David Crystal presents…

Creole translations of the Bible.

Most Creoles grew up around the trade routes of these empires… British French Spanish Portuguese Dutch

Two families of pidgin English Atlantic Pacific Developed in West Africa, transported to West Indies & America during slavery. In Africa they are still widely used in: Gambia, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ghana, Togo, Nigeria & Cameroon. In the America, they are found in the islands and on the mainland, spoken largely by the black population. From the coast of China to the Northernmost parts of Australia in: Hawaii Vanatua Papua New Guinea

Vietnamese Pidgin Was short lived. It grew up while the Americans were there but disappeared when the troops left.

How pidgins become creoles: They begin as limited forms with a few, simple constructions (mainly commands), helped by gestures & miming. Then the vocabulary increases and it develops its own grammatical constructions. People begin to use them at home. Children are born into families and the pidgin becomes the mother tongue. The language is then flexible, creative, it competes with other languages. The creole provides an ethnic identity.

Creoles Suzanne Romaine

Arises when a makeshift language (pidgin) becomes nativised. Sociolinguists label them according to the language from which they draw most of their vocabulary e.g. Jamaican Creole

Creole English. There are many English based Creoles. location name Aku Kru English Kamtok Bajan Creolese Miskito Coast Creole Gambia Liberia Cameroon Barbados Guyana Nicaragua

AAVE & British Black English It has been argued that AAVE has Creole origins since it shares many features with English based Caribbean Creoles. In the UK BBE is spoken by immigrants who come from the Caribbean so it has Creole features.

Shared Features. Pre-verbal negation and SVO. A mo koti a brede The same item for both existential statements and possession Dem get wan uman we get gyal pikni He didn’t cut the bread. There is a woman who has a daughter.

They planted the tree. The tree was planted. Dem plaan di tri In Jamaican Creole No distinction is made in the verb forms Dem plaan di tri Dem tri plaan They planted the tree. The tree was planted.

The lack of a formal passive

No copula (linking verb) & adjectives function as verbs Di pikni sick The child is sick

No syntactic difference between questions & statements Guyanese Creole Depending on intonation… I bai di eg dem He bought the eggs Or Did he buy the eggs?

‘Qui` and cote` meaning ‘which side’ : ‘where’ Questions tend to have two elements and the first from the ‘lexifier language’ Haitian Creole from Ki kote` ‘Qui` and cote` meaning ‘which side’ : ‘where’

Kamtok Wetin From what and thing: what

Theoretical Point It has been claimed that the many syntactic and semantic similarities among creoles provide the key to an innate ‘bioprogram’ for language, and that creoles provide the key to understanding the original evolution of human language.

Creolization Slaves speaking many language have to develop a common language among slaves and with overseers.

The children grow up speaking pidgin but they need to change it to meet their needs.

A theory about Jamaican Creole It developed from a pidgin in one generation then de-creolized back to English.

Tok Pisin Stabilised and expanded as a pidgin before it creolized: a gradual transition.

Middle English Some argue that middle English is a creole that arose from contacts with Norse during the Scandinavian settlements (8th-11th C) and then with French after the Norman Conquest (11thC). In addition to massive lexical borrowing, many changes led to such simplification of grammar as the loss of the old English inflectional endings.

De-Creolozation A creole gradually converges with its lexifier language.

De-creolization can… obscure the origins of a variety e.g. American Black English.