Pidgin And Creole Language Analysis

Pidgin and Creole languages emerges as new languages in the context of language contact. In earlier year’s pidgin and creole was thought of as broken English, bastard Portuguese, nigger French, kombuistaaltje (‘cookhouse lingo’), isikula (‘coolie language’) (Holm, 2002). The reason that pidgin and creole was thought of in this manner stems from an ideology that pidgin and creole were corruptions of “superior”, usually European languages and partly from the attitudes towards the speakers of such languages who were often perceived as semi-savages whose habits was somehow an insult (Holm, 2000). Some linguists thought of Pidgin and creole languages as nonstandard but it is recently that linguists have realised that Pidgins and Creoles are not

Some of the grammatical structures are recognizable in the process of phonetic reduction, with the word of Tok Pisin “bilong” that derives from English word “belong”. The shift in this word does not seem to display phonetic change and at the same time another feature is the abstractioning or broadening of the meaning. “Bilong” is used in Tok Pisin as a possessive marker similar to the English meaning “belong”. For example, “Man bilong em I stap long haus”, meaning “Her husband is in/at the house”. In the next example “Em I meri bilong toktok” meaning “She is a gossip” the word “bilong” expands into an attributive marker (Tung, 2014). The word “belong” acts as the superstrate in this

For example “Em I kat im olgeta diwai” meaning “He cut all the trees” or as a pronoun in “Jisas laik im olgeta” meaning “Jesus loves everyone” (Tung, 2014). Again English acting as the superstrate in this context.

To conclude Pidgin and Creole languages such as Tok Pisin according to (Mead, 1931) became a vehicle for a new culture that has resulted from contact noted by (Holms, 2000). Tok Pisin started as a jargon in the context of trading and colonization evolved into a lingua franca language with recognised status as one of the official languages in Papua New Guinea. The grammatical changes involves phonological reduction, words used in new contexts and the expanding of the original