xv Przedmowa, czyli o istocie i konieczności prowadzenia badań kreolingwistycznych Creolinguistics The study of creole languages has been at the center of investigations of language evolution and change since the nineteenth century, when pioneers like Schuchardt and Hesseling first used them as evidence for the crucial role of language contact in the history of Indo-European and other languages. Yet, such scholarly interest did not persist, and for a long time, creoles were seen as marginal both to society and to serious investigation. The field of creole linguistics has progressed far beyond its earlier marginality, and a wealth of studies over the last six decades have made us increasingly aware of the widespread existence of creoles across the world, and the equally common occurrence of processes of language formation and change that creoles share with many languages not referred to as “creoles.” We now recognize that creole languages “are of central importance to our understanding of language, and central too in the lives of millions of people” (Hymes 1971: 1). The study of creole languages has now become an integral part of Contact Linguistics, an interdisciplinary field that seeks to understand the interplay of socio-historical, socio-cultural, linguistic and psycholinguistic factors in the evolution of all languages, recognizing the fact that all languages have been shaped by contact with other languages at various points in their history. Creole linguistics explores a variety of issues that are vital to the understanding of language evolution in general. As outcomes of naturalistic second language acquisition, creoles are ideal testing grounds for understanding the linguistic processes and the types of contact-induced change that have shaped the grammars of many languages, shedding light on universal principles and patterns of change under contact. However, the processes of their formation and evolution cannot be fully understood without a strict attention account of the socio-cultural contexts in which they emerged and developed over time. This introduction to Kreolingwistyka w zarysie… (Creolinguistics: An Outline) emphasizes this aspect of creole languages by viewing them through the lens of Anthropological Linguistics and from the perspective of language vitality. This approach builds on the foundations laid by pioneers of the anthropological approach to creoles such as Dell Hymes and Sidney Mintz. As early as 1971, Hymes called attention to the fact that “creole languages are of special importance, since their very existence poses the question of the relation of means of speech to social needs” (1971:6). Hymes expressed the almost prophetic view that the full story of creole languages must one day
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTE5NDY5MQ==