Class notes for October 24, 2013 - Pidgins

First, a quick look at where some (not all) pidgins are or were spoken.

Not everybody likes pidgins...

But people keep using them.

Here are the lecture notes for pidgins.

If you have trouble downloading them, another copy can be found below the jump (click where it says 'czytaj więcej').

 

Class notes: Pidgins

Michael Farris

Pidgins are important as the least common denominator in cross linguistic communication.

They are not like "top-down" phenomena such as obligatory foreign language instruction in schools or language policies of governments where a small group of people make decisions for the majority.

Instead they represent a "bottom-up" of people who need to communicate about practical subjects. Therefore anything and everything that does not serve that immediate aim is disposed of.

They are also important because cross linguistic communication using other languages are often subjected to the same process (though in greatly reduced form).

Four factors seem to be necessary to create a pidgin:

1. Speakers of different languages in regular or prolonged (not assimilatory) contact

2. A desire or need to communicate

3. No accessible interlanguage. This means there is no common third language and there is no need and/or desire and/or ability for one group to learn the language of the other. It can also mean one group cannot force its language on the other

4. Time for user base to develop and vocabulary to stabilize (to some degree)

Given these conditions pidgins arise spontaneously and easily. In some parts of the world (especially Africa) there are still pidgins emerging, especially in urban conglomerations which bring together large numbers of people with no common language.

Pidgins have a number of traits in common:

Phonological simplification

Phonetic features such as vowel length, tone, or any other relatively rare kind of sound, (like the 'th' sounds of English or rounded front vowels of French or German) are lost and replaced with more commonly occurring sounds. There is also loss or reduction of consonant clusters. The unconscious goal seems to be to limit sounds to the easiest to distinguish.

Grammatical 'simplification'

There is a general loss of inflectional and agreement categories (such as gender, number, tense, noun classes etc). Words in Pidgins typically undergo no modification (except maybe reduplication). Changes in meaning are achieved by adding more words.

There is a general replacement of inflection with analytic structures, so that 'she went' might become 'she done go', 'or even 'e done go' or 'e go'.

There is a general lack of embedding. Ideas are expressed through a serious of juxtaposed short simple clauses.

Instead of "That book I bought last week is really interesting" a pidgin might express the same idea as:

"Me buy book last week. Book interesting. True."

Semantic simplification

Pidgins do not serve anyone's full time communicaive needs. Therefore, many areas of life remain unaddressed. Often pidgins are limited to commercial transactions. Russenorsk was in use between Norwegian and Russian fishermen for over a hundred years but was only used to discuss concrete face to face issues related to boats and fishing.

Semantic categories are also coflated.

Often this is done by either mapping the qualities of the human body onto inanimate objects as in 'boat nose' instead of 'prow (of a boat)' alternately human body parts might be described metaphorically as in 'grass belong head' for 'hair (on the human head)' Both these kinds of constructions seem to be based on a principle of making the smallest possible vocabulary stretch as far as possible.

This principle of using as few separate morphemes as possible might be referred to as oligosynthesis. This is a frequent quality of constructed languages (Sona, Toki Pona), and speculative fiction (Newspeak in Orwell's 1984) but otherwise unattested in natural human languages. Though some natural languages have some oligosynthetic qualities.

Lack of uniformity between individual users 

A study of Hawaiian Pidgin English found that word order was highly variable with most speakers usually following the word order of their own language. A Japanese user might say "I car buy" using SOV order while a Philipino speaker might say "Buy I car" using the VSO of most Phillipine languages.

Particular pidgins

Chinese Pidgin English : From the 17th to 19th centuries along China coast. Actually a group of pidgins that arose in different port cities.  Influenced mainstream English and a number of everyday phrases used by all native speakers have their origin in Chinese Pidgin English, such as

long time no see,

have a look-see,

where to?,

no X-ee no Y-ee (no tickee no laundry)

Chinook Jargon (Chinuk Wawa, Wawa, Lelang) - Primary trade and interlanguage of the Pacific Northwest in North America 19th century until about 1900. Based on the Chinook language (with English and French additions). Had about 100,000 speakers at one point.

Lingua Franca (Sabir) – Trade language in the Mediterranean basin 11th to 19th centuries.

Russenorsk – Russian and Norwegian – from 18th century to Russian Revolution. Between Russian and Norwegian fishermen who fished in the sea north of Russia.

Mobilian Trade Jargon (Yamá) – North American Gulf coast – Western Muskogean, based on Choctaw-Chickasaw

Choctaw       

chibashlilitok                       chi – bashli – li – tok = one word, four bound morphemes

                                       you -  cut  -    I-past-tense

            isno ino bashli taha             you I cut past    = four separate words (O S V)

Some other kinds of languages or communication strategies are sometimes referred to as Pidgins but are not These include:

Entrenched code-switching:

Spanglish – Parts of US between bilingual speakers of Spanish-English

Vehicular "transfer" languages : Ethnic languages which are used widely for trade or other contacts and which are modified 'simplified' through heavy cross-linguistic usage which outweighs native monolingual usage.

Sango – Principle lingua franca of the Central African Republic

Swahili – Expanding lingua franca in Eastern Africa

Malayo-Indonesian – Traditional lingua franca in Malaysia and Indonesia

Mixed languages : Use vocabulary from one language and grammatical affixes from another

Michif – French lexicon, Cree morphology

Copper Island Aleut – Aleut nouns, Russian verbs

Media Lengua – Spanish roots, Quechua morphology

Erromintxela – Romany lexicon, Basque morphology