Taking educated Ghanaian English (GhE) as an example, this article considers the place of stylistic and sociolinguistic variation in Schneider’s (2003, 2007) Dynamic Model of the evolution of New Englishes. The study examines variation in one phonological and one morphosyntactic variable,… read more
This article investigates the nature of 15th - 18th century Afro-European linguistic contacts on the Lower Guinea Coast of Africa with the aim of establishing whether the Portuguese could have spread the Mediterranean Lingua Franca to Lower Guinea. There is solid evidence that a Portuguese-lexified… read more
The status of Gullah and Bahamian Creole English (BahCE) within the Atlantic English creoles and their historical relationship with African American Vernacular English (AAVE) have long been a matter of discussion. It was assumed that Gullah and BahCE are ‘sister’ varieties sharing an immediate… read more
This article analyzes the earliest known attestations of 302 lexical, functional, and grammatical features in 13 English-lexicon contact languages in the Atlantic and the Pacific. The main aims are (i) to shed light on the historical relationships between the individual varieties, (ii) to learn… read more