Creole Language Studies
Hancock is as well known in the field of linguistics—particularly in the area of pidgin and creole languages -- as he is in the world of Romani studies and Romani social activism. In addition to his research on the Krio language of Sierra Leone, he has studied the Gullah language of coastal South Carolina and Georgia, and the Afro-Seminole Creole language spoken by a community of Black Seminole descendants in Brackettville, Texas. Hancock was the first scholar to report the existence of Afro-Seminole Creole, and he later identified another variety of that language spoken in a village called Nacimiento in the Mexican state of Coahuila. He maintains that Afro-Seminole Creole and Gullah are closely related languages.
Hancock is recognized as one of the founders of the field of pidgin and creole linguistics. He has also done extensive research on the English-based creole languages spoken in West Africa and the West Indies. He is known especially for his views on the historical development of these languages. He maintains that all the English-based pidgins and creoles spoken in the Atlantic basin region—both in West Africa and in the Caribbean—belong to a single language family he calls the "English-based Atlantic Creoles." He argues that all of these languages can be traced back to what he calls Guinea Coast Creole English which arose along the West African coast in the 17th and 18th centuries as a language of commerce in the Atlantic slave trade. He argues that Guinea Coast Creole English was spoken in coastal slave trading bases like James Island, Bunce Island, and Elmina Castle where the offspring of British slave traders and their African wives used it as their native language.
Hancock maintains that Guinea Coast Creole English ultimately gave rise to the pidgin and creole languages spoken in West Africa today, such as the Aku language in the Gambia, Sierra Leone Krio, Nigerian Pidgin English, Cameroonian Pidgin English, etc. He also maintains that some of the Africans taken as slaves to the New World already spoke Guinea Coast Creole English in Africa, and that their creole speech influenced the development of creole languages spoken today on the American side of the Atlantic such as Gullah, Afro-Seminole Creole, Bahamian Dialect, Jamaican Creole, Belizean Kriol, Guyanese Creole, Sranan Tongo in Suriname, etc.
Hancock's views on the connections among the Atlantic creole languages is controversial. The strong similarities among these languages is undeniable, but many linguists prefer to explain those similarities through convergence rather than historical relationships. Other scholars argue that both factors played a role in the formation of these languages. Another group of linguists subscribes to a theory that attributes creole similarities (which extend to Indian Ocean creoles and Hawaiian creole) to an innate "bioprogram" for language that emerges under the conditions common to most creole communities.
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