Communication StudiesEnglish Creole

Generally: in the Caribbean and around the north and east coasts of South America,

around the coasts of Africa, particularly the west coast, and across the Indian and PacificOceans.

Distribution related to the long-standing patterns of trade (goods and slaves).

Distribution of Creole

Linguistic Map

Linguistic Map

Some areas exclusively Spanish- speaking, no surviving pidgins or creoles: DominicanRepublic, Cuba and Puerto Rico

Others have only English-based creoles like Antigua, Barbados, Grenada, Jamaica and Guyana.

Others have only French-based ones like Guadeloupe, St Lucia, and Haiti. Some have both, like Dominica and Trinidad. Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao have Portuguese-based creoles, and the US Virgin Islands has a virtually extinct Dutch-based creole.

The Caribbean Area

on the northeast coast of South America The official language Dutch, but native tongue of less than 2%

of the population. Sranan and Djuka (English based creoles) are spoken. Sranan -in the coastal areas, a ‘conservative’ English creole

that bears little resemblance any more to English Djuka- in the inland the most important of a group known

collectively as ‘Bush Negro’, is descended from a pidginized variety of English used by runaway slaves. It is a creole,but it is also found in pidginized varieties among the native Indians of the interior of Suriname for whom it has become a lingua franca.

Saramaccan- another creole in the inland, sometimes regarded as Portuguese-based and sometimes as English-based. It seems to have been undergoing a process of relexification.

Suriname (Former Dutch Colony)

pidgins arise because the people among whom they are found lack the ability to learn the standard l. with which the pidgins are associated. European languages- ‘better ’than others which are ‘deficient’ in certain respects.

"foreigner-talk" or "baby-talk" theory- Europeans deliberately simplifying their l. in order to communicate with others. These simplified forms would, then, serve to provide pidgins with their basic structure and vocabulary. There are too many structural similarities among pidgins and creoles associated with very different European languages to make this theory plausible, e.g. between the English-based creole of Jamaica and the French-based creole of Haiti.

Theories of Creole

African sub-stratum. African slaves were multilingual, treated English, French and Portuguese in the same way. Bickerton: it is impossible to trace certain basic similarities back to an African source, e.g., the characteristic creole tense-aspect system for verbs.

Theories Cont’d

In Creole English the vast majority of lexical items are derived from English, but other languages as well.

There are some English words where the usage and meanings are inconsistent with traditional English usage.

Some Creole words are recognized to be English words but do not mean the same thing in English.

Lexical Features

Lexical Item English Meaning Creole English Meaning

Ignorant Lacking knowledge or information

Irritable and lacking self control

salad A cold dish of raw vegetable

tomato

belly A person’s stomach Pregnant

dark With little or no light To be bashful and introverted

Examples of Lexical Features

Some words have been compounded to create nouns, adjectives and verbs which do not exist in English

Creole English also forms words by the process of reduplication (base words are repeated to form new words).

Vocabulary: reduplication to avoid possible confusion or to express certain concepts of intensifying: san (“sun”), sansan (“sand”), look ("look"), looklook ("stare"), cry ("cry"),crycry ("cry continually").

Compound Words ◦ Eye-water (tears)◦ Hand- middle (palm)◦ Neck-back (nape)

Compound AdjectiveHard-ears (Stubborn)Red-Eye (envious)Sweet Mouth (flatter)

“ De sweet mouth bwoy like mi”

Examples

Reduplication‘chati-chati’ talk excessively‘gyaal-gyaal’ many girls.

Examples

The phonology of Caribbean Creole English is not identical to that of English.

The sounds are fewer: no differentiation between: it-eat, pin-fin, sip-ship-chip.

ship=sip, sheep= sipsip; no distinction between /p/ and /f/-

wanpela=wanfela ("one").

Linguistic Characteristics of English Creole- Phonology

International Phonetic Alphabet

In English possession is signaled by the addition of the apostrophe ‘s’ to nouns. In Creole English the word ‘fi’ is used for example.

A fi Jon mango = It is John’s mango

Grammatical Features

Plurals are signaled by adding the word ‘dem’ to the noun to create a noun phrase.

“Mary dem want to come” = Mary and her friends want to come.

“Dem” is multifunctional it can be used as a pronoun. It can mean “they” as in ‘Dem a come’.

It can also be used to show possession Used as a demonstative pronoun.

Grammatical Features (Cont’d)

Indirect Speech The word ‘say’ is used to indicate indirect

speech as in :‘John tell mi say him buy a new kaar’

Past TenseThe verb forms do not change in Creole

English but we sometimes use “Yesterday” as a time marker or ‘did’.

Features Cont’d

Gender Distinction◦ The personal pronoun ‘him’ is used to refer to

both male and female. It may be used to refer to neuter gender as well. Absence of sex discrimination is a feature of West African Languages.

◦ “ Im have twin last week” Copula Verb Construction

◦ In English , a coupla links the subject of a sentence to the predicate. Creole English can have a zero coupla structure.

◦ “Jane sick” = Jane is sick.

Features Cont’d

Future Tense◦ The future tense marker most commonly used in

territories like Belize, Jamaica and the Bahamas is the word ‘wi’ in the Eastern Caribbean the marker is ‘go’ (goin,gwain).

◦ ‘wi’ and ‘go’ can also be used to indicate predictable behaviour.

Habitual Action◦ The auxiliary verb ‘does’ is used to signal habitual

action in some caribbean territories, but it is absent in Jamaican Creole instead we would indicate habitual action by “John go a river everyday”.

Features Cont’d

In Creole English the ordering and placement of phrases and sentences are used to highlight and emphasize different aspects of meaning.◦ “Is Pam eat de mango”◦ “Is Pam eat de mango”Time“Is yesterday Pam eat de mango”Action“Is eat Pam eat de mango”

Syntax