Pidgin and Pidginization

• A language that is created for very practical and

immediate purposes of communication between
people who otherwise would have no common
language whatsoever, and learned by one person
from another within the communities concerned
as the accepted way of communicating with
members of the other community.
• A pidgin is a variety specially created for the
purpose of communicating with some other
group, and not used by any community for
communication among themselves.
• Not used as a means of group identification.
• Since the reason for wanting to communicate with members
of the other communities is often trade, a pidgin may be what
is called a TRADE LANGUAGE, but not all pidgins are restricted
to being used as trade languages, nor are all trade languages
pidgins.
• However, not all pidgins have arisen as trade languages.
Pidgins are needed when people from different language
backgrounds are thrown together and have to communicate
with each other, and with a dominant group, in order to
survive.
 Etymology: The etymology of word pidgin is
uncertain. Pidgin first appeared in print in 1850. The
most widely accepted etymology of Pidgin is the
Chinese pronunciation of word business.
• In the past Pidgins were originated from the events
like trade, seafaring and tourism. Sometimes they
were originated from the traumatic events like wars
and slavery.
• 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 ocean.
 Theories of Origin:
Baby Talk Theory: According to this theory,
there are similarities in the speech of children
of pidgin speakers such as:
• High percentage of content words and low
number of function words
• Little morphological marking
• Word classes are more flexible than in adult
( free conversion)
 Independent Parallel Development Theory:
• According to this theory, all pidgins arose
independently and developed along parallel lines.
It means all pidgins are having similar structures
and thus restructuring similar languages.
Nautical Jargon Theory: According to this theory,
pidgins are derived from the lingua franca spoken
by crews of ships at the time of trading. Those
crews were composed of men speaking a variety
of dialects and languages so they have to find a
common language.
Monogenetic/ Reflexification Theory
According to this theory, the grammatical
structure of pidgin would not be affected by
the switch of vocabulary.
Universalist Theory: This theory has one thing
which distinguishes it from others is that it
sees the similarities due to universal
tendencies among humans to create a
language of a similar type.
• This is the situation in which most Africans taken as
slaves to the New World found themselves, since the
slavers would break up tribal groups to minimise the
risk of rebellion. Thus, the only way in which the
slaves could communicate either with each other or
with their masters was through a pidgin which they
generally learned from the slavers, based on the
latter's language. Since most slaves had little
opportunity to learn the ordinary language of their
masters, this pidgin remained the only means of
communication for most slaves for the rest of their
lives. This had two consequences.
• One was that pidgins became very closely associated with slaves,
and acquired a poor reputation as a result (and the slaves also
got the reputation of being stupid since they could not speak a
'proper' language!).
• The other consequence was that pidgins were used in an
increasingly wide range of situations, and so gradually acquired
the status of Creole languages.
• There are a large number of pidgin languages, spread through all
the continents including Europe, where migrant workers in
countries like Germany have developed pidgin varieties based on
the local national language.
• For example, in Papua New Guinea, a lot of official business is
conducted in Tok Pisin. This language is now used by over a
million people, but it began many years earlier as a kind of
‘contact’ language called a pidgin.
• The language spoken by a large number of
people in Hawai’i is also a creole, technically
known as Hawai’i Creole English.
• A French creole is spoken by the majority of the
population in Haiti and English creoles are used
in Jamaica and Sierra Leone.
• There are believed to be between six and twelve
million people still using pidgin languages and
between ten and seventeen million using
descendants from pidgins called ‘creoles’
• 18 Pidgins used around the world (4 extinct and many in the
process of disappearing).

Possible outcomes of Pidgins:

• Die out (when original reason for communication diminishes
or disappears).
• Develop to more formal roles (lingua franca); which is called
an ‘expanded pidgin’.
• Develop into a creole
 Characteristics of Pidgin
• A pidgin should be as simple to learn as possible.
• The vocabulary is generally based on the vocabulary of the dominant group.
Hence, the very large number of pidgins spread round the globe are based on
English, French, Portuguese and Dutch. (why; give reasons).
• The dominant language is superior because of economical or social factor.
• Two languages involved: a power struggle for dominance.
• A pidgin is described as an ‘English pidgin’ if English is the lexifier language,
that is, the main source of words in the pidgin. It doesn’t mean that those
words will have the same pronunciation or meaning as in the source.
• Limited lexicon. Chinglish=700
• The pidgin is still a compromise between this and the subordinate varieties, in
that its syntax and phonology may be similar to the latter (less dominant),
making the pidgin easier for the other communities to learn than the dominant
language in its ordinary form.
• As for morphology, this is left out altogether, which again makes for ease of
learning. To the extent that differences of tense, number, case and so on are
not indicated at all, they are marked by the addition of separate words.
• Poor affixation
• Inflectional suffixes such as -s (plural) and -’s (possessive) on nouns in
Standard English are rare in pidgins, while structures like tu buk (‘two books’)
and di gyal place (‘the girl’s place’) are common.
• Functional morphemes often take the place of inflectional morphemes
found in the source language. For example, instead of changing the form of
you to your, as in the English phrase your book, English-based pidgins use a
form like bilong, and change the word order to produce phrases like buk
bilong yu.
• Reduplication is common (drydry, talktalk)
• Pidgins have very little morphophonemic variation, that is, the type of
variation found in the final sounds in Cats and boxes
• In pidgins and creoles, there is almost a complete lack of inflection in nouns,
pronouns, verbs.
Nouns – are not marked for number and gender
Pronoun – will not be distinguished for case, so
there will be no
I - Me, he - him.
- In Tok Pisin me is either I or me
- Yumi ( I and you)
- em ( he, she, it )
- ol ( they or them)
- wanpela man ( one man)
• Negation may only include a single particle no.
• Semantics: Semantic Extension
• Pragmatics: Narrower range of functions
• Phonology: CV syllable preferred
• The sounds of a pidgin or creole are likely to be
fewer and less complicated than those of related
languages
— Tok Pisin has only five basic vowels, unlike the
dozen or so found in English
• Syntax: SVO pattern is preferred, articles are
usually omitted
(1) A pidgin based on language X is not just an example of 'bad X',
as one might describe the unsuccessful attempt of an
individual foreigner to learn X. A pidgin is itself a language,
with a community of speakers who pass it on from one
generation to the next, and consequently with its own history.
(2) A pidgin is not simply the result of heavy borrowing from one
variety into another, since there is no pre-existing variety into
which items may be borrowed.
(3) A pidgin, unlike ordinary languages, has no native speakers,
which is a consequence of the fact that it is used only for
communication between members of different communities.
Thanks