Course Titel
The Pidgin – Creole Life Cycle
Teachers
Margot
van den Berg & Rachel Selbach
E-mail: m.v.d.berg@let.ru.nl
Postal Address:
Dr. M. C. van den Berg
Taalwetenschap, Faculteit
Letteren
Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen, Erasmusplein 1, kamer
E.9.22
Postbus 9103, 6500 HD Nijmegen, The Netherlands
Homepage: www.ru.nl/linc
Intermediate
Since the
1960s, when Hall (1962) published on the Pidgin – Creole Life Cycle,
creole languages have been generally regarded as
languages that develop historically from pidgins. In this view, pidgins are
seen as simplified, irregular forms of speech used as an occasional means of
interethnic communication between groups of speakers without a language in
common. Creoles, on the other hand, are the common language of a speech
community. The structural elaboration differentiating a creole
from its pidgin ancestor results from nativization,
the process by which a language acquires a native-speaking community, invoking
innate knowledge to explain certain common creole
features. Nowadays, the majority of creolists and
others working in contact linguistics do not accept this view unconditionally,
but outside of contact linguistics it is still prevalent.
Under the heading of the
Pidgin-to-Creole life-cycle, we will discuss in this course perennial
creole themes such as abrupt vs. gradual language
restructuring (Or: how
long does it take to make a language?); L1 vs L2
acquisition / children vs. adults as creators of creole
language (Or: who makes a language?); the pidgin > creole
nexus (Or: when does a language begin?),
and grammaticalization from today’s perspective. We
focus on data from
Wednesday: The Surinamese Creoles and the Pidgin-Creole life
Cycle
Thursday: Melanesian Pidgin and the Pidgin-Creole life Cycle:
the case of bambae
Friday: Wrapping up: A multi-modular approach to P/C genesis
Background
and preparatory readings:
Selbach, Rachel, Hugo Cardoso
& Margot
van den Berg (2009) Gradual Creolization. Studies celebrating Jacques
Arends.
Siegel, Jeff (2008). The emergence of Pidgin & Creole
Languages.
Course readings:
Monday:
Muysken, Pieter (2008) ‘Pidgin
and creole genesis’. Book
chapter in Functional categories. Cambridge studies in linguistics 117,
Cambridge University Press, 188 – 210
Muysken, Pieter (2004)
‘Pidginization, creolization
and language death’. In Handbook
of Morphology. Geert Booij & Christian Lehmann (eds.),
Singler, John (2008) ‘The sociohistorical context
of Creole Genesis’. In Handbook
of Pidgin and Creole studies. Blackwell Handbook in Linguistics.
Silvia Kouwenberg & John Singler
(eds.).
Tuesday:
Bruyn,
Adrienne (2009) ‘Grammaticalization in creoles:
ordinary and not-so ordinary cases’ In Studies
in Language 33.2, 312-337 (dig attached)
Migge, Bettina & Margot van den
Berg (2009) ‘Creole learner varieties in the past and in the
present: implications for creole development’.
In Acquisition et
Interaction en Langue Etrangère …Langage,
Interaction et Acquisition (AILE-LIA), 1, 253 – 282
Baker,
Peter (1990) “Off
target?” Journal of Pidgin and Creole
Languages 5: 107-19.
Thursday:
Jourdan,
Christine. 1985. Creolisation, nativization
and substrate influences: what is happening to Bae in
Pijin.
Papers in pidgin and creole linguistics, No.4, pp. 67-96, Pacific
Linguistics, no.A72.
Keesing, Roger.
1991. Substrates, calquing and grammaticalization in
Melanesian pidgin. In: Traugott and Heine, eds. Approaches
to Grammaticalization.
Labov, William. 1990 (1971) On the Adequacy of Natural Languages: I.The Development of Tense. In Singler, ed. Pidgin
and Creole Tense-Mood-Aspect Systems.
Romaine,
Suzanne. 1990. Change and variation in the use of Bai
in young children’s creolized Tok Pisin
in
Sankoff, Gillian.
1991. Using the future to explain the past.
In Byrne&Huebner, eds.Development and structures of creole languages: essays in
honor of Derek Bickerton,
61-74,
Sankoff, Gillian and Susanne Laberge.
1980. On the acquisition of native speakers by a
language. In G. Sankoff,
The Social Life of Language.