shift
in the ancestral language in favour of another language takes place
by the entire speech community. And in such rare instances, one
could talk in terms of ‘language death’. What has been realized
or recognized, of late, by the western scholars is the possibility
of the co-existence of two or more stages of its development. For
instance. Neo-Melanesian while remaining a pidgin for a section of
its speakers is undergoing creolization for another section. Such
situations led to the creation of a new term ‘Pidgin-creole’. In
the case of Naga Pidgin, it is a pidgin for most of the Nagas and to
the Non-Nagas working in Nagaland, a creole for the Kacharis and a
few offspring's of mixed marriages. It is also undergoing
creolization with some minority groups, though at a snail’s pace.
similarly Sadari and Halbi are also ‘Pidgin-creoles’. It is also
recognized that a pidgin could be creolized at any stage of its
development, for instance, Hawaian pidgin-creole (Bickerton &
Odal 1977) which was creolized at the pre-pidgin continuum,
resulted in a wide range of variation across the syntactic
structure, whereas in the case of Tok Pisin (Muhalhasler 1979), a
stable pidgin was creolized resulting in a high degree of
inter-speaker uniformity in speech. Does that indicate, to use once
again a biological term, a ‘premature birth of a creole’
whenever creolization takes place at a pre-pidgin-continuum stage?
What is important to note from the life cycle angle is that the
case study of Belize creole shows that decreolization is not
necessarily accompanied by the death of a creole rather individuals
acquiring more complex repertorie, i,e., the individuals acquire a
wide range of intermediate varieties including the ability to switch
over between codes and varieties when appropriate, without
abandoning their respective native creoles. Thus, rather than the
merger of a creole with its standard counterpart, we might have
varieties of creole ranging from ‘the language of the flower girl
to that of Dutchess’ (Shaw 1945). This is amply established from
the analysis of Gullah data (Hopkins 1979) where he found that at
least half of the Gullah speakers could not be classified as
operating either at the acrolectal or at the basilica end of the
continuum, rather this half tend not to be classified at all because
they operate with almost equal frequency at both the ends of the
continua. These imply that Bickerton’s dynamics (Bickerton 1975)
is specific to the Guyanese situation and is not a universal feature
that can be attributed to all creole groups where the source
language is reintroduced as an official language or the language of
education. Another question that could be posed at this stage is
whether or not a shift in language use in respect of a pidgin as a
second language to the first language could be treated as a part of
life cycle. What was lost in the process is the ancestral language
of the speaker and not the pidgin. Loss of ancestral languages has
taken place all over the world in the case of linguistic minorities,
the principal cause for such a loss/shift
being instrumental purpose (cf. Sreedhar, 1983a), How does then a
shift in the use of pidgin as a second language to the first
language differ from that of a total shift to the dominant language
by different linguistic minorities? If the process involved in both
situations are the same why are they designated differently? We will
revert to this issue later while discussing the corresponding
situations found in India. In the meantime, let us examine the three
characteristic features attrubuted to the pidgins from the Indian
angle. In this we begin with the secio-political background of the
Naga Pidgin.
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(i) Socio-Political
situation:
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If we look at the Naga Pidgin
in the light of the western views mentioned above, even though
absolutely no evidence is available about its origin, it is very
clear that neither colonial expansion nor slave trade had anything
to do with its origin. For instance, the very fact that as late as
1872, Dr. Clark, who was camping in Sibsagar, a town in the
northeastern part of Assam bordering on the Ao area of Naga Hills,
learnt the Ao village clearly indicates that Naga Pidgin was not in
vogue in those days in the Ao area as a whole, as otherwise, he
would have learnt Naga Pidgin rather than the Ao language as the
former would have given him a wider audience. Badgly’s (1873)
report indicates that even Assamese was unkown in most places he
visited, particularly, Thatchumi, a Sema village, located in the
central part of Naga Hills, where he found himself unintelligible
and resorted to signs as the only means of communication. These
clearly indicate that, even though the exact period of the origin of
Naga Pdigin is unknown, its spread to all over Nagaland is of a
recent phenomenon. The earliest refernce to the Naga Pidgin is that
of Lt. Bigges (Tour diary 1841) wherein he mentions that ‘on
arrival at the Lotha Naga Hills, about 70 Nagas come down, many of
them knowing Assamese’. The earliest recorded evidence of this
pidgin is found in Hutton (1921) with a few lexical items and
phrases in the pidgin. According to him ‘the Assamese as spoken in
the Naga Hills, (i.e. Naga Pidgin)1 is
peculiarly well adapted for the reproduction of Naga idioms, as a
vehicle of interpretation. It makes a far better lingua franca for
the Hills than Hindustani or English would, the substitution of
which for Assamese (Naga Pidgin) has been occasionally suggested’.
Haimendorf (1936) states that ‘fortunately many people including
chidren spoke fluently Nagamese, (Naga Pidgin) the lingua franca of
the entire Naga Hills’.
The two main sources for the spread of Naga Pidgin in the entire
nook and corner of Nagaland are : (1) General Road Engineering
1The word Naga Pidgin in italics provided
by this writer.
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