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.