Icelandic Basque pidgin

Abstract

In this paper I present an analysts of what remains of a trade language born in the seventeenth century as a consequence of Basque fishing trips in the North Atlantic. Since the data that we have show a linguistic system in an early stage of development and the languages in contact are easily identifiable, whichever characteristics are present in the contact language will be traceable to one of the initial languages or to universal tendencies. For this purpose, an analysis of the main typological features of both Basque and Icelandic is also provided.