Mieke Vandenbroucke

20/3/2013

Brueghel 1563, “Tower of Babel”

� Exam reading

Mesthrie et al 2009: ch. 9 Language Contact 2: Pidgins, Creoles and ‘New Englishes’

Additional reading: 2 newspaper articles on Fanagalo

� Central focus

- Multilingualism vs. Monolingualism

- Language contact and extreme language mixture: pidgins & creoles

� Exam questions2

� How many languages do you speak and to whatextent are you fluent in them?

� Do you consider yourself to be monolingual or multilingual?

� Do you think this child is multilingual or a polyglot?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-URtZfIgKAU

� Do you consider multilingualism a good or bad thing?

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» history of distrust of multilingualism in Western tradition

� Cf. biblical story of tower of Babel in Babylonia

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1 And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.

2 As people moved east, they found a plain in Shinar* and settled there.

4 And they said “Go to, let us build us a city, and a tower, that reaches

unto heaven; and let us make a name for ourselves, otherwise we will

be scattered over the face of the whole earth.

5 And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the

children of men were building.

6 And the LORD said “Behold, if as one people speaking the same

language they do this, then nothing they plan to do will be

impossible for them.”

7 “Come let us go down and confuse their language so they may not

understand one another’s speech”

8 So the LORD scattered them abroad from there over all the earth and

they stopped building the city

9 Therefore is the name of it called Babel**; because the LORD did

there confound the language of all the earth; and from there did the

LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.

(Genesis 11:1-9)

“Building the tower of Babel” (12th centuryanonymous mosaics in Sicily)

In biblical account of tower of Babel in Babylonia:

▪ single, universal language as gift of paradise

▪ linguistic diversity and need for multilingualism as divinepunishment for human arrogance

» Monolingualism as natural human condition

» Multilingualism as anomaly

» Language policies promoting monolingualism

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� societal monolingualism is…

� “a figment of imagination” (Joseph 2006)

� “a myth detached from reality” (Shohamy 2006)

� “the idea that monolingualism is the human norm is

a myth” (Thomason 2001)

� Assumed monolingualism vs. multilingual reality

� Japan? Germany? France? England?

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The unification of the nation-state Germany by Otto von Bismarck (1848-1871)

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Eighteenth century and before: multi-ethnic empires

E.g. Austro-Hungarian Empire, Ottoman Empire, Russian Empire

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Ottoman Empire

and its losses

after 1807

Nineteenth-century European nation-states

� Period of intense nationalism + drastic change in attitude towards multilingualism

� » Monolingualist language ideology as part of nationalist discourse▪ Create monolingual population, speaking national standard language

▪ Strive for unity in nationality, culture, history, territory, religion and most of all language

▪ Principle of commonality of language

▪ One-language-one-nation homogeneity

▪ Multilingualism: a threat to unity + bad influence children’s acquisition

� » Language as a social construct

� » Consequences▪ Assimilation of ethnic minorities

▪ Colonies: perpetuation of myth 10

� Increasing mobility and flows of migration

� Globalisation

� Emergent world economies and new international

division of labour (outsourcing)

� Rapid expansion of digital communication

� Multinational units (EU, UN, NATO, WB, etc)

� Post-colonial search for new identity

� …

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Result: increasing recognition, revaluation and positive

approach of multilingualism as a resource

� Multiple areas in sociolinguistics deal withmultilingualism

� Language use in multilingual community▪ Code-switching, code-mixing, translanguaging

▪ Diglossia (Ferguson) / polyglossia (Platt)

▪ Lingua francas

� Language conflict▪ Language shift, attrition, language death

▪ Reversing language shift, revitalization of minority languages

� Language change▪ Borrowing, loanwords, transfers

▪ Extreme language mixture: pidgins and creoles

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PIDGIN CREOLE

No native speakers Native speakers, acquired as L1

Restricted functions (trade, work) Full range of social functions

Simplified structure and small

vocabulary

Expanded structure and vocabulary,

required of L1

� Contact languages (extreme language mixture)

� > Creolistics (1960/70s onwards)

� Degrees of grammatical complexity (correlates with functions):� Jargon (pre-pidgin)� (Stable) pidgin� Expanded pidgin� > Creole

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� Trade� Market languages; Trade pidgins

� E.g. Russenorsk >>

� European settlement� Locations where indigenous population survived and not enslaved

� > necessity of learning indigenous languages

� Pidgin development in domain of employment

� E.g. Fanakalo (English, Zulu & Afrikaans)

� Settings of war� E.g.Post WWII: American wars in Asia (Japan, Korea, Vietnam and

Thailand)

� > Bamboo English (marginal, unstable jargon, pre-pidgin)

� Diasporas, large-scale movements� Labour migration: Tok Pisin & Gastarbeiterdeutsch (industrial pidgin) 15

� Majority of pidgins: slave-holding communities

� Trans-Atlantic New World slave trade (17th-19th C)� Colonisation of New World territories by European powers

� Development of crops plantations

� Labour force: mass-scale slave importation from W-Africa

� > The Sale Triangle

� Crystallization:fort creoles vs. plantation creoles

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� Etymology?

� “business” in Chinese Pidgin English

� Hebrew “pidjom” (‘trade’ or ‘exchange’)

� Chinese “péi” + “tsin” (‘paying money’)

� English “pigeon” (bird messenger)

� 17th C Brazil “Pidians” (‘people’)

� > uncertainty; but connection to ‘trade’

� Linguistic structure >

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� Etymology?

� Linguistic structure:

� Reduced language: minimal vocabulary and grammar

� Pidginization implies two types of languages:

▪ Superstrate language

▪ = the socially dominant language(s)

▪ = the LEXIFIER language

▪ = the surface level of the pidgin

▪ Substrate language

▪ = the ‘subordinate’ language(s)

▪ = the language(s) that contribute to grammatical structure and

semantic restrictions

▪ = the language(s) that influence the below-the-surface level 18

CREOLE WHERE SPOKEN SUPERSTRATE SUBSTRATE

Jamaican Creole Jamaica EnglishWest-African

languages

Negerhollands Virgin Islands Dutch

Danish, English,

French, Spanish

and African

Haitian Creole Haiti French African languages

PapiamentoNetherlands

AntillesSpanish

African languages

(also Dutch and

English)

Angolar São Tomé Portuguese Kimbundu

19> Mesthrie et al 276

» size of lexis is small

» maximum use of minimal resources

some important strategies:

� polysemy

� multifunctionality

� circumlocution

� compounding20

� Polysemy� shado: ‘shadow, soul, reflection’ (Cam. Pidgin English)

� Multifunctionality� sik: noun, adjective, intransitive verb, transitive verb

(Sranan)

� Circumlocution� Gras bilong fes (‘beard’)

� Gras bilong hed (‘hair’)

� Gras bilong ai (‘eyebrow’) (Tok Pisin)

� Compounding� Hos man vs. hos meri (‘stallion’ vs. ‘mare’) (Tok Pisin) 21

� How to account for worldwide similarities between

pidgins?

� (1) Monogenetic theories

� considerable support in 1960s

� all pidgins with European superstrate derive from

Portuguese pidgin (earliest explorers/colonisers)

� Portuguese pidgin as structural basis with later

relexification by other European languages

� evidence: nautical element in many pidgins

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� How to account for worldwide similarities betweenpidgins?

� (2) Independent parallel development

� Broad parallels in circumstances pidginization account for similarities in pidgin languages▪ Parallels between superstrate languages: European languages

similar in structure and vocabulary

▪ Parallels in group of substrate languages : African languages, many slave languages from West-African language family

▪ Parallels in circumstances of language learning

� Both (1) & (2) restricted to EU-based pidgins >>23

� (3) Linguistic universals

� relies on innate linguistic abilities of humans

� psycholinguistic account

� dominant theory in creolistics24

“Africans, Americans, Asians, Europeans, and Polynesians would

have used their innate linguistic abilities to create simple

communication systems which could be elaborated by having

recourse to their mother tongues or to the linguistic common

denominators which are thought to underlie all human languages

…. It is likely that speakers, in contact situations, simplify their

languages in particular ways.” (Todd 1994)

� Fanakalo or Fanagalo

� Stable pidgin spoken in South Africa

� Developed in mining sector (instructions)

� Zulu as lexifier (!), lesser extent Englishand Afrikaans

� Structure: closest to English

� Recently: debate to replace it as lingua franca in SF mining sector

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� Extinct dual-source pidgin

� Relatively stable (seasonal) trade pidgin (jargon)

� ! 50/50 well-balanced Norwegian – Russian

� Used 1740-1917 in Arctic Pomor trade

� Rudimentary grammar

+ restricted lexis

(400 words)

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� Industrial pidgin in Germany

� Dubbed “foreigner talk”

� Simplified German spoken by

migrant guest workers (Turkish, Greek,

Serbian, Croatian, …) since 1950s

� Grammatical simplification + lexical reduction

� Pidginization or SLA continuum variety?

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� Pre-pidgin > Pidgin > Expanded pidgin > Creole

� Creolisation/ vernacularisation/nativization

� Acquisition as L1 in creole community

� Expansion of structure and vocabulary to express full range of meanings and serve full range of functions required of full-fledged L1:

� Lexis: substrates and superstrate expansions

� Phonology: more complexity

� Reorganisation of grammar

� Development of complex and embedded clauses

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� Underdeveloped, restricted pidgin »full-fledged L1 creole?

� Derek Bickerton’s bioprogram theory� Children play active role in providing structure and

complexity to pidgin and in creolisation

� The bioprogram▪ = children’s innate capacity for language

▪ = linguistic blueprint that takes form by dominant L1 exposure

▪ Abstract syntactic and semantic structures

▪ Words then ‘plugged’ onto abstract structures

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� Bickerton’s arguments:

� Bioprogram is universal: similarities in creole grammars

� 12 ‘universal’ grammatical structures creoles (not non-creoles)

▪ Multiple negation

▪ Zero copula

▪ Serial verb constructions

▪ (Reduplication)

� Opposing and discrediting the bioprogram theory:� Evidence shows adults as much involved as children

� Creole universals: influence of African languages

� Sharp break: not demonstrated (intermediate varieties Tok Pisin)31

� Alternate account of creolisation: Gradualism

= process of gradual creolisation of expanded pidgin

over generations

� Children & adults simultaneously involved in process

� Coexistence of P and C over time

� Bioprogram’s jump/break from P to C

≠ Gradualism’s slow evolving and unfolding change

over long period of time32

� Standard superstrate language of a creole-speaking society exerts powerful influence on the development of the creole

� social mobility: greater access of Creole speakers to superstrate L

� ≠ slave-holding societies (rigid class distinctions)

� ≠ replacement of original superstrate by another

� Result: range of varieties between creole and superstrate L

� POST-CREOLE CONTINUUM >33

� Result of decreolisation:

� Synchronic variation; coexistence of varieties betweensuperstrate and creole language

� Three central systems� Basilect: ‘deep creole’, farthest removed from lexifier

� Acrolect: closest to lexifier, (accent, grammatical differences)

� Mesolect: variety intermediate these two poles (fluid)

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“There is no sharp cleavage between creole and standard… [but] a linguistic

continuum, a continuous spectrum of speech varieties ranging from …

‘bush talk’ or ‘broken language’… to educated standard [and showing an]

extreme degree of variability” (DeCamp 1971: 350)

Guyanese creole

English-lexified creole

spoken in Guyana,

first colonized by Dutch

British colony until 1966

~ speech continuum

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� � Decreolisation

� Process whereby acrolectal and upper-mesolectal

varieties start to become more creole-like

� Conditions: prevention of social mobility

� E.g. Fiona Wright (1984): study of black adolescents’

language use in Britain

� Migrated parents from Caribbean spoke decreolized creole

� Increase in basilectal creole features occurred amongst

adolescents

� Reason: lack of social mobility + social network in-group talk36

� Tok Pisin

� Dialect of Melanesian Pidgin

� 2.5 million speakers in Papua New Guinea

� Used in broadcast, print media and parliament

� Complex development in Melanesia, Pacific Islands▪ 1800s first contact with European traders: pre-pidgin

▪ > labour migration to Australia: early Melanesian Pidgin

▪ > return to home islands: stabilized Melanesian Pidgin (expanded pidgin) with three dialects on different islands▪ Papua New Guinea: Tok Pisin

▪ Vanuatu: Bislama

▪ Solomon Islands: Pijin

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laTpd2ofjKg

� Tok Pisin

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laTpd2ofjKg

� Papiamentu (creole)

� Trinidad French Creole

� Hawai’i Creole English (Pidgin)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvCvyqMt0schttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6Mk__YmSXo&feature=endscreenhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtF0rUW-naw&feature=endscreen&NR=1

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� Negative attitudes towards pidgins:� “mongrel jargons” or “macaronic lingos”

� Corruption and impure forms of superstrate language

� No high status or prestige

Signs on campus in Cameroon about Cameroon Pidgin English

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� Lecture by Sue Fox on language

maintenance, language shift and

language death

� After Easter Break, 17 April:

guest lecture about linguistic landscapes

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