LING 115gw Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Savant Syndrome, Noam Chomsky, Tok Pisin
Document Summary
Unit 6: pidgins and creoles the birth and creation of new languages. Pidgins & creoles = languages which are created in multi-lingual environments by the need of speakers of mutually unintelligible languages to communicate with each other. Most commonly speakers of 3 or more languages. Usually one linguistic group will be dominant and a simple language that is a mixture of all of the languages spoken in a social environment will be created -- known as a pidgin. Over a period of time, these languages are increase in complexity and gain native speakers, transforming the original pidgin form into a creole. Pidgin has no native speakers and is a contact language created when speakers of 2 languages need to communicate with each other. Examples: (1) slaves (from africa) / their owners (english-speakers) in the american south and the caribbean in the 19th century (2) trade languages along coastal areas mostly in the tropics (esp.
