Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages - Volume 33, Issue 2, 2018

Abstract

Earlier linguistic research suggested that Malacca Creole Portuguese (MCP) had existed without diglossia with Portuguese ever since the Dutch conquest of Portuguese Malacca in 1642, yet it had experienced some contact with Portuguese in the 19th and 20th centuries. The present study adds significantly to this discussion. It considers a range of information from sociohistorical studies and archival sources (including linguistic data) relating to the Dutch (1642–1795, 1818–1823) and early British (1795–1818, 1823–1884) colonial periods. For the Dutch period, it is seen that contact with other Creole Portuguese communities is likely to have persisted for some time. Most significant, however, is the finding that 19th century texts in Portuguese and creole Portuguese, recently identified in archival sources in London and Graz, show that Portuguese continued to be part of the Malacca sociolinguistic setting until the early British period, and that missionary Indo-Portuguese also had a presence at that time. It is concluded that, rather than presenting a narrow lectal range akin to that of the MCP community in the late 20th century, the creole lectal grid in the 19th century was more complex, and included dimensions of a continuum in a diglossic relationship with Portuguese.

Abstract

This study examines two distinctive neologistic processes within Rasta Talk. (1) Overstanding is morphological refashioning of a word that replaces morphemes (actual or perceived) which are misaligned with respect to the connotations of the word itself. Thus the word understanding, bearing positive connotations, is repaired by transforming the negatively mis-connotating sub-component under- into over-. (2) Iformation is the targeting of (depending on a word’s structure) either the first syllable or the first segment for replacement by /ai/ or /j/; e.g. ancient and food become I-cient and yood, respectively. These two processes contribute greatly to the salient properties of Rasta Talk, and involve a large degree of complexity which merits detailed scrutiny.

Abstract

Published literature on Lingua Franca contains divergent views regarding its place in the taxonomy of contact language types. While this language is traditionally regarded as a pidgin, some scholars consider it more accurate to view it as a koine. This paper shows that Lingua Franca exhibits features that are consistent with both pidginization and koineization, and proposes to view it as located on the pidgin/koine continuum.

Abstract

In this paper, I propose that the Arabic-based migrant pidgin Gulf Pidgin Arabic (GPA) is shaped by the initial work environment of its speakers. My data consist of recordings of conversations with 16 GPA speakers living in Oman and the United Arab Emirates, who have learned the language working either as shopkeepers or as maids in private homes. By looking at the use of verb forms, I find that the maids use significantly more verbs derived from imperatives than the shopkeepers, and argue that this is the result of the social context in which they work. I then compare the speech of the maids to the speakers of Pidgin Madam (PM) in Lebanon, who work in a similar environment, and show that while these two varieties share the preponderance of imperative verbs, the feminine-derived forms which make up most of the verbal inventory of PM are comparatively rare in maids’ GPA. I attribute this to the existence of similar yet distinct foreigner talk norms in the Gulf and in Lebanon, each of them reflecting the composition of the migrant population in their respective regions.

Abstract

Haitian, a French-lexifier creole with a Gbe substrate, shows an asymmetry in the way it has adapted French liquids: the French lateral was maintained in postvocalic coda position in Haitian, but the French rhotic was systematically deleted in this position. This paper presents the results of a perception study showing that the lateral is generally more perceptible than the rhotic in coda position in Modern French. The hypothesis that perception played a role in the phonological asymmetry in Haitian is compatible with these results. The paper sketches an analysis of how the perceptual asymmetry between French coda laterals and rhotics resulted in the emergence of a new phonological grammar, distinct from both the grammar of the substrate and superstrate languages. This analysis is in line with previous works on the role of perception in second language acquisition, loanword adaptation, creolization, and sound change more generally.

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