New languages that emerge out of contact is a fascinating area of linguistics. In this course, social, historical and structural aspects of three types of contact languages are dealt with: pidgins, creoles and mixed languages. The teachers of this course are both leading researchers in the field of contact languages.Pidgins shed light on how much people can reduce languages and still maintain a sufficient level of communication. Pidgins are reduced, simplified languages that are nobody%E2%80%99s mother tongue that sometimes develop in contact situations. Pidgins show how much in languages is more or less superfluous. There are around 100 pidgins that have been documented to some extent, so it is not an extremely common process.Creole languages on the other hand shed light on what is necessary in languages. Creoles appear to develop from reduced languages such as pidgins, but new grammatical distinctions are always created. Creoles also continue lexical and grammatical properties from the lexifiers (often Western European colonial languages) and substrate languages (for example African languages spoken by slaves transported to the new world). It is a challenge to identify which languages contributed to what aspect of the newly developed creoles. There are perhaps 80 distinct creoles in the world, based on Arabic, Dutch, English, French, Portuguese, Spanish as well as Amerindian languages and some signed languages.Mixed languages, as defined in this course, differ substantially from both pidgins and creoles in that there is neither reduction nor expansion of any magnitude. Mixed languages combine complete parts of one existing language (e.g. the grammatical system, or the verb phrase) from one language with another language (e.g. the lexicon, or the noun phrase) from another. Only a few dozen cases are known.In the course, questions of genesis of pidgin, creoles and mixed languages are related to structural and typological aspects of these languages. Data from the recent Atlas of Pidgin and Creole Structures, edited by a team lead by Susanne Michaelis, will be used extensively. Even though these contact languages are often marginal with regards to numbers of speakers and status, they are important for theories of language and cognition.Students of this course will be presented with the latest empirical work and theoretical developments in the field of contact languages.

Course leader
Peter Bakker: http://pure.au.dk/portal/da/linpb@dac.au.dkSusanne Maria Michaelis

Target group
Master students with an interest in pidgins, creoles and mixed languages.

Credits info
9.9 ECTS Master's Level

Fee info
EUR 333: Price: Students holding a preapproval including exchange students do not pay for the course.ONLY Free-mover students and Tomplads students MUST pay for the course: Danish and EU/ES (tomplads): 333 EURNON-EU-ES students (free-mover): 998 EURBooks, course materials, social programme, and housing are not included in the tuition fee. Also be aware of course specific expenses mentioned in the description. EUR 998: Price: Students holding a preapproval including exchange students do not pay for the course.ONLY Free-mover students and Tomplads students MUST pay for the course: Danish and EU/ES (tomplads): 333 EURNON-EU-ES students (free-mover): 998 EURBooks, course materials, social programme, and housing are not included in the tuition fee. Also be aware of course specific expenses mentioned in the description.



Scholarships
No sholarships

Aarhus University
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Postal code: 8000
City: Aarhus
Country: Denmark
Website: www.au.dk/summeruniversity
E-mail: dfs@au.dk
Phone: +4551335274