Pidgin and Creole

12 Key excerpts on "Pidgin and Creole"

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  Pidgin and Creole Languages

  • Suzanne Romaine(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Chapter 2 Definitions and characteristics of pidgins and creoles

  2.1 Some preliminary definitions of pidgins

  DeCamp's (1977:3) comment on the lack of agreement over definitions of pidgins and Creoles is a useful starting point for my discussion:

  There is no . . . agreement on the definition of the group of languages called pidgins and Creoles. Linguists all agree that there is such a group, that it includes many languages and large numbers of speakers, and that pidgin-creole studies have now become an important field within linguistics. Yet even the authors of this book [in Valdman 1977b SR] would not agree among themselves on a definition of these languages. Some definitions are based on function, the role these languages play in the community: eg a pidgin is an auxiliary trade language. Some are based on historical origins and development: eg a pidgin may be spontaneously generated; a creole is a language that has evolved from a pidgin. Some definitions include formal characteristics: restricted vocabulary, absence of gender, true tenses, inflectional morphology, or relative clauses, etc. Some linguists combine these different kinds of criteria and include additional restrictions in their definitions.

  Let us take a look at some problems in attempts to define the terms 'pidgin' and 'creole'. It will soon become apparent, as Traugott (1981:1) points out, that 'despite attempts to define the terms "pidgin" and "creole" in homogeneous ways, they have proved to defy such definitions'. DeCamp (19713:15) defines a pidgin as a:

  contact vernacular, normally not the native language of any of its speakers ... it is characterized by a limited vocabulary, an elimination of many grammatical devices such as number and gender, and a drastic reduction of redundant features.

  A pidgin represents a language which has been stripped of everything but the bare essentials necessary for communication. There are few, if any, stylistic options. The emphasis is on the referential or communicative rather than the expressive function of language. As Hymes (1971:84) puts it: 'Pidginization is that complex process of sociolinguistic change comprising reduction in inner form, with convergence, in the context of restriction in use . . . Pidginization is usually associated with simplification in outer form.' It appears that pidgins should be recognized as a special or limiting case of reduction in form resulting from restriction in use, since other varieties of language display similar properties, eg dying languages, second languages, koines, etc. (cf

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  The Routledge Handbook of Pidgin and Creole Languages

  • Umberto Ansaldo, Miriam Meyerhoff, Umberto Ansaldo, Miriam Meyerhoff(Authors)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  In this chapter the term Pidgin refers to a secondary language with a set structure that can be learned, but that is not the mother tongue of its users. It is a language which emerged in a situation where speakers of mutually unintelligible languages needed a way to communicate with each other, and it is typically used only in a limited set of contexts. A Creole is here defined as a language which emerged in a situation of intense contact and which has become the mother tongue of an entire speech community. It is a full-fledged language which can be used in any and all contexts and is on par with any other natural language in the world. A lexifier is the language from which a contact language derives most of its vocabulary. This is often, but not always, the same language as the superstrate, which is here defined as a socially dominant language that has significantly influenced the structure and use of a less dominant language or variety in a community. An example of a language where the lexi- fier and superstrate differ is Sranan, an English-lexified Creole dominated by Dutch, which was the colonial superstrate language for most of Sranan’s history. Similarly, Pichi is an English-lexified Creole with a Spanish superstrate. A substrate language is here defined as Typology of Pidgin and Creole languages 385 that language or variety which has influenced the structure or use of a more dominant language or variety in a community. This chapter is structured as follows: I will first bring up two major positions in the debate on the typology of Pidgin and Creole languages. I will then list some of the features that have traditionally been put forth as typical for Pidgins (as opposed to non-Pidgin languages) and for Creoles (as opposed to non-Creole languages) and test whether these assumed typical features are in fact typical for Pidgins and Creoles respectively, before suggesting future directions for the study of the typology of Pidgin and Creole languages.

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  Variety in Contemporary English

  • W.R. O'Donnell, LORETO Todd(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  3 Pidgins and Creoles

  We should now like to turn our attention to the phenomenon of pidgins and creoles, concerning which there are probably even more differences of opinion, confusions and uncertainties than with dialects.

  Pidgins and creoles were at one time defined and, consequently, dismissed as ‘marginal languages’. Recently, however, they have assumed a more central position in linguistics. They are being used, for example, to check theories concerning language change because their very existence challenges two related and widely held views: that the radical restructuring of languages is rare, and that change in language tends to be slow, gradual, almost imperceptible. (See Morris Swadesh’s The Origin and Diversification of Language for a statement of such views.)

  It is not easy to offer comprehensive or completely satisfactory definitions of pidgins and creoles. Just as the umbrella title ‘Indo-European’ comprehends a variety of languages as different as English and Hindi, Swedish and Greek, so too there are a number of distinguishable types of Pidgin and Creole languages. It may be useful, however, to begin with definitions which will subsequently be refined.

  Pidginisation may be described as the simplification processes which result from contacts between people who speak different languages. It is perhaps worth emphasising the point that the concept of ‘standard’ languages and communication by means of such standards is unknown in large areas of the world today and was even more of a rarity in the past. In many such areas, contact between speakers of different languages involves and involved the emergence and exploitation of linguistic common denominators. Pidginisation is not, therefore, an unusual or altogether exotic process. It occurs in even casual contacts between people who have simple communication needs and who have little or no knowledge of each other’s language.

  If such contacts cease to be casual and sporadic, then pidgins frequently develop. A pidgin

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  Linguistics in Sub-Saharan Africa

  • Jack Berry, Thomas Albert Sebeok, Jack Berry, Thomas Albert Sebeok(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter Mouton

    (Publisher)

  1 So that, on the evidence available it is not always easy to decide whether a given language is best considered a pidgin, a creole or something else again. Another difficulty in this respect is largely termino-logical. 'Pidgin' and 'creole' have proved useful terms and there is a large measure of agreement in their use. They are not, however, general enough on the one hand, or precise enough, on the other, to ensure that there is never any doubt. In this chapter the term 'pidgin' is used to mean a 'lingua franca' (Unesco 1953:46) which at some stage has undergone EXTREME simplification (all lingua francas undergo SOME simplifi-cation). A 'creole' is then defined as a pidgin which has been 'nativized' in some way. 1 Greenberg (1965b), for example, after an intensive search of the literature of urbanization and migration in Africa, has recently expressed his disappointment at the paucity of available information on the linguistic aspects of these two important and for this chapter, highly pertinent subjects. The present writer's own search would seem to confirm and reflect Greenberg's evaluation of the data. PIDGINS AND CREOLES IN AFRICA 511 In this sense of the two terms, African pidgins and creóles divide into two types — indigenous and non-indigenous. The latter kind, which will be considered first, are all European-based. They are (since Afrikaans is given its own chapter elsewhere in this volume) Creole Portuguese, Creole French and Creole and Pidgin English. PORTUGUESE CREOLE (especially Valkhoff 1966) is spoken on the African mainland in Senegal and Guiñé, in the Cape Verde Islands, and in the islands of the Gulf of Guinea. Within Guiñé (Wilson 1962; Chataigner 1963) three main dialects of Crioulo are recognized: that of Bissau and Bolama, that of Cacheu and S2o Domingos, and that of Bafata and Geba. The first-named dialect has almost superseded the other two.

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  Language History, Language Change, and Language Relationship

  An Introduction to Historical and Comparative Linguistics

  • Hans Henrich Hock, Brian D. Joseph(Authors)
  • 2009(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter Mouton

    (Publisher)

  As in Tok Pisin, it is possible that some children acquired the resulting form of speech as their native language; but there is nothing to guarantee that their form of speech immediately became dominant. The clear evidence of Tok Pisin and the more circumstantial evidence of other pidgins/creoles, then, suggest that the distinction between pidgins and creoles is gradient, rather than absolute. The distinction pidgin vs. creole may be useful for linguistic classification, but just like distinctions such as Old Eng-lish vs. Middle English, it seems to be an idealization. And just as in reality, speakers of Old English did not one fine morning wake up finding themselves speaking Middle English, so pidgin-speaking societies probably did not switch to creole in a short, cataclysmic upheaval. What is more important is that, once the process of depidginization has run its full course and the language thereby has acquired the lexicon and grammar necessary for full communication, the resulting creoles will be indistinguish-able from any other form of “full” language. It is only their history which makes them different. In the majority of cases, the resulting language is a vernacular which is used only for ordinary everyday communication, while another language (usually a European standard language) serves as a means of more intellectual and written communication. This result, then, is something very similar to diglossia (see Chapter 10, § 6). In fact, the Haitian relationship between the speech of the educated elite (modeled on Parisian French) and the French-based creole of the majority population has been cited as a paradigm case of diglossia. Decreolization and African American Vernacular English 415 However, creoles are not “condemned” to forever remain vernaculars. The case of Tok Pisin shows that creoles are just as much usable as intellectual and written languages as any other form of speech, if there is the need.

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  Language History, Language Change, and Language Relationship

  An Introduction to Historical and Comparative Linguistics

  • Hans Henrich Hock, Brian D. Joseph(Authors)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter Mouton

    (Publisher)

  As in Tok Pisin, it is possible that some children acquired the resulting form of speech as their native language; but there is nothing to guarantee that their form of speech immediately became dominant. The clear evidence of Tok Pisin and the more circumstantial evidence of other pidgins/creoles, then, suggest that the distinction between pidgins and creoles is gradient, rather than absolute. The distinction pidgin vs. creole may be useful for linguistic classification, but just like distinctions such as Old English vs. Middle English, it seems to be an idealization. And just as in reality, speakers of Old English did not wake up one fine morning finding themselves speaking Middle English, so pidgin-speaking societies probably did not switch to creole in a short, cataclysmic upheaval. What is more important is that, once the process of depidginization has run its full course and the language thereby has acquired the lexicon and grammar necessary for full communication, the resulting creoles will be functionally indis-tinguishable from any other form of “full” language. It is only their history which makes them different. In the majority of cases, the resulting language is a vernacular which is used only for ordinary everyday communication, while another language (usually a European standard language) serves as a means of more intellectual and written communication. This result, then, is something very similar to diglossia (see Chapter 10, § 6). In fact, the Haitian relationship between the speech of the edu- 388 Pidgins, creoles, and related forms of language cated elite (modeled on Parisian French) and the French-based creole of the majority population has been cited as a paradigm case of diglossia. However, creoles are not “condemned” to forever remain vernaculars. The case of Tok Pisin shows that creoles are just as much usable as intellectual and written languages as any other form of speech, if there is the need.

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  Language Planning and Policy: Issues in Language Planning and Literacy

  • Anthony J. Liddicoat(Author)
  • 2007(Publication Date)
  • Multilingual Matters

    (Publisher)

  In such contexts, people first develop their own individual ways of communicating, either by simplifying their own language or by using words and phrases they have learned from another language, similar to interlanguage in second language acquisition. If the groups remain in contact, certain communicative conventions may emerge and individual variation is reduced. The result is then a new language – a pidgin. The lexicon of the pidgin is derived from the various languages originally in contact, with the majority of words usually coming from one particular language, called the ‘lexifier’. However, the grammar is different from that of the lexifier or any of the other contributing languages, and also formally less complex, having a much smaller total lexicon and little if any morphological marking of gram-matical categories. This kind of pidgin is normally restricted to use as a medium of inter-group communication, and would not be considered a vehicle for literacy. However, in some cases, the use of a pidgin has been extended into wider areas – for example, as the everyday lingua franca in a multilingual country. As a result, the language becomes lexically and grammatically more complex, and it is called an ‘expanded pidgin’. An example is Melanesian Pidgin with its three dialects: Tok Pisin in Papua New Guinea (spoken by over 4 million), Pijin in 143 Literacy in Pidgin and Creole Languages Solomon Islands and Bislama in Vanuatu. Another example, Nigerian Pidgin, has over 30 million speakers. Both these expanded pidgins are lexified by English. As the result of population movement, a new community might form, made up of people whose parents or grandparents came from different countries and spoke different languages – for example among the children of plantation slaves or indentured labourers. This community may also have a new variety of language as their mother tongue – a creole.

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  Language and Society in South Asia

  • Michael C. Shapiro, Harold F. Schiffman(Authors)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter Mouton

    (Publisher)

  196 LANGUAGE AND SOCIETY IN SOUTH ASIA of directions will be mentioned and the main theoretical thrusts which have any bearing on the topic of creolization and pidginization in South Asia will be outlined. A very concise and useful introduction to some of the latest thinking that is in print can be found in Hymes, 1971. 2 A number of definitional problems exist with regard to pidginization and creolization, and scholars working in this field do not as yet fully agree on some basic definitions of these terms. It is at least accepted, however, that pidginization refers to the process or set of processes leading to the development of a pidgin, this being a reduced version of some language used for trade or other communication in a situation where the mother tongue of the speakers involved is some other natural language. That is, a pidgin is not commonly held to be the native language of its speakers. It may arise anywhere where people of various social groups in contact have no language in common. It arises out of the immediate need to bridge this communication gap; it may survive only a short period or endure for centuries. When two speakers of a pidgin have offspring who grow up with no other language than the pidgin as a mother tongue, their mother tongue is called a creole, and the process of the development of the pidgin into a Creole is called creolization. Creolization is generally taken to refer to the expansion of the limited, reduced pidgin into a full-fledged language, capable of expressing whatever its speakers wish to express. This commonly takes place in the first generation that the creole exists qua creole, although of course further developments may alter the development of the creole in successive generations, it being a natural language and subject to all the processes that natural languages undergo.

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  Roots of Language

  • Derek Bickerton(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Language Science Press

    (Publisher)

  Be- tween 1500 and 1900, there came into existence, on tropical islands and in isolated sections of tropical littorals, small, autocratic, rigidly stratified societies, mostly engaged in monoculture (usually of sugar), which consisted of a ruling minority from some European nation and a large mass of (mainly non-European) laborers, drawn in most cases from many different language groups. The early linguistic history of these enclaves is virtually unknown; it is generally assumed (but see Alleyne 1971; 1979) that speakers of different languages at first evolved some form of auxiliary contact-language, native to none of them (known as a pidgin), and that this language, suitably expanded, eventually became the native (or creole) language of the community which exists today. These creoles were in most cases different enough from any of the languages of the original contact situation to 1 Pidgin into creole be considered “new” languages. Superficially, their closest resemblance was to their European parent, but this was mainly because the bulk of the vocabulary items were drawn from that source, and even here, there were extensive phono- logical and semantic shifts. In the area of syntax, features were much less easily traceable. In general, the term creole is used to refer to any language which was once a pidgin and which subsequently became a native language; some scholars have extended the term to any language, ex-pidgin or not, that has undergone massive structural change due to language contact (one who shall be nameless confessed to me that he did this solely to obtain access to a conference which, like most creole conferences, was held in an exotic tropical setting!). In fact, I think that even the traditional definition is too wide, since it covers a range of situations which may differ in kind rather than in degree.

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  Pidgins and Creoles

  • Professor Loreto Todd, Loreto Todd(Authors)
  • 2003(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Chapter 5 The scope of pidgins and creoles

  aiɔn no fit hɔt if yu no putam fɔ faia (iron no fit hot if you no put it for fire). An iron cannot get hot if you don’t put it in the fire, i.e. Nothing can succeed if it is not tried.

  Our attention in this chapter will focus on creoles and extended pidgins rather than on the extreme phases hypothesized earlier. A restricted pidgin can only either expand or die and the potential of international languages is too well known to need documenting. From the evidence examined it is clear that pidgins and creoles are capable, or can easily become capable, of expressing the needs, opinions and desires of their speakers. In the case of English-based varieties, since the entire lexicon of English is potential pidgin/creole material, no subject is automatically excluded as being beyond their lexical scope. During the Second World War Neo-Melanesian was used for government propaganda, a service to which Nigerian pidgin was also put during the Civil War; politicians have found that Krio is a decided asset in Sierra Leone speech-making; Cameroon pidgin has been used in a broadcast advising listeners of the dangers of leprosy; and all the English varieties have been found adequate for the teaching of a doctrine involving such concepts as ‘grace’, ‘redemption’, ‘transubstantiation’ and ‘three divine persons in one God’. As spoken media their potential is at least as great as any other language, greater than some in that they facilitate intercommunication over wide areas; but in an increasingly literate world it is arguable that if they are to survive they must also show their value as written media.

  In the past, pidgins and creoles have been almost exclusively spoken languages, but this fact has not prevented their sustaining a vital literature, albeit an oral one. Atlantic pidgins and creoles have, for centuries, been the vehicles for proverbs and work-chants, songs and folktales. The African love of storytelling found expression in whatever language adults were obliged to use to children. Like all traditional raconteurs, African storytellers introduced modifications to suit the area and the listeners, but the same basic stories have been recorded thousands of miles apart and across language barriers. The theme of two large animals being manipulated into having a tug-o’-war by the local trickster has turned up in the French-based creoles of Louisiana and Mauritius and in Cameroon pidgin English; many of Harris’s Brer Rabbit stories have equivalents in hundreds of West African townships; and the Georgian ‘Tar Baby Story’ told by Jones (1888, pp. 7–11) is found both in the Krio of Freetown and in Seychellois creole. Such an oral literature, one that has survived changes of culture and language, suggests that these pidgins and creoles are also capable of sustaining a written literature. The further fact that they have successfully transmitted folk wisdom indicates that they might also be employed in formal education. To gauge their value and potential in these spheres it is important to examine how they have already been used and to ask how and whether this usage may be continued, expanded or discarded.

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  Creolization of Language and Culture

  • Robert Chaudenson(Author)
  • 2002(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  5 Linguistic creolization

  From the point of view of a global approach to processes of creolization, the preceding chapters have had little to say about strictly linguistic facts. My discussions of the languages spoken in the societies I have been dealing with have referred almost exclusively to sociolinguistic aspects, but this strategy in no way implies that my hypothesis lacks a solid foundation in language structure. This book aims at a general explanation of the creolization of language and culture, so it was necessary to start by grounding it in the sociohistorical context: an obvious prerequisite for all research in this field.

  Pidgins and creoles

  My discussion of this topic from the sociolinguistic perspective makes it clear that approximative varieties of French, even in the form of ‘beginners’ jargon,’ are not at all associated with sociological factors that have usually been invoked to define a pidgin. The schema that posits a creole as the result of the evolution of a pidgin through ‘complexifications of the external form,’ ‘expansion from the internal form,’ and ‘expansion of the domains of use’ (Valdman 1978:11) is therefore quite incompatible with the sociohistorical and sociolinguistic facts that characterize the initial phases (I and II) of colonial societies.

  Data on the slaves’ actual linguistic productions during this period are almost completely lacking. It is imperative to adopt the sociolinguistic approach. Nonetheless, one must be prepared to come across old documents that are likely to shed new light on the question of what counts as evidence and how to use it. Quite recently, in an old book, F. Moreau, Professor at the University of Dijon, happened upon an eleven-page manuscript written in an ACR creole. Entitled ‘Passion de Notre Seigneur selon Saint Jean en langage Nègre’ (‘Passion of our Lord according to Saint John in Negro Language’), it was analyzed by the late Guy Hazaël-Massieux, who was certainly the best specialist to study this kind of document. His conclusion (corroborated by paleographic examination of the handwriting and paper quality, which dated the document to the early eighteenth century) is that it appears to have been written in the late seventeenth century or early eighteenth century (by 1725 at the latest) – which makes it the oldest Antillean Creole text. It contains nothing surprising, since ecclesiastics have long been our best informants regarding the slaves’ linguistic behaviors. Renouncing from the outset the idea of instructing slaves in their native languages, they often sought, instead, to expedite evangelization and make it more effective by accommodating to ‘the way they spoke’ (Pelleprat 1655:52). The ‘Passion … en langue Nègre’ undoubtedly reflects this disposition and evangelization strategy.1

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  Contrastive Sociolinguistics

  • Marlis Hellinger, Ulrich Ammon, Marlis Hellinger, Ulrich Ammon(Authors)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter Mouton

    (Publisher)

  In the majority of countries where pidgins and Creoles are spoken the act of writing itself is largely a middle class occupation restricted to those who have not only a sufficient degree of education, but also time to write. Not surprisingly, literature written in pidgins and Creoles has been scant. Indeed, popular belief in creole-using societies has it that these languages cannot be written. The lack of written norms also reinforces popular ideas that they are not 'real' languages, but corrupt and bastardized versions of some other (usually European) language. Such views have been held by both Europeans as well as by speakers of Pidgin and Creole languages. The comments made by some speakers of French Creole from the Eastern Caribbean are typical (cited by Morris and Nwenmely 1993: 261): It's broken French, you can't write it down. No, it's not a language. Pidgins and Creoles have generally suffered from misguided beliefs that they are not suitable vehicles for serious literature and artistic expression outside the comic domain. An instructive example of Europeans' attitudes towards the possibility of literature can be seen with respect to Tok Pisin. In May of 1953 The United Nations Trusteeship Council sent a mission to New Guinea to report on the Australian administration of the territory. 274 Suzanne Romaine They urged Australia to take energetic steps to stop the use of Tok Pisin as a language of instruction in the schools. The UN report was the subject of much controversy in the Australian media. One writer of a letter to the Sydney Morning Herald said the greatest objection to pidgin is that it has no literature and never can have any (reported by Hall 1955: 103). Of course, at this time most of what was written in Tok Pisin was written by missionaries and government officials. While indigenous people used Tok Pisin for writing letters, they had not yet appropriated the written language as a means for literary expression.

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