Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages - Volume 4, Issue 2, 1989

Hitherto it has been believed that serial verb constructions were not found in the French Creoles of the Indian Ocean. In fact, there exists a wide variety of such constructions in both Morisyen and Seselwa; extensive examples from Seselwa are provided. However, for less basilectal speakers, such constructions must carry on each verb a tense marker which is identical to that on the matrix verb. This fact, together with the misanalysis of Seselwa i as a reprise pronoun, served to disguise the nature of Seselwa serials. The data surveyed has significant consequences for future studies of creoles and for theories of creole origins.

Melanesian Pidgin is a cover term for closely related varieties of the English-lexifier Pacific Pidgin that is spoken in Vanuatu (where it is known as Bislama), Papua New Guinea (where it is known as Tok Pisin), and Solomon Islands (where it is known as Pijin). Structurally and lexically, Bislama is closer to Solomon Islands Pijin than either is to Tok Pisin. The precise nature of many of the structural differences between these three varieties of Melanesian Pidgin has not been widely described, partly because Bislama, and particularly Solomon Islands Pijin, are relatively little described in the literature. This paper aims to describe one grammatical feature which differentiates these three varieties. The grammatical feature that is the subject of this paper is the form se. It carries a particularly high functional load in Bislama. The same form is also present in Solomons Pijin, though in this variety of Melanesian Pidgin, it has a sharply reduced functional load as compared with Bislama. On the other hand, in most current varieties of Tok Pisin, it is almost completely absent. In those varieties of Tok Pisin in which it is present, its status as a genuinely independent grammatical or lexical item is questionable. This paper will also go somewhat beyond a straightforward structural description of se in Melanesian Pidgin, as it will also reconstruct its history in the three varieties of the language. The paper will concentrate on Bislama, as it is in this variety of the language that the form se is most widely used.

This paper examines, and refutes, the currently most popular hypothesis concerning the origin of Fanagalo, namely, that it arose on the plantation fields of Natal among indentured East Indian migrants who arrived there from 1860 onwards. Can a pidgin be initiated by a group of migrants from differing linguistic backgrounds in a plantation situation, and still remain in widespread use without showing any substrate influences? If the Indian origin hypothesis is correct, this would indeed be the case: a "crystallized" southern African Pidgin, stable for about a hundred years, would have been created in the sugar plantations of Natal by migrant indentured Indian workers without any tangible influences from any of the five or so Indic and Dravidian languages involved. However, structural and lexical evidence indicates otherwise. Written sources (a first-hand account by an English settler from about 1905, and two published accounts by an English missionary) suggest that the use of Fanagalo in Natal predated the arrival of Indian immigrants by at least ten years. Regarding the origins of Fanagalo, one other viable alternative is examined — the Eastern Cape in the early 1800s. The conclusion is that the most likely site for Fanagalo's genesis was Natal in the mid-nineteenth century.