**** Prototypical vs. necessary conditions

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Debates over the definition of a pidgin or creole are often concerned with the lack of a prototypical feature in a category privileged as "necessary" by a particular author. Synthesis requires a flexible definition. Using the concepts of prototype and family resemblances, preferred -- rather than necessary -- features can define pidgins and creoles in a way that positively defines them and simultaneously distinguishes them from related phenomena. The particular forms a variety takes (whether pidgin, creole, or something else yet again) may stray from the prototype somewhat and many will include additional features concerned with their sociohistorical manifestations. The prototype is essential only insofar as it is a way of momentarily bounding a category's parameters to allow definition.

• - A prototypical definition of pidgins ............. <[LINK]>
• - A prototypical definition of creoles ........ <[LINK]>
• - using prototypes to synthesize universalist,

polygenetic, and substrate positions ............ <[LINK]>

• - Definition considered as a cognitive concept....<[LINK]>
• - Prototypes and family resemblances .............. {<[LINK]> }

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For family resemblences, see Wittgenstein, Rausch. For prototypees, see Lakoff Women Fire and dangerous things--chapter ?? for a broad overview of the family resemblences model, and ________, _Metaphors we Live By_. For reservations and revisions of this see Jackendoff, Class notes, and ________, _Semantic Structures(?)_