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THE MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND SCIENCE OF UKRAINE
Research on topic:
Pidgins and
Creoles as
standard
Languages?
Conducted by:
Yaroslav Levchenko,
the student of MA course,
specialization “English language and
literature”,
the faculty of foreign languages
scientific advisor:
Migovich I.V.
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АНГ – Левченко Я.С. – ТМК – Research
Luhansk – 2009
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PLAN
Introduction.........................................................................................................3 – 5
Creoles and Pidgins comparison.......................................................................6 – 10
Suggested definitions of Pidgins and Creoles.................................................11 – 14
Conclusions.....................................................................................................15 – 17
References.......................................................................................................18 – 19
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INTRODUCTION
Most languages are derived from their ancestors through an unbroken chain
• In this process, major changes can take place and new languages
emerge, but only over centuries and even millennia, only gradually.
Contact can happen between very similar or very distinct languages, in pairs
or small numbers or large numbers, gradually or very rapidly. With Pidgins and
Creoles, we are only interested in a small part of the spectrum of language contact:
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• Both are natural, developed thru contact and not deliberately
"invented"
• This is because Pidgins are new, while Creoles have had time to
develop.
any language today minus its social history and know whether or not it's a Creole
(though Pidgins are more obvious, given their general lack of complete
grammatical machinery).
For the same sorts of reasons, there's a continuum between Pidgins and
Creoles too: a Pidgin gradually expands its social contexts, and extends its
process (by becoming the native language of a group of children, and eventually
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• Social and historical information is necessary to distinguish them from
each other, and from older languages which developed through normal language
transmission.
There is great argument about the claims I've just made above, but they are
treatments (e.g. those still found in many linguistics textbooks today!) of the
differences between Pidgins, Creoles and older languages have often been too
simple and evenfactually incorrect. This is partly because of the great progress in
careful description of Pidgin and Creole grammars in the last 20 or 25 years, and
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Today, creolists think it's especially important to study Pidgins & Creoles
language formation and growth are the same for all cases -- i.e.,
formation, and
one here.)
Let’s compare the case of typical Pidgins and Creoles with African
which may have had a Creole past. At any rate, it's certain that many of the same
social and linguistic conditions which led to Creole formation throughout the West
Indies were in place; and yet today AAVE is certainly not a Creole.
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АНГ – Левченко Я.С. – ТМК – Research
naturally contact?)
usually
This example shows how the same lexical elements may be configured
differently in a Creole from its superstrate. GFC is actually more regular and
systematic than Standard French, in having both modifiers on the same side of the
head noun.
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French versus Guadeloupéen French Creole
la table rouge "the red table" tab wouj la
Def table Adj table Adj Def
Pidgin Fijian:
This example shows how reduced pidgin grammar may be when compared
is because Fijian distinguishes not just singular from plural, but singular
fromdual (=2) from paucal (=a few) from plural; while there are also different
forms for items that are edible vs. drinkable vs. other, etc. However, Pidgin
to Pidgins and Creoles. Linguists mean the following when we say simplicity:
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o an increase in regularity (fewer exceptions, fewer forms), and/or
Note that these trends aid the speaker more than the listener, so it's
not cognitively simpler. (Not mentally, that is -- of course Pidgin speakers know
the differences between few/many, edible/inedible etc!) More work has to be done
in inference, through pragmatics, because the syntax and morphology does less.
This example is from a Pacific Pidgin with English as its superstrate. (All of
these Pidgins and Creoles date from the 19th century, so they are relatively new, but
their early days are relatively well-documented; see Muhlhausler 1997 below for a
good treatment of them.) Missionary influence played a large role in many of these
2. Steretwe taem Jisas i go soa, 2. When he had stepped out of the boat
wanfela man wea i stap long berigiraon i immediately a man out of the tombs met him
Desfala man ia devol nogud i stap long This man was possessed by an unclean spir
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hem.
Bikos hem i karangge tumas, and no-one could restrain him any more,
4. Plande taem olketa i hankapem han 4. For he had often been restrained wit
an lek bulong hem, shackles and chains on his arms and legs,
bat hem i smasing olketa nomoa. but the chains he wrenched apart, and the
No man i storong fitim fo holem. and no one had the strength to subdue him.
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groups, no matter what sort of language it was. This is also true for some other
serve as alingua franca, too; so could a creole. English often does. Lingua
A Pidgin
e.g. Esperanto)
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o may sometimes be a stable variety with norms of acceptability,
Also, Pidgins:
thus...
o ... have very surfacy grammar, much variation but little system,
interpretation;
Also, Creoles:
'corruption' of it);
input (Bickerton);
o may or may not be highly mixed, depending on their age & current
language contacts;
(borrowing/integration rules);
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o have much variation but coherent sociolinguistic norms (of
evaluation/interpretation)
purposes...
languages (decreolize).
are independent languages with their own communities & social life -- but not
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CONCLUSIONS
basically historical, versus those that are basically universalist. The basic facts
The basic idea is, most pidgins and creoles are the product of European
colonialism going around the world and colliding with indigenous languages, often
either enslaving their speakers or shipping them off to remote non-native areas to
"superstrate" languages and the "substrate" languages of the people they dominated
- African languages in the Caribbean and the Indian Ocean, Austronesian and other
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languages in the Pacific, and so on - taking into account different social
circumstances that obtain over such a period of extended contact, which typically
Input languages into Pidgins and Creoles are often referred to by the terms:
a subordinate situation (often one that came into contact after the initial situation
applied).
The basic idea is that pidgins are the product of the same general kinds of
contact processes that would happen anywhere, no matter who was involved. So it
seems logical to try and figure out what those processes are, how they applied to
particular kinds of languages we know about, and how they would apply to others
if the chance arose; and to compare this process to second language learning
(SLA). Creoles, on the other hand, are supposed to be the product of nativization
language learning (FLA) - which is thought to be the same everywhere, due to our
kinds of input children get. If creoles all have similar input, and undergo similar
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processes, it's no surprise they should turn out to be similar even when they're
historically unrelated.
Over the last 10 – 15 years, there have been many modifications of these
sorts of positions. It's fair to say today that most creolists believe there are both
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REFERENCES
1. J Arends, P Muysken & N Smith, eds. Pidgins & Creoles, Chs. 1-2. (The
same book, Chs. 3 & 8-11, goes further in-depth.) Amsterdam: John
Benjamins Publishers.
2. JA Holm 1988 Pidgins and creoles. Vol. I: Theory and structure. Vol. II:
the world.)
textbook.)
10. P Muysken and N Smith eds. 1986 Substrata versus universals in creole
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