ABSTRACT
Chapter 10 covers specialist methods for documenting contact languages such as pidgins, creoles and mixed languages; and contact processes such as borrowing and code-switching. We begin by detailing specific considerations for documenting contact languages in the field, such as their low status, whether or not documentation of their source languages exists, and sensitivities around naming and speaking contact varieties. We then discuss specific techniques for documenting these languages, in particular how to develop a corpus which accurately reflects a community’s linguistic norms and which is not skewed by a researcher’s presence. Threaded throughout the chapter are discussions of how to deal with variation, including suggestions for semi-experimental techniques for documenting and characterising linguistic variation and change in small speech communities.
