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Variation Rolls the Dice: A worldwide collage in honour of Salikoko S. Mufwene
Edited by Enoch O. Aboh and Cécile B. Vigouroux
[Contact Language Library 59] 2021
► pp. 23–56

A sociolinguistic typology for languages in contact

| University of New Mexico

Different types of languages evolve in situations of human social contact, depending on the nature of the contact and the attitudes on the part of the speakers towards the societies in contact. Three socially-defined language types are useful for classifying contact languages. One may distinguish between an esoteric language, used for communication within a speech community, and an exoteric language used for communication between different speech communities. The third language type, a neogenic language, results when speech communities merge (e.g., in colonisation). Each language type involves a continuum depending on the degree and asymmetry of the social contact between speech communities. This chapter describes these continua, the “contact” or “mixed” languages that they account for, and their structural linguistic correlates.

Keywords: contact languages, esoteric language, exoteric language, neogenic language, pidgin, creole, mixed language
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Linguistic features, or linguemes
    • 1.2Evolutionary linguistics and language contact
  • 2.Towards a sociolinguistic typology of languages with respect to intersocietal contact
  • 3.The exoteric language continuum and its relation to social organization
    • 3.1Pidgins and the exoteric language continuum
    • 3.2Exoteric languages and social organization
    • 3.3African lingua francas before, or in apparent absence of, European contact
    • 3.4African lingua francas in the context of European contact
    • 3.5North American lingua francas and trade pidgins
    • 3.6Pidgins in Papua New Guinea before European contact
    • 3.7Social changes and changes in the type of exoteric language
  • 4.The neogenic language continuum
    • 4.1Language shift and lingua francas
    • 4.2Neogeny from closely related varieties: Koiné and standard
    • 4.3Neogeny involving speakers of sharply distinct varieties: Restructured varieties and creoles
  • 5.“Mixed languages” and the esoteric language continuum
    • 5.1Neogeny and “mixed languages”: Mixed-marriage languages and semi-shift
    • 5.2Increasing esotericism and “mixed languages”: Death by borrowing
    • 5.3Sources of linguemes in “mixed languages”
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 12 October 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/coll.59.02cro
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