Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages - Volume 31, Issue 1, 2016

This paper is primarily concerned with the use of spatiotemporal metaphor in English. In particular, the interpretations of spatiotemporal metaphors in a nativized variety of English, Singapore English, will be examined. On the basis of morphosyntax, Singapore English and English spatiotemporal metaphors do not differ. The difference is only apparent in the usage of these terms. This paper examines Chinese influence in the temporal interpretations of English and show that there is substrate influence from Chinese languages on the interpretations of Singapore English spatiotemporal terms.

This paper analyzes the properties of the Present Perfect in Barranquenho/Barranqueño, a contact variety spoken in the southern border of Portugal and Spain. In this variety, the Present Perfect displays a mixed structure: while the forms of auxiliary and participle are from Portuguese, its range of interpretations is not attested in Portuguese but rather in Spanish. As in other domains of the grammar of Barranquenho that have been studied, the Present Perfect displays features attributable to Portuguese and to Spanish. These findings are discussed against hypotheses regarding the emergence of this contact variety as well as the theoretical debate concerning the relation between language contact and second language acquisition.

Linguists who have studied the Afro-Colombian creole language Palenquero — which shares a lexicon highly cognate with Spanish — have noted the introduction of Spanish elements, ranging from conjugated verbs and preverbal clitics to more complex morphosyntactic constructions. The apparent mixing has variously been attributed to decreolization, language attrition, code-switching, interference from Spanish, performance errors, and the possibility that such configurations have been an integral part of Palenquero since its origins. The present study reports the results of experiments conducted in San Basilio de Palenque, to probe Palenqueros’ implicit partitioning of Spanish and Palenquero. The results suggest that the Spanish incursions are not all feasibly characterized as code-switching, and do not meet the criteria for decreolization. The introduction of Spanish elements may be the residual effect of a return to the active use of a language that had lain effectively dormant for many years.

The colonial history of Australia necessitated contact between nineteenth and twentieth century dialects of English and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island languages. This has resulted in the emergence of contact languages, some of which have been identified as creoles (e.g. Sandefur 1979, Shnukal 1983) while others have been hidden under the label of ‘Aboriginal English’, exacerbated by what Young (1997) described as a gap in our knowledge of historical analyses of individual speech varieties. In this paper we provide detailed sociohistorical data on the emergence of a contact language in Woorabinda, an ex-Government Reserve in Queensland. We propose that the data shows that the label ‘Aboriginal English’ previously applied (Alexander 1968) does not accurately identify the language. Here we compare the sociohistorical data for Woorabinda to similar data for both Kriol, a creole spoken in the Northern Territory of Australia and to Bajan, an ‘intermediate creole’ of Barbados, to argue that the language spoken in Woorabinda is most likely also an intermediate creole.

In this paper, we examine mass and count in Michif, a language often called a mixed language, which has elements from French (and English) and Cree (and Ojibwe). French has an obvious grammatical mass/count distinction (Doetjes 1997); Cree does not. Michif could therefore display a mass/count distinction, like French, or look like it lacks one, like Cree. In fact, the system is mixed (contra Croft 2003: 58): French-derived nominals display an obvious mass/count distinction and the Cree-derived nominals do not. Number, numerals and quantifiers disambiguate within the French-derived part of the grammar but do not in the Cree-derived part. Michif has inherited both the French system and the Cree system, reflected in the behaviour of the nominals.

In the early stages of the China trade European traders knew nothing of Chinese, while the Chinese traders were equally ignorant of European languages. It was in this setting that pidgin languages developed for interethnic communication. While the role of Chinese Pidgin English in the China trade is fairly well-understood (see Baker 1987; Baker & Mühlhäusler 1990; Bolton 2003; Ansaldo 2009), the use of pidgin Portuguese is poorly documented and our understanding of it is correspondingly limited (Tryon, Mühlhäusler & Baker 1996). In this article we discuss what can be learnt from a newly transcribed phrasebook — the Compendium of Assorted Phrases in Macau Pidgin. We first review the use of contact varieties of Portuguese in the China trade. We then introduce the contents and layout of the Compendium and explain the transcription practices adopted for the phrasebook. Grammatical features contained in the phrasebook are examined and illustrated. We conclude with an examination of the significance of the Compendium in enriching our understanding of pidgin Portuguese and its relationship with Macau Creole Portuguese as well as Chinese Pidgin English.