Week 12

Question 1

How did English become a world language?

Answer 1

Because of its wide diffusion outside the British Isles, to all continents of the world, by trade, colonisation and conquest. This process began in the 17th and 18th century.

The US experienced massive immigration in the 19th and 20th century.

Question 2

In the 19th century, which regions came under British rule?

Answer 2

Singapore, British Guiana, New Zealand, West Africa, South Africa.

Question 3

‘The Scramble for Africa’

Answer 3

Colonial powers (Belgium, France, Britain, Germany, Portugal) competed for possessions in the African continent.

Question 4

Which areas did the Americans dominate, and therefore, influence these regions with GA?

Answer 4

Philippines, Puerto Rico.

Question 5

How many native speakers of English are there approximately?

Answer 5

400 million

Question 6

What are significant outcomes of this massive spread of English across the globe?

Answer 6

There are now many varieties of English, and it is used for many different purposes in varying social contexts.

In North America, Australia and New Zealand, there was dense settlement by English-language speakers, who outnumbered the original inhabitants (Native Americans, Australian Aboriginals, Maoris), and also dominated them politically and economically.

Question 7

Pidgin

Answer 7

A pidgin is an auxiliary language used in the first place for the purposes of trade between groups that have no common language. It arises when two or more languages are in contact, and is a simplified form of the dominant one, with influence from the other(s).

Question 8

How can a pidgin evolve? And how can they disappear?

Answer 8

It may, eventually, be capable of fulfilling all language-functions. This is likely to happen in a multilingual area, where the pidgin can perform a useful function as a lingua franca.

It may even become an official language: Papua New Guinea’s pidgin, called Tok Pisin.

Some pidgins die out because the need for them passes.

Question 9

What are pidgins often based on?

Answer 9

Many are based on European languages, including English. There are many English-based pidgins in the coastal regions of West Africa.

Question 10

If a pidgin evolves into a first language, what is it then called?

Answer 10

If a pidgin becomes the first language of a group, it is then called a creole.

There are also English-based creoles in the Caribbean (Gullah, Papiamento; it is possible that AAVE is descended from a creole).

Question 11

What factors contributed to the development of creoles in the Caribbean?

Answer 11

The mixing of populations caused by slave-trade. The slavers herded together speakers of many different West African languages. On the ships, the captives probably communicated with each other in a form of West African pidgin, which in the Caribbean plantations developed into creoles.

Question 12

How are pidgins and creoles able to co-exist?

Answer 12

Pidgins and creoles co-exist with standard varieties of the donor language. In Jamaica, an English-based creoles exists alongside Standard English.

Question 12

What is acrolectal and basilectal?

Answer 12

Speakers often vary their speech according to the social context, moving towards the standard (acrolectal) end or towards the creole (basilectal).

Question 13

The development of so many varieties of English has given problems and controversies about the language, especially in former British colonies which later became independent. Give an example.

Answer 13

Standardisation vs. attachment to traditional culture.

Question 14

How many pidgins and creoles are there approximately in the world today? And what are they based on?

Answer 14

Over 200. Based on many different languages, including Swahili, Arabic, Japanese and many European languages.

Question 15

What kind of system do the pidgins and creoles have? What is the donor language?

Answer 15

Pidgins and creoles are hybrid language systems. The donor language is not the only source, but it is the dominant one.

Question 16

In which case is a pidgin especially useful?

Answer 16

In West Africa, there is a co-existence of more than 400 languages which means that pidgins are really useful to communicate.

Question 17

What happens if the pidgin loses contact with the donor-language?

Answer 17

This happened with the English-based creoles of Surinam. It may evolve away from it, though might retain archaic features which have been lost by the donor language.

Question 18

What are some characteristics of a pidgin language?

Answer 18

1. The main features taken over are lexical: the new language system draws on English for vocabulary.
2. Various pidgins in the world often resemble each other in structure more than the donor languages.
3. A pidgin often tends to reserve the minimal grammatical structures needed for effective communication.
4. An English-based pidgin is generally not considered to be a dialect of English, but rather a different language in its own right.
5. The simplification of pidgin-creole structures is seen in phonology and grammar. The amount of phonemes is reduced (the same vowel is used in ‘black’ and ‘block’).

Question 19

What kind of language, in terms of category, does the pidgin belong? And what is a result of this?

Answer 19

Pidgins are extreme forms of analytic languages: they mostly lack inflections and rely on free morphemes to indicate grammatical relations. For this reason, word-order is of great importance.