David Crystal presents…

Creole translations of the Bible.

Most Creoles grew up around the trade routes of these empires…BritishFrenchSpanishPortugueseDutch

Two families of pidgin EnglishAtlantic Pacific

Developed in West Africa, transported to West Indies & America during slavery. In Africa they are still widely used in: Gambia, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ghana, Togo, Nigeria & Cameroon.In the America, they are found in the islands and on the mainland, spoken largely by the black population.

From the coast of China to the Northernmost parts of Australia in: HawaiiVanatuaPapua New Guinea

Vietnamese PidginWas short lived. It

grew up while the Americans were there but disappeared when the troops left.

How pidgins become creoles:They begin as limited forms

with a few, simple constructions (mainly commands), helped by gestures & miming.

Then the vocabulary increases and it develops its own grammatical constructions.

People begin to use them at home.

Children are born into families and the pidgin becomes the mother tongue.

The language is then flexible, creative, it competes with other languages.

The creole provides an ethnic identity.

CreolesSuzanne Romaine

Arises when a makeshift language (pidgin) becomes nativised.

Sociolinguists label them according to the language from which they draw most of their

vocabulary e.g. Jamaican Creole

Creole English. There are many English based Creoles.

location name

AkuKru EnglishKamtokBajanCreoleseMiskito Coast

Creole

GambiaLiberiaCameroonBarbadosGuyanaNicaragua

AAVE & British Black EnglishIt has been argued

that AAVE has Creole origins since it shares many features with English based Caribbean Creoles. In the UK BBE is spoken by immigrants who come from the Caribbean so it has Creole features.

Shared Features. Pre-verbal negation

and SVO.A mo koti a bredeThe same item for

both existential statements and possession

Dem get wan uman we get gyal pikni

He didn’t cut the bread.

There is a woman who has a daughter.

In Jamaican Creole No distinction is made in the verb forms

Dem plaan di tri

Dem tri plaan

They planted the tree.

The tree was planted.

The lack of a formal passive

No copula (linking verb) & adjectives function as verbsDi pikni sick The child is

sick

No syntactic difference between questions & statementsGuyanese Creole

Depending on intonation…

I bai di eg dem

He bought the eggs

OrDid he buy the eggs?

Questions tend to have two elements and the first from the ‘lexifier language’Haitian Creole from

Ki kote` ‘Qui` and cote` meaning ‘which side’ : ‘where’

Kamtok

Wetin From what and thing: what

Theoretical PointIt has been claimed that the many syntactic and semantic similarities

among creoles provide the key to an innate ‘bioprogram’ for language,

and that creoles provide the key to understanding the original

evolution of human language.

CreolizationSlaves speaking

many language have to develop a common language among slaves and with overseers.

The children grow up speaking pidgin but they need to change it to meet their needs.

A theory about Jamaican CreoleIt developed from a pidgin in one generation then de-creolized back to English.

Tok PisinStabilised and expanded as a pidgin before it creolized: a gradual transition.

Middle EnglishSome argue that middle

English is a creole that arose from contacts with Norse during the Scandinavian settlements (8th-11th C) and then with French after the Norman Conquest (11thC). In addition to massive lexical borrowing, many changes led to such simplification of grammar as the loss of the old English inflectional endings.

De-CreolozationA creole gradually converges with its lexifier language.

De-creolization can…obscure the origins of a variety e.g. American Black English.