The case of pidgin and creole languages - Linguistics

impoverished system).
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Once child learners enter the mix, there is potential for the spatial system to grow on its
own. Thus creoles should have a larger and more complex system for describing spatial
relations. Importantly, this system should not be expected to conform to that of any
parent language.
To investigate this hypothesis, I turned to a set of four languages, two pidgins and two
creoles. These languages were chosen to reflect a diversity of geographical regions and
lexifier (superstratum) languages. Detailed analyses of spatial terms in these languages,
Berbice Dutch Creole, Mauritian Creole, Tok Pisin, and Chinese Pidgin English, are
conducted below.
Results
Berbice Dutch Creole
Berbice Dutch Creole is of interest because it is the only extant creole with Dutch as
superstrate language. Little is known about its history. Originally spoken in the Dutch
colony of Berbice, sociolinguistic factors caused the language community to diminish in
size after transfer of the colony to the British (Kouwenberg, 1994:1). A very small
number of texts from the 18 th century document this language, but it is not clear how
much before this the language had been spoken.
Linguistically, its origins are clearer. The lexifier is unambiguously Dutch. The main