The papers in the special focus issues of the Journal of Germanic Linguistics (13.4 and 14.1) testify to the continuing significance of Afrikaans sociohistorical linguistics. Even before its official “birth,” recognition, and christening, Afrikaans had been the subject of debate, discussion, dissension, and adulation. Within linguistics, it has excited attention from Hesseling onward on account of the transformation of Dutch grammar evident in some facets of its structure and lexicon. The extent of the transformation and the participation of indigenous and enslaved people in the process have proved what my co-editor, Paul Roberge (1995:72), once called an “enduring crux ” in sociohistorical linguistics. With the promotion (and consequent further politicization) of Afrikaans in the apartheid era (1948–1994), the issue of origins became an ideologically polarized one. It seemed to me in the 1980s and 1990s that linguists in South Africa, with a few exceptions, weren't keeping pace with developments in creolistics; and, conversely, scholars versed in creolistics weren't always paying attention to the full span of the data on the transformation of Dutch in South Africa. With the academic boycott of apartheid South Africa, there seemed little opportunity for full, free, and frank scholarly exchange.

A provisional typological comparison demonstrates that Khoekhoe, Dutch, and Afrikaans are highly similar with respect to a couple of minor features. Therefore, Cape Dutch Pidgin (CDP), which came about as a relexified and pidginized version of Khoekhoe, could often develop compromises between Dutch and Khoekhoe syntax. Exceptions were the use of SOV without V2 and (possibly) the use of certain postpositions. Furthermore, there is evidence showing that CDP and Orange River Afrikaans (ORA) are diachronically related. An investigation of the sentential structure of Khoekhoe, however, shows that the second position (P2) phenomenon differs considerably from V2 in Dutch: P2 is symmetric and is applied in all clause types. Yet, except for a temporary pro-drop phenomenon in wh-clauses, P2 did not really affect the pidgin. Once finite verbs were acquired, the picture changed, and new (optional) subordinate V2 and V1 patterns could be introduced into Cape Dutch and Afrikaans under the influence of Khoekhoe Dutch/Afrikaans.

As a phenomenon to be explained, convergence in historical linguistics is substantively no different than in creolistics. The general idea is that accommodation by speakers of “established” languages in contact and the formation of new language varieties both involve a process of leveling of different structures that achieve the same referential and nonreferential effects. The relatively short and well-documented history of Afrikaans presents an important case study in the competition and selection of linguistic features during intensive language contact.

By way of wrapping up this two-part special issue, Focus on Afrikaans Sociohistorical Linguistics (JGL 13.4 and 14.1), I will touch on some of the significant issues raised by the contributors from my own, mainly dissident, point of view.

Afrikaans linguistics suffered a major loss with the death of our colleague Carla Luijks, from cancer, on December 30, 2001, at the cruelly young age of 43 (two weeks shy of her 44th birthday).