Creole and Pidgin Languages. General Characteristics
Pidgin and Creole
Malaki Marina, 3LM3
Issues to discuss
language: general characteristics
and peculiar features, varieties
Creole Languages : general characteristics,
theories of creolization
Structural characteristics of PL and CL.
a simplified form of speech formed out of one
or more existing languages and used by people
who have no other language in common.
nobody's mother tongue, and it is not a real
language at all: it has no elaborate grammar, it is
very limited in what it can convey, and different
people speak it differently (R.L. Trasc, Language
and Linguistics: The Key Concepts, 2007)
used to describe Chinese Pidgin
English, was later generalized to refer any pidgin.
Tok Pisin = talk Pidgin
have limited power and do not last long
(Pidgin Russian in Manchuria disappeared when
Russian settlers left China after WWII )
Varieties of Pidgin
Pidgins used around the world (4 extinct and
many in the process of disappearing)
as lingua franca for trade between
British and Chinese people.
– began to decline in the late 19
Spirit Language (Jamaica, West
West African Pidgin (West Africa,
Equatorial Guinea, Sierra Leone )
African Pidgin (su-su= gossip, pyaapyaa=sickly, koro-koro=clear vision, dotidoti=garbage, yama-yama=disgusting)
you sabi do am? = do you know how to do
Was influenced by: English, Portuguese, Cantonese,
Hawaiian, Korean , Philippine, Mexican
no like t'come fo' go wok." =
People don't want to have him go to work
dirt and cover and blanket, finish" =
"They put the body in the ground and
covered it with a blanket and that's all."
Grammar (ex. 2 prepositions –
blong= of,for , long= all the other)
small vocabulary (Chinglish=700
words, gras blong het=hair)
Creole Languages developed
in colonial European plantation
settlements in the 17th and 18th centuries
as a result of contact between groups that
spoke mutually unintelligible languages.
the 1930s some linguists have
claimed that creoles emerged from pidgins
Theories of Creolization
(languages previously spoken by
Superstrate (colonial nonstandard varieties
of the European languages )
Universalist (universals of language
development , developed by adults
according to universals of second language
Pidgins have no native speakers; creoles
have native speakers.
Pidgins have a limited range of uses;
creoles have a considerably expanded
range of uses.
Pidgins typically evolve out of contact
situations; creoles evolve out of pidgins.
5 vowels in Pidgin
almost complete lack of inflection in nouns,
pronouns , verbs and adjectives.
Nouns are not marked for number and
Negation may only include a single particle
Vocabulary similar to standard language