Relexification

Relexification is not synonymous with lexical borrowing, by which a language merely supplements its basic vocabulary with loanwords from another language.

Language creation and relexification hypothesis

Relexification is a form of language interference in which a pidgin, a creole or a mixed language takes nearly all of its lexicon from a superstrate or a target language while its grammar comes from the substrate or source language or, according to universalist theories, arises from universal principles of simplification and grammaticalization. The language from which the lexicon is derived is called the "lexifier". Michif, Media Lengua, and Lanc-Patuá creole are mixed languages that arose through relexification.

A hypothesis that all creole languages derive their grammar from the medieval Mediterranean Lingua Franca was widely held in the late 1950s and the early 1960s, but it fell out of favour. It was later argued, for example, because of underlying similarities between Haitian Creole and Fon language that the grammar of Haitian Creole is a substratum that was created when Fon-speaking African slaves relexified their language with French vocabulary. However, the role of relexification in creole genesis is disputed by adherents of generative grammar. Wittmann (1994), Wittmann & Fournier (1996), Singler (1996), and DeGraff (2002), for example, have argued that the similarities in syntax reflect a hypothetical Universal Grammar, not the workings of relexification processes.