Salient and substantive pidginization

Please visit the publisher's website (http://www.cambridge.org/ca/academic/subjects/languages-linguistics/sociolinguistics/pidginization-and-creolization-languages-proceedings-conference-held-university-west-indies-mona-jamaica-april-1968) to learn more about this publication.There was some question at one time as to whether or not pidgins were languages. This was an era when decisions were being made about the use of pidgins in business, government, and education in former colonial territories throughout the world. There was always a superfluity of languages, and in the keen competition that characterizes multilingual areas, the pidgins were outclassed; they hardly 'made the leagues' at all. In the contest with the natural languages, both indigenous and imported, they showed up very poorly, having no supporters with mother-tongue loyalties. Of course, the arguments given - when they were not simply disregarded - were mainly linguistic: pidgins have vocabularies and grammars so restricted as to be inadequate for communication. Seldom did anyone observe that they actually were in widespread and successful use. Without them communication would, in many areas, be severely hampered or almost impossible. But still, they were not languages