Pidgins And Creoles- Marina Banjac.docx

Banjac Marina

Pidgins and Creoles 1.Introduction Salikoko S. Mufwene discuses and opposes the well-established view on pidgins and creoles as sharing the same developmental tide. First, he discusses the emergence of the terms as proof of their independence. Secondly, he opposes the idea that the structural design of the creole is what distinguishes it from other language varieties. Furthermore, in the section The development of creoles, he lists different approaches to the analysis of the development and external shape of the creoles. He also endeavors to explain the shortcomings of general linguistics’ applied analysis of the pidgins and creoles. 2. What Are Pidgins and Creoles? Pidgins and creoles are new varieties of language that arose from the extended contact between colonial non-standard varieties of European languages and several non-European languages. Pidgins are reduced and structurally simplified languages which emerged along trade routes and trade forts. Pidgins are specialized in functions and initially served as lingua francas. Some pidgins expanded and through the process of nativization or creolization became creoles, as Bloomfield (1933) and Hall(1966) state. However, discussion about the structural complexity of the two, as well as of the terminology chosen for the reference to the languages that are referred to as pidgins or creoles is debatable. Author Salikoko S. Mufwene presents the evidence of a contradicting nature of the standards that govern these notions. Underlying criteria that categorize new language varieties into pidgins and creoles rests upon the tentative assumption that these terms are identified as part of one continuum. Salikoko S. Mufwene criticizes received approach to the analysis of pidgins and creoles through challenging wellestablished views. The terms creole and pidgin had expanded to other emerging varieties during the time of massive colonializations. Before the convergence, many of them had initially been appointed the name jargon. The term pidgin arose in the early nineteenth century (Baker and Mühlhäusler, 1990) and is believed to be etymologically related to the Cantonese bei chin, (Comrie, Matthews, and Polinsky, 1996:146) which phonologically resembles the pronunciation of pi-dgin more than an English alternative etymon business. The term was generalized and utilized by the linguists,

even though the sailors and traders were responsible for the ’escalation’ of the term. The term Creole, on the other hand, was coined in the American Iberian colonies in the sixteenth century and was soon to be adopted in metropolitan Spanish, French, and English. Hall (1966) and Mühlhäusler (1986/1997) compare the pidgin, jargon, and creole with reference to ’life-cycle’ stating that jargon is less stable than pidgin, while the pidgin structurally expands into creole through the putative process of nativization. This implies that they all belong on one and the same axis, which is what Salikoko S. Mufwene strongly opposes. ’’The fact that the term pidgin emerged in Canton, thousands of miles away from the American Iberian colonies where the term creole originated in the sixteenth century, should have cast doubt on the scenario that derives creoles from pidgins.’’ It was not until the eighteenth century, however, that the term Creole started to be generally applied for language variety associated exclusively with the descendants of non-Europeans. According to Chaudenson (1992) and Mufwene (1997), Creole is in essence basilect, lower class variety, as opposed to acrolect which is the upper class’ variety. They justify this by stating that settlement colonies were commonly spread and enlarged by homestead societies, and even though non-Europeans were in minority, they used the same koinés as Europeans. Diverging from the initial forms of the colonial language, in the later stages of the plantation settlement, this language could be identified as basilect. Chaudenson (1992) points out that prior to this development, slaves did not use pidgins, but mesolectal approximations of European koinés. In that socio-economic climate, as some diachronic textual evidence suggests, plantation settlements flourished, the population grew and changed, an earlier variation of colonial language faded, and was consequently replaced by newly developed basilect. When the pidgin structurally expands and is acquired by the new generations of indigenous people it is said to be creolized. This process of creolization also implies further development and cultural expansion to the level when the creole is not recognized as such, due to its close approximation with the vernacular or base language. This well-held view is dubious since there are examples where some of the European languages even though resembling structurally other creoles, are not considered creoles but a variety. The reason behind this is that somehow, an idea of creole is closely connected with the vernacular language exclusively acquired by the non-Europeans. Bloomfield(1933) stated that when the language of a particular community becomes their only language, it is considered to be creolized. Furthermore, Hall (1962,1966) developed this theory by interpreting the creoles as ‘nativized pidgins’. Post-creole stage on the

life-cycle continuum was added and coined by DeCamp (1971) stating that creole may become decreolized and in fact become standard language of a particular community. However, Salikoko S. Mufwene states that Creole is still a creole even if some of its features are lost when converging with the base language. The evidence for this is basilectal and mesolectal features existing at the same time with the creole proving the fact that the creole is still alive. At the same time, Creole is often identified due to its socio-economical climate in which it developed, and not according to its ’’structural peculiarities’’. Salikoko S. Mufwene presents some discrepancies between different post-continuum outcomes adducing Carribean English creoles and Gullah as evidence against decreolization. Salikoko S. Mufwene discusses how naming practice behind creoles is not as consistent as it seems. If we are to name a new language a creole, it needs to have some criteria with which it is compatible. There must be some structural similarities that all creoles share. However, it seems that only languages or vernaculars that were acquired by the Non-Europeans were granted the ‘status’ of the creole. While some colonial offsprings in Europe were only considered to be varieties of European languages. This is closely related to the problem of the structural design of the creole. How can one resort to a handful of rules which govern the creation and adaptation of the base language to its users' utilization? Is there some kind of prototype to which all creoles resort to? Salikoko S. Mufwene discusses the well-established view ‘’that there are creole prototypes from which others deviate in various ways’’. He states that creoles cannot be defined in that way since every creole had its own specific socio-economic ecology. Under this, he posits that every single aspect is relevant in the development process. Whether it be the languages in contact, the time duration of contact, people in contact, nature of their contact etc. 3. The Development of Creoles So if creoles did not come into existence out of pidgin, how did they develop? There are three hypotheses concerning this question. The substratum, the superstrate, and universalist. First instances of substrate hypothesis were related to African languages spoken by the slaves in the New World and Indian Ocean plantations. The nineteenth-century French creolists believed that Europeans had to talk to the Africans in baby talk.They also assumed that African languages were primitive and that the creole was their appropriation of European languages. In

the twentieth century Sylvain ( 1936) and Turner (1949) shed the light on the structural influence that African linguistics had on Haitian Creole and Gullah. There are three schools concerned with substrate hypothesis.First school advocated by Alleyne (1980, 1996) and Holm (1988) analyzes the substrate influence on Atlantic and Indian Ocean creoles. It resembles the previous approach by Turner which also invoked the influence of African language but lacked evidence. Mufwene (1990) criticized both of these approaches as being inadequate. Stating that although they do acknowledge the influence African languages had on the Creole, they lack structural evidence of precisely which selectional principles are involved. The second school accounts for the relexification hypothesis. Relexification is the process wherein the lexemes from the European language are incorporated into the non-European languages. This approach has been criticized by Salikoko S. Mufwene, by drawing an examples from Haitian which has French as its lexifier language and EweFon as substrate: (1) Haitian also shares several features with other non-standard French varieties; (2)It ignores several features that came from other African languages which were present during the development of the Haitian Creole. The reason behind that is that ’’relexifications assume, disputably, that languages of the Ewe-Fon group are structurally identical and that no competition of influence among them was involved’’ The third school of substrate hypothesis deals with the idea that substrate languages provide their structural elements and incorporate them in newly formed varieties. Typologically homogenous languages share their relevant features, even though the example of Melanesian show that not all features are equally incorporated. Superstrate hypothesis or dialectologists hypothesis revolves around the idea that superstrate language is the one lending its structural features to the newly created creole.AAE is claimed to have developed from the non-standard variety of the base language which served as the source of creoles’ structural features. This non-standard variety was related to the low-class whites, while the African languages had restricted influence if any at all. As for the Haitian Creole, it is strongly related to 17th and 18th century French, taking all of its basic vocabulary and linguistic structure. It is also, as stated with the examples of AAE, heavily based on the superstratum language, amongst others, Krapp (1924) and Kurath (1928) Faine (1937) and Hall (1958: 372).

However, Rickford (1998) and Chaudenson (1989, 1992) believe that creole’s feature did not originate in their base language and are more accommodating for the substratum hypothesis. Universalist hypotheses are closely related to the notion of Universal Grammar which stands for the universality of language features underlying their formal realization. According to this, creoles are not influenced by the languages which were used by the speakers in contact but are attributed to the certain laws of language acquisition. Bickerton contends that children acquiring the creole actually contribute to its formation and shaping due to UG parameters. Bickerton helps himself with the notion of Pidginization index where he presents some factors included. They fundamentally revolve around the socio-economic background during the colonization growth concerning the number of speakers of one or the other language community. However, not all creolist invoked the position of children as critical in this process of development of the creole. Many contemporary creolists subscribe to a complementary hypothesis which implies combination and discussion of all relevant aspects of the previous three, and therefore this is considered to be an adequate alternative. Baker and Corne, (1986); Hancock, (1986); and Mufwene,(1986, 2001) discuss the interaction and influence from both substrate and superstrate language, along with the socio-historical issues relevant for the development of the creole. There are a lot of technical problems to overcome when being on the road of discovery of how creoles became what they became? What were the selectional principles when the interaction between the nation happened? Could one find the definite form to which all creoles gravitate to become? Are there any rules at all? How did sociohistorical conditions shaped the acquisition of the new language? Is there any possibility of generalizing creoles according to their structural features and not according to the circumstances in which they arose that are the same for all creoles? Every creole had different languages in contact and selectional features of both were based on the languages in contact. Reference: Salikoko S. Mufwene, (2006). “Pidgins and Creoles” In Braj B.Kachru, Yamuna Kachru, Cecil L. Nelson (eds.) The Handbook of World Englishes(315-327.) Blackwell Publishing.