42 Jamaican Creole Proverbs from the Perspective of Contact Linguistics languages date back to the end of the 19th century. Julien Vinson, in his definition of a creole language, captured, in my opinion, the nature of pidgin language: Creole languages result from the adaptation of a language, especially some Indo-European language, to the (so to speak) phonetic and grammatical genius of a race that is linguistically inferior. The resulting language is composite, truly mixed in its vocabulary, but its grammar is essentially Indo-European, extremely simplified. (1889: 345–46; quoted in DeGraff 2003: 393) DeGraff (2003: 393) presents this definition as a typical 19th century view of creole languages and the people that speak them. Defining the creole phenomenon in this way today would be considered clearly racist, however, the idea that there are better and worse languages was present in the 19th century scholarly mainstream. It is apparent that the low social status of the language users was transferred onto the variety they spoke and considered as substandard. The above classification of contact languages as substandard varieties did not take into account the fact that people in an immediate need for communication adjust their language by simplifying the linguistic structures, therefore the composition of a new variety is of an “extremely essential” nature. There is no agreement on a single, unified definition of a pidgin language that is accepted by all researchers, as there is no single definition of the terms ‘language,’ ‘text,’ ‘discourse,’ etc. All of the explanations try to capture the nature and essence of the term by indicating its different aspects, such as its function, the role the languages play in a group and its structural characteristics. Hall defines pidgin on the example of Pidgin English and underlines the circumstances in which many pidgins occurred: […] the various types of Pidgin English arose in various regions, as a result of the same basic stimulus: English seamen and traders (many of whom have voyaged to more than one region) were moved to simplify their language when they were dealing with indigenous peoples – an example of the process termed ‘stimulus diffusion.’ (1966: 9) This stimulus diffusion consists in the transfer of simplified forms everywhere seamen or traders go. The definition given by Hall (1966: 9) describes the situation where one group is in a position to dictate the conditions of communication to another, less powerful group. The dominant group simplifies their language to be able to communicate with another group of speakers. The lexicon of a pidgin derives from one of the languages involved in
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