PIDGIN AND

CREOLE

Navyrin Desta Gracelia

 LANGUAGES

LINGUA
FRANCAS CREOLE
PIDGIN
 LINGUA FRANCAS

Lingua Franca is a language which is used

habitually by people who use mother tongues are
different in order to facilitate communication
between them.
The variety of other terms can be found
which describe much the same
phenomenon:
A. A Trade Language e.g., English Hausa in West Africa or
Swahili in East Africa.
B. A Contact Language e.g., Greek Koine in the Ancient World.
C. An International Language e.g., English throughout much of
our contemporary world.
D. An Auxiliary Language e.g., Esperanto or Basic English.
 English as Lingua Franca

Spoken as a native language in many

countries.
Spoken as a second language especially in
India and Philipine.
 PIDGIN
A Pidgin is a language with no native speakers: it is no
one’s first language but is a contact language.
The process of pidginization probably requires a
situation that involves at least three languages, one of
which is ‘dominant’ over the others.
 CREOLE

 A creole is often define as a pidgin that has

become the first language of new generation
speakers.
 DISTRIBUTION

Pidgin and Creole languages are distributed mainly,

though not exclusively in the equatorial belt around the
world usually in places with direct or easy access to the
ocens.
They are found mainly in the Caribbean and around the
north and the east coast and across the Indian and
Pacific Oceans.
 THEORIES OF ORIGIN

A. The Baby-Talk Theory.

B. Independent Parallel Development Theory.
C. Nautical Jargon Theory.
D.Relexification Theory.
E. Universalist Theory.
 The Baby-Talk Theory

At the end of the last century Charles Leland, when

discussing China coast pidgin English, noted that there
were many similarities with the speech of children such as
the following features:
a) High percentage of content words with a
correspondingly low number of function words.
b) Little morphological marking.
c) Word classes more flexible than in adult language
(free conversion).
 Independent Parallel Development
Theory
This view maintains that the obvious similarities
between the world’s pidgins and creoles arose on
independent but parallel lines.
 Nautical Jargon Theory

 As early as 1938 the American linguist John Reinecke noted the

possible influence of nautical jargon on pidgins.
 It is obvious that on many of the original voyages of discovery
to the developing world many nationalities were represented
among the crews of the ships.
 This fact led to the development of a core vocabulary of
nautical items and a simplified grammar (at least as regards
English).
 Relexification Theory

Grammatical structure couldn’t be effected by the

switch in vocabulary,
In that era, Lingua Franca used by crusaders and
traders to communicate.
 Universalist Theory
 This is the most recent view on the origin of pidgins and has
elements in common with the other theories. However, the
distinguishing mark of this theory is that it sees the similarities
as due to universal tendencies among humans to create
languages of a similar type, i.e. an analytic language with a
simple phonology, an SVO syntax with little or no
subordination or other sentence complexities, and with a
lexicon which makes maximum use of polysemy (and devices
such as reduplication) operating from a limited core vocabulary.
 CONCLUSION
PIDGIN
No native speaker.
Extended contact between groups
with no language in common, usually
used for trade.
Simple in structures.
Not used for group identification.
CREOLE
Have native speaker.
Develop from Pidgin, learn as first
language by speakers.
Complex in structures.
Take on national and official
functions.