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³ and Boas' dissent' º <[LINK] - ³

Structuralist Contributions to Pidgin and Creole Studies During

the 1930s

The eflorescence of structuralism in the 1930s saw little

new addition to the field of creole studies. Most of the work

done in this period drew on previous work to either support or

refute structuralist hypotheses. Leonard Bloomfield's most

famous (or infamous) contribution to creole studies was to

decontextualize and extend Schuchardt's hypothesis of "baby talk"

{<[LINK]> -def.} and "foreigner talk" {<[LINK]> -def.} from being a

factor among factors to being of itself a primary and sufficient

(in conjunction with the dislocation of the population)

explanation of creole language origins. He also introduced the

concept of decreolization in the speech of African Americans

{<[LINK]> decreolization} ({<[LINK]> Holm88} 33, 38, 61) A critic of

the structuralists, Franz Boas, considering the mixed origins of

lexical cognates in many languages, endorsed Schuchardt's wave

model in opposition to the Stannbaum model preferred by most

structuralists, including Edward Sapir, with whom Boas debated

the issue at length.

({<[LINK]> --Thomason and Kaufman} cptr 1, {<[LINK]> Sapir} 144,

153-154, 204 and passim, {<[LINK]> Boas} 225 and passim.)

<[LINK] to continue with the history of creole studies>