pidgins and creoles
TRANSCRIPT
АНГ – Левченко Я.С. – ТМК – ResearchTHE MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND SCIENCE OF UKRAINE
LUHANSK TARAS SHEVCHENKO NATIONAL UNIVERSITY
The Chair of English Philology
Research on topic:
Pidgins and Creoles as standard
Languages?Conducted by:
Yaroslav Levchenko,
the student of MA course,
specialization “English language and literature”,
the faculty of foreign languages
scientific advisor:
Migovich I.V.
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АНГ – Левченко Я.С. – ТМК – Research
Luhansk – 2009
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PLAN
Introduction.........................................................................................................3 – 5
Creoles and Pidgins comparison.......................................................................6 – 10
Suggested definitions of Pidgins and Creoles.................................................11 – 14
Conclusions.....................................................................................................15 – 17
References.......................................................................................................18 – 19
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INTRODUCTION
Most languages are derived from their ancestors through an unbroken chain
of normal language transmission: each generation of speakers inherits their
language from previous generations intact, w/only a few minor changes.
In this process, major changes can take place and new
languages emerge, but only over centuries and even millennia, only
gradually.
Exceptions to this process-- rapid growth or loss of languages--
are nearly all due to contact between languages.
Contact can happen between very similar or very distinct languages, in pairs
or small numbers or large numbers, gradually or very rapidly. With Pidgins and
Creoles, we are only interested in a small part of the spectrum of language contact:
contact between 3 or more linguistically diverse language types,
in a situation providing great motivation for speakers to
communicate (and often of dramatic social inequality),
resulting in very rapid language change and evolution.
Thus neither Ps nor Cs come about by normal language change &
transmission, in the technical sense used above, yet
Both come about through normal processes of language contact,
i.e.
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Both are natural, developed thru contact and not deliberately
"invented"
However, Creoles are complete languages, Pidgins are not.
This is because Pidgins are new, while Creoles have had time to
develop.
There's a continuum between Creoles and older languages -- i.e. a Creole
gradually develops grammatical machinery and the sorts of redundancies and
historical residue that characterize older languages. So we can't necessarily look at
any language today minus its social history and know whether or not it's a Creole
(though Pidgins are more obvious, given their general lack of complete
grammatical machinery).
For the same sorts of reasons, there's a continuum between Pidgins and
Creoles too: a Pidgin gradually expands its social contexts, and extends its
grammatical forms and repertoire to match them, spurred on by the nativizatin
process (by becoming the native language of a group of children, and eventually
the language of ethnic identification for a speech community). In other words,
There's no reliable purely-structural definition of Cs, and
similarly
No hard-and-fast structural distinction between Ps and Cs.
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Social and historical information is necessary to distinguish
them from each other, and from older languages which developed through
normal language transmission.
Nevertheless, there are some widely-found tendencies and
generalizations linguists use in attempting to characterize Pidgins and Creoles.
There is great argument about the claims I've just made above, but they are
increasingly popular. There's also a consensus in the field that old-fashioned
treatments (e.g. those still found in many linguistics textbooks today!) of the
differences between Pidgins, Creoles and older languages have often been too
simple and evenfactually incorrect. This is partly because of the great progress in
careful description of Pidgin and Creole grammars in the last 20 or 25 years, and
also because of advances in our understanding of historical processes made
through careful case studies of individual languages.
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CREOLES AND PIDGINS COMPARISON
Today, creolists think it's especially important to study Pidgins & Creoles
(and transitional varieties like AAVE) for many reasons, including:
to deepen our knowledge of language change and contact
to help us understand how new languages expand, age and
decay
Also, there's some unsolved mystery about whether such processes of
language formation and growth are the same for all cases -- i.e.,
whether all Pidgins share structural features because of their
recent formation, and
whether all Creoles share structural features because of the
pathways of language change open to them. (The topic
of grammaticalization is an important one here.)
Let’s compare the case of typical Pidgins and Creoles with African
American Vernacular English (AAVE) -- a dialect of North American English
which may have had a Creole past. At any rate, it's certain that many of the same
social and linguistic conditions which led to Creole formation throughout the West
Indies were in place; and yet today AAVE is certainly not a Creole.
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Comparison: Pidgins, Creoles & African American Vernacular English
Pidgin Creole AAVE
Contact language that arose
naturally
Yes Yes (?
contact?)
Has native speakers Not
usually
Always Yes
Linguistic form and grammar are... Reduce
d*
Expand
ed*
Full
Restricted in contexts of use Yes No Yes
but...
Stable and independent norms No Yes Yes
Fully adequate natural language No Yes Yes
Short texts and example data
This example shows how the same lexical elements may be configured differently in a Creole
from its superstrate. GFC is actually more regular and systematic than Standard French, in having both
modifiers on the same side of the head noun.
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French versus Guadeloupéen French
Creole
la table rouge "the red table" tab wouj la
Def table Adj table Adj Def
Pidgin Fijian:
Tamana tinana keitou sa mate tiko
Father mother 1pl Pred die Dur
"Our parents have died"
This example shows how reduced pidgin grammar may be when compared
to its input. Fijian, a Polynesian language with c. 200,000 speakers, has 35
formsfor pronouns corresponding to English's 3 in the first plural: we/us/our. This
is because Fijian distinguishes not just singular from plural, but singular
fromdual (=2) from paucal (=a few) from plural; while there are also different
forms for items that are edible vs. drinkable vs. other, etc. However, Pidgin
Fijian(spoken in Fiji by people of Polynesian, Indian and Chinese descent)
has only one pronominal form for this person/number: keitou.
This feature is an example of the "greater simplicity" that is often attributed
to Pidgins and Creoles. Linguists mean the following when we say simplicity:
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o an increase in regularity (fewer exceptions, fewer
forms), and/or
o a decrease in marking distinctions in the form of the
language (lack of inflectional morphemes, among other things)
Note that these trends aid the speaker more than the listener, so it's
not cognitively simpler. (Not mentally, that is -- of course Pidgin speakers know
the differences between few/many, edible/inedible etc!) More work has to be done
in inference, through pragmatics, because the syntax and morphology does less.
Solomon Islands Pidjin: verses from Mark 5:2-4
This example is from a Pacific Pidgin with English as its superstrate. (All of
these Pidgins and Creoles date from the 19th century, so they are relatively new, but
their early days are relatively well-documented; see Muhlhausler 1997 below for a
good treatment of them.) Missionary influence played a large role in many of these
languages, and often continues to in the from of development of materials for
language description, instruction and standardization. This New Testament text
and translation thus make an appropriate example.
2. Steretwe taem Jisas i go soa, 2. When he had stepped out of the boat,
wanfela man wea i stap long berigiraon i
kamaot fo mitim hem.
immediately a man out of the tombs met
him.
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Desfala man ia devol nogud i stap long
hem.
This man was possessed by an unclean
spirit.
3. Ples bulong hem nao long berigiraon. 3. He lived in the cemetery;
Bikos hem i karangge tumas, and no-one could restrain him any more,
even with chains,
no man i save taemapim. because he was too strong.
4. Plande taem olketa i hankapem han
an lek bulong hem,
4. For he had often been restrained
with shackles and chains on his arms and legs,
bat hem i smasing olketa nomoa. but the chains he wrenched apart, and the
shackles he broke in pieces,
No man i storong fitim fo holem. and no one had the strength to subdue him.
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SUGGESTED DEFINITIONS FOR PIDGINS AND CREOLES
A lingua franca is a language used by people whose mother tongues are
different in order to communicate.
Any language could conceivably serve as a lingua franca between two
groups, no matter what sort of language it was. This is also true for some other
terms (cited by Wm. Samarin, Wardhaugh Chap. 3): "Contact Language,
International Language, Auxiliary Language, Trade Language". A pidgin could
serve as alingua franca, too; so could a creole. English often does. Lingua
franca is thus a purely functionally-defined term, i.e. linguistic structure of the
language involved plays no role.
A Pidgin
o is a contact language or lingua franca that arose
naturally (not like e.g. Esperanto)
o does not have native speakers
o is reduced in linguistic form and grammar
o is restricted in contexts of use
o is typically unstable and highly mixed
o may sometimes be a stable variety with norms of
acceptability,
o but is NOT a fully adequate natural language.
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Also, Pidgins:
o derive from the process of pidginization
o typically evolve from trade or plantation situations...
o ... where many languages occur but no one predominates;
o are the products of incomplete Second Language
Acquisition, and thus...
o ... have small core vocabularies, and borrow extensively,
o ... have very surfacy grammar, much variation but little
system,
o ... and sociolinguistically have no (or incoherent) norms
of interpretation;
o have limited domains for expressive and communicative
functions;
o typically either die out or evolve into creoles...
o ... through the process of creolization/nativization.
A Creole, on the other hand:
o does have native speakers
o has developed, thru expansion in linguistic form and
grammar,
o and thru extension in use (communicative & expressive
functions),
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o into a full-fledged, complete and adequate natural
language
o which is typically stable and autonomous in its norms
Also, Creoles:
o often evolve from pidgins, thru the
creolization/nativization process;
o exist most often in post-colonial areas, where...
o ...they tend to be the vernacular of spontaneous daily use;
o are typically related to one widely-spoken language
(often seen as a 'corruption' of it);
o are native languages acquired as mother tongues; thus...
o ...are products of First Language Acquisition, based on
inadequate input (Bickerton);
o may either stabilize, decreolize thru contact, or die out
o may or may not be highly mixed, depending on their age
& current language contacts;
o have established mechanisms for vocabulary extension
(borrowing/integration rules);
o have less elaborate/grammaticalized structures in
grammar than older languages do (whether standardized or not), but
definitely more than pidgins;
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o have much variation but coherent sociolinguistic norms
(of evaluation/interpretation)
o have wider domains & are used more for
expressive/communicative purposes...
o ... though they resemble non-standard dialects in terms of
prestige;
o may remain stable over long periods or merge toward
standard languages (decreolize).
These definitions use "stable” and “autonomous" as relative terms. Creoles
are independent languages with their own communities & social life -- but not
resistant to change, nor impervious to outside influences!
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CONCLUSIONS
Theories of Pidginization and Creolization divide up into those that are
basically historical, versus those that are basically universalist. The basic facts
they are both trying to explain are:
o why Creoles around the world, regardless of superstrate,
are similar in structure (are they?)
o why Pidgins around the world, regardless of superstrate,
are similar in structure (are they?)
o how and why Creoles and Pidgins are related:
how they're similar, and how they're distinct
how Creoles develop out of Pidgins (when and if
they do)
The basic idea is, most pidgins and creoles are the product of European
colonialism going around the world and colliding with indigenous languages, often
either enslaving their speakers or shipping them off to remote non-native areas to
work as "indentured servants". So it originally seemed logical to try to explain as
much as possible by common descent from the politically-dominant European
"superstrate" languages and the "substrate" languages of the people they dominated
- African languages in the Caribbean and the Indian Ocean, Austronesian and other
languages in the Pacific, and so on - taking into account different social
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circumstances that obtain over such a period of extended contact, which typically
result in development of pidgins early on, and creoles later on.
Input languages into Pidgins and Creoles are often referred to by the terms:
o Superstrate: a language spoken by people who held a
socially dominant position in the contact that produced them.
o Substrate: a language spoken by people who held a
socially subordinate position in the contact that produced them.
o Adstrate: another language involved that's neither in a
dominant nor a subordinate situation (often one that came into
contact after the initial situation applied).
The basic idea is that pidgins are the product of the same general kinds of
contact processes that would happen anywhere, no matter who was involved. So it
seems logical to try and figure out what those processes are, how they applied to
particular kinds of languages we know about, and how they would apply to others
if the chance arose; and to compare this process to second language learning
(SLA). Creoles, on the other hand, are supposed to be the product of nativization of
mixed, second languages (pidgins), and nativization is basically child first-
language learning (FLA) - which is thought to be the same everywhere, due to our
innate, genetically-programmed language learning mechanisms, no matter what
kinds of input children get. If creoles all have similar input, and undergo similar
processes, it's no surprise they should turn out to be similar even when they're
historically unrelated.
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Over the last 10 – 15 years, there have been many modifications of these
sorts of positions. It's fair to say today that most creolists believe there are both
historical and universalist elements involved in the explanation of any particular
Pidgin or Creole's structure.
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REFERENCES
1. J Arends, P Muysken & N Smith, eds. Pidgins & Creoles, Chs. 1-2. (The
same book, Chs. 3 & 8-11, goes further in-depth.) Amsterdam: John
Benjamins Publishers.
2. JA Holm 1988 Pidgins and creoles. Vol. I: Theory and structure. Vol. II:
Reference survey. Cambridge Univ. Press. (A handbook on Ps & Cs around
the world.)
3. Thomason, Sarah G. 2001. Language contact: an
introduction. Edinburgh: Univ. of Edinburgh Press. (A good book setting
creoles and pidgins in the general cnotext of language contact.)
4. S Romaine 1994, Language in Society, Ch. 3 (89-
98). Oxford Univ. Press. (Good chapter in a standard sociolinguistics
textbook.)
5. P Muhlhausler 1997 (2nd ed.) Pidgin and creole linguistics. London:
Battlebridge Press, Westminster Creolistics Series 2. (A good introductory
textbook on Ps & Cs.)
6. D Hymes ed. 1971 Pidginization and Creolization of
Languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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7. JE Reinecke, SM Tsuzaki, D DeCamp, I Hancock & RE Wood
1975 A bibliography of Pidgin and Creole languages. (Oceanic Linguistics
Special Publication No. 14.)Honolulu: The University Press of Hawai'i.
8. D Bickerton 1984 "The language bioprogram hypothesis" Behavioral &
Brain Sciences 7(2):173-221.
9. RB LePage & A Tabouret-Keller 1985 Acts of Identity: Creole-based
approaches to language &
ethnicity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
10.P Muysken and N Smith eds. 1986 Substrata versus universals in creole
genesis. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishers.
11.D Bickerton 1988 "Creole Languages and the Bioprogram" In Newmeyer,
ed., Language: Psychological & Biological Aspects. (Linguistics:
the Cambridge Survey, Vol. 3), 267-
284. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
12.SG Thomason & T Kaufman 1988. Language Contact, Creolization, &
Genetic Linguistics. Berkeley: University of California Press.
13.S Mufwene ed. 1993 Africanisms in Afro-American language
varieties. Athens GA: University of Georgia Press.
14.J McWhorter 1998 "Identifying the creole prototype: Vindicating a
typological class." Language 74(4):788-81.
15. PL Patrick 1999 Urban Jamaican Creole: Variation in the
Mesolect. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins
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