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From: seumas@vnet.ibm.com (James Walker)
Subject: Re: Creoles and Pidgins
Sender: news@austin.ibm.com (News id)
Message-ID: <D8F5B8.2268@austin.ibm.com>
Date: Thu, 11 May 1995 14:52:19 GMT
Reply-To: seumas@vnet.ibm.com (James Walker)
References: <3orp5u$1mut@news-s01.ny.us.ibm.net>
Organization: IBM Canada, Toronto Lab
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In <3orp5u$1mut@news-s01.ny.us.ibm.net>, wolfkir@ibm.net writes:
>          Re: creoles and pidgins. Are we seeing a semantic
>          quibble here? Surely, languages like Tok Pisin are
>          ***not*** pidgins, but creoles, according to
>          Bickerton's definition? That there is a difference
>          between pidgins (= communication systems invented
>          ad-hoc by people without a common language) and
>          creoles seems to me a plain fact. Like so many other
>          things in language (and life), a sharp demarcation
>          between categories is of course impossible. But look at
>          the extremes of the continuum, and the concept pidgin
>          vs creole is clear enough.
Part of the problem is that the old pidgin-creole distinction often turns out,
upon examination, to be simplistic.  Bickerton distinguishes between what he
calls "true creoles", such as Hawaiian Creole English, Guyanese Creole English,
etc., and other ("false creoles"?) pidgins which have had continued contact with
their substrate language(s) during their development, such as Tok Pisin, and have 
therefore not undergone the kind of radical transformation that Bickerton claims 
the true creoles have undergone.  Other creolists tend to refer to languages like
TP as "extended pidgins", a term which recognizes that such languages have moved 
beyond the pidgin stage but are not, strictly speaking, creoles.  Salikoko Mufwene
has suggested that the terms "pidgin" and "creole" should be regarded as prototypical
categories, the membership of languages in each being determined not by an exhaustive
list of features, but by extension of various features.
          
>          The question is, what is the pidgin to creole transition
>          as a process? Does it happen only when children of a
>          multilingual community deveop their own version of
>          the mixture that their parents present them with?
>          (That's Bickerton's claim). Or does it also happen
>          when several generations of adults use it?
The first is the "traditional" definition, and one that Bickerton defends.  The latter
would probably be better regarded as an extended pidgin.

James
------------------------------------------------------------
James Walker, Toronto Information Development, IBM Canada
"Who'd've thought a nuclear reactor would be so complicated?"
-- Homer Simpson
Disclaimer: The above views are mine, not those of IBM.
