Creole language

A stable natural language that develops through sustained contact among speakers of different languages. Its vocabulary often draws heavily on a lexifier, while its grammar reflects multiple sources and innovations.

Pidgin: A contact language with limited functions that develops among groups without a shared language. Some creoles develop from pidgins that expand in use and become native languages.
Decreolization: Change in a creole toward a socially dominant language with which it is in contact. It describes later convergence, not the process that defines a creole’s formation.
Haitian Creole: A French-lexifier creole spoken chiefly in Haiti. It illustrates a creole with a large native-speaking community and official status in Haiti.
Derek Bickerton: A linguist known for influential theories of creole formation and language acquisition. His bioprogram hypothesis proposed a distinctive role for children in creole formation.
Creole language debate: Disagreement over whether creoles form a distinct linguistic type and how they arise. The debate shapes which historical and structural features are treated as defining.
Lexifier: The language that supplies much of a contact language’s vocabulary. A creole often takes much of its vocabulary from this source language.
Mixed language: A language whose major components draw substantially from two or more source languages. Mixed languages are not simply creoles with vocabulary and grammar from different sources.
Tok Pisin: An English-lexifier creole and one of Papua New Guinea’s official languages. Its expansion from a contact language into a national lingua franca shows changing social functions.
Mervyn Alleyne: A Jamaican linguist who studied Caribbean language history and creole formation. His work challenged accounts that treated creoles as structurally detached from their African sources.
Language ideology: Beliefs and assumptions about languages, their speakers, and their social value. Such beliefs often rank creoles below standardized languages despite their full expressive range.

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