ABSTRACT
This chapter returns to the question of the Mediterranean lingua franca (MLF) and the persistence of language myths, suggesting that the very existence of this linguistic variety is best explained in terms of the traditional methods of contact linguistics, and that the term “lingua franca” is an inappropriate glottonym. It explores the historical context of one item, in particular, the Dictionnaire de la langue franque ou petit mauresque of 1830, purported to contain the largest sample of MLF texts. This work was composed by an anonymous author and published in Marseille, intended for use by French soldiers during their occupation of Algeria, and deemed to be the only comprehensive source of MLF data. Brown analyses all 1,887 unique entries in the Dictionnaire in order to show that the language is essentially Tuscan, and that non-Romance elements identified by previous studies are present only in reduced numbers. Adopting the framework of a “sorites paradox”, the chapter considers how previous researchers have classified MLF phenomena, and points to the lack of textual evidence for a distinct variety of language. This has implications for how researchers discern MLF phenomena in a historical framework, and taxonomies of linguistic variants in contact languages more generally.
