Atlantic, Pacific or world-wide?

This paper addresses the issue of the distribution in English-based pidgins and creoles of a number of selected diagnostic features. A large corpus of 17 Atlantic and eight Pacific varieties is surveyed in search of attestations. Examples are listed to illustrate the occurrence of features in the pidgins and creoles considered. Citations include the first attestation of a feature in the earliest records currently available of both Atlantic and Pacific English-lexicon contact languages. The textual evidence adduced appears to indicate that 23 diagnostic features considered to be Atlantic or Pacific respectively have a wider distribution than hitherto assumed and should therefore be reclassified as world-wide features. Also discussed are some of the implications of these findings.