The Atlantic

The littoral zone of the three continents bordering the Atlantic Ocean has served as an arena of people and language contact for millennia. The study of the creole languages of the Atlantic basin offers countless possibilities for cross-fertilization with historical, genetic, and areal-typological linguistics. Detailed studies of individual features suggest that two large linguistic areas that we term ‘Afrosphere’ and ‘Eurosphere’ converge on the Afro-European creole languages of the Atlantic. Contact with African adstrates has reinforced and expanded existing Afrosphere features in the Afro-Caribbean English-lexifier Creoles (AECs) spoken in Africa. In turn, the absence of contact with African adstrates has led to a weakening of Afrosphere, and a strengthening of Eurosphere features in the American AECs. Future work will have to factor in the tectonic demographic shifts and far-reaching socio-economic changes underway in Africa, and their consequences for patterns of language use and contact along the Atlantic rim. In coming decades, the importance of the Atlantic will only grow as a crossroads of language contact, and a site for the emergence of new languages, speech styles, and plurilingual practices.