523 l3 La Anglais Ufhb Language Change 2020 21

SOCIO6216-2
LANGUAGE CHANGE
Dr ATCHE Djedou
FELIX HOUPHOUET-BOIGNY UNIVERSITY
L3 LA_ 2020-21
From Language Birth
to
Language Death
SOCIO6216.2 - Language Change: Pidgins, Creoles – Language death -
 Course Objectives
 To Discuss and analyse the Dynamics
of the Linguistic Ecosystem on the Life
of Natural Languages
 Expectations:
 Learners are able to Identify and
Analyse the major manifestations of
Language Change
REFERENCES
 COUPLAND, Nikolas & JAWORSKI, Adam. 1997.
Sociolinguistics: A Reader and Coursebook. New York:
Macmillan Press Ltd.
 COULMAS, Florian (Ed). 1998. The Handbook of
Sociolinguistics. B. Blackwell Publishers.
 DORIAN N.C. (1982a): Language Loss and
Maintenance in Language Contact Situations.
 DORIAN N.C. (1982 b) : Linguistics Models of
language death Evidence, New York Acad. Press.
 HUDSON, R.A. 1988. Sociolinguistics. Cambridge
University Press: Cambridge.
FASOLD, R. 1993. The Sociolinguistics of Society. Oxford
(UK), Cambridge (USA).
FASOLD, R. 1993. The Sociolinguistics of Language.
Oxford (UK), Cambridge (USA).
MUHLHAUSER, P. 1986. Pidgins and Creoles. Blackwell:
London.
SALIKOKO S. Mufwene. 2002. Colonisation, Globalisation,
and the Future of Languages in the Twenty-first Century.
In MOST Journal on Multicultural Societies, Vol. 4, No.2. Pp
1-48
SALIKOKO S. Mufwene. 2010. Globalization, Global
English, and World English(es): Myths and Facts. In
Handbook of Language and Globalization Nikolas
Coupland (Ed). Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 31-55
WARDHAUGH, R. 1990. An Introduction to
Sociolinguistics. Norwich: Blackwell
COURSE OUTLINE
► Pidgins
►Creoles
►Language Decay/Death
►Linguistic Ecosystem
Introduction
 Do Languages Change?
 If they do, what causes them to
change?
 Do we have different types of
Language change?
 What is the theoretical
foundation of Language
change?
 Introduction
 While Structural Linguistics studies
languages as an autonomous and static
self-contained system…
…while Transformational Grammar is
interested in the nature of language as a
human faculty….
…while Discourse Analysis Theories (e.g.
MOG) focus on the linguistic production of
the almighty speaker-utterer…
… the issue of Language Change comes
under the heading of a different approach to
Language which is Sociolinguistics.
 Introduction
 Sociolinguistics is the study of the
relationship between Language and Society.
Are there reasons to suspect any relationship
between Language and Society?
 Languages are often named after the communities
that use them:
 French  People of France;
 English  People living in England;
 Nzikpli  People living off the Nzi River, etc.
 Hence this question by Ivorians: “Tu parles quelle

ethnie?”
 Introduction
 A Baule elder defining the baule individual…
“ A Baule is a person who says “mi wan jo”

(“I say”, in Baule language)
 Such utterances suggest that even lay

people (=ordinary people) intuitively sense a
relationship between language and society:
In the academic or constituted knowledge,
these issues are the concern of
SOCIOLINGUISTICS.
 Sociolinguistics, as an approach to
language, is interested in the modification
of linguistic systems in two major ways:
 There are modifications which are the result of
very short spans of time, that is to say, instant or
synchronic modifications that will occur as
soon as speakers use their language (social
context-bound modifications), and…
Modifications that are the results the progressive
modification of linguistic systems which come over
long-standing periods (centuries), say diachronic
time.
 Introduction
 The first type of modifications (instant) are
known as linguistic variations and fall
under the heading of Micro-
sociolinguistics, while the second type
(diachronic modifications) are the
concern of Macro-sociolinguistics.
 Language being a system, no wonder
that it changes over time and a German
language historian August Schleicher
(1821-1868), a specialist in Indo-European,
equated languages to living organisms.
 Introduction
A. Schleicher leaned on the theory of
Charles DARWIN on the “evolution of
living species” to draw the parallel between
organisms and human languages;
In Schleicher’s perception, a language has
a period of birth; a period of dynamic life
and, unfortunately, a period of death;
But Language change through the “Birth”
or the “Death” of a language does not occur
overnight: “languages will not be delivered
birth or death certificates!” Saliko S.
MUFWENE once pointed out.
Introduction
Changes in language will be observed by specialists
but they will often go unnoticed by lay people.
Rather, it is always a long-standing process that
generally go unnoticed.
Language change unfolds over three stages

corresponding to:
 The emergence of pidgin languages (language
birth);
 The period of dynamic life (creole and ordinary
languages);
 The period of decline, decay and eventually
death.
1.
Pidgins
&
The Pidginization
Process
1. Pidgins and Pidginization Process
Preliminary Remarks
 Attitudes to Pidgins and Creoles
 For a long time, Pidgins & Creoles have been
neglected by language scientists on the grounds that they
presented little scientific interest to General Linguistics.
Such an attitude was associated to some implicit racist
claims: Pidgins and Creoles are spoken by non-European
(i.e. non-civilised) communities and it was implicitly
admitted that speakers of Pidgins and Creoles were not
intelligent or educated enough to speak “proper” or
"normal“ languages!
 As to get things worse, these languages are essentially
Third-World languages.
1 P i d g i n s & P i d g i n i z a t i o n P r o c e s s
 In the process of LANGUAGE CHANGE over

chronological time, a Pidgin & a Creole
represent two successive stages where
pidginization is the early stage and
creolisation the subsequent one (stage);
 To draw a parallel with other theories like MOG
these two theoretical “Etats de Langues” are a
macrocosm of the operative time principle:
Stage 1 Stage 2 Stage 1+n
Pidgin Creole Ordinary Lang.

1.1 THE TYPICAL SCENARIO: a

Multilingual Setting
 In a Multilingual Situation where several
languages are brought into the same geographical
space, languages face at least three possibilities :
 a) Linguistic Domination: one language out of

the others becomes the dominant langue and is used
by all the speakers even by those whose mother-
tongue is different (e.g. English in Australia where
English is a non-local language and it still imposes
itself over local languages)
1.1 The typical scenario: a multilingual setting

b) Linguistic Coexistence: all existing languages
manage to co-exist beside the invading language
(to some extent, the case of French in Niger beside
Hausa, Wolof beside French in Senegal, in Mali and
Guinea with French beside Mandingo);
c) The last possibility left to co-existing languages

in a multilingual situation is a Linguistic
Compromise: a new language arises and that
language is a more or less systematic mixture of
the existing languages and this is pidginization
precisely (Nigeria, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana…).

1.2 THE SOCIO-ECONOMIC FACTORS

 Pidginization arises from an urgent need
among people whose mother-tongues are different
and who have to meet common needs without any
delay…
 Generally, the speakers involved are brought
together in the same area for economic
reasons such as trade or enforced labours situation
(slavery).
 As a way of example, note that when the English or the
Portuguese went their way trading across the world they
could not afford wasting time to teach their languages or
learn the local languages before starting business (Isn’t
true that ‘time is money ‘?!).
1.2 The socio-economic factors
 That is also the case of slaves being

transferred to America: they spoke different
African languages but slave owners could not
waste time trying to teach them English or
Portuguese before they started toiling on the
sugar or the cotton farms.
 In all these cases, people are pressured

by urgent needs to communicate: as a
result, traders or slave bosses were bound to
resort to a lingua franca.
1.2 The socio-economic factors

◊ The social factors at stake: the higher emulation
phenomenon
 Higher class emulation is the fact that lower
class people try to ape Higher class social actors in various
ways (dressing, behaviour & language choice, of course!)
 Economy & Society influence each other and that
constitute a determining factor for the development of a
pidgin language…
 Usually, it is the foreign language which is pidginised
because that language is generally the language spoken
by the dominant group (higher class groups) who are
wealthy as they detain new products highly valued (even if
cheap junk) or new means of production;
1.2 The socio-economic factors - Social factors at stake: Higher emulation phenomenon
 In addition to wealth, the dominant group has
generally the military and political power
(slavery and colonial contexts).
As a result, the dominant groups language
that almost always turns out to be the foreign
language is associated with power & prestige,
while the local languages have a lower status.
 The dominated group speaking different local
languages consider the dominant group's
language as a reference language and speaking
the new language is a mark of social achievement
and promotion!
1.2 The socio-economic factors - Social factors at stake: Higher emulation phenomenon
 Local people will try to speak the foreign

and dominant language but since this
language is acquired in poor conditions (out of
formal schooling generally) it results in a
distorted version of the dominant groups’
medium.
 This is how the higher class emulation
seems to be at work in the starting and
development of Pidgins and the local
languages remain unlikely to be the best
candidates for pidginization.
 The socio-economic factors

◊ The Linguistic and Socio-linguistic Factors
 Pidginization develops in multilingual contexts
of at least three languages and only one of
them will sustain pidginization.
 In a bilingual situation, the decision to adopt or
speak only one language is easier: you speak
language A or language B, depending on the
occasion (diglossic situations).
 In other words, when a speaker needs to
communicate with a co-speaker he is meeting for
the first time, the latter is either a speaker of
language A or speaker of language B.
 The socio-economic factors - The linguistic and socio-linguistic factors
 Now, the purely linguistic reason is related to

communication pragmatism…
 When local language speakers meet for the first
time and do not know each other they reasonably
chose to speak the foreign language unless there
are reasons to think that the co-speaker speaks
specific local language;
 This is particularly remarkable in extremely
linguistically heterogeneous nations like Cameroon: it
is very unlikely that ten Cameroonians taken at
random in Yaoundé/Douala share the same local
language!)

 The socio-economic factors - The linguistic and socio-linguistic factors

 The other linguistic reason is that the dominant group
speakers play an active role at the beginning of the
process. When they meet local people without education,
they assume that these local people might not understand a
sophisticatedly elaborate form of their language…
 … accordingly, they themselves deliberately simplify
their own (foreign language) so as to put it at the level of
uneducated local people so giving rise to speech forms
like “petit nègre” social variety in French colonies.
 The process of deliberate simplification is then carried
on by local people with the basic grammatical structure of
dominant groups’ (foreign) language that would be
subsequently relexified with some lexical items of their
different languages.
1.3 The General Features of Pidgins

 Whatever their localisation in the world, whatever
the variant of pidgin language (French, Chinese,
German Portuguese pidgin, X-Pidgin, etc.) these
languages displays irreducible features ranging from
structural to functional ones.
a) The Referential Function

 Due to the conditions in which Pidgins originate
(urgent need to communicate), these linguistic
systems are not concerned with expressing very
abstract notions (e.g. philosophical speculations etc.)
b) Metaphorical Naming
 The referential function in pidgin is
characterised by massive use of metaphors to
name actions or things;
 Remember that Pidgins are “improvised”
systems of communication and the appropriate
word might not be known…
… then the only solution left is to name in a
figurative way with, often time, in association to
various current social inferences:

b) Metaphorical Naming
apollo  the conjunctivitis disease that appeared at the
time the NASA Apollo Team landed on the Moon in 1968;
mausgrass  Moustache (Tok-Pisin)
Machéter quelqu’un  to murder someone using a machet;
Kandiarouse  a vocabulary made of barbarisms (named
after the former Minister of National education);
Go-slow  Traffic Jam in Nigeria;
Woro-woro -> a district taxi whose transportation fares were
30 FCFA (in Jula);
Une go dévaluée -> a girl out of fashion just like the
former CFA currency before devaluation in 1994…
Une femme amortie (Late Ouattara Eugenie) a woman
which age makes her inappropriate for sexual intercourse!
C) The Lack of Homogeneity

 As a result of their being improvised systems of
communication, Pidgins are always involved into on-
going changes:
 The vocabulary being essentially metaphorical and
metaphors having deep-rooted social origins which,
themselves are involved in a an on-going changes, a
pidgin term used today after a social reality might
change quite overnight:
e.g.
 conjonctué = (to be penniless (by Aicha Koné in the 1980s)
 dévalué = (in 1994 after the CFA devaluation)
c) The lack of homogeneity

 In other words, the change in the vocabulary of
Pidgins is faster than the change that can be
reported in ordinary languages:
 Variations of Pidgins are also unpredictable: there
seems to be no correctness requirements, no linguistic
authority as such, changes are easily reported from one
speaker to another:
 One speaker might use a certain term to refer to a
certain reality ; another speaker does not feel constrained
to use a different term and this causes the language to
change all the time so making pidgins absolutely
unstable languages…
 Pidgins are characterised by a lack of homogeneity.
d) Absence of a Linguistic Norm

 Speakers of a pidgin do not feel constrained by
correctness constraints!
 In the case of Ivorian French, a pidginising
language, no one would ever submit a pidgin
utterance to acceptability evaluation: it is as if in
a pidgin there is no distinction between what you
can and must not say…
 Pidgin languages do not comply to any
linguistic norm!

e) The Lack of Stylistic Variation

 The ignorance of any linguistic norm call forth
another consequence, that is Stylistic Variation
 Stylistic variation is the possibility that

human languages offer to express the same idea
different ways ranging from extreme formality
 (e.g. Would you mind giving me your pen?
 Auriez-vous l’amabilité de me passer votre stylo?)
 Stylistic variation is highly dependent on the

master of the language which corresponds to the speaker
having a wide paradigm of choices (paradigmatic
axis) to express the same idea…
e) The lack of stylistic variation
 But in a way, in a language, stylistic

variation will not exist when there is no
linguistic norm as deviations (i.e. stylistic
variation) is measured in terms of deviating
away or close to the linguistic norm.
 Now, as pidgin language ignore any linguistic

norm, there will not exist such a phenomenon
recorded in “ordinary languages”, that is, the
stylistic variation!

Pidgins as Second Languages

 Since Pidgins are languages that arise from
special communicative circumstances, they tend
to be used in restricted situations or contexts…
… and when the pidgin speaker is back in
another social context (e.g. home context) he is
likely to turn to his mother-tongue.
 Note that when Ivorians are in their offices or
during professional meetings, they try to (or
think they) speak a formal French adapted to
official situations;
 Pidgins as second languages

 By contrast, when they are among friends or
intimates from the same region, often times, they will
resort to local languages if possible, or to a pidginised
form of French when it is a contact situation.
 In short, a pidgin is never a native language
and a pidgin does not have native speakers.
 Whenever native speakers are identified for
a pidgin, that is, pidgin speakers whose parents
also speak the pidgin…
… that variety of language is no longer to be
considered as a pidgin : it becomes a Creole.
End of section 1
SOCIO6216-2
2.
The Creolization
Process
SOCIO6216.2 - Language Change: Pidgins, Creoles – Language S decay
2 . C r e o l i z a t i o n P r o c e s s
Creolisation comes over as the advanced

elaboration stage of a pidgin language.
But not all Pidgins will necessarily
become Creoles: even if a pidgin reaches a
certain level of homogeneity – from the
point of view of its structure, the presence of
all language functions, its stability …
…it can still be regarded as a pidgin if it does

not qualify for some sociolinguistic
functions!
SOCIO6216.2 - Language Change: Pidgins, Creoles – Language decay

 Such is the case of Tok-Pisin (the variety in New

Guinea) which has reached a structural stability as to
be used in the Banking and Insurance Sector
and yet, it is a Pidgin.
 In the language change process, a pidgin faces

three possibilities:
1. a pidgin can perish and disappear;
2. a pidgin can co-exist with substrate and
super or substrate languages (Tok Pisin);
3. a pidgin can develop into a Creole
language.

2.1 Disappearance of a Pidgin

 When the conditions prevailing for the utility
of a pidgin no longer exist, that is:
if for some reasons or others, one of the
substrate languages survive and standardise into
a nation-wide language;
or
if the foreign language completely defeats the
substrate local languages and is acquired and
used by all speakers, linguistic communication is
then ensured so that the pidgin becomes
unnecessary...
2.2 Pidgin co-exists with sub-/super strate languages

 When substrate and superstrate
languages remain vivid, the pidgin that had
started to develop in earlier contact situations
hardly develops to reach the elaborated form of
an authentic Creole.
 Such will certainly be the case of the Pidgin
English of Nigeria (PEN): local substrate
languages of Nigeria (Igbo, Yoruba, Hausa) that
would merge in the process of the formation of the
PEN are still sociologically robust and do not appear
to resist from being endangered by English...
2.2 Pidgin co-exists with subs-/super strate languages
 Major languages of Nigeria are also used in audio-

visual production (e.g. Nollywood Productions) , not to
mention the print press (newspapers in Yoruba,
Igbo, etc.)
 On top of that, education through English being

unlikely to reach 100% in a near future, the contact
situation remains.
 Accordingly, the Pidgin English of Nigeria
(PEN) is likely to be maintained for a long time and
even for ever so that, correlatively, PEN is much
unlikely to go beyond the pidginisation level.

2.3 Creolization Becomes Effective

 A pidgin will develop into a Creole for various
reasons or factors:
Cultural Factors
The cultural factor is the fact that the creole
language now plays a cultural identity function;
 In the Caribbean regions, standard languages

like French (e.g. Guadeloupe, Martinique, Haiti) and
English (e.g. Jamaica, Barbados, etc.), Dutch (Surinam)
co-exist with creole languages formed from these
standards languages so creating a diglossic situation;
2.3 Creolization becomes effective

Cultural factors
While creole languages are used in almost every

home contexts, standards languages blossom in formal
contexts;
Uneducated people (the most numerous) are

understandably keen on the use of the creole
languages and on top of that the use of creoles
necessarily triggers a feeling of loyalty to local
populations…
Correlatively, standard languages (French, English; Dutch)

are perceived as the languages of higher social classes and
possibly as the language of the former oppressors…
Cultural factors
 For those cultural and underlying ideological

reasons (standard languages being associated with
domination and exploitation), the linguistic gap
increases between the existing pidgin and standard
European languages;
 As a consequence and in the long run, the early

pidgins become a new language autonomous from its
original super-strate language, that is, a creole.


The speakers
 Creolisation takes place over three generations
at least (which correspond to about 100 years).
 When a couple uses a pidgin in daily domestic
situations, the children who are born in such a
context acquire the pidgin…
… not as a second language, but as their
first language or mother-tongue.
 In theory, that is the starting point of creolisation
since the children become native speakers of a half-breed
language and nonetheless, an autonomous language.

2.4 General Features of Creoles

The Language Functions
 Since a Creole language is a mother-tongue,
speakers innovate the new language which is theirs
(LAD-bound capacity!) introducing unconsciously all the
characteristics present in an ordinary language;
 Instead of being informative (i.e. referential
function) and directive (i.e. expressive function) essentially,
the new language expands to express a much larger
range of linguistic functions;
 It becomes a vehicle of culture and as it is
endowed with stylistic variation;
 Literary work also blossoms (e.g. novels and poems),
not to mention music (e.g. Zuk Music with the Kasav’);
2.4 General features of Creoles
◊ Fluency
 One general feature of Creoles is that Creole
speakers speak faster than pidgin speakers:
remember that a pidgin is an improvised system of
communication used in restricted circumstances only;
 Therefore, as opposed to creoles which are used
each and everyday, Pidgins speakers should not be
expected to be as fluent as creole speakers are;
 For example, the Neo-Malaysia creole is used in
religion, agriculture, aviation & media even
though it naturally borrows words from other
languages for relexification requirements.
2.4 General features of Creoles

◊ Grammatical Development
 Some of such changes have been reported in Tok-
Pisin, still considered as a pidgin but that could be
regarded as a creole (note that it is now called “an
extended pidgin”!).
 In this language, the English expression by and
by that was used in a earlier stages of the pidgin as
an adverb expressing the future time was later
contracted in baimbai.
 In the latest version of modern Tok-Pisin, the
baimbai has been transformed into more reduced
form, bai :

2.4 General features of Creoles : Grammatical development

 Since Pidgins are created to meet urgent
communicative demands, the lexical system will be
more developed in comparison to the grammatical
system which remains seminal or rudimentary;
 When a pidgin turns into a Creole, important
changes take place at the grammatical level.
 The birth of grammatical operators
 In the course of languages development, some
lexical elements undergo semantic and morphological
transformations and specialise in expressing
grammatical functions.
SOCIO6216-2 - S O C I O 6 2 1 6 - 2 L a n g u a g e C h a n g e –
Figure 5 : The Birth of Function Words (meta-operators)

Stage 1a: baimbai mi kam long haus = later I come to the house
or
Stage 1b: mi kam long haus baimbai = later I come to the house
Stage 2a: Bai mi kam long haus = later I (will) come to the house
or
Stage 2b: mi kam long haus bai = I will come to the house
Stage 3: mi bai kam long haus = I will come to the house.

 Note that in stages 2 the operator was still
functioning as an adverbial particle and that in stage 3
(the most elaborated stage of the language), the distribution of bai
has changed with its position immediately before the
verb, just like modals in English grammar:
 The lexical semantic expression has
turned into a grammatical morpheme !
 Consider also the case of the demonstrative –là in
Ivorian French like in “femme-là” or “bonhomme-là”.
 Being a demonstrative, the –là is as referential as a
lexical element…
 However, we can anticipate that in the development or a

possible creolisation of the Ivorian French the –là is bound
to become the (definite) article like in Baule (i.e. “nyi”) and
at that future time the gender category will have collapsed.
◊Development of syntax : subordinate conjunctions
 As a creole language is a language as “normal” as any
ordinary language (as a result of such long-standing drastic
changes), its structure becomes “unique” in the way ordinary
languages differ from each others!
 The "new” autonomous language now has but vague
souvenir with its former pidgin version, and little to do with
its ancestral standard language (the language from which it
turned into a pidgin first, and eventually in to the creole)!
2.4 General features of Creoles : Development of syntax
 One of most outstanding features indicating that a

pidgin has reached an extremely elaborate stage is
the emergence of function words such as subordinate
conjunctions:
Figure 6 : The Birth of Subordinate Conjunctions
Stage 1: Mi no save. Oli wokin dispela haus. (Phase) 1

I didn’t know. They had built this house.
mi no save olsem ol i wokim dispela haus.

Stage 2:
I didn't know that they built this house (Phase) 2
End of section 2
SOCIO6216-2
Language
Change
Language
Death
Introduction: Languages as living organisms
 Behind the topic "Language Death", there is an
implicit idea that languages can be viewed as living
organisms.
BUT DO LANGUAGES DIE ?

DOES THE DEATH OF LANGUAGE MEAN THAT
THE LANGUAGE DISAPPEAR OVERNIGHT ?
DOES IT CORRESPOND TO THE DEATH OF ALL
SPEAKERS ?
 There is a little controversy about the relevance of
the term "languages death" and the linguistic reality
that it covers.
SOCIO6216.2 - Language Change: Pidgins, Creoles – Language decay -
1. Some Factors Causing Language “Death”
 Major (historical) disasters

 Consanguine relations (mariages)
 Isolated linguistic communities
 Creolisation of a main language
SOCIO6216.2 - Language Change: Pidgins, Creoles – Language decay-

 The Determining Factors of Language Decay
 Language decay always takes place in a
specific linguistic situation in which some social
and historical factors act as accelerating factors.
The Linguistic Setting/ Landscape

 In in a monolingual community (like France, the
UK or the US) language shift is virtually impossible;
 In such a situation we have a case known as

language maintenance;
SOCIO6216.2 - Language Change: Pidgins, Creoles – Language decay -

7. 2 T h e d e t e r m i n i n g f a c t o r s o f l a n g u a g e d e c a y
 Likewise, in a stable bilingual situation (with two

languages in co-existence) we also have a case of
language maintenance since both languages are used
all the time, though in alternative social contexts
(diglossia);
 On the contrary, should we have an unstable
multilingualism or bilingualism situation, the linguistic
instability will always favour one language over the
others;
 In the long run, this translates into a language
being abandoned (e.g. lower status variant) in favour
of the Higher status variant;

 From being unsteady bilingual or multilingual, the

speakers of the minority language become definite
monolingual speakers of the dominant language (see
Figure 4 on inter-generational shift)
The Historical and Social Factors

 A language will perish when all its speakers
disappear or when a language has become another
language as a result of creolisation.
The purely social factors are essentially the
economic reasons that lead some speakers to shift
from their languages to a dominant language;

 The use of the dominant language can be a

means to insure social promotion (job
opportunities, business opportunism, social
prestige, etc. (see linguistic eco-system)).
The Signals of the Decaying Process

 There are signals indicating that a language is
critically involved in an irreversible decaying/dying
process in spite of efforts to maintain it (alive).
 Those signs can be recorded at
 (a) the sociolinguistic level and
 (b) the purely linguistic level.

 The Sociolinguistic Indicators
 The sociolinguistic signs appear at the level of
the social function of the language.
 Language shift appears to always develop over
several generations, at least three, say about 100
years (Gal 1978 : Peasant men can't get wives : language
change and sex roles in a bilingual community. Language and
Society, n°7).
 Intergenerational shift is when one
generation which is bilingual (and actually uses two
languages), fails to pass on to subsequent
generations not the two languages, but only one
language;
 The sociolinguistic indicators
The intergenerational shift process over three

generations of community, bilingual with
Language A and Language B at the beginning…
… and monolingual at the end with language

A only can be portrayed as follows (figure 1):

Figure 1 : Intergenerational Shift
Generations (Speaker’s) language use social context

Language status
A B A B A B A B AB A
BA BAB ABABA
1 Bilingual (+++) B A B A B AB AB A B Mixed
A BAB ABA
A A A A B B B BB
2 Bilingual (+ / -) A A A A BBBBB Specific
A A A A
A A A A A A A A
3 Monolingual A A A A A A A A Mixed
A A A A A A A A
A A A A

The Acculturation Effect

 Acculturation is directly related to speakers’
attitude toward their language;
 It is psychological and corresponds to the state
of mind of speakers regarding the recessive
(dominated) languages.;
 Acculturation first translates into the

community’s feeling that their language lacks any
prestige and next, speakers become convinced
that their language is inadequate to express some
concepts or name things;
 The acculturation effect
 This state of mind generally originates from cultural
and technological domination: newly introduced
technologies are named in the language of the
dominant language since such concepts are not
available in the decaying language;
 Correlatively speakers are so overwhelmed that
they fail to make any effort to coin equivalent terms in
their language;
 Note that languages cannot withstand linguistic
erosion if they are not fertilized with a powerful
scientific or technological culture (see Silué S J . 1995.
“Dynamisme des langues et dynamisme des cultures”.
E.D.R.T., n°1)
 Spirituality is deeply rooted in one’s culture and
spirituality is expressed in the language to which we
are the most affectively tied;
 Speakers of a decaying language progressively
abandon their language to express spiritual life in
other people’s language!
 Note that the day Africans will start worshipping
their traditional Gods in European languages this is an
indication that African languages are lost for ever.
e.g.
Case of the Brons who have turned to Kulango but make sure their
rituals are conducted in Bron language and even if the Bron King
speaks Kulango on a daily basis he will resort to Bron in official setting.
 Reserved domains are also made up of the
proper name system: one symptom of language
decay is when speakers cease to name babies in
their own languages and use imported names
instead.
 Such a case has been reported in the French
Breton language where the traditional Breton name
"franch" has been replaced by the French one
"François".
 “François” that was first used in official

circumstances has completely replaced "Franch"
even in intimate home conversion.
 The Lack of a Purist Reaction

 Purists are those who feel concerned with
observing the linguistic norm; purists will make
sure the language is preserved;
The lack of a purist reaction against massive
borrowing and interferences is also a major
indicator of the dying process is quite advanced.
In a language decaying context, old speakers
who are generally more concerned about
language maintenance and who implicitly act as
linguistic authorities give up correcting distorted
forms...
 The lack of a purist reaction
 In the long run, all speakers fail to notice
distorted forms and massive and unnecessary
borrowing goes unnoticed.
 When there is no one to worry about the lexical
and grammatical abuses over the recessive
language, there is a general linguistic relaxation of
the norms.
 Anything a speaker says to express himself is
implicitly admitted as acceptable and in the long run,
no one worries whether the ancestral language of
the community is transmitted to subsequent
generations properly or not.
The Linguistic Features of Language Decay

The purely linguistic indicators of language decay
range from the destabilisation of the rhetorical
function to the corruption of the phonological,
lexical and syntactic systems.
 Mono-stylism
 One of the consequences of the lack of a purist
reaction is that stylistic variation which is a variation
in speech between formal register and familiar register
disappear!
 This is so because there is no way of making sense of
stylistic variation as seen in ordinary languages if there
is no awareness of a linguistic norm…
The linguistic features of language decay - Mono-stylism
 In the absence of a linguistic norm, the language

become uniformed stylistically or mono-styled in
the sense that the opposition between formal
style/register and casual style/register is
neutralised;
 A resulting consequence is that the rhetorical

function in such a language no longer exists
(impossibility to practice literature).
The linguistic features of language decay - Mono-stylism
 In practice too, discourse devices like
proverbs are neglected, then ignored and
abandoned and the language looses any
dynamism in terms of artistic or literary
production;
 Just like with proverbs, speakers will no
longer be able to play jokes using their
language or tell stories in their dying language
to their children...
 The language progressively vanishes and is
eventually listed among extinct languages.
The linguistic features of language decay
 The Lexical Pollution

 In the general linguistic perspective, borrowing
from other languages can be viewed as an
enrichment of language and all human languages are
committed to borrowing though in varying degrees…
 But in the case of decaying languages, lexical
borrowing becomes excessive, asymmetric
(one way) and abusive:
 “Asymmetric borrowing” because while the
decaying language does borrow from other
languages, no other language ever borrows from a
dying language.
 Phonological Disorganisation
 In normal situations, when, a language borrows a
word from another language, it usually adapts the
loaned word to its phonological structure by
converting non-equivalent phonemes into a closest
corresponding sound in the recessive language:
e.g.
 street /stri:t/  /sitiri/ (Susu language (Guinea);
 agriculture  agirikiliture (most African languages)
 stella club  estela (most African languages)
The linguistic features of language decay * Phonological disorganisation
 The typical decaying language will borrow

words just like quotations without taking pain to
go through any phonological restructuration;
e.g.
 In the decaying language the consonant clusters
/str/, /gr/ and /st/ which are not attested in their
phonological system is abandoned in favour of the
consonant cluster system of the dominating
language!

 Syntactic Corruption
 Recessive languages also resort to syntactic
borrowing;
 A dying oral language in Australia is simply
substituting its ergative constructions (e.g The
stones move) for the English syntax S – V – O
(Someone moves the stones).
 This was also the situation of Latin language which

syntax is based on case inflection for syntactic
functions (subject, object, genitive, dative etc.). The
adoption of word-order has speeded up the decay of
the case system.
The linguistic features of language decay - Syntactic corruption
 In decaying languages, syntactic subordination

of clause markers (e.g. because, since, for, as
etc…) are either replaced by subordination markers
of the dominant language or simply abandoned
and clauses are just juxtaposed.
e.g.
 An African language:
a) Il pleuvait: il n’est pas venu;
 (cause first, consequence next)
 An European language:
a) Il n’est pas venu parce qu’il pleuvait
 (consequence first, cause next)
7 .The
2 T h e linguistic
d e t e r m i nfeatures
i n g f a c tof
o r language
s o f l a n g decay
u a g e d- eSyntactic
cay corruption
 The decaying language abandon the semantico-

logical format of its syntax and adopt the format of
the dominant language;
 Unfortunately, since the semantico-logic format is
upheld by logical connectors such as (parce que /because
– donc/so – puisque/since – etc.) that are not attested in
the dying language;
 … the adoption/integration (through borrowing) of the
information layout in the semantico-syntax of the
sentence structure does not have surface consequences
only…
That category of borrowing implies far-reaching
consequences affecting deeply the native thinking
strategies of speakers of the decaying language;
The linguistic features of language decay - Syntactic corruption
 In other words, it is the built-in cultural and

intellectual system which is so affected.
 Note the massive and systematic use of logical

connectors borrowed from European language when
African elites or intellectuals use their native
languages (e.g. parce que /because – donc/so –
puisque/since – etc.)
 Such a state of affairs presumably stems from the
effects of literacy (see Silué’s 2013 Summer Project in
CASAS – Cape Town (South Africa).

 CONCLUSION
 The term "Language Death" is not certainly
appropriate to describe the situation of those languages
which find it hard to survive from linguistic competition
with other languages.
 It would be appropriate if languages could be isolated form
their users.
 Now, if the situation of these languages is analysed
taking the speakers into consideration, the phenomenon
actually corresponds to a collective and unconscious
decision to shift onto another language (Language Shift).
 From what has been said, it seems impossible to make
reliable predictions about the death of a contemporary
language : too many interrelated factors are at work.
End of Section 3
SOCIO6216-2
4.
The Ecosystem
of
Language
SOCIO6216.2 - Language Change: Pidgins, Creoles, Language death -
4 . T h e E c o s y s t e m o f L a n g u a g e
 While in the description of Language

Change languages were assimilated to living
organisms with, namely a period of birth, a
period of dynamic life and a period of death,…
 While, in a parallel perspective, language
change can also be equated to the merging of
human races (black, white, yellow & red) that
would, through various sorts of contacts bring
about half-breed (Pidgins) or second
generation (Creoles)…
 Languages can be also likened to vegetal
species (the Flora) in their natural milieu.
 As for the notion of Linguistic Landscape, it can be

readily assimilated to a linguistic map, an atlas, but
with the difference that the linguistic atlas is as static (like
any map) while “linguistic landscape” conveys some
dynamism.
“Linguistic Landscape” conveys some sort of
dynamism in that it brings into play the struggle for survival
among co-existing languages and where some languages are
seen to progressively override others.
 From the dynamism of the linguistic landscape and the
struggle of co-existing languages for life (survival) will also
stem some form of linguistic resistance, linguistic
survival, linguistic surrendering (when some
languages concede being completely defeated by more
powerful ones).
 The notion of Linguistic Landscape, along with

that of Linguistic Ecosystem are reminiscent of
other present day paradigms:
 The Economic Globalization and the dominating
behaviour of some languages like English must not
be discarded from globalization in general…
 Historically, the universal linguistic ecosystem has
been constantly distressed by major historical
happenings such as massive or long-standing
migration flows, massive deportation (slavery),
religious or colonial conquests and
globalization.

 Modification of the linguistic ecosystem of

America and Australia
 Modification of the linguistic ecosystem of North
Africa (Maghreb and Soudan) with Arab
conquest since the 7th C
 Modification of the linguistic ecosystem of Sub-
Saharan Africa with the colonial conquest
started in the early 18th C.
 As regards colonization, the upheaval of the

linguistic ecosystem offers two parallel pictures:
 The settlement colonization &
 The exploitation colonization.

 The Settlement Colonization is when

indigenous languages were replaced or uprooted all
the way through after local population were almost
exterminated (America) or culturally defeated
(Australia, North Africa)
 The Exploitation Colonization is when colonial
languages and local language engage a co-habitation
drive that soon brought about local language to
being almost eaten up.
 The Congolese-born sociolinguist Saliko S Mufwene (now
American by adoption) from the University of Chicago is one of
the leading figures of this new trend of SOCIOLINGUISTICS
applied to the phenomenon of language in contact.
 The contribution of Saliko Mufwene to the analysis

of LANGUAGE CHANGE is very important;
 Some of the most recent and significant works on
the language change are:
 The Ecology of Language Evolution - Cambridge Approaches
to Language Contact. CUP 2001) and
 Language Evolution: Contact, Competition and Change.
2008. Bloombury).
 In previous academic books papers, Mufwene has

been strongly and insistently voicing against the
unremitting diatribes of those researchers who have
a simplistic view of language change;

Those researchers seem to be nostalgic of a

hypothetical stable and peaceful linguistic
landscape where all languages would be equal.
 In the face of it and as a reply to those who lament that
some languages (Western languages especially) are
“killer languages” of minority languages, William
Mackey (Silué 2012) warned: “ … dans la réalité sociale
[…] les langues ne sont égales que devant Dieu et les
linguistes!” “
 We could even say that GLOBALIZATION reinforces
the inequalities among languages and even some of the
colonial languages that are flagged among Africans as
languages of globalization make no exception in the
LINGUISTIC COMPETITION.
 During an international conference on languages

in contact and where the advocators of the
Francophonie were given the floor, Claude Hagège
(a French Linguist) lamented against the LINGUISTIC
IMPERIALISM of the English language…
 He called for more vigorous institutional response
from part of the French State to fight back THE
LINGUISTIC TYRANNY of English against French.
 Hagège’s protest sounds odd and hardly justified
when we think of the sneaky proposal by Late
President François Mitterrand (21st September 1993)
about the “exeption culturelle” .

 Hagège’s protest sounds even odder when we

remember the Libreville “Francophonie Conference
in 2004” where the French conceded that all the African
languages were “partner languages” to the sole French
Language.
 In plain words, France is instructing shamelessly (but
also patronizingly) Africans to help France fight back the
English and leave the French language bosom, as if those
African did not have their own languages !!!!!
 The strange size of Hagège’s laments is that his
whimpers were formulated in the paper to submit at the
International Conference and the paper was written
and presented in…
…. English!!!!
 Hagège’s case is very illustrative of the reality of

the linguistic ecosystem phenomenon: a linguistic
militant in favor of the French language against
English felt compelled to voice his recriminations in
English!
 The conclusion to draw from this state of
affairs is that LANGUAGES DO NOT KILL
EACH OTHER!
 Rather, it is the users of languages who feel the
necessity to opt for the communication mediums felt
to be the most appropriate in the situation or the
most likely to meet efficiently his/her communication
needs.
 The Linguistic Ecosystem is the fact that for

some specific reasons and purposes, speakers
(whatever the historical period and whatever the
world region), will take on using the language that
serves their communication imperatives the most
effectively.
 In other word, language change in general and
language shift in particular that leads to the decay
and subsequent death of some languages is dictated
by socio-economic pragmatism: I use the
language that “will help me eat”!
 It then follows that languages alone will not
compete or fight each other…
 Rather, it is the social, economic, cultural &

even political power of the natives of the so “killer
languages” that creates the situation whereby other
speech communities (worldwide) find it “rewarding”
to opt for the most operational language.
 This will start with occasional resorts to the
language of others (the dominant language) ;
 It will persist as the occasions to use this
operational language increase and it then crystalizes
as a case of language shift when the dominant
language happens to have eventually invaded all the
key and daily sectors of the individual’s life.

 Globalization languages like English will

keep on extending unrelentingly, while minority
language will survive and remain at bay for an
unpredictably short while as long as the activities
that are determinant for the lives of populations
are carried out in dominating languages.
 At a local level, the case of the Ehotile (minority

speech community of Adiaké) is quite telling:
 An Ehotile is bound to “forget about his
native language” as soon as s/he crosses the
threshold of the house!

 The effect of economic pragmatism displays a

similar picture when local globalization is at stake:
 In Cote d’Ivoire, the Jula (Malinke) language is
seen to override any other local language in the informal
economy that effects directly or indirectly practically all
Ivorians citizens.
 In rural areas this language is progressively imposing
itself as the language of economic transactions (trading of
raw agricultural products, trade in general and transports,
etc.) all the things that affect the populations on a daily
basis.
 In urban areas the Jula (Malinke) is the language
that has colonized all activities of the informal economy
which claims more than 60% population intake.
 There also, naïve observers will accuse the Malinke

language of eating up neighboring languages while, in actual
fact, the process is driven by socio-economic determinism.
 This socioeconomic determinism and
pragmatism also work the other way round:
 Reportedly, some Europeans businessmen trading in
globalized areas like Singapore and Hong-Kong are
seen to learn Chinese language in order to meet their
business objectives;
 Likewise, in Cote d’Ivoire, Lebanese nationals are
very fluent in some national languages, an evidence that
the linguistic ecosystem phenomenon is at work for
ever….
Concluding
Remarks

C o n c l u d i n g Re m a r k s
In the face of it should we say that African and

their languages are doomed to disappear?
 The “eternal curse” or Afro-pessimism must be
discarded outright because God did not create Africans or
Blacks to lag far behind all the other communities!
 There are several ways to envisage the future of African
languages in the globalization context, which, in the view
of late MEMEL FOTEH had not started in recent years;
 However, to rescue their situation along with the
survival of their languages, the African people should
courageously accept to perform a series of ruptures that
are cultural, psychological, economical & even
political.
 The African people must lean firmly on and adhere

to the unrelenting principle that “it is the function
that creates the organ”:
 Concretely, this starts by making cultural
revolution whereby they concede the effort to
convene their languages into all important
human activities thought to be determinant for
their daily lives (economy, culture, politics,
education, etc.).
 The way is long and there will be no way to
circumvent the instrumentalization of their languages
and there, the first step is to devise a writing
system for the language!
 The African Union has created the ACALAN (Académie

des Langues Africaines) in 2004 and the ACALAN has set
up 10 commissions that are instructed to develop and
promote 10 major regional languages considered as
Transnational Lingua Francas (Silué 2013).
 If the congenital bureaucratic behavior of African
leaders does not overshadow this hopeful project, and if
African intellectuals accept to contribute, then there is a
beginning of hope.
 In this regard, The African Union must select and
impose some of these regional languages as working
languages in their sessions rather than contending
themselves in pompous jamborees conducted in foreign
languages.
 And in this regard too, it must be noted that the

African Union which numbers some 50 nations is
inching to adopt just 10 languages while the
European Union that numbers just some 28-
members-nation strong has to manage 27 different
European languages.
 This situation is never portrayed as a linguistic
conundrum/enigma for just one reason…
 European languages are all equipped with writing
systems.
 Young Africans must end up getting the idea that
linguistic diversity or multilingualism is not a
built-in linguistic constraint specific to the
African continent.
End of Lecture

Thank you for
your friendly
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SOCIO6216-2

 Hence this question by Ivorians: “Tu parles quelle

“ A Baule is a person who says “mi wan jo”

 Such utterances suggest that even lay

Language change unfolds over three stages

 In the process of LANGUAGE CHANGE over

Stage 1 Stage 2 Stage 1+n

Pidgin Creole Ordinary Lang.

1.1 THE TYPICAL SCENARIO: a

 a) Linguistic Domination: one language out of

1.1 The typical scenario: a multilingual setting

c) The last possibility left to co-existing languages

SOCIO6216.2 - Language Change: Pidgins, Creoles – Language death -

1.2 THE SOCIO-ECONOMIC FACTORS

1.2 The socio-economic factors

 That is also the case of slaves being

 In all these cases, people are pressured

1.2 The socio-economic factors

 Local people will try to speak the foreign

 The socio-economic factors

 The socio-economic factors - The linguistic and socio-linguistic factors

 Now, the purely linguistic reason is related to

SOCIO6216.2 - Language Change: Pidgins, Creoles – Language death -

 The socio-economic factors - The linguistic and socio-linguistic factors

1.3 The General Features of Pidgins

a) The Referential Function

SOCIO6216.2 - Language Change: Pidgins, Creoles – Language death -

C) The Lack of Homogeneity

c) The lack of homogeneity

d) Absence of a Linguistic Norm

SOCIO6216.2 - Language Change: Pidgins, Creoles – Language death -

e) The Lack of Stylistic Variation

 Stylistic variation is the possibility that

 Stylistic variation is highly dependent on the

e) The lack of stylistic variation

 But in a way, in a language, stylistic

 Now, as pidgin language ignore any linguistic

SOCIO6216.2 - Language Change: Pidgins, Creoles – Language death -

Pidgins as Second Languages

 Pidgins as second languages

Creolisation comes over as the advanced

…it can still be regarded as a pidgin if it does

SOCIO6216.2 - Language Change: Pidgins, Creoles – Language decay

 Such is the case of Tok-Pisin (the variety in New

 In the language change process, a pidgin faces

SOCIO6216.2 - Language Change: Pidgins, Creoles – Language decay

2.1 Disappearance of a Pidgin

2.2 Pidgin co-exists with sub-/super strate languages

2.2 Pidgin co-exists with subs-/super strate languages

 Major languages of Nigeria are also used in audio-

 On top of that, education through English being

SOCIO6216.2 - Language Change: Pidgins, Creoles – Language decay

2.3 Creolization Becomes Effective

 In the Caribbean regions, standard languages

2.3 Creolization becomes effective

While creole languages are used in almost every

Uneducated people (the most numerous) are

Correlatively, standard languages (French, English; Dutch)

2.3 Creolization becomes effective

 For those cultural and underlying ideological

 As a consequence and in the long run, the early

SOCIO6216.2 - Language Change: Pidgins, Creoles – Language decay

2.3 Creolization becomes effective