On languages on islands

Islands as specific research sites in their own right have been given little direct attention by linguists. The physical segregation, distinctness, and isolation of islands from mainland and continental environments may provide scholars of language with distinct and robust sets of singular and combined case studies for examining the role of islandness in any appreciation of language. Whether distinct and particular sociolinguistic and typological phenomena can be attributable to islands and their islandness and vice versa remains unexplored. This position article considers the possibility of there being anything particular and peculiar about languages spoken on islands as compared to languages spoken on mainlands and continents. It arose out of a workshop titled ‘Exploring island languages’ held at Aarhus University, Denmark on 30 April 2018. The main question posed was: Is there anything special socially, linguistically, grammatically, and typologically about the languages of islands? If so, is it possible to talk about such a thing as an island language?.</p

Die Creol Taal

Negerhollands is the original creole language, lexically closely related to Dutch, of the Virgin Islands. It emerged as a separate language around 1700 and died out completely only a few years ago, having gradually been replaced by English in the course of the nineteenth century. Apart from giving information about the history and the features of this language, this book is an attempt to document the various phases of Negerhollands and make texts accessible to a wider public