1. Middle English
A Creole?

2. Theory of Language Birth
The origins of language are nearly impossible to reconstruct fully.
Area of philosophical and psychological inquiry more than linguistic inquiry.
Possible to track the origins of individual languages.
Contact languages (pidgins and creoles)
Pidgin: a reduced code that allows speakers of different languages to engage with one another.
Creole: a “mixed” language, that combines the lexicon of one language (the lexifier) with the grammar/phonology of another.

3. Pidgins and Creoles
Pidgins have consistent rules (more than just “foreigner talk”).
Creoles develop from pidgins when speakers only share the pidgin language.
Creoles can be identified by the following traits:
Faster speech
Lexical expansion
Development of tenses
Relative clauses

4. What is the Reasoning? Creoles develop in colonial situations.
England was colonized first by the Norse ( )
Norman colonization ( )
Creoles tend toward weakening of case systems and regularization of word order.
Case system deteriorated in Middle English
Word order became more highly important.

5. Language Death Really, first, language shift.
Communities of speakers adopt a dominant, more prestigious language, and discontinue use of their first language.
Language suicide: decreolization or blending.
British Norse “blended” into Scots/Middle English.
Guyanan Creole becoming more like English.
Language Murder
Bilingualism that shifts to monolingualism
Code-switching problematic within this framework.