The chapter argues that theories of grammaticalization as an independent unidirectional development of a lexical item into a functional item are misleading. Adopting a uniformitarian perspective, he submits that change involves three interrelated factors: The first, the process of recombination, refers to an innate human cognitive capacity which allows speaker/signer-learners (SL) to select specific linguistic features and recombine them into new syntactic variants. The second represents the feature pool of the variants to which SLs are exposed through contact; they are subject to the process of competition and selection. The third, commonly referred to as grammaticalization, has to do with population factors which may favor or hinder the spread of specific variants across a speech community.

Contrary to this approach based on universal multilingualism and contact as cornerstones of acquisition and change (Aboh 2015, 2020), classic examples of grammaticalization are particularly misleading because they aggregate different populations of different SL profiles as if they involved homogeneous monolingual or monomodal communities living in identical ecologies. Likewise, commonly used notions such as language-internal vs. contact-induced change become obsolete because they conceive of contact as the exceptional case. The author shows that language change is always the result of contact.

Applying historical ethnography, the chapter demonstrates that the nature of the interactions between Africans and the French along the West African coast from the late sixteenth to the early twentieth centuries did not favor the development of either a French-based creole or a pidgin. When the first French traders arrived in West Africa they capitalized on the century-long trade routes and social networks established by the Portuguese. They formed partnerships with powerful female commercial partners, who acted as language and cultural brokers between African and French traders. Over time, trading practices evolved from direct exchanges requiring mutual language learning to the emergence of professional interpreters, making it less necessary for the trading partners to learn each other’s language. By the eighteenth century, the French engaged in military conquests. The nature of interactions between African recruits and French officers and the types of population structures in which the former were inserted, did not favor the emergence of a pidgin-like variety identified in creolistics as Français Tirailleur. A detailed analysis of some of the grammatical structures of this putative variety suggests that Français Tirailleur was likely fabricated by those who described or quoted it in their books.

In recent decades, scholars have examined the genesis of Jewish language varieties, particularly Yiddish, as well as Modern Hebrew, drawing intriguing parallels with creole formation processes. This chapter delves into the ecological aspects of language contact, comparing the sociohistorical and linguistic contexts of Jewish language emergence with Caribbean plantation creoles. Particular emphasis is placed on Judeo-Spanish (Ladino), tracing its linguistic trajectory following the traumatic expulsion of Sephardic Jews from Spain in 1492. By applying the “Founder Principle,” the research investigates the linguistic repertoires of founding populations, examining their social stratification, literacy capabilities, familial structures, and intricate social networks.

The author embraces Uniformitarianism to re-examine whether creoles and pidgins emerged in an exceptional way and why there are so few pidgins lexified by European languages in coastal Africa where the earliest trade contacts between European mercantile companies and Indigenous rulers took place. Equally significant is the fact that no historian of the trade mentions usage of a Portuguese pidgin-cum-broken language, though it appears that Portuguese functioned as the default lingua franca from the coast of West Africa to coastal East Asia. Note also that no English pidgin emerged in India, the territory from which the British East India Company spread its activities to Southeast and East Asia. There are more English pidgins than those based on other European languages; and most English pidgins are in the South Pacific. An extensive review of how the trade between Europeans and non-Europeans operated, through brokers-cum-interpreters, reveals that pidgins emerged like creoles by basilectalization away from the lexifier and not sooner than the early nineteenth century. Comparisons with the emergence of more specifically the Romance languages also suggests that the latter evolved similarly to creoles and pidgins, by gradual divergence away from the lexifier, under substrate influence.

The editors trace Uniformitarianism, aka the Uniformitarian Principle, to the nineteenth-century geologist Charles Lyell. Applying it critically to language evolution, they explain their interpretation of it as a two-way heuristic concept that uses information about language change in the distant past to shed light on recent changes and at the same time employs findings about recent language evolution, especially from an ecological perspective, to ask useful questions about earlier cases of language speciation. Assuming that the emergence of creoles and pidgins instantiates language speciation, they argue that the tables can be turned around how to use the ecological approach to show evolutionary similarities between the emergence of these new language varieties and that of their lexifiers. Evidence is adduced not only from the histories of the relevant language contacts but also from various restructuring processes observed in diverse domains of linguistics, such as the Nicaraguan Sign Language (NSL). The editors argue that the Uniformitarian approach disputes the interpretation of the home signs brought to the boarding school for the Deaf as pidgins. Specifically, the emergence of NSL illustrates the kinds of social dynamics under which communal languages (creoles and non-creoles alike) must have emerged in the history of mankind.

This chapter explores the Spanish Creole Debate (Granda 1968; Schwegler 1999; Lipski 2005; Sessarego 2021) through Afro-Veracruz Spanish (AVS), a vernacular spoken in rural Veracruz, Mexico. Findings align with studies on other Afro-Hispanic dialects (Díaz-Campos & Clements 2008; Sessarego 2013a, 2014, 2015, 2019), showing that colonial Veracruz lacked the conditions for creole formation, challenging earlier claims (McWhorter 2000: 11). By integrating sociohistorical and linguistic perspectives, it adds a valuable piece to the Spanish Creole Debate.