“A language is a dialect with an army and a navy, but my accent often turns out to be your dialect” (McCrum et al. 1986)

Why study pidgins and creoles? Pidgins and creoles complicate the everyday idea of what a language is, what a dialect is, and where one language stops and another begins

What is a pidgin? A pidgin is a contact language used between two groups of people who want to be able to understand each other but who don’t have a language in common They develop a new, working language out of simplified elements of each other’s language A pidgin has to be learned; you can’t just simplify your language and call that a pidgin

How pidgins arise Pidgins arise in functional contexts like trade, invasion, or migrant labour: they tend to have a small vocabulary -- usually a few hundred core words -- and a simplified grammar the language of the people in control of the situation tends to supply the vocabulary of the pidgin in cases where there isn’t a power differential, the pidgin draws equally from the vocabulary of all

The example of Russenorsk “First used in trading between Russian fishermen and Norwegian merchants in Northern Norway from about the end of the 1700s... The contact between the two groups was restricted to a few months in summer, when the Norwegians traded their fish for Russian grain and other commodities. The Russian Revolution in 1917 ended the trade” and thus the language (Winford 2003)

Russenorsk The vocabulary of Russenorsk is almost all nouns (thing words), verbs (action words) and a few adjectives (descriptors) There are only two pronouns, moja (I/me/us/we) and tvoja (you) The sounds of Russenorsk consist of only the sounds that Russian and Norwegian have in common

The grammar of Russenorsk Like all pidgins, it doesn’t use grammatical markers on the words, like “-ed” for past, or “-s” for plural – tense, person, number are expressed through words like “soon”

stari gammel, snart pa kjaida slipom old old soon on church sleep which means: I’m old, I will die soon

Like most pidgins, it doesn’t use words like “the” or “a”, and it doesn’t use “is” to link subject and complement Russman bra mann Russian-man good man or, as we would put it, The Russian is a good man

Finally, like most pidgins, word order is very important in signalling meaning Moja kopom fiska I buy fish but Moja tvoja pa vater kastom I you on water throw

Making new words in Russenorsk – 3 ways borrowing a word from one of the source languages using a word metaphorically joining two words together to make a new one, like this: kuasjorta = “cow-shirt = cow-hide kuasalt = “cow-salt” = salted meat

Defining pidgins Not everybody agrees on exactly how to define a pidgin, but most pidgins are structurally like Russenorsk Some pidgins are more complicated, for social reasons they are extended to fulfil the social roles of a majority or official language, in which trading fish is only one of many functions! A good example is Tok Pisin

As you’ve read, Tok Pisin is the lingua franca in Papua New Guinea It is used for newspapers, road signs, and advertising, as well as everyday speech It is the second language of approximately 6 million people

Creoles

What is a creole? A creole is an elaborated version of a pidgin that is the native language of its speakers It has a much more complex grammar and a much larger vocabulary than a pidgin It develops this structure to deal with the range of situations it’s used in as a native language – the mother tongue of its speakers

Creoles and colonization Historically, most present-day creoles arose on plantations in the parts of the New World, of the Indian and the Pacific Oceans and of West Africa colonized by Europeans

The origin of creoles Historically, most present-day creoles arose on plantations in the parts of the New World, of the Indian and Pacific Oceans, and of West Africa colonized by Europeans. World Map of Creoles according to Holms (1988)

The world of creoles / a world of creoles Up until recently, creoles were thought to have arisen when the children of plantation workers learned a pidgin as their first language and then made it more complex However, recent scholarship suggests creoles arise when a whole group of people need to learn a second, target, language but don’t have easy access to it

This explains some of the extraordinary commonalities amongst creoles across the world. Most show some of the same simplifications as those made by people learning a second language. Most also have a European base and the Caribbean creoles, at least, have some West African languages in common.

Caribbean English Creoles

Origin of CECs In the Caribbean, most of the indigenous people were exterminated soon after contact The English bought slaves in Africa and brought them over to work on sugar plantations The English were dominant, so the creoles were based on their vocabulary But English remained the language of the masters, so a continuum often developed

Creole continuum - The creole shades into the lexifier language (English) and they cannot be distinguished, either in the community or in its speakers: “Nearly all speakers of English in Jamaica could be arranged in a sort of linguistic continuum, ranging from the speech of the most backward peasant or labourer all the way to that of the well-educated urban professional. Each speaker represents not a single point but a span on this continuum, for he [or she] is usually able to adjust his speech upward or downward for some distance on it.” (DeCamp 1961) Is there one language or are there two languages in a creole continuum?

Costa Rican English Creole

The grammar of CECs Are somewhere between European and African African: West African languages tend not to indicate the tense (time) on the verb but they do indicate whether the action is continuous or finished European languages indicate the time on the verb but not the aspect (continuous / completed)

English: I sang [past tense] there JEC: Mi don sing [completed action] dere Caribbean English Creoles use the African system:

The vocabulary of CECs most words in a CEC are of European origin, though in some cases there has been shift in meaning, e.g., “ sweet” in JEC is not an adjective any more, but a verb that means “to make me feel good” In JEC, a few hundred African words have survived, as well as translated compounds like bad-mouth (“to speak ill of” (cf. Mandingo da-jugu, Hausa mugum-baki, “bad mouth”))

A well-known characteristic of all creoles is the way they use reduplication, or repetition of the same word, to indicate plural or intensity. Examples from TEC are true-true (real), one-one (bit by bit) In general, creoles have very rich word formation strategies; new words are frequently coined, but are just as frequently abandoned

The sounds of CECs I Caribbean English Creoles have sounds that are closer to African sounds: /s/ gone in consonant clusters like /sp/, /st/, and /sk/: spoon, stand, and skin -> puun, tan, kin. /t, d, k/ gone in /st, sk, ld/ at the ends of words: last, old, desk -> laas, ool, des

Example of spoken creole (again)

The sounds of CECs II Caribbean English Creoles are also syllable- timed rather than stress-timed This accounts for their rhythms, which are noticeably different from English

The rhythms of creole