the
vocabulary is drawn almost exclusively from the language. The syntactic
structures of the pidgin is less complex and less flexible than the
structure of the languages which were in contact. Though many pidgin
features clearly reflect usages in contact languages, others are
specific to a pidgin’. To Mulhasler (1979) pidgins are typically use
the lexical bases in more than one grammatical surface fucation through
a set of rules which permits of the optimal use of the limited lexicon.
He further states that ‘pidgins are not merely simplified but also
heavily restructured version of the language from which they are
derived. Hall (1966 Disclaims that ‘for a language to be a true
pidgin two conditions must be met . . . . its grammatical structures and
its vocabulary must be sharply reduced . . . and also the resultant
language must be native to none of those who use it’. Valdman (1978)
in morpho-phonemic alternation-a single, usually the fullest, form is
selected, (ii) replacement of inflection by the use of function
words, (iii) invariant word order and reduction of transformation that
promote syntactic elements and (iv) elimination of obligatorily marked
plural. The effect of these features on pidgin as ‘a language that
shows a consistent reduction of the functioning of the language both in
it grammar and in its use. Hymes (1971 : 20) claims that ‘the use of
word order rather than inflection and the use of syntax rather than
morphology is a kind of simplification in the outer form, a feature
common to all pidgins.
Many scholars also attribute the existence of the pidgins and creoles
to colonel expansion, for instance, Hymes (1971:5)
states that ‘the very existence of pidgins and creoles
is largely due to the process of discovery, exploration,
trade, conquest, slavery, migration, the colonialism
that have brought the people of Europe and the people
of the world share a common destiny’. Reinecke (1938)
also claims that ‘pidgins and creoles are predicts
of specific historical circumstances involving colonial
expansion and the nature of these circumstances had
much to do with the nature of linguistic outcomes’.
Sankoff (1979) concurs with views of Reineke. Whinnom
(1971) takes this ‘colonial expansion’ view a step
further and claims that pidgins and creoles all over
the world are the result of Portuguese conquest and
are based on Portuguese language. The differences
found presently in different pidgins and creoles are
attributed to the displacement of the Portuguese vocabulary
by the vocabulary of the languages of subsequent colonial
rulers when the Portuguese were displaced by the other
Western colonialists. He describes this process as
‘relexification’ and therefore he posits a monogenetic
theory for the pidgins and creoles
found all over the world though most of the creolists
including Hall, the doyen amongst them, believe in
‘polygenetic’ theory. Le Page (1977) scoffs at the
‘relexification’ assumption/concept.
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Despite much theoretical disagreements with regard to the true nature
of pidginization, one finds a general agreement on a few points. These
include: (i) a pidgin does not arise in a contact situation between just
two languages. A one to many and not just one to one ratio is
essential, i.e., a multilingual situation is a must for the birth of a
pidgin. Further, the common people who are to be the speakers of a pidgin
must come from two or more different mutually unintelligible language
backgrounds, with no common language amongst them and the presence of a
dominant external language, (ii) at least at the beginning, the
vocabulary is almost all from a single source, viz., the external
language and (iii) it should be a second language to everyone of its
users. The ‘colonial expansion’ concept is also by and large
accepted by the western scholars. It would, thus, be more easy to offer
a consensus functional definition of a pidgin, viz., pidgins are
essentially utilitarian trade languages which come into being from the
process of reciprocal imitation or rudimentary language learning in
multilingual contact situations amongst speakers or mutually
unintelligible languages with no common language amongst them to serve
the communicative needs of buying and selling, loading and unloading
etc.
Pidginization has three main phases. In the first phase one finds a
casual and unsustained contact between a dominant
minority language and the local languages. In this
phase, communication is limited to such transaction
where a detailed exchange of ideas is not required
and wherein a small vocabulary drawn from the source
language coupled with gestures would be sufficient
to fulfill trading arrangements. Hall (1966) claims
or a petty shopkeeper’, a view not shared by others.
The second phase begins as soon as the pidgin is used
by and between the local people for interlingua communication
amongst the local language should be withdrawn as
a model, if the pidgin is to stabilize at a point
quite distinct from the source language, which is
not true in the Indian context (Sreedhar 1982a). A
pidgin could be expanded in phase second only in one
way, viz., from the mother tongue of the local people
using the pidgin for interlingua communication. Even
this is only partly true in Indian situation (cf.
Sreedar. 1983b). This phase helps to account for the
indigenous grammatical patterns and numerous direct
translation found in most of the pidgins and
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