This collection of essays on the pidginization and creolization of language is taken from a conference held at The University of the West Indies in April 1968. Its editor, Dell Hymes, was an incredibly influential sociolinguist and anthropologist in his lifetime, president of the Linguistic Society of America (1982), the American Anthropological Association (1983) and the American Folklore Society. He was a pioneer of the sociolinguist movement, striving to find ways to connect language and speech to human relations and anthropological study. Within this collection of essays, the reader will find varied studies of pidgin and creole languages by academics considered leaders in their field, particularly at this time. The topics of these essays range from those exploring the employment of pidgin languages in specific territories, such as Vietnam, the West Indies and the US, to those essays looking at the formation and hybridization of pidgin and creole languages generally.

Table of Contents:
Part I. Preface and Introduction: Preface Dell Hymes; Introduction: the study of pidgin and creole languages David Decamp; Part II. A Pidgin (and Two Creoles): Introduction; 1. Tây Bồi: notes on the pidgin French spoken in Vietnam John E. Reinecke; 2. The Katanga (Lubumbashi) Swahili creole Edgar Polomé; 3. The language situation in Haiti Albert Valdman; Part III. General Conceptions of Process: Introduction; 4. Linguistic hybridization and the 'special case' of pidgins and creoles Keith Whinnom; 5. Salient and substantive pidginization William J. Samarin; 6. Absence of copula and the notion of simplicity: a study of normal speech, baby talk, foreigner talk, and pidgins Charles A. Ferguson; 7. Convergence and creolization: a case from the Indo-Aryan/Dravidian border John J. Gumperz and Robert Wilson; 8. Acculturation and the cultural matrix of creolization Mervyn C. Alleyne; 9. Hypotheses as to the origin and modification of pidgins Martin Joos; 10. A note on reduction and expansion in grammar Jan Voorhoeve; 11. Language contact and the problem of convergent generative systems: Chinook jargon Michael Silverstein; 12. The question of creolization in Puerto Rican Spanish David Lawton; Part IV. Problems of Historical Reconstruction: Introduction; 13. Tracing the pidgin element in Jamaican creole (with notes on the nature of pidgin vocabularies) Frederick G. Cassidy; 14. Lexical origins and semantic structure in Philippine creole Spanish Charles O. Frake; 15. The strange case of Mbugu (Tanzania) Morris Goodman; 16. Detecting prior creolization: an analysis of the historical origins of Marathi Franklin C. Southworth; 17. A report on Chinook jargon Terrence S. Kaufman; 18. Problems in the study of Hawaiian English Stanley Tsuzaki; 19. Kongo words in Saramaxx Tongo Jan Daeleman; 20. Tone and intonation in Sierra Leone Krio Jack Berry; 21. A provisional comparison of the English-derived Atlantic creoles Ian F. Hancock; 22. Grammatical and lexical affinities of creoles Douglas Taylor; Part V. Variation and Use: A Range of English-Linked Cases: Introduction; 23. Varieties of creole in Suriname: church creole and pagan cult languages Jan Voorhoeve; 24. Prestige in choice of language and linguistic form Christian Eersel; 25. The art of reading creole poetry Jan Voorhoeve; 26. Coexistent systems in language variation: the case of Hawaiian English Stanley Tsuzaki; 27. Jamaican creole: can dialect boundaries be defined? Beryl L. Bailey; 28. Toward a generative analysis of a post-creole speech continuum David Decamp; 28. Education and creole English in the West Indies: some sociolinguistic factors Dennis R. Craig; 29. The creolist and the study of Negro non-standard dialects in the continental United States J. L. Dillard; 30. Cultural and linguistic ambiguity: some observations on the role of English-based creole in and Antiguan village Karl Reisman; 31. The English language in Hawaii Elizabeth Carr; 32. A report on neo-Melanesian Edward Wolfers; Part VI. Disciplinary Perspectives: Introduction; 33. Some social forces and some social functions of pidgin and creole languages Allen D. Grimshaw; 34. The notion of 'system' in creole languages William Labov; 35. Language history and creole studies Henry M. Hoenigswald; 36. The socio-historical background to pidginization and creolization Sidney W. Mintz; Part VII. Appendices; Index.