Pidgins & Creoles, and

Codes
Outcomes of Language Contact

• Language Death: no native speakers

• Language Shift: One language replaces another
• Language Maintenance: A relatively stable bi-/
multilingual society
• Pidgin: a rudimentary system of communication
• Creole: creation of a new language based on pidgins or
languages in contact
• Lingua Franca
• Global Languages
 Endangered Languages
• Prediction: half of the approximately 6,000 languages may become
extinct within 100 years.

• 90 Alaskan indigenous
2 being acquired by children.

• 90 Australia Aboriginal
20 being used by all age groups.

• 175 Native American

20 being acquired by children.
 Part I.

Pidgins  Creoles

“Creole Courtyard” 1887

1. Pidgins & Creoles: Introduction
 Pidgins and Creoles
Language varieties developed by speakers in contact who share no common
language.

• Pidgin
• Limited functions of use
• Adjunct language (no one speaks only a pidgin)
• Linguistically simplified
• Develop their own rules and norms of usage

Examples
• West African Pidgin English
• Chinook Jargon, Native American, British, & French traders in the Pacific Northwest,
19th c.
• Solomon Island Pidgin, Solomon Islands
• Creole
• Languages developed from pidgins
• First language of some members of a speech community
• Used for a wide range of functions

Examples
• Jamaican Creole (also called patois)
• Krio (Sierra Leone, Africa)
• Gullah (South Carolina & Georgia)
Creole Languages (VARIATIONS )
AFRO-SEMINOLE CREOLE USA
AMAPA CREOLE Brazil
ANGOLAR São Tomé e Príncipe
ARABIC, BABALIA CREOLE Chad
ARABIC, SUDANESE CREOLE Sudan
AUKAN [DJK] Suriname
BAHAMAS CREOLE ENGLISH Bahamas
BAJAN [BJS] Barbados
BAY ISLANDS CREOLE ENGLISH Honduras
BERBICE CREOLE DUTCH Guyana
BETAWI Indonesia (Java and Bali)
BISLAMA Vanuatu
CAFUNDO CREOLE Brazil
CHAVACANO Philippines
CRIOULO, UPPER GUINEA Guinea-Bissau
CUTCHI-SWAHILI Kenya
DUTCH CREOLE U.S. Virgin Islands
FA D'AMBU Equatorial Guinea
FERNANDO PO CREOLE ENGLISH Equatorial Guinea
FRENCH GUIANESE CREOLE FRENCH French Guiana
GUYANESE CREOLE ENGLISH Guyana
HAITIAN CREOLE FRENCH Haiti
HAWAII CREOLE ENGLISH USA
INDO-PORTUGUESE Sri Lanka
INDONESIAN, PERANAKAN Indonesia
KARIPUNA CREOLE FRENCH Brazil
KITUBA Democratic Republic of Congo
KORLAI CREOLE PORTUGUESE India
KRIO Sierra Leone
KRIOL Australia
KWINTI Suriname
LEEWARD CARIBBEAN CREOLE ENGLISH Antigua
LESSER ANTILLEAN CREOLE FRENCH St. Lucia
LOUISIANA CREOLE FRENCH USA
and so on...
http://www.ethnologue.com/web.asp
 Sources of Linguistic Features

• Superstrate: the socially dominant language

Most vocabulary from superstrate language (lexifier
language)

• Substrate: socially subordinate language(s)

Most grammatical structure from the substrate
language(s)
 Example: Solomon Islands Pidgin
Superstrate: English
Substrate: Oceanic languages

What does -im mean?

Mi no luk-im pikipiki bulong iu
I not see-HIM? pig belong you
(“I didn’t see your pig.”)

*Mi no luk pikipiki bulong iu.

English
I shot the burglar.
I shot ‘im.
*I shot’im the burglar.
 Example, continued

Solomons Pidgin transitive intransitive

luk ‘look’
luk-im ‘see something

sut ‘shoot’
sut-im ‘shoot something’

Kwaio (Oceanic language)

aga ‘look’
aga-si ‘see something’

fana ‘shoot’
fana-si ‘shoot something’
 Can you identify the superstrate of these Creoles?
1. mo pe aste sa banan. I am buying the banana.
French: Seychelles Creole
de bin alde luk dat big tri. They always looked for a big tree.
English: Roper River Creole

2. a waka go a wosu. He walked home.

English: Saran

3. ja fruher wir bleiben. Yes at first we remained.

German: Papua New Guinea

4. olmaan i kas-im chek. The old man is cashing a check.

English: Cape York Creole
French: Guyanais
 Discussion Question
“If someone told you the pidginized
varieties of a language are ‘corrupt’
and ‘ungrammatical,’ and indicated
that their speakers are either ‘lazy’
or ‘inferior,’ how might you try to
show that person how wrong he or
she is? What kinds of evidence
would you use? (Is this question too
PC? Why “how” wrong?)
 The theories of Pidgin origin

• 1. Polygenesis (not from a single source, but

develop independently when the social situation
requires communication among speakers who do
not share a common language, but need to
communicate.
• Monogenetic and relexification theories of pidgin
origin are almost certainly wrong (Wardhaugh 74-
5)
2. Creole Development
Creoles: Structural Similarities
1. di kaafi kuol
the coffee cold
(The coffee is cold.)

2. serial verbs: one verb fulfills a grammatical role

Gullah Creole English (So. Carolina & Georgia)

I tol pas mi
he tall pass me
(He’s taller THAN me.)
 Theories of Creolization

1. When children learn a pidgin as a native

language

2. Grammaticalization and phrases become

words ‘ma bilong mi’ (my husband) to
mabilongmi (Wardhaugh 78)
Levels of creole/language status
and the continuum

1. Acrolect “high speech”

2. Mesolect “middle speech”
3. Basolect “low speech”

Groups often recognize status

distinctions subconsciously
 Creolization
1. When children learn a pidgin as their mother tongue,
within a generation or two, native language use becomes
consolidated and widespread. The result is a creole.

2. Major expansion in the structural linguistic resources:

vocabulary, grammar, and style.

3. Shift in the overall patterns of language use in the

community.
Decreolization

• Shift toward standard form of the language

from which the creole derives.

• The standard language has the status of social

prestige, education, wealth. Creole speakers
find themselves under great pressure to
change their speech in the direction of the
standard.
Hypercreolization

• Aggressive reaction against the standard

language on the part of creole speakers, who
assert the superior status of their creole, and the
need to recognize the ethnic identity of their
communication. Such a reaction can lead to a
marked change in speech habits as speakers
focus on what they see as the “pure” form of the
creole.
 Recreolization

• As Jamacians living in England who “deliberately

recreolize the English they use in an attempt to assert
their ethnic identity and solidarity bacause of the social
situation in which they find themselves (Wardhaugh 84)
• Look at discussion question 1 on page 85 (an analagous
way to think about these redical linguistic evolutions is
to consider the metamorphosis of the whale. Radical
change because of special enviornment.
• Look also at discussion question 5
3. Pidgins & Creoles: Conditions for
Development
 1. The Slave
Trade

The forcible exile of over 12 million Africans to

work the plantations of European colonists.
 Two Locations

• Fort Creole: developed at fortified posts along the west African coast,
where European forces held slaves until the arrival of the next ship.
Guinea Coast Creole English

• Plantation Creole: developed on plantations in the New World colonies

under the dominance of different European languages.
Jamaican Creole Jamaica English
Negerhollands Virgin Islands Dutch
Haitian Creole Haiti French
Papiamento Netherlands Antilles Spanish
Angolar Sãno Tomé Portuguese
 2. Trade
• Naga Pidgin
• Contemporary pidgin spoken by peoples in mountain
regions of north-east India.

• Acts as lingua franca (29 languages)

• Originated as a market language in Assam in the 19th

century among the Naga people

• Undergoing creolization among small groups like the

Kacharis in the town of Dimapur, and among the children
of interethnic marriages.
 3. European settlement
• movement of European settlers to places where
• the indigenous population had not been decimated or moved
into reservations
• a slave population did not form the labor force

• Fanakalo
• spoken in parts of South Africa
• vocabulary from Zulu, and some from English & Afrikaans)
• stable pidgin, shows no signs of creolizing
 4. War

• Korean Bamboo English

• American wars in Asia (Japan, Korea, Vietnam,
Thailand)
• marginal, unstable pidgin
• Read story of Cinderella-San, Wardhaugh pp. 71-2
 5. Labor Migration

• within colonized countries, people from different

ethnic groups may be drawn into a common work
sphere without being forced

• Tok Pisin in Papua New Guinea (Pacific Islands)

4. Linguistic Features of Pidgins
 Examples

Two pidgins for which English supplied much of

the vocabulary

• Cameroonian Pidgin, Cameroon, West Africa

• Korean Bamboo English, Korea

 Phonology

Tend to reduce Lack Affixes

consonant clusters.
 Morphology

Use Reduplication. (as in English ‘purple’)

 Lexicon

Reduced vocabularies

Polysemy

Circumlocution
 Lexicon

Compounding
 Grammatical Structure
“Often complete lack of inflection in nouns,
pronouns, verbs, and adejectives”
Wardhaugh 67

• Lack articles (e.g. the, a, an)

• Preference for compound sentences, not complex.
• very few suffixes and grammatical markers

Time usually expressed with adverbs instead of inflection

Chinese Pidgin English

Before my sellum for ten dollar
PAST 1sg sell for ten dollars

I sold it for ten dollars.

 Not always “polite”
bagarap
ka bilong me I bagarap Wardhaugh,
p. 68
 Linguistic artifacts are absent.
Spellings such as ‘knight’ and
words which show historical vowel
shift like ‘type’ vs ‘typical’ also,
though a shift in consonant
pronunciation rather than in vowel
is ‘space’ ‘spacious’
It is as if these new languages are
too young to have the wrinkles that
older languages develop
5. Pidgin Development
 Theories for structural similarities

1. Monogenesis & relexification (Portuguese)

2. Independent parallel development (“foreigner

talk”)

3. Linguistic universals
 Classifying Pidgins: Grammatical
Complexity
Less Complex
• Pre-pidgin (or jargon)

• Stable Pidgin

More Complex • Expanded Pidgin

 Expanded Pidgins
• Pidgins that have developed a more formal role, as regular
auxiliary languages. May have official status as lingua francas.
• Linguistically more complex to meet needs.
• Used for more functions in a much wider range of situations.

• Tok Pisin (Papua New Guinea) c. 1880

• expanded pidgin currently undergoing creolization. Now has about
20,000 native speakers.
• about 44% of the population
 Codes

Sociolinguistics

Beyond Babel (2001)

a documentary Intonation
I. The difficulty of defining language, culture,
sociolinguistics, dialect, creole, pidgin, now
complicated by the word ‘code’. According to
Wardhaugh, the term ‘code’ is useful because it
is neutral.
High (H) and Low (L) varieties of a
language are distinct, kept separate,
and used in different situations.

All children learn the L variety, but

may not learn the H viariety
(Wardhaugh 89)
Bilingualism
•Individual bilingualism
–two native languages in the mind
–Fishman: “ a psycholinguistic phenomenon”
•Societal bilingualism
–A society in which two languages are used but where relatively
few individuals are bilingual
–Fishman: “a sociolinguistic phenomenon”
•Stable bilingualism
–persistent bilingualism in a society over several generations
•Language evolution:
–Language shift
–Diglossia
BENEFITS OF BILINGUALISM
(California Department of Education, Language Policy and Leadership
Office)
•Enhanced academic and linguistic competence in two languages
•Development of skills in collaboration & cooperation
•Appreciation of other cultures and languages
•Cognitive advantages
•Increased job opportunities
•Expanded travel experiences
•Lower high school drop out rates
•Higher interest in attending colleges and universities
 Potential problems with
bilingualism

Interference between L1 and L2

Increasing proficiency in L2 leads

to reduced speed in L1
Table 1: Percent of Children
Who Speak Only English by
Generation and Group
• By 3 generation more than 70% of most groups, Hispanic, Asian, ect. Are
rd
monoglot English speakers
• Speaking only English is the predominant pattern by the third
generation, except for Dominicans, who are known for
frequent back-and-forth travel between their homeland and
the US.
•
Some very interesting multilingual situations occur in the world and we will look at some of
these in this lecture.
Tukano
The Tukano people of the northwest Amazon, on the border between Colombia and Brazil,
are multilingual. Men in this society must marry outside their language group. To marry a
woman who speaks the same language is seen to be marrying one’s sister (one whose
mother-tongue is the same). Men, therefore, choose to marry from the various neighbouring
tribes where other languages are spoken. Once married the woman moves to the husband’s
household. As a result of this process most villages are multilingual as women have moved
into them as wives and taking with them their mother tongue. Children are born into a
multilingual environment speaking both the mother’s and the father’s language and those of
other children. When men from one village visit another they will always find speakers of
their own language who have preceded them.

Multilingualism among the Tukano is the norm, they cannot readily tell an outsider just
how many languages they speak or how well they speak them.
 normal for people to know several
languages and to choose the most
appropriate one for each occasion.
There is also a genuine interest in
‘language learning’ among the
Siane. Salisbury (1962) tells of a
situation where a group of laborers
returned from working on the coast
where they had learned pidgin
English (Tok Pisin) and almost
immediately a village school was
established so that the rest of the
 •India
A multilingual situation has been reported by Gumperz and Wilson (1971) of
Kupwar, a village of 3,000 inhabitants in Maharashtra in India. Four languages
are spoken: two Indo-European language, Marathi and Urdu, and two non-Indo-
European languages: Kannada and Telegu. Language use is determined by the
caste system:
The highest caste, Jains, speak Kannada
The untouchables speak Marathi
The small population of rope-markers speak Telugu
The Muslims speak Urdu
Marathi dominates inter-group communication.
Bilingualism and even tri-lingualism is normal, especially among men. A
consequence of this situation has been some convergence of languages with
regard to syntax. As a result the languages have become to differ more and more
in their vocabularies alone. (Wardhaugh 1998:99)
 The Gastarbeiter impact
In Europe bilingualism has resulted from a longstanding co-existence of
languages, as in Belgium, or from more recent changes in social
structure, such caused by the Gastarbeiter or guest worker groups in
Europe. Guest workers and their dependents now constitute a population
of 24 million in northern Europe. They originate from Turkey, Greece,
Italy, Japan, the new Balkan states and Arabic-speaking countries. In the
early 1990s it was estimated that some 750,000 foreign students
attended German schools and about 1 million attended French schools.
Such populations need to be catered for in terms of language
programmes for maintaining the children’s languages, translation
services, interpreting services etc. all of which have an impact on the
multilingual nature of society.
 •Fluidity
An important feature of most multilingual societies is their fluidity. The
relationships between the languages are always changing (with the
exception perhaps of Paraguay). In some areas the level of bilingualism
is increasing which suggests that the languages are becoming more
equal, in others, second and third generation immigrants are becoming
more monolingual as in the USA and in Australia. Several scenarios
might exist:
language maintenance whereby one language survives despite powerful
neighbours
language shift whereby speakers of a language may have assimilated to
the dominant culture and its language
Extensive vocabulary borrowing by one of the languages
The emergence of a new ‘hybrid’, eg creoles and pidgins
Language death
 Three-Circle
Model of World
Englishes
 The Inner Circle
• English as dominant language
• “Standard Englishes”

British Isles (UK) 65 million

US & parts of Caribbean 300 million
Canada 27 million
Australia 18 million
New Zealand 4 million
414 million
 The Outer Circle
• former colonies
• co-exists with other languages
• “Standardizing Englishes”

African territories
(Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania, Ambia) 300 million

Indian subcontinent
(India, Paistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka) 1.2 billion

Pacific rim
(Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines) 80 million
 The Expanding Circle
• English of those for whom the language serves no purpose within
their own countries.
• Historically, learned English to use with native speakers in the U.S.
and UK. Now, more likely to use it for communication with other
non-native speakers.
• Number is more difficult to assess since it depends on the level of
competence

Far East (China, Indonesia, Japan,

Korea, Nepal, Taiwan) 1.7 billion
Middle East (Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia) 70 million
Africa (Zimbabwe) 10 million
Worldwide Speakers of English

• 20% of the world’s population speak English as a first or

second language

• additional 45% use English in some important capacity in their

lives

• Total: Nearly two-thirds of the world population

“Outer Circle”: Indian English
 Social Tensions
“I think it’s too late to resist anything. I mean
there’s no point. You know, you’ve got English, it’s
become part of the fabric of the country. It’s an
Indian language, it’s not a foreign language, not any
more. And I think the task at hand is to be able to
own it. You know, and define your own version of
how you use the language.”
—Arnab Chaudhuri
 Spoken Indian English:
omission of articles
Grammatical
I borrowed book from library.
SOV word order I door open.
prepositional variation I my aunt to visited.
comparative good, more good, most good of all
itself/only Can I meet with you tomorrow itself?
existential ‘there’ Meat is there, vegetables are there.
politeness markers These mistakes may please be corrected.
tense & aspect I am having a cold.
question non-inversion Who you have come to see?
generic tag question You are going home soon, isn’t it?
Spoken
bandh
Indian English: Lexical
‘regional labor strike’
crore ‘10 million’
lathi ‘bamboo iron-clad police truncheon’
biodata ‘CV/Curriculum Vitae’
co-brother ‘wife’s sister’s husband’
Indian English Audio Sample

We started by setting up exhibitions on railway stations, ordinarily

you know that nobody will come and see an exhibition if it is uh...
organized in a hall, but in a railway station there are always people
and have a little time to spare. They started coming to the exhibition,
they started looking around, and of course we tried to reach their
minds by telling them what the various matters are and you'd be
surprised that we could motivate quite a number of people in this
very simple fashion. People always like elephants — they're fantastic
looking — and we decided to acquire an elephant, paint it and we all
taught it some tricks.

Listen for trilled /r/ and retroflex stops

II. English as a Global Language
 What is a Global Language?

• Is English a global language because more people

speak it than any other language?

• No. Only about one-fourth of the world's

population speaks English as its primary or second
language.
A global language plays some role in most countries.

1. Mother-tongue
• USA, Canada, Britain, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa (but compare to
Spanish in 20 countries)

2. Official language: government, law, media, education

• some kind of special status in over 70 countries (e.g. Ghana, Nigeria, India, Singapore,
Rwanda)
• more than any other international language, present and past (e.g. French, Spanish, Arabic)

3. Priority status in countries’ foreign-language teaching

• most widely taught foreign language (100+ countries)
• becoming the chief foreign language (e.g. 1996, replaced French in Algeria (a former
French colony)
 Number of English Speakers Growing Rapidly

• The three roles English plays throughout the world suggest

that English will eventually come to be used by more people
than any other language.

• The number of speakers fluent/competent in English is

growing more rapidly for English than any other language
(although Spanish is growing more rapidly than English in
terms of mother-tongue use).
Should we have a global language?
 Advantages
• International Lingua Franca
• International business
• International air transportation
• International organizations
• 1945 UN, World Bank
• 1946 UNESCO, UNICEF
• 1948 World Health Organization

• International academic-scientific community

• conferences
• publication
• Internet
 Disadvantages
• Mixed feelings for native speakers
• Pride? Ownership?

• Linguistic complacency
• Are monolingual English speakers disadvantaged?
• Should everyone speak at least two languages?

• Language death

• Access to power
• English spoken by world elite.
• Internet
How English Became a Global Language
 Why English?
• It is more beautiful/logical?
• It has “less grammar”?
• What about Latin, Greek, Arabic?

• It is easier to learn?
• However, children learn “more complex” languages at the same
rate as children learning English
• It is willing to borrow words?

• It is more democratic because it doesn’t have a grammatical system

of coding social class differences?
• Javanese, Japanese

NONE of the above.

1. Religious proselytizing & current religious significance)

In the 1600s, the King James Bible traveled farther and faster than the
spoken word could. The Bible was in print when the British Empire was
being built. From 1611, voyages to America, to India through the East
India Company, and later to South Africa.

Australian aborigine villagers and

Caucasian missionary, 1930
 2. The Slave
Trade
The forcible exile of over 12 million
Africans to work the plantations of
European colonists.
 3. Imperialism
India, independence 1947

© Underwood & Hindu Man Serving Tea to Colonial Woman

Underwood
CORBIS VV1190
(ca. 1910-1930)
 New Zealand

Maori Warriors (ca. 1854)

In the 19th century the Maori resisted colonization and warred with British settlers.

©CORBIS BK002387
 4. Economic significance

England led world in production and trade in 1900

USA led world in industrial production in 20th century.

Japan
5. Cultural Capital
English doesn’t have a historic foothold in Japan.

Western movies, fashion, music

Japanese teenagers have grown up with American and UK
“Chris Peppler: “I am a bilingual DJ and my forte is
music.
more on western music rather than the local music
and I feel that when you’re introducing American or
British songs I like to do it in English. It’s just like
you know, you don’t eat sushi with a knife and
fork.”
 Babamania

Japanese pop
group performs
exclusively in English.

チェルシーホテル "say baba TOKYO" 予約受け付け

Myths about English as a Global Language
 Myths about English as a Global
1. Will everyone soon be speaking English?
Language
2. Will globalization lead to homogeneity?
• People have more choices, not fewer (you can order customized
jeans from Levi Strauss and a customized computer from Dell).
• Establish virtual communities (e.g. fly fishing)
3. Are nation-states crumbling (e.g. European Union)?

• The EU promotes uniform standards for food production and

currency; however, it also promotes Catalan autonomy and
Scottish devolution.
 Resources
International Dialects of English Archives: http://www.ukans.edu/~idea/index2.html

Varieties of English http://www.ic.arizona.edu/~lsp

British English, Canadian English, African-American English, American Indian English, Chicano
English, Northeast U.S., Southern States English

Worldwide Accents of English

Text, transcription, audio, some explanations of linguistic features. Comparison of British RP
with General American, Scottish, USA Southern Mountains, Texan, Asian Indian, Nigerian
http://www.gazzaro.it/accents/files/accents2.html
http://www.gazzaro.it/accents/files/EnglishAccents.html

New Englishes: http:www.postcolonialweb.org/index.html

Pidgin and Creoles

Language Museum: http://www.language-museum.com
Pidgins & creoles archive http://www.pca.uni-siegen.de