English Pidgin Research Articles

ЗАЛОГ АНГЛИЙСКОГО ГЛАГОЛА И ЕГО СУДЬБА В АНГЛО-ПИДЖИНАХ И КРЕОЛЯХ

The article considers various modern approaches to the interpretation of the category of verb voice in the English language and the transformation of this grammatical phenomenon in the source language in the process of the emergence and development of new contact languages by the example of the English pidgins and creoles. The analysis is conducted by the material of the creoles Krio, Tok Pisin, Kriol, the Trinidadian and Jamaican creoles. Basing on the study of the processes of forming a new grammatical system of creoles, the authors establish the tendency of the decay of the source language verbal paradigm, the complete rejection of the passive voice use and the similarity of the general structural process of languages development.

Hidden Roots: The African Element in Bahamian Speech

The basis of New World Language varieties were forged on the West African coast as a result of prolonged business contact, thus the linguistically-sophisticated Africans rapidly acquired enough European language to use in trade and a common English pidgin evolved. It is reasonable to assume that this language was transmitted to differing extents to the slaves who waited (sometimes for up to a year) for trans-shipment to the New World. This is the most reasonable explanation for the remarkable similarities in grammar and vocabulary in the English of New World Africans, whether inhabitants of South American forests, of the Jamaican hinterland or of the Bahamian Family Islands.

Copula Deletion in Spanish Foreigner Talk

Questionnaires were used to discover how twenty-eight students from Peru, Colombia, and Guatemala use the Spanish copulas ser and estar in foreigner talk. Ser usually was deleted but not estar when used as a locative or when discussing health. A multiple choice situational questionnaire was found to reflect actual use more accurately than one where respondents write what they think they would say. The pattern of deletion suggests that creolists should look at the role of "canned topics" in the development of the bipartite and tripartite copulas found in Pacific and Afro-Caribbean English Pidgins and Creoles.

English pidgins: form and function

ABSTRACT: This paper highlights similarities and variation in both the form and function of English pidgins the world over. Their ethnographic functions are shown to vary from that of the lingua franca in Africa and Asia to that of local vernaculars in the New World. Although these pidgins usually have an in‐group, and sometimes politically integrative, function, very few of them have ever succeeded in being elevated to the high status of varieties used in, for example, the government, or higher courts of law, let alone higher education. Regarding form, it is noteworthy that, although English pidgins share a number of formal features (which may be attributed either to their common seventeenth‐ and eighteenth‐century lexifier or to a universal, Bickertonian language bioprogram), they differ from one another in a number of other respects which may be attributed to substrate linguistic influence or chance selection of superstate features. Traditional invocations of ‘decreolization’ to account for intra‐ and intercommunal variation are argued against because they are based on the unproven assumption that the basilect as such has ever existed. The available information both on the social stratification of the slave population on the plantations of the New World and on differences in the British‐African demographic ratios in the colonies is adduced to support the position that current speech continua date from the formative stages of the pidgins.

On the Relationship of Gullah and Bahamian

B OTH GULLAH AND BAHAMIAN appear to have an immediate ancestor in the eighteenth-century creole English spoken on plantations in the American South.' The intertwining history of the Carolinas and the Bahamas, coupled with linguistic similarities most evident in their lexicons, suggest that and Bahamian are in fact sister dialects of Atlantic English.2 The Dictionary ofBahamian English (Holm with Shilling 1982) casts new light on Cassidy and Hancock's 1980 debate in American Speech on the place of Gullah. As Hancock points out, Of all the western hemisphere anglo-creoles, is the least satisfactorily accounted for in its relationship both to other such languages and to the varities of black vernacular English spoken in the United States, with which it is often linked (1980, p. 17). Cassidy found that the lexical evidence from Hancock's 1969 comparative study virtually requires a common English pidgin source for the language of slaves taken from Barbados to Surinam, Jamaica, and South Carolina from 1651 to 1670. It suggests, though it does not require, creolization in Barbados, perhaps already begun in Africa (1980, p. 13). Hancock, doubting the existence of an early, stabilized Barbadian creole, traced Gullah's ancestry to an early Guinea Coast English that later evolved into Sierra Leone Krio, as well as other varieties of creolized English. He has now (1982; forthcoming) elaborated this position in a preliminary classification of the varieties of Atlantic English. In this family tree, Guinea Coast English has a Lower Guinea branch, which has a Caribbean branch, which has an Eastern or Lesser Antillean branch, which has a Leewards branch, which has a branch, which has Islands and Afro-Seminole on one branch, with Bahamian and Caicos on the other. Although this might seem to imply a mother (Gullah)/daughter (Bahamian) relationship between the two varieties discussed here, Hancock uses Gullah to refer to the earlier American plantation creole and Sea Islands Creole to refer to the variety of currently spoken on the Islands of South Carolina.3 Hancock, then, agrees with the position presented here that and Bahamian are sisters. The use of the term sister here is to be understood as a metaphor for a close relationship in both heredity and development, but not in the strict

Historical and linguistic evidence in favour of the relexification theory in the formation of creoles

ABSTRACTThree different Creoles spoken in Surinam are examined for their Creole origins. Saramaccan (SM) and Sranan (SN) are compared on basic vocabulary and other linguistic features and analyzed in conjunction with historical evidence. It is suggested that SN and SM speakers came to Surinam plantations with a basic knowledge of Portuguese-Creole. SN completely relexified in the direction of English, whereas SM only partly relexified toward English. Evidence suggests that Ndjuka (ND) is not a product of relexification, but developed from an eighteenth-century English pidgin. It is concluded that both ‘normal’ genetic developments and relexification may have similar results and that comparative evidence alone is not a sufficient basis for historical conclusions (comparative linguistics, creoles, relexification).