Pidgins/Creoles and Second Language Acquisition

Abstract

The role of adult second language acquisition in the genesis of pidgin and creole languages has been discussed since the late nineteenth century. Earlier debate centered around whether simplification, one of the "universal processes" of second language acquisition (SLA), is responsible for the formal simplicity found in pidgins and creoles in comparison to the languages which came into contact to produce them. Later debate has also focused on whether another process of SLA, transfer, can account for the presence of various linguistic features of the substrate languages in pidgins and creoles. This chapter covers the issues concerning the role of these SLA processes in pidgin and creole (PIC) genesis - simplification in section 2, transfer in section 3. For each process, some historical background is presented, followed by a discussion of recent developments in PIC studies, especially those that have built upon research in the field of SLA. The chapter ends with a section describing additional approaches and various current controversies regarding SLA in PIC genesis (section 4).