Mixed language | Wikipedia audio article
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Date: 2018-11-05

This is an audio version of the Wikipedia Article:
Mixed language

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SUMMARY
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Although every language is mixed to some extent, by virtue of containing loanwords, it is a matter of controversy whether a term mixed language can meaningfully distinguish the contact phenomena of certain languages (such as those listed below) from the type of contact and borrowing seen in all languages. In other words, a "mixed language" is a language that belongs to more than one language family and it is unclear whether there are any mixed languages, i.e. it is unclear to what extent language mixture can be distinguished from other mechanisms such as code-switching, substrata, or lexical borrowing.In 1861, Max Müller denied "the possibility of a mixed language". In 1881, William D. Whitney wrote the following, expressing skepticism regarding the chances of a language being proven a mixed language. 

Such a thing as the adoption on the part of one tongue, by a direct process, of any part or parts of the formal structure of another tongue has, so fas as is known, not come under the notice of linguistic students during the recorded periods of language-history. So far as these are concerned, it appears to be everywhere the case that when the speakers of two languages, A and B, are brought together into one community, there takes place no amalgamation of their speech, into AB; but for a time the two maintain their own several identity, only as modified each by the admission of material from the other in accordance with the ordinary laws of mixture; we may call them Ab and Ba, and not AB. … [W]e shall doubtless meet now and then with the claim that such and such a case presents peculiar conditions which separate it from the general class, and that some remote and difficult problem in language-history is to be solved by admitting promiscuous mixture. Any one advancing such a claim, however, does it at his peril; the burden of proof is upon him to show what the peculiar coditions might have been, and how they should have acted to produce the exceptional result; he will be challenged to bring forward some hisotircally authenticated case of analogous results; and his solution, if not rejected altogether, will be looked upon with doubt and misgiving until he shall have complied with these reasonable requirements. 
Wilhelm Schmidt was an important proponent of the idea of mixed languages in the very late 19th and early 20th century. In the judgement of Thomas Sebeok, Schmidt produced "not a scrap of evidence" for his theory. Margaret Schlauch provides a summary of the various objections to Schmidt's theory of Sprachmischung, by prominent linguistics such as Alfredo Trombetti, Antoine Meillet, and A. Kholodovich. 
Despite the old and broad consensus that rejected the idea of a 'mixed language', Thomason and Kaufman in 1988 proposed to revive the idea that some languages had shared genealogy. Meakins, who finds Thomason and Kaufman's account credible,  suggests that a mixed language results from the fusion of usually two source languages, normally in situations of thorough bilingualism, so that it is not possible to classify the resulting language as belonging to either of the language families that were its sources. 
Despite these recent efforts to rehabilitate mixed languages as an idea, many linguists remained unconvinced. For example, van Driem rejects one by one each of Thomason and Kaufman's examples as well as those more recently proposed. Most recently, Versteegh rejects the notion of a mixed language, writing that at "no point is it necessary to posit a category of mixed languages."