THE AMERICAN KOINE-ORIGIN, RISE, AND PLATEAU STAGE

Abstract

The early dialect history of the British immigrants to the United States involved a leveling process, leading to the formation of a koine.Reports from British travelers in the eighteenth century indicate a "striking uniformity" in the English of the American colonists.Comparison with the early reports from Australia, and with general works on the theory of languages in migration, indicates that the development of a koine would be expected in a situation of the type pre.vailing,where dominant regional patterns of settling in the new country cannot be convincingly shown.Since observers in the late eighteenth century begin to be critical of American usage, it is concluded that the koine stage was drawing to a close by that time and individual American dialects were developing.It is concluded that the formation of those new dialects was traceable to influences other than the regional dialects of more recent immigrants from England.Marckwardt's (1958) choice of the Mayflower passengers as his example of those who supposedly brought the uncomplicated dialects of England to the North American colonies is an especially unfortunate one.All of the British immigrants to the Americas entered a linguistically complicated situation-although, obviously, not with the same kind of complexity faced later by non-British immigrants-but the Pilgrim Fathers provide an especially obvious example of why the reconstructive picture of British "regional" dialects migrating to North America will not work.Regionally, the Pilgrims may have been more homogeneous than the generally heterogeneous emigrating British groups.According to historian Charles M. Andrews, The leading centers of Separatism [the general nonconformist religious movement of which the Puritans were part] were in London and Norfolk, but the seat of the little congregation that eventually led the way across the sea to New England was in Scrooby in Nottinghamshire (1919: 6).Thus, the Pilgrim group, which was quite small, may at one time have actually represented a "regional" British group with its dialect.But a great deal of complication was to come to that simple picture before the group even set sail for America.And language contact was a major part of that complication.What is very well known to historians, but apparently forgotten by authorities on American English, is that the Pilgrim group went not directly from England to the Americas but most immediately to Holland.Leaving Britain secretly, they went to Amsterdam in 1607 and 1608 for the express purpose of escaping persecution by the Established Church of England.But they found some flaws with Amsterdam and soon moved on to Leyden-in 1609.Although their early descriptions of the latter city are glowingly enthusiastic, they soon found reason to feel that they should move on.The specific reasons are rather interesti ng for language history: Fall 1973

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