Natalie Operstein

Whose name is hidden behind the anonymity of the key publication on Mediterranean Lingua Franca? What linguistic reality does the label 'Lingua Franca' conceal? These and related questions are explored in this new book on an enduringly important topic. The book presents a typologically informed analysis of Mediterranean Lingua Franca, as documented in the Dictionnaire de la langue franque ou petit mauresque, which provides an important historical snapshot of contact-induced language change. Based on a close study of the Dictionnaire in its historical and linguistic context, the book proposes hypotheses concerning its models, authorship and publication history, and examines the place of the Dictionnaire's Lingua Franca in the structural typological space between Romance languages, on the one hand, and pidgins, on the other. It refines our understanding of the typology of contact outcomes while at the same time opening unexpected new avenues for both linguistic and historical research.

Do you know what you want to do when you grow up? Why not work as a babysitter…for sloths? Or become a farmer…of corpses? You might even grow up to be someone who gets paid to actually sleep on the jo

Wanting to express himself in just the right way when his animal friends use their nice new notebooks to write poems, stories and songs, a frustrated Tapir discovers his creative energies when he tran