Professional Documents
Culture Documents
LANGUAGE - 18
Language Contact:
Pidgins & Creoles
Readings:
Lipski, Crystal, Holman,
Sample Pidgins & Creoles
PIDGINS AND CREOLES
- Expanded pidgins
- Creole origins
- From pidgins to creoles
-- Hawaiian Creole English
- Developments in the UK and the US
*Notes based on Jenkins, J. 2003. World Englishes, Routledge, pp. 55-60, 99-106, 154-162.
Pidgins
Pronunciation
Grammar
Social Functions
Lexis
Drawn from dominant (lexifier) language (English,
French, Portuguese, Dutch)
Lexis rules for pidgins are simpler than for mature
languages
Concepts encoded in lengthy ways
Yumitripela “we, us”
Gras bilong pisin “feathers”
Extensive use of reduplication
Pikpik “pigs”
Gutpela liklik “fairly good”
Pronunciation
Five vowel sounds: / i e a o u /
“deep” / “dip” -> /dip/
“work” / “walk” -> /wak/
Simplification of consonant clusters
/-nd/ -> /-n/ : /paun/ “pound”
/-ks/ -> /-kis/ : /sikis/ “six”
Conflation of consonant sounds
/f/ -> /p/ : /pren/ “friend”
/š/ -> /s/ : /bus/ “bush”
Larger number of homophones
/tiŋ/ -> “thing” / “think’
Grammar
Pidgins
Variable from speaker to speaker
Few if any inflections
Simple negation: “no” + X
Simple clause structure
From pidgins to creoles
Consistency across speakers
Assimilation & reduction processes
Expanded vocabularies
Tense system
Greater sentence complexity
Social Functions
Pidgins: Limited range of social functions
As contact languages, used for minimal
communication purposes
Extended pidgins and creoles: Wide range of
social functions
Oral and written literature
Education
Mass media
Advertising
Religion
Creole Developments in the UK
London Jamaican
Patois of British blacks
Origins in the Caribbean
Spoken by London-born youth
Reflects process of re-creolization (shift back to
earlier forms of the creole)
Also spoken by young whites, Asians
“Language crossing” – use of minority varieties by
ethnic outgroups
Jamaican Creole Grammatical
Features