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Pidgin and Creole
Languages
By Moazzam Ali
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Introduction
A variety of language without native speakers
which arises in a language contact situation of
multilingualism, and operates as a lingua franca.
Pidgin language can have native speakers , but
that Pidgin is called Creole.
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Some Encyclopedic Definitions A simplified form of speech that is usually a mixture of two
or more languages, has a rudimentary grammar and vocabulary, is used for communication between groups speaking different languages, is not spoken as a first or native language, but used as contact language.
Pidgin, language based on another language, but with a sharply curtailed vocabulary (often 700 to 2000 words) and grammar; native to none of its speakers; and used as a lingua franca, or a language used as a means of communication between peoples with different native languages.
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Lingua Franca
In an educational publication related to vernacular
languages in Paris 1953, UNESCO defined a lingua
franca related to vernacular languages as „a language
which is used habitually by people whose mother
tongues are different in order to facilitate communication
between them‟.
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Characteristics of Pidgin
Pidgin is itself a language
A pidgin based on a language X is not just asan example of „bad X‟.As one might describethe unsuccessful attempt of an individual tolearn X. It is itself a language with a communityof speakers and with its own history. Eachpidgin has well formed linguistic system and islearnt in the same way as other languages arelearnt.
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No native speaker
Pidgins, unlike other ordinary languages,
have no native speakers which is the
consequence of the fact that it is used only
for communication between members of
different communities.
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Terminology The word pidgin, formerly also spelled pigeon derives from a
Chinese (Cantonese) language which means „business‟
Originally used to describe Chinese Pidgin English, it was later generalized to refer to any pidgin.
Pidgin may also be used as the specific name for a local pidgin in places where they are spoken.
For example, the name of Tok Pisin derives from the English words talk pidgin, and its speakers usually refer to it simplyas “Pidgin” when speaking English.
The term jargon has also been used to describe pidgins and is found in the names of some pidgins such as Chinook Jargon.
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Development of Pidgin Language As a result of European settlers bringing to the Caribbean
area large numbers of slaves from West Africa who spoke
different languages, other pidgins evolved in that region
based on English, Portuguese, Dutch, French, and Spanish.
Creation of a pidgin usually requires:
Prolonged, regular contact among different language
communities.
A need to communicate between them.
An absence of a widespread, accessible inter-language.
Keith Whinnom (in Hymes 1971) suggests that pidgins need
three languages to form, with one being clearly dominant
over the others.
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Common Traits among Pidgins Since a Pidgin strives to be a simple and effective form of
communication, the grammar, phonology, etc, are as simple as
possible, and usually consist of :
A Subject-Verb-object word order in a sentence.
Uncomplicated clausal structure( no embedded clauses).
Less codas within syllables (Syllables consist of a vowel, with an
optional initial consonant).
Basic Vowel, like /a/ /i/ /u/ /e/ /o/
No tones, such as those found in West African and East Asians
languages.
Separate words to indicate tense, usually preceding the verbs.
Words are reduplicated to represent plurals, superlatives, and other
parts of speech that represent the concept being increased
A lack of morphophonemic variation.
Superstratum & Substratum
Languages While a pidgin is used by speakers of different
languages, it is typically based on the lexicon of what is
called a “dominant” language in the area where it is
spoken.
Dominant languages were typically those of the
European colonialists, e.g., French, English, Dutch, etc.
The dominant language is called the lexifier, or the
superstratum language.
The native languages of pidgin users are called
substratum languages.
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Linguistic Properties of
Pidgins As you should expect, pidgins are very simple in their
linguistic properties.
1) Lexicon
Words from lexifier languages;
Words belong to open classes (nouns, verbs, adjectives)
No or few prepositions, conjunctions, determiners, etc.
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Linguistic Properties of
Pidgins Since pidgin vocabulary is pretty limited, meanings are
extended.
So, stick is not only used for sticks, but also for trees, in
Solomon Islands Pidgin.
In Korean Bamboo English, grass is used in “gras bilong
head” to mean “hair”, and in “gras bilong mouth” to mean
“moustache”.
Compounds are also frequent, e.g., dog baby for
“puppy”, or
“Him cow pig have kittens?”
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Linguistic Properties of
Pidgins2) Phonology:
Phoneme inventory: Consonants and vowels that are
phonetically easy.
Syllable structure: Typically CV or CVC.
Stress: fixed stress location.
3) Morphology:
Pretty much none. No tense or aspect marking. No
agreement, either.
4) Syntax:
Sentences are simple and short with no embedding
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Geographical Distribution
Pidgin and Creole languages are distributed, mainly found in the Caribbean and around the North and East coasts of South America, around the coasts of Africa and across the Indian and Pacific Oceans.
A basic authoritative source on their distribution is Hancock(1977):
He lists 127 pidgin and creole languages. Thirty-five of these are described as being English-based.
These include such languages as: Hawaiin Creole, Gullah or Sea Islands (spoken on the island off the coasts of northern Florida and South Carolina), Camaroon Pidgin English ,Tok-Pisin and Chinese Pidgin English.
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Other fifteen are described as being French-based
Louisiana, Haitian and Mauritian. They are mutually
intelligible.
Fourteen others are listed as Portuguese-based i.e Papiamentu, Guine and Sengal spoken.
Seven are Spanish-based Cocolichi spoken by Italian immigrants.
Five are Dutch-based, Virgin Islands and Afrikaan.
Three are on Italian-based, Asmara Pidgin (spoken in parts
of Ethiopia).
Six are Garman-based Yiddish and Gastarbeiter spoken in West Germany.
The rest are based on a variety of other languages; Russenorsk (Russian and Norwegian), Chinook Jargon (Pacific Northwest of the United States and Canada); Sango (Central African Republic)…etc.
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Hawaiian Pidgin is spoken by many people who live in Hawaii, but
mostly by teenagers .Majority of the words and phrases are versions of
English slang, with words from other languages that make up Pidgin.
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No can----------- cannot.
Talk stink---------- speaking bad about someone.
Wat doing--------- what are you doing?
If I come stay go, an you no stay come, wat foa I go?-----------If I come and you are not there, why should I go?
Hawaiian Pidgin
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The following is “A Mother Goose” nursery (The
Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe) translated into
Hawaiian Pidgin:
Hawaiian Pidgin English (HPE), ignoring pronunciation:
- You see, I got wood there; plenty men here no job,
come steal.
- Honolulu come; plenty more come; too much
pineapple there.
- No can. I try hard get good ones. Before, plenty
duck; now, no more.
- All ‟ight, all ‟ight, I go; all same, by‟n bye. Honolulu all
Japanese.
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The following is “A Mother Goose” nursery (The
Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe) translated into
Hawaiian Pidgin:
Dere waz one ol Tutu- (Tutu-grandmother)
Stay living in one slippa- (slippa-sandals)
She get choke kids---- (choke- a lot)
Planny braddahs and one sistah- ( sistah-sister) (braddahs-brothers)
(Planny- plenty)
But no da poi-(Poi-a Hawaiian food made of taro)
Den broke dere okoles (Okoles-butt)
And sent dem moi moi (Moi Moi-sleep)
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Tok Pisin Pidgin:
Reading ShakespeareJulius Caesar(Act 3, Scene 2)
Friends, Romans, countrymen, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones;
So let it be with Caesar.
Tok Pisin
Pren, man bolong Tom, Wantok, harim nau. Mi kam tasol long plantim Kaesar. Mi noken beiten longen. Sopos sampela wok bolong wampela man I stret; sampela I no stret; na man I dai; ol I wallis long wok I no stret tasol. Gutpela wok bolonged I slip; I lus nating long giraun wantaim long Kalopa. Fesin bolong yumi man. Maski Kaesar tu, gutpela wok I slip.
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Pidginization
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Pidginization
The process by which a pidgin develops is
called pidginization. This process of
pidginization involves:
Admixture
Reduction
Simplification
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Pidginization
Admixture
The mixing of elements from one language or
dialect into another. In the process of
pidginization the transfer of grammatical
patterns and other features from one language
to another take place.e.g.Okay is a west African
origin imported into a local English based pidgin.
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Pidginization
Reduction:
It refers to the process whereby large part of thesource language that are available to the nativespeakers are lost or not acquired by thepidginizing non native speakers.
Simplification
It refers to the phenomena such as loss ofgrammatical gender, loss of case endings andan increase in lexical transparency, e.g.,replacement of optician by eye-doctor.
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Continue…..
Comparisons between pidgin and sourcelanguage show that the source language has alarge vocabulary, and have a large repertoire ofstyles, phonological units, syntactic devices andthe grammatical units. Reduction may berepaired by the process of expansion ifcreolization occurs.
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Vocabulary of pidgin has great
similarities to that of source language:
Vocabulary of pidgin has great similarities tothat of dominant source language:
However, Phonological and morphologicalsimplifications often lead to words assumingsomewhat different shapes. Vocabulary islimited and carries heavy burden of meanings.It is some time necessary to use reduplicativepattern to avoid possible confusion or toexpress certain concepts.
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Continue…
Consequently we find pairs like talk(talk),
talk talk ( chatter), looklook (,looklook
(stare) San (sun), sansan (sand).
Certain concepts require elaborate
encoding. e.g. Hair—is gras bilong hed,
beard---is gras bilong fes.
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Depiginization
The linguistic processes of complication,
purification and expansion, by which a pidgin or
pidginized variety of language comes to
resemble or become identical with the source
language from which it was originally derived.
This may occur if the speakers of pidgin have
extensive contacts with the speakers of source
language.
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Think !!!!!
Suppose you‟re a child born in a speech community
where a pidgin is spoken (either by your parents or by
the other kids in the neighborhood). The pidgin
utterances are your primary linguistic data (PLD).
But remember that a pidgin is not a natural language.
So, what language are you going to end up learning on
the basis of these PLD?
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Questions ??????
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Creole
M. Moazzam Ali
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Birth of Creole
As it turns out, kids impose structure on the language
input they receive, ending up with a language that has
prepositions, articles, tense marking, aspect
morphology, embedded sentences, etc.
No, UG does. We‟ll get back to this later, though.
When a pidgin is acquired as a first language by a
generation of children, it becomes a creole. A creole
thus, unlike a pidgin, is a natural language
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Creole
The term comes from the Portuguese crioulo, and
originally meant a person of European descent who had
been born and brought up in a colonial territory. Later, it
came to be applied to other people who were native to
these areas, and then to the kind of language the spoke.
Creoles are typically classified based on their lexifier
language, e.g., English-based, Frenchbased,etc.
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Decreolization
Creoles tend to co-exist with their lexifier languages in
the same speech community. Since they are based on
these languages, at least lexically, they come to be
viewed as “nonstandard” varieties of the lexifier
language.
As we noted a couple of weeks ago, under desires for
overt prestige, some speakers start to move away from
the creole to the standard lexifier language, in what is
often called decreolizatoin.
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The Post-creole continuum
As a result of decreolizatoin, a range of creole
varieties exist in a continuum. The variety
closest to the standard language is called the
acrolect, the one least like the standard is
called the basilect, and in between these two is
a range of creole varieties that are called
mesolects:
<-------------------------------------------------->
Acrolect Mesolect Basilect
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Origin of Pidgin and Creoles
One view is that every creole is a unique independent
development, a product of language contact in a
particular area.
The problem with this polygenesis approach is that it
does not account for the fact that creole languages
around the world share a lot of similarities with regard to
their linguistic properties
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Theories of Origin
One idea is that the pidgins arise because the people who lack the ability to learn the standard language with which the pidgins are associated.
According to „ baby talk‟ theory, the pidgins and creoles result from Europeans deliberately simplifying their languages in order to communicate with others.
According to this African Sub-stratum theory: Pidgins and creoles retain certain characteristics of ancestral African languages (Sabir). (monogenesis)
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Pidgin Theories……… Monogenesis
Perhaps pidgins and creoles all came from the same ancestor
language then?
This is the monogenesis view. A candidate common origin
has actually been suggested. All the present European-
language-based pidgins and creoles are derived from a single
source i.e., the Mediterranean lingua franca known as Sabir.
According to Relexification theory, in 15th or 16th century
Portuguese relexified that language, that is, they added their
own vocabulary to grammatical structure of Sabir. Evidence
for this view comes from the fact that there is a considerable
number of Portuguese words in the pidgins and creoles of the
world.
Pidgin Theories………
Polygenesis According to polygenesis theory, pidgins and creoles
have a variety of origins; any similarities among them
arise from the shared circumstances of the origins.
For example: speakers of English have to make
themselves understood for the purposes of trade and
those with them, have to be understood.
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References: Waradhaugh,Ronald.(1990) An Introduction to Sociolinguistics
(seventh). London: Typeset by Katerprint Co. Ltd,
Oxford.
Hudson, R. A.(1996). Sociolinguistics (second edition). London:
Cambridge University Press.
Trudgell, Peter. (1992). Introducing Language and Society
(First addition) Pengouin Books Ltd, Registered Offices:
Harmond, Middlesex, England.
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia.
Columbia Encyclopedia.
Internet, Google Website, etc sources.
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Thanks
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