As far as the Nagas were concerned, they were head-hunters to a man, and the last case was reported from the Tuensang district in 1958. Since the inter-village feuds and the resultant head-hunting expeditions. continued for centuries, there was very little scope for interlingua contact for interlingual contact or societal bilingualism amongst the Nagas. The intervillage feuds and wars which formed part of the Naga life are now a part of their history. With the establishment of stable administration for the entire Nagaland, the insecurity that lurked in the minds of every Naga started disappearing, resulting that lurked in the minds of every Naga started disappearing, resulting in the gradual transformation of their social and political life. A number of Nagas started crossing the limits of their villages for education and employment. As far as the societal bilingualism amongst the Nagas is concerned, these may be taken as the turning point. Earlier there was some limited one-way bilingualism amongst the Sema and Chang converts to Christianity who learnt the Ao language which was the first Naga language to have the Bible translated. Beyond the fact that Rev. Godhula, and Assames pastor working with the American missionary Dr. E.W.Clarks at Sibsagar1, got introduced to some Ao Nagas from Mulungkimong village and later Rev. Godhula learnt the Ao language in his Sibsagar camp from one Ao named Supongmeven, nothing is known about the language used in their early contacts. The first nine Ao Nagas of the Mulungkimong village converted to Christianity by Rev. Godhula, were baptized by Dr. Clark at Sibsagar on Nov. 11, 1872. The same year he set up a Baptist Mission, the first to be set up in the Naga Hills (Kijung 1961). The Hindu missionaries and the missionaries of the other Christian denominations did not venture into the Naga Hills. Later Dr. clark and Mrs. Clark learnt the Ao language thus became a language of prestige and superior culture for the other Nagas. With this brief account of the languages spoken in Nagaland and the different ethnic groups, and their early contacts with outsiders it is proposed to discuss the terms used in the title of this monograph.

In linguistics or for that matter in any science, a term has relevance only in its opposition to the other terms on the one hand and

The languages called pidgins and creoles have drawn the attention of scholars for more than a century. But these languages, when compared to the genetically related languages usally termed as ‘natural language’, got a step-motherly treatment until recently. Pioneers in the study of pidgins and creoles were : H. Schuchardt, Herikevit, John E. Reinecke, William Greenfield, Robert Hall Jr. etc.

The pidgins and creoles as types of languages were effectively distinguished only just about 50 years ago [Bloomfield (1933), Reinecke (1938/64)etc.] Reinecke, while recognising them as distinct language types, kept both pidgins and creoles together under the rubric of marginal languages. Despite the interest of the scholars in these tyes of languages for almost a century, the studies in these languages remained a marginal concern to the linguists. It was only after the Mona conference in April 1968 that these languages started receiving serious attention of scholars and also a respectable position within linguistic studies. While referring to the importance of pidgins and creoles, Hymes claims that (Hymes, 1971 : 5) ‘certainly pidgins and creoles challenge our ability to deal with linguistic diversity, to discover its systematic basis from the stand point of social life. I would predict that the future of sociolinguistics lies in a still more widely defined concern, namely explanation of the origin, maintenance, change and loss of specific means of speech. The concern would be with the adaptation. It would be part of the general problem of social science, the maintenance and transformation of symbolic order’. Despite the creoles, there is hardly any generally accepted definition of a pidgin. Most scholars define a pidgin by referring to its characteristic features which are not uniform. For instance, Hymes (1971 : 84) offers the definition of some terms connected with the pidgins, but a pidgin is ‘pidginization’ was defined, he defines a pidgin as ‘a result of such a process (pidginiztion) that has achieved a norm’. Earlier in the features to the same book, Hymes mentions about certain characteristic features of pidgins i.e., pidgins arise as make shift adaptaiton, reduced in structure and use and no ones language’. To Todd (1974 : 1) ‘a pidgin is a marginal language which aims to fulfil certain restricted communication needs among people who have no common language.