This paper is intended as an outline synthesis of what is presently known about the processes of pidginization and creolization. Section 1 deals with the linguistic processes of pidginization under the following headings: (1) the learned expectancies of how to behave in a contact situation, (2) necessity and heightened attention, (3) redundancy,…

The author maintains that there are two kinds of problems confronting West Indian children in English schools: first, there are the purely linguistic problems that arise from the fact that their native language is unlikely to be English of a kind readily understood by the teacher, the child being similarly unable to understand the teacher; second,…

This study continues a series of reports on the work of the team which has carried out a sociolinguistic survey of multilingual communities. This study deals with an early sample of the results of the St. Lucian survey, and in particular with the extent to which they provide support for the theoretical model of linguistic choice and change, and…

The purpose of this research was to frame a hypothesis accounting for the observed behavior of particular children in a contact language area, in an attempt to understand their linguistic learning processes. The community involved was the township of Benque Viejo at the Guatemalan frontier, and the four informants, aged 10-13, spoke varying…

A discussion on the nature of language argues the following: (1) the concept of a closed and finite rule system is inadequate for the description of natural languages; (2) as a consequence, the writing of variable rules to modify such rule systems so as to accommodate the properties of natural language is inappropriate; (3) the concept of such…