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Koineization in Medieval Spanish Donald N. Tuten Digital
Instant Download
Author(s): Donald N. Tuten
ISBN(s): 9783110177442, 3110177447
Edition: Reprint 2012 ed.
File Details: PDF, 9.11 MB
Year: 2003
Language: english
Koineization in Medieval Spanish
WDE
G
Contributions to the Sociology of Language
88
Editor
Joshua A. Fishman
Mouton de Gruyter
Berlin · New York
Koineization
in Medieval Spanish
by
Donald N. Tuten
Mouton de Gruyter
Berlin · New York 2003
Mouton de Gruyter (formerly Mouton, The Hague)
is a Division of Walter de Gruyter & Co. KG, Berlin
© Printed on acid-free paper which falls within the guidelines

of the ANSI to ensure permanence and durability.
ISBN 3-11-017744-7
Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Bibliothek

Die Deutsche Bibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche
Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available in the
Internet at <http://dnb.ddb.de>.
© Copyright 2003 by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, D-10785 Berlin
All rights reserved, including those of translation into foreign languages. No part of this
book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or
mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval
system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Printed in Germany.
Acknowledgements
During the several years that I have worked on this book, I have been for-
tunate to receive assistance from a variety of knowledgeable and talented
scholars. Of these, I must thank explicitly John Nitti, Tom Cravens, An-
drew Sihler, and Lesley Milroy, who gave particularly helpful advice at
different stages of the project. Jim Milroy and Jeff Siegel volunteered to
read and critique parts of the manuscript, and Ralph Penny and Ray Harris-
Northall generously agreed to review the entire manuscript. The final result
is much improved thanks to their detailed and thoughtful reactions. All
shortcomings, it need hardly be said, are entirely my own.
I must also thank others for their generosity: my colleagues at Emory
University for allowing me the time off to finish this project; Mikel Val-
ladares for his untiring help with bibliography; Emilia Navarro for proof-
reading the manuscript; and my friends and family, especially Pepe, for
their patience and support.
Contents
Acknowledgements ν
1. Introduction 1
2. Koines and koineization 9

2.1. Koine and koines 9
2.1.1. The Greek Koine 9
2.1.2. Modern use of the term koine 13
2.2. Models of koineization 22
2.2.1. Siegel's stage-based model 23
2.2.2. Trudgill's process-based model 28
2.2.2.1. Accommodation and salience 29
2.2.2.2. Interdialect 36
2.2.2.3. Focusing 39
2.2.2.4. Mixing, leveling, reduction 41
2.2.2.5. Reallocation 43
2.2.2.6. Simplification 45
2.3. Elaborating the process model: Conditions of speaker 47
activity
2.3.1. Norms, norm enforcement, and social networks 49
2.3.2. Language acquisition: Adults and children 54
2.4. Observing koineization: The Milton Keynes project 63
2.4.1. Interaction of acquisition and social networks 64
2.4.2. Focusing and the time scale of koineization 67
2.5. Koineization and other contact phenomena 73
2.5.1. Pidginization and creolization 74
2.5.2. Contact between stable dialects 79
2.5.3. Dialect leveling, homogenization, uniformity 80
2.5.4. Standardization and standards 84
2.5.5. Language shift and language death 86
2.5.6. Convergence 88
2.5.7. Borrowing 88
2.5.8. Interacting processes and the study of koineization 89
2.6. The model and its use 89
2.6.1. Definition of koineization 90
2.6.2. Methodological guidelines 91
viii Contents
3. The Burgos phase 94

3.1. Social history 94
3.2. Previous discussion of language change in early Castile 104
3.3. Linguistic changes 112
3.3.1. Leveling and simplification of articles and preposition 114
+ article contractions
3.3.2. Reorganization and simplification of the tonic vowel 119
system
3.3.3. Koineization and other changes of the Burgos phase 131
3.3.3.1. The aspiration of F- 132
3.3.3.2. The development of /tf/ 136
3.3.3.3. The development of CL-, PL-, FL- 138
3.4. Conclusion 143
4. The Toledo phase 145

4.2. Koineization and language spread/dialect leveling 153
4.3.1. Leveling and reallocation in the development of 160
apocope
4.3.2. Reanalysis and the rise of leísmo 173
4.3.3. Reorganization and simplification of the possessive 204
system
4.4. Conclusion 214
5. The Seville phase 215

5.2.1. Previous discussion of the origins of Andalusian 223
5.2.2. Documentary evidence 231
5.2.3. The decline of extreme apocope 233
5.2.4. Simplification of first-person singular possessives 238
5.2.5. Leveling and the rejection of leísmo 242
5.2.6. Seseo-. A 13th-century merger? 245
5.3. Conclusion 256
6. Conclusions 257
Maps 269
Contents ix
Notes 274
References 302
Index 332
Chapter 1
Introduction
Approaches to the study of language and language change have long been
characterized as following in one of two tracks. The focus might be the
external aspects of the status and use of language, or, in line with what was
considered more properly linguistic, the internal structural features and the
changes they undergo. Little relationship was seen to exist between the
external (social and cultural) and the internal (structural), and an exclusive
focus on the internal features of language came to characterize linguistic
research, whether synchronic or diachronic. Although some scholars ques-
tioned the value of this approach, they lacked the theoretical base to
counter the views of others who believed and believe still that the sole
object of linguistic study should be the internal structure of the language.
Belief in the autonomy of language finds its origins in certain meta-
phors that have long governed scholars' views. In the nineteenth century,
the dominant view held that language was a biological organism, which
was born, grew, decayed, and died. This belief in the independent life of
language led to its study apart from the context of its use. In the twentieth
century, this metaphor, though not at all dead, has blended with and been
superseded by others, particularly that of language as machine.1 This view,
evident in Saussure's definition of a language as a system où tout se tient,
has led to ever more precise representations of language as efficient sys-
tem. While certainly enhancing descriptions of language structure, such a
position has left little room for language change, and has led, paradoxi-
cally, to the view that language systems must alternate between perfect and
flawed states.
James Milroy (1992: 23) has argued that such metaphors have actually
hindered research on language change. Continuing the machine metaphor,
he points out that internal combustion engines are also systems, but they do
not change themselves; they can only be changed from without. Still, the
understanding that speakers do not, in general, consciously effect changes
in the linguistic system has reinforced the idea that change can only be
explained system-internally. Therefore, even when attempts have been
made to include external factors in explanations of change, the view of
2 Introduction
language as an autonomous entity has tended to impede an accurate con-

ceptualization of how external factors might contribute to change.2
In recent decades, however, sociolinguists have strongly defended the
notion that it is not languages that change but rather speakers who change
language.3 To the non-specialist, such an observation may appear self-
evident, even trivial, but the biological and mechanistic metaphors so
dominated linguistic inquiry that the importance of speakers to language
change was for a long time largely ignored. Milroy (1992: 24) points out
that linguists who have worked within a wholly system-internal approach
have made notable headway in defining the linguistic constraints on
change, but that they have been unsuccessful in dealing with the Actuation
(and Transmission) Problem: "Why do changes in a structural feature take
place in a particular language at a given time, but not in other languages
with the same feature, or in the same language at other times?" (Weinreich,
Labov, and Herzog 1968: 102). In order to answer this question, perhaps
the fundamental problem in the study of language change, the researcher
must focus on what speakers in society do with their language. To do so is
not to reject the idea of language as system, but rather to supplement this
idea with a conception of language as a tool or pool of resources that is
used by speakers for specific purposes (Milroy refers to this as "speakers'
teleology"). From this perspective, linguistic change is seen as the product
of the interplay of speakers and systems in specific and changing social
contexts.
Keller (1994) follows a logic like that of Milroy in arguing for the use
of invisible-hand explanations in historical linguistics. Keller points out
that languages are social institutions, or phenomena of the third kind, and
that they cannot be explained in the same ways that natural phenomena or
human artifacts are explained.4 Rather, like other social institutions, lan-
guages arise and change as the unintended results of collective and inten-
tional human actions (as do traffic jams, or footpaths across lawns). An
invisible-hand explanation of linguistic change will therefore be composed
of two levels: a micro-level and a macro-level. The micro-level examines
intentional speaker activity and the constraints upon that activity. The con-
straints, or ecological conditions, include intralinguistic factors such as the
linguistic varieties and the specific features associated with each, as well as
extralinguistic factors, such as sociocultural, psychosocial, cogni-
tive/learning, and biological conditions that enable and restrict speaker
behavior. Speaker (interactions, summed and viewed collectively, then
Introduction 3
lead to consequences on the macro-level, which is constituted by the lin-

guistic structures, processes, or outcomes that need to be explained.
Of the extralinguistic factors affecting speaker activity, only those relat-
ing to social conditions are normally open to change. For this reason, Mil-
roy emphasizes the link between social change and linguistic change, and
argues that the primary task of historical sociolinguistics is the establish-
ment of explicit causal links between these two domains (Milroy 1992:
222). To the extent that patterns of social change and linguistic change co-
occur in different situations, models and theories of change can be ab-
stracted from real cases of change. In this study, I critique, elaborate and
apply a sociolinguistic model of change, koineization, which provides a
means of linking certain kinds of structural changes to a specific type of
social change. Koineization is generally considered to consist of processes
of mixing, leveling, (limited) reduction or simplification, which occur in
social situations of rapid and intense demographic and dialect mixing. The
model has been developed primarily from studies within the variationist
paradigm of new towns (e.g., Omdal 1977; Trudgill 1986; Bortoni 1991;
Kerswill 1996; Kerswill and Williams 2000) and colonial and post-colonial
language varieties, often as an extension of research on other contact varie-
ties such as pidgins and creóles. These include discussions on the origins
of different varieties of overseas Hindi-Bhojpuri (e.g., Moag 1979; Gamb-
hir 1981; Siegel 1987, 1993; Barz and Siegel 1988; Mesthrie 1993), and, to
a lesser extent, colonial English (e.g., Trudgill 1986; Trudgill, Gordon, and
Lewis 1999). Unsurprisingly, the model has been applied to language
change in other colonial contexts, including Latin of the Roman Empire
(Wright 1996) and American Spanish (e.g., Fontanella de Weinberg 1992;
Granda 1994; del Valle 1998; Hidalgo 2001).
The model of koineization represents a significant theoretical advance
for our understanding of language change as influenced by dialect contact
and mixing. Traditional historical linguists, heavily influenced by
Neogrammarian, structuralist, or generativist/formalist principles, were
loath to admit explanations based on dialect contact or mixing in any but
anomalous cases of change; the ideal explanation was either internal to the
system (and thus little more than a description) or internal to the speech
community (if this aspect was considered). Indeed, as we will see in Chap-
ter 2, it is no accident that much early work on koines was carried out by
scholars already interested in contact varieties such as pidgins and creóles,
or variationist sociolinguists, who were drawn to the study of dialect con-
tact through their study of language/dialect variation and its relationship to
4 Introduction
linguistic change. Still, even in sociolinguistics, study of dialect mixing has

only now begun to enter the mainstream. 5
Although this model has most often been associated with colonial varie-
ties, it is my contention it should be useful for linking the unique social
consequences of the medieval reconquest and repopulation of the area we
now know as Spain (phenomena with no obvious analogues in medieval
France, Italy, and England) 6 with the particular formative changes of me-
dieval Spanish (or, more precisely, Castilian).7 In fact, as I discovered as I
began to research the topic, Ralph Penny had already proposed this idea in
his brief study Patterns of linguistic-change in Spain (Penny 1987). Penny
suggested that the model of koineization (as defined by Trudgill 1986)
could and should be applied to the history of Spanish, not only colonial
varieties, as in the work of Fontanella (1992), but also peninsular Spanish
itself. Penny pointed out that the medieval expansion of Castile and Castil-
ian had occurred in a series of geochronological stages of population
movement and dialect mixing (Penny 1987: 4—7):
1. Burgos and the early county of Castile (late 9th and 1 Oth centuries)
2. Toledo and surrounding regions (from 1085 and into the 12th century)
3. Seville and the valley of the Guadalquivir (mid- and late 13th century)
4. Granada and surrounding regions (from 1492)
5. The conquest and colonization of America, and the sudden conversion of
Seville into the sole port of entry/exit for the colonies (from 1492 and into
the 16th century)
6. Judeo-Spanish, in exiled Sephardic communities of the Mediterranean (fol-
lowing the expulsion of 1492)
7. Madrid, following its designation as capital of Spain (from 1561)
According to Penny (1987), there are numerous features of Peninsular

Spanish that might be ascribed to koineization, such as the absence of pho-
nemic splits and the small inventory of phonemes relative to other Ro-
mance languages. Other such features include:
— reduction from four to three degrees of aperture for tonic vowels

— reduction of final vowels from four to three
— merger of Ibi and /β/
— loss of voicing in sibilants
— leveling from four to three verb classes
— almost complete leveling of second and third verb classes
— extreme leveling of irregular verb forms
Introduction 5
— leveling of perfect auxiliary verb to haber

— interdialectal solution to third-person object pronouns
— merger of /j/ and I7J in Andalusia (yeísmo)
— merger of the antecedents of Isl and /Θ/ in Andalusia (seseo/ceceo)
— replacement of vosotros with ustedes in Western Andalusia
— aspiration and loss of l-sl in Andalusia
(Penny 1987: 8-17)
However, Penny (1987) kept his comments speculative; he did not attempt
to tie most of these changes to any particular stage, provide evidence for
such linking, or enter into a detailed explanation of how particular features
originated, were selected or spread. Subsequently, Penny has returned oc-
casionally to the topic (e.g., 1992, 1995, 2002) and has published a recent
volume, Variation and Change in Spanish (Penny 2000), which includes
significant discussion of the effects of dialect mixing on the history of
Spanish. In his more recent publications, Penny has begun a more in-depth
analysis of some of the problems identified by him, and has begun to an-
swer the question he himself poses in his (1987) essay: "is it possible to
observe a correlated series of linguistic levelings and simplifications, in the
way the theory predicts?" (Penny 1987: 8). To this end, he has analyzed the
origins of Judeo-Spanish (1992) and the rapid propagation of the aspiration
of etymological Iii after the naming of Madrid as capital in 1561 (2002). In
Penny (2000), he discusses still more features of Spanish that may have
arisen as a result of koineization. Still, this volume was designed as a broad
overview and introduction to variation and change in the history of Span-
ish, and Penny therefore did not aim to link specific changes to specific
periods (though he does consider some changes that might be associated
with the Burgos phase), nor to engage in detailed reconstructions of par-
ticular changes. At this point, then, the questions that Penny posed in 1987
have yet to be answered, particularly for the early medieval periods of
koineization. Indeed, while the importance of the Burgos phase (or período
de orígenes as it is known to most historians of Spanish) has long been
recognized, the sociolinguistic significance of the Toledo and Seville
phases remains undemonstrated. Moreover, Penny (2000: 5), following
Wright (1999), expresses reservations about periodization of the history of
any language, including Spanish, and so avoids reliance on the historical
schema of geochronological stages of koineization he had proposed earlier
(though he continues to suggest them as possibilities).
6 Introduction
Penny's original suggestions and unanswered questions form the start-

ing point and organizational basis for much of this study. I have chosen to
study only a limited number of features, and, in the interest of exploring its
usefulness, I have chosen to maintain the geochronological framework
outlined in Penny (1987). The number of features has been limited to only
a few for each stage (not all of which were mentioned by Penny), because
my primary intent has been to show, in a thorough and detailed manner,
how certain changes can best be explained in terms of koineization, and in
so doing to offer evidence for the validity of the model as elaborated and
defined in Chapter 2. I have limited discussion to the levels of phonology
and morphology (or morphosyntax in the case of leísmo), in part because
these are the linguistic levels that have received most attention in Hispanic
historical linguistics, but also because these have been the components of
language least obviously related to social and cultural change. I have also
limited my discussion to only the first three stages proposed by Penny -
those which began and ended in the medieval period. This is so for two
main reasons. First, the year 1500, a traditional break-off point between
medieval and modern Spanish, marks a convenient break-off point for this
study, which would otherwise require entry into the even more complex
issues surrounding the origins of American Spanish (though the last chap-
ter includes discussion which will be of interest to those studying this
topic). Second, the late 15th century marks the advent of printing and with
it the beginning of widespread effects of standardization (Harris-Northall
1996b), a process which may erase or blur the effects of koineization (see
Chapter 2). Indeed, even though application of the model represents a clear
example of what Labov (1975) has called "using the present to explain the
past", medieval Spanish also represents an ideal context and variety on
which to test and explore the explanatory power and limits of the model, in
that the competing effects of standardization - so difficult to escape in the
modern world - were largely absent. And, even though we must still con-
tend with that perpetual dilemma of historical linguistics - relative paucity
of data - medieval Spanish is a variety that has been thoroughly studied,
and for which we possess fairly plentiful documentary evidence, some-
times (particularly in the Seville phase) much more than that available for
some of the colonial/post-colonial language varieties that have been stud-
ied as koines up to now.
The study is divided into four core chapters (Chapter 2-5). In the first
of these, I begin by reviewing the history and use of the term koine, from
which the term and concept of koineization is derived. Given the recent
Introduction 1
development of this model, it is only to be expected that consensus about

all its defining features has yet to be reached. Even so, a thorough under-
standing of the model is necessary if it is to be used to reconstruct events at
great time-depths (1100 to 700 years ago in this study). Inevitably, my own
research has led to re-evaluation of earlier proposals on koineization. I
therefore examine key studies that discuss or apply a model of koineization
(particularly Siegel 1985; Trudgill 1986; and Kerswill and Williams 2000),
synthesizing this earlier work, relating it to more general theories of lan-
guage change and pointing to possible problems, limits, and refinements. I
also propose certain methodological procedures or guidelines that should
be adhered to when using the model to analyze and explain past changes.
From there, I move to investigate, in three further chapters, the first
three periods of possible koineization and rekoineization suggested by
Penny for Castilian: the Burgos phase (Chapter 3), the Toledo phase
(Chapter 4), and the Seville phase (Chapter 5).8 In each of these chapters, I
review the social and demographic history of the period and region, and
develop sociolinguistic reconstructions of certain changes that can and
should be linked to koineization as it is defined in Chapter 2. But I have
also varied the organization of each chapter as needed. For example, the
Burgos phase has received a great deal of attention from scholars, so Chap-
ter 3 includes a review and critique of previous discussions of the linguistic
significance of this phase, as well as the medieval period in general. In this
chapter I argue that there are at least two groups of changes for which
koineization was a primary cause, but I also discuss three other changes
less clearly related to koineization, and, in the interest of exploring the
explanatory limits of the model, consider to what extent koineization may
or may not contribute to our understanding of their development.
Unlike the Burgos phase, the Toledo phase has not generally been rec-
ognized as significant to the development of medieval Castilian, so my
primary aim in Chapter 4 is to show that there are several groups of
changes that can be attributed to koineization in this period. I also consider
the relationship between koineization and the spread of Castilian features
in neighboring regions, a phenomenon which appears to have accelerated
at this time. Until very recently, the Seville phase had been largely ignored
by scholars, but during the past decade the Spanish scholar Frago Gracia
has made strident claims that many of the features that today characterize
the Andalusian dialect of southern Spain had their origin in the dialectal
and demographic mixing of the 13th century. Chapter 5 is therefore, in
large measure, a response to the work of Frago Gracia (e.g., 1993), whose
8 Introduction
research and views I consider in some detail. In fact, I challenge his argu-
ments that a key modern feature of Andalusian, seseo, arose in the 13th
century. On the other hand, I do find convincing textual evidence of other
changes not considered by Frago which support his more general claim that
the Seville phase was an important period of (rapid) change. This particular
case will illustrate the importance of adhering to the methodological guide-
lines outlined in Chapter 2 when employing the model at a great time-
depth.
Chapter 2
Koines and koineization
The model of koineization, of fairly recent development, is based on earlier

metaphorical use of the term koine. We therefore begin with an overview
of the origins and modern use of the term in the linguistic literature, and of
the confusion that its varied meanings have sometimes provoked. The pri-
mary aim will then be to define, as thoroughly as possible, what koineiza-
tion is, and what it is not. Several scholars have sought to answer these
questions, though their responses do not agree in all respects, so I have
organized the bulk of this chapter as a critical review of previous discus-
sion of koineization, with the goal of synthesizing this earlier work and my
own views. Throughout, the various facets of koineization are put in rela-
tion to other theories of language use and change, but a special section
focuses on the differences between koineization and other processes with
which it may interact in real cases of change, or be confused in scholars'
discussion of change. The chapter concludes with the definition of a proto-
typical model of koineization, and the proposal of methodological guide-
lines for application of the model.
1. Koine and koines
Koine is a term with a long history and a wide variety of interpretations. It

has its origin in the name of a variety of ancient Greek that became the
common language of the eastern Mediterranean. Subsequent metaphorical
or technical use of the term has referred to a broad range of language varie-
ties that share some or all of the characteristics of the original Greek
Koine.
1.1. The Greek Koine
The κοινή (from koiné dialektos or koinè glòssa 'common tongue') was a
mixed dialect based largely on the prestigious Attic dialect of Athens.
From the middle of the fifth century B.C., when Pericles converted the
10 Koines and koineization
Confederacy of Delos into an Athenian empire, the influence of Attic

spread rapidly throughout the Aegean. Most of the other city-states in this
empire spoke Ionic dialects (to which the comparatively archaic Attic was
closely related)9 and resented the control of Athens, but the emerging
Koine, usually referred to as Great Attic at this early stage (Bubenik 1993:
12; Horrocks 1997: 29), was useful for commerce and general intercourse
and was also employed as the (written) language of administration (Hor-
rocks 1997: 33). It has been suggested (Thomson 1960: 34; Hock 1986:
486) that a likely birthplace for the Koine was the Peiraieus, or port of
Athens, where Attic speakers and Ionic speakers from other parts of the
empire interacted, along with Doric speakers from the neighboring Pelo-
ponnesus. However, its use as written "standard" and spoken vernacular
was never restricted to the Peiraieus, since contact between Attic and Ionic
speakers occurred in a variety of contexts. The city-states in the Attic
League had to provide soldiers for the Athenian armies, as well as deal
with Athenian officials in their territories and Athenian administrative
documents composed in official Attic (Horrocks 1997: 31).10 Athens also
sent out numerous Attic-speaking colonists to the colonial territories,
where they interacted with Ionic speakers. Many speakers of Ionic also
took up residence in Athens, and through their interaction with Athenians
may have contributed to changes in the speech of "middle-class" residents
of the city. Great Attic thus developed in part as a second dialect of Ionic
speakers, but it became the native dialect for following generations in some
of the Ionic cities. Eventually, Philip of Macedón adopted Great Attic as
his language of administration and it later spread throughout the eastern
Mediterranean as a result of the conquests of his son, Alexander the Great.
The early Koine may have benefited from its ambiguous relationship to
traditional Attic; its difference from Attic may have made it more accept-
able to the dominated Ionic speakers of the empire (Hock 1986: 486),
while its similarity perhaps lent it prestige and made it acceptable to Philip
of Macedón. It has been characterized as a "de-Atticized Attic" (Hock
1986: 486) and as a "de-Atticized Ionicized Attic" (Bubenik 1993: 13). It is
interesting to note that this mixed and simplified form of Attic was decried
from the beginning as being impure and corrupt (Palmer 1980: 175), and
centuries later, under the Romans, a campaign of "Atticization" was
launched to improve it (Buck 1933: 22). The following features have often
been identified as typical of the mixed and simplified nature of the original
Koine:
Koine and koines 11
1. Highly distinctive Attic -it- was largely replaced by the more widespread
(Ionic) equivalent -ss-, thus:
Attic Koine
glötta glossa 'tongue'
phulattö phulassô 'guard, watch'
tettares tessares 'four' (Hock 1986:486)
2. Distinctive Attic -rr- was replaced by more widespread (Ionic) -rs-:
Attic Koine
arrën arsën 'male' (Hock 1986: 486)
3. Attic -ä- (<*-ayw) was replaced by more widespread -ai-:
Attic Koine
eläa elaia 'olive' (Hock 1986: 4)
4. Dual number, a feature of Attic, was abandoned in the Koine, as in most
other Greek dialects (Hock 1986: 486).
5. Attic -eös and Ionic -êos were replaced by Doric -äos in läos 'people' and
nâos 'temple', leading to a more regular declension for these nouns (Hock
1986: 487).11
6. Pitch accent was lost, replaced by a stress accent (Thomson 1960: 35).
7. Phonemic vowel quantity was abandoned (Thomson 1960: 35) and distinc-
tive consonant length was lost (Horrocks 1997: 113);
8. The number of vowels was reduced; diphthongs became monophthongs
(Palmer 1980: 176-177).
9. Final -n was regularized in the accusative (Thomson 1960: 35).
10. The optative disappeared (merged with the subjunctive); the infinitive be-
came common in use with prepositions; the imperfect and aorist were reor-
ganized on a new uniform basis; numerous irregular verb forms were regu-
larized (Thomson 1960: 35).
11. The particle äv was replaced by a more transparent periphrasis (Thomson
1960: 36).
12. In some cases new words replaced both Ionic and Attic equivalents:
Attic Ionic Koine
naûs nëûs ploîon 'ship'
(Bubenik 1993: 15)
This list of characteristics is attractively simple and clear - deceptively so

- but not all who have used the concept and the term koine have agreed on
the features that characterized the original Koine. This has led to varying
and problematic interpretations of the term's meaning. Indeed, the great
distance between the present and the period in which these social and lin-
guistic changes occurred has made it difficult to define the features of the
Koine, much less a clear notion of how the Koine was produced. One prob-
lem has been that this temporal distance (and lists like the one above) has
tended to give a falsely static impression of the Koine. Many scholars ap-
pear to have conceived of it as a finite state, but in reality the Koine was
constantly developing. Palmer (1980: 177) points out that precise dating of
attestations of these changes shows that they did not all occur concurrently,
but rather appeared and spread at different times over the course of centu-
ries, along with the social and geographical spread of the Koine. For ex-
ample, Horrocks (1997: 35, 27) discusses the replacement of -tt- by -ss-
and the loss of dual number as a feature of early Great Attic (presumably
lost even earlier in a prehistoric Ionic phase of dialect mixing), but believes
the loss of the pitch accent (and with it the resultant loss of distinctive
vowel and consonant quantity) to have begun in classical times and only to
have reached completion in the (Egyptian) Koine by 150 B.C. (Horrocks
1997: 109). Indeed, many of these phenomena were attested in one or sev-
eral contributing dialects prior to the formation of the Koine itself.
Another assumption, not unrelated to the view of the Koine as a static
entity, has been that the Koine was uniform across the Hellenistic world.
However, this seems to have been true primarily of a conservative and
standardized Koine which was employed in official documents. Horrocks
(1997: 61) observes that the "very high grammatical and orthographic stan-
dards of even very ordinary 'official' papyrus documents from Egypt"
suggests that even low-ranking officials must have received rigorous train-
ing in this formal variety. On the other hand, more private documents re-
veal significant regional diversity, and there exist features of Egyptian
Koine which distinguish it from the Koine of Asia Minor, or that of Pales-
tine and Syria (Bubenik 1989: 175-252; Horrocks 1997: 60-64).
With regard to the causes of these changes, Thomson (1960: 35)
seemed to assume that the extension of Greek to non-native speakers
played a role, but he offered no further details. Others have seen the
changes that resulted in the Koine as examples of "normal" development.
Indeed, Buck dismissed out of hand the possibility that the changes in the
Koine were in any way unique:
But mixture in vocabulary is common to most of the present European lan-
guages. There were also changes in pronunciation, in syntax, and in the
meaning of words, similar to the changes that have taken place in the other
European languages. (Buck 1933: 22)
Buck was partially correct in making these assertions, but, as will be dis-
cussed below, there is reason to believe that there are distinct though gen-
eralizable processes which led to the formation not only of the original
Koine but also of many other language varieties that share similar histories
Koine and koines 13
of dialect mixing and demographic movement. More recently, scholars

such as Bubenik (1993) and Horrocks (1997: 41) have come to view the
changes which characterize the Hellenistic Koine, especially in such new
urban centers as Alexandria, Antioch, and Pergamum, as arising from the
combined effects of top-down imposition of the Koine by the ruling dynas-
ties (favoring overall uniformity), dialect leveling resulting from the mix-
ing of the dialectally heterogeneous immigrant masses from old Greece,
and imperfect acquisition by indigenous populations of the language un-
dergoing koineization (favoring interregional diversity).12 Horrocks makes
the following useful observation on the issue of uniformity and variation in
the Koine:
It is essential, then, to see the Koine not only as the standard written and
spoken language of the upper classes (periodically subject to influences
from belletristic classical Attic), but also more abstractly as a superordinate
variety standing at the pinnacle of a pyramid comprising an array of lower-
register varieties, spoken and occasionally written, which, in rather different
ways in the old and the new Greek worlds, evolved under its influence and
thereafter derived their identity through their subordinate relationship to it.
(Horrocks 1997: 37)
1.2. Modern use of the term koine
Modern metaphorical or technical use of the term koine has grown as

scholars have attempted to identify commonalities between (the develop-
ment of) the original Koine and other language varieties. In fact, this has
been only too easy to do, as different scholars have identified different
features of the original koine as being key to its nature. The meanings as-
signed to metaphorical uses of the term koine became increasingly diverse
as use of the term grew during the 20th century. According to Cardona
(1990: 26), modern use dates from Meillet's (1913) discussion and analysis
of the original Koine. Meillet reported three meanings for the term: for
Hellenistic Greeks, the language of everyday use; for Hellenistic gram-
marians such as Apollonius Dyscolus, the language of reference for use in
grammars, and possibly the base from which new dialects arose; for mod-
ern Hellenists, the base for modern Greek (Meillet [1913] 1975: 253-275).
Meillet suggested that it was easier to define the structure of a koine by
what is was not (the dialectal features it lacked) than by what it was,
thereby establishing the problematic notion that koines are merely the
"least common denominator" of contributing varieties (see below). He also

emphasized the long and apparently punctuated development of the Koine:
la κοινή n'est pas une langue fixée, ce n'est pas non plus une langue qui
évolue en obéissant régulièrement à certaines tendences; c'est une langue où
il y a une sorte d'équilibre, constamment variable, entre fixation et évolu-
tion. (Meillet 1975: 256)
Most importantly, however, Meillet argued that the features of the Koine
were not unique to it, and suggested that Vulgar Latin, among other lan-
guages, showed a similar history of social expansion and structural reduc-
tion (Meillet 1975: 257).13 Meillet's discussion thus identified the useful-
ness of "ce terme commode et nécessaire", as he calls it, and thereby
initiated its more general use as a means of categorizing language varieties.
Jakobson ([1929] 1962: 82) was another early user of the term, and ob-
served that dialects which serve as vehicles of communication in large
areas and gravitate towards the role of koine (by which he seemed to mean
lingua franca; see below) tend to develop simpler systems than dialects
which are restricted to local use (these ideas were further explored in An-
dersen 1988). Despite such early use, the term apparently remained highly
specialized and rarely used until the second half of the 20th century
(Cardona 1990: 27). Cardona offers as another early example the following
passage from Tagliavini's Origini delle lingue neolatine·.
Probabilmente il francone, parlato alle corti dei re merovingi e carolingi, era
una lingua mista, una specie di koiné formato da elementi franchi salì e
franchi ripuarì, nonché da elementi romanzi e germanici assai vari.
(Tagliavini 1949: 206)
Talgiavini uses the term to refer to a variety that results from the mixing of
not only related but also unrelated languages, thus employing it in a way
that seems justified only in the broadest sense (i.e., if the feature of mixing
is the only one picked out by the metaphor; but see below for discussion of
the potential impact of non-native speakers).
Although not all scholars would use the term with such liberty, it has
nevertheless received a tremendous variety of interpretations in the linguis-
tic literature. Siegel (1985) argues that this is so because the original Koine
had six different features which scholars could highlight (or ignore) in
making comparisons. According to Siegel, the Koine:
— was based primarily on one dialect

— had features of several dialects
Koine and koines 15
— was reduced and simplified14

— was used as a regional lingua franca
— was a standard
— was nativized to some extent (Siegel 1985: 358-9, 362)
In order to determine the dominant interpretations of the term, Siegel ana-

lyzed references to some 36 language varieties as koines (Siegel 1985:
359):
1. Literary Italian (Pei 1966: 139)

2. Church Kikongo [Congo] (Nida and Fehderau 1970: 152)
3. Standard Yoruba (Bamgbose 1966: 2)
4. Bahasa Indonesian (Pei 1966: 139)
5. High German (Germanic Review 1 (4): 297 [ 1926])
6. Bühnenaussprache [Stage German] (Dillard 1972: 302)
7. Hindi (Hartmann and Stork 1973: 123)
8. Latin in the Roman Empire (Hill 1958: 444)
9. Belgrade-based Serbo-Croatian (Bidwell 1964: 532)
10. Mid-Atlantic koine [England] (Times Literary Supplement, 22 April 1965)
11. Network Standard English [U.S.A.] (Dillard 1972: 302)
12. Melanesian Pidgin (Ervin-Tripp 1968: 197)
13. Fourteenth-Century Italian of Naples (Samarin 1971: 134)
14. Town Bemba (Samarin 1971: 135)
15. Fogny [Senegal] (Manessy 1977: 130)
16. Kasa [Senegal] (Manessy 1977: 130)
17. Congo Swahili (Nida and Fehderau 1970: 152)
18. Lingala [Congo] (Nida and Fehderau 1970: 153)
19. 'Interdialects' of Macedonian (Lunt 1959: 23)
20. Koineized colloquial Arabic (Samarin 1971: 134)
21. Ancestor of modern Arabic dialects (Ferguson 1959a: 616)
22. Vernacular of north China, seventh to tenth centuries (Karlgren 1949: 45)
23. Calcutta Bazaar Hindustani (Gambhir 1983)
24. Israeli Hebrew (Blanc 1968: 237-51 )
25. Eighteenth-century American English (Traugott 1977: 89)
26. Fiji Hindustani (Siegel 1975: 136; Moag 1979: 116)
27. Trinidad Bhojpuri (Mohan 1978)
28. Guyanese Bhojpuri (Gambhir 1981)
29. Surinam Bhojpuri (Gambhir 1981: 184)
30. Mauritian Bhojpuri (Gambhir 1981: 184)
31. Slavish [U.S.A.] (Bailey 1980: 156)
32. Italian-American (Haller 1981: 184)
33. Slave languages [Caribbean] (Dillard 1964: 38)
34. English-based nautical jargon (Hancock 1971: 290n)

35. Black Vernacular English (Mühlhäusler 1985: 8)
36. Canadian French (Gambhir 1981)
Siegel reports that very few of these language varieties could be said to
have all the properties of the original Koine, and he found wide variation in
the meanings assigned to the term itself. Studies 1-22 used the term to
refer to a lingua franca (any variety used for intergroup communication);
studies 1-11 used it to refer to regional standards. A majority of the studies
indicated that several dialects must contribute to the formation of a koine.
Only a few studies included reference to a base dialect, reduction and sim-
plification, or to nativization (Siegel 1985: 362).
Though Siegel restricted himself to studies published in English, his
general conclusions appear valid for studies published in other languages
as well. Still, further variation in meaning does crop up. For example, Ro-
mance philologists have long used the term koine to describe certain me-
dieval literary varieties, such as the Provençal of the Troubadours and the
"Sicilian" dialect of the court of Frederick Π, praised by Dante in De Vul-
gari Eloquentia (Elcock 1960: 399, 459). These varieties certainly show
mixing and the elimination of dialect features, but they appear to have been
the result of conscious selection and limited to use in writing by a tiny
elite. They have also been labeled, perhaps more appropriately, literary
standards (Elcock 1960: 455).15 In Italian linguistics, the term has also been
used to describe certain (probably spoken) regional varieties that arose
from the Middle Ages around principal urban centers (e.g., Venice, Turin,
Milan, Genoa, Naples, Palermo). This use follows those that emphasize
dialect mixing, use as lingua franca and/or regional standard. More re-
cently, koine has also come to be used as a sociolinguistic label for a cer-
tain level in the dialect continua that characterize most regions of Italy
(Berruto 1989: 13). Pellegrini ([I960] 1975: 37) divided these continua
into four levels: dialect, regional koine, regional Italian, Italian standard.
The regional koines are thus seen as distinct from the regional standards,
but their lingua franca function remains significant, as does, at least for
some authors (e.g., Cardona 1990), the mixing, reduction, and simplifica-
tion of dialect features.
Given such wide variation in actual usage, it is unsurprising that explicit
definitions of the term have also varied widely. The following give some
idea of this variation (some of these are quoted in Siegel 1985):
Koine and koines 17
— "a form of language resulting from a compromise between various dialects

and used as a common means of communication over an area covering all
the contributing dialects." (Graff 1932: xxxvii)
— "a compromise among several dialects" used "by a unified group in a self-
contained area within a larger linguistic area". Pei also considers a koine to
be a planned language: "a deliberately sought sublimation of the constituent
dialects rather than an unconscious and accidental merger". (Pei 1966: 139)
— "Koine is the term for a 'common' dialect which lacks prominent features
of the more conventional dialects of a language. It is the end result of dia-
lect levelling." A koine is often considered "good" speech in the language
and is most often a standard dialect. (Dillard 1972: 302)
— "KOINES. A standard normally has its origin in the dialect of some particu-
lar territory, which comes to enjoy superiority over those of neighboring
regions, for non-linguistic reasons (usually political, less often economic or
social, never purely literary). Such a favored dialect comes to be the com-
mon language or KOINÉ . . . used throughout its region, where it is usually
comprehensible to most of the speakers of the neighbouring dialects. In the
course of its spread, the koiné retains its basic relationship to the dialect on
which it is based, but takes in features from related dialects, as in the in-
stance of Span, /xuérga/ juerga 'spree' from Andalusian . . . or French fa-
bliau 'animal-fable' from Picard (Φ ONFr. fablel 'little fable')."
(Hall 1974: 104)16
— "The spoken language of a locality which has become a standard language
or lingua franca." (Crystal 1992)
Though a more precise definition of the term has been developing since the
publication of Ferguson (1959a), widely varying interpretations still
abound, even in more recent studies such as those in Sanga (1990) and
Knecht and Marzys (1993), where, for example, the terms koine and stan-
dard are frequently conflated.
The different interpretations given to the term have produced a situation
in which its use often produces more confusion than clarity. Siegel (1985:
363) sets out to resolve this problem by specifying a technical meaning for
the term. He claims that the concept of dialect mixing is fundamental, and
specifies that the contributing varieties must be language varieties that are
either a) mutually intelligible or b) share the same genetically-related su-
perposed language (1985: 375-376). 17 These may include regional dialects,
sociolects, and "literary dialects". For the last category, Siegel based his
claim on the development of Israeli Hebrew, which Blanc describes as a
result of the mixing of "a variety of literary dialects, several substrata, and
several traditional pronunciations" (Blanc 1968: 238-239). But this defini-
tion raises the problem of "non-native" speakers in the demographic mix:
should learner interlanguages be included among the contributing varieties
of a koine? The impact of non-native speakers has also been identified as
important to the development of the Hellenistic Koine (e.g., Horrocks
[1997] reports Coptic substrate features in Egyptian koine texts) and the
early Arabic koine (Ferguson 1959a). Mesthrie (1994: 1865) defends their
potential importance in the development of any koine, since the variants of
native speakers of unrelated languages are less likely to be perceived as
"foreign" in the mixed linguistic pool of the prekoine (cf. LePage 1992).
However, certain constraints need to be placed on this broad view of con-
tributing varieties, at least for prototypical cases. First, adult interlanguage
features may form part of the pool, but these speaker-learners must have
easy access to input and interaction with native speakers. This in turn im-
plies that such "foreign" speakers do not form a majority in the commu-
nity, since their dominance would reduce the likelihood of their obtaining
sufficient access to the language (varied though it may be). Thus, the range
of contributing varieties or subsystems must be expanded to include inter-
language varieties of second language learners.18
Siegel also warns that many of the definitions given to the term koine
are either too broad or too narrow. Thus, using koine as a synonym of lin-
gua franca or common language robs it of usefulness, as does restricting
koine to the meaning of "planned, standard, regional, secondary" variety or
one based primarily one dialect. Perhaps more controversially, Siegel's
explanation could be read as favoring a close identification between koines
and standards:
unplanned, nativized, or transported languages may be koines if they exhibit
the mixing of any linguistic subsystems such as regional dialects, literary
dialects, and sociolects. However, although a koine may or may not be a
formal standard, it is implicit in all definitions that a koine has stabilized
enough to be considered at least informally standardized. (Siegel 1985: 363)
In reality, Siegel meant socially-based language norms rather than the codi-
fied language norms that characterize standard languages, and Siegel
(1987: 201) clarifies this issue by abandoning use of the term "informal
standardization". The definition might also be improved by emphasizing
that prototypical koines not only may be but necessarily are unplanned,
nativized, and transported varieties (see below).
Koine and koines 19
According to Siegel, most koines are characterized to some extent by

reduction and simplification, though he comments:
requiring a koine by definition to exhibit these features would be too restric-
tive, as the amount of reduction or simplification may differ between koines
according to both the conditions under which they developed and their cur-
rent developmental stage. (Siegel 1985: 363)
Recent research (e.g., Kerswill and Williams 2000) shows that there are
cases of koineization without obvious examples of simplification; this is
due to the pre-existing similarity between the contributing varieties, in
which most variation is allophonic. Mohan (unpublished paper; reported in
Siegel 1985: 361-2) points out that koines are of two types: those based on
dialects with great structural similarity (such as that studied by Kerswill
and Williams), and those based on more highly differentiated dialects.
While I think these "types" have to be viewed as extremes on a scale,
greater difference between the contributing dialects can be expected to lead
to greater perceived simplification in the resultant koine. On the other
hand, Siegel's reference to the "current developmental stage" is problem-
atic, since it implies that a koine, once formed, continues to be in some
way identifiable as a koine; as will be emphasized below, koines are only
identifiable in a historical sense.
Siegel concluded his discussion of koines with the following definition:
a koine is the stabilized result of mixing of linguistic subsystems such as re-
gional or literary dialects. It usually serves as a lingua franca among speak-
ers of the different contributing varieties and is characterized by a mixture
of features of these varieties and most often by reduction and simplification
in comparison. (Siegel 1985: 363)
The claim that a koine normally serves as a lingua franca requires some
qualification. A koine would only serve as a lingua franca for non-native
speakers, since for native speakers it would serve as a primary (perhaps
even sole) means of communication. The function of lingua franca may be
important in the development of regional koines. Siegel explains that:
a regional koine usually results from the contact between regional dialects of
what is considered to be a single language. This type of koine remains in the
region where the contributing dialects are spoken. (Siegel 1985: 363)
Petrini (1988: 34, 42) points out that regional koines with no native speak-
ers can be extremely unstable, varying from speaker to speaker and from
situation to situation, and may be no more than an abstract perception of
the linguist who observes the frequently similar results of multiple

accommodations by speakers. Petrini claims too that a regional koine as a
clearly distinct variety is likely to arise only as it gains native speakers,
most often in urban centers, who serve to stabilize the norms of the koine.
This regional koine is then used as a lingua franca by speakers of rural
dialects, but such use is secondary to its use by native speakers.19
The notion of koine as lingua franca is more problematic in the case of
immigrant or colonial koines. According to Siegel, an immigrant koine:
may also result from contact between regional dialects; however, the contact
takes place not in the region where the dialects originate, but in another lo-
cation where large numbers of speakers of different regional dialects have
migrated. Furthermore, it often becomes the primary language of the immi-
grant community and eventually supersedes the contributing dialects.
(Siegel 1985: 364)
In this case, it seems that the lingua franca function would only exist for a
short time, until the speakers of the contributing dialects die off. After that,
all or most speakers of the koine are native speakers. However, there is a
larger issue here: emphasis on the use of koines as lingua franca may re-
veal an assumption that koines develop primarily in order to facilitate clear
communication. This is a partly valid assumption in the case of language
subsystems that are sufficiently different to impede mutual comprehensibil-
ity (as seems to have been the case in many socially subordinate koines,
such as those used by workers in the Bhojpuri-Hindi diaspora), but most
dialects are in fact mutually comprehensible (or become so quickly with
interaction), so effective communication cannot be identified as the only or
even the most important factor in koine formation. This issue is discussed
in greater detail below.
Another valuable effort to define koine as a technical term is that of
Mesthrie (1994). Mesthrie, like Siegel, analyzes modern use of the term in
relation to the original Koine, for which he identifies four key features:
— (a) its development as a new, common variety based on existing dialects of

the language (common is taken in the sense of "shared");
— (b) its use as a common (or "vulgar") medium of communication between
speakers with different first languages or speakers from different dialect ar-
eas;
— (c) its use as the standard/official language of a politically unified region;
Koine and koines 21
— (d) changes in its structure on account of its wide use as both first and sec-
ond language (involving a synthesis of these at some stage).
(Mesthrie 1994: 1864)
For modern uses, Mesthrie explains that in one stream of thinking, the for-
mal criteria of (a) and (d) are considered primary, and in another, the
functional properties of (b) and (c) are considered primary. Mesthrie re-
jects (b), (c) and (d) as criteria for definition of koine:
The major objection to (b), (c), or (d) alone as a defining criterion is that on
its own each defines a language variety or linguistic process that has a well-
established label: (b) is synonymous with lingua franca (and the process of
language spread); (c) is better described as 'standardization'; and (d) de-
scribes the phenomenon of substrate influence in second language acquisi-
tion or in language shift. (Mesthrie 1994: 1864-1865)
Mesthrie identifies (a), or the incorporation of features from several (re-
gional) varieties of a single language, as the only necessary feature of a
koine (however, see below for consideration of the impact of language
acquisition). In effect, Mesthrie rejects the synchronic functions - lingua
franca or standard - as defining features of a koine, and accepts only those
aspects that are essentially diachronic in nature, resulting from the process
of dialect mixing:
While the processes involved in koineization are of considerable interest to
the linguist, once a koine has formed there may be nothing to distinguish it
from older dialects of the language. (However, subordinate immigrant
koines do often show a significant reduction in inflections.) Generally, the
designation koine might be appropriate at a particular stage in the history of
the language, but loses significance once the variety becomes established as
the first language of a new generation. Like any other natural language a
koine may in time develop new regional subdialects, as shown by the history
of Greek. (Mesthrie 1994: 1865).
Hence, koine has become, in its technical sense, merely a convenient label
for those language varieties and states that result from the social and lin-
guistic processes of koineization.20
2. Models of koineization
Most recent discussions of koines have shifted from a focus on the resul-
tant state to a focus on the processes of koine formation. Though Samarin
(1971) was the first to use the term koineization, others before him had
already begun to shift focus to the diachronic study of koine formation.
Ferguson's (1959a) study of the Arabic koine, which he claimed was the
common base for modern spoken dialects of Arabic, was essentially an
exercise in reconstruction of a stage of the language. He attributes the for-
mation of this variety (perceived as uniform) to "a complex process of
mutual borrowing and leveling among various dialects", while most of the
14 features he discusses show some sort of loss, reduction or simplifica-
tion. Given the time depth of this study and the lack of documentary evi-
dence, no further study of processes was possible. Blanc (1968) argued that
modern Israeli Hebrew was "gradually given a definite shape by a slow
'koineizing' process drawing on several pre-existing sources . . . Usage had
to be established by a gradual and complex process of selection and ac-
commodation which is, in part, still going on, but which now has reached
some degree of stabilization" (Blanc 1968: 238-239). Samarin (1971) was
only indirectly concerned with koineization, but he suggested use of the
term as a means of differentiating a unique process, distinct from dialect
leveling or borrowing, that leads to the formation of a new dialect. Samarin
(and Dillard 1972: 300) also emphasized that koineization involves the
suppression of localisms or prominent stereotypable features as speakers of
different dialects mix together in new social contexts, particularly in cases
of migration.
None of these studies engaged in detailed discussion of the process or
model of koineization. However, the growth of studies of pidginization and
creolization also drew scholars' attention to other types of colonial/post-
colonial languages, among them the numerous varieties that arose as a
consequence of the Bhojpuri-Hindi diaspora. In the aftermath of the aboli-
tion of slavery, European colonial powers shipped hundreds of thousands
of Indian peasants on indentured contracts to other colonies. The immi-
grants spoke primarily genetically-related Indie languages from the north,
but in some cases there were also speakers of Dravidian languages from the
south. The Indie varieties included dialects of Bhojpuri, Avadhi, other
eastern and western varieties of Hindi, Bengali, Rajasthani, Panjabi and
Calcutta Bazaar Hindustani, with widely varying degrees of mutual com-
prehensibility between the different varieties. In each colony, a compro-
Models of koineization 23
mise variety arose that was used as an in-group language among the Indian
laborers. The areas where these new dialects have been identified and stud-
ied include Fiji, Surinam, Natal (South Africa), Trinidad, Mauritius and
Guyana (Siegel 1988a; Mesthrie 1993: 26-29).
2.1. Siegel ' s stage-based model
As these different varieties received more scholarly attention, efforts to

define common principles of koineization began to appear. An early effort
is that of Gambhir (1981), but the most well-known and influential in this
tradition is that of Siegel (1985), who was investigating the development of
Fiji Hindi (or Hindustani; e.g., 1975, 1987, 1988b). In his (1985) study, he
synthesizes notions of koines and koineization from other studies in order
to arrive at a technical definition of koine (reported above) and a more
precisely defined model of koineization, based on his own findings and
that of others. His model is based on a sequence of four possible stages of
koineization:
1. Prekoine. "This is the unstabilized stage at the beginning of koineization.

A continuum exists in which various forms of the varieties in contact are
used concurrently and inconsistently. Levelling and some mixing has be-
gun to occur, and there may be various degrees of reduction, but few forms
have emerged as the accepted compromise."
2. Stabilized Koine. "Lexical, phonological, and morphological norms have
been distilled from the various subsystems in contact, and a new compro-
mise subsystem has emerged. The result, however, is often reduced in mor-
phological complexity compared to the contributing subsystems."
3. Expanded Koine. A stabilized koine "may become a literary language or
the standard language of a country. This extension of use is often accom-
panied by linguistic expansion, for example, in greater morphological
complexity and stylistic options."
4. Nativized Koine. "A koine may become the first language for a group of
speakers . . . This stage may also be characterized by further linguistic ex-
pansion (or elaboration), but here some of it may be the result of innova-
tions which cannot be traced back to the original koineized varieties."
(Siegel 1985: 373-374)
Siegel emphasizes that not all these stages need necessarily occur in any
particular case of koineization, and provides examples of such variable
development (see Table 1). Siegel consciously modeled this presentation
on then-current approaches to the study of pidginization and creolization,

and borrowed his paradigm (Table 1) from the developmental continuum
for pidgins and creóles (Table 2) constructed by Mühlhäusler (1980: 32).
At first glance, the proposed relationship seems eminently reasonable,
since pidgins, creóles, and koines all result from language contact and
demographic mixing, and they are often found in colonial or post-colonial
regions. However, as Siegel himself has argued in later work (see below),
there are significant differences between pidginization/creolization and
koineization, and these differences underlie some problematic implications
of the (1985) stage-based model.
Table 1. Developmental contunua of koines. Source: Siegel (1985: 375).
prekoine prekoine prekoine

4 i ι
i stabilized koine stabilized koine
4 4 I
J, J. expanded koine
4 I 4
nativized koine nativized koine nativized koine
(Fiji Hindustani) (Guyanese Bhojpuri) (Greek Koine)
Table 2. Developmental contunua of creóles. Source: Siegel (1985: 375), based on

Muhlhausier (1980: 32).21
jargon jargon jargon

4 4 4
4 stabilized pidgin stabilized pidgin
4 4 4
4 4 expanded pidgin
4 4 4
creole creole creole
(West Indian English (Torres Strait Creole) (TokPisin)
Creole)
Pidgins are generally understood to result from contact between typologi-

cally distant varieties, while prototypical koines (such as Spanish) result
from contact between linguistic subsystems that show high degrees of mu-
tual intelligibility. Since speakers in a koineizing context can usually un-
derstand each other, the need to communicate information - which plays

the key role in pidginization - cannot be a generalizable primary motive for
alterations in speaker production (though it may play a greater role when
contributing varieties show greater structural differences, as in the case of
Fiji Hindi). More importantly, prototypical pidgins and creóles arise in
very specific social circumstances in which speaker-learners are separated
from models - native speakers of the target variety - at the same time that
they must communicate with the socially-distant model speakers or, more
importantly, other speakers with whom a common language is not shared.
The social context of koineization could not be more different, for the
speaker-learners, be they native speakers of a related dialect, second lan-
guage learners, or children, must be assumed to have easy access to abun-
dant, if highly variable, input. Indeed, within the Thomason and Kaufman
(1988) model, koineization is properly categorized as change with lan-
guage maintenance (but see below).
As a result, it becomes difficult to accept an unintended implication of
the stage-based model: that both pidginization and koineization are charac-
terized not only by mixing (which remains undefined but which we may
assume means the appearance of features from several source dialects in a
resultant koine) and simplification, but also by reduction/impoverishment.
Siegel borrows Mühlhäusler's (1980: 21) definitions of simplification ("an
increase in regularity or a decrease in markedness") and reduction ("a de-
crease in the referential or non-referential potential of the language"). But
while simplification is indeed a linguistic process of koineization, reduc-
tion of this sort cannot be, for reduction as defined here includes the ex-
treme structural/lexical reduction of pidgins, which makes full comprehen-
sion difficult or impossible outside of contexts of direct oral
communication, where gestures, intonation, and the possibility of clarifica-
tion substitute for structural complexity. Since learners in a koineizing
situation are not deprived of input, there is no reason for extreme reduction
to occur.22
If extreme reduction does not occur, then there is no need for a stage of
structural expansion, which in pidgins is associated with the expansion of
functions and/or creolization of an existing pidgin; this occurs as the pidgin
is extended to use in new communicative contexts, and it therefore requires
new vocabulary and more systematic marking of grammatical relations to
make it less context dependent and more fully functional as a primary
means of communication. Since no radical reduction such as that affecting
pidgins is present in koineization, expansion must be reinterpreted in the
context of koineization. It is certainly true that any expansion of contexts

of use is likely to require an expansion of the lexicon, but this is true of any
language that acquires new functions. In fact, Siegel exemplifies this third
stage with the use of the koine as a literary or standard language. The in-
clusion of standardization is not entirely unwarranted, for it reflects a fre-
quent reality: koines tend to be selected as standards, since standards also
require the minimal variation in form that characterizes koines. However,
while standardization does include a process of elaboration of the lexicon
and syntax, particularly of written language (Haugen 1966: 933; Lodge
1993: 26), this is not quite the same as expansion in pidginiza-
tion/creolization, which includes especially an increase in morphological
complexity. Moreover, standardization may enter into competition with
koineization. For instance, Fontanella (1992: 42-54) argues that in the
history of American varieties of Spanish, standardization has sometimes
(partially) impeded koineization, as in the interior of Mexico, and some-
times reversed its effects, as in Buenos Aires (see below). Rather than in-
cluding processes such as lexical expansion or standardization within a
model of koineization, it is probably best to see them as interacting with
koineization.
Another problem with the parallel stages of pidginization and koineiza-
tion is the timing and significance of nativization. In pidginization, relative
stabilization of grammar and lexicon may occur before nativization (as in
the well-known case of New Guinea Tok Pisin), but pidgins are not native
languages, and structurally they are very simple and therefore easily
learned by adults; nevertheless, they are relatively unstable with regard to
phonology, since each speaker's version will be affected by his/her native
language phonology. In large measure, it is the nativization stage of creoli-
zation that leads to full stabilization of a pidgin (although the question of
how many and what types of features need to be stabilized in order to con-
sider the variety stabilized will depend largely on the perspective taken).
Here then, there is a problem with Mühlhäusler's original proposal. In fact,
while adults do play important roles in the selection of features, nativiza-
tion by children is probably key to full stabilization or focusing of a koine
(Mesthrie 1994: 1866; Kerswill 1996). Petrini (1988: 42), as mentioned
above, argues that the developing koine or prekoine of the Italian region of
Ticino has so far failed to stabilize because there are no native speakers of
this variety, and Kerswill (1996) argues that in a koineizing community the
first signs of the new koine will become evident among the older members
of the first generation of children (see below).
In later publications, Siegel has discussed the similarities and differ-

ences between koineization and creolization that I highlight here (e.g.,
Siegel 2001), and he has accepted many aspects of Trudgill's work into his
own approach (Siegel 1993b), but such reformulations have not led to a re-
evaluation of the original stage-based model, which is still frequently cited
in the literature (e.g., Kerswill and Williams [2000] situate their own dis-
cussion within this framework). The adherence to the pidginization para-
digm which underpins the four-stage model may reflect the particular his-
tory of Fiji Hindi and other post-colonial language varieties, since some of
these varieties show the interaction of koineization with other processes.
For example, Siegel himself (1987: 196) points out that one of the contrib-
uting varieties of Fiji Hindi was itself a pidgin, so we should not be sur-
prised to find some effects of pidginization in the resultant koine (also
suggested by Trudgill 1986: 106). Of course, the challenge to defining
koineization is the necessity of distilling a prototypical model from com-
plex and varied cases of real change.
Siegel's early model has helped to draw the attention of scholars to the
study of koineization and from it we can retain useful insights, including
the concept of prekoine (the highly variable, diffuse, even chaotic, initial
stage of demographic and dialect mixing); the importance of stabilization
or focusing of new norms; the definition of contributing varieties as mutu-
ally intelligible linguistic subsystems (which allows inclusion of child and
adult learner language); and the recognition of the interaction of koineiza-
tion with other processes. The definition of koineization in terms of these
four stages does not appear, however, to be the best means of furthering
our understanding of the process. In fact, the generalizable stages of
koineization can probably be limited to just two: the prekoine, character-
ized by the co-existence of numerous varieties and variants, and the stabi-
lized (or focused) koine, which has become the native language variety of
at least some speakers; these two stages can of course be separated by a
period of variable length of norm selection and enforcement (e.g., Trudgill
[1998] and Kerswill [2002] suggest three stages based on progressive fo-
cusing over three generations; see below). Nevertheless, the restriction to
two basic stages (or three generational stages) does not preclude the de-
scription of stages of development in a particular language variety, in
which case one could refer to the interaction of koineization with processes
such as pidginization or standardization. Siegel makes an observation that
has important implications for application of the model to actual language
histories, and in particular to that of Spanish:
It should be stressed that the developmental continuum of a koine is not

necessarily linear. At any stage, for example, 'rekoineization' can take place
if there is continued contact with the original closely related varieties, or ad-
ditional contact with different ones. (Siegel 1985: 375)
For those varieties that have seen repeated phases of koineization, the attri-
bution of particular changes to particular phases will become an added
objective of historical sociolinguistic research (see Chapters 3, 4, and 5).
2.2. Trudgill's process-based model
The single most influential discussion of koineization is that of the socio-

linguist Peter Trudgill, who was drawn to the topic by his broader interest
in contact between dialects and how this affects language variation and
change. His primary discussion of koineization appears in his (1986) book
Dialects in Contact, which includes analysis of a range of issues associated
with contact between individual speakers of dialects, contact between sta-
ble dialects, and dialect mixing in koineization. In the final chapters of this
book, Trudgill defines a model of koineization and tests it on the history of
certain varieties of colonial English, particularly Australian English.
Trudgill's model is based on the isolation of the processes that occur dur-
ing koineization rather than stages of development. The following is his
summary of what happens during koineization:
In a dialect mixture situation, large numbers of variants will abound, and,
through the process of accommodation in face-to-face interaction, interdia-
lect phenomena will begin to occur. As time passes and focusing begins to
take place, particularly as the new town, colony, or whatever begins to ac-
quire an independent identity, the variants present in the mixture begin to be
subject to reduction. Again this presumably occurs via accommodation, es-
pecially of salient forms. This does not take place in a haphazard manner,
however. In determining who accommodates to whom, and which forms are
therefore lost, demographic factors involving proportions of different dialect
speakers present will clearly be vital. More importantly, though, more
purely linguistic forces are also at work. The reduction of variants that ac-
companies focusing, in the course of new-dialect formation,23 takes place
via the process of koinéization. This comprises the process of levelling,
which involves the loss of marked and/or minority variants; and the process
of simplification, by means of which even minority forms may be the ones to
survive if they are linguistically simpler, in the technical sense, and through
which even forms and distinctions present in all the contributory dialects
may be lost. Even after koinéization, however, some variants left over from
the original mixture may survive. Where this occurs, reallocation may oc-
cur, such that variants originally from different regional dialects may in the
new dialect become social-class dialect variants, stylistic variants, areal
variants, or, in the case of phonology, allophonic variants.
(Trudgill 1986: 126; italics in original)
An important first observation must be made here: Trudgill explicitly
equates koineization only with the "more purely linguistic forces" of level-
ing, simplification, and reallocation. Though he recognizes these as signifi-
cantly related to speaker activity, we will see that his early view of koinei-
zation is both enhanced and limited by this focus on linguistic outcomes.
What follows is a discussion of each of the particular features of koineiza-
tion highlighted in the above passage.
2.2.1. Accommodation and salience
Trudgill borrows the concept of accommodation from the work of the so-
cial psychologist Howard Giles, who developed what is known as Speech
(or Communication) Accommodation Theory. According to Giles (1973:
90), "if a sender in a dyadic situation wishes to gain the receiver's ap-
proval, then he may adapt his accent patterns towards that of this person,
i.e., reduce pronunciation dissimilarities".24 This process is known as ac-
cent convergence. Its opposite is likely to occur when a speaker wants to
dissociate or signal disapproval.25 Accommodation may affect any linguis-
tic level (e.g., lexicon, syntax, morphology, phonology, as well as speaking
rate and style), and it is hypothesized to be a universal tendency of human
behavior (Trudgill 1986: 2).26
Trudgill's emphasis on accommodation reveals rather novel assump-
tions about why dialect contact leads to change. Given that most contribut-
ing varieties in a prekoine linguistic pool are mutually intelligible at least
to some degree, many of the alterations in speech that take place are not
strictly speaking necessary to fulfill communicative needs, although some
comprehension difficulties may occur (Trudgill 1986: 1). Rather, speakers
accommodate to the speech of their interlocutors in order to promote a
sense of common identity. This focus on the identity-marking function of
language (cf. Milroy 1992, 1993) is critical to an understanding of how and
why koineization occurs; it will be further discussed below.
Though accommodation is generally studied as a phenomenon affecting

the immediate performance of individuals (or short-term accommodation),
Trudgill identifies and analyzes what he terms long-term accommodation,
which results in a relatively permanent effect on the speech patterns of an
individual. Trudgill sees this as the basic mechanism underlying linguistic
change in two-dialect contact situations and in koineization resulting from
multidialectal contact. Making long-term accommodation the driving force
for linguistic change in situations of dialect contact has further implica-
tions. First, there are important differences between short-term and long-
term accommodation. Most social psychologists up to the time of
Trudgill's writing had focused on speech accommodation as stylistic varia-
tion, where the speakers presumably have pre-existing knowledge of the
variants they use. For example, Trudgill himself adduced data from his
Norwich studies which showed that his informants accommodated with
markers (variables subject both to social class and stylistic variation) but
did not do so with indicators (variables subject only to social class varia-
tion) which were not characteristic of their own speech; presumably they
lacked the knowledge to produce these forms. However, long-term accom-
modation places a greater burden on the speaker:
accommodation beyond the speech community will often be a rather differ-

ent process from accommodation within it. Accommodation within the
speech community, as in my Norwich interviews, involves altering the fre-
quency of the usage of particular variants of variables over which the
speaker already has control. Accommodation beyond the speech community,
on the other hand, may well involve the adoption of totally new features of
pronunciation. (Trudgill 1986: 12)
At this point speakers appear to enter into a process of language or dialect
acquisition, the significance of which is explained by Beebe and Giles:
All speakers have, to some extent, a limited linguistic repertoire, both in
their native languages and in any second languages they might speak . . .
Limitations in repertoire are central to research within SLA [second lan-
guage acquisition], whereas they are peripheral in studies of native speakers
. . . It is important, when extending social pyschological theories to SLA
data, that limitations in repertoire be considered. For it is the tension be-
tween limitations in ability to converge toward a native-speaking interlocu-
tor and motivation to converge that makes second-language data unique.
(Beebe and Giles 1984: 22-23)
Nevertheless, Trudgill hesitates to associate long-term accommodation

with second language acquisition as such. In part, this may be because of a
possible tendency on the part of speakers to approach dialect and language

learning differently (particularly in cases of contact between standardized
languages). If the dialect to be learned is viewed by speakers as simply a
different variety of the same language, then they may take a more piece-
meal approach to adopting or rejecting features of the target variety. If, on
the other hand, they believe the target to be a separate system, they are
likely to adopt strategies more typical of second language acquisition, and
attempt to learn the new variety as a whole. In Nordenstam's (1979: 24)
study of Swedish women in Norway, it was found that some of the women
perceived Swedish and Norwegian as separate languages and tried to keep
them apart, while others adopted features on a one-by-one basis, believing
Swedish and Norwegian to be varieties of one language. Still, no matter
what strategy a learner of a similar variety adopts (piecemeal or whole),
errors due to constraints imposed by the acquisition process are likely to
crop up, so a useful distinction is unlikely to stand on this criterion.27
Chambers (1992: 675-676) also prefers to maintain a distinction be-
tween long-term accommodation and second dialect acquisition. Chambers
bases his distinction on the behavior of the informants in his study of sec-
ond dialect acquisition. These were Canadian children/adolescents (aged
9-17) who had moved to England and were adopting features of Southern
English English. Though Chambers is himself Canadian, the children did
not accommodate toward him by using fewer British variants and more
Canadian ones. For Chambers then, the innovations in the children's
speech represented "irrepressible acquisitions rather than ephemeral ac-
commodations". This may be true, but the important point is that the chil-
dren had extended the newly adopted English features from their most
careful style to even their most colloquial vernacular style (Ellis 1985: 95).
Chambers seems to want to restrict the use of long-term accommodation to
those cases in which the speaker continues to shift between different ac-
cents in different situations and styles. This may be a useful distinction, but
it is a distinction of degree rather than kind, and Ellis makes the point that
acquisition of a feature in a learner's careful style is probably the first step
toward acquisition in all styles. Moreover, the examples of long-term ac-
commodation given in Kerswill (2002: 682-685) would seem to confirm
this analysis, since they show that the speech of adults engaged in long-
term accommodation is characterized by simplifications and great intra-
speaker variability, as is predicted in Ellis' model. I return to the issue of
acquisition below, but from here on I assume that long-term accommoda-
tion forms part of a process of dialect acquisition (although, in the koineiz-
ing context, what is being acquired is generally a set of the most fre-
quently-occurring features, rather than a pre-existing variety; see below).
If second dialect learners (those engaged in long-term accommodation)
do not learn all features, which features do they modify and/or learn? First,
it has been shown that (adult) speakers in more stable dialect contact situa-
tions tend to accommodate (to the extent that they can or want to) to the
most salient features. Following Nordenstam (1979), who was studying
contact between speakers of two different varieties, Trudgill (1986: 11-27)
argued that the most salient features are those which represent differences
in the lexicon and morphology (no mention is made of syntax; see below).
But, aside from the lexicon, it is in the phonology that dialect differences
are most consistently found, and this is where Trudgill focuses his atten-
tion. After analyzing evidence of accommodation from a variety of studies,
he suggests that the following factors contribute to salience (these are
summarized and listed as follows in Kerswill 1994: 154):
1. Phonological contrast. For example, English English speakers who relocate

to the US often adopt the contrasting phoneme /ae/ for their native /a:/ in
words of the dance class.
2. Great phonetic difference. English English speakers in the US tend to
adopt the American [A] for their native [D] in words of the hot class, and
Americans in England do just the reverse.
3. Naturalness. English English speakers in the US begin to flap intervocalic
Ν more quickly than Americans in England acquire the intervocalic [t] for
their flap, since flapping is a kind of "natural" weakening.
However, Trudgill also indicates a number of factors which appear to im-

pede accommodation and either reduce or override salience:
4. Extra-strong stereotyping. For example, accommodating Northern English

English speakers tend not to adopt the Southern English English /a:/ for
their native /ae/ in dance-class words, despite the phonological difference
(cf. Number 1 above).28
5. Phonotactic constraints. For example, English English speakers in the US
tend not to acquire American non-prevocalic /-r/ as in cart, bar (even
though the phonological difference is evident) since in most Southern Eng-
lish English dialects syllables of the shape VrC or Vr# are not allowed.
6. Homonymie clash. For example, English English speakers may avoid the
American pronunciation [hat] since it sounds too much like their own pro-
nunciation of heart.
These few examples make it clear that long-term accommodation cannot be

seen as an entirely predictable process, since accommodation sometimes
occurs or fails to occur for no obvious reason, and is also influenced by
cultural factors, such as in cases of stereotyping. Kerswill (1994b: 154-
155) is quick to point out the circularity of the notion of salience, for it is
defined precisely in terms of those features which are or are not adopted.29
Still, Kerswill too is unwilling to abandon salience, since it seems that
speaker-learners do find some features more "striking" than others. In a
recent and very detailed discussion of this very issue, Kerswill and Wil-
liams (2002) consider the value of numerous factors that have been pro-
posed as contributing to salience, and test several of those proposed by
Trudgill (1986) for their value in explaining the spread of features in dia-
lect leveling in southeast England. In the end, they conclude that language-
internal factors are an essential pre-condition for salience; these include
phonological contrast, great phonetic difference, internally-defined natu-
ralness (which favors weakening or loss of distinctions), semantic trans-
parency, and particular syntactic and prosodie environments (2002: 105;
see below). All these factors are likely to draw speakers' attention to par-
ticular features. However, no single linguistic factor, or set of factors, is
capable of guaranteeing salience. They suggest therefore that it is extra-
linguistic conditioning which is crucial in determining salience: cognitive,
pragmatic, interactional, social psychological, and sociodemographic fac-
tors. As such, salience cannot be predicted, and particular reasons for its
existence must be sought in each case, with special attention to relations
between speakers, their attitudes, and their sociocultural contexts of inter-
action.
In the discussions of Trudgill (1986) and Kerswill and Williams (2002),
salience is seen as the primary factor determining which features are ac-
commodated to and, therefore, which features become more frequent. This
of course is absolutely necessary in non-koineizing situations (how else
can one explain changes in frequency of particular variants?). However, in
nearly all discussions of koineization, it is argued that majority forms win
out in the final dialect mix (e.g., Trudgill 1986; Kerswill and Williams
2000). This argument rests on the assumption that frequency and consis-
tency of use of particular forms and form/function combinations play the
fundamental role in determining what forms are acquired, and this fre-
quency is determined primarily by the original demographic mix (Siegel
1997: 139). Indeed, the importance of frequency as a factor distinct from
salience is shown by Trudgill, Gordon, Lewis, and Maclagan (2000), who
provide clear evidence that most features of New Zealand English selected
during koineization are features which represented majority use among the
sum total of original settlers (a claim which is further supported by the
selection of similar majority forms in other Southern-Hemisphere Eng-
lishes which saw similar population mixes).30 When frequency and consis-
tency are seen as primary, salience is invoked as an explanation for those
features which cannot be explained as the result of greater frequency alone
(in some cases salience can plausibly be viewed as contributing to a fea-
ture's perceived frequency). It would seem therefore that older children
and adolescents - those responsible for the formation of a new koine (see
below) - do accommodate to each other and learn from each other, but that
over time it is the most frequent forms that are consistently favored in this
process (rather than any particular target variety). In a koineizing context,
salience as discussed by Kerswill and Williams (2002) is probably most
important for exceptional adaptations in adult, adolescent, or child speech,
which can then alter the frequency of certain variants and thereby affect the
learning of children and adolescents.
Nevertheless, the potential cumulative effects of perceptual and cogni-
tive salience should not be discounted. For example, Siegel (1997: 139)
emphasizes that stressed words are both phonetically and cognitively sali-
ent. Of the perpectives on perceptual salience reviewed by Kerswill and
Williams (most post-date Trudgill's early work), the most important is that
of Yaeger-Dror (1993: 203-206), who, following a comprehensive review
of studies of cognitive and phonetic factors which contribute to salience,
comes to the following conclusions about universally salient positions:
the beginning of a syllable, word, or sentence is most salient. A vowel nu-
cleus or intervocalic position is also salient (because more acoustically
prominent), as is the semantic nucleus (the focus) of the sentence. The coda
(of a syllable, of a word, or of a sentence) is the most redundant and least sa-
lient. (Yaeger-Dror 1993: 206)
Although, as Kerswill and Williams (2002) indicate, it is impossible to

make predictions about outcomes in particular cases, it may be that percep-
tual salience shows its influence in long-term trends. If speaker-learners are
most likely to learn perceptually salient items (other things being equal)
and to follow "natural" (ease-of-articulation) tendencies, then we would
expect a language variety which has undergone (repeated) koineization to
show a preference for CV syllable structure. In fact, this is exactly what we
find in the history of Spanish. Similarly, Ohala, in a review of acoustic
phonetic studies, finds that "place cues are generally less salient in VC
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MAGIC AND

FETISHISM ***
Religions Ancient and Modern
MAGIC AND FETISHISM
RELIGIONS: ANCIENT AND

MODERN.
Foolscap 8vo. Price 1s. net per volume.
ANIMISM.
By Edward Clodd, Author of The Story of Creation.
PANTHEISM.
By James Allanson Picton, Author of The Religion of the
Universe.
THE RELIGIONS OF ANCIENT CHINA.
By Professor Giles, LL.D., Professor of Chinese in the
University of Cambridge.
THE RELIGION OF ANCIENT GREECE.
By Jane Harrison, Lecturer at Newnham College, Cambridge,
Author of Prolegomena to Study of Greek Religion.
ISLAM.
By Professor T. W. Arnold, Assistant Librarian at the India
Office, Author of The Preaching of Islam.
MAGIC AND FETISHISM.
By Dr. A. C. Haddon, F.R.S., Lecturer on Ethnology at
Cambridge University.
THE RELIGION OF ANCIENT EGYPT.
By Professor W. M. Flinders Petrie, F.R.S.
THE RELIGION OF BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIA.
By Theophilus G. Pinches, late of the British Museum.
BUDDHISM. 2 vols.
By Professor Rhys Davids, LL.D., late Secretary of The Royal
Asiatic Society.
HINDUISM.
By Dr. L. D. Barnett, of the Department of Oriental Printed
Books and MSS., British Museum.
SCANDINAVIAN RELIGION.
By William A. Craigie, Joint Editor of the Oxford English
Dictionary.
CELTIC RELIGION.
By Professor Anwyl, Professor of Welsh at University College,
Aberystwyth.
THE MYTHOLOGY OF ANCIENT BRITAIN AND IRELAND.
By Charles Squire, Author of The Mythology of the British
Islands.
JUDAISM.
By Israel Abrahams, Lecturer in Talmudic Literature in
Cambridge University, Author of Jewish Life in the Middle
Ages.
PRIMITIVE OR NICENE CHRISTIANITY.
By John Sutherland Black, LL.D., Joint Editor of the
Encyclopædia Biblica.
SHINTOISM.
MEDIAEVAL CHRISTIANITY.
ZOROASTRIANISM.
THE RELIGION OF ANCIENT ITALY.
Other Volumes to follow.
MAGIC
AND FETISHISM
By
ALFRED C. HADDON, Sc.D., F.R.S.
UNIVERSITY LECTURER IN ETHNOLOGY, CAMBRIDGE
LONDON
ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE & CO. Ltd.
16 JAMES STREET HAYMARKET
1906
Edinburgh: T. and A. Constable, Printers to His Majesty

PREFATORY NOTE
It is by no means easy to do justice to such a large,
comprehensive, and at the same time vague subject as magic in the
small compass of a Primer, and part of even that small space had to
be devoted to another subject. For sins of omission I must claim this
excuse; for sins of commission I claim the indulgence of the reader.
A. C. H.
CONTENTS
MAGIC
I. SYMPATHETIC MAGIC.
A. Contagious Magic.
Hair, nail-pairings, etc. (3), scalp-lock (4), saliva (5),
luck-ball (5), footprints (6), clothes (7), rag bushes
and pin-wells (8), personal ‘ornaments’ (9), food
(10), cannibalism (10), sympathetic relations
between persons (11), couvade (13).
B. Homœopathic Magic.
Plants (15), rain-making (16), wind-making (18),
increase of plants (18), and of animals (19), luring
animals to be caught (19), human effigies to injure
or kill people (20).
II. MAGICAL POWER OF NAMES AND WORDS.
Objection to names being mentioned of people, fairies,
and animals (22), names of power (24), satire
(26), geis (27), tabu (28).
III. TALISMANS AND AMULETS.
Stones and metals (30), colour (31), bones, teeth,
claws, etc. (32), lucky pig (33), amulets against
the evil eye (33), luck-bone (39).
IV. DIVINATION—(40).
V. PUBLIC AND PRIVATE MAGIC.
A. Public Magic.
Australian intichiuma totem ceremonies (41), corn-
planting dance of the Musquakie (45).
B. Private Magic.
Folk-remedies (46), love-charms (47), nefarious magic
(48).
VI. MAGICIANS.
Training of sorcerers and societies of magicians (51).
VII. PSYCHOLOGY OF MAGICAL PRACTICES.
Nervous instability (53), suggestion (53), make-believe
(55), tabu (55), mana (58), projective will-power
or telepathy (60), from spell to prayer (61), the
impossible not undertaken (62), loopholes in case
of failure (63).
FETISHISM
I. DEFINITION.
1. Etymological (66), 2. Historical (66), 3. Dogmatic
(67).
II. ESSENTIAL CHARACTERS OF FETISHISM.
May be any object (72), a symbolic charm with
sympathetic properties (74), a sign or token
representing an ideal notion or being (76),
habitation of a spiritual being (77), vehicle for
communication of a spirit (79), instrument by
which spirit acts (80), possesses personality and
will (83), may act by own will or by foreign spirit
(84), spirit and material object can be dissociated
(87), worshipped, sacrificed to, talked with (89),
petted and ill-treated (90).
III. FETISHISM AS A FORM OF RELIGIOUS WORSHIP—
(91).
MAGIC
I. SYMPATHETIC MAGIC
As knowledge increases, mankind learns more and more about the
world and the processes of nature, but even at the present day the
vast majority of white men possess only a rudimentary amount of
this knowledge; indeed, most so-called educated people have very
vague ideas concerning the physical universe in which they live.
Such being the case, it is not surprising that primitive peoples have
very confused notions concerning these matters, and, as the result
of false inductions concerning the causes of phenomena, they seek
to accomplish ends by means that we recognise as inadequate. ‘It is
plain,’ as Dr. Jevons points out (36, 33), ‘that as long as man is
turned loose as it were amongst these innumerable possible causes
with nothing to guide his choice, the chances against his making the
right selection are considerable.’ Further, ‘no progress could be made
in science until man had distinguished, at any rate roughly, possible
from absolutely impossible effects (or causes), and had learned to
dismiss from consideration the impossible. It might be expected that
experience would suffice of itself to teach man this essential
distinction, but the vast majority of the human race have not yet
learned from experience that like does not necessarily produce like:
four-fifths of mankind, probably, believe in sympathetic magic.’
The instances of sympathetic magic as Dr. Hirn points out (32,
278) are naturally divided into two main classes which, broadly
speaking, correspond to the two types of association, contiguity and
similarity, and as in psychology it is often difficult to decide whether
a given associative process has its origin in a relation of contiguity or
in one of similarity, so it is often an open question to which group a
given superstition is to be assigned. We will start from the facts that
are simpler and easier to explain.
A. Contagious Magic.
1. Sympathetic Magic based on a material connection between

things (32, 279) has been aptly termed by Dr. Frazer (21, 77)
Contagious Magic. All over the world we meet with examples of
the belief that objects which were once related to one another retain
their connection though they may be separated, and whatever may
happen to one part or object the other part or object is similarly
affected; thus, by acting upon a part of a given whole we may
influence the whole as well as all its other parts.
This belief explains why a magician, wishing to influence or act
upon some particular individual, desires to obtain some portion of
his body or something actually connected with him. A few hairs from
the beard, a lock of hair, some nail-parings, a drop of blood from the
nose which has fallen to the ground, and which has not been
rendered impalpable by effacing it with the foot, are used by Basuto
sorcerers (10, 277), and indeed by workers of magic everywhere. A
few of the examples collected by Mr. Hartland (30, ii. 66) will suffice
to demonstrate the universality of this belief. In some parts of
England a girl forsaken by her lover is advised to get a lock of his
hair and boil it; whilst it is simmering in the pot he will have no rest.
In certain parts of Germany and Transylvania the clippings of the
hair or nails, as well as broken pieces of the teeth, are buried
beneath the elder tree which grows in the courtyard, or are burnt, or
carefully hidden, for fear of witches. Patagonians burn the hairs
brushed out from their heads, and all the parings of their nails for
they believe that spells may be wrought upon them by any one who
can obtain a piece of either.
The potency of the hair is shown in the beliefs about the long
narrow beaded band which is used to tie up the hair of a Musquakie
woman (56, 96, 7). This, though a talisman when first worn,
becomes something infinitely more sacred and precious, being
transfused with the essence of her soul; any one gaining possession
of it has her for an abject slave if he keeps it, and kills her if he
destroys it. A woman will go from a man she loves to a man she
hates if he has contrived to possess himself of her hair-string; and a
man will forsake wife and children for a witch who has touched his
lips with her hair-string. The hair-string is made for a girl by her
mother or grandmother and decorated with ‘luck’ patterns; it is also
prayed over by the maker and a shaman. The scalp-lock ornament
worn by the Musquakie men is kept with great care as it helps to
protect the soul. As the tearing out of the scalp-lock makes the soul
at its root the slave of the one obtaining it, so the possession of its
ornament and shield, which has absorbed some of its essence, gives
the possessor the ability to send the rightful owner brain fever and
madness (56, 106).
In the South Sea Islands it was necessary to the success of any
sorcery to secure something connected with the body of the victim.
Accordingly a spittoon was always carried by the confidential servant
of a chief in the Hawaiian Islands to receive his expectorations,
which were carefully buried every morning. The Tahitians used to
burn or bury the hair they cut off, and every individual among them
had his distinct basket for food. As Mr. Hartland points out (30, ii.
76), the custom, everywhere practised, of obliterating all trace of the
saliva after spitting, doubtless originated in the desire to prevent the
use of it for magical purposes, and the same desire led to the
extreme cleanliness in the disposal of fouler excreta which is almost
universally a characteristic of savages. Thus this belief has been one
of the most beneficial of superstitions.
Luck-bags of red cloth, which contain ‘the four things of good
fortune,’ are made by witches in Italy (43, 287), who while sewing it
sing an incantation. American Negroes brought over from West
Africa the art of making ‘luck-balls’ or ‘cunjerin’ bags,’ a practice
which is kept up to the present day. They are supposed to bring
happiness and success in everything the owner undertakes; one
made for Charles G. Leland, at the instigation of Miss Owen (57,
173), contained, in addition to knotted threads, a piece of foil to
represent the brightness of the little spirit that was going to be in
the ball, a leaf of clover in the place of the hair of the one that is
going to own the ball, and some dust which was designed to blind
the eyes of enemies. Miss Owen got the same man, Alexander, the
King of the Voodoos, who made the ball for Mr. Leland, to make one
for me, and she informed me that ‘it was made just like Mr. Leland’s
with the same words and with the same materials, excepting the
clover. This is not the season for clover, so a fragment of paper, torn
from one of your books, represents you.’
It is not essential that the object to be operated upon should have
formed an actual part of a person, for something associated with
that person, such as something habitually worn or used, is sufficient,
or as in the case of the luck-ball just cited, the association may be as
remote as that between an author and a piece of the paper of a
book he has published.
Earth from a man’s footprints, on account of its close contact with
the person, has acquired the virtues of a portion of his body. Widely
spread in Germany is the belief that if a sod whereon a man has
trodden—all the better if with the naked foot—be taken up and dried
behind the hearth or oven, he will parch up with it and languish, or
his foot will be withered. He will be lamed, or even killed, by sticking
his footprint with nails—coffin nails are the best—or broken glass
(30, ii. 78); but these are also the practices of Australian or other
savages. To quote only one example from Australia (34, 26), sharp
fragments of quartz, glass, bone, or charcoal are buried in the
footprints of the victim or in the mark made in the ground by his
reclining body. They are supposed to enter the victim, and rheumatic
affections are very frequently attributed to them.
Clothes, from their intimate association with the person, have
naturally attained a prominent place among the instruments of
witchcraft. In Germany and Denmark no portion of a survivor’s
clothing must on any account be put upon a corpse, else the owner
will languish away as it moulders in the grave. To hang rags from the
clothing of a dead man upon a vine is to render it barren. ‘Probably,’
as Mr. Hartland suggests, ‘it is only a different interpretation of the
same belief which alike in Christian, in Mohammedan, and in
Buddhist lands has led to the ascription of marvellous powers to the
clothes and other relics of departed saints. The divine power which
was immanent in these personages during life attaches not merely
to every portion of their bodies but to every shred of their apparel’
(30, ii. 90). An illustrative parallel can be taken from the Pacific. The
red feathers which adorned the sacred girdle worn by the Tahitian
kings were taken from the images of the gods. The girdle ‘thus
became sacred, even as the person of the gods, the feathers being
supposed to retain all the dreadful attributes of power and
vengeance which the idols possessed, and with which it was
designed to endow the king.’ So potent was it that Mr. Ellis says (17,
iii. 108) it ‘not only raised him to the highest earthly station, but
identified him with their gods.’
It is conceivable, as Mr. Hartland suggests (30, ii. 214), that
uneducated folk might argue thus: if an article of my clothing in a
witch’s hands may cause me to suffer, the same article in contact
with a beneficent power may relieve pain, restore me to health, or
promote my general prosperity. Hence the practice of throwing pins
into wells, of tying rags on bushes and trees, of driving nails into
trees and stocks, of throwing stones and sticks on cairns, and the
analogous practices throughout the world, suggest that they are to
be interpreted as acts of ceremonial union with the spirit identified
with well, tree, stock, or cairn (30, ii. 228). In the British Islands the
sanctity of the well or bush was subsequently annexed by the
missionaries who took up their abode beside them, and thus we find
the wells or trees called after certain saints and the healing power
attributed to the latter, whereas the holiness and efficacy of the
wells were in the vast majority of cases, if not in all, pre-Christian
(27, 383).
Objects are worn or eaten so that by induction the individual may
acquire their properties. Thus the Red Indian hunter (70, 131) wears
ornaments of the claws of the grizzly bear, that he may be endowed
with its courage and ferocity, and the Tyrolese hunter still wears
tufts of eagle’s down in his hat, to gain the eagle’s keen sight and
courage. ‘Look,’ writes Casalis (10, 271), ‘at those strange objects
hanging from the necks of our little black friends. There is a kite’s
foot in order that the poor child may escape misfortune with the
swiftness of the kite in its flight. Another has the claw of a lion in
order that his life may be as firmly secured against all danger as that
of a lion; a third is adorned with the tarsus bone of a sheep, or an
iron ring, that he may oppose to evil a resistance as firm as iron, or
as that little compact bone without marrow which could not be
crushed between two stones without difficulty.’
The eating of certain kinds of food, more especially of the flesh of
animals, would similarly have a very potent effect; thus among the
Dyaks (65, i. 176), young men sometimes abstain from eating the
flesh of deer, lest they should become timid. The Abipones of
Paraguay (14, 258) ‘detest the thought of eating hens, eggs, sheep,
fish, or tortoises, imagining that these tender kinds of food engender
sloth and languor in their bodies and cowardice in their minds. On
the other hand they eagerly devour the flesh of the tiger [jaguar],
bull, stag, boar, anta and tamandua [ant-eaters], having an idea
that, from continually feeding on these animals, their strength,
boldness, and courage are increased.’
Belief in contagious magic leads quite logically to various revolting
practices. In Torres Straits the sweat of renowned warriors was
drunk by young men, who also ate mixed with their food the
scrapings from the finger-nails of the warriors which had become
saturated with human blood in order ‘to make strong and like a
stone; no afraid’ (29, v. 301). The eyes and tongue of a freshly killed
enemy were frequently torn out and given to lads to make them
brave and fearless. The Australian natives believe that a man’s fat
and his strength and vitality are connected, therefore the wasting of
the body and disease are the result of the absence of fat, perhaps to
be followed by death. By eating a man’s fat, and thus making it part
of himself, the black fellow thinks that he also acquires the strength
of the deceased. So also they think that human fat brings success in
hunting, causes spears which are anointed with it to fly true, or the
club to strike irresistible blows. The possession of human fat is,
therefore, much desired by these aborigines, especially those who
feel age or disease, or who wish to be successful in the magical arts,
for it is believed that the spirit of the dead man whose fat has been
used will help the charm to act (35, 411, 361). Cannibalism for
magical purposes of this sort has probably been extremely common
and is possibly at the base of a good deal of anthropophagy.
Very widely spread is the belief that close relatives or even friends
are bound together in a sympathetic relation, which is especially
manifest on important occasions or at critical times. When a Land
Dyak village has turned out for a wild-pig hunt in the jungle, those
who remain at home may not touch water or oil with their hands
during the absence of their friends, lest the hunters should all
become ‘butter-fingered,’ and the prey so escape them (60, i. 430).
It is also recorded from Borneo that when men are on a war
expedition, fires are lighted at home, the mats are spread, and the
fires kept up till late in the evening and lighted again before dawn,
so that the men may not be cold; the roofing of the house is opened
before dawn, so that the men may not lie too long and so fall into
the enemies’ hands (60, ii. 104). Again when a Dyak is out head-
hunting, his wife, or, if he is unmarried, his sister, must wear a sword
day and night, in order that he may be always thinking of his
weapons; and she may not sleep during the day nor go to bed
before two in the morning, lest her husband or brother should
thereby be surprised in his sleep by an enemy (20, i. 30). Similar
instances could easily be multiplied indefinitely from various savage
countries, but even in Europe there are not lacking records of a real
sympathy between husband and wife, where the former suffers from
certain characteristic ailments of the latter (59, 240). There is a very
widely spread series of customs based upon the belief that the
father and his unborn or newly born child are in such sympathetic
relationship that the former has to take all sorts of precautions lest
his offspring should in any way be injured. The extreme form this
custom takes is for the newly made father to take to his bed and be
specially dieted; this occurs in many places, but notably in the East
Indian Archipelago and in South America. The custom, which is
known as the Couvade, is subject to many modifications, which have
been tabulated and discussed by Mr. H. Ling Roth (59, 204). Among
the Land Dyaks of Borneo the husband of a pregnant woman, until
the time of her delivery, may not do work with any sharp instrument,
except what may be absolutely necessary for the cultivation of his
farm; he may not tie things together with rattans, or strike animals,
or fire guns, or do anything of a violent character for fear of injuring
the child. Often the men must abstain from certain food lest it
should affect the child; thus in Guiana partaking of the Agouti would
make the child meagre, or eating a labba would make the infant’s
mouth protrude like the labba’s, or make it spotted like the labba,
which spots would ultimately become ulcers (59, 220). Thus the
father is frequently debarred from performing many of the usually
unconsidered daily acts, lest they should affect the welfare of a child
that is newly born or is about to be born; and there is the curious
development of the belief of an occult reaction of the expected child
on the father, affecting, to take one example, his success in fishing
(59, 234).
B. Homœopathic Magic.
2. When man first began to think about the world around him he
must have noted (what he, in common with other animals, had
unconsciously acted upon in the past) that day and night and the
seasons arrived in regular succession, the same stars rose and set,
an animal reproduced its own kind, in fact that there was a
uniformity in nature. But side by side with these natural sequences
there were irregularities. Some days were shorter than others, some
were bright, others cloudy, the length and character of the seasons
varied from year to year, some stars had a course in the heavens
independent of the majority. Again, he might early have noticed that
many of these fluctuations in sunshine and rain, in heat and cold,
affected him directly or indirectly by influencing vegetation. We need
not be surprised, therefore, if he came to the conclusion that it
would be better for him if he exerted himself to regulate matters
somewhat, but then the difficulty would arise, what was he to do?
The unenlightened mind does not discriminate between cause and
effect, and imagines that as like produces like, so a result can be
attained by imitating it. Hence arose Mimetic or Symbolic Magic,
which, following Dr. Hirn, is better termed Homœopathic Magic,
which is occult influence based upon a likeness between things (32,
282). On this was founded the mediæval medical theory known as
the Doctrine of Signatures, which supposes that plants and minerals
indicate by their external characters the diseases which nature
intended them to remedy.
It would be easy to give a large number of examples to illustrate
homœopathic magic, but a few will suffice. Thus the Euphrasia, or
eye-bright, was, and is, supposed to be good for the eyes, on the
strength of a black pupil-like spot in its corolla (70, 123). The yellow
turmeric, or saffron, cured jaundice. The roots of roses or their slips,
with their knots removed and set amongst broom, will bring forth
yellow roses (47, x. 70).
The influence of homœopathic magic can be traced in beliefs and
practices from the lowest savages to civilised nations. The magician
who works by similarities makes representations of things or beings,
in order to acquire an influence over them. By dramatic or pictorial
imitation heavenly bodies are influenced, rain is made, plants and
animals are increased, animals enticed to their destruction, human
beings acted upon.
When it was wished to cause rain to fall in Murray Island, Torres
Straits, the rain-maker scooped a hole in the ground, and lined it
with leaves and placed in it a rude stone image of a man which had
previously been anointed with oil and rubbed with scented grass;
then he poured the decoction of minced leaves of various plants
mixed with water over the image—the image being so laid in the
hole as to point to the quarter from which the rain was expected.
Earth was heaped over the image and leaves and shells placed on
the mound, and all the while the rain-maker muttered an incantation
in a low sepulchral tone. Four large screens composed of plaited
coco-nut leaves were placed at the head, foot, and sides of the
grave to represent clouds; on the upper part of each was fastened a
blackened oblong of vegetable cloth to mimic a black thunder-cloud,
and coco-nut leaves, with their leaflets pointing downwards, were
suspended close by to represent rain. A torch was ignited and waved
lengthwise over the grave; the smoke represented clouds and the
flames mimicked lightning, and a bamboo clapper was sounded to
imitate thunder.
The rain was supposed to come when the decoction round the
image was rotten. The incantation consisted of enumerating various
aspects of certain forms of clouds. Rain could be made in this
manner only by one section of the community, and amongst these
one or two men had a much greater reputation than the others (29,
vi.).
This may be taken as an example of a typical rain-making
ceremony, in which all the phenomena of a thunder shower are
imitated.
If a native of Mabuiag, in Torres Straits, required rain he went to
the rain-maker and asked him to make some. The latter might reply,
‘You go and put some more thatch on your house and on mine too’;
this was to keep out the forthcoming rain. The rain-maker painted
the front of his body white, and the back black. This was explained
by my informant thus: ‘All along same as clouds, black behind, white
he go first,’ or he painted his body with black spots to make the
clouds come separately; when they congregated, the rain fell. The
rain-maker put ‘medicine’ in his right hand and waved it towards his
body and chanted an incantation. To stop the rain the rain-maker
put red paint on the crown of his head, to represent the shining sun,
and ruddled his body all over. He then lay doubled up and was
closely surrounded with three mats, so that no wind could penetrate
to him. Finally he burnt some leaves on the sea-shore close to the
water, on a rising tide; the smoke represented the clouds, and as it
was dissipated so they disappeared, and as the encroaching sea
washed away the ashes, so the clouds were scattered (29, v. 350).
In the island of Muralug certain old men could raise a wind by very
rapidly whirling a thin bull-roarer attached to a long string. More
wind could be obtained by climbing to the top of a tree and
performing there. In this case the noise made by the bull-roarer
imitated that produced by a gale of wind (29, v. 352).
Examples of the magical increase of plants are found in the ‘yam
stones’ placed in their gardens by various Papuans, which by their
rounded shape suggest the actual tubers (28, 202; 29, vi.).
The following instances are culled from that treasury of folk
custom and belief—The Golden Bough. In Thüringen the man who
sows flax carries the seed in a long bag which reaches from his
shoulders to his knees, and he walks with long strides, so that the
bag sways to and fro on his back. It is believed that this will cause
the flax to wave in the wind. In the interior of Sumatra rice is sown
by women who, in sowing, let their hair hang loose down their back,
in order that the rice may grow luxuriantly and have long stalks. It is
commonly believed in Germany and Austria that leaping high in the
fields will make the flax or hemp grow tall. A Bavarian sower, in
sowing wheat, will sometimes wear a golden ring, in order that the
corn may have a fine yellow colour (20, i. 35, 36).
As references are given on pp. 41-44 to magical practices for the
increase of animals, further examples need not be added here, their
object being to provide plenty of food for the community. It was for
the same reason that images of fish, turtle, and dugong were made
by the islanders of Torres Straits and taken with them when they
went fishing, with the idea that the image lured the real animal to its
destruction; and men of the dugong clan who were symbolically
decorated made mimetic movements with a dead dugong to
constrain others to come and be caught (29, v. 337, 182, and vi.).
The same people used to carve small human effigies out of thin
slabs of wood and coat them with beeswax, or the images were
made entirely of beeswax. These figures were treated in various
ways for nefarious magic, but always the first action was to call
them by the names of the persons who were to be affected by them.
If the magician pulled an arm or a leg off the image, the patient felt
sore in the corresponding limb, and became ill, and eventually died
in great pain; should the magician restore the dismembered limb,
the patient would recover. If a magician pricked with the spine of a
sting ray an image that had been named, the person indicated would
be stung in the same place by a sting ray when he went fishing on
the reef (29, v. 324). Analogous customs are to this day practised in
Britain. The first example comes from Ross-shire (48, 373). The corp
creagh is a body of clay rudely shaped into the image of a person
whose hurt is desired. After a tolerably correct representation is
obtained, it is stuck all over with pins and thorns and placed in a
running stream. As the image is worn away by the action of the
water the victim also wastes away with some mortal disease. The
more pins that are stuck in from time to time the more excruciating
agony the victim suffers. Should, however, any wayfarer discover the
corp in the stream, the spell is broken and the victim duly recovers.
From Argyleshire we learn (49, 144) that a long incantation was
used as the pins were being put in the clay image, the beginning of
which was something to this effect: ‘As you waste away, may ——
waste away; as this wounds you, may it wound ——.’ When it was
desired that the person should die a lingering death, care was taken
that the pins should not touch where the heart was supposed to be;
but when a speedy death was desired, the pins were stuck over the
region of the heart. Actual instances of the employment of the corp
chrè or corp chreadh, clay body or clay corpse (as Dr. Maclagan calls
it), are given by the two authors last cited, one of which occurred
about the year 1899. This practice is merely the continuance of old
customs, for ‘King James in his Dæmonology, says that “the devil
teacheth how to make pictures of wax or clay, that by roasting
thereof, the persons that they bear the name of may be continually
melted or dried away by continual sickness”; and in the eleventh
century certain Jews, it was believed, made a waxen image of
Bishop Eberhard, set about with tapers, bribed a clerk to baptize it,
and set fire to it on the Sabbath, the which image burning away at
the middle, the bishop fell grievously sick and died’ (70, 124).
Many magical practices and beliefs are difficult to classify as either
contagious or homœopathic magic; they may even be a mixture of
both. Such is the belief in the power of names or words, talismans
and amulets, divination, and various practices of public and private
magic. These will be dealt with under separate headings.
II. MAGICAL POWER OF NAMES AND WORDS

A Name is considered by backward folk to be part and parcel of a
living being, and as magic can be performed on a person through
tangible substances that have come into contact with him, so magic
can be performed or influence exerted through the utterance of a
person’s name. In the west of Ireland and in Torres Straits people
have refused to tell me their names, though there was no objection
to some one else giving me the information; the idea evidently being
that by telling their own name to a stranger they were voluntarily
putting themselves into the power of that stranger, who, by the
knowledge of their name so imparted, could affect them in some
way. Over the greater part of America was spread the belief in a
personal soul, which is neither the bodily life nor yet the mental
power, but a sort of spiritual body. In many tribes, writes Dr. Brinton
(7, 277), this third soul or ‘astral body’ bore a relation to the private
personal name. Among the Mayas and Nahuas, it was conferred or
came into existence with the name; and for this reason the personal
name was sacred and rarely uttered. The name was thus part of the
individuality, and through it the soul could be injured. Professor Rhŷs
has shown (58, 566-7) from philological evidence, that Aryan-
speaking peoples ‘believed at one time not only that the name was a
part of the man, but that it was that part of him which is termed the
soul, the breath of life.’ The dislike of hearing their names mentioned
is not confined to human beings, for, as is well known, in the British
Islands the Fairies have a very strong repugnance to being so called;
hence they should be termed the Wee-folk, the Good People, or by
other ambiguous terms. Certain Scottish and English fishermen
believe that the salmon and pig have a similar objection to being
‘named,’ but they do not mind being called respectively the ‘red-fish’
or the ‘queer fellow.’
If power can be exerted over men by the use of their names, it is
only reasonable to believe that spirits and deities can be similarly
influenced. Torres Straits islanders believe that a local bogey or a
spirit-girl can be summoned by being mentioned by name (29, v. 14,
86), as the witch of Endor brought up the spirit of Samuel. Dr. Frazer
(20, i. 443-6) gives examples to show that people have believed that
gods must keep their true names secret, lest other gods or even
men should be able to conjure with them; even Ra, the great
Egyptian god of the sun, declared that the name given him by his
father and mother ‘remained hidden in my body since my birth, that
no magician might have magic power over me.’ This probably was
one reason why the real name of supreme Gods was known but to a
chosen few; one instance will suffice. To the Mohammedans, Allah is
but an epithet in place of the Most Great Name; for, according to a
Moslem belief, the secret of the latter is committed to prophets and
apostles alone. Another reason is that the utterance of these secret
names gives tremendous power, for (42, 273) those who know the
Most Great Name of God can, by pronouncing it, transport
themselves from place to place at will, can kill the living, raise the
dead to life, and work other miracles.
According to Jewish tradition, when Lilith, Adam’s first wife,
refused to yield obedience to him she uttered the Shem-
hamphorash, that is, pronounced the ineffable name of Jehovah and
instantly flew away. This utterance evidently gave her such power
that even Jehovah could not coerce her, and the three angels, Snoi
(Sennoi), Snsnoi (Sansennoi), and Smnglf (Sammangeloph), who
were sent after her, were contented with a compromise, and Lilith
swore by the name of the Living God that she would refrain from
doing any injury to infants wherever and whenever she should find
those angels, or their names, or their pictures, on parchment or
paper, or on whatever else they might be drawn, ‘and for this
reason,’ says a rabbinical writer, ‘we write the names of these angels
on slips of paper or parchment, and bind them upon infants, that
Lilith seeing them, may remember her oath; and may abstain from
doing our infants any injury’ (1, 165). The custom is still maintained
in the east of London of printing portions of Scripture and these
three names on pieces of paper, which are placed on the four walls
of a room where a baby is expected, where they remain eight days
for a boy and twenty days for a girl.
Apart from the coercive power which is attributed to the
pronouncing of names, there is an analogous belief in the utterance
of words or phrases. Those Words of Power have been classed by
Mr. Clodd (11, 194) as: (1) Creative Words; (2) Mantrams and their
kin; (3) Passwords; (4) Spells or Invocations for conjuring up the
spirit of the dead, or for exorcising demons, or for removing spells
on the living; and (5) Cure-charms in formulæ or magic words. Mr.
Clodd points out that these classes overlap and intermingle.
Even among such backward people as the Australians, certain of
the medicine-men or sorcerers were bards who devoted their poetic
faculties to the purposes of enchantment, such as the Bunjil-yenjin
of the Kurnai, whose peculiar branch of magic was composing and
singing potent love charms and the arrangement of marriages by
elopement spells (35, 356, 274).
In few countries was the spoken word more effective than in
ancient Ireland; a sorcerer, whether a druid or not, would stand on
one foot, with one arm outstretched and with one eye shut, and
chant an incantation in a loud voice (37, i. 240). The grand weapon
of the Irish poets by which they enforced their demands was the
satire. A poet could compose a satire that would blight crops, dry up
milch-cows, and raise an ulcerous blister on the face. A story is told
(37, i. 454) of Senchán Torpest, chief poet of Ireland, who lived in
the seventh century, that once when his dinner was eaten in his
absence by rats, he muttered a satire beginning, ‘Rats, though sharp
their snouts, are not powerful in battle,’ which killed ten of them on
the spot. Shakespeare, and other Elizabethan writers, often refer to
the belief that Irish bards could rhyme rats to death. The Irish geis
or geas [pronounced gesh or gass], plural geasa [gassa], was the
exact equivalent of an ordinary tabu, but people sometimes put an
injunction on a person in some such form as ‘I place you under
heavy geasa, which no true champion will break through, to do so
and so.’ In this manner, the witch-lady forces Finn to search for the
ring she had dropped into the lake; and Marbhan put the arch-poet
Senchán Torpest under geasa to obtain a copy of a lost story. When
the request was reasonable or just the abjured person could not
refuse without loss of honour and reputation and probably in early
days personal harm would accrue if the geasa were disregarded. The
power of the geis was so strong that when Grania put Diarmuid
under geasa of danger and destruction to elope with her, he was
advised by his friends against his will to agree: Oisin said, ‘You are
not guilty if the bonds were laid on you,’ and Osgar said, ‘It is a
pitiful man that would break his bonds’ (25, 347, 8).
Sympathetic magic bulks largely in the life of backward peoples,
not merely in the form of actions to be performed, but also in those
to be abstained from. The ‘Thou shalt not’ is more in evidence than
‘Thou shalt.’ The prohibitions of savages and barbarians are now
spoken of under the general term of tabu. Some tabus are rational
from our point of view, others seem to us to be utterly irrational, but
this does not affect their validity in any way. So much has been
written on this subject by divers writers that only one or two
examples need be given here. The subject is again referred to on p.
55.
The old Irish tale, the ‘Bruiden Dá Derga,’ tells of the destruction
following the violation of tabus. Conaire, King of Ulster, was put
under certain geasa by his father, such as: ‘Thou shalt not go desiul
round Tara nor withershins round Bregia,’ ‘The evil beasts of Cerna
must not be hunted by thee,’ ‘There shall not go before thee three
Reds to the house of Red,’ and others. But on the way to Dá Derga’s
Hostel ‘They went righthandwise round Tara, and lefthandwise round
Bregia, and the evil beasts of Cerna were hunted by him, but he saw
it not till the chase had ended.’ Then he saw three red men going
before him to the house of Red, and Conaire says, ‘All my geasa
have seized me to-night,’ and before the next day Conaire and all his
host were destroyed in Dá Derga’s Hostel (66, xxii.). When Cuchulain
was on his way to his last combat he met three hags, daughters of a
wizard, all blind of the left eye. They were cooking a dog with
poisons and spells on spits of a rowan tree. It was geis to Cuchulain
to eat at a cooking-hearth, or to eat the flesh of a hound, but the
women put him on his honour not to refuse the piece they offered
him, so he took it, and all the strength went out of the left hand in
which he took the food (66, iii.).
III. TALISMANS AND AMULETS

In the forms of magic we have hitherto considered, something is
done by a human being, whether by action, representation, or word,
but there is another branch of magic in which the virtue resides
intrinsically in certain objects which are variously termed charms,
talismans, amulets, or mascots. Those that transmit qualities or are
worn for good luck may be termed talismans, while the term
amulet may be restricted with advantage to those charms which
are preventive in their action; but the same charm is in some cases
employed for both these purposes. These objects are continuously
effective without any action on the part of the preparer or wearer, as
they possess power in their own right, but this is from very diverse
causes.
Certain stones from their colour suggest flesh; thus garnets and
carnelians are worn in the rough or worked into beads as amulets
against skin diseases. Most precious stones are credited with
distinctive properties, and some have a reputation for being unlucky,
as for example the precious opal. The amethyst, as its name implies,
was regarded by the ancient Greeks as a charm against becoming
intoxicated; among the ancient Egyptians the amethyst
corresponded to the Zodiacal sign of the Goat, and as the goat was
an enemy to vines, so the amethyst was a foe to wine. Leland (43,
351) points out that it also ‘drives away bad thoughts and confers
ripe and happy genius.’ Amber beads are carried by people of
various races for weak eyes, and it is essential they should be looked
through to strengthen the sight (43, 267). The electrical power of
attraction of light objects by amber when rubbed was doubtless one
cause of its supposed virtue. The several metals have their active
magical properties. A lump of crude antimony in Italy is very
efficacious when the following invocation is pronounced: ‘Antimony,
who art of zinc and copper! thou most powerful, I keep thee ever by
me, that thou mayest banish from me evil people, and bring good
luck to me.’ Gold is the most genial or luck-bringing, and, as a
woman said, ‘antimony is stronger than lead, because it consists of
three metals, or rather always has in it copper and lead’ (43, 373-4).
Colour alone has its magical qualities, hence the frequency of red
woollen thread or stuff in counter-charms against the evil eye, as an
old saw expresses it: ‘Roan tree and red thread, will drive the
witches aa wud’ (49, 156). For the same reason red coral is so
greatly valued. Blue is of equal efficacy, hence the wearing of
turquoise by so many Oriental and North African peoples, and blue
beads are worn by people for much the same reason, that they
suspend them round the necks of donkeys or camels.
When dealing with contagious magic, we saw that many objects
are worn, in order that certain qualities of the animals from which
they were obtained may be imparted to the wearer. The wild boar’s
tusk, the acquisition of which is greatly desired by the natives of the
Papuan Gulf as a mark of bravery, is coveted not so much as a
personal ornament, as for the courage, ferocity, and daring which it
is supposed to contain and to be capable of imparting to any one
who wears it (33, 427). Probably this is the reason why boars’ tusks
are so much prized all over New Guinea, where they are wrought
into ‘ornaments,’ which are carried in the mouth or worn on the
chest when on the war-path. In West Africa the bones from the legs
of tortoises are much valued as anklets, in order to give the wearers
endurance. The lower jaw-bone of the tortoise is worn by certain
tribes as a preventive against toothache; in this case the reason
would seem to be that as the tortoise has no teeth it cannot suffer
from toothache, and thus freedom from toothache can be imparted
by that edentulous jaw. The spinal bones of snakes are strung
together for a girdle as a cure for backache (3, 237).
Africans, according to Arnot (3, 237), believe largely in preventive
measures, and their charms are chiefly of that order. In passing
through a country where leopards and lions abound, they carefully
provide themselves with the claws, teeth, lips, and whiskers of
those animals, and hang them around their necks, to secure
themselves against being attacked. For the same purpose the point
of an elephant’s trunk is generally worn by the elephant-hunters.
A large class of talismans consists of models or representations
of objects, and the attributes of the original pass on to the symbol.
The pig, perhaps on account of its abundant fecundity, was primarily
sacred to the earth goddess, whether she was known as Demeter,
Ceres, or by any other name. Leland points out (43, 255) that little
gold and silver pigs were offered to Ceres, who was pre-eminently a
goddess of fertility, and therefore of good luck and all genial
influences. For these reasons they were worn by Roman ladies, and
‘lucky pigs’ are still very common charms, especially in South
Germany.
The belief in the evil eye is not only widely spread, but extremely
ancient, and in some places is still firmly rooted among the folk.
‘Overlooking’ may be intentional, but it is believed that many
persons, without intention and even against their will, by the glance
of their eye, have caused injurious effects; so that, in some cases,
mothers would not venture to expose their infants to the look of
their own fathers. Plutarch (18, 13) vouches for this, and admits that
envy exerts an evil influence through the eyes, and adds that it is
wise to employ charms and antidotes to turn aside these evil
glances. A friend of his stated that some even fascinate themselves
by their own gaze, and alluded to the story of Eutelidas, who, like
Narcissus, fell a victim to the admiration he felt for his own likeness.
Women and children seem to have been accounted by all old
classical writers as the most liable to injury. Among the Greeks and

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2. Koines and koineization 9

3. The Burgos phase 94

4. The Toledo phase 145

5. The Seville phase 215

language as an autonomous entity has tended to impede an accurate con-

lead to consequences on the macro-level, which is constituted by the lin-

linguistic change. Still, even in sociolinguistics, study of dialect mixing has

According to Penny (1987), there are numerous features of Peninsular

— reduction from four to three degrees of aperture for tonic vowels

— leveling of perfect auxiliary verb to haber

Penny's original suggestions and unanswered questions form the start-

development of this model, it is only to be expected that consensus about

The model of koineization, of fairly recent development, is based on earlier

1. Koine and koines

Koine is a term with a long history and a wide variety of interpretations. It

1.1. The Greek Koine

Confederacy of Delos into an Athenian empire, the influence of Attic

This list of characteristics is attractively simple and clear - deceptively so

of dialect mixing and demographic movement. More recently, scholars

1.2. Modern use of the term koine

Modern metaphorical or technical use of the term koine has grown as

"least common denominator" of contributing varieties (see below). He also

— was based primarily on one dialect

— was reduced and simplified14

In order to determine the dominant interpretations of the term, Siegel ana-

1. Literary Italian (Pei 1966: 139)

34. English-based nautical jargon (Hancock 1971: 290n)

— "a form of language resulting from a compromise between various dialects

According to Siegel, most koines are characterized to some extent by

the linguist who observes the frequently similar results of multiple

— (a) its development as a new, common variety based on existing dialects of

2.1. Siegel ' s stage-based model

As these different varieties received more scholarly attention, efforts to

1. Prekoine. "This is the unstabilized stage at the beginning of koineization.

on then-current approaches to the study of pidginization and creolization,

Table 1. Developmental contunua of koines. Source: Siegel (1985: 375).

prekoine prekoine prekoine

Table 2. Developmental contunua of creóles. Source: Siegel (1985: 375), based on

jargon jargon jargon

Pidgins are generally understood to result from contact between typologi-

derstand each other, the need to communicate information - which plays

context of koineization. It is certainly true that any expansion of contexts

In later publications, Siegel has discussed the similarities and differ-

It should be stressed that the developmental continuum of a koine is not

2.2. Trudgill's process-based model

The single most influential discussion of koineization is that of the socio-

2.2.1. Accommodation and salience