Pidgins and Creoles and Their Emergence

Seminar paper from the year 2015 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1,0, University of Leipzig, language: English, abstract: TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. INTRODUCTION 1 2. DEFINITIONS 2 2.1 PIDGINS 2 2.2 CREOLES 3 3. THEORIES OF ORIGINS OF PIDGINS 4 3.1. BABY-TALK-THEORY 4 3.2. NAUTICAL JARGON THEORY 6 3.3. PARALLEL DEVELOPMENT THEORY 6 3.4. MONOGENETIC/RELEXIFICATION THEORY 7 4. THE DEVELOPMENT FROM PIDGIN TO CREOLE 8 4.1. JARGON STAGE 8 4.2. STABILIZATION PHASE 9 4.3. EXPANSION PHASE 9 4.4. CREOLIZATION 10 5. THE LIFE CYCLE OF CREOLES 11 5.1. DE-CREOLIZATION AND THE POST-CREOLE CONTINUUM 11 5.2. RE-CREOLIZATION 13 6. CONCLUSION 15 REFERENCES 16 PLAGIARISM DISCLAIMER 17 1. INTRODUCTION "Chrismus time ah de time ob gladness, and de time ob goodwill, when de goodwill pirit tek hold ob we, we feget ebery libing ting bout de grudge we gat against wen ex doah neighbour; an we begins fe wish him all kinda nice something, cause we feel nice weself. [...]" (Todd, 2006: 100) This sequence of Jamaican Creole is only one of the diversity in the creole-speaking world. In my term paper I will examine the emergence of a Creole. I start with an outline of the definitions of Pidgins and creoles and how they relate to each other. I continue with the most known origins of Pidgins, which is followed by the four phases of development from a Pidgin to a Creole. Finally, I will introduce the topic of De- and Re-creolization. 2. DEFINITIONS 2.1. Pidgins Defining what is a pidgin and what is not is a challenging undertaking. Generally, a Pidgin is "any combination and distortion of two languages as a means of communication." (Sebba, 1997: 1) Pidgin English is defined as "any lingua franca consisting of English and another language." (Sebba, 1997: 1) It is a reduced language that arises through extensive contact between different groups of people who do not share a common language (Holm, 1988: 4). The Pidgin is strengthened because there is