The case of pidgin and creole languages - Linguistics

dimensions of English 'in' from its usage.
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This difficulty in learning L2 prepositions is present in more standard languages as well.
A test of adults learning Arabic in the classroom showed that their mastery of
prepositions was quite poor, even for more advanced learners
(http://exchanges.state.gov/forum/vols/vol38/no3/p26.htm). Although the use of
prepositions is systematic, the system is hard to learn, perhaps because it is not explicitly
obvious to language users.
In the context of standard languages, these adult learners leave scarcely a footprint: their
speech is considered accented or aberrant and is not incorporated into the language. But
there is in fact a context where these imperfectly learned semantic fields are incorporated
into the standard language: pidgins and creoles.
Pidgins and Creoles
To understand the relevance of pidgins and creoles to a typology of spatial semantics, a
few short definitions are in order. A pidgin is the language that arises when groups of
people from diverse language backgrounds are forced to interact for some limited
purpose. In one common scenario, pidgins arose when large groups of slaves were taken
to plantations and required to communicate with each other and with their owners.
Creoles are like pidgins, but more complete. By one definition, they are used in more
discourse contexts than pidgins. In another, they are the language that results when kids
learn and regularize a pidgin (McWhorter 2000).