Discuss the arguments for and against having primary and/or secondary education through the medium of a specific pidgin or creole (for example Tok Pisin or Sranan).
Make sure you are clear about who would benefit or be disadvantaged in each case.
In class, we talked about recreolisation and in particular, we looked at London Jamaican. As indicated, the phenomenon of recreolisation cannot be understood independently from an awareness of the social context surrounding the recreolisation.
What type of motivations can you imagine, would account for the ‘White Creole Speaker’?
What can you say about the following:
- Bickerton’s Language Bioprogram Hypothesis
- Explain the theories between abrupt and gradual creolisation. You could briefly explain the Gradualist Hypothesis
Should pidgins / creoles be made official languages? Discuss this with reference to specific cases.
Sebba (1997) points out that one of the problems facing the linguist trying to describe the language of Jamaicans is the fact that the language is so varied / variable. De Camp (1971) was the first to describe the Jamaican situation as a dialect continuum linking the broadest creole with the local variety of Standard English.
We can view the dialect continuum as a ladder, with the acrolect at one end and the basilect at the other. In the middle, there are the mesolects, which are display varying degrees of similarity to either the creole or standard. The acrolect is the variety closest to the standard languae, while the basilect the the variety closest to the creole. Can you think / find other examples of creoles that exist in a similar continuum?
One contribution per person please!
Name a creole, its lexifier language and the socio-cultural background of its formation. Don’t forget to quote your sources.
Surf the web and try to find:
- associations for the study of pidgins and creoles
- conferences on pidgins and creoles (indicate the date and place of the next meeting)
- journals
- notable dissertations on any issue in pidgin or creole linguistics
A good place to begin your search would be the LinguistList. I will be setting up the blog roll as soon as I get your responses.
When talking about pidgins and creoles, the following concepts are important. What do they mean? Don’t forget to state your sources! (no wikipedia please)
- substrate language
- superstrate language
- lexifier
- ‘common core’ hypothesis
- monogenesis
- relexification
- polygenesis
Note: you do not have to define every single term, just pick one.
We touched very briefly on foreigner talk in our first session.
What exactly is foreigner talk, and what would be typical instances of simplification in foreigner talk? Don’t forget to state your sources.
In Germany, the term is applied to the simplified German of so-called ‘guest workers’. These were migrant workers mainly from the Mediterranean countries.
There is disagreement among scholars (and as indicated by the previous discussion) as to whether GAD should really be termed a pidgin. These doubts arise partly from the questionable stability of GAD.
Look at the extract below and list / highlight the features which characterise pidgins:
Interviewer: Sie waren krank, hat es da Probleme gegeben mit der Firma, wenn Sie krank gewesen sind?
Miguel (Spanish migrant worker):
Wann ich krank, Ingenieur mir sagen, ‘meine Büro kommen, Arbeit?
Ich sag ‘ah, ich krank, ich nicht kommen Arbeit.’
- ‘Warum? Wieviel Wochen du krank?’
Ich sag ‘ah, ich weiss nichts, ich nicht Doctor.’
Und dann Ingenieur sagen ‘nächste Monat nicht kommen Arbeit, du fort Spanisch auch’
- ‘Warum? Das Monat bezahle, warum ich fort?’
(from Sebba, M. (1997). Contact Languages: Pidgins and Creoles. Basingstoke: Palgrave)
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