Chapter 2: Structural characteristics of a pidgin or creole Structural characteristics of a pidgin or creolePhonology • 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.— nouns are not marked for number and gender—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’.—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 .Chapter 2: Syntax 96 Practical English Grammar Syntax • Sentences are likely to be uncomplicated in clausal structures.• 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