Pidgin and Creole: Key Concepts in Language Contact

[00:00:00][Music] hello everyone welcome today we are going to talk about two very interesting phenomena called pidgin and creole so we'll talk about pagina and crayon in this video can you imagine a situation where let's imagine a situation where what will happen when when two different sets of people happen to meet in a particular time and space where they have no language in common and if this contact sustains for a longer period of time how do they carry out their everyday transactions what will happen when there is no language common right how they will be able to meet their communication needs and if you look at the mobility history of mobility and migration for various factors and regions it may be war it may be trade it may be the process of colonization and this this entire idea of age of discovery when european forces reached different non-european shores what could have happened when there was no language in common for communication so for all any transaction they require to communicate and perhaps this is the reason or this is the fact that because there was no language in in common among these two sets of people something new emerged right a a linguistic code had to emerge to fulfill and meet the requirements of communication interaction right and their daily everyday transactions so pigeon and creole are the results of such situations in the history where two sets of people came together in contact and this contact sustained for a long time but there was no language common for communication so in order to meet their communicative needs and carry out everyday transactions a common code emerged right out of the two sources so community a speech community a and speech community b they come in contact nothing common between the two no language common between the two communities and so language x emerges with blending of language a and language b so this is how a new code emerges right and that code was called pigeon so pidgin is a type of simplified language which came into existence as a result of contact between two or more languages so when you say contact between two languages of course where we mean that two sets of people speaking those languages came in contact and the situation mostly occurs in trade plantation and colonization processes now i told you that no language was common right so two sets of people will set one will have so this relationship was asymmetric where one will have power status and control on resources so dominating community or set of people so dominant variety this they spoke and that was considered dominant variety or you know superposed variety the other who were controlled the you know other set of people and their languages so it was a blend or the mixture of these two varieties and because it has something from language a and something from language b it was not at all a completely new language but it drew from a and b sources so it will have a very simplified syntax word order because it will it will serve only restricted purposes so bare minimum restricted purposes it served a common code which was negotiated and acceptable to both so they could both transact in that particular newly negotiated code which was which emerged out of this compulsion of communication right so this is called prison as biketone mentions it is constructed in an unplanned way because uh this emerged to to meet the needs of communication with of these two sets of people of speaker a and speaker b so it was not planned it simply evolved and emerged right so it is constructed in an unplanned way or it is given birth or been developed by unintelligible languages that means nothing was common totally unintelligible and it is not native native language to any of the community right any of the set of people neither offset a nor offset b because they had language x as the native language native tongue mother tongue language b as the mother tongue of the other group but this newly emerged language or code let's not call a language but of course a code which served restricted purpose of communication and interaction and socialization to carry out trade and business and other works it served a very limited purpose with a simplified sentences and very selective minimally required words right pidgin and creole have are the immersed languages in need of communication among people who didn't have single language to use and for example among plantation laborers who came from different geographic origins i quote from jeff 2008 so this is prison a very restricted simplified and very very uh fundamentally very simple and restricted variety which emerged out of a compulsive situation where no language was common between two sets of people for transaction and trade okay let's present for you so todd 1974 i quote from him a pageant is a marginal language which arises to fulfill certain restricted communication needs among people who have no common language that's what we are talking about i encode when we critically examine any pigeon we have two factors to consider or to ponder upon number one circumstances for its development so we have to understand the circumstances under which this pigeon emerged and that was a contact situation between two distinct languages which were non mutually known intelligible and no language common so this emerged as a restricted code and number two the purpose of his development of course to meet the communication needs because no common language wasn't not available for the two sets of people to use any common language so it had to emerge right so onimbo 1999 claims that what began originally as a trade language gradually grieve into a compromised language for wider communication right so seba 1997 labels the reduced structural system into four structures in attribution to pidgin grammar as i told you that grammar of pidgin will be very simple definitely because uh they're not going to this this this variety was not used for you know higher social functions this variety was used for very limited essential and restricted purpose and there was no choice because you know nothing no language was common so they contacted and they communicated and they transacted only in terms of limited you know social contacts and he characterizes four structures he attributes forest lack of surface grammar grammatical complexity that means language the code will not have very complex sentences very simple sentences sometimes uh you know even monolith monoclusial sentences right lack of morphological complexity refers to the fact that you won't have a lot of creativity in deriving words words were simply borrowed from the other language so the dominant language will retain its structure and the lexical category will be borrowed from the words will be borrowed from the other language just to make a common negotiated code where both of them have this the this this opportunity to own it and use it preference for semantic transparency and reduction in vocabulary so very limited words very limited options for sentences the sentences are very you know simple not complex multi-clauses not long sentences so these are the basic characteristics of pidgin the variety that we are talking about now creole is a subsequent development of vision right so creole is an extension of prison so as a consequence of colonial european trade patterns most of the known non european base creole languages arose in the coastal areas in the equatorial built around the world if you look at the spread of creole you know it is on the seashores around the world and why because this through navigation through the sea route the these colonizers reached these shores they contacted they came in contact with the host community the local community no language common so this emerged but a creole is an advanced and neutralized naturalized stable language which arise out of prison so pidgin which emerged as a very restricted code in such a contact situation when this sustains for a long time this pigeon also expands its scope and it goes beyond everyday small and trade transactions and we start we see the expansion of prison when this pigeon is expanded to such a level and sustains for a long time then the next generations or coming generations they acquire this particular variety as their mother tongue that means because at the time of birth they're exposed to this variety and they acquire it as mother tongue so when the pigeon expanded pigeon is acquired by children of the next generation as mother tongue it is called creole so a creole is a nativized variety of extended vision expanded vision all right so it is a language that developed or derived from pigeon of course that you just talked about creole is an extended pigeon with elaborate social functions and native speakers of the variety who constitute a speech community so now what we see something that emerged as a as a necessity a necessary outcome you know to to serve the purpose of communication between two sets of people who had nothing in common now extends and expands to a level where this minimal contact is expanded in other social domains and then the pidgin expands to such a level where it starts functioning as a code for different social functions right so unlike pidgin it is the first language to children of the community so i just i told you that after sustained pidgin after a sustained period of time this pigeon extends expands its social functions its vocabulary we we notice complexity in the grammar structures and then in few years the next generation children acquire this variety as mother tongue and the moment this extended pidgin is acquired as mother tongue it is called creole okay uh if you look at the number of creoles that survive today across the globe you can find some creoles some of them have become instinct after this post-colonial period some of some of them disappeared some of them were standardized renamed but we can find the parent language creoles based on their parent language across the coastal areas in the world like arabic based creoles are exist still they exist still exist one interesting example of creole is in northeast of india which is very vibrant dynamic and you in use right it's called nagamese assimi's based creole and when you look at the name nagam is naga plus assamese two distinct set of people they came in contact in due course of history and this creole emerged based on asmes chinese based creole like kangmang dutch-based cruel languages still exist english-based creole languages french-based creole languages german-based creole languages another creole there may be debate but another broadly speaking another creole that we find in andaman and newcapper islands of india which is andaman creole that is hindi and i know hindi japanese based jilan kriyal japanese kanban kandoku congo based creole like malaya base creole languages based sango portuguese based creole languages spanish-based creole languages sinhala based veda languages there are some examples of creole right some of them still survive and they are flourishing and used across the globe as spread on the coastal areas of the world now what are the common factors between pigeon and creole so we have to understand both varieties of languages are a natural outcome of contact situation as we understood that when two sets of people with no language in common come in contact it happens and it happened in the history then lack of common languages lead to emergence of a lingua franca right a contact language where they can carry out basic communication needs transactions right then it can expand and be used by other communities not necessarily only by the people who were involved originally in that context situation because it can be learned by other people and can be used so other people also joined while at the initial stage of the pigeon it is restricted to only those who were involved in contact situation but you can it can creole is derived from pageant but pidgin is a secondary language not primary language as i told you which developed by speakers of unintelligible languages right paging is fully adequate language it is derived from the process of pigeonization and it is evolved from trade colonization and plantation that involves many languages but no one in is predominant and creole often evolved from pigeon through the creolization or nativization process so i told you that when pidgin expands and starts functioning as an elaborate code for other social functions and when it is acquired by next generation as mother tongue it becomes creole right creole is developed out of pigeon and you know todd 1974 it's a it's a hybrid language basically right what are the distinctions distinctions that pidgin has no native speaker while creole has native speakers the former is created by adults but the latter that means creoles are invented by the children linguistically pidgin's form and grammar is simplified and reduced sometimes can even die out but creole is a stable and developed code and it can develop into a full-fledged complete and adequate natural language and we call it natural language because you know it is acquired by next generation children as a normal mother tongue often creole often exists in post-colonial areas of course because you know these european forces reached different shores of the world they came in contact with local community and this is how it all happened you all may not have elaborate grammatical structures as the older languages do but however creole has definitely more complex syntax and more elaborate vocabulary as compared to pidgins so pajin is an antecedent of creole now let us look at developmental stages of pidgin and kriya because they are related and one is antecedent of the other the latter is an outcome of the you know others process of development so let us correlate these two varieties and see uh you know the linguistic correlation so situation social situation and linguistic correlation if you look at the if you want to understand the process of development let us look at this table so on the left you have social situation on the right you have linguistic correlation so when you say marginal contact marginal contact refers to the very limited occasion when these two sets of people meet without any language in common to use for their linguistic transactions so marginal contact contact and it gets you a very restricted non-elaborate pigeon that is the linguistic correlate but we know that in due course of time this pigeon develops expands and starts functioning as an elaborate code for other social functions and in in due course this extended variety is acquired by the next generation children as language mother tongue so when it is nativized then you find extended vision right and then so after nativisation when the generation says start next generation and then the extreme generation they start acquiring it as mother tongue and also the older resource languages fade away and the generation is left with this newly immersed extended pigeon which is being acquired as mother tongue it becomes creole so creole is a nativised extended version of prison so the correlate is creole and then after due course of time you might see in the history there were movements and initiatives to you know institutionally support uh you know codify and elaborate deliberate attempt to standardize these creoles and that is that process is called the process of decrealization that means now it is no more a creole but it becomes a full-fledged standard developed codified language so this is this is the ultimate development of the process that is started with a marginal contact and blooms into flourishes as a full-fledged language so in social linguistics if you want to understand the contact situations and the outcome of certain contacts page pagin and creole remain a very significant concept and today as we are talking there are standard creoles available and you can find it uh you know on the world map atlas right so that is it on virgin and creole and i hope that you understand the distinction between the two and also a common origin of the two so thank you very much