**** Creoles as mature languages

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ UP: <[LINK]>

Creoles can take several courses after their formation. Much depends on demographics, power relations, continued immigration and language contact--in short, it is subject to the same constraints and pressures for continuity and change as any other language. Apart from its history, there is nothing to discern a mature creole language from any other language in the processes it is subject to. The history may leave its marks, but after the most extreme factors of immigration/removal have been replaced by natural increase, the language of a particular community is just that, a language. The rapidity or gradualness of this demographic transition plays an important role in determining whether or not such historical markings are distinct or "blurred." Below are some of the processes that a mature creole may undergo.

• - Standardization and perhaps, diglossia .......... <[LINK]>
• - Decreolization and a post-creole continuum ...... <[LINK]>
• - Re-creolization ................................. <[LINK]>
• - Obsolescence and death ............................ <[LINK]>

Demography and "blurring:"

• - Blurring of categories ........................ <[LINK]>
• - Demography of pidginization and creolization .... <[LINK]>