Aboriginal languages of Australia and Papua New Guinea
- 10 Native languages of the Americas
- 11 Macro families
- 12 Pidgins, creoles and other mixed languages
- Glossary
- References
- Index of languages
- Index of terms
12 - Pidgins, creoles and other mixed languages
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Figures
- Maps
- Tables
- Words, words, words…
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations used in the glosses
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Indo-European languages
- 3 Non-Indo-European languages of Europe and India
- 4 Languages of the Caucasus
- 5 Languages of Northern Africa, Middle East and Central Asia
- 6 Languages of sub-Saharan Africa
- 7 Languages of eastern Asia
- 8 Languages of the South Sea Islands
- 9 Aboriginal languages of Australia and Papua New Guinea
- 10 Native languages of the Americas
- 11 Macro families
- 12 Pidgins, creoles and other mixed languages
- Glossary
- References
- Index of languages
- Index of terms
Summary
So far, we have discussed how languages evolve from earlier forms through changes in pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar. As a result of this evolution, languages that share a common ancestor can be classified into groupings of various sizes, depending on how long ago that common ancestor was spoken. For example, Proto-West-Germanic, the common ancestor of West Germanic languages such as English, Dutch and German, was spoken more recently than Proto-Germanic, the common ancestor of those West Germanic languages, as well as North Germanic languages such as Icelandic, Norwegian, Swedish and Danish. In turn, Proto-Germanic was spoken more recently than Proto-Indo-European, the common ancestor of an even larger grouping, the Indo-European language family.
One important factor in the evolution of languages is language contact. As has been discussed in Section 5.3 and elsewhere throughout this book, language contact and the resulting lexical and grammatical borrowing may reshape the language to be quite different from its relatives. While all of the world's languages have at some time been influenced by some language or other, in this chapter we will discuss very specific types of languages that arise out of a particularly close contact between groups of people who do not speak each other's languages, but who for some reason or another simply must work out a means of communicating with each other. These languages are known as pidgins and creoles.
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- Languages of the WorldAn Introduction, pp. 230 - 253Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2012