**** Pidgins: provisional or rule-based?

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

Many of the debates over what is and is not a pidgin are issues of naming rather than being substantive issues. Bickerton defines pidgins as provisional, changing and ad hoc systems rather than as more formalized, rule-based systems, as others -- for example, Holm -- argue. Bickerton's position is in line with the role he assigns pidgins in his bioprogram hypothesis, while Holm's more stable pidgins support his substratist position. Scholars taking an ethnomethodological frame have questioned whether such a things as pidgins and creoles exist as discrete phenomena in any way other than through their histories. Siegel, taking a mediating path, recognizes that pidginization may result in idiosyncratic lects that might or might not stabilize, or perhaps even expand, depending on demographic conditions. Siegel calls Bickerton's provisional pidgins "jargons," although the term raises as many problems as it solves.

-- Demographic patterns of continuity and change in

pidgin and creole systems......................... <[LINK]>

-- For a summary with examples of Siegel's developmental

model of pidginization and creolization ......... <[LINK]>

• - Ethnomethodological critique ................... <[LINK]>
• - Jargons and pidgins ............................. <[LINK]>

............................................ \/PgDn\/ for sources

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Bickerto RL 5; Holm 5; Gumperz and Wilson; Hymes, "Intro" to Pidginization and creolization_, restated in Hymes 1993; Siegel ??