ABSTRACT
Typologically, Makista, also widely referred to as the Macao Patois, 1 belongs to the group of languages classified as creoles. For the working purposes of this chapter, we use the term ‘creole languages’ to refer to the group of languages resulting directly from extreme multilingual contact situations imposed on peoples of different geographic, ethnic and linguistic backgrounds during the European Maritime Expansion between the sixteenth and the nineteenth centuries. 2 Given their respective demographic, linguistic and historical constraints, such languages share, in varying degrees, the existence of lexical, functional and semantic elements from the different contributing languages. They also share the common feature of having their European lexifiers (superstrates), or a local variation of these, as the target language of their speakers. The degree of proximity of a creole in relation to the lexifier, and its evolution ever closer to that lexifier 3 or away from it towards a more basilect-like structure vary from creole to creole. Such processes are directly related to the socio-linguistic background behind each specific community where a creole has been developed.
