This study examines whether Palenquero/Spanish bilinguals maintain intonational distinctions between their two languages in polar questions (PQs). Earlier work reports both temporal and intonational differences, but temporal contrasts seem restricted to older speakers, and evidence is mixed, with older adults possibly showing greater intonational differences. Using two unilingual discourse completion tasks, this study analyzes whether PQ intonation varies by final stress, language, and speaker generation. Functional Principal Component Analysis of time-series F0 trajectories, combined with linear regression, reveals that the nuclear portion of younger adults' intonation is more sensitive to the stress pattern of the final word than to the language, while older adults produce more language-specific final contours. Younger speakers resemble other Caribbean Spanish varieties. In contrast, older speakers appear to extend a truncation rule: they produce truncated contours in Spanish PQs and non-truncated contours in Palenquero. These findings suggest uneven maintenance of intonational contrasts across generations, likely reflecting generational change.
Languages are in a state of constant evolution, a process exemplified by the development of Chinese Pidgin English (CPE). Following the Opium War (1840-1842) and the relocation of the primary trading center from Canton (Guangzhou) to Shanghai, a Shanghai-based variety of CPE emerged within a new sociolinguistic environment. The booklet y & imacr;ng hu & agrave; zh & ugrave; ji & ecaron; ((sic)(sic)(sic)(sic) The Annotation of English 1860), using Ningbo dialect phonetic transcription to help locals conduct business with foreign traders, played a connecting role in this transformation (Wu 2001). The study analyzes the booklet's language features. Lexical analysis reveals processes such as compounding, semantic extension, and the incorporation of vocabulary from Canton Pidgin English, Portuguese, and standard English. The syntactic analysis establishes a four-tiered typology of sentence structures, with quantitative results showing a predominance of Sinitic-aligned types characterized by substrate-driven structures and Sinitic functional economy, alongside smaller proportions of English or hybrid patterns, indicating an evolving contact variety shaped by structural coexistence and gradual lexifier influence.
Describing a modern variety of Martinique Creole spoken by French-Creole bilinguals, we show that this language uses two different subgrammars to express 'definiteness', viz to signal a uniqueness presupposition on a discourse referent: (i) the enclitic determiner -la, arguably located in a phrase-peripheral D head which has been shown by T & eacute;rosier (2021, 2022) to convey two subtypes of discourse-linking; (ii) a dedicated morphosyntax for noun phrases we call names, which are rigid designators. Our study leads us to distinguish names (a class of noun phrases) from proper nouns (a class of lexemes); and to discard the assumption that Definiteness instantiates a single feature (possibly either 'strong' or 'weak') linked to a single phrase-peripheral D head (Longobardi passim, Matushansky 2023). The grammar of MQ rather indicates that uniqueness presuppositions may arise independently of the D head.
This paper addresses the question of metalinguistic terminology from a cross-linguistic and cross-conceptual perspective. In the first part of the paper, the current crisis in terminology is analysed, with a focus on unthinking the dominant keywords and concepts of global Anglophone linguistics such as "language", "creole", "dialect", and "variety". Theorizing the problems of Anglocentrism and Eurocolonial dominance on metalinguistic practices, the paper turns to the contact zone as an area of conceptual innovation and terminological legitimacy. With a point of departure in three case studies from the South Pacific contact zone, the paper integrates insights from South Pacific keywords and local metalinguistic terms. It advocates for the adoption of a new multipolar metalinguistics and underscores the importance of incorporating emic perspectives into linguistic theorizing.
This article examines naming practices in creole languages and in scholarly discourse, addressing names in and for creole languages. It asks what constitutes a 'creole name', how the input languages affect and shape creole onomastics, and when creole serves as a glossonym and when as a class noun for a group of languages. Drawing on examples from diverse creoles, the overview shows that while many names originate from superstrate sources, they often undergo phonological and semantic changes. The discussion of glossonyms highlights how language names operate beyond identification, serving as instruments for categorization and identity construction reflecting both sociohistorical and present conditions. Naming emerges as a constitutive act that shapes linguistic conceptualization. Recognizing this performative dimension is essential for understanding processes of language making and for interrogating assumptions embedded in creole studies.
This article discusses past and current names for contact languages, and their origins. Pidgins and creoles are new languages, and naming them may indicate a perceived continuation from preexisting languages or a break away from the antecedent languages, the lexifiers. Names for individual languages of pidgins and creoles are diverse. The languages may bear the name of the lexifier (e.g. French), a label referring to what today is a type of language (e.g. creole), they may be named after the function of the language (e.g. trade), a colonial vision of the language (e.g. "broken"), a frequent expression (e.g. "Fanakalo" 'say it like this'), a population, a location, etc. Generic names for pidgins and creoles, as used in academic circles, often started off as names for individual languages. Terms spread, both from languages they were initially applied to, to other languages, and they may spread from being used in one language to another language.
The Cape Verde Islands — Upper Guinea contact zone became the first location where Pt. crioulo and its loan translations Sp. criollo , Fr. créole and En. creole were used to designate pidgin or creole varieties. Approaching this issue from the perspective of language ideologies, we differentiate between the perspective of local communities and the perception of European outsiders, and hence between the use of autoglossonyms, i.e., names given by speakers, and the use of alloglossonyms, i.e., names given by outsiders. The paper illustrates how labels for local languages were (mis-)used within the outsiders’ othering strategy, becoming subject to ideological stances.
This article examines the polysemic nature of the glossonym ‘Chavacano’ at the level of discourse, beyond the documented structural properties of its referent, i.e. the Philippine Chavacano Creoles. Arguing that language names function as statements with epistemic value, the study explores the evolving meanings produced through the labelling of Asia’s only Spanish-based creole. By comparing colonial-era documentation with contemporary emic and etic wsritings, we observe how current uses of the creole language name interact with its original derogatory connotations through affirmation, contestation, or negotiation. Applying a Foucauldian archaeological approach to language naming broadens the analytic scope of Creolistics, shifting the focus from purely structural concerns to the discursive power embedded in language names. By analysing the glossonym ‘Chavacano’, we gain insight into the complex meaning-making processes that are couched in creole language naming, where the reproduction of colonial pejorative statements intersects with the reclamation of ethnolinguistic pride.
This paper examines changes in Chabacano (Philippine Spanish Creole) identity in the national and global context of mass migration, focusing on the case of Cavite City, Philippines. Based on qualitative analysis of sociolinguistic, ethnographic, and literary data, we analyze translocal cultural and hybrid language practices in the context of language endangerment in the Cavite Chabacano-speaking community. The results show that due to the effects of migration, Caviteño identity has shifted from local to translocal, with Chabacano coming to represent nostalgia and authenticity as the language becomes more endangered. These shifts in identity are related to longstanding historical and cultural patterns, with complex dynamics reflecting both local pride and participation in the national and global markets. The Cavite Chabacano case also shows that the idea that ‘when a language dies, a culture dies’ is difficult to maintain in the multilingual Philippine context.
This study investigates language use and attitudes among teachers and students at two secondary schools in Dominica, a multilingual Caribbean island shaped by both French and British colonial influence. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with 56 students and 11 teachers, the study explores perceptions of standard English, Dominican English Creole (DEC), and Kwéyòl. The findings show that standard English holds strong overt prestige and is widely used in formal settings, while DEC is the dominant spoken variety among students yet is often described as ‘broken English’ and socially stigmatized. Kwéyòl, associated with older generations, retains cultural value but is declining in active use among youth. Media exposure, particularly through music and social platforms, plays a key role in shaping language attitudes, often reinforcing stigmas. The findings offer insight into processes of language shift and the sociocultural positioning of local varieties in a postcolonial, digitally connected society.
Drawing from linguistic landscape data collected in the public space of multilingual Mauritius, this paper discusses the manifestation of linguistic hybridization in its written form. Theoretically, we draw mainly on the concept of interlect coined by Prudent (1981) to describe the linguistic practices in creole speaking islands. We show the embeddedness of French and Creole, two of the most spoken languages in the country, and English, the official language, in these signs and argue that boundaries between these languages are difficult to define and fuzzy. The case is particularly frequent that Creole structures are 'masked' by a French orthography. Although this fuzziness can be observed at all the levels of the language structure, we here focus mainly on the orthographical and the morphological levels.
The study first introduces relativization, then describes strategies for relativization in Vincentian, as well as the syntactic positions that can be relativized. Comparative references to Eastern Maroon Creole (EMC) are made, particularly concerning gapping and the use of resumptive pronouns. The phenomenon of headless or free relative clauses is also examined. It is argued that both headed and free relatives in Vincentian and EMC can be analyzed similarly, except that the slot typically filled by the head of the relative clause remains empty and is understood implicitly. This absence of an explicit head highlights the distinctive capacity of free relatives to operate independently.
In Chabacano, certain words from the lexifier language Spanish have been adopted in their plural-derived form, although their number is singular. These invariable plural forms can also be found in Philippine languages as Spanish loanwords, without the plural marker that is common for these languages. This article presents an inventory of the invariable plural words in Chabacano and offers a detailed analysis of their semantics. The results are used to evaluate theories about the development of the invariable plurals and to explain the commonalities between their use in Chabacano and the Philippine languages. In addition, similar uses are shown to occur in present-day contact situations with English in the Philippines. In general, the results show a continuity in the adoption and semantics of the plurals between the substrate and the varieties of Chabacano, thus adding to the substratist explanations in language contact and to the discussion about the origins of the Chabacano varieties.
The study explores three factors in the digital spread of pidgins and creoles. The first is the writing boom on the Internet, which has led to prestige gains for pidgin/creoles. The second is the interplay of migration, culture and the media as boosters in the diffusion of pidgin/creoles. The third is the technologisation of pidgin/creoles, as measured by their presence in Large Language Models (LLMs) developed for text generation and machine translation. While pidgin/creoles are typically not among the languages that have been technologised 'top down' and systematically, several of them - among them Jamaican Creole and Nigerian Pidgin - have a high profile in the digital media and therefore also a significant presence in the training data of LLMs. Where pidgin/creoles have become informal world languages in this way, this poses new challenges for the development of standard orthographies and codification.
A placeholder is a dummy element with which a speaker fills the grammatical slot of a target form that they are unable or unwilling to produce. Despite the growing body of work on placeholders, no extensive attention has been paid to placeholders in pidgin and creole languages. In this paper, we characterize da kine (cf. 'the kind') in Hawai'i Creole as a placeholder and describe its grammatical and functional properties through examples retrieved from oral histories. Grammatically, da kine is 'versatile' in that it replaces diverse elements (e.g. nominal, verbal, adjectival, clausal). Functionally, the uses of da kine are motivated by various factors (e.g. interactional, cognitive). Da kine also has other uses as a hesitation marker and a general extender. Furthermore, we suggest a Gricean pragmatic account of da kine and analyze a wide range of its functions as conversational implicatures.
