Course materials for/by Peter L. Patrick. Contains copyright material used for educational purposes. Please respect copyright.
Notes for LG449
Definitions: PIDGIN(-ization)
Hugo SCHUCHARDT
(as summarized by Meijer & Muysken 1977: 30): "In a contact situation involving 2 groups speaking different languages the simplified language used for communication. . . will be based on one of the two. . . Within the contact language, variations attributable to the native language background of the individual speaker may occur. A contact language may thus be related to any native language ‘as a tree to its roots’. . . In many cases the choice of the particular form that the simplification will take rests with the speaker of the model language."Robt. HALL
(1966:xii): "It often happens that, to communicate with each other, two or more people use a language in a variety whose grammar and vocabulary are very much reduced in extent and which is native to neither side. Such a language is a pidgin."Dell HYMES
(1971:84): "Pidginization is [a] complex process of sociolinguistic change comprising reduction in inner form, with convergence, in the context of restriction in use. A pidgin is a result of such a process that has achieved autonomy as a norm. The context of restricted use in pidginization need not be external but may be internal to a speech community instead... The result of pidginization may acquire a name, but not an independent life; that is, it may be a pre-pidgin continuum."John RICKFORD
(1977:191-2): "The process of pidginization is usually assumed to begin when a language is used only for very limited communication between groups who speak different native languages. Sharply restricted in domains of use, it undergoes varying degrees of simplification and admixture. If a new stable variety of the language emerges from this process, it might be described as a pidgin."Derek BICKERTON
(1977): "Pidginization is second-language learning with restricted input." "Pidginization. . . begins by the speaker using his native tongue and relexifying first only a few key words . . . [E]ven [these] will be thoroughly rephonologized to accord with substrate sound system and phonotactics. . . [and] slotted into syntactic surface structures drawn from the substrate." [Bickerton explicitly rejects the thesis that pidginization "is a process somehow distinct from other processes of language acquisition"; and he also rejects the idea that simplification by speakers of the superstrate language was important, stressing the role of innate universal grammar.]John McWHORTER
(1995:240): "…Pidginization [is] the initial restructuring of a language by a group of learners; this entails structural reduction and substrate transfer. [In discussing Atlantic creoles,] I refer to the restructuring of African languages by Africans as pidginization."Peter MUHLHAUSLER
(1997:6): "Pidgins are examples of partially-targeted second-language learning and second-language creation, developing from simpler to more complex systems as communicative requirements become more demanding. Pidgin languages by definition have no native speakers – they are social rather than individual solutions – and hence are characterized by norms of acceptability. . . There are qualitatively different stages in the development of a pidgin. . . : Jargon à Stable pidgin à Expanded Pidgin à Creole." [PM has other definitions of pidgins on p.4]Philip BAKER
(Baker 1993:6): "A pidgin is a form of language created by members of two or more linguistic groups in contact as a means of intercommunication, the most basic grammatical rules of which are common to all its habitual users regardless of their own primary language, while at least one and perhaps all of the participating groups recognize that this means of intercommunication is not the primary language of any other."References
Bickerton, Derek (1977). "Pidginization and Creolization: Language Acquisition and Language Universals." In Albert Valdman, ed., Pidgin and Creole Linguistics, Indiana U.P.: 49-69.
Hall, Robert (1966). Pidgin and Creole Languages. Ithaca: Cornell U. Press
Hymes, Dell, ed. (1971). Pidginization and Creolization of Languages. Introduction. Cambridge U. Press.
Meijer, Gus & Pieter Muysken (1977). "On the Beginnings of Pidgin and Creole Studies: Schuchardt and Hesseling." In Valdman, ed.: 21-45.
McWhorter, J.1995. "The scarcity of Spanish-based creoles explained." Language in Society 24:213-44.
Muhlhausler, Peter (1997, 2nd ed.). Pidgin and Creole Linguistics. London: U. of Westminster Press
Rickford, J. 1977. "The question of prior creolization in Black English." In Valdman ed.: 190-221.