UNIT 3

1. PIDGINIZATION & CREOLIZATION

Pidginization: process that takes place when two languages come into contact &
there is a process of simplification or hybridization. This occurs because there is a
need to communicate between speakers of different languages & there are limited relations
between them (used for a specific purpose as trade). Often words from one language are
adopted while using the syntactic ordering of the other language, but the grammatical
system is simplified as well as other complex linguistic features. The formation of pidgins
was characteristic of 16th- 17th cent. (When European colonial powers spread all over the
world & new languages, related to the language of the colonizer emerged). These languages
were initially used for functional purposes in specific situations/contexts & they were
not the native language of anyone.
The process of pidginization (Wardhaugh) requires the contact of more than two
languages. In a context with only 2 languages there would be a struggle between the 2 &
there would be a relation of dominance of one over the other, based on social/economic
factors. The language of the dominant culture would be probably imposed. If locals speak
more than one native language there is a need to find a common ground.
Pidgins have been used for centuries & some of them became creoles. This takes
place when the language that was originally a function language is acquired as a
mother tongue by children exposed to it. Now it needs to serve all kind of social needs &
communicative purposes & therefore the language expands. The pidgin develops &
becomes more complex in terms of grammar & phonology & its use covers all kinds of
communicative functions.
The process of pidginization & creolization are different although they overlap. The
former involves simplification (in lexis, grammar, phonological features) while the latter
entails the expansion in all linguistic features & communicative functions. The language
which originally had limited functions becomes now a system that needs to be used for all
types of social functions.
Not every pidgin becomes a Creole. Although creoles have gained status in the last
decades, there are million of speakers whose native & only language is Creole & they may
feel they speak a sub-standard language. Some creoles have become official languages (in
Papua New Guinea) & others are widespread (Hawaiian Creole – English based-, Haitian
Creole – French based), the native language of almost all Haitians).
Between 1950-1975, these languages stopped being considered marginal “bastardized
jargons” to gain status of languages & became of central interest for many linguistics.
Before that they were deemed to be of little interest because they lack certain linguistic
features (articles, the copula, grammatical inflections). At present they are considered as
languages in their own right or varieties of a language. Originally, pidgins served the
purpose of a lingua franca (language used by people who speak different mother tongues
& who used a common language for a specific functional situation). It still occurs today &
we can find today examples of lingua franca in English (used all over the world for
intercultural communication) or Esperanto (artificial language, sometimes used in
international communication)

2. SOME INSTANCES OF PIDGINS

Most pidgins & creoles are based on a European Language, the most common ones
based on: English, French, Spanish, Dutch, Italian or German. English-based creoles are
very common in Caribbean areas (Antigua, Jamaica) & present in Africa (Cameroon,
Kenya...), Asia (India, China, Hong Kong) & the Pacific area (Papua New Guinea, Australia).
French-based creoles are found in Martinique, Guadeloupe, St. Lucia & Haiti. Spanish-
based pidgins were used in Dominican Republic, Cuba, Puerto Rico & the Philippines.
Some of the most important pidgins: Cameroon Pidgin English, Hawaiian Pidgin, New
Guinea Pidgin German, Pidgin German (Gastarbeiters), kamtok, Russenorsk (used until the
20s in the Arctic by Russian fishermen & Norwegian fish traders), Sango, Vietnamese
Pidgin French.
Pidgins share a number of general characteristics:
 Almost complete lack of inflection in nouns, pronouns, verbs & adjectives
 Nouns are unmarked for number or gender
 Verbs lack tense markers
 No distinction for case in personal pronouns (I can stand for me, & they for them)
 Absence of clausal structures
 No distinction between long & short vowels (ship & sheep would be pronounced
the same). There is a common resource: Reduplication (In Tok Pisin, sip means “ship” &
sipsip, “sheep”. Another common usage of reduplication is to intensify the meaning of a
word: cry means “cry” & crycry means “cry continually”)

3. SOME INSTANCES OF CREOLES

Terminology & sociolinguistic status are not always consistent & some creoles can be
referred as pidgins (Tok Pisin or Hawaiian Pidgin English) or the other way round. This
is produced because “pidgin” & “Creole” are technical terms commonly used by linguistics
but not necessarily by speakers. Instances of creoles: Anglo-Romani (creolization of
Romani in England), Asmara Pidgin (Italian-based, spoken in parts of Ethiopia),
Chabacano/Zamboangueño (Spanish-based), Haitin Creole, Jamaican Patwa, Tok Pisin...
The British Empire spread all over the world for around 350 years & favored the
expansion of Standard English & the creation & development of many pidgins & creoles.
There have been more English-based creoles than in other languages. Two major
groups of English-based creoles can be identified: the Atlantic group (West Africa & the
Caribbean area) & the Pacific group (Hawaiian Creole English & Tok Pisin).
3.1 HAWAIIAN CREOLE ENGLISH (HCE): 600.000 people speak it in Hawaii. Also
known as Hawai'i Pidgin or Pidgin. Immersed in a complex sociolinguistic situation. It
was denigrated in schools & public administrations for years but it is turning into a way to
express solidarity & forge local identity. Hawaii's Council is determined to maintain &
develop this local language by enforcing competent language planning & policy.
Characteristics:
 It avoids phonological features difficult to pronounce in any of the languages in
contact. Vocalic system simplified & fricatives tend to be avoided (Braddah (brother), Bo da
dem (both of them)).
 Vocabulary derived from the socially dominant group. English-based pidgins have
90% of words coming from English. In HCE some come directly from English (boy, stay,
fish) & others have been adapted (Den – then-, lata – later-, Wot? - What?).
 Polisemous words (inside means: inside, soul & heart)
 Lack of inflection in nouns, pronouns, verbs & adjectives. Nouns are unmarked for
number & gender (Him was real tight wit his brudda)
 Tense & aspect are normally indicated with a marker. Past tense is expressed by
placing preverbal preterite auxiliaries “wen”, “bin” & haed” before the verb (Shi wen pain
da grin haus), Future events are marked by “go”, “gon”, “gona” or “goin” before the verb (I
gon it fish). Progressive aspect can be expressed by: inserting “ste” (stay), before the verb
in the infinitive, using the -ing form of the verb, & using both forms altogether (shi ste rait
da leta, Dey plaing futbawl, Naue ste iting da kek)
 Auxiliaries are nonexistent & negation is expressed by placing “no”, “nat” or “neva”
before the verb (No can (cannot, its not possible), No mo (there isnt any))
3.2 JAMAICAN PATWA (or PATOIS): it does not have an official status, so the name
for this Creole has not been fixed to present day & terms like Jamaican, Jamaican Creole,
Jamaican Patwa or Patois are all used. In Jamaica, official language remains Standard
English (spoken by the elite), but a whole spectrum can be found having standard English
at one extreme& Jamaican Patwa at the other. Jamaican Patwa is characteristic for its
fragmented English speech & for having a syntax developed during the days of slavery
with the influence of West African languages. Nowadays it has not got much social &
socioeconomic status in Jamaica & represents the speech of the peasant & laborer with
little education. It is not considered an acceptable language for formal purposes &
speakers are considered as socially & linguistically inferior. Attempts to change this
situation by giving Jamaican patwa an official status & turning it into the language of
education. It is now gaining in prestige (newspapers or radio). It does not have a uniform
orthographic representation & there is no agreement to conclude if it should accommodate
the lexifier language (Standard english) or it should be created & entirely new system.
General features:
 No t – or d - d distinction (“de” (the), “odder” (other), “tink” (thing)
 Final consonant clusters tend to be devoiced ( /d/ becomes /t/) or deleted
(“Husban”)
 Not stressed-time but syllable-timed, so all syllables receive the same stress.
 Modified personal pronouns ( I: “me”, He: “im”, They: “dem”)
 Absence of plural markers on nouns: (all type a people; “Book”)
 Altered third person singular subject-verb concord (shi greet im)
 Absence of auxiliaries to form the negative (Mi nuh wan nutten fe eat)
 Copula deletion (it soh bad)
 Tense marked lexically (instead f morphologically)
3.3 TOK PISIN: Papua Nueva Guinea has 3 official languages which turned to be
second languages for most people: Hiri Motu, Tok Pisin & English. Tok Pisin is used by
3.000.000 people as a unifying language & lingua franca among speakers od different
indigenous languages. This language, very distant to English, is sometimes used as Pidgin
& sometimes as Creole & shows clear influences from English in terms of borrowings,
subordination patters, plural forms (-s). But there cant be a found continuum between TP
& English as decreolization does not affect TP. TP is used in many government
publications, in radio, TV & in the House Assembly. Characteristics:
 Consonant assimilation. No distinction between /p/ & /f/: /g/ & /k/; /s/, / / &
/t / (“Hap pas seven” (Half past seven), “sip” (ship), “sips” (chips), “dok” (dog))
 Simplified consonant clusters (“ailan” (island), “kona” (corner))
 Simplified vocalic system (a, e, i, o, u) (“fut” (foot), “smok” (smoke), “tumora”
(tomorrow))
 Word reduplication to emphasize (“liklik bas” (minibus), “singsing” (festival))
 Plural suffic –pela (“emtupela” (those two), “emtripela” (those three), “tupela” (both))
 Lexicon based on English (adres (address), heven (heaven), man (man))
 Metaphors in word formation (“haus blilong tumbuna pasin (museum), “laplap
bilong windo” (curtain))
 Simplified prepositional system (only 3); “long” used for “to, for, from”; “bilong”
used for “of”; & “wantaim” used for “with”.

4. DECREOLIZATION
Creoles continue to evolve. There is a phenomenon called decreolization that arises
when a creole has prolonged contact with a standard language in a specific society &
that standard brings a considerable influence on the creole. So speakers start to
develop the Creole taking the standard as a model. This process can be perceived in
places like Barbados, India, Nigeria or Papua New Guinea.
The different forms of the creole become socially stratified & the variety closer to the
standard becomes the language of the elite & the educated society (acrolect), whereas the
variety closer to the Creole represents illiterate people & lower social class (basilect). The
ones in the middle are mesolects, which determine social stratification & alleged identities
among their speakers.

5. THE USE OF PIDGINS & CREOLES IN EDUCATION

It is rather uncommon to find a pidgin or Creole as the language of instruction in
formal education in any educational system of the world.
 Vldman: considers that this is for 2 reasons: 1. the continuum of variation is usually
found between the pidgin/Creole & the standard educational language represents a
strong obstacle as it is difficult to isolate a particular norm to be used in education. 2.
Pidgin/Creole has an inferior status in the speech community.
Siegel: affirms that speakers of creoles & minority dialects don’t do well in formal
education because of socio-economic factors & language (these speakers are
disadvantaged because the language of formal education is a standard variety they do not
speak as a mother tongue).This is the case of AAVE (African American Vernacular English)
Some creoles are now recognized as a distinct variety with a grammatical system, but
educators & policy makers introduce many arguments against the application of a
“nonstandard” variety in the educational system. Some progress is being made in this
respect over the years & pidgins & creoles are gaining social & political recognition & are
acknowledged as part of the social identity in many parts of the world nowadays. In the last
decades there has been a global attempt to legitimize the use of pidgins, creoles & minority
dialects in formal education, claiming that the speaker of those languages has the right to
express their own linguistic & socio-cultural identity in their own languages. Siegel points
out some obstacles:
 Teachers: negative attitude & ignorance. May mistake language problems of
Creole-speaking children for cognitive problems & lower their expectations on these
students. This leads to the lowering of student performance in favor of students speaking
the standard variety.
 Students: negative attitude & self-image because of denigration of their speech
& culture. This can be neutralized by legitimizing students' language variety & adopting an
integrative approach.
 Repression of self-expression because of the need to use an unfamiliar form of
language.
 Difficulty in acquiring literacy in a second language or dialect. Children may be
repressed if they are not allowed to express themselves in their familiar variety language.
Pidgins, creoles & minority dialects have been used in 3 types of educational
programs so far, all of them aiming at additive bilingualism or bidialectalism in order to
help children acquire standard language while maintaining their own
pidgin/Creole/minority language:
 Instrumental program: use of the home variety as the medium of instruction as a
vehicle for the acquisition of initial literacy. The standard language is introduced at a later
stage & gradually becomes the language of instruction for some subjects (Implemented in
Mauritius, Papua New Guinea).
 Accommodation program: allows the use of the home language without
penalization, but it is not used as the language of instruction for any subject nor studied as
a language itself. At higher levels, their home language can be preserved by means of the
study of literature & music of their own communities (Implemented for Hawaiian children
speakers of Hawaiian Creole English & of Aboriginal English in Australia)
 Awareness program: includes some teaching on basic sociolinguistic & socio-
pragmatic principles of different language varieties, & their grammatical rules & pragmatics
are compared with those of the standard variety (Created for Creole-speaking Caribbean
immigrants in the UK & speakers of Kriol & Aboriginal English in Australia.