Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages - Volume 39, Issue 2, 2024

Abstract

Motion event description has received little attention in contact linguistics as compared to other branches of linguistics. To address this gap, I provide an overview of the grammatical and lexical resources for the encoding of motion events in Gulf Pidgin Arabic (GPA). 10 GPA speakers narrated the story of a boy, his dog, and his missing pet frog. The results revealed: (a) the participants used a relatively large number of path verbs and a comprehensive number of spatial particles; (b) they showed an overwhelming aversion to the description of manner in boundary-crossing and caused motion situations; and (c) they engineered coercive constructions to deal with semantically complex situations. Taken together, the linguistic evidence suggests GPA is developing into a verb-framed language type. This study adds a significant methodological and empirical weight to the existing literature and has the potential to encourage intra- and inter-disciplinary comparative work on motion event description.

Abstract

Baba Malay today is an endangered creole perceived to be a less flexible, easily identifiable language entity with static ascribed qualities. An investigation of resources from the late 1800s and early 1900s shows that such a characterization of early Baba Malay is not possible. Three novels and twenty letters demonstrate a wide range of variation, lexically and grammatically, emphasizing a wide creole continuum that plausibly existed in the heydays of the language. The wide range of variation can be understood to be detracting from, and aligning with the creole’s substrate and lexifier languages, or with the language that was gaining dominance during that time, English. The linguistic ideologies of early Baba Malay speakers and competing pressures in their group identities explain the considerable variation found.

Abstract

This study analyzes the borrowing of Dutch reciprocal pronouns in a corpus of primary field data of Sranan, Sarnami, and Surinamese Javanese, three languages of Suriname. The expression of reciprocity in relevant African and Asian substrates of the languages under study is also presented and discussed. I suggest cognitive and sociolinguistic explanations for the preference of Dutch-sourced reciprocal pronouns during multilingual contact. The three languages show convergent borrowing processes favoring the dedicated Dutch reciprocal pronoun over ‘scattered’ native strategies. Further, Suriname is a hierarchical post-colonial language ecology in which borrowing proceeds mostly in one direction, either directly from Dutch, or from Dutch via Sranan. The parallel multilingual trajectory of contact-induced change in the expression of a complex notion like reciprocity showcases the attractiveness for borrowing of forms and structures with transparent relations between form and content.

Abstract

This paper presents new Skepi Creole Dutch data from the late-18th century, found in the work of the German scholar Ernst Karl Rodschied. The creole data include pronominal and verbal paradigms, a short 60-word excerpt from a private letter, and around two dozen names for local flora. After briefly introducing Rodschied, we present the data and compare them to the existing Skepi corpus.

Abstract

This paper examines the choices made at the levels of Ausbau (‘language by development’, Kloss 1967: 29–30) and Abstand (‘language by distance’, ibid) during the codification phase of Mauritian Creole. Using the document Lortograf Kreol Morisien (Ministry of Education and Human Resources 2011) as its focal point, it studies the co-association between Ausbau and Abstand and connects the choices made to a broader ideological framework which sets out to ‘promot[e] our country’s language’ (Hookoomsing 2011: 9). It explores the implication of adopting a linguistic form which a user can ‘intimately connect with loved ones, community and personal identity’ (Delpit 2006: 95) while simultaneously providing it with the stature traditionally enjoyed by the lexifier. In the final instance it views the decreasing Abstand of Mauritian Creole as a form of prestige planning (Haarmann 1986) carried out with the possible intention of enhancing its public image.

Abstract

Vincentian Creole makes a future/non-future temporal distinction on the basis of the categorisation proposed in several studies, according to which languages combining present and future make a past/non-past distinction and those using the same form for past and present make a future/non-future tense opposition. In Vincentian Creole examples of absolute tense, underspecified (or unmarked) predicates do not generally obtain a future interpretation: only readings in the past tense (for dynamic predicates) or the present (for non-dynamic predicates) are available. Thus, predicates in the future tense are unambiguous regardless of the lexical aspect of these predicates, unlike the context of past and present tense interpretations which I explored in my previous column. Evidence from other English-related creoles supports this claim.

This article reviews The Oxford Guide to Australian Languages

This article reviews Loss and Renewal: Australian languages since Colonisation

This article reviews The Routledge Handbook of Pidgin and Creole LanguagesGBP 44.99230.0040.99