pidgins and creoles

features of pidgin languages

• fewer function words

• less conjunctions

• less variation of lexis

• fewer modal verbs

• simplified pronoun system

• nouns not marked for plurality, fewer inflections

• tense markers aren’t always present

how pidgins come about

• pidgins are contact languages created when people need to communicate but have no shared language e.g. on slave plantations

• full exchange of ideas not necessary, so a small vocabulary is drawn mainly from the lexifier

• a pidgin that becomes a first language is called a creole, pidgins are just auxiliary languages #

• todd, 1992, descriptivist - they often eliminate inessential features like articles, which japanese doesn’t have anyway

• a pidgin will either die or some become extended pidgins, and useful auxiliary languages in multilingual contexts, vocab will expand, grammar becomes less simplified, fills all communication needs

1. a small vocabulary dominated by one language, typically a european language

2. simplification of grammar e.g. reduced inflections, verb forms and nouns

3. if communication need no longer exists, will die out e.g. korean bamboo english which arose during the korean war, with us and uk troops speaking with south koreans

tok pisin - ‘talk pidgin’

• spoken as an auxiliary language in papua new guinea, where there are over 700 languages

• vocabulary expanded through reduplication e.g. ‘tok’ = talk, ‘toktok’ = chatter and compounding e.g. ‘workpren’ = colleague, ‘bugaruptul’ = spanner

• ‘mi’ = me, i, my

• but, more complex with ‘yumi’ = me and you ‘mipela’ = me and those not you, more flexible than standard english

• possesives shown through ‘bilong’, papa bilong me

• as it develops, gets spoken faster, just like standard languages e.g. ‘man bilong mi’ becomes ‘manblomi’

• grammar is becoming more complex e.g. suffix ‘im’ added to create verbs, ‘bik’ means big, ‘bikim’ means enlarge

• auxiliaries ‘bin’ to mark past, ‘bi’ to mark future, has developed a tense system

• tok pisin only has 5 vowel phonemes, rp has 20

• conflation of consonant sounds = p/f, s

• consonant cluster reduction at the end of words e.g. pren for friend

boconde

• it is clear that people used to expressing themselves with a rather simple language cannot easily elevate themselves to the genius of a european language….barbarous forms of language of half sane peoples

anonymous reviewer in the economist

• pidgins are corruptions - in the sense of simplifying adaptions of existing languages. They offer evidence of degenerative language change….pidgins are simple, clumsy languages incapable of nuance, detail, abstraction and precision

jenkins

• extended pidgins are capable of expressing all the needs of their speakers

todd

• pidgins often eliminate redundancies in language such as excessive plurality markers e.g. les deux grands journeaux (4 markers) to di tu big pepa (1 marker)

jamaican creole

• holm - a creole has a pidgin in its ancestry, spoken natively by an entire speech community whose ancestors were displaced geographically so their ties with the original language and sociocultural identity were partly broken

• enslaved africans were often deliberately mixed up with speakers of different languages to hinder rebellion, pidgin englishes to fulfil a communication need

• the children of slaves spoke pidgin as their native language

  creole lexis

• english was the lexifier, but some words from african languages survived

• nyam = to eat, from wolof

• duppy = ghost, from akan

• unu = yu plural, from igbo

• curse words created by compounding = ‘bombaklaat’ - bum cloth, toilet paper, all purpose swear word in MLE

grammar

• verbs not marked for tense or person

• nouns not marked for plurality

• interchangeable use of ‘mi’ and ‘i’ as subject and object pronouns

• can distinguish between singular and plural you, with ‘unu’ as plural

• use of ‘a’ to mark progressive aspect in place of copula = ‘mi a nyam’

• deletion of copula = ‘di man happy’

• ‘fi’ preferred to ‘to’ in infinitives = ‘john aks fi see it’

• negatives = ‘di bwoy no want it’

phonological features

• b labialisation = /bwaɪ/

• backing alveolar plosive ‘t’ to velar plosive ‘k’ = /lɪkəl/

• different monophthong = /kɑːn/

• consonant cluster reduction at end of words = /fren/

post creole continuum

• creolisation = movement from pidgin to creole

• decreolisation = happens after extensive contact with dominant standard language, has happened in jamaica among educated jamaicans in formal contexts, speak in ‘acrolect’, working class speak in ‘basilect’

• can move along continuum, based on context and willingness to conform, 2nd generation british jamaicans use basilect for identity, parents used acrolect to integrate

sebba, 1997 - ladder of lects

1. basilect = mi a nyam

2. mesolect = mi a eat, mi eatin, i is eatin

3. acrolect = i am eating

edwards - recreolisation

• young jamaican immigrants use creole as a marker of identity, use of patois has had an influence on MLE

leith

3 types of english colony

1. substantial settlement by first language speakers of english displaced the pre colonial population e.g. america/australia

2. sparser colonial settlements maintained the precolonial population in subjection and allowed a proportion access to learning english as a second language e.g. nigeria

3. pre colonial population replaced by new labour from west africa e.g. jamaica, barbados

(not leith)

• until very recently, pidgins and creoles were regarded as inferior ‘bad’ languages

• later in 20th century, sociolinguists began to appreciate how these languages reflect and promote the lifestyles of speakers

theories of origins

• having a single origin = monogenesis

• independent origin = polygenesis

• or alternatively - universal strategies

polygenetic theories

1. independent parallel development theory = pidgins and creoles developed and arose independently, but in similar ways and they share a common linguistic ancestor, are formed in similar social and physical conditions

2. the nautical jargon theory = european ships’ crews had a range of language backgrounds so developed a shared language to communicate, the sailors’ lingua franca was passed onto africans and asians they came into contact with, the nautical jargon created a nucleus for various pidgins, which were subsequently expanded in line with their learner’s mother tongues, evidence comes from the fact many creoles and pidgins have nautical elements, words for heave, capsize and hoist

monogenetic theory

• all european based pidgins and creoles derive from one proto-pidgin source, a portuguese pidgin used in trade routes in the 15th and 16th centuries

• this is thought to have derived from an earlier lingua franca called sabir used by crusaders and traders in mediterranean in the middle ages

• it was then relexified by portuguese in the 15th century, portuguese lexis was introduced into sabir grammar

• the portuguese version of sabir was then used by the portuguese in the 15th century when they sailed to the west coast of africa, so would have been first european language they came into contact with and acquired

• evidence = lexical similarities with portuguese pidigins and creoles and other pidgins and creoles e.g. english ones have forms of the portuguese verb ‘saber’ to know, as ‘savi’ and ‘sabi’

universal theories

1. the baby talk theory = arose because of the similarities between the early speech of children and some forms in pidgins e.g. fewer function words and morphological changes, also suggested that speakers of the dominant language using ‘foreigner’ talk with l2 speakers encouraged this type of speech

2. todd - a synthesis = instead of searching for a common origin in the past, we should try to look for universal patterns of linguistic behaviour in contact situations, pidgins and creoles act alike because languages and simplification processes are alike, as l1 speakers of different languages simplify their languages in similar ways, argues all speakers have an innate ability to simplify by means of redundancy reduction where message is more important than quality, implies there are inherent universal constraints on language. This theory can account for the existence of some pidgins and the related origins of others, because in every case, people have responded to ‘an innate behavioural blueprint’, evidence for this = all children go through similar stages when learning language, people use simplified language with less proficient speakers