PRACTICAL WORK N

MARCO HISTORICO

PIDGIN AND CREOLE VARIATIES IN LANGUAGE

STUDENTS :
AMOEDO, ROCIO
UMLANDT VIRGINIA

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DEFINITION
ORIGIN
TYPES OR CLASSES
EXAMPLES

1- PIDGIN :

A pidgin is a restricted language which arises for the purposes of

communication between two social groups of which one is in a more
dominant position than the other. The less dominant group is the one
which develops the pidgin.
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.
The creation of a pidgin usually requires:
Prolonged, regular contact between the different language
communities
A need to communicate between them
An absence of (or absence of widespread proficiency in) a
widespread, accessible interlanguage
Also, Keith Whinnom (in Hymes (1971)) suggests that pidgins need
three languages to form, with one (the superstrate) being clearly
dominant over the others.
It is often posited that pidgins become creole languages when
a generation of children learn a pidgin as their first language.

CREOLE :
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.
A creole language, or simply a creole, is a stable natural
language developed from the mixing of parent languages.
A creole is believed to arise when a pidgin, developed by adults
for use as a second language, becomes the native and primary
language of their children.
2There 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.
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:
a)
High percentage of content words with a correspondingly low number
of function words
b)

Little morphological marking

c)

Word classes more flexible than in adult language (free conversion)

d)

Contrasts in area of pronouns greatly reduced

e)

Number of inflections minimized

Independent parallel development theory This view maintains

that the obvious similarities between the worlds pidgins and creoles
arose on independent but parallel lines due to the fact that they all
are derived from languages of Indo-European stock 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.

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.
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 sabir from 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.
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.
TYPES AND EXAMPLES

Creole in the Southern United States

A French-based Creole, often known as Louisiana Creole, can be found in the

southern United States. Louisiana Creole finds its roots in the original French
settlers who came to America. Over time the French language picked up
Native American, West African and Spanish elements thanks to contact with
these linguistic groups, resulting in the development of Louisiana Creole.
Many Louisiana Creole speakers identify with their French heritage and
therefore consider the language they speak to be French. However,
Louisiana Creole varies significantly from Standard French.

Haitian Creole

Haiti offers a striking example of the differences between the Standard

French language and a French-based Creole language, thanks to the fact
that the small island country has two official languages: French and Haitian
Creole. Haitian Creole is based largely on 18th century French, and includes
a mixture of African and Spanish influences. With an estimated 8 million
speakers in Haiti alone, Haitian Creole is believed to be the most widelyspoken Creole language in the world.