Structural characteristics of a pidgin or creole Structural characteristics of a pidgin or creolePidgins verus creoles Pidgins are typically contrasted with creoles in terms of differences in their uses, their speakers, and their origins. What are these differences? 1. Pidgins have no native speakers; creoles have native speakers. Creoles have no native speakers; creoles have native speakers.2. Pidgins have a limited range of uses; creoles have a considerably expanded range of uses.3. Pidgins typically evolve out of contact situations; creoles typically evolve out of pid-gins. Phonology • The sounds of a pidgin or creole are likely to be fewer and less complicatedthan those of related languages—Tok Pisin has only five basic vowels, unlike the dozen or so found in English—Papia Kristang has seven basic vowels — rapidly being reduced to the fivefound in neighboring Bahasa Malaysia Morphology • Pidgins have very little morphophonemic variation, that is, the type of variationfound in the final sounds in cats , dogs , and boxes . The development of such morpho-logical alternations is a sign that the pidgin is undergoing creolization.• In pidgins and creoles, there is almost a complete lack of inflection in nouns,pronouns, verbs, and adjectives.Syntax 119 Practical English Grammar — nouns are not marked for number and genderNotes: This phrase means that nouns have neither a plural marker nor havenoun classes. The term gender means kinds rather natural gender e.g., male and female, butisntead refers to the classes that nouns belong to. Polish, for example, has masculine, femi-nine, and neuter; despite the terms, however, these only marginally refer to natural gender andinstead refer primarily to the phonological shape of the nouns. Swahili nouns, as anotherexample, have 26 classes (or, if one wishes, 26 genders).—verbs lack tense markers— transitive verbs may, however, be distinguished from intransitive verbs. Forexample, in Tok Pisin transitive verbs are marked with the suffix - im .— pronouns will not be distinguished for case. In Tok Pisin, me is either ‘I’ or‘me’.subject verb objectI, *me like *she, her; *he, him; she,*her like *he, him; youhe,*him like *they, themthey, *them like *she, her; *I, meyou like *they, them—However, the first person plural may distinguish between inclusive and exclu-sive. Again, using an example from Tok Pisin, mipela is exclusive, while yumi is inclusive, as an examination of their morphology makes clear.— In Tok Pisin, there are only a few required endings on words. One is -pela onadjectives, as in wanpela man ‘one man’, -pela ‘plural’, as in yupela ‘you (plu-ral)’, and the transitive suffix -im , already mentioned.— There are virtually never alternations such as break , broke , broken . Syntax • Sentences are likely to be uncomplicated in clausal structures.English 121 120 Vocabulary • Pidgins do not have relative clauses. Their development is a sign of creolization. Pid-gins do not have embedding.•Negation may only include a single particle. In Krio, an English-based creole, the onlynegation marker is no . Cf. i no tu had ‘It’s not too hard’.• TMA (Tense-Modality-Aspect). Creoles do, however, have a tense-aspect markingsystem. This usually includes a continuous marker of some sort, cf. de in English-based creoles, ape in French-based creoles, and ka in Portuguese-based creoles. a de go wok ‘I’m going to work’ Krio mo ape travaj ‘I’m working’ Louisiana French e ka nda ‘He’s going’ St. Thomas Vocabulary • The vocabulary is quite similar to the standard language with which it is asso-ciated, although there may be considerable morphological and phonological simplifi-cation.• Reduplication is often used to indicate, among other things, intensity, plural-ization, habituality, and so on.• Syntactic devices are often employed to extend the vocabulary.Tok Pisin gras bilong het ‘hair’gras bilong fas ‘beard’gras bilong pisin ‘feathers’• Pidgins and creoles often draw their vocabulary from more than one language.However, in many cases one of the languages is the primary source of vocabulary; in thissense, Tok Pisin is an English-based creole, as English is its main lexical source.Question: Pidgins are typically contrasted with creoles in terms of differences in their uses,their speakers, and their origins. How do they differ along these three parameters?Various Pidgins and Creoles 121 Practical English Grammar Various Pidgins and CreolesCajun Cajun French is the French patois spoken in Louisiana. Beginning in 1755, the GrandDérangement forced Acadians to leave their homes in eastern Canada. Many settled in Louisi-ana and their French language gradually evolved into what we call Cajun French.The word cajun comes from acadien. Acadia was colonized by the French in the east-ern region of Canada in 1604. It was the first European colony in North America. Chinook Jargon Chinook Jargon was a trade language (or pidgin) of the Pacific Northwest, whichspread quickly up the West Coast as far as Alaska. It is related to, but not the same as theindigenous language of the Chinook people.Jargon was derived from a great variety of indigenous words, as well as English andFrench. Many of its words are still in common use in the Western United States and Canada.The Jargon words of published lexicons only numbered in the hundreds, and so it was easy tolearn. It has its own grammatical system. In Kamloops, British Columbia hundreds of speak-ers also learned to read and write the Jargon- as a result, Jargon also had its own literature.There is some controversy about the origin of the Jargon, but all agree that its glorydays were during the early 1800s. During this era many dictionaries were published in order tohelp settlers interact with the First Nations people already living there. American leaders sentcommuniques to each other, stylishly composed entirely in The Chinuk. Many residents ofFort Vancouver choose to speak Chinook Jargon as their first language, even using it at homein preference to English. Loggers incorporated it in their jargon.Chinook Jargon is still spoken as a first language by some residents of Oregon State,much as the Métis language Michif is still spoken in Canada. Hence, Jargon is now a creolelanguage.English 121 122 Chinook Jargon Some believe that the Jargon (without European words) existed prior to