- Home
- e-Journals
- Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages
- Previous Issues
- Volume 32, Issue, 2017
Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages - Volume 32, Issue 2, 2017
Volume 32, Issue 2, 2017
-
Demonstratives and the emergence of a definite article in Juba Arabic and Ki-Nubi
Author(s): Stefano Manfredipp.: 205–232 (28)More LessIn this study I provide a description of the morphosyntax and the functions of demonstratives in Juba Arabic and Ki-Nubi, two closely related Arabic-based contact languages. The study describes the process of acquisition of demonstrative pronouns and determiners and it explains the formal and functional changes that have taken place in the demonstrative system of Arabic as a consequence of pidginization and subsequent creolization. Broadly speaking, the reduction of the inflection of Arabic demonstratives and the gradual loss of their deictic value corresponds to a change of their grammatical functions along the common grammaticalization path deictic demonstrative > anaphoric demonstrative > definite article. However, Juba Arabic and Ki-Nubi clearly differ in terms of both forms and functions of pronominal and adnominal demonstratives. If Juba Arabic demonstratives are characterized by a certain morphological continuity with those of its Arabic lexifier, Ki-Nubi gives evidence of an innovative, and rather complex, system of demonstrative pronouns and determiners. This morphosyntactic divergence is also reflected on a functional ground insofar as the adnominal demonstrative de “this” is mainly used as a tracking device in Juba Arabic, whereas it can mark nominal definiteness in Ki-Nubi. The study eventually proposes a unified diachronic hypothesis that accounts for a greater degree of grammaticalization of nominal determination in Ki-Nubi as a result of its radical creolization.
-
Putting Matawai on the Surinamese linguistic map
Author(s): Bettina Miggepp.: 233–262 (30)More LessThe creoles associated with Suriname have figured prominently in research on creole languages. However, one variety, Matawai, has, to date, remained completely unresearched. This paper attempts to address this lacuna. It discusses its history and selected areas of grammar in order to assess the place of Matawai among its sister languages and its development. The linguistic analysis draws on recordings from 2013 and the 1970s. The paper provides evidence to support the view that Matawai is most closely related to Saamaka. However, there are also features that are unique to Matawai and those that appear to be due to either patterns of language contact with the other creoles of Suriname or common inheritance. The paper argues that systematic corpus-based analysis of lesser-used varieties provides new insights into existing debates.
-
On the origin of some Northern Songhay mixed languages
Author(s): Carlos M. Benítez-Torres and Anthony P. Grantpp.: 263–303 (41)More LessThis paper discusses the origins of linguistic elements in three Northern Songhay languages of Niger and Mali: Tadaksahak, Tagdal and Tasawaq. Northern Songhay languages combine elements from Berber languages, principally Tuareg forms, and from Songhay; the latter provides inflectional morphology and much of the basic vocabulary, while the former is the source of most of the rest of the vocabulary, especially less basic elements. Subsets of features of Northern Songhay languages are compared with those of several stable mixed languages and mixed-lexicon creoles, and in accounting for the origin of these languages the kind of language mixing found in Northern Songhay languages is compared with that found in the (Algonquian) Montagnais dialect of Betsiamites, Quebec. The study shows that Tagdal and the other Northern Songhay languages could be construed as mixed languages, although the proportion of Berber and Songhay elements varieties somewhat between these languages, and also indicates that the definition of ‘mixed language’ is labile because different mixed languages combine their components in different ways, so that different kinds of mixed languages need to be recognized. NS languages seem to belong to the category of Core-Periphery languages with respect to the origins of more versus less basic morphemes.
-
A new window into the history of Chabacano
Author(s): Mauro Fernández and Eeva Sippolapp.: 304–338 (35)More LessTheories about the origin of the Spanish-lexified creoles of the Philippines known as Chabacano have been based on scarce historical samples. This article presents two early Chabacano texts that are more than twenty years older than the ones that have been available so far: ‘La Buyera’, from 1859, and ‘Juancho’, from 1860. Based on a comparison with historical and contemporary sources pertaining to Philippine-Spanish contact varieties, the texts are placed in their linguistic and sociohistorical context. A linguistic analysis of the texts reveals a clear pattern of creole features and suggests that there was probably sociolinguistically motivated variation in different settings where the Chabacano varieties emerged. The results of the analysis confirm that Chabacano existed as a crystallized variety by at least the mid-19th century and was not restricted to interactions between servants and Spanish-speaking masters or to commercial contexts. Rather, it was already a language used for social and intimate relations and daily interactions in diverse neighborhoods of Manila.
-
Language shift, endangerment and prestige
Author(s): Maya Ravindranath Abtahianpp.: 339–364 (26)More LessThis paper examines a scenario of possible language shift in the multilingual village of Hopkins, where the two most commonly used languages are both ‘minority’ languages: Garifuna, now endangered in many of the communities where it was once spoken, and Belizean Creole (Kriol), an unofficial national lingua franca in Belize. It offers a qualitative examination of beliefs about the three primary languages spoken in the community (Garifuna, Kriol, and English) with data gathered from sociolinguistic interviews and surveys in four rural Garifuna communities in Belize. It situates these findings on the social evaluation of Garifuna and Kriol socio-historically by examining them alongside the recent history of language planning for Garifuna and Kriol in Belize.
-
Documenting Unserdeutsch
Author(s): Péter Maitz and Craig Alan Volkerpp.: 365–397 (33)More LessUnserdeutsch, also known as Rabaul Creole German, is the only known German-lexifier creole. This critically endangered language has its origins in an orphanage in German New Guinea for mixed-race children, where Standard German was taught by mission personnel. Unserdeutsch was creolised in one generation, and became the in-group language of a small mixed-race community. It is now spoken by around 100 elderly speakers, nearly all immigrants to Australia. The current project is only the second documentation based on actual fieldwork and has a specific focus on the use and vitality of the language as used by the last generation of speakers. It has the aim of producing an Unserdeutsch corpus that will facilitate both future linguistic research and contact with the language for the descendants of Unserdeutsch speakers. Preliminary findings show variation among speakers along a continuum from heavily creolised basilect to an almost European German acrolect. Most of the lexicon is derived from German, while a number of basilectal grammatical constructions are the result of the loss of marked features in German and possible imperfect second language learning as well as relexification of Tok Pisin, the presumed substrate language.
Volumes & issues
-
Volume 39 (2024)
-
Volume 38 (2023)
-
Volume 37 (2022)
-
Volume 36 (2021)
-
Volume 35 (2020)
-
Volume 34 (2019)
-
Volume 33 (2018)
-
Volume 32 (2017)
-
Volume 31 (2016)
-
Volume 30 (2015)
-
Volume 29 (2014)
-
Volume 28 (2013)
-
Volume 27 (2012)
-
Volume 26 (2011)
-
Volume 25 (2010)
-
Volume 24 (2009)
-
Volume 23 (2008)
-
Volume 22 (2007)
-
Volume 21 (2006)
-
Volume 20 (2005)
-
Volume 19 (2004)
-
Volume 18 (2003)
-
Volume 17 (2002)
-
Volume 16 (2001)
-
Volume 15 (2000)
-
Volume 14 (1999)
-
Volume 13 (1998)
-
Volume 12 (1997)
-
Volume 11 (1996)
-
Volume 10 (1995)
-
Volume 9 (1994)
-
Volume 8 (1993)
-
Volume 7 (1992)
-
Volume 6 (1991)
-
Volume 5 (1990)
-
Volume 4 (1989)
-
Volume 3 (1988)
-
Volume 2 (1987)
-
Volume 1 (1986)
Most Read This Month

-
-
Intonation in Palenquero
Author(s): José Ignacio Hualde and Armin Schwegler
-
-
-
Off Target?
Author(s): Philip Baker
-
-
-
The Origins of Fanagalo
Author(s): Rajend Mesthrie
-
-
-
Relexification
Author(s): Derek Bickerton
-
- More Less