Description

This second volume of John Holm's Pidgins and Creoles provides an overview of the social-historical development of each of some one hundred known pidgins and creoles. Each variety is grouped according to the language from which it drew its lexicon -- Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, French, English, African and other languages. John Holm convincingly demonstrates the historical and linguistic reasons for this organization, which also enables the reader to perceive with ease the interrelationship of all varieties within each group. The section devoted to each variety provides a discussion of its salient linguistic features and presents a brief text, usually of connected discourse, with a morpheme-by-morpheme translation. Readers thus have access to data from all known pidgins and creoles in the world, and the volume provides possibly the most comprehensive reference source on pidginization and creolization yet available.

The emphasis of John Holm's first volume was on linguistic structure and theory. Each volume can be read independently, but together the two volumes of Pidgins and Creoles provide a major survey of current pidgin and creole linguistics which lays new foundations for research in the field.