Characteristics of pidgin and creole languages

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CONTENTS
1. Introduction-----------------------------------------------------------3
2. Common characteristics-------------------------------------------------4
3. The terms ‘pidgin’ and ‘creole’----------------------------------------6
4. Theories of origin-----------------------------------------------------8
5. Developmental stages of pidgins/creoles-------------------------------11
6. Conclusion------------------------------------------------------------14
7. Bibliography----------------------------------------------------------15

1. Introduction
The study of pidgin and creole languages has been undermined in the past by the widely held belief that these languages are of little merit to linguistic studies, being more notable for the features they lack rather than those they possess. “The pidgin English spoken these days is about the most atrocious form of speech perhaps one could find in any corner of the globe. It is neither one thing nor the other. Consisting of a mixture of Samoan and Chinese here and there, with an occasional word of Malayan, it is a conglomeration truly worthy of the tower of Babel”. (Rabaul Times, 16 October 1925; quoted (McMahon, 1994, :253))
Pidgins and creoles were considered as broken and corrupted forms of language, the product of stunted cognitive and in some cases physical capacity o n the part of those who spoke them. European languages were deemed far too sophisticated to be learnt by “primitive” natives. According to one writer commenting in 1849 “that people used to expressing themselves with a rather simple language cannot easily elevate their intelligence to the genius of a European language . . . it was necessary that the varied expressions acquired during so many centuries of civilization dropped their perfection, to adapt to ideas being born and to barbarous forms of language of half-savage peoples” quoted (Aitchison, 2001, :221). The immediate aim of this paper is to present a theory of pidgin and creole origins from what will henceforth be referred to as the “classical” point of view. In essence this will allow the construction of a theory of pidginization and creolization according to what is generally supported amongst creolists and operates as the basis for a great deal of those studies relating to the discipline. The following discussion of pidgin languages intends to define pidgins from the classical point of view i.e. that point of view which considers pidgins and creoles to be inherently linked in line with a family tree model of language genesis. Such an approach is adopted to establish the popular standpoint before proceeding to offer an alternative opinion regarding how and where pidgin languages developed as well as their relationship to creole languages.

Pidgins and creoles are spoken by about ten million people around the world. Pidgin is known as the language that groups of people originally speaking different languages use when they come in contact. A pidgin is a contact language, which means that it is acquired and not learned natively. It is also different from Trade Jargons, for it implies an unequal relationship between speakers. Pidgins can develop to become Creole languages. This requires the pidgin to be learned as mother tongue by children, who then generalize the features of the pidgin into a fully-formed, stabilized grammar. This is however not always the case: pidgins can die or become obsolete. The history of pidgin and creoles started with the time when Europeans tried to expand their territories during the European exploration in 15th century. During the 16th century and early 19th century, pidgin and creoles languages spread out especially in South America and Africa. Pidgin is a language which is occurred through language contacts where often took place in uncivilized societies among local people and European people. During that time, it was used as a communication tool between them. Pidgin was playing a role as a lingua franca among people who were not familiar with major European languages such as English or French. This language was needed for doing business among them.Consequently, pidgin is often considered as the mixture of languages such as some European languages (eg. English and French), some local languages (eg. Hawaian) as well as other varieties of languages which settlers brought from different places. Pidgin has not only been used for business, but also for other purposes, for example as a medium of communication among several ethnicities.3. The terms ‘pidgin’ and ‘creole’There are a number of views on the origin of the term pidgin, none of which has gained sole acceptance by the academic community.1) Chinese corruption of the word business. As the word is used for any action or occupation (cf. joss-pidgin ‘religion’ and chow-chow-pidgin ‘cooking') it should not be surprising that it be used for a language variety which arose for trading purposes.2) Portuguese ocupaçao meaning ‘trade, job, occupation’. This suggestion is interesting as the Portuguese were among the first traders to travel to the third world and influence natives with their language. Phonetically the shift from the original word to a form /pidgin/ is difficult to explain.3) A form from the South American language Yayo ‘-pidian’ meaning ‘people’ (claim put forward by Kleinecke, 1959). This form occurs in tribal names like ‘Mapidian’, ‘Tarapidian’, etc. This claim rests on a single occurrence of the word ‘Pidians’ in a text from 1606. But as several authors have pointed out this might be a spelling error for ‘Indians’ seeing as how the author has other misspellings in the text in question.4) Hancock (1972) suggested that the term is derived from ‘pequeno portugues’ which is used in Angola for the broken Portuguese spoken by the illiterate. This view is semantically justified seeing that the word ‘pequeno’ is often used to mean ‘offspring’, in this case a language derived from another. Phonetically, the shift to /pidgin/ is not difficult to account for: /peke:no/ > /pege:n/ > /pigin/ > /pidgin/ (stages not attested, however).5) Hebrew word ‘pidjom’ meaning ‘barter’. This suggestion is phonetically and semantically plausible, hinges however on the distribution of a Jewish word outside of Europe and its acceptance as a general term for a trade language.The term ‘creole’ There is less controversy on this issue than on the previous one. The term would seem to derive from French ‘creole’, it in its turn coming from Portuguese ‘crioulo’ (rather than from Spanish ‘criollo') which goes back to an Iberian stem meaning ‘to nurse, breed, bring up’. The present meaning is ‘native to a locality or country’. Originally it was used (17th century) to refer to those from European countries born in the colonies. The term then underwent a semantic shift to refer to customs and language of those in the colonies and later to any language derived from a pidgin based on a European language, typically English, French, Portuguese, Spanish or Dutch. Now the term refers to any language of this type, irrespective of what the input language has been. HYPERLINK "https://www.uni-due.de/SVE/VARS_PidginsAndCreoles.htm" \l "GlossTop" 4. Theories of originThere are various theories about the origin of pidgins which have been proposed in the last hundred years or so. These can be presented as a basic group of five theories which show a degree of overlap; note that a mixture of origins is also a possibility which should also be considered.1) The baby-talk theory At the end of the last century Charles Leland, when discussing China coast pidgin English, noted that there were many similarities with the speech of children such as the following features:High percentage of content words with a correspondingly low number of function words Little morphological marking Word classes more flexible than in adult language (free conversion) Contrasts in area of pronouns greatly reduced Number of inflections minimizedLater linguists, notably Jespersen and Bloomfield, maintained that the characteristics of pidgins result from ‘imperfect mastery of a language which in its initial stage, in the child with its first language and in the grown-up with a second language learnt by imperfect methods, leads to a superficial knowledge of the most indispensable word, with total disregard of grammar’ (Jespersen 1922: 234). The evaluative nature of such views would be rejected by linguists today.2) Independent parallel development theory This view maintains that the obvious similarities between the world’s pidgins and creoles arose on independent but parallel lines due to the fact that they all are derived from languages of Indo-European stocks and, in the case of the Atlantic varieties, due to their sharing a common West African substratum. Furthermore, scholars like Robert Hall specify that the similar social and physical conditions under which pidgins arose were responsible for the development of similar linguistic structures.3) Nautical jargon theory As early as 1938 the American linguist John Reinecke noted the possible influence of nautical jargon on pidgins. It is obvious that on many of the original voyages of discovery to the developing world many nationalities were represented among the crews of the ships. This fact led to the development of a core vocabulary of nautical items and a simplified grammar (at least as regards English). Later pidgins show many of these lexical items irrespective of where the language varieties are spoken. Thus the word capsise turns up with the meaning ‘turn over’ or ‘spill’ in both West Atlantic and Pacific pidgins. So do the words heave, hoist, hail, galley, cargo. One of the shortcomings of this otherwise attractive theory is that it does not help to account for the many structural affinities between pidgins which arose from different European languages.4) Monogenetic/relexification theory According to this view all pidgins can be traced back to a single proto-pidgin, a 15th century Portuguese pidgin which was itself probably a relic of the medieval lingua franca (also known as sabirfrom the Portuguese word for ‘know') which was the common means of communication among the Crusaders and traders in the Mediterranean area. Lingua franca survived longest on the North African coast and is attested from Algeria and Tunesia as late as the 19th century. The theory maintains that when the Portuguese first sailed down the west coast of Africa in the 15th century they would have used their form of lingua franca (sabir). Afterwards in the 16th and 17th centuries when the Portuguese influence in Africa declined, the vocabulary of the then established pidgins would have been replaced by that of the new colonial language which was dominant in the area, say English or French. As the Portuguese were among the first traders in India and South East Asia a similar situation can be assumed to have obtained: the vocabulary of the original Portuguese pidgin was replaced by that of a later European language. Note that with this theory the grammatical structure of pidgins would not have been effected by the switch in vocabulary (this is what is meant by the term relexification). Thus the obvious similarity in structure of all pidgins would go back to the grammar of the proto-pidgin coming from the Mediterranean area. What this theory does not explain is why the structure (analytic) should be of the type it is. Furthermore there are a number of marginal pidgins (Russenorsk, Eskimo Trade Jargon) which cannot conceivably be connected with Portuguese and which are nonetheless analytic in structure just as the pidgins based on the main European colonial languages are.5) Universalist theory This is the most recent view on the origin of pidgins and has elements in common with the other theories. However, the distinguishing mark of this theory is that it sees the similarities as due to universal tendencies among humans to create languages of a similar type, i.e. an analytic language with a simple phonology, an SVO syntax with little or no subordination or other sentence complexities, and with a lexicon which makes maximum use of polysemy (and devices such as reduplication) operating from a limited core vocabulary. To put it in technical terms, a creole will be expected to have unmarked values for linguistic parameters, e.g. with the parameter pro-drop, whereby the personal pronoun is not obligatory with verb forms (cf. Italian capisco ‘I understand'), the unmarked setting is for no pro-drop to be allowed and indeed this is the situation in all pidgins and creoles, a positive value being something which may appear later with the rise of a rich morphology.5. Developmental stages of pidgins/creoles Social situationLinguistic correlate1)Marginal contactRestricted pidgin2)NativisationExtended pidgin3)Mother tongue developmentCreole4)Movement towards standard language (not necessarily input language)DecreolisationPidgins are generally characterized as restricted and extended. In the life-cycle of pidgins one can note that they start off as restricted language varieties used in marginal contact situations for minimal trading purposes.