Varieties in English

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Department of English Faculty of Philosophy University of Novi Sad

PIDGINS AND CREOLES (seminar paper in Varieties of English)

Student: Ivana Aleksi

Novi Sad, 2009

Although it is quite difficult to provide the exact definition of a pidgin, we can say it is a result of a language contact between two or more already existing languages, in situations such as trade or colonization. On the other hand, a creole is one-time pidgin which has become the mother tongue of a speech community.

Pidgins and creoles are of great significance for sociolinguistics for several reasons. The first and the most noticeable one lies in the fact that the birth and the development of pidgins and creoles, which could only be suggested for other languages, can be directly observed and this could be very useful for many hypotheses on the nature and the spread of change (Romaine 1988). Apart from that, it is rather disputable whether pidgins and creoles should be accepted as official or national languages (Baker 1991, Carrington 1993, Romaine 1994), as well as whether they could be of use when it comes to some political purposes (Searle 1984, Devonish 1986). Furthermore, some linguists (e.g. Cassidy, 1970) assume that these two could be successfully applied to improving some teaching methods and techniques.

Before anything else, we should discuss the origin of the term pidgin itself. The most commonly held theory is that the word comes from Chinese Pidgin English, where the word pidgin is

an adaptation of English word business. Another theory suggests that the term actually comes from a Hebrew word pidjom, which means barter. However, these are not the only suggestions. What seems as the most probable solution to this problem is that similar terms arose independently, and then, reinforcing one another, coalesced in the common term pidgin. Pidgins are the means of communication between two or more groups of people who do not share the same language. One of these groups is of a higher social status and their language is called the superstrate or lexifier language as opposed to the language of the native community called the subsrate language which affects the structure of a pidgin in terms of phonology, syntax and semantics. Nevertheless, there are some cases where the original inhabitants hold the social power and therefore influence the development of a lexicon of a certain pidgin (e.g. Fijian used by the British on Fiji). Being very simple in comparison with their substrate and superstrate languages, pidgins display simplification of not only outer form (lack of morphology), but also their inner form (e.g. constrained morphology, limited semantics). As opposed to jargons, pidgins are considered to be conventionalized and much more stable.

It is difficult to determine where a certain pidgin ends and a creole begins, since creolisation or nativization may occur at

any of the stages of the development of a pidgin: the jargon stage, the stable pidgin stage and the expansion stage. Usually a pidgin grows and develops rapidly and extensively before becoming a creole, but on the other hand, children may learn a pidgin which did not go through any of stages above, except perhaps the first (jargon) stage. This would be unlikely except under very unusual social circumstances such as slavery, when a certain community acquires a new language in less than one generation (Sebba 1997: 135).

Pidgins

also

go

through

various

geographical

and

sociolinguistic stages in their development. For instance, Ligala emerged as a trade pidgin used between the speakers of some Bantu languages, but has also been adopted as a lingua franca used in business, education and military. On the other hand, some pidgins experience no or very little expansion during their lifetime. The reason for this usually lies in low motivation for acquiring this pidgin as a first language. Some examples of these pidgins are Russenorsk, Chinook, Eleman and Koriki. Finally, it may happen that some pidgins face the death due to the lack of motivation for its use. They might be looked down upon as inferior just like in the case of Russenorsk which was despised by Norwegian merchants.

Pidgins represent a common phenomenon on all inhabited continents, and prove to be an evidence of the need for limited communication languages. between the groups speaking different

A word creole is derived from the French word crole which means indigenous or native. A creole is one-time pidgin which has become the mother tongue of a speech community. As a pidgin develops, it may become a main means of communication between people who do not speak it as their first language. As soon as children begin to learn it unconsciously i.e. to acquire it as a first language, it becomes a creole and these children the first generation creole speakers. The process when a creole arises without a preceding stable pidgin is called abrupt creolisation. Quite the opposite, normal transmission implies languages normally passed from

generation to generation with children learning it from adults, older children and peers. It is much commoner then the abrupt creolisation and applies to the majority of existing languages (Sebba 1997: 135).

We can distinguish several stages in the development of creoles. Firstly, a relatively immature creole appears. This stage is characterized by the fast pace of growth. Then, a fully mature language develops and the pace of growth slows down. And

finally, a creole becomes a normal language. We can conclude that creolisation is characterized by expansion and elaboration. The degree of expansion varies from creole to creole and depends on the status of the pidgin from which a creole develops: more expansion is necessary if it develops from a jargon (Hawaiian creole), whereas less expansion is required for a stable pidgin (Tok Pisin in Papua New Guinea). Some of the characteristics that creoles additionally get are some movement rules which prove to be useful especially when it comes to putting focus on different sentence constituents (Bickerton 1981), the article system which enables making distinction between definites, indefinites and nonspecifics, some preverbal particles indicating tense, mood and aspect as well as constructions with embedded subordinate statements (Irene 1987).

With respect to different history, different set of factors which have contributed to making a certain creole what it is (the number of languages involved, the relative numbers of speakers, whether or not a pidgin establishes itself before the appearance of the creole, the location where a certain creole emerges etc.), different examples of creolisation could be found. The clear distinction can be made between fort creoles, plantation creoles and maroon creoles. Fort creoles appeared in European outposts on the West African coast between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. It was the main means of 6

communication between Europeans and local Africans. The English, like Portuguese, had several such forts (Hancock 1986). Plantation creoles developed on plantations in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans among different ethnical groups working there as slaves and laborers (Singler 1990a, 1993, Arends, 1995, Rickford and Handler 1995). Finally, maroon creoles are those languages spoken among runaway slaves who had to come up with their own means of communication. They were usually appearing somewhere in inlands. The best known of these is Saramaccan.

The answer to the question of pidgin an creole origin is not simple and unique. One of the earliest theories suggested that European languages were too sophisticated and complex to be learnt by primitive native communities. However, this theory has been completely abandoned. These days there are several commonly held theories which try to explain the origin of pidgins and creoles. The theory of monogenesis suggests that all the pidgins of the world developed from one protopidgin. The language which is thought to be the proto-pidgin is Portuguese-based Pidgin Sabir, which was Lingua Franca of the Mediterranean in the 15th and 6th century. According to this theory, Sabir was acquired by natives. In case of subsequent colonization, relexification would take place, i.e. the original Portuguese-based words would be replaced with words from

the new dominant language. The evidence which speaks on behalf of this theory is the fact that there are some Portuguesebased words which are found in a great number of pidgins, such as save or savy which mean know derived from Portuguese saber, or pikinini or pikin derived from Portuguese pequeno, meaning little. Another piece of evidence is that most of the pidgins have similar structure. However, this theory cannot be proved. We find pidgins on places which are not likely to have been influenced by Sabir, like Russenorsk, in the North of Europe, on the borders of Norway and Russia,or Eskimo Trade Jargon, in the South of Greenland. Also, the most probable explanation for the similar structure of pidgins is the fact that most of them are based on similar languages, most commonly with European superstrates and African substrates (Hancock 1986). The difficulties of proving this theory, as well as the fact that all pidgins share certain characteristics, have led to polygenetic theories. The explanation for common characteristics which this theory offers is that a universal language structures appears when a language is being built. This structure tends to be as simple, i.e. as unmarked as possible. Some of the common pidgin characteristics, such as simple phonology, SVO syntax, with little, or no embedded clause, limited vocabulary which makes maximum use of polysemy, ect. prove this theory. The conclusion is that the shared features of pidgins are in fact

universal features . The theory of imperfect learning (Hall 1966) sees a pidgin as an attempt of people to learn a foreign language which is completely different from their mother tongue. During their process of learning, they simplify the language, in a way that it can be compared to baby-talk.

However, there is evidence that the Portuguese-based pidgin spoken in West Africa in the 16th century, was developed by the Portuguese, who taught it to the Africans. Taking this into consideration, there arose another theory, suggesting that a pidgin comes as a result of unconscious attempt of native speakers of the base language to simplify it in order to make it easier for non-native speakers to learn it. This theory is especially praised by American linguist Leonard Bloomfield, who claims that such foreigner talk , or baby talk is primarily based on imitation of learners errors, or as Bloomfield puts it masters imitation of the subjects (Bloomfield, 1993 : 472). However, this is somewhat a racist theory, suggesting that non-Europeans are not capable of learning a European language. What is more probable is that substrate speakers acquire a broken version of a superstrate language because they are not sufficiently exposed to its influence. Therefore, it can be said that pidginization is second-language learning with restricted input. (Bickerton 1977 : 49). Bickerton extended his theory in 1980s when he introduced Language Bioprogram Hypothesis. According to

this theory the first generations of children who acquire creoles invent the creoles themselves. With help of specific bioprogram pidgins are being transformed into an early creole. Therefore, this theory could be seen as being both polygenetic and monogenetic, since it suggests that each creole is developed independently in separate places and that this development is guided by a single bioprogram. There has been many disputes about this theory ever since it appeared. The fact that it does not account for non-European varieties is quite a serious drawback according to many linguists (Mufwene 1984). Apart from that, creoles do not seem to be as uniform as Bickerton suggested, esspecialy when it comes to the markers denoting tense, modality and aspect (Singler 1990a). However, Bickerton presented his clarifications for his theory in the Journal of Pidgin and Creole Studies (e.g. 1987, 1991, 1992, 1994).

It is important to highlight that these theories should not be regarded as mutually exclusive and that all of the mechanisms expressed in them can play a part in a formation of a pidgin language.

In some communities such as Guyana, Hawaii, Jamaica and many others there is a creole called basilect, the standard language called acrolect as well as many intermediate

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varieties mesolects. Over the time, the speakers of a certain creole tend to decreolize or modify their creole in order to meke it more similar to the standard language, thus producing many of so called mesolects. These varieties make up one continuum. It is believed that these mesolects appear somewhere in the interim, since the number of the basilectal speakers tend to decline over the time and the number of mesolectal speakers tend to increase. This phenomenon seems to be very influential for the development of sociolinguistics and prove to be invaluable when it comes to the study of the development of language varieties.

Pidgins and creoles have always had low status, even when they are majority languages. The low, developing language will be used in everyday life and communication within the family, but almost never for administrative and educational functions. Therefore, a pidgin and creole is, according to many traditionalists, just a particular form of a lexifier, and thats why it is sometimes even rejected and replaced with the high language. However, the recent perspective in historical linguistics finds creolisation very important for observation of the language changes in progress. The observation of the birth and the development of pidgins and creoles can be directly observed and this could be very useful for many hypotheses on the nature and the spread of change. Furthermore, creoles also

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offer the solution to the question how the child acquires a certain language. With this in mind, we can recognize creoles and pidgins as a key to language change, language learning and acquisition as well as linguistic evolution.

REFERENCES: Aitchinson, J. (2001). Language Change: Progress or Decay?. 3rd edition. Cambridge: CUP. Mc Mahon, April M.S. (1996). Understanding language change. Cambridge: CUP. Rickford, J.R. & McWhorter, J. (1998). Language Contact and Language Generation: Pidgins and Creoles. The handbook of Sociolinguistics. Florian Coulmas. Sebba, M. (1997). Pidgins and creoles . New Yourk: St. Martins Press, INC.

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