Lingua Franca of the Mediterranean: Structure and History (1450-1850)

The aim of my PhD project is to describe Lingua Franca (LF). LF is the now extinct, Romance-lexified oral code that arose from cross-cultural contacts in and around the Mediterranean from 1450-1850. This description is to include a tentative grammar of LF, to the extent that this is possible, as well as a description of the contexts in which LF was used. The study is couched in the framework of Pidgin and Creole studies, and aims to contribute to language contact issues.
The corpus consists of both literary and documentary sources from European travelers, slaves, poets and playwrites, spanning half a millenium. There is a vivid mix of genres that seeks to represent LF: songs, poems, theatre pieces, travelogues, and one anonymous dictionary. Since none of the sources can be considered straightforward reflections of LF, these representations must constitute the object of study itself.

Publications

Journal

Selbach, R. 2002. Conversations with Chris. TeReo 44:17-29.

Edited Volume

Selbach, Rachel, Hugo Cardoso & Margot van den Berg (eds.). 2009. Gradual Creolization: Studies celebrating Jacques Arends. Amsterdam: Creole Language Library Series John Benjamins.

Book Chapters

van den Berg, Margot and Rachel Selbach. 2009. Introduction. in: Selbach, Cardoso, van den Berg, (eds). Gradual Creolization: Studies celebrating Jacques Arends. Amsterdam: Creole Language Library Series John Benjamins.

Selbach, Rachel. 2009. Norms, grammar, or a bit of style: What most makes a language a language? LACUS Forum 34: 221-232. Speech and Beyond, eds. Patricia Sutcliffe, Lois Stanford and Arle Lommel.Houston, TX: LACUS.

Selbach, Rachel. 2008. The superstrate isnot always the lexifier: Lingua Franca in the Barbary Coast 1530-1830. in : Creole structures between substrate and superstrates. Susanne Michaelis, ed. Amsterdam: Creole Language Library Series John Benjamins.

Selbach, Rachel. 2008. Lingua Franca: the linguistic Loch Ness? Logos Series "Studies in Eurolinguistics, Vol.4"

Jourdan, C. and R. Selbach. 2004. The Phonology and Phonetics of Solomon Islands Pijin. In: Handbook of the Varieties of English. Mouton de Gruyter.

Lingua Franca of the Mediterranean (1500-1830): a conundrum of pidgin description

19th International Conference for Historical Linguistics (ICHL 19)
Radboud University Nijmegen, 10-15 August 2009
"Making the best of bad data in historical contact linguistics"

Lingua Franca on the Barbary Coast: 300 years of variation without change
Poster presentation at CNRS/CELIA Workshop held in conjunction with Association for Linguistic Typology (ALTVII): Language Contact and morphosyntactic variation and change/ Variations et changements morphosyntaxiques en situations de contacts de langues.
Ministère de la recherche, Paris 5. September 20-24, 2007.

Social and Linguistic Structures in the slave colony of Algiers (1518-1830)
18th International Conference for Historical Linguistics (ICHL 18)
Université du Québec à Montréal, August6-10, 2007
Special Workshop August 10-11: "Towards realistic models of contact-induced change: Mapping Psycholinguistic and Sociolinguistic Factors":
Norms, grammar, or a bit of style: What most makes a language a language?
Annual meeting of Linguistics Association of Canada and the US (LACUS)
Eastern Kentucky University, Richmond, Kentucky, July 24-28, 2007
Constructing and deconstructing Lingua Franca: Between monogenesis and myth
Society for Pidgin and Creole Linguistics (SPCL)
Amsterdam, June 18-20, 2007
Lingua Franca of the Barbary Coast / La Langue Franque Barbaresque
Paris workshop: Journee d'etude sur les grammaires creoles
Paris-8, April 6, 2007 (coorganized by GRGC [Groupe de recherche sur les Grammaires Creoles], UMR SFL, Universite Paris-8 and ACLC, Language Creation)
With norms or with style: Can a highly variable code be a language?
Diachronic Dialogues : Sessions of LOT historical linguists
ACLC/UvA, Amsterdam, February 23, 2007
Lingua Franca and the (not small) matter of Style
Language Creation Day
ACLC/UvA, Amsterdam, September 22, 2006
When the lexifier is not the superstrate: Lingua Franca in Algiers (1500-1900)
Max-Planck-Institute Leipzig, Germany, June 3-5, 2005
Lingua Franca of the Mediterranean (1500-1830)
ACLC Napdag, Amsterdam, Sept 17, 2004
Lingua Franca of the Mediterranean: Finding Nessie
SAILLS in St. Andrews, Scotland, June 11-13, 2004
The morphology of the pronominal system in Solomon Islands Pijin is innovative
First International Workshopon the Phonology and Morphology of Creole Languages Siegen, Germany, August 2001
Manufacturing evidence: Transcription as the first stage in obtaining linguistic evidence
Twenty-eighth forum of Linguistics Association of Canada and the United States (LACUS) Conference theme: The Nature of Linguistic Evidence.
Montreal, Canada, July 2001
Bae revisited: is the future marker in the VP yet?
SPCL meeting. Joint paper with, and presented by, Christine Jourdan.
Coimbra, Portugal, June 2001
Oketa in Solomon Islands Pijin:
Homophony or conceptual link between the third person plural pronoun and nominal plurality?
SPCL, under auspices of Linguistics Society of America (LSA).
Chicago, Illinois, January 2000
Personal pronouns of Solomon Islands Pijin (From Lexical to Functional Category)
Annual meeting of Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Sprachwissenschaft (DGfS), Arbeitsgruppe: The role of functional categories in language contact and change.  
Halle, Germany, March 1998
Solomon Islands Pijin Pronouns: An argument for inherited constructs and labels, and inherent, creative order
SPCL, under auspices of LSA. Chicago, Illinois, January 1996
Lend me your ears: Language interference and transcription
SPCL, under auspices of LSA.  Joint presentation with Christine Jourdan, Robbyn Sellers and Ingrid Mittmannsgruber.
Boston, Massachussettes, January 1994

Summer/Winter Schools

Berg, van den, M. C. & R. Selbach (2010)

'The Pidgin-Creole Life Cycle', Seminar, Landelijke Onderzoekschool Taalwetenschap Winter School 2010,

Amsterdam (VU), 11 - 22 januari 2010

Kofi Yakpo, Rachel Selbach and Margot van den Berg (2010)
'Language Variation: Fieldwork and Contact Linguistics', Seminar, International Summer School on Language Documentation and Description

Leiden University Centre for Linguistics, Leiden , 5 July - 17 July 2010 (12-16 July)

No known ancillary activities