Pidgin And Creole

• A.      Pidgin and creole 
•  
  

a.      Pidgin

Hymes (1971, p. 3) has pointed out that before the 1930s pidgins and creoles were largely ignored by linguists, who regarded them as ‘marginal languages’ at best. (Some linguists were even advised to keep away from studying them lest they jeopardize their careers!) He points out that pidgins and creoles ‘are marginal, in the circumstances of their origin, and in the attitudes towards them on the part of those who speak one of the languages from which they derive.Holm (1988, pp. 4–5) defines a pidgin as: a reduced language that results from extended contact between groups of people with no language in common; it evolves when they need some means of verbal communication, perhaps for trade, but no group learns the native language of any other group for social reasons that may include lack of trust or of close contact.

A pidgin is a language with no native speakers: it is no one’s first language but is a contact language. (language contact: Situation in which groups of speakers of different languages come into contact with one another, e.g., geography, conquest, trade) That is, it is the product of a multilingual situation in which those who wish to communicate must find or improvise a simple language system that will enable them to do so. A highly codified language often accompanies that dominant position. A pidgin is therefore sometimes regarded as a ‘reduced’ variety of a ‘normal’language, i.e., one of the aforementioned dominant languages, with simplification of the grammar and vocabulary of that language, considerable phonological variation, and an admixture of local vocabulary to meet the special needs of the contact group.

From statement in above can be concluded that pidgin is:

Ø  arises in a (new) contact situation involving more than two linguistic groups

Ø  groups have no shared language

Ø  groups need to communicate regularly, but for limited purposes, such as trade

Ø  is nobody's native language

Ø  vocabulary (typically) from one of the Langua-ges (= Lexifier Language)

Ø  grammar is a kind of crosslanguage compromi-se with influence from universals of L2 learning

Ø  no elaborate morphological structures

For example of Pidgin:

b.      Creole

In contrast to a pidgin, a creole is often defined as a pidgin that has become the first language of a new generation of speakers. As Aitchison (1994, p. 3177) says, ‘creoles arise when pidgins become mother tongues.’ A creole, therefore, is a ‘normal’ language in almost every sense. Holmes (1992, p. 95) says that ‘A creole is a pidgin which has expanded in structure and vocabulary to express the range of meanings and serve the range of functions required of a first language. Winford (2003, p. 307) says that ‘creoles constitute a motley assortment of contact vernaculars with different histories and lines of development, though of course they still have much in common . . . [and] there are no structural characteristics that all creoles share . . . [and] no structural criteria that can distinguish creoles from other types of language.  Just like a pidgin, a creole has no simple relationship to the usually standardized anguage with which it is associated.

From statement in above can be concluded that creole is:

Ø  arises in a (new) contact situation involving more than two linguistic groups

Ø  is the native language of a speech community

Ø  vocabulary (typically) from one of the Languages (= Lexifier Language)

Ø  grammar is a kind of crosslanguage compromise with influence from universals of L2 learning

Ø  some creoles are nativized pidgins

For example of Creole:

c.       Lingua franca

People who speak different languages who are forced into contact with each other must find some way of communicating, a lingua franca. Samarin (1968, p. 661) lists four: a trade language (e.g., Hausa in West Africa or Swahili in East Africa); a contact language (e.g., Greek koiné in the Ancient World); an international language (e.g., English throughout much of our contemporary world); and an auxiliary language (e.g., Esperanto or Basic English). So, it can be conclude that lingua franca is Any variety that serves as the tool of communication for people who speak varieties which are not mutually intelligible.

For example :

Ø  Swahili in many African nations like Tanzania and Zaire

Ø  Russian in the former USSR

Ø  English in several tourist destinations, and in the scientific community

Ø  Tok Pisin in Papua New Guinea

Pidginization is process of making pidgin, so does creolization. Pidginization generally involves some kind of ‘simplification’ of a language, e.g., reduction in morphology (word structure) and syntax (grammatical structure), tolerance of considerable phonological variation (pronunciation), reduction in the number of functions for which the pidgin is used (e.g., you usually do not attempt to write novels in a pidgin), and extensive borrowing of words from local mother tongues. We may argue, therefore, that a pidgin arises from the simplification of a language when that language comes to dominate groups of speakers separated from each other by language differences.

On the other hand, creolization involves expansion of the morphology and syntax, regularization of the phonology, deliberate increase in the number of functions in which the language is used, and development of a rational and stable system for increasing vocabulary. But, in practice it is not always easy to say whether we have a pidgin rather than a creole. But even though the processes are different, it is still not always clear whether we are talking about a pidgin, an expanded pidgin, or a creole in a certain situation. For example, the terms Hawaiian Pidgin English and Hawaiian Creole English may be used by even the same creolist (Bickerton, 1977, 1983) to describe the same variety. Likewise, Tok Pisin is sometimes called a pidgin and sometimes a creole.

• B.   Distribution

Pidgin and creole languages are distributed mainly, though not exclusively, in the equatorial belt around the world, usually in places with direct or easy access to the oceans. Consequently, they are found mainly in the Caribbean and around the north and east coasts of South America, around the coasts of Africa, particularly the west coast, and across the Indian and Pacific Oceans. A basic source on their distribution is Hancock (1977), a survey that was intended to list each language that had been treated as either a pidgin or a creole whether or not Hancock himself agreed with the classification. The list includes Maltese and Hindi for example, languages which Hancock believes should not be included. More recently Holm (1989) provides a useful survey of pidgins and creoles, and Smith (1995) lists 351 pidgins and creoles along with 158 assorted mixed languages.

• C.   Linguistic Characteristics

a)      Phonology

The sounds of a pidgin or creole are likely to be fewer and less complicated in their possible arrangements than those of the corresponding standard language. For example, Tok Pisin makes use of only five basic vowels and also has fewer consonants than English. /it/ and /eat/, /pin/ and /fin/

b)     Morphology

In pidgins and creoles there is likely to be a complete lack of inflection in nouns, pronouns, verbs, and adjectives. For example:

1.      Noun (Man /SG/ and Ol Man /PL/)

2.      Pronoun ( You Pela = You all /PL/)

3.      Verbs ( Em I rit = she is reading /transitive verb/) and (Mi kukim rais = I cook rice /word order/) etc.

4.      Adjectives

c)      Syntax

Syntactically, sentences are likely to be uncomplicated in clausal structure. For example taken respectively from English, French, and Portuguese creoles:

1.      A de go wok (‘I’m going to work’ in Krio)

2.      Mo ape travaj (‘I’m working’ in Louisiana French)

3.      E ka nda (‘He’s going’ in St Thomas).

d)     Vocabulary

The vocabulary is quite similar to the standard language with which it is associated, although there may be considerable morphological and phonological simplification. Syntactic devices are often employed to extend the vocabulary. For example:

1.      Tok Pisin gras bilong het  = hair

2.      gras bilong fas                 = beard

3.      gras bilong pisin              = feathers

• D.   The theories of Origin

1)      Baby-talk/Foreigner simplification (1930s):  imperfect second language learning plus simplification of input. That they result from Europeans deliberately simplifying their languages in order to communicate with others. For example: between the English-based creole of Jamaica and the French-based one of Haiti.

2)      Polygenesis (1950s): is that pidgins and creoles having a variety of origins; any similarities among them arise from the shared circumstances of their origins. For example, speakers of English have had to make themselves understood for the purposes of trade and those trading with them have had to be understood

3)      Monogenetic theory is that the similarities among pidgins and creoles might be attributable to a common origin in the language of sailors in some kind of nautical jargon. For example, Nelson’s flagship Victory is said to have been crewed by sailors of fourteen different nationalities.

4)      Relexification or Monogenesis (1880s): all the present European-language-based pidgins and creoles derive from a single source, a lingua franca called Sabir used in the Mediterranean in the middle Ages. For example : savvy and piccaninny (from Portuguese saber, ‘know,’ and pequeño, ‘little’), in English-based creoles.