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Heine, Bernd – 1970
Defining a lingua franca as a "common language which is habitually used as a medium of communication between groups of people whose mother tongues are different, "this book begins by comparing various Africa lingua francas and discussing questions of general relevance to their study, and then presents statements of varying length about…
Descriptors: African Languages, Arabic, Bibliographies, Creoles
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Welmers, William E. – Language Sciences, 1970
Basically a defense of Joseph Greenberg's classification of African Languages (1963), this article also discusses in non-technical terms and in reference to the African situation how linguists deal with language change and how language relationships are determined. (FB)
Descriptors: African History, African Languages, Creoles, Diachronic Linguistics
Hoyrup, Jens – 1993
Problems in determining the origins of Sumerian, an ancient language, are described, and an alternative approach is examined. Sumerian was spoken in southern Iraq in the third millennium B.C. and later used by Babylonian and Assyrian scribes as a classical language. While early texts in Sumerian are considered a better reflection of the original…
Descriptors: Creoles, Diachronic Linguistics, Foreign Countries, Language Classification
Odlin, Terence – 1997
The process by which Irish-speaking regions became English-speaking regions over a period of centuries is examined. The first part argues that schooling played far less of a role in the shift than some scholars have suggested, because schools were not structured to be particularly effective in teaching the second language (English) to…
Descriptors: Contrastive Linguistics, Creoles, Diachronic Linguistics, Educational History
Lotz, John – 1972
The materials included in this document concern the theory, objectives, and administrative issues behind the project to describe the languages of the world. The basic objective of the project is to collect a series of language descriptions which achieve an acceptable level of descriptive adequacy without interfering with the freedom of the…
Descriptors: Clearinghouses, Contrastive Linguistics, Creoles, Descriptive Linguistics
Sandefur, John R. – 1986
A study of North Australia's Kriol language situation identifies the language, its speakers, its functions, and the sociopolitical factors in its emergence as an autonomous language. The first chapter reviews the development of the linguistic field concerning pidgins and creoles, looking especially at the concepts developed to explain the rise and…
Descriptors: Aboriginal Australians, Bilingualism, Creoles, Descriptive Linguistics