Languages in contact Socio-spatial diversity: Language varieties Vernacular, Standard, Lingua Franca, Pidgin, Creole

Languages in contact Socio-spatial diversity: Language varieties

• Vernacular, Standard, Lingua Franca, Pidgin, Creole

Vernacular

• Three defining characteristics:

• Lack of codification and elaboration
• A language learned at home
• Functionally restricted

Standard

• A Standard can be defined as the variety that has undergone some linguistic processing so that there is a set of widely accepted rules for it (eg for spelling) and that it can serve both official and everyday functions of a state

Formal Standard

• A formal standard applies to the written language and to spoken situations that are the most formal. Its rules are set by ‘authorities’ (language academies, editors, dictionaries, etc)

Informal Standard

• Applies to spoken language in everyday use. It is determined by speakers who make judgments as to whether a form is acceptable or not. It is characterized by multiple norms of acceptability, and defined by the absence of socially stigmatized forms.

A continuum of standardness

• V IS FS

How does a standard emerge?

• Sometimes a standard variety develops out of a local vernacular that has attained political, socioeconomic or cultural superiority over other vernaculars (English, French, Spanish)

• Sometimes a standard is created artificially with some political or social objective in mind (Katharevusa in Greece, Nynorsk in Norway)

• Countries with a colonial past may use the variety of the previous hegemony as a standard, alongside a standardized local code

How good is a standard?

• Linguistically, standards are not any better than vernaculars, which is proven by the fact that any vernacular can become a standard

• Socially, standards have more prestige, but that is an artificial not a natural differentiation

• Standards do have a positive impact as they enhance cross-regional communication, promote literacy etc.

• When the prestige of a standard, however, is influenced by racial, religious or class biases the results can be catastrophic

Lingua Franca

• Any variety that serves as the tool of communication for people who speak varieties which are not mutually intelligible

Examples of lingua francas

• Swahili in many African nations like Tanzania and Zaire

• Russian in the former USSR

• English in several tourist destinations, and in the scientific community

• Tok Pisin in Papua New Guinea

Bilingualism

• Individual bilingualism

• two native languages in the mind
• Fishman: “ a psycholinguistic phenomenon”

• Societal bilingualism

• A society in which two languages are used but where relatively few individuals are bilingual
• Fishman: “a sociolinguistic phenomenon”

• Stable bilingualism

• persistent bilingualism in a society over several generations

• Language evolution:

• Language shift
• Diglossia

Diglossia

• Ferguson’s definition (1959): the side-by-side existence of historically & structurally related language varieties

• the Low variety takes over the outdated High variety

• Fishman’s reformulation (1967): a diglossic situation can occur anywhere where two language varieties (even unrelated ones) are used in functionally distinct ways

• the Low variety loses ground to the superposed High variety
• problematic as it creates an opposite situation to widespread bilingualism

Diglossic situation

• Four examples:

Diglossic situation: functions of H vs. L

Language choice

• code switching

• changing from one language to an other
• situational switching

• metaphorical switching

• code-mixing

• speaking in one language but using pieces from another

• style shifting

• standard English vs. afro-american vernacular

• language borrowing

Example of code-switching in the Amazon

• Tariana is spoken by about 100 people in the northwest Amazonia (Brazil). Other languages in the area is e.g. Tucano (almost a lingua franca), Baniwa and Arawak (the two latter related to Tariana). The area is known for its language group exogamy and institutionlized multilingualism. Language choice is motivated by power relationship and by status, and there are strict rules for code- switching. Code-mixing with Tucano is considered a “language violation”; using elements of Baniwa is funny while mixing different Tariana dialects implies that one “cannot speak Tariana properly. Overusing Portuguese is associated with an Indian who is trying to be better than his peers.

Sociolinguistic classification

• Ferguson (1966) distinguished between five language types based on prestige (p) and vitality (v):

• Vernacular
• unstandardized native language of speech community (-p, +v)
• Standard
• native language of a speech community codified in dictionaries and grammars (+p, +v)
• Classical
• language codified in dictionaries and grammars which is no longer spoken (+p, -v)
• Pidgin
• hybrid language with lexicon from one language and grammar from another language (-p, -v)
• Creole
• language acquired by children of speakers of pidgin, or subsequently by speaker or Creole (-p, ±v)

Outcomes of Language Contact

• Language Death: no native speakers

• Language Shift: One language replaces another

• Language Maintenance: A relatively stable bi-/ multilingual society

• Pidgin: a rudimentary system of communication

• Creole: creation of a new language based on pidgins or languages in contact

• Lingua Franca

• Global Languages

Endangered Languages

• Prediction: half of the approximately 6,000 languages may become extinct within 100 years.

• 90 Alaskan indigenous
• 2 being acquired by children.
• 90 Australia Aboriginal

• 20 being used by all age groups.

• 175 Native American

• 20 being acquired by children.

Pidgins & Creoles Around the World

Lifecycles of Pidgins

• Jargon Phase: contains great individual variation

• Stable Pidgin: contains both simple and complex sentences

• Expanded Pidgin: complex grammar, and has a developed word formation component

Features of a Stable Pidgin

• Lack of surface grammatical complexity
• Lack of morphological complexity
• Semantic transparency
• Vocabulary reduction

1. The Slave Trade

• The forcible exile of over 12 million Africans to work the plantations of European colonists.

Profile of a Slave Ship

• Name of ship: Zong

• Left Sãn Tomé 6 September 1781

• Slaves on board 440

• White crew 17

• Arrived in Jamaica 27 November 1781

• Slaves deceased 60

• Crew deceased 7

• Slaves sick on arrival, likely to die greater than 60

• Price per slave in Jamaica 20-40 pounds

• from The Memoirs of Granville-Sharp

• (text p. 284)

Two Locations

• Fort Creole: developed at fortified posts along the west African coast, where European forces held slaves until the arrival of the next ship.

• Guinea Coast Creole English

• Plantation Creole: developed on plantations in the New World colonies under the dominance of different European languages.

• Jamaican Creole Jamaica English

• Negerhollands Virgin Islands Dutch

• Haitian Creole Haiti French

• Papiamento Netherlands Antilles Spanish

• Angolar Sãno Tomé Portuguese

2. Trade

• Naga Pidgin

• Contemporary pidgin spoken by peoples in mountain regions of north-east India.
• Acts as lingua franca (29 languages)
• Originated as a market language in Assam in the 19th century among the Naga people
• Undergoing creolization among small groups like the Kacharis in the town of Dimapur, and among the children of interethnic marriages.

3. European settlement

• movement of European settlers to places where

• the indigenous population had not been decimated or moved into reservations
• a slave population did not form the labor force

• Fanakalo

• spoken in parts of South Africa
• vocabulary from Zulu, and some from English & Afrikaans)
• stable pidgin, shows no signs of creolizing

4. War

• Korean Bamboo English

• American wars in Asia (Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Thailand)
• marginal, unstable pidgin

5. Labor Migration

• within colonized countries, people from different ethnic groups may be drawn into a common work sphere without being forced

• Tok Pisin in Papua New Guinea (Pacific Islands)

An example of English Based Pidgins

• Hawaiian Pidgin English

Hawaiian Pidgin English

• The Foundations…

• Hawaiian Pidgins were necessitated by the contact between American merchants returning from China.

• At Hawaiian ports, some Chinese crew members stayed behind.

• The Hawaiian natives and the Chinese sailors couldn’t understand one another, thus the creation of a trade language was necessary.

• The new language was a mixture of both, and aided in the communication between two linguistically divided people.

• The language created has morphed into the unique Hawaiian Pidgin that it is today.

• The Hawaiian Pidgin English is English based, but consists of 7 diverse languages.

Hawaiian Pidgin English (see http://www.une.edu.au/langnet/hce.htm)

• Today’s Usage…

• Hawaiian Pidgins are spoken by many people who live in Hawaii, but mostly by teenagers.

• Most people raised in Hawaii, regardless of race or social class can understand this Pidgin to an extent.

• With words from other languages making up the Pidgin, some believe it sounds like improper English.

Romance Based Pidgin Lingua Franca…

• A trade language used around the Mediterranean
• The only remnants of the language are found in the nursery rhymes of children in Jerusalem.
• used as a counting-out rhyme
• Characteristics:
• Have had a limited vocabulary
• Have a sharply circumscribed grammar
• Lack verb tenses and case endings

Motu Based Pidgin

• The Foundations…

• Hiri Motu is a language of Papua New Guinea.

• Piginization of Motu:

• Influenced by English, Tok Pisin, and Polynesian languages.
• 90% lexical similarity with Motu

• Word order tends to be OSV while most pidgins are SVO

Motu Based Pidgin:

• Example of Hiri Motu Text:

• “Sapos yu kaikai planti pinat, bai yu kamap strong olsem phantom. Fantom, yu pren tru bilong mi. Inap yu ken helpim mi nau? Fantom, em i go we?”

• Translation:

• “If you eat plenty of peanuts, you will come up strong like the phantom. Phantom, you are a true friend of mine. Are you able to help me now? Where did he go?”

• (famous comic strip in Papua New Guinea)

What’s the difference?

• Pidgins

• Is NOT a mother tongue
• Form of communication between two mutually unintelligible languages

Papiamentu

• What? A creole based on Spanish, Portuguese, and Dutch, with influences from West African and Amerindian languages

• Where? The ABC islands of the Caribbean (Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao)

• Who? 329K total speakers, 20K who speak it as a second language

Language Characteristics: Lexicon

• About 60% of the lexicon comes from Spanish and Portuguese (noted as Ib.)

• Ex: ‘No lubida!’ ‘Mi ta sinti bo falta’

• About 25% comes from Dutch (noted as Du.)

• Ex: ‘(Masha) danki,’ ‘Hende (Hòmber/Muhe)’

• The remaining 15% comes from West African languages, Arawakan languages, and others

• Often in creoles, the superstratum language supplies the lexicon, where the substratum supplies the structure (and such lexical items as toponyms)

Language Characteristics: Phonology

• Some examples:

• Emphatic nasalization of vowels before [ŋ]
• Lack of word-final voiced obstruents
• Use of tone to distinguish “identical” words
• Allowance of CC coda clusters, complex onset clusters

• Phonemic inventory similar to that of a typical Romance language, with obvious Germanic influences

• Ex: [n (with allophones ŋ ñ) h x e ə è o ò y ø]

Language Characteristics: Grammar

• Language Bioprogramme Hypothesis

• General creole characteristics:

• No case system (accusative case as a catch-all)
• ‘mi’ (from Sp. ‘mi’ or Port. ‘mim’), ‘bo’ (from Port ‘vos’): ‘mi ta invitá bo’ (“I am inviting you”)
• Lack of verb conjugation
• Mi bai, bo bai, e bai, nos bai, boso bai, nan bai
• Tense, aspect, and mode specified with separate words, rather than coded into words
• Mi ta skirbi, Mi ta skirbiendo, Mi a skirbi, Mi tabata skirbiendo, Mi lo skirbi
• Word order generally Subject-Verb-Object

History: A Brief Overview

• Earliest inhabitants of the islands were the Caiquetio Indians who had come over from northern coast of present-day Venezuela and spoke a language of the Arawak family

• 1499: Spaniards discover the islands, dub them las islas inútiles

• 1527: Spain colonizes the islands

• Indians either die from exposure to new diseases, are hunted down for cannibalism under decree from the church, or are shipped to Hispaniola as workers

• However, Indians die too quickly to be effective workers, giving rise to the need for African slaves

History: A Brief Overview

• Because of the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494), the Spanish could not explore in Africa, so they had to get slaves through the Portuguese intermediaries

• The islands functioned as a way-station when ships would stop, but were generally left sparsely populated (except for the notable population of Portuguese-speaking Sephardic Jews) and scantily defended

• After the founding of the West Indies Company (1621), the Dutch were dedicated to establishing themselves militarily and commercially in the New World. They landed on Curaçao in 1634, and the other two islands within two years, ending Spanish domination there.

History: A Brief Overview

• With the Dutch as such a long-lasting influence over the islands (all are still possessions of the Netherlands), one might expect Papiamentu to have developed into a Dutch-based creole, rather than Iberian with a certain amount of Dutch influence. However, the Dutch were never interested in the linguistic aspect of domination and slavery, and Spanish remained a lingua franca of the area. Also, the Catholic church took pains to reach out to the local population in their own language, Papiamentu, helping to solidify it in the state they found it: predominantly Iberian-based.

History: A Dispute

• There continues to be a good deal of argument as to whether Papiamentu is a Spanish-based creole with some Portuguese influence or a Portuguese-based creole relexified by Spanish. This argument calls into question when Papiamentu was formed.

• If it is a Portuguese creole, it would have had to have been formed by the African slaves still in Africa or in transit to the New World. Papiamentu does show similarites to Cape Verdean Creole, lending support to this hypothesis. During the entirety of the slave trade, Cape Verde saw approximately 100,000 slaves pass through its ports.

History: A Dispute

• If it is a Spanish creole, it would have had to have been formed on the islands themselves through direct contact with the Spaniards, of which there was little, since they were frequently absentee landlords. However, there was constant contact with Spanish missionaries and Spanish-speaking settlements on the northern coast of South America.

Current Status of Papiamentu

• As it now stands, Papiamentu is in no danger of extinction. It is used in all domains, public and private. It is taught in primary schools, but Spanish, a more prestigious language, and Dutch, the official language, are used for later education. Although Papiamentu does not have a social stigma attached to it, most people on the islands are multilingual for commercial purposes. It is used in TV (including news broadcasting), radio, newspapers, and books, having a long literary tradition.

• Orthography in use is a point of contention between Aruba and the other two islands, as Aruba uses a more etymological orthography, whereas Curaçao and Bonaire use one more phonemic.

Tok Pisin

Tok Pisin

Papua New Guinea

Melanesian Pidgin

Tok Pisin

Creolisation

Tok Pisin Vocabulary

Tok Pisin – Word Formation

Tok Pisin - Vocabulary

Tok Pisin - Vocabulary

Tok Pisin - Vocabulary

Plural marker

Pronouns

Causative/transitive marker

Word Order

Complex Sentences

African American English

The African Substratum Hypothesis

African American English

African American English

LSA resolution

LSA resolution

Agreement - AAE

Genitive - AAE

Copula deletion - AAE

Habitual ‚be‘ - AAE

Perfective ‚done‘ - AAE

Negative inversion - AAE

Double negation - AAE

The Bioprogram Hypothesis

Grammaticalization

Grammaticalization

Grammaticalization

Grammaticalization

Grammaticalization

Grammaticalization

Grammaticalization

Bibliography

• 1. Aitchinson, Jean. Language Change: Progress or Decay?. UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

• 2. Romaine, Suzanne. Pidgin & Creole Languages. NY: Longman , INC., 1988.

• 3. Singh, Ishtla. Pidgins and Creoles: An Introduction. NY: Oxford University Press Inc., 2000.

• 4. En.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawaiian_Pidgin

• 5. www.ethnologue.com

• 6. www.msu.edu/~colem104/paper1.htm