The series Studia Linguistica Germanica, founded in 1968 by Ludwig Erich Schmitt and Stefan Sonderegger, is one of the standard publication organs for German Linguistics. The series aims to cover the whole spectrum of the subject, while concentrating on questions relating to language history and the history of linguistic ideas. It includes works on the historical grammar and semantics of German, on the relationship of language and culture, on the history of language theory, on dialectology, on lexicology / lexicography, text linguisticsand on the location of German in the European linguistic context.

Hugo Schuchardt was effectively the founder of the flourishing field of creole studies. He assembled an enormous corpus of source-material in the form of texts, transcripts, word-lists and dictionaries and between 1880 and 1920 published the results with his own commentaries in a series of reviews and articles. Professor Gilbert has edited and translated a coherent selection of the most important essays, comprising Schuchadrt's studies of the English-based creoles and two of his major theoretical papers on the Lingua Franca and the Language of the Saramacca Negroes in Surinam. His introduction surveys Schuchardt's work as a whole and analyses his more specific contributions in these selections. The volume will be welcomed by a wide range of linguists and anthropologists.