Dialects Course

DIALECT

Definition

The word ‘dialect’ appeared first in the 16th century. In French it is dialecte, in Latin

dialectus, in Greek diálektos, and it means ‘speech’, ‘debate’, ‘way of local language’, ‘style’. It

is known as a general and technical term for a form of a language, for example a southern

French dialect; the Yorkshire dialect; the dialects of the United States.

Although the term usually refers to regional speech from a geographical perspective, it can

be extended to cover differences according to class and occupation; such terms as regional

dialect, social dialect, class dialect, occupational dialect, urban dialect, and rural dialect are all

used by linguists. In addition, the extracted element lect has become a term for any kind of

distinct language spoken by an individual or group, with such derivatives as acrolect (a high or

prestigious variety), basilect (a low or socially stigmatized variety), mesolect (a lect in a socially

intermediate position between these two).

Dialect, language, and standard

Most languages have dialects, each with a distinctive accent, grammar, vocabulary, and

idiom. Traditionally, however, dialects have been regarded as socially lower than a 'proper' form

of the language (often represented as the language itself), such as the King's or Queen's English

in Britain, and le bon français in France, or in general terms the standard language. Such a

variety like standard language also has regional roots, but because it developed into the official

and educated usage of a capital like London or Paris, it tends to be seen as non-regional, often as

supra-regional, and therefore not a dialect proper.

Certain processes create a social and linguistic difference between this variety and the

dialects of a language:

- degrees of standardization in accent, grammar, orthography, and typography;

- its special development through literature and use as the medium of education and

literacy;

- social empowerment through its use by the governing cultural and scholarly elite.

Many users of a standard variety have tended to despise dialect speakers as more or less

'illiterate' and teachers have often sought to impose the standard throughout a country and

eliminate or greatly reduce all other 'deviant', 'low', or 'vulgar' forms, with the occasional

exception of some limited 'good' dialect. Such dialect is usually rural, seen as part of a romantic

folk tradition or the instrument of a famous but unconventional writer (usually a poet, such as

Robert Burns in Scotland or the prose writer Ion Creangă in Romania). As a result of such

factors, there is a long-lasting disagreement concerning the definitions of such words as dialect,

standard, and language.

A dialect continuum

During the 19th and the 20th centuries there was considerable study of dialects proper and in

relation to the standard variety of a language. As a result of this study, philologists and dia-

lectologists generally regard a dialect as a historical subtype of a language and a language as the

summative form of the features of its dialects.

Within a language, there is usually a dialect continuum: speakers of Dialect A can

understand and be understood by speakers of Dialect B, and C by B, and so on, but at the

extremes of the continuum speakers of A and Z may be mutually unintelligible. The A and Z

communities may therefore be right thinking or arguing that A and Z are different languages. If

politics intervenes and the speakers of A and Z come to be citizens of different countries (as with

Spanish and Portuguese, or Swedish and Danish, or all Romance languages having as their

common ancestor Latin), the dialects may well be socially re-valued as 'languages' (in due course

with their own dialects and standard variety).

Despite their differences, dialects have more shared than differing features, and those in

which they agree (phonological, syntactic, lexical, idiomatic, etc,) serve as the defining core of a

language, while the clusters of differences serve as the defining cores of the various dialects.

Thus, a language X that has dialects A, B, C, D, E, may have 14 features, 10 of which are shared

by A, B, C, 9 by B, C, D, 11 by B, D, E, and so on. Perhaps only 8 features are common to all

five. If they are, they form the core or common features of X, to which may be added additional

features acquired through the conventions necessary for a standard language.

The evolution of dialects

If we consider language as a living body, dialects can be described as a kind of species

evolution. The tendency of all languages is to change in one detail or another and so developing

of dialects is controlled only by the need of communication between speakers, preserving a

common core. Although written forms, accompanied by the teaching of a standard, slow the

process of change, they cannot prevent it. In fact, dialects are often less changeable than the

standard; their speakers tend to live in stable communities and to preserve forms of the language

which are 'older' in terms of the development of the standard. Such a standard, however, is in

origin also a dialect and, in the view of some linguists, can and should be called the standard

dialect (although for many this phrase is a contradiction in terms). Dialects are stronger

regionally while the standard is the usage of the nation at large, or at least of its most prominent

and dominant representatives. As a consequence, many native speakers of a dialect may learn the

standard as a secondary variety of their own language.

The distribution of dialects

Geographically, dialects are the result of people’s settlement throughout history. As

populations increase and spread out, they generally follow the natural features of the land. The

sea and rivers serve as both boundaries and roadways. People settle first in lowlands and groups

of settlers may be separated by mountains. Dialect development can be understood to some

extent in relation to topography: where populations can communicate easily, dialectal differences

develop more slowly than where they lose immediate (or all) contact. An effective method of

studying such matters is the science of linguistic geography. Individual features (sounds, words,

grammatical forms, etc.) can be displayed on maps showing where one or another feature

prevails in use and where competing forms are found. Lines on a dialect map outline the area

within which any form is regularly used.

Alternatively, the differing features may be shown on maps with dots or other symbols,

giving a visual dimension to the data. Certain features of dialect can also be seen in relation to

social factors not necessarily connected with geography. The type of language one speaks (a

social dialect or sociolect) depends on community, family background, occupation, degree of

education, and the like. Where a standard form has become established, the tendency is to

consider it 'right' and to denigrate other varieties, whose only fault may be that they are out of

style in the mainstream of a language. Distinctive dialects are most fully preserved in isolated

areas (e.g. along sea coasts, on islands, in mountain areas) where they are little influenced by

outsiders and the population is relatively self-sustaining. The dialects of large cities, however,

include the social wide range of the language, with outside features being brought in and new

features being created more or less continuously.

Dialect myths and reality

What do the popular uses of the term dialect say about the general public's perception of

dialect, as it varies from the neutral technical definition presented initially? There is a popular

mythology about dialect differences developed by the society which is at variance with the

linguistic facts about dialects. Following are some of these myths, as they contrast with linguistic

reality:

MYTH: A dialect is something that someone else speaks.

REALITY: Everyone who speaks a language speaks some dialect of the language; it is not

possible to speak a language without speaking a dialect of the language.

MYTH: Dialects always have highly noticeable features that set them apart.

REALITY: Some dialects get much more attention than others; the status of speaking a dialect,

however, is unrelated to public commentary about its special characteristics.

MYTH: Only varieties of a language spoken by socially disfavoured groups are dialects.

REALITY: The notion of dialect exists apart from the social status of the language variety; there

are socially favoured as well as socially disfavoured dialects.

MYTH: Dialects result from unsuccessful attempts to speak the "correct" form of a language.

REALITY: Dialect speakers learn their language by mimicking members of their speech

community who speak the same variety, not by failing in their attempts to mimic speakers of the

standard variety.

MYTH: Dialects inherently carry negative social connotations.

REALITY: Dialects are not necessarily positively or negatively valued; their social values are

derived strictly from the social position of their community of speakers. (Wolfram 1991: 4-5)

PIDGIN

Definition

Used first in the 1870s as a linguistic term, it is widely considered to be from the Chinese

pronunciation of business, also rendered as pigeon, as in that's not my pigeon (‘that's not my

business or concern’). Other linguists suggested sources such as Portuguese ocupaçao ‘business’,

and pequeno ‘small’ (suggesting baby talk), and Hebrew pidjom ‘barter’. It is a term used in a

general and a technical sense for a contact language which draws on elements from two or more

languages: pidgin Portuguese; a Spanish pidgin.

The general sense

As generally understood, a pidgin is a hybrid 'makeshift/improvised language' used by and

among traders, plantations (especially with and among slaves of various backgrounds), and

between Europeans and the indigenous peoples of Asia, Africa, and the Americas, especially

during the heyday of European expansion (17th -20th centuries). Because the word has often been

used and discussed pejoratively, it carries such connotation as 'childish', 'corrupt', 'lazy',

'inferior’, 'oversimplified', and 'simple-minded’. The term has been extended with such a

negative sense into wider use, that we can find it in expressions such as 'writing pidgin Latin' and

'not satisfied with pidgin Marxism'. This view of pidgin languages has often appeared in works

of reference, as in Brewer's Dictionary' of Phrase and Fable 1965:

Pidgin-English. The semi-English lingua franca used in China and the Far East,

consisting principally of mispronounced English words with certain native grammatical

constructions. For instance, the Chinese cannot pronounce r, so replace it with l-te-lee for

'three', solly for 'sorry', etc. Also, in Chinese, between a numeral and its noun there is

always inserted a word (called the 'classifier') and this, in Pidgin-English, is replaced by

piece - e.g. one-piece knifee, two piece hingkichi (handkerchiefs). Pidgin is a corruption of

business. Pidgin English is a utilitarian form of basic English and is widely used in varying

forms by many native peoples with whom the English have come in contact. (revised by

Evans 1993: 832)

Etymologically, there appears to have been only one pidgin: Pidgin English, also

known as Business English, Pidgin-English, pidgin-English, Pigeon English, Pigeon-

English, bigeon, pidgeon, pidjin, pidjun. This was a trade jargon used from the 17 th century

onward between the British and Chinese in such ports as Canton. In 1826, B. Hall wrote: 'I

afterwards learned that “pigeon", in the strange jargon spoken at Canton by way of

English, means ’business'. In 1845, J. R. Peters noted: 'Pidgeon is the common Chinese

pronunciation of business'; and in 1872, A. D. Carlisle observed: 'The dialect … current

between Englishmen and Chinamen ... goes by the name of Pigeon-English' (Oxford

English Dictionary). It should be noted, however, that Chinese (Coastal) Pidgin English or

China Coast Pidgin is now a technical term referring to a contact language used between

speakers of English and Chinese from the first half of the 18 th century until the early 1970s.

(McArthur 1996: 698-99)

The technical sense

Sociolinguists use the term to describe a phenomenon whose study has greatly increased

since the Second World War. For them, a pidgin is a marginal language which arises to fulfil

certain restricted communicative functions among groups with no common language. This more

scientific approach now tends to predominate in works of reference, as in the Concise Columbia

Encyclopedia (1994: 689):

Pidgin, a lingua franca that is not the mother tongue of anyone using it and that has a sim-

plified grammar and restricted, often polyglot, vocabulary. An example is the pidgin

English used in Eastern Asian ports, principally for trading between the English and

Chinese. The majority of the vocabulary and grammar are of English origin, but there are

also Malay, Chinese, and Portuguese elements. Pidgins are important national languages in

Papua New Guinea and some Pacific island countries.

In sociolinguistic terms, there have been many pidgins and the process known as

pidginization is likely to occur anywhere under appropriate conditions. This process of

simplification and hybridization involves reduction of linguistic resources and restriction of use

to such limited functions as trade. The term is sometimes extended to refer to the early stages of

any instance of second language acquisition, when learners acquire a minimal form of the target

language often influenced by their own primary language.

There is, however, some disagreement among scholars over the number of languages in

sufficient contact to produce a pidgin. Some investigators claim that any two languages in

contact may result in a degree of linguistic improvisation and compromise, and so lead to

pidginization. Such a viewpoint includes in the category of pidgin foreigner talk and other

classes of makeshift and often transitory communication. Other investigators argue that only in

cases where more than two languages are in contact are true pidgins born. In situations where

speakers of more than two languages must communicate in a medium native to none of them, the

kinds of restructuring are more radical than in other cases and likely to be more durable.

The names given to pidgin languages by linguists refer to their location and their principal

lexifier or base language: that is, the language from which they draw most of their vocabulary.

Papuan Pidgin English therefore refers to the pidgin that is spoken in what was formerly the

Territory of Papua, and that draws most of its vocabulary from English and is therefore an

English-based pidgin; Hawaii Pidgin English is the pidgin English spoken in Hawaii. In addition

and often prior to such academic names, pidgins may or may not be identified as such and often

have specific names retained by linguists when discussing them, such as Bazaar

Hindustani/Hindi, Korean Bamboo English, français petit-nègre. Even after a pidgin develops

into a creole, the name may continue to be used, such as Roper Pidgin, also known as Roper

River Creole. A language may also have both pidgin and creole varieties, as with Tok Pisin in

Papua New Guinea.

Characteristics

A pidgin is characterized by a small vocabulary (a few hundred or thousand words) drawn

largely from the superstrate language (that is, the language of the socially dominant group),

together with a reduction of many grammatical features, such as inflectional morphology, as in

Tok Pisin where mi kam can mean 'I come', 'I am coming', 'I came', and wanpela haus means

'house' while tupela haus means 'two houses'.

One source of grammar is the socially subordinate substrate language(s). Often, though not

always, where pidgins develop, one group is socially superior and its full language is more or

less inaccessible to the other group(s), so that there is little motivation or opportunity to improve

performance. Where the needs of communication are minimal and restricted to a few basic

domains such as work and trade, a casual and deficient version of language can be enough, as

has been the case with Kisettla (settlers' language), the pidgin Swahili used between the British

and Africans in Kenya. Many pidgin languages arose in the context of contact between European

colonizers who enslaved or employed a colonized or transported population on plantations, in

ports, in their homes, etc.

An important feature of pidgins is the lack of grammatical complexity; for this reason, they

are often referred to at best as simple or simplified languages, at worst as bastardized or broken

forms of another language. Simplicity is attributed by many people to lack of grammar, but lin-

guists agree that pidgins have a distinctive grammatical structure.

The grammar of a pidgin language is constructed according to a principle which states that

there should be a close relation between form and meaning. There is a tendency for each

morpheme (or word element) to occur only once in an utterance, and for it to have only one

form. Non-pidgin languages generally have built-in redundancy and require the expression of the

same meaning in several places in an utterance: for example, in the English sentences One man

comes and Six men come, singular and plural are marked in both noun and modifier, and concord

is shown in both noun and verb. However, the equivalents in Tok Pisin (Papua New Guinea

Pidgin English) show no variation in the verb form or the noun: Wanpela man i kam and Sikspela

man i kam.

Because they lack redundancy, pidgins depend heavily on context for their interpretation.

Most pidgins have little or no inflectional morphology. Where English marks possession by

adding 's (as in John's house), Tok Pisin has haus bilong John. Here, bilong has been taken from

English, but has shifted its function from verb to preposition, and can be paraphrased as

'belonging to'.

Pidgin languages tend to have only a small number of prepositions and they use them to

mark a variety of grammatical relations which in other languages would be expressed by a much

greater number of prepositions. Pidgins are highly regular and have fewer exceptions than many

other languages, which makes them easier to learn.

Another property is multifunctionality: the same word can function in many ways. In

English, the word ill functions as an adjective (in He is ill, an ill wind). The corresponding noun

is illness, derived by a regular process of word-formation. In Tok Pisin, however, the word sik

can function as both noun and adjective: Mi sik ‘I am ill’; Em i gat sik malaria ‘He has malaria’.

Pidgins may compensate for lack of vocabulary by circumlocution: in Tok Pisin, Singsing taim

maus i pas ‘to sing with the mouth closed’ (= to hum). Where English has branch, Tok Pisin has

han bilong diwai ‘hand of a tree’.

In analysing the syntactic elements of pidgins, it is often impossible to separate the

influence of substrate from superstrate language: as in the case of Tok Pisin, the influence of

local languages from that of English. In Tok Pisin, the particle i is a so-called predicate marker,

occurring in such sentences as Ol man i kisim bigpela supia (The men – predicate marker – got

big spears). This marker can be derived from the use of personal pronouns in non-standard

English, such as he as in John, he got a new car, as well as from similar syntactic patterns in

Austronesian languages. Such a use of pronouns as predicate markers is widespread across

pidgins, occurring in some of the French-based Indian Ocean creoles as well as in Chinook

Jargon.

Classification

Pidgins can be classified into four types according to their development:

- jargon,

- stable pidgin,

- extended or expanded pidgin, and

- creole, each characterized by a gradual increase in complexity.

(1) Jargon. In this stage, there is great individual variation, a very simple sound system,

one- or two-word utterances, and a very small lexicon. Jargons are used for communicating in

limited situations: trade jargons generally, and Chinook Jargon, a trade language spoken along

the north-west Pacific coast of North America from the 18th century.

(2) Stable pidgin. This is more regular and more complex and there are social norms

regarding its use, as with Russenorsk, a trade pidgin used in northern Norway by Russian

merchants and Norwegian fishermen over some 130 years (1785-1917). Because the language

was used for seasonal trade, it did not expand much structurally and had a core vocabulary of

about 150-200 words.

(3) Extended or expanded pidgin. Other pidgins, such as Tok Pisin, not only stabilized but

expanded to become more grammatically complex, and to serve as well-established lingua

francas, sometimes with official or other status.

(4) Creole. At this stage, the pidgin is creolized: that is, it is acquired as a first language by

children, particularly in urban areas. This is the stage of, for example, Tok Pisin in Papua New

Guinea and Kriol (also known as Roper River Creole) in the Northern Territories of Australia. It

is generally impossible to identify structural features which distinguish expanded pidgins from

emerging creoles, since both exhibit increased structural complexity and share many features.

The difference lies more in social use than in form.

Theories of origin

Various theories have been proposed to account for the origin of pidgin languages, and fall

into three broad types: monogenetic, polygenetic, and universalist.

Monogenesis. This theory asserts a common origin for all European-based pidgins. Some

monogenetic theorists claim that they all descend from a nautical jargon used for communication

among sailors from different backgrounds. Others have argued that they descend from a 15 th

century Portuguese pidgin which could in its turn have been a relic of Sabir, the lingua franca of

the Crusaders and a Mediterranean trading language. It is claimed that this language was

relexified (that is, renewed with vocabulary from different sources) as it came into contact with

such other European languages as English and Dutch.

Both the nautical-jargon and Sabir theories take as supporting evidence the fact that many

pidgins share common words like save (to know: compare English savvy = the ability to

understand and judge people and situations well) and pikinini (child: compare English

pickaninny = a black child. This word is sometimes used by older white people but black people

consider it offensive). Both words are of Spanish/Portuguese origin, from saber/sabir (to know)

and pequeño (small), and are widely used in English-based pidgins and creoles in the Caribbean

and Pacific. Such words could either have been directly inherited locally or transmitted from one

location to another by sailors, who undoubtedly account for some of the lexical sharing across

unrelated pidgins, although their role in the formation of stable pidgins was probably not great.

However, it is difficult to account for the many differences among pidgins by appealing entirely

to relexification, and neither approach explains the origin of the many non-European-based

pidgin languages.

Polygenesis. This theory stresses distinctness and refers to the influence of substrate

languages, such as the influence of African languages in the formation of the Atlantic pidgins.

According to one view, pidgins arise out of the imperfect learning of a model language by slaves

or as a result of deliberate simplification, for example by Europeans in a master/slave

relationship. There is evidence that the Portuguese taught a simplified version of their language

to those they traded with along the west coast of Africa.

Universalism. This view argues for the universal nature of the social and psychological

factors which occur in language contact. The baby-talk theory is based on the idea that certain

systems of communication emerge in response to particular social and historical circumstances.

There is evidence for this hypothesis in the fact that baby talk, foreigner talk, and pidgins show

certain similarities of structure. Baby talk expressions such as Daddy go bye-bye are similar to

the reduced versions or language used to address foreigners.

There is no doubt that the native languages of colonized, enslaved, and transplanted

populations provided important input to pidgins, but there are also many features which can be

explained only by reference to the superstrate languages of the colonizers, enslavers, and

transplanters. At present, therefore, no single theory can adequately explain the origin of pidgin

languages.

CREOLE

Definition

It appeared first in the language in the 16th century and comes from French créole, Spanish

criollo, Portuguese crioulo, from criar ‘to nurse’ or ‘breed’, from Latin creare/creatum ‘to

beget’. The term relates to people and languages especially in the former colonial tropics and

subtropics, in the Americas, Africa, the Indian Ocean, and Oceania. In Portuguese, crioulo

appears to have referred first to an animal or person born at home, then to a black African slave

in Brazil who was born in his or her master's house. In the 17 th – 18th centuries, particularly in the

West Indies, the term could mean both a descendant of European settlers (a white creole) or a

descendant of African slaves (a creole Negro or Negro creole). Later, the term came to apply

also to life and culture in creole societies: for example, the (French) Creole cuisine of Louisiana.

The complexity of the term is captured by the comment of J. M. Ludlow: 'There are creole

whites, creole negroes, creole horses, etc.; and creole whites are, of all persons, the most anxious

to be deemed of pure white blood' (A Sketch of the History of the United States, 1862 in

McArthur 1994: 247). Since the later 19th century, the term has extended to include a language

spoken by creoles and has acquired a new sense in linguistics, associated with the development

of pidgin languages.

Creole languages

In sociolinguistic terms, these languages have arisen through contact between speakers of

different languages. This contact first produces a makeshift language called a pidgin; when this

is nativized and becomes the language of a community, it is a creole. Such languages are often

known locally as pidgin or creole, but may have such specific names as Aku in Gambia and

Papiamentu in the Netherlands Antilles.

They are usually given labels by sociolinguists that refer to location and principal lexifier

language (the language from which they draw most of their vocabulary): for example, Jamaican

Creole, in full Jamaican Creole English or Jamaican English Creole, the English-based creole

spoken in Jamaica.

Haitian Creole French is spoken in Haiti and is French-based. Creoles based on English,

French, Spanish, and Portuguese occur in the Americas, Africa, and Asia. There are three Por-

tuguese creoles in islands off the West African coast: Cape Verde, Annobon, and São Tomé.

Papiamentu is the only such creole in the Caribbean, spoken by inhabitants of the Netherlands

Antilles (Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao), with an admixture of Dutch. The Dutch-based creole

Negerhollands (Black Dutch) is spoken by a small number of people in the Virgin Islands.

Creoles not based on European languages can be found in parts of Africa (such as Swahili

when used as a trade vernacular) and in Papua New Guinea (such as Hiri Motu).

Creole English. There are many English-based creoles. In West Africa, they include Aku in

Gambia, Krio in Sierra Leone, Kru English in Liberia, and Kamtok in Cameroon. In the

Caribbean and the neighbouring mainland they include Bajan in Barbados, Creolese in Guyana,

Miskito Coast Creole in Nicaragua, Sranan in Surinam, Trinbagonian in Trinidad and Tobago,

and the creoles of the Bay Islands of Honduras.

In North America, they include Afro-Seminole, Amerindian Pidgin English, and Gullah. In

Oceania, they include Bislama in Vanuatu, Broken in the Torres Straits, Hawaii English Creole,

Kriol in Northern Australia, Pijin in the Solomon Islands, and Tok Pisin in Papua New Guinea. It

has been argued that Black English (Vernacular) in the United States has creole origins since it

shares many features with English-based creoles in the Caribbean. In the UK, British Black Eng-

lish, spoken by immigrants from the Caribbean and their children, has features inherited from

Caribbean English Creole.

Common characteristics

Typical grammatical features in European-based creoles include the use of preverbal

negation and subject-verb-object word order: for example (from Sranan in Surinam) A no koti a

brede ‘He didn't cut the bread’. Many use the same item for both existential statements and

possession: for example, get in Guyanese Creole Dem get wan uman we get gyal pikni ‘There is

a woman who has a daughter’. They lack a formal passive: for example, in Jamaican Creole no

distinction is made in the verb forms in sentences such as Dem plaan di tri (They planted the

tree) and Di tri plaan (The tree was planted).

Creoles tend to have no copula and adjectives may function as verbs: for example,

Jamaican Creole Di pikni sik ‘The child is sick’. Most creoles do not show any syntactic

difference between questions and statements: for example, Guyanese Creole I bai di eg dem can

mean 'He bought the eggs' or 'Did he buy the eggs?' (although there is a distinction in intonation).

Question words in creoles tend to have two elements, the first generally from the lexifier

language: for example, Haitian Creole ki kote (from qui and coté, 'which' and 'side') meaning

where, and Kamtok wetin (from what and thing) meaning what. It has been claimed that many

syntactic and semantic similarities among creoles are due to an innate 'bioprogram' for language,

and that creoles provide the key to understanding the original evolution of human language.

Creolization

The process of becoming a creole may occur at any stage as a makeshift language develops

from trade jargon to expanded pidgin, and can happen under radical conditions, such as where a

population of slaves speaking many languages has to develop a common language among slaves

and with overseers. In due course, children grow up speaking the pidgin as their main language,

and when this happens it must change to meet their needs.

Depending on the stage at which creolization occurs, different types of structural expansion

are necessary before the language can become adequate. In the case of Jamaican Creole, it is

thought that a rudimentary pidgin creolized within a generation, then began to de-creolize

towards general English. Tok Pisin, however, first stabilized and expanded as a pidgin before it

became creolized; in such cases, the transition between the two stages is gradual rather than

abrupt.

The term is also applied to cases where heavy borrowing disrupts the continuity of a

language, turning it into a creole-like variety, but without a prior pidgin stage. Some researchers

have argued that Middle English is a creole that arose from contact with Norse during the

Scandinavian settlements (8th - 11th centuries) and then with French after the Norman Conquest

(11th century).

In addition to massive lexical borrowing, many changes led to such simplification of

grammar as loss of the Old English inflectional endings. It is not, however, clear that these

changes were due only to language contact, since other languages have undergone similar

restructurings in the absence of contact, as for example when Latin became Italian.

De-creolization

It is a further development in which a creole gradually converges with its superstrate or

lexifier language: for example, in Hawaii and Jamaica, both creoles are moving toward Standard

English. Following the creolization of a pidgin, a post-creole continuum may develop when, after

a period of relatively independent linguistic development, a post-pidgin or post-creole variety

comes under a period of renewed influence from the lexifier language. Decreolization may

obscure the origins of a variety, as in the case of American Black English.

Conclusion

Pidgin and creole languages were long neglected by the academic world, because they

were not regarded as 'real' or developed languages, but, their study is currently regarded as

significant for general linguistics as well as the study of such languages as English.

The study of pidgins and creoles has been rapidly expanding as linguists interested in

language acquisition, language change, and universal grammar have taken more notice of them.

Because these varieties arise and often expand rapidly, they provide an excellent testing ground

for theories of historical change. Speakers must bring some general and possibly innate

principles and strategies to bear on the task of learning to communicate under such

circumstances. These languages have also attracted the attention of sociolinguists, owing to the

amount of variation among them, and the study of such variation has had repercussions on the

study of the totality of languages like English, in which variety is as much the norm as

uniformity.

Since pidgins and creoles are generally spoken in Third World countries, their role and

function are closely connected with a variety of political matters concerned with national, social,

and economic development and transition into post-colonial societies. Some countries give

official recognition to pidgin and creole languages, among them Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu,

and Haiti. In Haiti, the 1983 Constitution declared both Haitian Creole and French to be national

languages, but recognized French as the official language; in 1987, Creole was declared official

too. The former Papua New Guinean Prime Minister, Michael Somare, has on occasion spoken

abroad in Tok Pisin, even though he endorses the use of English for official purposes. Pidgin and

creole languages also function as symbols of solidarity in many parts of the world where their

use is increasing. In Haiti, it is often the case that to speak creole is to talk straight, while to

speak French is synonymous with duplicity.