Language form and language substance: from a formal to an ecological approach to pidgins and creoles

Abstract

This paper argues that creolistics has tended to overemphasize the formal and general properties of Creole languages to the neglect of their substantive and singular lexical properties. Rather than assuming that Creoles can express anything their speakers need or want to say as soon as they come into being, this paper shows, with data from a range of Creoles, that lexical adaptation to new natural environments is a prolonged gradual process. The perspective taken is ecolinguistic, i.e. it regards language as a management tool enabling its users to sustain functional links between themselves and their environment. Ecolinguistics judges the adequacy of the lexicon in terms of its ability to do this.