languages and that loses much of the grammatical elaboration of its source languages in the process. The vast differences between Old English and Middle The Middle English creole hypothesis is a proposal that Middle English was a creole, which is usually defined as a language that develops during contact between two groups speaking different languages and that loses much of the grammatical elaboration of its source languages in the process. The vast differences between Old English and Middle English, and English's status as one of the least struct This hypothesis was first proposed by C.-J. Bailey and K. Maroldt in 1977, followed by Nicole Domingue and Patricia Poussa. These authors argued that Middle English was a creole that developed when the Anglo-Norman-speaking invaders learned Old English imperfectly and expanded their reduced English into a full language. Evidence cited in support of the hypothesis was the heavy admixture of Norman words into the English lexicon, including some basic words such as the words for uncle, niece, danger, trouble, cause; the frequent loss of Old English verb and adjective affixes in favor of loans from Norman (e.g. enclosid, inpacient, disheritance); a number of grammatical changes that appear to have been modeled after Norman, such as expression of the perfect aspect using the verb have (as in "she has eaten"), the use of of to express the genitive (as in French le livre de Jean), and constructions such as "it is me", "it is him" (compare modern French c'est moi, c'est lui); and English's complete loss of case and gender markers on nouns. Middle English comes reasonably close to satisfying the three criteria that define McWhorter's creole prototype. For instance, by the end of the twelfth century, grammatical gender was all but lost in northern English dialects, and two centuries later it had disappeared even in the south. However Middle English did not lose all of Old English's noncompositional derivational morphology; for i The Middle English creole hypothesis is a proposal that Middle English was a creole, which is usually defined as a language that develops during contact between two groups speaking different languages and that loses much of the grammatical elaboration of its source languages in the process. The vast differences between Old English and Middle English, and English's status as one of the least structurally elaborated of the Germanic languages, have led some historical linguists to argue that the language underwent creolisation at around the 11th century, shortly after the Norman conquest of England. Other linguists suggest that creolisation began earlier, during the Scandinavian incursions of the 9th and 10th centuries. Much of the debate over the Middle English creole hypothesis revolves around how terms like creole or creolisation should be defined. While there does not exist a consensus that Middle English should be classified as a creole, This hypothesis was first proposed by C.-J. Bailey and K. Maroldt in 1977, followed by Nicole Domingue and Patricia Poussa. These authors argued that Middle English was a creole that developed when the Anglo-Norman-speaking invaders learned Old English imperfectly and expanded their reduced English into a full language. Evidence cited in support of the hypothesis was the heavy admixture of Norman words into the English lexicon, including some basic words such as the words for uncle, niece, danger, trouble, cause; the frequent loss of Old English verb and adjective affixes in favor of loans from Norman (e.g. enclosid, inpacient, disheritance); a number of grammatical changes that appear to have been modeled after Norman, such as expression of the perfect aspect using the verb have (as in "she has eaten"), the use of of to express the genitive (as in French le livre de Jean), and constructions such as "it is me", "it is him" (compare modern French c'est moi, c'est lui); and English's complete loss of case and gender markers on nouns. Middle English comes reasonably close to satisfying the three criteria that define McWhorter's creole prototype. For instance, by the end of the twelfth century, grammatical gender was all but lost in northern English dialects, and two centuries later it had disappeared even in the south. However Middle English did not lose all of Old English's noncompositional derivational morphology; for instance, Old English understandan → Middle English understanden → English understand. Nevertheless, Middle English is highly simplified compared with Old English, suggesting, according to McWhorter, a contact-based explanation, though not necessarily contact with French: Unlike the French elites, Scandinavians settled among the general population and often married Anglo-Saxon women. Lexical borrowing from Old Norse, while not as extensive as later borrowings from Norman French, included many domestic content words (happy, knife, skirt, window, neck) as well as commonly used words such as they, their, them, though, both, same, against. Loss of grammatical gender in English appears to have occurred first in the north and east, the regions of greatest Scandinavian settlement. The rapid loss of Old English verbal prefixes is attributed to the fact that Old Norse had already lost most of the Germanic prefixes, and so lacked cognates for English prefixed verbs. McWhorter, in summarizing the evidence for Scandinavian influence, writes that "the evidence strongly suggests that extensive second-language acquisition by Scandinavians from the eighth century onwards simplified English grammar to a considerable extent". More specifically, the claim is that the inflectional and other losses in English resulted from Old Norse speakers' incomplete acquisition of English. Creolisation of English might have occurred due to interaction between Common Brittonic and English, however evidence supporting the influence of the Celtic languages on English is hampered by a lack of written sources.