EXAMINE THE GRAMMATICAL RELEVANCE OF PIGEON LANGUAGE IN A

MULTI-CULTURAL SOCIETY LIKE NIGERIA.

HISTORY OF PIGEON ENGLISH

Pidgin, originally, a language that typically developed out of sporadic and limited
contacts between Europeans and non-Europeans in locations other than Europe from
the 16th through the early 19th century and often in association with activities such
as trade, plantation agriculture, and mining. Typical pidgins function as lingua
francas, or means for intergroup communication, but not as vernaculars, which are
usually defined as language varieties used for ordinary interactions that occur
outside a business context. Pidgins have no native speakers, as the populations that
use them during occasional trade contacts maintain their own vernaculars for
intragroup communication.
The communicative functions and circumstances of pidgin development account for
the variable degree of normalization within their often reduced systems. Among
other things, they often lack inflections on verbs and nouns, true articles and other
function words (such as conjunctions), and complex sentences. They have thus been
characterized from time to time as “broken” languages and even as “chaotic,” or
apparently without communal conventions. Nevertheless, several pidgins have
survived for generations, a characteristic that indicates a fairly stable system.

Some of the pidgins that have survived for several generations are also spoken as
vernaculars by some of their users, including Nigerian Pidgin, Cameroon Pidgin, Tok
Pisin (Papua New Guinea), and Bislama (Vanuatu), all of which are based on a
predominantly English vocabulary. Such vernaculars have developed systems as
complex as those of related creoles and are called expanded pidgins. However, some
linguists who assume that creoles are erstwhile pidgins that were nativized and
expanded by children tend to lump both kinds of vernaculars as creoles. A more
plausible explanation for the distinction is the fact that in their histories pidgins have
not been associated with populations that consider themselves to be ethnically
Creole.

1
Some scholars of creole languages think that Lingua Franca, the variety that
developed during the Middle Ages out of the contact between Romance languages
and Arabic and other Levantine languages, was a pidgin. If this extension of the
term pidgin is justified, then many other such contact varieties must have developed
during the course of human history.
Like creole, the term pidgin has been extended to language varieties that developed
out of contacts between indigenous groups—for instance, Chinook Jargon (U.S. and
Canada), Delaware Pidgin (U.S.), and Hiri Motu (Papua New Guinea). As is evident
from the name of the first of these examples, the term pidgin has also alternated
with jargon in common speech despite the scholarly stipulation that a jargon is
developmentally an unstable pre-pidgin. This interpretation is consistent with what
scholars have crystallized as the “pidgin-creole life cycle,” according to which a
contact situation produces a jargon, which may die or develop into a pidgin, which in
turn may die, remain as such, or develop into an expanded pidgin, which likewise
may die, remain as such, or develop into a creole. Accordingly, some linguists posit
that a creole may remain as such or decreolize (i.e., lose its creole features) as it
assimilates to its lexifier (the language from which it inherited most of its
vocabulary) if both are spoken in the same polity.
Until the end of the 19th century, there was no developmental or technical
correlation between creoles and pidgins. The term pidgin was first recorded in
English in 1807, as English was adopted as the business and trade language of
Canton (Guangzhou), China. At the time, the term business English was often
written as pigeon English, a spelling that reflects the local pronunciation. Though the
term business has been accepted as the etymon, pidgin may also have evolved from
the Cantonese phrase bei chin ‘pay money’ or from a convergence of both terms.
The communication necessitated to effect trade between the English and the
Cantonese led to the development of Chinese Pidgin English. As trade spread, there
proved to be too few interpreters among the local Cantonese traders and their
European counterparts. Many local traders applied what little English they had
learned from their sporadic contacts with more-fluent speakers. This caused the
business English spoken in Canton to diverge increasingly from more-standard
English varieties. Since the late 19th century, linguists have extended the term

2
pidgin to other language varieties that emerged under similar contact conditions.
Pidgin was subsequently indigenized in several languages, as with pisin in Tok Pisin.
However, European businessmen actually used other, and often derogatory, lay
terms for such varieties, including jargon, baragouin, and patois, because the new
varieties were not intelligible to native speakers of their lexifiers. This explains why
pidgins have often been characterized derisively by lay people as “broken
languages.”
Several creolists have argued that creoles, or at least those of the Atlantic and
Indian oceans, started without antecedent pidgins. For instance, according to the
French creolist Robert Chaudenson, plantation communities were preceded by
homesteads on which approximations of the colonial varieties of European
languages, rather than pidgins, were spoken by masters, servants, and slaves alike.
As foreign settlements in the tropics evolved into plantation colonies, their
populations grew more by importation than by birth, and model speakers for the
newcomers consisted more and more of “seasoned” slaves—that is, nonnative
speakers who had arrived earlier and acclimated to the region and therefore spoke
some approximations of the local colonial varieties of relevant European languages.
This practice caused the colonial European varieties to diverge more and more from
their original lexifiers until they eventually became identified as creole languages.
The divergence was thus gradual from closer approximations of the lexifier to
varieties more and more different, an evolutionary process identified as
basilectalization (basilect being the variety that is the most divergent from the
European lexifier).

GRAMMATICALIZATION IN NIGERIAN PIDGIN

ABSTRACT
Nigerian Pidgin (hereafter NP) has assumed elaborated roles and functions, gaining
new grounds in different sociolinguistic domains as a result of its sustained social
expansion process. One of the consequences of this increased dynamism of NP is
the development of lexical items into grammatical markers which is an expected
natural process. In this paper, we examine language-internal mechanisms that
transform lexical items into morphosyntactic items either for semantic value,

3
creativity, expressivity or routinization. Our basic argument is that
grammaticalization in NP is not contact-induced but a language-internal
phenomenon, which reveals that NP has both a synchronic and diachronic existence
that are imperative in evolving its unique grammar.
1. INTRODUCTION
NP is a variety of the West African Creole, which has been traced to the 15th century
along the coastal regions of Calabar, Port-Harcourt, Sapele, Warri, and Badagry
among others. The upsurge of interest in slave trade brought about the earliest
contact between the Europeans and Africans, and where there was no common
medium of communication, the emergence of a pidgin language became apparent
(Nair, 1972). The first recorded form of NP was documented by the famous Antera
Duke, a prominent chief and trader in Old Calabar, who wrote mostly about the
activities that transpired between the Efik and White trading partners and
supercargoes along the Cross River Basin up to Bakassi in Southern Cameroon
(Mensah, 2011). It is noted that the earliest contact of West African people with the
Europeans was with the Portuguese in the 15th Century. This explains the presence
of a pocket of Portuguese words in the lexicon of NP such as pikin ''child'', palaver
''problem'', dash ''gift'', sabi ''know'' etc. (Vanamali, 1993).
Antera Duke's documentation has come to be known as the Diary of Antera Duke
(DAD). Fayer (1990) maintains that DAD provides evidence that the pidgin English
used in Old Calabar was not just a spoken language but also had written functions.
The diary also provided some of the earliest evidence of the pidgin that continues as
Nigerian Pidgin English (NPE) (p. 185). Unfortunately, a greater chunk of the diary
was bombed at the library of the United Church of Scotland during the Second World
War (Fayer, 1990).
NP started off as a language of business communication and with the passage of
time, it expanded to other domains and functionalities. NP has English as the lexifier
language, while other languages like French, Portuguese, and Nigeria's indigenous
languages are the substrate source of lexical influence. In the developmental
continuum of NP, a number of changes and innovations had taken place, which may
either be contact-induced or self-renewing. One such change in the evolution of
historical morphosyntax of NP is the acquisition of grammatical functions by lexical

4
items which hitherto belonged to a categorical class and performed a lexical function
(Traugott, 2004). Traugott (ibid) calls this phenomenon ''a shift from lexical to
grammatical'' (p. 140) or from grammatical to further grammatical. In other words,
lexical/grammatical items have undergone changes in use, meaning and form, and
new forms and new functions have been assigned to them relative to the system
(Vincent, 1995).
Grammaticalization has been described as a language-internal development and
conceived as a slow, diachronic, progressive and unidirectional process (Hopper &
Traugott, 1993; Miller, 2000; Traugott & Heine, 1991). In grammaticalization,
synchronic realities are often explained in terms of diachronic changes. This paper
discusses the grammaticalization of verbs, which function as tense markers,
aspectual markers, auxiliary elements and complementizers as well as nouns which
grammaticalize as plural markers. In the relevant literature on grammaticalization,
no study has examined the phenomenon in NP either from a theoretical or
exemplifying perspective. The present study, therefore, sets the tone to filling this
conceptual gap by providing an analysis that would be of interest to scholars of
grammaticalization and generative linguists. The paper is structured as follows: The
next section examines the background on Calabar variety of NP which is the
reference point for the present study. Section 3 deals with the grammaticalization of
verbs, Section 4 is the grammaticalization of prepositions, Section 5 examines the
grammaticalization of nouns. Section 6 is the summary of findings, and provides
further perspectives for future research.
Data for the study were obtained through recording of natural occurring speech of
speakers of a variety of NP spoken in Calabar, the capital city of Cross River State,
South-Eastern Nigeria. This variety of NP is popularly called Una or Broken English.
Fifty respondents or subjects within the age bracket of between 15 and 70 years
were sampled randomly. Young people within the age range of between 15 and 35
constituted the largest population (52%) while middle-aged respondents (36-50
years) and elderly respondents (51-70 years) respectively constituted 25% and 23%
of the total respondents studied. 70% of the respondents (35) were males while the
remaining 30% were females. The preponderance of young people was based on
their creative and innovative use of NP. They have a way of generating the relevant

5
data without being prompted unlike other categories of respondents. The data were
mainly obtained in schools, university campuses, homes, markets and other
conversational contexts and involved a wide range of subjects –politics, religion,
commerce, economy, education, labour etc.
Eighteen of the respondents speak NP as a second language, representing 36%,
while 32 of them, representing 64%, speak NP as a third language. This variable
also gives a clue to the educational background of the respondents. Those who
speak NP as a second language are not literate in English (formal education), while
those who have it as the third tongue may have graduated from either a higher
school or the university. 15% of the respondents were elites like university
professors, administrators, highly revered clergymen, etc. 60% were the middle
class which includes teachers, civil servants, pensioners, farmers, etc. and 25% were
artisans, bus conductors and motor park touts. We also employed participant
observation as a primary method for the research. A digital recorder was used to
store the corpus of grammaticalized speech. Four hours of recording were done in
the field. The data which were transcribed and annotated formed the basis of our
analysis.
 
2. BACKGROUND ON THE CALABAR VARIETY OF NP
A number of varieties of NP have been recognised in literature such as Wafi, spoken
predominantly in Warri and Sapele (Marchese & Schnukal, 1982), Ajegunle, spoken
in Lagos and its environs ( Jowitt, 1991), Una, the Calabar variety, spoken in
Southern Cross River State (Mensah, 2011) and Special English, the varieties spoken
in Port- Harcourt and Onitsha, etc. A generally known feature of all these varieties is
that they developed in highly linguistically heterogenous settings. They are also
mutually intelligible but each has its peculiar social and morphosyntactic
idiosyncrasies which make it stand out as a distinct variety. The Warri variety is
believed to be the most versatile and creative of all the varieties of NP (Marchese &
Schnukal, 1982; Mensah, 2011). It contributes the highest amount of slang which
eventually gains currency and becomes conventionalised in the lexicon of their
variety of NP and beyond. Such newly invented entries in the Warri variety include
efizy ''style'', káwásáki ''leave quickly'', strafe ''sexual intercourse'', ákátá ''an African-

6
American'' and gbósá ''loud noise'', etc. These lexical items have socially invented
meanings which gradually spread to the other varieties. The Ajegunle variety is
highly influenced by Yoruba slang such as egunje ''bribe'', tokumbo ''second hand-
rated goods'', òròbò ''an extremely fat person'', lékpá ''a very thin person (usually a
female)'', ásháwó ''a prostitute'', ibeji ''twins'' etc. The Onitsha variety is partly
influenced by Igbo's (its predominant speakers) commercialism and trade slang.
Words and expressions like nyàkìrì ''dishonest transaction'', buy market ''be in
trouble'', bad market ''worthless goods items'', etc. are commonplace and contribute
to the resourcefulness and lexical enrichment of NP.
Una, the Calabar variety of NP, is a fairly stable variety which evolved with the
advent of NP during the pre-colonial era in Nigeria (Elugbe & Omamor, 1991). It
spreads to the entire South- Eastern part of the country due to the influx of traders
with diverse linguistic backgrounds (e.g. Igbo, Ekoi, Agwagune, Ugep, Obubra etc.)
who were transacting business along the West African coast. English is the chief
donor language (superstrate) while Efik is the primary substrate lexical influence in
addition to other pre-colonial Nigerian languages like Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba. Efik,
English and NP exist in a diglossic relationship within the urban sociolinguistic
ecology. This variety is mainly coloured by the Efik lexemes and calque forms which
give it its distinctive character. A number of metaphors and metonym in this variety
demonstrates the indigenous languages influence as our data could reveal:
 1.
kóp nó mí (lit. listen to me) - love portion
ínwáñ (lit. farm) - a foolish person
útóñ (lit. ear) - a mobile handset
kwat nkpe (lit. scratch and pay)- a prostitute
dry die - HIV/AIDS
cry die - mourning
yansh man - a homosexual
yansh babe - a lesbian
 Another important form of the influence of the indigenous language on this variety
is its combination with English through blending to create lexical items by semantic
association as we can see in 2:

7
2.
úbók gum (hand/gum) - a mean or selfish person
sáí monkey (roamy monkey) - (lit.) a thief
tíñ ké church (say in/church) - stop nagging (lit. testify, confess)
 There is also the juxtaposition of elements from two lexical items (clipping) in
English to create a word. This is mainly for aesthetic and comic effects as the data in
3 show:
 3.
fantabullous (fantastic/fabulous)
overgasted (overwhelmed/flabbergasted)
flabberwhelmed (flabbergasted/overwhelmed)
carnibration (carnival/celebration)
edutainment (education/entertainment)
terrubious (terrible/dubious)
 
This kind of coinage has also gained currency in other varieties of NP and
particularly in Keggite's (a social network group made up of undergraduate students)
communication. It is, however, noted that it is somehow more common in the Una
variety than in others, though they may not originally have been coined in this
variety.
An interesting feature of NP is that it is gradually acquiring affixes, and thus
developing a complex morphological system. For instance, words like misyarn,
misfire, blacky, shorty, etc. are in the lexicon of NP and function to bring out
contrastive meaning, and emphatic meaning. The illustrations in 3 naturally would
be considered to be ''grammar'' by the speakers of NP (i.e., high sounding and
embellished words) and would be simplified to less complicated forms in NP natural
discourse. However, they are mainly used to create humour and achieve maximum
comic effect. Elugbe and Omamor (1991) describe such creations as a substandard
attempt by a large proportion of illiterate Nigerians ill-equipped to manipulate the
English language. Mensah (2011) refers to such forms as a feature of Pidgin English
which he rightly distinguishes from Nigerian Pidgin.

8
An important morphophonemic fact about the Calabar variety of NP is that it does
not distinguish homophones. Though this is a general feature of NP, the Calabar
variety seems to be a little more dynamic creating homophones from both
superstrate and substrate sources. Words like thing, thin, tin are pronounced [tin].
Forms like sight, site and cite would be [sait] while write, right and rite may be [rait]
etc. The reason for this discrepancy is that the relationship between sound and
spelling is much more stable in NP than in English. The phonological reduction of
codas and the neutralization of phonemes lead to greater number of homophones in
NP than in metropolitan English. Although no variety of any language distinguishes
homophones phonetically. The NP sounds match their corresponding letters in a
direct and more faithful one-on-one relation. It is true that there is no generally
accepted orthography for NP, hence, each writer prefers a writing system that is a
true reflection of the sound. The only way to distinguish homophones in NP is with
suprasegmental features like tone and intonation, non-linguistic features like
gestures and mimicry as well as the context of discourse as we can see in the data
in 4 and 5:
 4.
a. Pálè no gree me come.

pale NEG gree me come

(My) father didn't allow me to come.
b. De pálè bin dey misyarn una.
DET pale PAST PROG misyarn you (PL)
5.
a. Chelsea bin waya Arsenal well.
Chelsea PAST waya Arsenal well
Chelsea defeated Arsenal glaringly.
b. Jossy carry de waya troway.
Jossy carry DET waya troway
Jossy threw away the wire.
 

9
The homophones pálè father/friends in 4 and waya in defeat/wire in 5 can only be
distinguished contextually. They are phonetically and orthographically identical and
both pairs can be used in lexical decision task to investigate word recognition
(Martin, 1982).
The Calabar variety allows a much greater degree of multifunctionality of lexical
items in which case, a lexical item can belong to more than one grammatical class or
part of speech in agreement with Muhlhausler (2008, p. 81) who states that the
elimination of many formal distinctions between word classes is to be expected in
any mixed language. In this regard, we examine two lexical items, runs and toronto
which can function as nouns, transitive and intransitive verbs and adjectives:
6. As nouns
E dey do runs.
3SG PRES do runs
She is into prostitution.
E be real toronto.
3SG be real toronto
He' s a real cheat.
7. As adjectives
E be runs babe.
3SG be runs babe
She is a smart girl (given to prostitution).
Wer de toronto boy?
Q DET toronto boy
Where is the fake boy?
8. As transitive verbs
E dey runs pay fees.
3SG PRES runs pay fees
She does prostitution to pay her fees.
You no fit toronto me.
2SG NEG AUX toronto me
You cannot deceive me.
9. As intransitive verbs

10
E dey runs.
3SG PRES runs
She prostitutes very well.
Me dey toronto.
1SG PRES toronto
I deceive people a lot.
Where these forms are used as verbs without cognate objects as in 9, a pragmatic
reading is required to interpret the intensity of the action described by the verb. The
verb emphasises the degree to which the action is performed. The examples in 6-9
reveal that the same words can be used freely as different parts of speech, where
no formal distinction can be made between a noun, verb and adjective.
From the perspective of morphosyntax, the Calabar variety exhibits the presence of
tense but also predominant loss of inflectional and derivational morphology which is
a feature of pidgin languages. The most striking syntactic peculiarity of this variety is
that some speakers use the objective singular personal pronoun me for both the
subjective and objective positions as well as the objective plural personal pronoun
we for both the subjective and objective positions as we can see in 10:
 10.
a. Me wan follow come.
1SG want follow come
I want to come as well
b. Una no dey follow me.
2PL NEG PRES follow pro
You cannot come with me
11.
a. We wan follow come
1PL want follow come
We want to come as well
b. Una no dey follow we
2PL NEG PRES follow pro
You cannot follow us

11
It is, however, noted that the use of the first person subjective pronoun I is more
productive than me just as the use of us is more marked than we as an objective
personal pronoun in this variety. The reason is because pidgin languages are not
very systematic. The use of me and we as the corresponding markers for both the
objective and subjective cases do not impose selectional restrictions on the
assignment of theta roles to either the external argument (subject noun phrase) and
internal argument (object noun phrase). This is a morphosyntactic fact about
person/number agreement that is also found in other varieties particularly the Ikom
variety where it predominates. For the purpose of this study and reason of
consistency, we shall adopt the use of I for the first person singular subjective
pronoun instead of me. Generally, the sources of all the features of Calabar variety
of NP being catalogued here are as follows:
(i) directly from an indigenous language (Efik).
(ii) other varieties of NP and metropolitan English.
(iii) an organic process of evolution which pertain to pidgin languages (the notorious
''simplification'' or ''resetting to default'' claim [Bikerton, 1984])
In the following discussion, we describe how NP verbs undergo grammaticalization.
 3. GRAMMATICALIZATION OF VERBS
A number of lexical verbs in NP have undergone changes in use, form, meaning and
function in the historical development of NP. In this way, grammaticalization can be
seen as the gradual historical development of function morphemes from content
morphemes (Fintel, 1995). Some verbs undergo changes from lexemes to auxiliaries,
complementizers and tense while others encode temporal constituency of a
situation. In the ensuing discussion, we examine the syntax of each verb as a
grammatical marker in NP.
3.1 The grammaticalization of say and make
Say is a verb of communication, and it focuses on the communication of a message
by a subject rather than illocutionary force. It has an agentive subject and a direct
object or a recipient as its subcategorization requirements as illustrated in 12:
 
12

12
 a. Oga say e wan see you.
master say 3SG want see pro
Master says (that) he wants to see you
b. I say you be mumu.
1SG say 2SG COP fool
I am saying (that) you are a fool
As a verb in NP, say has retained its expressive value, functional significance and
meaning and is quite dynamic and immutable as in 12. Say functions as the head of
the predicate phrase in the matric clause. The noun in the subordinate clause is in
identity with the noun in the matrix clause which it modifies. The noun in the
subordinate clause is prenominalised overtly by that. The verb say, however, has
talk and yarn as its near synonymies as we can see in 13:
13
a. Wetin you dey talk?
Q 2SG PROG talk
What are you saying?
b. Wetin me yarn be ....
Q ISG yarn be
What I am saying is ....
Yarn, however, is a Wafi slang that is mostly used when one is asking another to tell
him/her about what had happened or when one wants to acquaint another with
what had happened as in 14:
 14
a. Yarn me the tin wey happen.
yarn me DET tin DET happen
Tell me the thing that happened
b. Make I yarn you the tin wey I see.
Make 1SG yarn 2SG DET tin DET 1SG see
Let me tell you the thing that I saw
One cannot use say in the contexts of 14 (a) and (b), rather, another verb of
communication, tell is implied. From the examples in 13, it is evident that the lexical
items talk and yarn form a semantic cluster in which say can be substituted. It has

13
been established that talk has a closer semantic relationship to say than yarn. We
can therefore say that say does have a statable lexical meaning as a verb and can
also function as a complementizer. This justifies Nicolle's (2007, p. 49) claim that
lexical source constructions may also continue to be used concurrently with the gram
that derives from it:
15
a. You think say me dey craze?
2SG think COMP ISG PRES craze
Do you think (that) I am crazy?
b. Chairman wan see say you do am well
Chairman want see COMP 2SG do it well
(The) boss wants to ensure (that) you do it wel
 Structurally, the complementizer say is closely associated with the main verb which
it modifies. From 15, while the complementizer may be an optional element in
English, it is a mandatory subcategorization requirement of the sentence in NP.
Millar (2007) argues that historically, complement constructions are syntactically
entirely independent. This implies that they existed as separate sentences and in the
passage of time, the two sentences were combined into one and the demonstrative
was reduced to a mere grammatical particle. Say functions as the head of the
subordinate clause or complentizer phrase. It places emphasis on the complement of
the sentence by preposing it to the focus position. The complementizer is
subcategorized for the verb, hence, is the head of the embedded or complement
clause. The notion of subcategorization is important here because not all verbs in NP
can choose say as their complements:
16
a. Me wonder say me go come
ISG wonder COMP ISG FUT come
I wonder whether I will come
b. Allman dey prepare say dem to come
Allman PROG prepare COMP for them to come
Everyone is preparing for them to come

14
 From the evidence in 16, it is established that say is a complementizer. It mainly
subcategories for verbs of cognition and not verbs of perception. From the above
analysis, we can propose the syntactic behaviour of say as a complementizer as
follows:
(a) it must have an agentive subject.
(b) it agrees with a non-finite complement clause.
(c) it topicalises the complement at the expense of the main clause.
The evidence in 16 further reveals that there can be other types of complementizers
in NP such as if and for as we can see in 17(a) and (b) respectively:
17
a. I wonder if I go come
ISG wonder COMP ISG FUT come
I wonder if I could come
b. Allman dey prepare for dem to come
Allman PROG prepare COMP them to come
Everyone is preparing for their arrival
 Conversely, if and for have stronger syntactic bond with verbs of perception and
action, though they are not grammaticalized in these contexts. The assumption here
is that the grammaticalization of say is due to internal evolution not necessarily as a
result of language transfer or contact.
The irregular verb mek can also function as a complementizer in NP. It is said to be
a light verb in English which implies an active role by the subject which causes
something new to come into existence from a pre-existing situation or normal course
of event. In NP, the verb mek acts as both lexeme and gram. As a lexeme, it is
mainly a causative marker, and as a gram, it functions as a complementizer only in
association with the lexical verb say:
 18
a. Me wan mek you come
1SG want CAUSE 2SG come
I want you to come

15
 b. Me say mek you come
1SG say COMP 2SG come
I say (that) you should come
 
In 18(a), the verb mek lends relatively little semantic content to the embedded
command which is derived from the imperative construction you come. The
implication of our analysis here is that matrix command in NP is covertly embedded.
The introduction of the causativizer mek has brought about change in grammatical
functions which can be stated as follows:
null => subject
subject => object
Note that the causative marker has also introduced a transitivizing verb wan which it
complements and a new subject which has a theta role of an agent. In this way,
mek has increased the valency of the verb and makes it take a new noun phrase and
thematic function.
In 18(b), mek functions as a complementizer and encodes a modal interpretation. It
is preceded by the subject and the main verb of the predicate phrase which is a
subcategorization requirement. In other words, it connects a matrix clause with a
subordinate clause. It constitutes the head of the CP which combines with the VP to
form the subordinate clause. Semantically, it indicates the truth conditional of the
proposition and demonstrates that the construction it introduces is embedded.
According to Radford (1997), a gram like mek marks the illocutionary force of the
clause it introduces.
3.2 The grammaticalization of go and bin as tense markers
The deitic movement verb go is gradually losing its concrete meaning such as
physical motion or directionality. It functions as a future tense marker. The
acquisition of the property of future tense by the verb go is brought about by the
complex interplay between the need for expressivity and creativity on the one hand
and regularization and routinization on the other (Bruyn, 1995, p. 4). The movement
verb does not demonstrate the semantic component of physical movemente, rather
it shows an ability to stack with a main verb as its auxiliary in the grammaticalization
process. Millar (2007) argues that a grammaticalizing verb like go does not express

16
actual motion but rather an intention for the near future. In other words, it
expresses change of location on the part of the subject (Nicolle, 2007, p. 48):
19
a. I go chop rice
ISG FUT chop rice
I will eat rice
b. We go tumble you
1PL FUT tumble you
We will fight you.
The examples in 19 show that go occurred when the situation time is posterior to
the reference time and the action described by the verb will happen after the
moment of speaking. The situation talked about intends to happen in the remote or
near future. The movement verb to go occurs preverbally to indicate futurity in
support of Nicolle (2007) claim that movement verbs are typically sources of future
tenses. It does not select the type of verbs it co-occurs. This implies that it does not
impose selectional restrictions on its subject. We notice a parametric difference
between the structure of sentences containing tense markers when they are
negated.
20
a. Me no go chop rice
ISG NEG FUT chop rice
I will not eat rice
b. We no go tumble you
3PL NEG FUT tumble you
We will not fight you
 
The NEG marker in NP follows the subject noun phrase directly and is the first
constituent of the predicate phrase. It is preceded by the future tense marker and
the main verb. In English, the superstrate lexical base for NP, the future tense
marker precedes the NEG marker before the main verb.
In addition to functioning as a future tense marker, go can also function as a
coordinator in a sentence, usually imperative order:

17
 21.
Come go chop rice
come CONJ chop rice
Come and eat rice
This syntactic operation involves the stacking of verbs, which recognises go as a
conjoining element that co-occurs between two other verbs. In this case, it connotes
deitic movement and has the effect of ''providing the deitic anchoring of a situation
with respect to the speaker or the hearer'' (Radden, 1996, p. 431). The function of
go in 21 as a deitic movement verb has changed but its semantic content has not
changed. This, according to Nicolle (2007, p. 58), is because pragmatically, the most
salient verb would be chop and a verb like come only expresses the speaker's
perspective since the chopping is to be done where the speaker is situated –
physically or conceptually– and not anywhere else.
The English copular verb be which is the lexical source for bin in NP is
grammaticalized as a past tense marker (in NP) having undergone functional
renewal which involves reuse of an old construction for a new function (Traugott,
2004, p. 134). Just like the future tense marker, bin precedes the verb:
22
a. I bin chop rice
ISG PAST chop rice
I ate rice
b. We bin tumble you
3PL PAST tumble you
We fought you
 Bin here functions as a neutral perfect past which simply states what happened
without a particular emphasis on any word or phrase in the sentence. It always
attracts an agentive subject and no selectional restrictions on verbs. In 22, it
indicates that the action described by the verb occurred prior to the time of the
speech. This means that the situation time is anterior to the reference time and both
are anterior to the speech time. Bin shows that the situation talked about happened
in the near or remote past.

18
The grammaticalization of go and bin as tense markers is a direct response to the
need of filling particular functional gaps. NP has been functionally deficient thus new
categories are required to fill certain morphosyntactic vacuums, hence the derivation
of go and bin. They usually do not select the type of verbs of perception, stative
verbs and action verbs etc. These tense markers are sourced from the language's
internal mechanism and not really the product of contact.
3.3 The grammaticalization of fit
The verb fit is used as a modal marker and it grammaticalizes two different degrees
of the speaker's commitment towards the reality or truth of what he is saying:

23
a. I fit slap you now
1SG AUX slap you now
I can slap you now.
b. I fit come
1SG AUX come
I can come.
 
In 23 (a), fit is used to indicate that the action of the verb is possible while in 23 (b),
it shows factual probability or epistemicity of the verb. We observe that in negating
constructions containing fit, the order of NEG and AUX can be altered to convey
different moods:
 23
c. I fit no slap you now
1SG AUX NEG slap you now
I may not slap you now
d. I fit no come
1SG AUX NEG come
I may not come
e. I no fit slap you now
1SG NEG AUX slap you now
I cannot slap you now.

19
 f. I no fit come
1SG NEG AUX come
I cannot come
 
The prohibitive ordering of elements, particularly the relationship between the NEG
marker and AUX marker reveals different temporal relations or logical possibilities in
23 (c)-(f ). In 23(c) and (d) where the NEG marker precedes the AUX marker before
the verb, the overall reality or truth of the statement expresses the semantic concept
of prohibitive probability while in 23(e) and (f ) where the AUX marker precedes the
NEG marker before the verb, they indicate prohibitive possibility. Generally, fit is
used in expressing ability as an AUX in NP and it always requires a succeeding verb
just as can in English.
3.4 The grammaticalization of suppose and try
The verbs suppose and try have modal and non-modal use in NP. They can function
as semi- auxiliaries. Suppose is analogous with English ought to or should depending
on context while try is synonymous with English dare:
 24
a. I suppose see chairman early momo
1SG AUX see chairman ADJ morning
I ought to/should see the chairman early in the morning'
b. You wan try me?
2SG want AUX pro
Do you want to dare me?
 
Suppose as an auxiliary within the VP gives information about occurrence of
suggested obligation or logical necessity. It precedes the main verb see within the
VP, which has chairman as its complement. It has both an objective meaning as
represented by English ought to and subjective meaning as indicated by English
should. In 24(a), suppose refers to someone who is not fulfilling his obligation but
hopes to do so in the future. It is a kind of epistemic modality since the speaker
expresses an opinion about a statement. The speaker's attitude is about the
possibility of seeing the chairman in the morning, but of which he is not certain. It

20
can also express relatively high probability, e.g. The time reference for suppose can
be shifted from the present to the past/future using the past tense operator bin/go.
The auxiliary try in NP is mainly restricted to non- assertive contexts, especially in
interrogative and negative sentences. Unlike suppose, it follows the main verb within
the VP. It expresses willingness in the face of contrary obligation. In 24(b), try is
used by the speaker to denote his expressed commitment as a treat to bring about
the proposition expressed by the utterance. The speaker desires that the situation
be made to conform to certain norms or expectations. Hence, try could be said to be
a deontic modality. The time reference for try can shift from the present/future to
the past using the corresponding tense markers.
The three way grammatical chain for suppose and try is:
25. lexical verb => AUX => grammatical morpheme
No overt morphological marking is possible on any of the verbs as a characteristics
of pidgin languages. The stacking of the verbs within the same VPs is what Nicolle
(2007) calls fake coordination. Suppose see in 24(a) is an instance of serial verb
construction, which is a Bantu characteristic of most of the pre-colonial languages in
Nigeria like Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba, Efik and Edo etc. which are the substrate lexical
influence of NP. There is no overt marker of coordination, subordination, or syntactic
dependency of any kind between the AUX and the main verb. The AUX indicates the
inception phase of an event while the main verb is the corresponding termination
phase of the same event. The two phases are semantically related and understood
as two phases of a unitary event (Aikhenvald, 2006). Wan try is a case of verb
stacking given that NP does not use the preposition to productively as English does.
The simple yes-no question in 24(b) with wan and try is not tenseless. It has a
semantic interpretation of non-past tense which is overtly marked. From the
perspective of minimalist syntax, the position of TP is occupied by this null tense
marker:
 

21
  
The form T1; out of VP is raised to full TP by a subject element which acts as a
specifier. The sentence is a projection of the modal auxiliary try which is raised to IP
by a complement D and to VP by a SPEC you.
4. THE GRAMMATICALIZATION OF PREPOSITIONS AND NOUNS
In the following discussions, we examine the grammaticalized status of the
preposition for and the pronoun dem which fill some gaps in the continuum from
lexical categories to syntactic auxiliary and plural markers respectively.
4.1 The grammaticalization of for
Mensah (2011) identifies for as the most mutable lexical item in NP. As a
preposition, it can be used to substitute for several other prepositions as we can see
in 27:
27
E dey for the table It's on the table.

22
I live for school domot I live at the school compound.
No be for mouth It's not by boasting.
I put am for your bag I put it in/inside your bag.
E good for you It's good for you.
Hú be gofnor for Lagos? Who is the governor of Lagos (State)?
Wáká for legedis. Walk with your legs.
Beyond its lexical mutability, the preposition for performs a major grammatical
function in NP as an aspectual marker and an auxiliary marker:
 
28
a. We for like come 1PL AUX like come We would like to come
b. I for chop rice
ISG AUX ASP chop rice
I would have eaten rice
 
In 28(a), the preposition for clearly functions as a past auxiliary element which
characteristically precedes the main verbs. Here, for is a modal auxiliary which gives
the same grammatical information as represented on the verb. In 28 (b), the
sentence has a perfect aspect, which refers to a completed action. This is marked by
the use of for which is realised as an auxiliary marker + a perfective aspect. In other
words, it is a combination of modal auxiliary and aspectual auxiliary. The examples
in 28 obey the subject- auxiliary order in declarative sentences but not auxiliary-
subject order in yes-no questions:
 
29
a. For we like come?
AUX 1PL like come
Would we like to come?
b. For I chop rice
AUX ASP 1SG chop rice
Would I have eaten rice
 

23
The implication is that, while English allows subjects to follow auxiliaries directly in
yes-no questions, NP is selectionally constrained. The data in 29 show that subject-
Aux inversion was not learned in NP given that subject-Aux inversion is a very
marked construction. This, however, is a morphosyntactic fact that is not particularly
relevant to grammaticalization.
4.2 The grammaticalization of dem
The use of dem in NP is also shifting from being a personal marker to becoming a
plural marker with indefinite quantifying value:
 
30
a. Me bin see Kofi dem
ISG PAST see Kofi PL
I saw Kofi and others
b. E shout give student dem for class
3SG shout at student PL for class
He shouted at the students in the clas
Dem in NP can only be used to postmodify definite animate nouns as a plural
marker. In 30(a), it connotes the notion that Kofi was seen with at least another
person or a company of people by the speaker. In 30(b), dem is used to mark
plurality in the same sense of the pluralizing suffix -s in English.
However, the definite animate nouns like Kofi and student which dem postmodify
can be deleted in the sentence if the listener or addressee has a pragmatic
background of the discourse without the sentences losing their semantic load. in NP
can only be used to postmodify definite animate nouns as a plural marker. In 30(a),
it connotes the notion that Kofi was seen with at least another person or a company
of people by the speaker. In 30(b), dem is used to mark plurality in the same sense
of the pluralizing suffix -s in English. However, the definite animate nouns like Kofi
and student which dem postmodify can be deleted in the sentence if the listener or
addressee has a pragmatic background of the discourse without the sentences losing
their semantic load.
 
THE ROLE OF PIDGIN AS A MEANS OF COMMUNICATION IN UNIFYING STUDENTS

24
Fundamentally, a pidgin is a simplified means of linguistic communication, as it is
constructed impromptu, or by convention, between individuals or groups of people.
The origin of pidgin could be traced to 1850, when it first appeared in print. Shaibu
(2013) describes Nigerian Pidgin English as a combination of indigenous languages
and English. It basically uses English words mixed into Yoruba, Benin or Igbo
grammar. Nigerian Pidgin English used to be seen mainly as the code of the non-
literate as well as a bastardization of English, therefore, was considered as indicative
of academic proficiency in English. In the case of Nigeria however, Akande
(2008:37) notes that, the social linguistic reality in Nigeria today is such that
Nigerian Pidgin English is spoken by university graduates, professors, lawyers and
journalists.
Holm (1988) considers language contact to be nearly as old as language itself. To
support this idea he points out that in the ancient Egypt there was a trade language
developed among several Hamito-Semitic languages in contact in the Nile Valley,
which can be considered a pidgin. A pidgin, or pidgin language is a simplified version
of a language that develops as a means of communication between two or more
groups that do not have a language in common. It is most
2
commonly employed in situations such as trade, or where both groups speak
languages different from the language of the country in which they reside. Major
language changes usually occur over centuries, but the language contact that forms
pidgins results in ‘rapid language change and evolution’ (Patrick. 2006). A pidgin
language is a variety created by combining two or more existing languages through
the process of ‘pidginization’. When people need to communicate but speak different
native languages, they may combine their own languages to create a new ‘pidgin
language'. This language is then transferred by word of mouth to others and
becomes the acknowledged way for the different speaking communities to
communicate.
Pidgin is a wide term covering a range of regional hybrids, which evolved through
historical events such as the spread of Empires, settlement, migration and

25
international trade. Found in Africa (West African Pidgins include Nigerian Pidgin,
Cameroonian Pidgin, Sierra Leone Krio), Indonesia (Tok Pisin, spoken in Papua New
Guinea), parts of Asia and the Caribbean, English derived Pidgins are inventive,
innovative, and often quite literal. For example in Tok Pisin, 'gras bilong het' (or
grass belong head) simply means 'hair'. Because of their spontaneous adaptability,
Pidgins are unlike other languages in that they can be as structured or as
unstructured as needed - there are no strict rules as such. Pidgins are also not used
as mother tongues, though over time and generations, the language evolves, is
adopted and changes to gradually become a first language for new generations.
Historically, Pidgin occurs in situations where native language is seen as subordinate,
or banned in the case of slavery, and is the point where Pidgin arguably moves to
become a Creole, or a stable, 'nativised' language. Scholarly debate remains
however, as to what point a Pidgin language can evolve to become a Creole and
replace a native language over the generations.
3
As an idea of how language evolves, from 'no common language' between English
and native groups, to 'Pidgin' languages to 'Creole', the tongue follows four main
stages of development -
Restricted - The beginnings of Pidgin, used as a fundamental necessity when
contact between language groups (English and native) is limited.
Extended - If contact is more prolonged, Pidgin develops, and may be situationally
encouraged to be used between natives themselves (i.e. natives of differing native
tongues), as well as between other language groups.
 Creole - If Pidgin survives, and if inter-native use evolves enough, it can develop
into a Creole language to become a next generation mother tongue in place of the
native language.
 Standardization/decreolization - Increasingly standardized and structured, over
time, the Creole becomes more rigid, developing into a standard, stabilized language
(And very different from the original loose Pidgin structures)
Nowadays, Pidgin English is in extensive use and is well-recognised around the
globe, especially in parts of West Africa and Oceania. In 2012 for example, for the
Queen's Diamond Jubilee celebrations, Prince Charles visited Papua New Guinea,

26
introducing himself as the "Numbawan pikinini bilong Misis Kwin", (or 'number one
child belonging to Mrs Queen') proving the resilience and longevity which Pidgin
(despite its modest roots) can have - if royalty can speak it, Pidgin has really gone a
long way. However, to be considered pidgin it must be stable and have norms of
meaning, grammar and pronunciation. Some of its characteristics are: limited
vocabulary; elimination of many grammatical devices - such as number and gender;
lack of inflectional and derivational morphemes; lack of verbal inflection; loss of
prepositions and indicators of time, aspect and mood; lack of locative prepositions
and plural indicator; movement rules among others.
4
1.1.2 Pidgin in the 21st Century
It has been discovered lately, that most people especially students in various
Nigerian tertiary institutions, find it easier to communicate with pidgin whenever
they are in an informal setting. It is also important to mention that Pidgin has been
able to secure a place in the corporate world. People switch to Pidgin in the middle
of a formal conversation either to explain themselves better or to cite an instance to
juxtapose the message they are trying to pass across. Obafemi Awolowo University,
a typical example of a multilingual setting; people from different cultural
backgrounds live together in a room, and communication has to take place. This set
of people prefer to use pidgin as a means of communication whenever they engage
in conversations in any informal environment because there are no standard rules
guiding its usage unlike the Standard English where you have to abide by the rules
of concord, syntax, phonology, and semantics among others. In other words, they
feel more convenient when they express themselves in pidgin because they is always
the tendency of being careful not to break the rules of concord, syntax, grammar,
among others.
Akande and Salami (2010) assume that the urban characters of the university
environments are strong factors influencing the students’ use and attitudes to
Nigerian Pidgin English (NPE). They hold that apart from their education, living
within the university communities, the students are likely to enact more urban
networks that are usually made up of multilingual and multicultural contents. It is
noteworthy to emphasize that the university communities have a large number of

27
users of the Nigerian Pidgin English. Basically, it could be argued that Nigerian Pidgin
English plays a unifying role among its users, as it is the language of the educated
and the uneducated irrespective of their linguistic backgrounds. Akande (2008:38)
argues “it could be regarded as a
5
marker of identity and solidarity. It is an inter-ethnic code available to Nigerians,
who have no other common language.
1.2 Statement of Research Problem
After various research procedures, it is evident that students of Obafemi Awolowo
University feel more comfortable whenever they are expressing themselves in Pidgin,
this study examines the degree Pidgin is used, the various types, the gender
involved, and the cultural undertone. Previous studies on pidgin have focused on the
origin and characteristics of Pidgin. Studies on how it performs its unifying role
among its users in a multilingual setting such as Obafemi Awolowo University halls of
residence has not received adequate scholarly attention. This type of study would
also highlight the positive roles of pidgin in Nigeria.
1.3 Aim and Objectives
The aim of this study is to describe how pidgin unifies the residents of the selected
halls of residence in Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, who are from diverse
linguistic backgrounds. The objectives of this study are to:
a. analyse the forms of conversations peculiar among the residents of Moremi and
Fajuyi halls of residence.
b. highlight how pidgin fosters, unifies and brings about the ease of communication
among selected respondents, and
c. analyse the recorded conversations in the context of time, mood and situation
accompanying them, in order to show how pidgin unifies them.
6
1.4 Significance of the Study
Pidgin is an important code for communication in a multilingual society, where many
cultural differences are in existence and have in one way or the other dominated the
day-to-day conversations of the students of Obafemi Awolowo University, this study
would examine the frequency at which pidgin is used, the syntactic groups, and the

28
cultural undertone reflected in the kind of pidgin used among the students, and the
purposes for which pidgin is used. The importance of this study is not just to
describe how pidgin is used, but to provide a deep insight of how pidgin serves the
unifying role among the students of Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife.
1.5 Assumptions Underlying the Study
a. Students adopt various forms of expressions ranging from the use of their local
dialects, British English, and the use of Pidgin.
b. Students have diverse ways of using Pidgin.
c. Pidgin makes communication easier in a multilingual speech community.
1.6 Scope of the Study
There are various forms of languages in the world, and it is impossible for an
individual to be proficient in all these languages. In Moremi and Awolowo halls of
residence in Obafemi Awolowo University, which are typical examples of multilingual
societies. Pidgin is commonly used during conversations among students because
most of the conversations done in the academic environment are usually formal
thereby creating some restrictions for the students as they tend to carefully select
words in order not to bypass the rigorous processes of the Standard British English.

5. SUMMARY OF FINDINGS
This study has examined internally motivated changes in NP which have resulted in
lexical items developing into morphosyntactic markers after undergoing semantic
bleaching in the language. We investigated verbs and nouns which have been
grammaticalized as tense/aspect markers, complementizers, and plural markers, etc.
in NP. We agree with Hopper and Traugott (1993) that a change in synchronic
language development is opportunistic, not predetermined. NP lexical items which
develop new grammatical functions are not influenced by its superstrate and
substrate donors but are purely independent, self-renewing and language change
mechanisms, which are robust paths towards its creolization and evolving its unique
grammar. The present study will serve as a reference point in an attempt to further
expand the frontiers of research in NP scholarship.
 

29
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I wish to thank three anonymous reviewers of this paper and Prof.Victor Manfredi of
the African Studies Centre, Boston University, USA. They have contributed ideas,
references, criticisms and intellectual support which have considerably improved the
quality of this paper. I gratefully acknowledge Prof. Fernando Ramallo of the
University of Vigo, Spain for the Spanish translation.
 
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