Work proceeds as if something that might be called “normal transmission” of speech from one generation to the next could be assumed, or as if the sample of speech provided by one’s informants could be safely assumed to represent a norm identical throughout the community.

In analyzing historical change and in describing present structure in language, linguists often find it possible to take social factors for granted.

In addition, the few better-recorded pidgins in this area (for no true creoles have been attested), such as Lingua Franca and Chinese Pidgin Russian, show a good deal of internal and regional variation reflecting the often vast areas over which they were used.Languages called “pidgins” and “creoles” have been something of a stepchild in scientific research, but their origins and social functions pose in particularly clear form problems of the sort with which the Council’s Committee on Sociolinguistics is concerned. Despite older disputes about the evolution of some European languages, such as Saami and the Germanic group, there are no confirmed creole languages which are native to Europe of northern Asia. Indeed the major lexifiers of pidgins from this region – Basque, Icelandic, Arabic, Italian, Norwegian and Russian – played small or no roles in the kinds of exploitation of the peoples and resources of the tropics which gave rise to these better-known and more widespread p/cs. Nonetheless, records of pidgins from Europe and Asia of whatever lexical source are relatively few, and hardly any of the languages can be described as well-documented. A small set of Western European languages (English, Dutch, French, Spanish and Portuguese) has provided the core lexica of most modern creole languages throughout the world and of many pidgins too, and the theoretical and historical study of pidgins and creoles (hereafter p/cs) began in Europe in the mid-19th century and continues to be pursued there.

Pidgin creole