This document provides an overview of pidgins and creoles. It defines pidgins as contact languages that arise between distinct linguistic groups for communication, featuring reduced grammar and vocabulary. Creoles develop from pidgins when a new generation acquires the contact language as its native tongue, expanding its structure. The document outlines the processes of pidginization and creolization, and notes that creoles may decreolize over time to resemble the standard language. It provides examples of pidgins and creoles, and a model of their life cycle from jargon to creole and possible convergence with the standard form.

1. Pidgins and
creoles
Presented by : Amal
Mustafa Elsinousy

2. The main points :
 Introduction
 Lingua
franca
 Pidgins
 Pidginization
 creole
 Creolization
 Decreolization

3. Introduction:
When
two or more people
from different languages
meet and tried to
communicate, what should
they do ?

4. Answers :
1.
2.
Use a third language (Lingua
Franca)
Mix the two languages (Pidgin
/Creole)

6. Lingua Franca
A
lingua franca is a language which
is used habitually by people whose
mother tongues are different in
order to facilitate communication
between them.

7. Other terms that are used to refer
to Lingua francas:
a trade language e.g., Swahili in East
Africa.
 A contact language e.g., Greek koine
 An international language e.g., English
 An auxiliary language e.g., Esperanto.
 A mixed language .e.g., Mitchif in
Canada


8. English – lingua franca:
Spoken in
many countries as a
native language .
Spoken as a second language
in other countries e.g., India and
the Philippines.

9. Other languages – lingua francas:
•
Many Languages throughout the history
served as lingua franca:
o Chinese
o French
o Arabic
o Chinook Jargon ( American Indian)
• We can conclude that mainly political
and economical power defines the
Lingua Franca.

10. pidgins
 Origin:
to be coming from a Chinese
attempt to pronounce the English word
business during trades in the Far East.
 Historically, pidgins arose in colonial
situations where the representatives of
the particular colonial power, officials,
tradesmen, sailors, etc., came in contact
with natives
 Assumed

11. Definition:
or contact language is a restricted
and extended language which arises with
an urgency of communication to serve
specific needs between social groups that
are ethnically and linguistically different from
each other .
 One of these groups is in a more dominant
position than the other; the less dominant
group is the one which develops the pidgin.
 A pidgin

12. Pidginization:
Is
a complex combination of different
processes of change, including
reduction and simplification of input
materials ,internal innovation, and
regularization of structure, with L1
influence also playing role.

13. Characteristics of pidgin language:
 No
native speakers yet .
 spoken by millions as means of communication
 Not used as a means of group identification.
 A product of multilingual – 3 languages – one is
dominant. The dominant language  superior
because of economical or social factor.
 Two languages involved  a power struggle for
dominance.
 The dominant group –more vocabulary (lexifier –
superstrate) ,while the less dominant languages
–grammar (substrate).
 Main function –trading

14. •
Reduced grammatical structure:
syllable preferred
 Morphology:  Poor affixation
 -Reduplication is common
 Syntax:
 SVO pattern preferred
 -Articles usually omitted
 Limited vocabulary
 Lexicon:
 Semantics:
 Semantic extensions
 Pragmatics:
 Narrower range of
functions
 Phonology:
 CV

15. Possible outcomes of Pidgins
 Die
out (when original reason for
communication diminishes or disappears)
 Develop
to more formal roles (lingua
franca); which is called an ‘expanded
pidgin’
 Develop
into a creole

16. Creoles

Origin:
An adaptation of the Castilian Spanish
criollo (home, local)
from Portuguese criar (to rear, to bring up),
from Latin creo ("to create").

17. Definition:
A
creole is a pidgin that has
become the first language of a
new generation of speakers.

18. Creolization:
Is
a process where a pidgin
expanded in structure and
vocabulary in order to express the
range of meanings and serve the
range of functions required of a first
language.

19. characteristics of Creoles
pidgins adopted as the native language.
 Nativization is when pidgin passed onto
new generations and became a mother
tongue which is acquired by children.
 Often classified as English/French/Spanish…
based
 speech becomes faster,
o
 Expansion
of morphology and syntax.
 Expansion of phonology.
 Expansion of the lexicon.

20. Decreolization
It
is a hypothetical phenomenon
whereby over time a
creole language reconverges with
one of the standard languages from
which it originally derived. the
theory of creole continua.

21. Bickerton (1975)has proposed a number
of terms to refer to the creole continuum in
Guyanese English:
 Acrolect : which refers to educated
Guyanese English which has very few
differences from other varieties of standard
language.
 Basilect:refers to a variety that would be
least comprehensible to a speaker of the
standard
 Mesolects: are intermediate varieties which
are used to fill the space between the
Acrolect and basilect.

22. Life-Cycle Model of Pidgins and
Creoles
 Jargon
 Pidgin  Pidgin Créole  Creole
⇩
⇩
⇩
⇩
Post-creole continuum ⇩
Post-pidgin continuum
⇘ ⇙
Nativized version
of lexifier
 e.g.,
-
Russenorsk
 - Chinese PE
Solomon Islands
Tok Pisin
Haitian
Jamaican

23. An example of a creole:
•
Jamaican creole is mixed with English and
African.
For example :
instead of saying me they say mi.
This sentence is written in Jamaican creole:
•
Unu cya lissen to we mia say!
•
•
English is:
•
Cant you listen to what I'm saying!

24. Distributions of Ps and Cs
Pidgins are distributed mainly in places
with direct or easy access to the oceans.
They are found mainly in the Caribbean
and around the north and east coasts of
South America and Africa .

25. Thanks for
Listening