G61.2510 Pidginization and Creolization

Prof. John Singler

FALL 1999
Office: 719 B'way, Rm. 505 (hours: Mon 4-6, Wed 12-1:30, & by appointment)
phone: 998-7950, e-mail: jvs1@is2.nyu.edu

Course Description

The intertwined questions that have shaped the study of pidgins/creoles (PC's) are these:

  • How are PC's created?
  • Why do PC's have the properties that they do?
  • Why, regardless of the languages that contributed to their development, do PC's share so many properties?

    This course examines conflicting theories of PC genesis. It explores PC properties, considering in particular what these languages can tell us about Universal Grammar and about contact linguistics. As PC genesis is seen as a prime example of the impact of social setting on language, special attention will be paid to the sociocultural matrix in which PC's develop.

    Assignments and Grading

    In the course of the semester there will be four assignments. For each assignment, it is necessary to get John's approval of a topic before proceeding. The assignments have the following weight:

    First assignment

    Due 9/21

    5%

    Second assignment

    Due 10/12

    20%

    Third assignment

    Due 11/16

    25%

    Fourth assignment

    Due 12/15

    50%

    First assignment: In this assignment you will report on properties of a particular PC; each student will select a PC on the first day of class and then present the report on September 21. You will present a ten-minute report to the class on this speech variety. While you will not be handing in a written version of the assignment, you will be expected to prepare an informative handout and to base your class presentation upon it. The handout should contain pertinent examples, a summary of the information you are presenting, and a list of references.

    Second assignment: In this assignment you will expand on your first assignment to report on a group of PC's. The grouping can be based on geography, e.g. African PC's; shared linguistic history, e.g. Dutch-lexicon PC's, or type, e.g. fort PC's.) Your primary task here is to summarize, synthesize, and evaluate relevant articles in producing a paper of four or five pages. In addition, you should prepare a handout for a class presentation (ten minutes).

    Third assignment: In this assignment you will present a cross-creole study of a particular linguistic feature or topic. In a paper of five to seven pages, you will describe the phenomenon under study, show what makes it noteworthy, and explicate any controversy that surrounds its analysis. Again, you should prepare a handout for a class presentation (ten minutes). A list of possible topics is given below, but you should not feel restricted to items on this list:

    Focus

    Phonotactics

    Semantics

    Minimality

    Pluralization

    The status of adjectives

    Morphology

    Pronoun systems

    Substrate influence

    Negation

    Reduplication

    Syllable structure

    Optimality

    Relativization

    Universals

    Fourth assignment: The final assignment is a term paper that either addresses a topic within PC studies or brings PC evidence to bear on a broader linguistic issue. If relevant, it may draw on work that you have done in one or more of the previous assignments for the course. This paper is to be roughly ten pages in length.

    A non-graded but required assignment: Approximately six times during the course I will send you a question or problem via e-mail. There will be a deadline for each of these assignments. A rule that I will expect each member of the class to adhere to is the following: you are to spend no more than thirty minutes in answering the question. That is, from the time you start thinking about the answer to the time your completed answer is e-mailed to me, you are not to spend more than half an hour working on the question.

    Another non-graded but required assignment: Students will subscribe to Creolist and will be expected to come to class each week having read everything that has appeared on Creolist that week. Each week a student will be assigned to lead a brief discussion of that week's Creolist postings. (Like other lists, Creolist often contains intemperate language, raging egos, profound irrelevancies, and naked idiocy. You have been warned.)

    Readings

    All the assigned readings for the course are on reserve in the Linguistics Department Reading Room. There are no required textbooks.

    Syllabus

    Books from which three or more articles are drawn:

  • Baker, Philip, & Adrienne Bruyn, eds. 1999. St. Kitts and the Atlantic Creoles: The texts of Samuel Augustus Mathews in perspective. London: University of Westminster Press.
  • Huber, Magnus, & Mikael Parkvall, eds. 1999. Spreading the word: The issue of diffusion among the Atlantic Creoles. London: University of Westminister Press.
  • Mufwene, Salikoko S., ed. 1993. Africanisms in Afro-American language varieties. Athens: University of Georgia Press.
  • Spears, Arthur K., & Donald Winford, eds. 1997. The structure and status of pidgins and creoles. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

    [Throughout the course each set of readings is to be done for the week in which it is listed]

    9/7 Pidginization and creolization. An introduction and some definitions. The difference between a pidgin and a creole. The central questions in pidgin/creole (PC) studies.

  • Mühlhäusler, Peter. 1997. first two chapters of Pidgin and creole linguistics (expanded and revised edition). Chapter One: Names and development, 1-21. Chapter Two: The study of Pidgins and Creoles, 22-50. London: University of Westminster Press.
  • Jourdan, Christine. 1991. Pidgins and creoles: The blurring of categories. Annual Review of Anthropology 20.187-209.
  • Mühlhäusler, Peter. 1995. Pidgins, creoles and linguistic ecologies. In Philip Baker, ed., From contact to creole and beyond, 235-50. London: University of Westminster Press.

    9/14 The language bioprogram hypothesis. Are PCs a special type of language?
  • Bickerton, Derek. 1980. Creolization, linguistic universals, natural semantax, and the brain. In Richard Day, ed., Issues in English Creoles: Papers from the 1975 Hawaii conference, 1-18. [Originally appeared in University of Hawaii Working Papers in Linguistics 1974, 6(3).125-41.]
  • The exchange between Derek Bickerton and Pieter Muysken (1988) in Frederick J. Newmeyer, ed., Linguistics: The Cambridge survey, Vol. II, 268-306. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Bickerton: Creole languages and the bioprogram.
  • Muysken: Are creoles a special type of language?
  • Bickerton & Muysken: A dialog concerning the linguistic status of creole languages.

    • 9/21 First assignment due: students will make in-class presentations. PC phonology.

  • Carter, Hazel. 1993. Vowel length in Afro-American: Development or retention? In Mufwene, 328-45.
  • Smith, Norval. 1999. The vowel system of 18th-century St. Kitts Creole: Evidence for the history of the English Creoles? In Baker & Bruyn, 145-72.
  • Singler, John Victor. in press. Optimality Theory, the minimal-word constraint, and the historical sequencing of substrate influence in pidgin/creole genesis. In John H. McWhorter, ed., Current issues in pidgin and creole linguistics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

    9/28 Universals, substrata, and mechanisms for PC genesis. Haitian Creole.

  • Seuren, Pieter, & Herman Wekker. 1986. Semantic transparency as a factor in creole genesis. In Pieter Muysken & Norval Smith, eds., Substrata versus universals in creole genesis, 57-70. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
  • Singler, John Victor. 1988. The homogeneity of the substrate as a factor in pidgin/creole genesis. Language 64.27-51.
  • Mufwene, Salikoko S. 1990. Transfer and the substrate hypothesis in creolistics. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 12.1-23.

    10/5Are pidgins different from creoles? The social setting of creolization (I)

  • Thomason, Sarah Gray, & Terence Kaufman. 1988. Shift without normal transition: Abrupt creolization. Chap. 6 of Language contact, creolization, and genetic linguistics, 147-66. Berkeley: University of California Press.
  • Bakker, Peter. 1995. Pidgins. In Jacques Arends, Pieter Muysken, & Norval Smith,eds, Pidgins and Creoles: An introduction, 25-39. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
  • Baker, Philip. 1990. Off target? Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages [JPCL] 5.107-19.
  • Baker, Philip. 1995. Motivation in creole genesis. In Philip Baker, ed., From contact to creole and beyond, 3-15. London: University of Westminster Press.
  • DeGraff, Michel. 1999. Creolization, language change, and language acquisition: An epilogue. In Michel DeGraff, ed., Language creation and language change: Creolization, diachrony, and development, 473-543. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
  • Arends, Jacques. 1993 Towards a gradualist model of creolization. In Frank Byrne & John Holm, eds., Atlantic meets Pacific: A global view of pidginization and creolization, 371-80. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

    10/12 Second assignment due: students will make in-class presentations and will hand in the written assignment. The social setting of creolization (II)

  • Singler, John Victor. 1993. African influence upon Afro-American language varieties: A consideration of sociohistorical factors. In Mufwene, 235-53.
  • Lefebvre, Claire. 1993. The role of relexification and syntactic reanalysis in Haitian Creole: Methodological aspects of a research program. In Mufwene, 254-79.

    10/19 The social setting of creolization (III)

  • Singler, John Victor. 1996. Theories of creole genesis, sociohistorical considerations, and the evaluation of evidence: The case of Haitian Creole and the Relexification Hypothesis. JPCL 11:185-230.
  • Arends, Jacques. 1995. Demographic factors in the formation of Sranan. In Jacques Arends, ed. Creolization: The early years, 233-85. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
  • Huttar, George. 1993. Identifying Africanisms in New World languages: How specific can we get? In Mufwene, 47-63.
  • Mufwene, Salikoko S. 1996. The founder principle in creole genesis. Diachronica 13.83-134.

    10/26 Shared creole properties: tense-aspect. Diffusion hypotheses (I): The St. Kitts hypothesis.

  • Singler, John Victor. 1990. Introduction: Pidgins and creoles and tense-mood-aspect. In John Victor Singler, ed., Pidgin and creole tense-mood-aspect systems, vii-xvi. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
  • Andersen, Roger W. 1990. Papiamentu tense-aspect, with special attention to discourse. In John Victor Singler, ed., Pidgin and creole tense-mood-aspect systems, 59-96. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
  • Sankoff, Gillian. 1990. The grammaticalization of tense and aspect in Tok Pisin and Sranan. Language Variation and Change 2.295-312.
  • Baker, Philip. 1999. Investigating the origin and diffusion of shared features among the Atlantic English creoles. In Baker & Bruyn, 315-64.
  • Baker, Philip, & Lise Winer. 1999. Separating the wheat from the chaff: How far can we rely on old Pidgin and Creole texts? In Baker & Bruyn, 103-22.

    11/2 Diffusion Hypotheses (II): Afrogenesis.

  • Parkvall, Mikael. 1999. Feature selections and genetic relationships among Atlantic Creoles. In Huber & Parkvall, 29-68.
  • Huber, Magnus. 1999. Atlantic English Creoles and the Lower Guinea Coast: A case against Afrogenesis. In Huber & Parkvall, 81-110.
  • McWhorter, John H. 1999. The Afrogenesis hypothesis of plantation Creole origin. In Huber & Parkvall, 111-52.

    11/9 Relating PC's to other types of contact languages.

  • Winford, Donald. 1997. Introduction: On the structure and status of pidgins can creoles. In Spears & Winford, 1-16. [The entire article is 1-31.]
  • Mufwene, Salikoko S. 1997. Jargons, pidgins, creoles, and koines: What are they? In Spears & Winford, 35-70.
  • Thomason, Sarah G. 1997. A typology of contact languages. In Spears & Winford, 71-88.
  • Smith, Norval, Ian E. Robertson, & Kay Williamson. 1987. The Ijo element in Berbice Dutch. Language in Society 16.49-89.

    11/16 Third assignment due: students will make in-class presentations and will hand in the written assignment. Creolization as process.

  • Baker, Philip. 1997. Directionality in pidginization and creolization. In Spears & Winford, 91-109.
  • Siegel, Jeff. 1997. Mixing, leveling, and pidgin/creole development. In Spears & Winford, 111-149.
  • Myers-Scotton, Carol. 1997. 'Matrix language recognition' and 'morpheme sorting' as possible structural strategies in pidgin/creole formation. In Spears & Winford, 151-174.

    11/23 The creole continuum: is it valid? Decreolization: does it occur? The creole continuum and decreolization: what's the connection between the two?

  • DeCamp, David. 1971. Toward a generative analysis of a post-creole speech continuum. In Dell Hymes, ed., Pidginization and creolization of languages, 349-70. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Carrington, Lawrence. 1993. Creole space--A rich sample of competence? JPCL 8.227-36.
  • Singler, John Victor. 1987. The city, the mesolect, and innovation. JPCL 2.119-47.
  • Rickford, John R., & Jerome S. Handler. 1994. Textual evidence of the nature of early Barbadian speech, 1676-835. JPCL 9.221-255.
  • Patrick, Peter. 1997. Style and register in Jamaican Patwa. In Edgar W. Schneider, ed. Englishes around the world: Studies in honour of Manfred Görlach, 41-55. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

    11/30 The creole continuum concluded. Creoles in contemporary society.

  • Siegel, Jeff. 1997. Pidgin and English in Melanesia: Is there a continuum? World Englishes, 16.185-204.
  • Singler, John Victor. 1997. The configuration of Liberia's Englishes. World Englishes 16.205-31.
  • Sebba, Mark. 1997. Pidgins and creoles: Issues for development. Chap. 8 of Contact languages: Pidgins and creoles, 235-63 [and bibliography, 296-306]. London: Macmillan.
  • Schieffelin, Bambi B., & Rachelle C. Doucet. 1994. The 'real' Haitian Creole: Ideology, metalinguistics and orthographic choice. American Ethnologist 21.176-200.
  • Siegel, Jeff. 1998. Applied creolistics in the twentieth-first century. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Pidgin and Creole Linguistics, New York.

    12/6 Conclusions.

    The final assignment is due Wednesday, December 15, in the Linguistics Dept. office by 5 p.m.

    Last Modified: August 7, 2000