The Englishness of Old English

Abstract One needn’t get carried away with the similarities between the development of relativization in the post-creole continuum in Hawaii and in Old English and thus conclude on the basis of such parallelisms that Old English (or Middle English) was a creole. It would be futile, in my opinion, to launch a debate about the prospect of uncovering creole origins for Old and Middle English (or for that matter, proto-Germanic). Bailey (1973) and no doubt others would wish to push these similarities farther than I would. When referring to pidginization/creolization (and pidgins/creoles), we must be careful not to confuse the process with the entities which result from them. Hence the term ‘creolization’ should be reserved for a situation in which a creole results. There are however cases where conditions are conducive to simplification, reduction etc. (e.g. second language acquisition), but which do not give rise to a pidgin or creole.