PIDGIN- AND CREOLE LANGUAGES

Depictions in British and American Literature between 1719 and 1843

Diplomarbeit

zur Erlangung des Magistergrades an der Geisteswissenschaftlichen Fakultät der Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz

vorgelegt von Markus STERNAT

am Institut für Anglistik

Begutachterin: Ao. Univ-Prof. Dr. Hermine Penz

Graz, 2011

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0 Table of Contents

1 Introduction page 5 2 Acknowledgements page 7

PART I: LINGUISTIC THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

3 History of Pidgins and Creoles page 8 4 Pidgins page 10 4.1 Etymology page 10 4.2 Definitions and Characteristics page 11 5 Creoles page 14 5.1 Etymology page 14 5.2 Definitions and Characteristics page 14 5.3 Summary of chapters 4-5 page 16 6 Early Discussions of Pidgins and Creoles page 17 7 Theories of Origin page 20 7.1 Nautical Jargon Theory page 20 7.2 Baby Talk and Foreigner Talk Theory page 20 7.3 Monogenesis and Relexification Theory page 22 7.4 Independent Parallel Development Theory = Polygenesis page 22 7.5 Summary page 23 8 Linguistic Development page 24 8.1 Jargon Stage page 24 8.2 Stabilization Stage page 25 8.3 Expansion Phase page 25 8.4 Creolization page 26 8.5 Summary page 28 9 Linguistic Features page 29 9.1 Phonology page 29

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9.2 Morphology page 30 9.3 Grammar and Syntax page 30 9.4. Vocabulary and Idioms page 31 9.5 Summary page 32 10 De-creolization and post-creole continuum page 33

PART II: CREOLES AND THEIR DEPICTION IN LITERATURE

11 Gullah page 35 11.1 Lorenzo Dow Turner´s Research page 35 11.2 People page 36 11.2.1 Origins page 36 11.2.2 History page 37 11.3. Contemporary Gullah page 38 11.4 Language page 39 11.4.1 General Introduction page 40 11.4.2 Language History page 40 11.4.3 Phonology page 42 11.4.4 Grammar and Syntax page 44 11.4.5 Words and Phrases page 45 11.5 Written Records page 47 11.6 “The Gold-Bug” page 50 11.6.1 Plot Summary page 50 11.6.2 Language Analysis page 52 11.7 Summary page 60 12 Trinidad page 62 12.1 Background Information page 62 12.1.1 General Introduction page 62 12.1.2 Lise Winer´s Research page 62 12.1.3 History page 63 12.1.4 Kwèyòl page 66

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12.2. Trinidadian English page 67 12.2.1 Phonology page 67 12.2.2 Syntax and Morphology page 69 12.2.3 Tenses page 70 12.2.4 Words and Phrases page 71 12.3. “Robinson Crusoe” page 72 12.3.1 Plot Summary page 72 12.3.2 Language Analysis page 74 12.4 Summary page 83 13 Conclusion page 84 14 Zusammenfassung in deutscher Sprache page 89 15 Bibliography page 94 16 Webliography page 96

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1 Introduction

This diploma thesis is entitled “Pidgin- and Creole Languages: Depictions in British and American Literature between 1719 and 1843”. The first part of my paper is of theoretical nature. For a start, I will point out the history, etymology, definitions and characteristics of Pidgins and Creoles. Then I will briefly refer to earlier discussions of Pidgins and Creoles in the 19th century. Next I will introduce the four most widespread Theories of Origin, which is followed by an exploration of the four stages during the linguistic development of Pidgins and Creoles. After that, I summarize grammatical aspects such as phonology, morphology, syntax and vocabulary. To round up the topic, I will explain the afterlife of Pidgins and Creoles, de-creolization and the post-creole continuum. The second part is my own research on the representation of Pidgins and Creoles in famous pieces of British and American Literature. One chapter is on Gullah, a variety spoken along the south-eastern coast of the United States. I found several useful websites by Gullah institutions on its history, people and language. Edgar Allan Poe, who spent more than one year in Charleston, South Carolina, where Gullah is spoken, depicts this dialect in his short popular story “The Gold-Bug”. The second Creole that I will investigate is that spoken on the island of Trinidad. Information is taken from the diploma theses by my former fellow students Eva Kramberger and Dorothea Martz as well as homepages by people who care for this language. This Creole is depicted in Daniel Defoe´s novel “Robinson Crusoe”. I took into account writing about the variety Tok Pisin and the “South Sea Tales” by Jack London as well. Yet numerous pieces on Tok Pisin have been published already. Furthermore, literary critics argued that the “South Sea Tales” were written when Jack London had already surpassed his heyday of writing and produced these tales just for financial reasons so that critics did not bother to seriously assess his works any more. After reading these stories, I came to agree with this opinion.

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Moreover, the Gullah variety and Edgar Allan Poe´s short story “The Gold-Bug” are not as well known as they would deserve to because both are fascinating. “The Gold-Bug” is mainly praised for the aspects of cryptography and treasure hunting whereas the element of the Gullah variety is mostly unknown. Besides, Daniel Defoe´s novel “Robinson Crusoe” is generally regarded just as a youth book and thus reduced to the suspenseful adventures of Englishman Crusoe and indigenous Friday on an exotic island; hardly anyone knows that the Trinidadian Creole is another major aspect of this literary classic.

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2 Acknowledgements

First of all, I would like to thank Dr. Annemarie Peltzer-Karpf for her seminar on linguistic varieties, for offering the topic of Pidgins and Creoles to me as well as for supporting my idea to focus on Pidgins and Creoles in Literature. Moreover, I would like to express special thanks to Dr. Hermine Penz for hosting my diploma thesis, for her patience with me and for her useful suggestions to improve my diploma thesis. Furthermore, I was lucky enough to come across the diploma research papers on Pidgins and Creoles by two of my former fellow students, Eva Kramberger and Dorothea Martz, which both gave me a glimpse of what would await me and also useful guidelines how to write a diploma research paper. Next, I am grateful to Peter Mühlhäusler, whose book on “Pidgin and Creole Linguistics”, especially chapter 9 on “Creoles in Literature”, inspired me to do research on this topic. Last but not least, I am obliged to my family and friends who always believed in me and supported me also in difficult phases of my university career.

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PART I: LINGUISTIC THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

3 History of Pidgins and Creoles

Pidgins and Creoles have been spoken ever since by humans. It is assumed that in ancient High Cultures, Egyptian, Sumerian and Chinese soldiers on the borders might have used a Pidgin variety to communicate with what they called ‘barbarians’. Likewise, in Greek and Latin plays, foreigners were depicted as speaking the language only poorly, wherefore a Pidgin was needed to talk to them. During the medieval times, traders and crusaders in Southern and Eastern Europe spoke a Lingua Franca, which was a Pidgin derived from Romance languages. (cf. Hall 1966: 3-4) Not just in Europe but all over the world, Pidgins came into existence wherever speakers of different mother tongues had contact. Before the arrival of Europeans in Northern America, Indian people in the Northwest of the continent spoke a Pidgin variety of Chinook for trade. (cf. Hall 1966: 4) Since the 15th century, wherever West Europeans went to conquer indigenous territories, they always applied the same linguistic pattern: they were too fond of their culture to care for the language of the native tribe. As a consequence, the indigenous people had to struggle to make themselves comprehensible by copying what they heard from the whites yet with limited success. Thus the Europeans concluded that the natives´ speech behaviour was incomplete because they were mentally inferior. For this reason, the whites would see no point in wasting their language and would imitate the indigenous people´s simplified language. The ingenuous aborigines would take this for the Standard language and would continue speaking this way, being unaware of all their mistakes. (cf. Hall 1966: 4-5) Early documents of Pidgin English go back to Canton in China where the English set up their factory in 1664, wherefore a Pidgin variety was established quickly as the English saw no possibility of acquiring the Chinese language.

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This Chinese Pidgin English was spoken widely between Chinese and English businesspeople and traders until 1843. With China´s gradual opening to the West and the decrease of Western influence in the later 19th century, this low-prestige Pidgin English was rejected, ousted and replaced by Standard English, especially by young and well-educated people. (cf. Hall 1966: 7-9) Similarly, in Australia the first European settlers and the aborigines used a Pidgin language in order to communicate. This variety became steadily more restricted and eventually substituted by Standard English in schools. (cf. Hall 1966: 10) The 19th century was a period when many African slaves were forced on rural areas and plantations. They were taken away from their families and had to live with fellow slaves of many different ethnic backgrounds. The result was a general breakdown of communication. This clever tactic was of use for the plantation owners as the slaves were easier to control without the possibility of talking to each other. In order to be able to speak to each other, they had to find a suitable variety. At this point, the first Pidgins came into existence. (cf. http://logos.uoregon.edu/: 2010)

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4 Pidgins

4.1 Etymology

Several differing theories on the etymology of Pidgins have been suggested. Yet none of them has been wholly accepted. Among the most likely proposals are these:

The most widespread idea is that the etymology of the term “Pidgin” can be found in China as this word is a “Chinese corruption of the English word ‘business’” (http://www.odlt.org/: 2010). It is further suggested that this term earlier only referred to “pigeon English” (http://www.odlt.org/: 2010), i.e. the variety in China for Chinese people and Europeans to communicate with each other. Later, it extended its meaning to describe any variety (cf. http://www.odlt.org/: 2010). Peter Mühlhäusler (cf. 1997: 1) believes that the Chinese also mispronounced the Portuguese word ‘ocupacao’ which means “business, trade, job, occupation.” (Mühlhäusler: 1997: 1) This proposal would be supported by the Hebrew word ‘pidjom’ that signifies “exchange, trade, redemption, barter.” (Mühlhäusler: 1997: 1). These theories have a point because Pidgins are described as trade languages.

Mühlhäusler (cf. 1997: 1) puts up another theory: the etymology of the term ‘Pidgin’ may come from the South Seas pronunciation of the English word ‘beach’ (‘beachee’). This seems to make sense as a beach is a typical location where primitive Pidgin languages are spoken.

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4.2 Definitions and Characteristics

This subchapter focuses on the most crucial characteristic features of Pidgins. We will look at their simplicity, their meaning as a contact language (or trade language), the relation between Pidgins and Creoles and their low prestige.

Basically, a Pidgin is “any combination and distortion of two languages as a means of communication.” (Sebba 1997: 1) Pidgin English is “any lingua franca consisting of English and another language”. (Sebba 1997: 1) It is a simple contact language (trade language) that is used when speakers of different mother tongues have to communicate with each other. (cf. Mühlhäusler 1997: 4)

Three general rules shall be stated: Firstly, it is important to note that a Pidgin is never the native language of anyone but is rather used by people who speak more than one native language. Therefore Pidgins are sometimes called ‘auxiliary languages’ as they are necessary for their users, additionally to their own tongues, to fill up communicative gaps. Secondly, Pidgins have generally accepted rules on grammar and lexicon. And thirdly, Pidgins do not have to be similar to their source languages but can show decisive deviations from it so that outsiders might have to learn it. (cf. Sebba 1997: 14-15)

Three terms are important in this context: The most important source of a huge majority of the vocabulary of a Pidgin is called the lexifier. The concept of substrate describes the grammatical systems of the native tongues with which the lexifier had contact. The notion of a superstrate refers to European lexical input. (cf. Sebba 1997: 15)

The distinction between an earlier Pidgin and a later Pidgin is essential: it develops from a limited, variant pre-language to a stable language with clear grammar rules of its own. (cf. http://www.une.edu.au/langnet/: 2010)

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In order to avoid the death of a language, it must be spoken for a longer time. A stable Pidgin acquires more complex grammar and larger vocabulary. At this stage it is learned as a mother tongue. If this happens, we can refer to it as a Creole. (cf. http://logos.uoregon.edu/: 2010)

Mark Sebba (cf. 1997: 39) states the avoidance of highly marked sounds, the use of simple syllable structure and the lack of tone to distinguish words.

Sebba (cf. 1997: 39) points out the lack of number, case, gender and agreement.

Richard Hudson (cf. 1980: 63) underlines especially the Pidgins´ lack of inflection and the simple morphology. According to John Haiman (1985: 165), Pidgins are “grammatical languages with a small stock of primary roots and lexical impoverishment”.

David De Camp (cf. 1971: 15) observes the reduction of grammatical devices such as number, case, gender, tenses, relative clauses, redundancy, conjunctions and declensions.

Sebba (cf. 1997: 39) mentions the lack of the copula, articles, complex sentences and passive forms. Tense, aspect, modality and negation are marked by a content word that functions as an adverb.

What has also been stated is an unchanged word order for both questions and statements (subject + verb + object) for reasons of simplicity and not to mix up subject and object. (cf. Givón 1979: 81-112)

Sebba (cf. 1997: 40) remarks small vocabulary, small inventory of prepositions, preference for words consisting of few syllables and small number of compounds.

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Basically, the lexicon of a Pidgin is given predominantly by the upper strate and adapted by the lower strate. (cf. Mühlhäusler 1997: 4) William Samarin (1979: 55-69) suggests that “since Pidgins communicate only a referential minimum, it is to be expected that ideophones, i.e. items which further specify others, fall out.”

Due to their small lexicon, early Pidgins show frequent compounding and periphrasis. Stable Pidgins with a larger lexicon produce new words. The vocabulary influences morphology and syntax. (cf. Romaine 1988: 37) According to Stephen Wurm (1971: 8), “many universal bases can function as nouns and verbs.”

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5 Creoles

5.1 Etymology

As to the origin of the term ‘Creole’, the etymology of this term goes back to an Iberian colony in the 16th century. It derives from the French word ‘créole’ which itself originates from the Portuguese word ‘crioulo’. This again can be traced back to the Iberian word ‘criar’ which denotes “to nurse, raise, breed or nourish.” (cf. http://www.odlt.org/: 2010) The initial sense of the word ‘crioulo’ was that of “home- born slave” (http://www.odlt.org/: 2010) or “white man or woman originating from the colonies.” (http://www.odlt.org/: 2010) The most widespread significance is “(descendant of) European or Negro settler in West Indies or stemming from these areas.” (http://www.odlt.org/: 2010) Eventually, it originates from the Latin word ‘creare’, which refers to “to produce or create.” (http://www.odlt.org/: 2010)

5.2 Definition and Characteristics

By definition, a Creole refers to a stable language that developed out of different languages, normally a European and an African one. (cf. http://www.odlt.org/: 2010)

Leonard Bloomfield (cf. 1933: 474) underlines a relationship between a Pidgin and a Creole. One more central aspect what sociolinguists call nativization, i.e. after a Pidgin becomes a Creole, it is acquired by children as their mother tongue. (cf. http://www.une.edu.au/langnet/: 2010)

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Thus a Creole is defined as “a Pidgin which has become a native language for their speakers.” (Sebba: 1997: 134) De Camp (cf. 1971: 16) also stresses the importance of a Creole as the mother tongue of the members of the speech community. Syntax and vocabulary are rather complex.

This process can happen in three possible situations: Firstly, under conditions of “social upheaval” (e.g. slavery) (Sebba: 1997: 15), “rapid social change” (e.g. migration from the countryside to cities) (Sebba: 1997: 15) or “where ethnically diverse groups mix closely together as in a colonial port or garrison”. (Sebba: 1997: 15)

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5.3 Summary of chapters 4-5

The etymology of the word “Pidgin” goes back most probably to the Chinese mispronunciation of the English, Portuguese and Hebrew words for “business”. Historically, in the 19th century many Africans were imported to work on rural plantations and had to come up with Pidgins for communication. A Pidgin is a simple trade language (or contact language) composed of elements of different languages and spoken as a second language by people without a common mother tongue.

The origin of the word “Creole” can be traced back to some Iberian words which originally referred to a “home-born slave” or a “white person originating from the colonies” and later denoted to “nurse, raise, breed or nourish”. Historically, due to the establishment of the European Sea Empire in the 16th and 17th centuries, imperialism, colonialism and slave trade flourished, which was a major reason for many Creoles to arise around the Equator. A Creole develops out of a Pidgin, is more complex and is acquired as a first language of a speech community.

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6 Early Discussions of Pidgins and Creoles

One interesting aspect to cover in this paper is the discussions of Pidgins and Creoles in the 19th century. Unfortunately, there is not so much to write about it because at that time the field of sociolinguistics was not yet introduced and linguists focused rather on other disciplines such as historical linguistics. As mentioned in the previous chapter, Creoles had arisen in the 16th century and Pidgins had come into existence in the 19th century. Nevertheless, Pidgin and Creoles have been largely ignored in linguistic studies until the 1960s. Before that, they were termed as “marginal languages” (Reinecke: 1938: 107), “slave talk” (Patrick: 1995: 227), “uneducated languages” (Knapik: 2009: 1) and “were to be avoided.” (Knapik: 2009: 1) The earliest definitions of the term “Creole” came up in the 19th century:

Creole languages result from the adaptation of a language, especially some Indo-European language, to the (so to speak) phonetic and grammatical genius of a race that is linguistically inferior. The resulting language is composite, truly mixed in its vocabulary but its grammar is essentially Indo-European, extremely simplified. (Vinson: 1889: 345-346)

In other words, linguists in the 19th century saw varieties such as Gullah as inferior English, poorly pronounced words and simplified grammar that illiterate Negroes introduced in order to imitate the language of their owners.

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Thanks to the efforts of three linguists, the field of Pidgins and Creoles was already explored in the late 19th century: Generally, Hugo Schuchardt is acclaimed as being the “greatest of the early scholars” (De Camp: 1971:31) and the “founding father of the field in the 1880s”. (De Camp: 1971: 31) He opposed and found counter-proofs against the theory of the ‘family tree’ of language relatedness, according to which linguists explored the relationship between ancient and modern languages. All of his life, he described numerous Pidgins and Creoles spoken in colonies all over the world. (cf. Sebba 1997: 34) Dirk Hesseling was the first to write an extensive study of a Creole language (Afrikaans). Its content is still widely discussed in modern times. (cf. Romaine 1988: 4) Both Schuchardt and Hesseling have been considered inferior linguists for a long time by a majority of linguists; except for them, there was hardly any focus on “mixed” (Sebba: 1997: 34) or “makeshift” (Sebba: 1997: 34) languages until World War II. A third founding member, John Reinecke, published his own research on the Hawaiian Creole from the 1930s. (cf. Sebba: 1997: 34) As we will see later, in the 1930s Lorenzo Dow Turner was one of the first linguists to explore a so-called substandard variety, that of Gullah. According to De Camp (cf. 1971: 14), after World War II, there was crucial progress in the exploration of Pidgin and Creole languages: First and most important, “the field has become unified.” (Romaine: 1988: 5) Before that, most linguists studied either Pidgins or Creoles; most linguists dealt with just one geographical area and only one particular language. (cf. Romaine 1988: 5) De Camp (cf. 1971: 14) claims that the year 1959 was a crucial one for Creole studies. In this year, the First International Conference on Creole Language Studies was organized in Jamaica. The results of this meeting have laid the foundation for many debates and much research afterwards. De Camp (cf. 1971: 14) believes the highlight of this conference is the fact that the majority of participants realized they were “Creolists.” (Romaine: 1988: 5)

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The next milestone in the development of this discipline was the Second International Conference on Creole Language Studies in Jamaica in 1968. This time, more linguists and experts from more diverse fields participated there. The field profited from the increasing importance of sociolinguistics as well as from research from related linguistic fields such as historical linguistics. (cf. Romaine 1988: 5) Secondly, De Camp (cf. 1971: 14) underlines the fact that studies of Pidgins and Creoles have established themselves as a respected academic discipline. In 1969, “the Modern Language´s Association annual bibliography groups Pidgin-Creole studies in a separate section.” (De Camp: 1971: 14) These Pidgin and Creole varieties have gained a crucial status in sociolinguistics. (cf. Hymes 1971: 5) In following years, the number of collections on these languages began to multiply. (cf. Romaine 1988: 6)

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7 Theories of Origin

Various Theories of Origin of Pidgins have been proposed in the last 100 years. None of them is solely acknowledged so that several theories are accepted. All of them serve to explain the similarities between English-based Pidgins and Creoles. Four of these theories will be examined in this chapter.

7.1 Nautical Jargon Theory

Frank Robertson (cf. 1971: 13-14) underlined the significance of sailor speech in the development of Pidgins and Creoles. William Churchill (1911: 13) points out the poor grammar of sailors: “The white man is a man of little or no education. The categories of grammar are above his experience; the few rules and the many exceptions of our speech have never been feruled into his intelligence.” This is supported by anecdotes by Otto Schellong (1934: 97-98): “The tribe that has the numerical superiority is likely to gain linguistic superiority a well.” Reinecke (1937: 434) formulated the theory that the sailors on the vessels had various ethnic backgrounds: “Aboard merchant vessels which ply the seven seas and ship large numbers of foreign sailors, the seaman is a figure of the greatest importance in the creation of the more permanent makeshift tongues.” Thus a nautical jargon with a simple grammar was formed, taken over by later Pidgins and adopted by African varieties. (cf. Romaine 1988: 84)

7.2 Baby Talk and Foreign Talk Theory

Baby talk denotes the way of speaking to babies or small infants: no long clauses, frequent repetition of elements and no complex words. The argument is that the same happens in the formation of a Pidgin or Creole.

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Speakers of English cannot but decisively modify their speech to foreigners with poor language skills. This is called foreigner talk. (cf. Romaine 1988: 74)

A promoter of this theory is Schuchardt (1979: 28): “All atrocities performed on language derive from its possessors in the same manner as child language depends on the speech of the nurse ... The White was teacher to the Black; the latter repeated the former.”

In other words, Schuchardt (1979: 74) outlines the probability of “obfuscations, inconsistencies and eccentricities” in the input. Bloomfield (1933: 472-473) claimed that

Speakers of a lower language may make so little progress in learning the dominant speech that the masters, in communicating with them, resort to baby talk. This is the master´s imitation of the subjects´ incorrect speech. The subject is deprived of the correct model and can do no better than to acquire the simplified baby talk version of the upper language.

Schuchardt (1979: 74) explains the limited grammar of Pidgins and the resulting simplification as follows: “It was solely a matter of the one making himself understood to the other.” We can see the suggestion that the white master acted as the teacher and simplified his language for the blacks who were unable to acquire it.

To conclude, we find striking similarities between baby talk and foreigner talk: Both result in modification of speech so that both speakers can make themselves understood.

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7.3 Monogenesis and Relexification Theory

Robert Hall (1966: 183) describes relexification as “the substitution of vocabulary items for others, with the maintenance of a stable syntactic base.” The Monogenesis and Relexification Theory was introduced by Schuchardt. The main point is that all Pidgins that derived from and were connected to a European language have a common single origin (Hesseling explains it is a single West African Portuguese Pidgin of the 15th century) and thus all of these languages are linked due to the substitution of vocabulary (according to Hesseling in the slave factories of Western Africa). The grammar, on the other hand, remains unchanged. What is crucial is that “all Pidgins are genetically related to one proto-Pidgin, thus they had a common ancestor from which they are descended.” (Hesseling: 1933: 62-71)

7.4 Independent Parallel Development Theory = Polygenesis

The Independent Parallel Development Theory (or Polygenesis Theory) says that the “obvious similarities between the world’s Pidgins and Creoles arose on independent but parallel lines due to the fact that they all are derived from languages of Indo-European stock.” (Romaine: 1988: 92) Furthermore, Suzanne Romaine (1988: 92) specifies that the “similar social and physical conditions under which Pidgins arose were responsible for the development of similar linguistic structures.”

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7.5 Summary

The Nautical Jargon Theories stress the importance of nautical speech in the formation of Pidgins and Creoles. The lack of grammar is traced back to the speech habits of the sailors.

The Baby Talk and Foreigner Talk Theory argues that a Pidgin or Creole forms when native speakers simplify their language to address speakers who do not know their language. The master is the teacher to the subject, the subject repeats the teacher.

The Monogenesis and Relexification Theory hypothesizes that all European- based Pidgins and Creoles derived from a West African Portuguese proto-Pidgin of the 15th century.

The Independent Parallel Development Theory (or Polygenesis Theory) claims that Indo-European Pidgins and Creoles with obvious similarities developed independently but parallel under similar conditions.

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8 Linguistic Development of Pidgins and Creoles

As we saw above, a Pidgin develops from a limited contact language (or trade language) to a social language and a kind of a lingua franca of speakers without a common mother tongue. If a Pidgin is used regularly and long enough, it will eventually survive and finally transform into a Creole (cf. http://www.uni- due.de/SVE/VARS_PidginsAndCreoles.htm: 2010).

A Creole, as described earlier, is spoken when speakers are deprived of and prevented forcefully from using their native language. This Creole will be passed on from generation to generation as a first language (cf. http://www.uni- due.de/SVE/VARS_PidginsAndCreoles.htm: 2010).

The development from an early, restricted Pidgin to a stable, complex Creole comprises four stages, which will be explained in this chapter:

8.1 The Jargon Stage

A jargon is the first of four and, linguistically speaking, the least systematic phase of Pidgin progress; at the same time, it has just a very small number of tasks and is spoken only in a few social surroundings- (cf. Sebba 1997: 102)

A jargon is described by considerable instability not only in grammar and vocabulary (cf. Sebba 1997: 102) but also in linguistic and social terms (cf. Mühlhäusler 1986: 147). They are “not transmitted in any consistent way from generation to generation but invented in an ad-hoc fashion.” (Sebba: 1997: 102)

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The most essential aspect of a jargon is the lack of rules and agreement among speakers for what is (not) a word or a phrase. Meaning might be delivered differently in various situations. Communication is the sole significant aim, no matter how it is done. (cf. Sebba 1997: 102)

At the Jargon Stage, the issues of cross-language communication and the transfer of structures from the superstrate language to the substrate language prevail: we find holophrases, individual variation, a simple phonetic system, short sentences and limited vocabulary. (cf. Mühlhäusler 1997: 128)

8.2 The Stabilization Stage

The second stage is that of Stabilization. According to Mühlhäusler (cf. 1981: 46), this stage is the most central one because the future of the Pidgin is set.

A stable Pidgin with its independent rules for grammar, pronunciation and lexicon might develop. (cf. Sebba 1997: 105) The “reduction of variability” (Mühlhäusler: 1986: 176), “the establishment of lexical and grammatical conventions” (Mühlhäusler: 1986: 176) and “the development of grammatical structures independent from source languages” (Mühlhäusler: 1986: 176) are “the truly salient, universal features” (Mühlhäusler: 1986: 176) of the Stabilization Stage.

8.3 The Expansion Phase

Expansion is the third Phase. According to Todd (1990: 5), an extended Pidgin is “one which, although it may not become a mother tongue, proves vitally important in a multilingual area and which, because of its usefulness, is extended and used beyond the original limited function which caused it to come into being.”

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The Pidgin has the chance to develop into a full language. (cf. Sebba 1997: 106) As Mühlhäusler (cf. 1986: 204) remarks, completely extended Pidgins might work like mother tongues for a considerable part of their users.

This extension of the Pidgin language into additional functions of use might create new domains of communication: “in religious activities, scriptural translations, church newsletters, hymns and sermons.” (Sebba: 1997: 106) This stylistic variation is a significant aspect of the Expansion Phase. (cf. Sebba 1997: 106)

An expanded Pidgin is used “in all domains of everyday life, for self-expression, word play and literature.” (Romaine: 1988: 138) Decisive are various morphological developments of new words, linguistic changes happen rather quickly. Borrowing is reduced to a minimum as it would rather harm the expansion of a well-structured and systematic language. Also central is the “introduction of stylistic flexibility, variation and choice.” (Mühlhäusler: 1997: 186)

8.4 Creolization

The final stage in the linguistic development from a Pidgin to a Creole is called Creolization. It is now only a short way from becoming the mother tongue and the sole communication language for its users. (cf. Sebba 1997: 107) For a huge majority of the offspring, this Pidgin would be the first language. This means that the kids are “first- generation Creole speakers.” (Sebba: 1997: 107)

When a Creole is about to become the mother tongue of speakers, there are three possibilities of what the quality of the Creole is like: a creolized jargon needs changes on many levels. A creolized stable Pidgin needs changes in morphology. A creolized expanded Pidgin needs changes in style. (cf. Romaine 1988: 154)

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During Creolization, there are two stages: During the developmental continuum, we observe redundancy as well as changes in word formation, derivation and morphology. During the restructuring continuum, we see hypercorrection and variation. (cf. Romaine 1988: 155-156)

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8.5 Summary

A jargon is unstructured, limited, restricted and unstable. Cross-language communication and the transfer of structures are dominant. Jargons are used for communication in limited referential domains.

The Stabilization Stage is the most central one with regard to its future. It involves establishment of social norms and a concern for linguistic correctness.

The Expansion Phase has an extension of use in new domains of life and for self-expression.

During the development from a Pidgin to a Creole, the language may become the main variety of a community and the mother tongue of its children.

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9 Linguistic Features

9.1. Phonology

The phonemic system of Pidgins is limited to vowels and consonants, which means that diphthongs such as /aj/, / j/ and /aw/ are avoided. The vowels are restricted to the cardinal vowels of the vowel triangle such as /i/, /I/, /e/, /ε/, /æ/, /a/, / /, /o/, /U/ and /u/. (cf. Hall 1966: 27)

Tense and lax vowels are not contrasted so that there is no distinction between the /i/ and /I/ vowels of English ‘beat’ and ‘bit’; between /u/ and /U/ in ‘fluke’ and ‘book’; between /e/ and /ε/ in ‘bait’ and ‘bet’ or between /o/ and /O/ as in ‘coat’ or ‘caught’. Nasalization (~) is not customary in English-derived Pidgins and Creoles. (cf. Hall 1966: 29)

Phonemic contrasts that do not show up in both the superstrate language and the Pidgin are lost. The dental fricatives of English /θ/ and /ð/, which are rare sound types, are replaced by the alveolar plosives /t/ and /d/. In many varieties of Pidgin English, the labio-dental fricatives /f/ and /v/ are replaced in the initial stages by the bilabial plosives /p/ and /b/. (cf. Hall 1966: 30)

Consonant clusters containing /s + consonant/ or /consonant + s/ were too difficult to pronounce for many indigenous people, wherefore we have simplified pronunciations such as [si´ton] for ‘stone’ or [sosipen] for ‘sauce-pan’. (cf. Hall 1966: 32)

Although intonation and stress of Pidgins and Creoles are based on that of the superstrate language, in many Pidgins and Creoles the stress of substrate words falls automatically on the first syllable. (cf. Hall 1966: 34-35)

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9.2. Morphology

Basically, the morphological classes of English-based Pidgins and Creoles are similar to those of the superstrate language. However, the grammatical systems of Pidgins and Creoles sometimes lack the categories of inflection that speakers of English are used to such as tense, number, case and gender. This can be explained by the fact that European colonizers thought some linguistic simplification necessary in order to make themselves comprehensible to the indigenous tribes which they met. (cf. Hall 1966: 57-58)

The compounding of words and the semantic reduplication of forms is common in many Pidgin and Creole languages. (cf. Hall 1966: 63)

9.3. Grammar and Syntax

Although the syntactical system of Pidgins and Creoles is generally based on that of English – using nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs and prepositions – the structure of the sentences is indeed different from that of European languages. (cf. Hall 1966: 69)

One decisive feature in syntactic constructions is the ellipsis of cohesive devices, especially prepositions. Consequently, the significance of the utterance is expressed by the word order and the meaning of the words. (cf. Hall 1966: 74-75)

In the verb phrase, we frequently see that the verb is repeated in order to underline progressive action or to emphasize something. Furthermore, to indicate purpose, result or condition, a verb can precede another verb. Moreover, when more than two verbs follow each other, each verb serves as a complement of the preceding one. (cf. Hall 1966: 76)

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As opposed to the English language, in the clause structure, the subject and the predicate must not be equally important. Indeed, the subject is less significant and could even be left out. (cf. Hall 1966: 82-83)

9.4. Vocabulary and Idioms

Outsiders of Pidgins and Creoles might be amazed by its “mixture of words from different sources.” (Hall: 1966: 89) Thus, Pidgin languages are often described as a “mongrel jargon” (Hall: 1966: 89) or a “weird mixture of tongues.” (Hall: 1966: 89)

One the one hand, it is important to note that Pidgin languages only have a limited lexicon. On the other hand, these words can have multiple meanings:

Each word has a definable meaning and by combining words into phrases with idiomatic meanings of their own, one can say anything one wants to. If something further needs to be referred to, new combinations of words can be made or new words can be introduced from outside sources. (cf. Hall: 1966: 90)

Numerous European loan words or borrowings underwent an extension of meaning, which may seem weird to Europeans but is logical to the indigenous people: The natives, being unaware of the European connotations, make up their own characteristic features. This can also be applied to European taboo words as many forbidden European words might be harmless vocabulary in the Pidgin. This depends on the use of the words in real situations. (cf. Hall 1966: 90-94) “Frequently, the new meanings that European words acquire in Pidgins and Creoles are related to the organization of native social groups. The context makes it clear what is being referred to so that no confusion results.” (Hall: 1966: 94)

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9.5. Summary

The vowel phonemes are reduced toward the cardinal vowels of the vowel triangle. In the consonant system, dental and labio-dental fricatives are replaced by alveolar and labial stops. Final consonant clusters and over-corrections cause trouble.

Morphological categories of grammatical inflection such as number, case, gender and tense do not show up. Compounding and reduplication are widespread.

Many syntactic constructions result from omitting linking elements. Verbs are frequently repeated or complemented. The verb is more important than the subject.

The vocabulary is reduced but the range of meaning is wide. The meaning of words can shift or extend.

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10 De-creolization and post-creole continuum

In the previous chapters, we have explored the genesis and the development of Pidgins and Creoles. This chapter describes the opposite process, namely what happens after their formation.

Derek Bickerton (cf. 1980: 109) describes de-creolization as a process that happens whenever a Creole gets into straight touch with its lexifier language. The decisive feature here is the formation of a “linguistic continuum of varieties” (Romaine: 1988: 158) between the Creole and the superstrate language. The continuum mentioned is called the post-creole continuum. (cf. Romaine 1988: 158)

In linguistic jargon, the Creole variety is named the basilect whereas the standard language is termed the acrolect. All these varieties on this scale are called mesolect. The mesolect is “transitional, mediating between the polar opposites of basilect and acrolect.” (Romaine: 1988: 158) To describe it in more detail: “At the ends of the continuum, we are not dealing with two distinct systems but an unbroken spectrum between the Pidgin or Creole, on the one hand and the prestigious standard on the other. There is no point of the continuum where we find a sharp break between the varieties.” (O´Donnell and Todd: 1980: 52)

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The different changes that happen during the post-creole continuum are described as “targeted”:

In decreolization, speakers progressively change the basilectal grammar so that its output gradually comes to resemble the output of an acrolectal grammar. The degree of closeness to the acrolect attainable at any degree may be constrained: first by the fact that the speaker´s perceptions of his ultimate target may be inaccurate and second because it would appear that for a grammar of one kind to become a grammar of another kind, it may have followed a line that is far from straight. (Bickerton: 1980: 109-110)

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PART II: SELECTED CREOLES AND THEIR DEPICTION

IN LITERATURE

11 Gullah

11.1 Lorenzo Dow Turner´s Research

This chapter is on Lorenzo Dow Turner, the African-American linguist who is regarded as the father of Gullah studies. I will provide a brief biography and introduce his research as well as his results.

It was in summer 1929 at South Carolina State University when Turner first came into contact with Gullah teachers. Before that, linguists saw varieties such as Gullah as inferior English, poorly pronounced words and simplified grammar that illiterate Negroes introduced in order to imitate the language of their owners. (cf. http://www.yale.edu/glc/gullah/index.htm: 2010) Today this view would be seen as superficial but a logical explanation would be that at that time minorities did not have a high status, neither in literature nor in linguistics. Scholars and writers rather concentrated on the white mainstream majority. The continent of Africa was not yet well explored either.

During the 1930s and 1940s, Turner completed his study on Gullah after numerous and intensive talks to native speakers in South Carolina and Georgia, presenting many new results. Among these results is the fact that Gullah people do not only have an official name but also a kind of a nickname. Gullah people still can remember older African texts from previous generations. (cf. http://www.yale.edu/glc/gullah/index.htm: 2010)

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More than 4,000 words of the Gullah language originate from African languages. Gullah nouns normally exist only in the singular form. Gullah verbs seldom distinguish between the present and the past. Phonology, lexicon, syntax and semantics were shaped by African languages as well. (cf. http://www.yale.edu/glc/gullah/index.htm: 2010)

11.2 People

This chapter is on the Gullah people, their origins and history: The Gullah people live on a “narrow strip of land” (http://www.ccpl.org/: 2010) along the south- eastern coast of the United States. (cf. http://www.ccpl.org/: 2010) The Gullah descend from “African-American tribesmen” (http://www.ccpl.org/: 2010) who were shipped over to the United States by slave traders. (cf. http://www.ccpl.org/: 2010) This Gullah area had earlier been inhabited by these slaves who had been forced to work on plantations of white colonists. (cf. http://www.knowitall.org/gullahnet: 2010)

11.2.1. Origins

Experts do not wholly agree on the origin of the Gullah people and the name. Three theories are widespread: Firstly, the name ‘Gullah’ might be traced back to Angola, where numerous enslaved Gullahs' ancestors originated. (cf. http://www.coastalguide.com/gullah: 2005) A second proposal is that the term goes back to the Gola, an ethnic minority inhabiting the “border area between Sierra Leone and Liberia” (http://www.yale.edu/glc/gullah/index.htm: 2010), a region where numerous Gullah tribesmen had originally lived as well. (cf. http://www.yale.edu/glc/gullah/index.htm: 2010)

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This leads Joseph Opala to conclude that the Gullah people are direct descendants from slaves of the rice plantations as their language contains clearly recognizable input from Sierra Leone due to the fact that on these plantations numerous Sierra Leonean people worked for a long time. (cf. http://www.yale.edu/glc/gullah/index.htm: 2010) Thirdly, ‘Gullah’ could also “derive from ‘Gallinas’, another name for the Vai; or from ‘Galo’, the Mende word for the Vai people” (http://www.yale.edu/glc/gullah/index.htm: 2010) because of “the Mende and Vai texts preserved by the Gullah and the significant percentages of Mende and Vai names and loanwords in the Gullah language.” (http://www.yale.edu/glc/gullah/index.htm: 2010)

11.2.2. History

At the beginning the plantation owners made only little progress, lacking workers for the huge farms. Around 1700 the planters started to grow rice despite little knowledge. Thus they needed far more slaves who had been familiar with African farming techniques ever since so that the colonists successfully copied these methods, imported more slaves and made huge profits. (cf. http://www.knowitall.org/gullahnet/: 2010 and http://www.yale.edu/glc/gullah/index.htm: 2010)

During the Civil War, many Gullahs were forced to serve in the U.S. army. After the war, slaves were liberated. As planters were helpless without slaves, they saw no other resort but selling their territories to some of the workers who earned a living as farmers. (cf. http://www.yale.edu/glc/gullah/index.htm: 2010)

After the breakdown of the rice economy in the late 19th century, the Gullah area degenerated and the people became increasingly isolated from the outside world. (cf. http://www.yale.edu/glc/gullah/index.htm: 2010)

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In the 20th century, this slowly stared to change:

They had little contact with the mainland because the only way to travel off the island was by boat. In the 1920s, bridges were built to connect some of the South Carolina and Georgia Islands to the mainland. The bridges provided access to the new resorts that had been developed in the coastal area. Island communities became more modern with the arrival of outsiders and the introduction of new technologies. (http://www.knowitall.org/gullahnet/: 2010)

11.3. Contemporary Gullah

After World War II, substantial changes in American society also affected the Gullah people: a considerable part of the young generation has found well-paid jobs in the cities or matriculated at universities. “Television, telephones, bridges, good roads and ferries have come to the once most remote parts of the Gullah area – and many "old-fashioned" customs have been lost.” (http://www.yale.edu/glc/gullah/index.htm:2010)

Though their isolation has decreased steadily, the Gullah people still stay closely tied to their culture, identity and heritage, which they cherish and are proud of. Even if the offspring have settled down in the city, the whole family still gather regularly to celebrate their culture. (cf. http://www.yale.edu/glc/gullah/index.htm: 2010)

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Tourism has also affected the Gullah region:

There have been problems in recent years on the Sea Islands, where land developers have made huge profits constructing tourist resorts, luxury housing, golf courses and country clubs for wealthy people attracted to the mild climate and island scenery. Land values jumped from a few hundred dollars an acre to many thousands; and some Gullah people, who sold their land, felt that they had not been paid the fair market value. (http://www.yale.edu/glc/gullah/index.htm:2010)

However, the Gullah have been capable of preserving a great deal of their culture due to “geographical and social isolation; the warm, semitropical climate of coastal South Carolina and Georgia; patterns of importation of enslaved Africans; the system of rice agriculture adopted there in the 1700s and a disease environment imported unintentionally from Africa.” (http://www.yale.edu/glc/gullah/index.htm: 2010)

11.4 Language

Now it is time to focus on authentic Gullah language: I will start by providing a brief history of the language. Next the grammar and syntax are explored, followed by an investigation of tenses. Then the phonology and vocabulary are analyzed. I will finish this chapter with a list of some typical Gullah phrases.

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11.4.1. General Introduction

As we saw above, many people had a rather modest opinion of Pidgins and Creoles (marginal and uneducated languages, slave talk) and would apply the same connotations to Gullah as well. Virginia Mixson Geraty refuses such views and claims that Gullah is an adequate language with grammar, phonetics and lexicon of its own. (cf. http://www.ccpl.org/: 2010)

As depicted in the chapter on history, the Gullah language could survive due to the isolation of its speakers. Major setbacks are the area´s opening to the mainland as well as the increasing number of deaths of aged speakers. Much of their linguistic knowledge is buried with them and thus younger generations have no access to it. (cf. http://www.aaregistry.com/african_american_history/327/Gullah_language_thrives_i nto_21st_century: 1997 and http://www.ccpl.org/: 2010)

11.4.2. Language History

Around 1750, a Western African English-based Creole that had originated in Senegal and Nigeria at the beginning of the 18th century also came into use in Sierra Leone and on the Rice Coast. Opala calls it a “hybrid language” (http://www.yale.edu/glc/gullah/index.htm: 2010) with its own “unique forms and expressions.” (http://www.yale.edu/glc/gullah/index.htm: 2010) It served two purposes: to enable communication between English and African businessmen and as a lingua franca among African people with various mother tongues. (cf. http://www.yale.edu/glc/gullah/index.htm: 2010)

Opala argues that a considerable part of the people from the Rice Coast who were shipped over as plantation slaves to South Carolina and Georgia had already spoken this dialect. (http://www.yale.edu/glc/gullah/index.htm: 2010)

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This means that this language formed the basis of the Gullah language because it was adopted by the other slaves. Opala thus concludes that Gullah “developed directly from this distinctive Rice Coast Creole, acquiring loanwords from the substrate languages of the African slaves from Sierra Leone and elsewhere.” (http://www.yale.edu/glc/gullah/index.htm: 2010). This thesis can be proved by several slave traders' records. (cf. http://www.yale.edu/glc/gullah/index.htm: 2010)

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Due to limited contact with the white people whom they regarded as their enemies, the Gullah plantation slaves remained mainly isolated. With the import of more slaves by the course of the 18th century, Africans from numerous different countries came onto the plantations, thus mixing elements of these various cultures. We can conclude that Gullah “began to develop from the Pidgin which was spoken by the tribesmen brought from Africa by the slave traders” and “became influenced by the various Creoles spoken by the natives in these islands.” (http://www.yale.edu/glc/gullah/index.htm: 2010)

After some years this language was additionally shaped by the varieties of the overseers from Ireland and Scotland. From “levelling of all these various linguistic influences, a new language developed.” (http://www.yale.edu/glc/gullah/index.htm: 2010) This language became a Creole in the middle of the 18th century as it was acquired by the next generations of slaves as their native language. (cf. http://www.yale.edu/glc/gullah/index.htm: 2010)

In recent years, this isolation decreased to some extent wherefore a part of the oldest grammatical structures from African languages slowly disappeared. (cf. http://www.yale.edu/glc/gullah/index.htm: 2010)

11.4.3. Phonology

As to the phonology of Gullah, we have quite a poetic description:

Gullah is spoken softly, with a rolling rhythm. As the Gullah speak, you can almost hear the wind ruffling the marsh grasses. Their words sway like the long banners of moss that hang from oak trees that grace their homeland. Since this language is an English-based or English-derived Creole, it sounds like English yet there is a certain flavor of the West African coast in its intonation and stress. (cf. http://www.ccpl.org/: 2010)

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The African substrate languages mentioned above have shaped the phonetics of nearly the entire English vocabulary. (cf. http://www.yale.edu/glc/gullah/index.htm: 2010)

As far as phonology is concerned, it should be noted that “Gullah speakers express different meanings by varying tone and pitch and by using nonverbal gestures such as body language. Listeners infer relationships between sentences from individual usage and context.” (http://www.aaregistry.com/african_american_history/327/Gullah_language_thrives_i nto_21st_century: 1997)

“Many words are disguised by phonetic changes, most of which are or were also found in general Black speech.” (http://www.aaregistry.com/african_american_history/327/Gullah_language_thrives_i nto_21st_century: 1997)

The lack of inter-dental fricative /th/- sounds leads to pronunciations of /this/ as [dis] and /through/ as [tru]. (cf. http://www.aaregistry.com/african_american_history/327/Gullah_language_thrives_i nto_21st_century: 1997)

The realization of labio-dental fricative /v/ as bi-labial plosive [b] as in [bery] for /very/ and [bexed] for /vexed/. (cf. http://www.aaregistry.com/african_american_history/327/Gullah_language_thrives_i nto_21st_century: 1997)

The loss of final consonants clusters means /past/, /wasp/, /blind/ and /salt/ become [pas], [wass], [bline] and [saal]. (cf. http://www.aaregistry.com/african_american_history/327/Gullah_language_thrives_i nto_21st_century: 1997)

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11.4.4. Grammar and Syntax

To put the rules of syntax in a nutshell, Gullah, like many West African languages, relies on short, loosely connected sentences that lack many of the prepositions, conjunctions, adjectives, participles and adverbs that tie sentences together in English. (cf. http://www.yale.edu/glc/gullah/index.htm: 2010)

We can clearly see the African grammar influence in the following sentences:

Reduplication (simply doubling a word to underline the significance of this word) is widespread in Gullah: [Da' duh big big dog] means “That is a very big dog”. Here the speaker simply wants to emphasize the enormous size of the dog. (cf. http://www.yale.edu/glc/gullah/index.htm: 2010)

Furthermore, we often find Topicalization as in [Da' big dog, 'e bite'um], which means “That big dog bit him”. The idea is to indicate that the person was bitten by a dog and not by any other animal. (cf. http://www.yale.edu/glc/gullah/index.htm: 2010)

Front Focusing is quite a similar phenomenon as in [Duh him cry out so] (“It is him who cried out that way”.) It should be underlined that exactly this person cried out and no one else. Both Topicalization and Front Focusing are supposed to clarify and avoid misunderstandings. (cf. http://www.yale.edu/glc/gullah/index.htm: 2010)

Another typically African linguistic device is the Dependent Clause: [Uh tell'um say da' dog fuh bite'um] means "I told him and said that dog would bite him". Remarkable is the use of two verbs (tell, say) although one would be enough. (cf. http://www.yale.edu/glc/gullah/index.htm: 2010)

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As the following sentences show, Gullah does not distinguish between the Present and the Past Tense: [Uh he'p dem] can either mean “I help them” or “I helped them”. If a Gullah speaker says [Uh bin he'p dem], he definitely refers to the past and means “I helped them”. Thus there are two ways of using the Past Tense. The Present Perfect Tense would be [Uh done he'p dem], in Standard English “I have helped them”. Obviously the two past participles are used for indicating the two past tenses, /been/ for the Past and /done/ for the Present Perfect Tense. The Future Tense is closest to Standard English: [Uh gwine he'p dem] is a variation of “I am going to help them”, nearly correct, apart from the absence of the copula. (cf. http://www.yale.edu/glc/gullah/index.htm: 2010)

Phonologically, we see that /I/ is pronounced as *a+, the middle /l/ in “help” is dropped (which might be a Glottal Stop) and the initial –th of “them” is pronounced as [d]. (cf. http://www.yale.edu/glc/gullah/index.htm: 2010)

11.4.5. Words and Phrases

The logical derivations of these words and phrases are mine. It should be noted that the greatest number of Gullah words are not African but English.

One important to note about Gullah words and phrases is that

While idiomatic expressions are both meaningful and colorful and while they contribute to the charm of the language, they also make it difficult to understand. With only a few well chosen words, a speaker is able to convey thoughts and ideas. Sometimes one single word can express eight complete thoughts. Then, using the same word and changing the tone of the voice to indicate a question, eight additional thoughts are expressed. (cf. http://www.ccpl.org/: 2010)

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● a /true mouth/ is a “truthful person” (all the words that come from his mouth are true). (cf. http://www.islandpacket.com/man/gullah/language.html: 2000 and http://www.gullahtours.com/phrases.html: 2010) ● whenever someone /sweet mouths me/, he “flatters me” (it is sweet what comes out of his mouth); the contrary would be to /bad mouth me/, that is to “curse me”. (cf. http://www.islandpacket.com/man/gullah/language.html: 2000 and http://www.gullahtours.com/phrases.html: 2010) ● being /shut mouth/ stands for being “secretive or withdrawn” (to have one´s mouth shut signifies being silent: either because you want to keep a secret for yourself or because you are introvert and withdraw from a possible conversation). (cf. http://www.islandpacket.com/man/gullah/language.html: 2000 and http://www.gullahtours.com/phrases.html: 2010) ● /tie your mouth!/ is an order to “stop talking!” (with your mouth tied, it is impossible to talk). (cf. http://www.islandpacket.com/man/gullah/language.html: 2000 and http://www.gullahtours.com/phrases.html: 2010) ● to /differ/ is the same as “to quarrel” (when two opinions differ from each other, the speakers are likely to quarrel). (cf. http://www.islandpacket.com/man/gullah/language.html: 2000 and http://www.gullahtours.com/phrases.html: 2010) ● /before day clean/ means “before dawn” (when the day is clean, dawn has broken). (cf. http://www.islandpacket.com/man/gullah/language.html: 2000 and http://www.gullahtours.com/phrases.html: 2010) ● when someone /turns his head/, he “changes his mind” (turning the head may refer to shaking the head and saying ‘no’). (cf. http://www.islandpacket.com/man/gullah/language.html: 2000 and http://www.gullahtours.com/phrases.html: 2010) ● in case that someone /has his eye tied up/, he is “fascinated by a female” (eyes tied up means his eyes are wide open and he is staring at her). (cf. http://www.islandpacket.com/man/gullah/language.html: 2000 and http://www.gullahtours.com/phrases.html: 2010)

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● and when a person says that /his head left him/, he simply “forgot” something (with head he refers to what is inside it, namely the brain, so his brain has left him and without the brain you forget things. (cf. http://www.islandpacket.com/man/gullah/language.html: 2000 and http://www.gullahtours.com/phrases.html: 2010) ● to /nyam/ is an onomatopoeia of a sound that you make when you enjoy a delicious meal, it thus means to “eat”. (cf. http://www.islandpacket.com/man/gullah/language.html: 2000 and http://www.gullahtours.com/phrases.html: 2010) Now, after having investigated the spoken language, it is time to focus on the written version as well. This will be the content of the next chapter.

11.5. Written Records

One major characteristic feature of Gullah is that it is an oral language, written records or rules of orthography have not in the least been important until recently. (cf. http://www.ccpl.org/: 2010) Only very few written accounts are available since a few years. I have selected two texts from the Old Testament, copied from the homepage http://www.gullahtours.com/phrases.html. As we will see from the examples, the written Gullah is close and similar to the spoken version. I will explore these two texts on the phonological and grammatical levels.

The first written record is the generally well known “Lord´s Prayer” (also known as “Our Father” or “Pater Noster”.)

Line #1: [Our Fadduh awt'n Hebb'n] (“Our Father art in heaven”): Right in the first line of this prayer we see some similarities between oral and written Gullah: the substitution of /th/ as [dd], the substitution of /v/ as [bb] and the cutting of the preposition /in/ to [n]. The Old English form /art/ is kept lexically but altered phonetically by omitting the middle /r/ sound.

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Line #2: [All-duh-weh be dy holy 'n uh rightschus name] (“Hallowed be thy name”): Here we detect two familiar grammatical aspects: *duh+, normally indicating progressive verbal action, here denotes the imperative and /all of us/ is simplified as [all we]; similar to the previous line, the conjunction /and/ is cut to [n]. The Old English form /thy/ is kept lexically but altered phonetically by substituting /th/ to [d].

Line #3: [Thy kingdom come] basically remains the same lexically.

Line #4: [Oh lawd leh yo' holy 'n rightschus woud be done] (“Thy will be done”): Interestingly, this time /thy/ is translated as [your] (but pronounced as [yo] by deleting the final /r/) as opposed to the preceding line. The pronunciation of /word/ is as follows: the middle /r/ is dropped and /o/ is changed to[u].

Line #5: [On dis ert' as-'e tis dun een yo' grayt Hebb'n] (“On earth as in heaven”): Here in this line, final /th/ becomes *t+ as in oral Gullah; /i/ becomes *e+ or [ee].

Line #6: [N ghee we oh Lawd dis day our day-ly bread] (“Give us today our daily bread”): The final consonant /v/ in /give/ is dropped; the reflexive pronoun /us/ is simplified to a personal pronoun [we]. The spelling of /daily/ is altered to [day-ly]; instead of modifying the /y/ to /i/, the affix –ly is added, which seems much easier.

Line #7: [N f'gib we oh Lawd our trus-passes] (“Forgive us our sins”): In the word /forgive/, the first syllable /for/ is shortened to [f].

Line #8: [As we also f'gib doohs who com' sin 'n truspass uhghens us] (“As we forgive those who sin against us”): The middle /o/ in /those/ is lengthened; the final cluster /st/ in /against/ is reduced to [s].

Line #9: [Een tuh no moh ting like uh sin 'n eeb'l] (“And deliver us from evil”) is simply paraphrased as [Do no more thing like a sin and evil].

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The second example to investigate is Psalm 23 “The Lord´s My Shepherd”, in which the writer David describes God as his shepherd.

Line #10: [De Lawd, 'E duh my sheppud. Uh een gwoi' want] (“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want”): In this line, we remark a Topicalization, which is a double indication of the subject ([The Lord, he ...] instead of /The Lord .../); the initial /h/ in /he/ is dropped; we see an omission of the copula; the negative future form /shall not/ is modified to [ain´t going].

Line #11: [E meck me fuh lay down een dem green passuh. 'E Khah me deh side dah stagnant wahtuh] (“He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters”): Here we detect the Gullah pronunciation *mεk+ of the word /make/; the definite article form /the/ becomes a personal pronoun plural [them]; the preposition /beside/ is simplified to [the side].

Line #12: [E sto' muh soul; 'E lead me een de pat' ob right-juss-niss fuh 'E name sake] (“He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake”): Again for reasons of simplification, the possessive pronoun /his/ becomes a personal pronoun [he]; the inflection /´s/ is deleted.

Line #13: [Aae doh Ie wark shru' de whalley ob dem grayb yaad Ie een gwoi' skayed uh dem dead people, fuh Ie know de Lawd, 'E duh deh wid me', E stick wha' 'E khah een 'E han' 'n de staff een de udduh han' gwoi' cumpit me] (“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me”): Here we remark an interchangeable use of /l/ and /r/ as in the substitution [wark] of /walk/; we also observe further dialect aspects such as the representation of /th/ as [sh] as in [shru´] and the representation of /v/ as [wh] as in [whalley].

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Line #14: [E fix up uh table fuh me fuh grease muh mout' 'n muh enemies een gwoi' git none. 'E 'noint muh head wid uhl. Muh cup obbuh flo] (“Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over”): /prepare/ is translated as *fix up+; /run over/ is translated as [overflow].

Line #15: [Sho' nuff all 'E goodnes,' 'n 'E muhcy gwoi' be wid me all de day ob muh life 'n Ie gwoi' lib deh een de house ob de Lawd fuh ebbuh 'n ebbuh] (“Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever”): /surely/ is translated as *sure enough+; /dwell/ is translated as [live]; the plural expression /all the days/ becomes a singular expression [all the day].

11.6 “The Gold-Bug”

The last aspect of this chapter is on Edgar Allen Poe´s 1844 short story “The Gold-Bug” and how the author depicts the speech of Jupiter, the black servant of William Legrand.

11.6.1 Plot summary

To start with, I will provide a summary of the content of this short story, which is a shortened version of the synopsis from Wikipedia Online: “The Gold-Bug" is set on Sullivan´s Island, near Charleston, South Carolina (where Poe was stationed at Fort Moultrie from November 1827 to December 1828). The plot follows William Legrand, who was bitten by a gold-coloured bug, as well as his servant Jupiter and an unnamed narrator. Legrand pulls the other two into an adventure after decoding a secret message that will lead to a buried treasure.

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Legrand becomes obsessed with searching for this treasure. The narrator has his doubts and questions if Legrand, who has lost his fortune, has gone insane. Legrand captured the bug but let someone else borrow it. Deep in the wilderness of the island, they find a tree, which Legrand orders Jupiter to climb with the gold-bug in tow. There he finds a skull and Legrand tells him to drop the bug through one of the eye sockets. From where it falls, he determines the spot where they dig. They find the treasure, estimated by the narrator to be worth about 14 million dollars. (cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gold-Bug)

One significant issue is that the depiction of the servant Jupiter could definitely be criticized as being quite stereotypical and racist in times of political correctness. This is due to the fact that he is given an accent in his speech. Jupiter is represented as very superstitious and having such a limited horizon that he is not even able to distinguish left and right. (cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gold-Bug) To make the point clear, I want to say that Poe´s depiction of Jupiter is racist and not that Jupiter himself is racist. To defend Poe, at his time “Negroes” were rarely considered intelligent but rather as skilful physical workers.

In the first half of the 19th century, black slaves were mostly illiterate as they did not have access to books. Yet several years after Poe´s story, Frederick Douglass and Harriet Ann Jacobs, both former slaves, published their autobiographies.

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Allow me a short personal comment: In my opinion, the choice of the names is worth pointing out: the white master is called Legrand, which may be derived from French “le grand”, meaning “the big, the great”. What is even more striking is the fact that the black slave is called Jupiter, after the highest Roman God in ancient mythology. Jupiter is one of the first fictional black characters in American literature who is given an extensive speaking part. Experts debated whether Jupiter's accent was just some comic relief for the entertainment of the readers or really genuine. Contemporary scholars denied any similarities to local black accents. (cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gold-Bug) That was the opinion of academics more than 150 years ago. As I pointed out in a previous chapter, the Gullah dialect then was neither widely known nor well researched. My research will confirm that Jupiter´s accent is truly based on the Gullah language because his accent contains numerous elements typical of Gullah speech habits.

11.6.2 Language Analysis

The following section of this chapter is on Jupiter´s speech. I have selected some of his utterances from the short story and analyzed them on the phonological, syntactical and grammatical levels. I will explore to what extent these examples of literary representation can be considered to depict genuine language use. Since the written representation is some kind of eye dialect, the reader would have to interpret what the pronunciation is supposed to be like in Poe´s imagination as there is no phonetic transcription. I thus offer a transcription using phonetic symbols as in the International Phonetic Alphabet. The first time Jupiter speaks is when the narrator asks him how his master is. The Negro answers [Why, to speak the troof, massa, him not so berry well as mought be] /waj, tu spik dε tru:f, masa, him nat so bεri wεl as mawt bi/. We can detect several peculiarities in Jupiter´s language.

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First of all, to him every white man is a “master”. As all slaves do, he pronounces it as [massa]. Furthermore, in this sentence Jupiter is not able to do a simple construction with /he is .../, instead he uses the pronoun [him]; he does not make use of the copula either, thus omitting the verb “to be” completely. Interestingly enough (and quite illogically to some people), Jupiter can use the more complex constructions /as might be/ and /to speak the truth/ perfectly correctly. One possible explanation might be that his eloquent master often makes use of such constructions and his slave, eager to learn, has snapped them up. Being proud of that, he wants to show off a little bit sometimes in order to demonstrate that he, being a black slave, is not a linguistic flop. On the phonological level, he pronounces the /th/ as an [f] and the /v/ as a [b], which is typical of Gullah speech. (cf. Poe: Gold-Bug: 101) Later in their conversation, we get three examples which show that Jupiter is able to understand difficult words but he does not manage to reproduce them correctly, although he tries hard: When the narrator wants to know what William Legrand complains of, Jupiter replies [Dar! dat´s it – him neber plain of notin – but him berry sick for all dat] /dar! dæts it – him nεbər plen f notin – bat him bεri sik for al dæt/. We see that he drops the prefix /com/ and repeats the words as [plain]. Phonologically, Jupiter pronounces the initial /th/ as [d] and the middle /th/ as [t], something Gullah speakers normally do. (cf. Poe: Gold-Bug: 101) The next example is quite similar: The narrator asks whether the master is confined to bed. The answer is [No, dat he ain´t – he aint find nowhar – dat´s just whar de shoe pinch – my mind is got to be berry hebby bout poor Massa Will] /no, dæt hi ent – hi ent fajnd nowər - dæts war dε šu pinč – maj majnd is gat tu bi bεri hεbi bawt pur masa wil/. The prefix /con/ is dropped and the word is repeated as [fined]. Again, an exalted clause such as /where the shoe pinches/ is well applied although the third person singular –s is missing, something very typical of black people´s language. On the phonological level, we see that he pronounces the /æ/ of /where/ rather as an [a]. Moreover, as most slaves, he has a tendency to drop the first vowel phoneme before a consonant: /about/ becomes [bout], another characteristic Gullah feature. (cf. Poe: Gold-Bug: 101)

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The third example seems to be exaggerated and is to make Jupiter appear ridiculous. The narrator very formally asks /To what fortunate circumstance am I to attribute the honor of a visit from you today?/, in this case quite an inappropriate register. The poor servant, totally desperate, can only ask innocently [What de matter, massa?] /wat dε mætər, masa?/ (cf. Poe: Gold-Bug: 103) Luckily the narrator makes himself understood then and interrogates what ails Legrand. The answer is [Why, massa, taint worf while for to git mad bout de matter – Massa Will say noffin at all aint de matter wid him – but den what make him go about looking dis here way, he did head down and he soldiers up and as white as a gose] /waj, masa, tent w rf f r tu git mæd bawt dε mætər - masa wil se n fin æt al ent dε mætər wid him – bat dεn w t mek him go abawt lukiŋ dis hir we, hi did hεd dawn εnd hi soldĴərs ap ænd æs wajt æs æ gos/. Here we notice the absence of articles as in [he did head down]. Phonologically, we detect that Jupiter pronounces the middle /e/ in /get/ as an [i] as blacks often do. Again Jupiter is able to make use of rather difficult constructions such as /what makes him go about looking .../ and /as white as a goose/. What is questionable is the phrase /he soldiers up/: black people rarely say the third person singular –s of a verb. Here and now the question arises whether Poe simply made a mistake and forgot to adopt the language of Jupiter. Reading between the lines, another possibility would be that Poe wanted to demonstrate that not all of Jupiter´s utterances are full of mistakes and that even a poor old Gullah slave can, from time to time, apply a grammatical construction correctly. (cf. Poe: Gold-Bug: 102) The next question is if anything unpleasant has happened since the narrator last saw Jupiter. He says [No, massa, dey aint been noffing onpleasant since den – twas fore den I´m feared – twas de berry day you was dare] /no, masa, de ent bin n fiŋ nplεsənt sins dεn – twas f r dεn ajm fird – twas dε bεri de ju was dar/. We see a common habit of black people: /there/ is pronounced as [dey]. (cf. Poe: Gold-Bug: 102)

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We detect another phenomenon: Jupiter pronounces the word /nothing/ in two ways: a few paragraphs above, in the utterance [him neber plain of notin], the middle /th/ became a [t]; here in [dey aint been noffing onpleasant since den], the same /th/ becomes an [f]. Both possibilities are common among black people. When the narrator asks what Jupiter means, he then becomes more concrete. [De bug – I´m berry sartain dat Massa Will bin bit somewhere bout de head by dat goole-bug.+ /dε bag – ajm bεri sartən dæt masa wil bin bit samwεr bawt dε hεd baj dæt gu:l-bag/. We see the customary Gullah form of the Present Perfect Tense: [he been bit+ is supposed to mean “he has been bit”. The only difference is the omission of the copula. On the phonological level, Jupiter pronounces /o/ as an [u] and drops the final /d/ of /gold/. (cf. Poe: Gold-Bug: 102) The narrator then wants to know whether the Negro really thinks so. He says that [I don´t tink noffin about it – I nose it. What make him dream bout de goole so much, if taint cause by he bit by de goole-bug. Ise heerd bout dem goole-bug for dis.] /aj dont tink n fin æbawt it – aj nos it. Wat mek him drim bawt dε gu:l so mač , if tent cas baj hi bit baj dε gu:l-bag. Ajs hi:rd bawt dεm gu:l-bag for dis/. Analyzing this sentence, we can see a Double Negation as in [I don´t think nothing], using two indicators for the negative aspect. Once more, we see an idiosyncratic use of the singular verb form. We have already seen that the third person –s is seldom used; the next particularity is that this –s is used with the first person as in [I knows it]. The next part of his utterance shows that the only form of a copula used is *ain´t”+. (cf. Poe: Gold-Bug: 103) Next the narrator asks the servant how he knows that. The reply is [How I know? why cause he talk about it in he sleep – dat´s how I nose.] /haw aj no? Waj kas hi tak æbawt it in hi slip – dæts haw aj nos/. Again Jupiter repeats the question. And we assert that he is not able to form a correct possessive pronoun as [in he sleep] shows. (cf. Poe: Gold-Bug: 103)

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Much later in the story, Legrand orders Jupiter to climb the tree. The slave obediently answers [Yes, massa, Jup climb up any tree he ebber see in he life.] /jεs, masa, Ĵup klajmb ap æni tri hi εbər si in hi lajf/. (cf. Poe: Gold-Bug: 109) It is remarkable that Jupiter does not say “I climb up any tree ...”; he does not call himself “I” but instead he refers to himself by using his name. This might be a form of humility and obedience to his master or a proof of very low self-esteem. The next sentences are not too flattering for Jupiter as Poe depicts him as a coward when his master orders him to climb a higher tree: [How far mus go up, massa?] /haw far mas go ap, masa?/ – [Which way mus go now, massa?] /wič we mas go ap, masa?/ – [How much fudder is got for go?] /haw mač fadər is gat f r go?/ – [De bug, Massa Will, de goole bug, what for mus tote de bug way up de tree?] /dε bag, masa wil, dε gu:l-bag, wat f r mas tot dε bag we ap dε tri?/ (cf. Poe: Gold-Bug: 110) But master Legrand knows which cadence to use in this case: He simply appeals to Jupiter´s honour, well knowing that the Negro would not put up with the fact that his honour is insulted. In case this does not work, he still has another trump card: he makes use of the authority which a master has over a slave. ‘You have to obey to my orders or I kill you.’ At that time, no one would have cared if a white man killed an old black slave. “If you are afraid, Jup, a big negro like you, to take hold of a harmless little dead beetle, why you can carry it up by this string – but if you do not take it up with you some way, I shall be under the necessity of breaking your head with this shovel.” (cf. Poe: Gold-Bug: 110)

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As I predicted, Jupiter feels offended and pretends that he has only joked; as if he wanted to say ‘Did you really think I was serious? I am not afraid of this beetle. What makes you think so?’ [What de matter now, massa? always want for raise fuss wid old nigger. Was only funnin any how. ME feered de bug! what I keer for de bug?] /wat dε mætər naw, masa? Alwes want f r res fas wid old nigər. Was onli fanin æni haw. Mi: fi:rd dε bag! Wat aj ki:r f r dε bag?/ Yet it is obvious that Jupiter only pretends to be brave though in reality he fears the insect that has bitten his master and Jupiter is afraid that the same would happen to him. Linguistically, we notice that he uses the infinitive wrongly, *want for raise+ instead of “to raise”. It is amazing again that he is able to form a correct past tense progressive as in [I was funning]. Again the question arises whether Poe forgot to adapt Jupiter´s language. (cf. Poe: Gold-Bug: 110) Here the question is inescapable whether Poe at first wrote the whole story in normal Standard English and then assimilated Jupiter´s language to that of a Gullah speaker. Here and there he may have forgotten something. The question is also how many non-standard or Gullah features have to be used in order to represent Jupiter as a speaker of this variety. Later Jupiter confesses to his master that he might have dropped the beetle. Legrand has a fit of rage and shouts at his slave. Once more he threatens to kill him. Successfully he intimidates him: “You infernal scoundrel! what do you mean by telling me such nonsense as that? As sure as you let that beetle fall, I´ll break your neck. Look here, Jupiter! – do you hear me?” (cf. Poe: Gold-Bug: 112)

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Poor Jupiter is ashamed and murmurs [Yes, massa, needn´t hollo at poor nigger that style.] /jεs, masa, nidnt halo æt pur nigər dæt stajl/. What is striking is that he calls himself a “nigger” while his master never uses this swearword (not even when he has a rage attack) but always says “Negro”. This shows two things: First, that Jupiter (and Negro slaves in general at that time) had a very low feeling of self-esteem; they were on the lowest step of the social ladder, being nothing but the property of white man. Second, that Poe maybe simply wanted to avoid being racist (although this swearword was customary at that time) although the issue of racism did not come up before the 20th century. (cf. Poe: Gold-Bug: 112) The next utterance of Legrand demonstrates that he does have some flair and knows how to cheer his servant up. He promises to give him money as a present if he is able to catch the beetle again: “Well! now listen! – if you will venture out on the limb as far as you think safe and not let go the beetle, I´ll make you a present of a silver dollar as soon as you get down”. (cf. Poe: Gold-Bug: 112) As expected, this little trick works perfectly well: [i´m gwine, Massa Will – deed I is – mos out to the eend now.] /ajm gwajn, masa wil – did aj is – m s awt tu di i:nd naw/. Phonologically, Jupiter pronounces the /e/ in the word /end/ as [i]. (cf. Poe: Gold-Bug: 112) The last scene that I would like to point out is comical for the reader and insulting for Jupiter at the same time: Legrand orders Jupiter to put the beetle into the left eye of the skull that he found on the tree.

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The Negro is desperate as he does not find the left eye ([Dat´s good! why dar aint no left eye of the skull]). /dæts gud! Waj dar ent no lεft aj f dε skal/. Legrand then patiently explains that the left eye is on the same side as the left hand, the hand that he chops the wood with. Unfortunately, the skull has no hands, so Jupiter is still confused ([Is de lef eye of de skull pon de same side as de lef hand of de skull, too? – cause de skull aint got not a bit ob a hand at all – nebber mind! I got de lef eye know – here de lef eye! what mus do wid it?]) /is dε lεf aj f dε skal p n dε sem sajd æs dε lεf hænd f dε skal, tu? C s dε skal ent g t n t æ bit b æ hænd æt al - nεbər majnd! Aj g t dε lεf aj no – hir dε lεf aj! W t mas du wid it?/ Once more Legrand explains that the left eye is on the same side as the left hand; still Jupiter is not sure ([Oh, my golly, Massa Will! aint dis here my lef eye for sartain?]) /o, maj g li, masa wil! Ent dis hir maj lεf aj f r sartən?/ Finally the Negro thinks he has understood it. He is proud of it and wants to show it to his master: [Twas dis eye, massa Will – de lef eye – jis as you tell me.] /twas dis aj – dε lεf aj – jis æs ju tεl mi/. The height of comic relief is the fact that Jupiter says [this eye is the left eye] while he is holding his hand on his right eye! (cf. Poe: Gold-Bug: 113-117)

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11.7 Summary

Lorenzo Dow Turner proved that Gullah was strongly influenced by African languages, preserving features of vocabulary, grammar and idiom of African languages brought in by plantation slaves as far back as 300 years ago. The term Gullah derives from a West African tribe from which the oldest ancestors came. The Gullah had lived in isolation until World War II, only in the last few decades has some modernism reached them. Gullah developed on the rice plantations where the languages of the ancestors mixed with those of the slaves and thus was shaped as a Creole. Gullah is spoken softly, with a rolling rhythm; there is a certain flavour of the West African coast in its intonation and stress. Speakers express different meanings by varying tone and pitch. Gullah lacks the /th/ sounds and loses final consonant clusters.

Gullah relies on short, loosely connected sentences that lack many of the prepositions, conjunctions, adjectives, participles and adverbs. Much of the underlying grammar has a West African foundation, we find Reduplication, Topicalization and Front Focusing.

The greatest number of Gullah words is not African but English. With only a few well chosen words, a speaker is able to convey thoughts and ideas. Sometimes one single word can express several thoughts.

Only few written records of Gullah exist such as texts from the Old Testament. They show that the written version is close to the oral language.

Poe depicts Jupiter in a typically mid-19th century racist and stereotypical way. The black servant is presented as superstitious and lacking in intelligence, further as cowardly, proud, easily offended and with a low self-esteem. Jupiter shows many linguistic features typical of black slaves and Gullah speakers: referring to himself as “me” or as “Jupiter”; omission of the copula, the third person singular –s and articles; the dropping of initial and final consonants; the use of Double Negation.

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Further, Jupiter is slow in answering questions or repeats the question. He is able neither to understand difficult formal language nor to correctly reproduce words longer than three syllables. Yet sometimes he is able to apply difficult constructions correctly.

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12 Trinidadian Creole

12.1. Background Information

12.1.1. General Introduction

In order to avoid any upcoming misunderstandings, I should like to make clear that I will talk about two languages spoken on Trinidad: The official language on the islands of Trinidad and Tobago is English, which was introduced by the English rulers in the 19th and 20th centuries. It contains many Creole elements. Yet there is a group of inhabitants who speak a variety that is called Kwèyòl (simply meaning Creole), both terms are accepted; it has ever since profoundly influenced the language habits of all people on the island. Kwèyòl was introduced by the slaves of the French immigrants during Spanish rule before 1800. It is French-based with some Spanish elements and little English influence. Those who are not familiar with it see it as a kind of ”patois, not a legitimate language and simply a vernacular of the French language“ (http://www.montraykreyol.org/: 2007) and do not worship it as a part of their cultural heritage. (cf. http://www.montraykreyol.org/: 2007)

12.1.2 Lise Winer´s Research

Lise Winer is the most acclaimed linguist on both Trinidadian English and Trinidadian Creole and thus the ideal person for the chair of the Society for Caribbean Linguistics. Patiently and persistently, she has published a dictionary on these languages and explored the vernacular language of local pupils. (cf. http://www.mcgill.ca: 2003).

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She publishes 19th century Trinidadian novels which “draw on its extremely varied ethno-cultural history, eschewing stereotypes found in other Caribbean writing of the time.“ (http://www.mcgill.ca: 2003). She holds public speeches and gives interviews to newspapers and radio stations. Winer gets only small funds and has to pay her expenses herself. She moans that "people do not take the Caribbean seriously" (http://www.mcgill.ca: 2003) and "even scholars feel free to downplay the Caribbean, in a way they would never denigrate a European society." (http://www.mcgill.ca: 2003). Even her closest friends have "romantic notions" (http://www.mcgill.ca: 2003) of her fieldwork, thinking of her "sitting in the sun on a beach sipping rum daiquiris, warm sand between the toes." (http://www.mcgill.ca: 2003)

What is important to Winer is that, contrary to general belief, "linguistic information cannot only be found with aged rural folk” (http://www.mcgill.ca: 2003); instead, the "use of language in Trinidad and Tobago does not run on a neat continuum of old to new but is mixed up like a marble cake or confetti.” (http://www.mcgill.ca: 2003) She draws on predominantly semantic and pragmatic methods: "You have to cover everything, not just names for tools or the colour of a rooster. There are abstract terms in kinship and religion, words to describe feelings or concepts." (http://www.mcgill.ca: 2003) Winer is strongly interested in the island´s large variety of fauna and flora: "There are 500 different birds alone, from caciques to cornbirds." (http://www.mcgill.ca: 2003)

12.1.3. History

“Trinidad was discovered by Christopher Columbus in 1498 during his third voyage to the new world. It was reported that he landed on the southern coast of the island near present-day Moruga. When he landed he saw three hills and named the island ‘La Trinidad’, meaning ‘The Trinity’. (cf. http://www.montraykreyol.org/: 2007)

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By 1507, the Spanish began to occupy and colonize the island and kept it until 1797. During these nearly 300 years, the Spanish were not able to properly develop this colony:

History tells us of Native Indians running wild, doing as they pleased and also of the very poor and almost non-existent infrastructure. The problem in Trinidad was dire indeed. By the late 18th century, Trinidad’s population was about 2,000 to 3,000, comprising of some Spaniards the remainder of the native population that survived the Spanish incursion and a few Africans who were imported to work on the plantations. Trinidad was a colony ripe for take-over by another European power. (http://www.montraykreyol.org/: 2007)

The Spanish were well aware of these failures and reacted by what was called the ‘cédula de población’: Catholic persons who “swore loyalty to the Spanish crown“ (http://www.montraykreyol.org/: 2007) and “obeyed the Spanish laws“ (http://www.montraykreyol.org/: 2007) were allowed to settle down on the island. These settlers were freed from paying taxes for ten years and were granted land for the setup of plantations. (cf. http://www.montraykreyol.org/: 2007)

A considerable part of these settlers came from the French islands such as “Martinique, Grenada, Saint Lucia, Dominica, Saint Vincent, Guadeloupe, Nevis, Haiti and Louisiana.“ (http://www.montraykreyol.org/:2007) They were welcome as they were Catholics, knew how to plant sugar cane and took many slaves with them. (cf. http://www.montraykreyol.org/: 2007)

This immigration of many French or French-speaking people started to seriously cultivate the island: “they built roads, buildings, villages and towns.“ (http://www.montraykreyol.org/: 2007) In the course of time, some of these French people gained influential positions in the government and soon outnumbered the Spanish people. “‘La Trinidad’ became ‘La Trinité’, an unofficial colony of France.“ (http://www.montraykreyol.org/: 2007)

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Moreover, as the slaves from the French islands turned out to be useless for the work on the plantations, further slaves from Africa had to be shipped over. (cf. http://www.montraykreyol.org/: 2007) “Most of the 22,482 slaves on the island at this time spoke only Creole.“ (http://www.montraykreyol.org/: 2007)

These newly imported slaves were, similarly to the slaves in South Carolina and Georgia, deprived of their native language and culture in order not to rebel against their masters. Nevertheless, both groups of slaves collaborated closely so that Kwèyòl was also taught to the new slaves for reasons of communication. This results in a mixture of different languages and a new variety came into existence on the island. (cf. http://www.montraykreyol.org/: 2007)

In 1802, the British captured the island. The linguistic and cultural influence of Spanish, French and Kwèyòl was visible: “Kwèyòl became the common language of the different communities of people who spoke different languages. More than 80% of the island’s population spoke French or Kwèyòl.“ (http://www.montraykreyol.org/: 2007)

This explains why the British rulers immediately made efforts to forbid the use of French, Spanish and Kwèyòl culture and language and instead introduced English. These measures were successful only at the beginning of the 20th century when the influence of French, Spanish and Kwèyòl slowly declined: They were either “illegal“(cf. http://www.montraykreyol.org/: 2007) or “discouraged.“ (http://www.montraykreyol.org/: 2007) “Soon Kwèyòl was superseded by English and today there remain very few places where Kwèyòl is heard regularly.“ (http://www.montraykreyol.org/: 2007)

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12.1.4. Kwèyòl

Earlier, Kwèyòl was used in both rural parts and towns. Originally, “monolingual Kwèyòl speakers especially in the northern part of the island“ (http://www.montraykreyol.org/: 2007) were found; today “all speakers of Kwèyòl are bilingual, speaking both English and Kwèyòl.“ (http://www.montraykreyol.org/: 2007) Still, in some villages founded by French settlers, Kwèyòl is still spoken by young children today and the culture is still widespread. (cf. http://www.montraykreyol.org/: 2007)

Henry Marvel is convinced that Kwèyòl “unites“ (http://www.montraykreyol.org/: 2007) all people on the island. He rejects statements that Kwèyòl is “an inferior language“ (http://www.montraykreyol.org/: 2007) and denies that it is “a dialect of French“ (http://www.montraykreyol.org/: 2007) because “monolingual Francophones cannot understand the language.“ (http://www.montraykreyol.org/: 2007) Instead, he argues that Kwèyòl is a language with its “own grammar, syntax and orthography.“ (http://www.montraykreyol.org/: 2007)

A huge majority of the lexicon comes from French, only a small minority from other languages such as “Yoruba, Husa, Igbo, Akan, Spanish, Carib, Hindi, Portuguese, Chinese, English and Arabic.“ (http://www.montraykreyol.org/: 2007) Words from these languages entered Kwèyòl due to the immigration of workers from these nations in the 1840s. These lexical items denoted predominantly food. Yet their effect was limited because Kwèyòl had already fully developed and thus borrowing was hardly necessary except for unknown items. English words denote modern aspects of life. However, Kwèyòl speakers would rather use borrowed French words instead of English. (cf. http://www.montraykreyol.org/: 2007)

Today, just 10% of the citizens use Kwèyòl regularly. Nevertheless, it has shaped the English language on Trinidad: “There are hundreds of words in current use that can be traced to both French and Creole.“ (http://www.montraykreyol.org/: 2007)

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People such as Marvel make struggle to “preserve and document our unique variety of Creole for the sake of future generations for fear that it will pass into extinction.“ (http://www.montraykreyol.org/: 2007) Marvel is truly optimistic because “in some areas of the country, there are calls for the revival of the language“ (http://www.montraykreyol.org/: 2007) and thus “slowly, the people of Trinidad are beginning to realize the cultural and historical importance of this language.“ (http://www.montraykreyol.org/: 2007) Marvel is convinced that “with hard work and determination it is very possible that Creole will once again take its rightful place as the language of the people.“ (http://www.montraykreyol.org/: 2007)

12.2. Trinidadian English

This chapter on the linguistic aspects of the Trinidadian Creole is based on the writings by Eva Kramberger (2005) and Dorothea Martz (2005).

12.2.1 Phonology

Trinidad Creole lacks the sounds /æ/ and /e/ that are substituted by *a+ and *ε+. Thus the pronunciation of the word /bat/ (Standard English /bæt/) becomes [bat] in Trinidad Creole. The pronunciation of the word /bait/ (Standard English /bet/) becomes *bεt+ in Trinidad Creole. The vowel /e/ varies in length and changes into a long vowel *ε:+ when emphasized. (cf. Kramberger 2005: 21)

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In Trinidad Creole, /iə/ and /eə/ are neutralized. Trinidadians do not make a differentiation between /iə/ and /eə/ in oral language but often pronounce /iə/ as [eə]; this thus brings about pronunciations such as [beə] for /beer/ and [neə] for /near/. As a consequence, some homophones come into use, which are only to be distinguished by context. E.g. [beer] / [bear], [ear] / [air], [fear] / [fair] and [hear] / [hair]. (cf. Kramberger 2005: 23)

The dental fricatives / θ/ and /ð/ are substituted by the alveolar stops *t+ and [d] in Trinidad Creole. E.g. [ting] / [tin] (=/thing/), [trut] / [tru:t] (=/truth/”), *dey+ / *de+ (=”they”), *den+ / *den+ (=”then”). The absence of /θ/ and /ð/ again leads to the production of homophones. E.g. such words as [tin] and [thin], [tree] and [three] or [den] and [then]. (cf. Kramberger 2005: 26)

The sound /ng/ becomes [n] in Trinidad Creole when used as a suffix. E.g. /eatin´/ *i:tin+ (=”eating”). (cf. Kramberger 2005: 27)

The palatalisation of the velar plosives /k/ and /g/ before /a/ is ususal in Trinidad Creole: a palatal /y/ sound is thrown in between the consonant and the following vowel, e.g. *kyash+ (=”cash”), *kyat+ (=”cat”), *gyap+ (=”gap”) or *gyirl+ (=”girl”). (cf. Kramberger 2005: 28)

Non-rhoticity is an important characteristic of Trinidad Creole. This can be explained by the fact that Standard English did not have any post-vocalic /r/ at the time of the colonization of Trinidad in the 19th century. Nevertheless, Trinidadians sometimes throw in an /r/ sound in words such as “bad” to lengthen the vowel sound. (cf. Kramberger 2005: 27)

The palatalisation of /tr/, /θr/ and /dr/ is widespread in Trinidad Creole, these clusters are changed into post-alveolar affricates, resulting in pronunciations such as *t∫i:+ or *t∫ri:+ (=”tree”); *d3raiv+ (=”drive”); *d3rink+ (=”drink”); *t∫upid+ (=”stupid”). (cf. Kramberger 2005: 28)

The dropping of initial /h/ is another frequent feature of Trinidad Creole. (cf. Martz 2005: 47)

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Another aspect of Trinidad Creole is the final consonant cluster reduction: /t/ and /d/ after consonants are swallowed: *lef+ (=”left”); *ak+ (=”act”); *la:s+ (=”last”); *bo:l+ (=”bold”); *ben+ (=”bend”). (cf. Kramberger 2005: 30)

Voiced clusters such as /md/, /nd/, /bd/, /vd/, /dgd/, /ld/, /wd/ and unvoiced clusters such as /pt/, /ft/, /st/, /t∫t/, /kt/ are generally avoided. (cf. Martz 2005: 45)

Reduction of /nt/: the final consonant cluster /nt/ of negating words is clipped: “didn´t”, “couldn´t”, “can´t” and “don´t” are cut to *didn+, *kudn+, *do:n+ and *ca:n+. (cf. Martz 2005: 45)

12.2.2 Syntax and Morphology

One central characteristic feature of Trinidad Creole is the absence of the copula before adjectives in the present (e.g.: *dat nasty+ = “that is nasty”). (cf. Kramberger 2005: 43)

Yet sometimes the copula is needed: In questions, the copula stands before the question word: [Is what yuh bring mi?+ = “What is it that you brought me?”). (cf. Martz: 2005: 64) The copula at the beginning of a sentence points to emphasis, a process called Front Focusing: *Is dem wha going+ = “It is them who are going”). (cf. Martz 2005: 64)

Furthermore, Trinidadians never make use of the third person singular –s ([he eat], [he go], [it hurt]). (cf. Kramberger 2005: 44)

Trinidad Creole negative particles contain the following: *na+ (= “did not”), *eh+ (= “is not”, “has not”), *ent+ (from “ain´t” = “is not”), *doh+ (= “does not”). Moreover, Trinidad Creole shows Double Negation (e.g.: *I ent goin´ no place+ = “I am not going anywhere.”) (cf. Kramberger 2005: 45)

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The plural form is indicated by articles, demonstratives and quantifiers instead of simply adding the plural morpheme –s. A noun modified by the definite article can thus have two meanings: [the dog] can either be singular or plural. To express the plural, the plural demonstrative /and them/ is added (“dogs” = *the dog and them+). (cf. Kramberger 2005: 32)

Trinidad Creole lacks the third person singular personal pronouns “him” and “her” as well as the first person plural personal pronoun “us”; the second person plural pronoun “you” is realized as *allyou+. (cf. Kramberger 2005: 35)

Possession is indicated by listing the subject pronoun and the object: [me book]; [you book]; [he/she/it book]; [we book]; [allyou book]; [them book]. (cf. Kramberger 2005: 36)

Also significant is the absence of possessive pronouns in Trinidad Creole. Possession is expressed by affixing /own/ to the pronoun: [my-own]; [your-own]; [he/she-own]; [we-own]; [allyou-own]; [them-own]. (cf. Kramberger 2005: 37)

Reflexive pronouns are marked by adding /self/ to the personal pronoun: [meself]; [youself]; [he-/she-/itself]; [weself]; [allyouself]; [themself]. (cf. Kramberger 2005: 38)

The most widespread quantifiers are *plenty+ (= “a lot”, “many”), *all+ (= “all”, “the whole of"), *a couple+ (= “a few”) and *a set of+ (= “a lot of”, “a large number of”, “a tremendous amount of”). (cf. Kramberger 2005: 40)

12.2.3 Tenses

Dynamic verbs generally refer to the past tense: *Ah walk up+, *ah jump up+ = “I walked up”, “I jumped up”). Static verbs normally mention the present tense: *Di child want food+ (= “The child wants food”). (cf. Kramberger 2005: 46)

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The preverbal markers /does/ and /does be + ing/ denote present tense habituality: *di crazy outfits dat people does wear+ (= “the crazy outfits that people wear”). Past tense habit is indicated by the preverbal marker /did/: *I did eat plenty+ (= “I used to eat a lot”). (cf. Kramberger 2005: 47)

Present continuity is expressed by /ing/: *dey buyin´ two costumes+ (= “they are buying two costumes”). Past continuity by /did + ing/: *we did laughin´+ (= “we were laughing”). (cf. Kramberger 2005: 48)

The preverbal marker /done/ indicates the aspect of completion: [dey don spend out all di budget a´ready+ (= “they have already spent all the money”). (cf. Kramberger 2005: 48)

The preverbal marker /go/ marks the future: *it go cost me $300+ (= “it will cost me $300”). (cf. Kramberger 2005: 48)

12.2.4 Words and Phrases

The last aspect of this chapter is on some Trinidadian phrases which I found on the University of Maine´s Website “Learn how to Talk like a Trinidadian”. The logical derivations are mine.

● a [back chat] is an “argumentative, insolent response” (not to accept what someone says and thus always talking back whatever someone says). (cf. http://www.usm.maine.edu/~amoroso/Timothy/TriniTalk.html: 2010) ● a [bath suit] is a “swimsuit” (a piece of clothing that you wear when you have a bath or go swimming). (cf. http://www.usm.maine.edu/~amoroso/Timothy/TriniTalk.html: 2010) ● to [horn] means to “cheat on a boyfriend of a girlfriend” (a derivation from the adjective “horny” which means to be so attracted by the physical qualities that you start a sexual relationship and forget the moral implications). (cf. http://www.usm.maine.edu/~amoroso/Timothy/TriniTalk.html: 2010)

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● to [lime] means to “hang out, loaf, have fun” (a derivation from the phrase ‘to be in the limelight’). cf. (http://www.usm.maine.edu/~amoroso/Timothy/TriniTalk.html: 2010) ● to [mamaguy] means to “put someone on, make fun of someone” (a boy who depends on his mother and is helpless without her protection; thus others tease him for that, well knowing that he would not be able to defend himself against these jokes). (cf. http://www.usm.maine.edu/~amoroso/Timothy/TriniTalk.html: 2010) ● a [mamapoule] is a derogatory term for a “husband who is controlled by his wife” (‘poule’ is the French term for ‘chicken’ which in this context means ‘coward’ or ‘weak’; as the man was controlled by his mother in his early years, he gets used to be dominated by a woman and thus the wife simply takes the position of the mother and controls him; the man reacts to his wife in the same way as he did to his mother: he dares not contradict). (cf. http://www.usm.maine.edu/~amoroso/Timothy/TriniTalk.html: 2010) ● a [saga boy] is a “male who is boastful of his physical attributes” (the physical qualities attributed to a young boy in a saga). (cf. http://www.usm.maine.edu/~amoroso/Timothy/TriniTalk.html: 2010)

12.3. “Robinson Crusoe”

12.3.1 Plot Summary

To start with, I will provide a summary of the content of this novel, which is a shortened version of the synopsis from Wikipedia Online: “Robinson Crusoe” is a fictional autobiography of the title character – a castaway who spends 36 years on a remote tropical island near Venezuela, encountering Native Americans, captives and mutineers before being rescued.

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The details of Crusoe's island were probably based on the Carribean island of Tobago, since that island lies a short distance north of the Venezuelan coast.

Robinson Crusoe sets sail on a sea voyage in September 1651, against the wishes of his parents. After a tumultuous journey he is shipwrecked in a storm about 40 miles out to sea on an island near the Orinoco River. He fetches arms, tools and other supplies from the ship before it breaks apart and sinks. He builds a fenced-in habitation near a cave. He hunts, grows corn and rice, he dries grapes to make raisins for the winter months, learns to make pottery and raises goats, using tools created from stone and wood which he harvests on the island and adopts a small parrot. He reads the Bible and suddenly becomes religious.

Years later, he discovers native cannibals who occasionally visit the island to kill and eat prisoners. When a prisoner manages to escape, Crusoe helps him, naming his new companion ‘Friday’ after the day of the week he appeared. Crusoe then teaches him English and converts him to Christianity.

After another party of natives arrives to partake in a cannibal feast, Crusoe and Friday manage to kill most of the natives and save two of the prisoners. One is Friday's father and the other is a Spaniard, who informs Crusoe that there are other Spaniards shipwrecked on the mainland. A plan is devised according to which the Spaniard would return with Friday's father to the mainland and bring back the others, build a ship and sail to a Spanish port.

Before the Spaniards return, an English ship appears; mutineers have taken control of the ship and intend to maroon their former captain on the island. Crusoe and the ship's captain strike a deal, in which he helps the captain and the loyalist sailors retake the ship from the mutineers. Crusoe leaves the island in December 1686 and arrives back in England in June 1687. (cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robinson_Crusoe)

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12.3.2 Language Analysis

The novel “Robinson Crusoe” consists of 20 chapters; in chapter 14, Friday shows up for the first time. I will focus on the speech of Friday as well as his conversations with his master and analyze them in linguistic terms.

Yet before I do so, I reckon it is interesting to look at Friday´s physical description. How does a literate Englishman as Defoe in the early 18th century imagine an indigenous savage man on a Carribean island? Defoe depicts Friday as young and physically strong:

He was a comely, handsome fellow, perfectly well made, with straight, strong limbs, not too large; tall and well-shaped; and as I reckon, about 26 years of age. He had a very good countenance, not a fierce and surly aspect but seemed to have something very manly in his face; and yet he had all the sweetness and softness of a European in his countenance too, especially when he smiled. His hair was long and black, not curled like wool; his forehead very high and large; and a great vivacity and sparkling sharpness in his eyes. The colour of his skin was not quite black but very tawny; and yet not an ugly, yellow, nauseous tawny as the Brazilians and Virginians and other natives of America are but of a bright kind of a dun olive- colour that had in it something very agreeable, though not very easy to describe. His face was round and plump; his nose small, not flat, like the Negroes; a very good mouth, thin lips and his fine teeth well set and as white as ivory. (Defoe: Robinson Crusoe: 272)

Friday´s most striking characteristic feature is his indescribable gratefulness to the person who has come to his rescue against the pirates, which is expressed by extraordinary submission:

He came out of the cave to me: when he espied me, he came running to me, laying himself down again upon the ground, with all the possible signs of an humble, thankful disposition, making a great many antic gestures to show it. At last he lays his head flat upon the ground, close to my foot and sets my other foot upon his head as he had done before; and after this made all the signs to me of subjection, servitude and submission imaginable to let me know how he would serve me so long as he lived. (Defoe: Robinson Crusoe: 272-273)

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The linguistic situation here is similar to what has been described in the theoretical part above: Speakers of different speech communities need to communicate but do not have a common language. Crusoe and Friday do not develop any Pidgin in order to make themselves understood but the master teaches his language to the servant.

As with Jupiter and William Legrand in Poe´s short story “The Gold-Bug”, I will select the most important conversations between Friday and Robinson Crusoe. Note that I only take into account those communicative situations in which Friday and Crusoe are alone. After a while, Crusoe begins to speak to Friday and teach him to speak to him: Logically, he has to start as simple as possible and on a rather low level: first, he lets him know his name should be “Friday”, which was the day he saved his life. He calls him so for the memory of the time. He further instructs him to call him “master” and teaches him the meaning of “yes” and “no”. (cf. Defoe: Robinson Crusoe: 274)

At first, when Friday cannot yet properly speak the English language, he and his master have to communicate by means of sign language, which seems to work. Here are some amusing examples:

● When they go by the place where Friday buried the two men, he points exactly to the place and shows Crusoe the marks that he made to find them again, making signs to him that they should dig them up again and eat them. At this Crusoe appears very angry, expresses his abhorrence of it and makes as if he would vomit at the thoughts of it. (cf. Defoe: Robinson Crusoe: 275)

● Crusoe finds that Friday still has a hankering stomach after some of the flesh and still is a cannibal in his nature; but he shows so much abhorrence at the very thoughts of it and at the least appearance of it that he durst not discover it: for he, by some means, lets him know that he would kill him if he offered it. (cf. Defoe: Robinson Crusoe: 283)

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● Crusoe boils some of the flesh and makes some very good broth. After he began to eat some, he gives some to Friday, who seems very glad of it and likes it very well; but what is strangest to him is to see his master eat salt with it. Friday makes a sign to him that the salt is not good to eat; and putting a little into his own mouth, he seems to nauseate it and would spit and sputter at it, washing his mouth with fresh water after it. (cf. Defoe: Robinson Crusoe: 281)

By the time, Crusoe makes it his business to teach him everything that is proper to make him useful, handy and helpful; but especially to make him speak and understand him when he speaks. Friday begins to talk pretty well and understand the names of almost everything that Crusoe has occasion to call for and of every place he has to send him to and Friday talks a great deal to him. (cf. Defoe: Robinson Crusoe: 294)

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What we know is that, after some time, Crusoe has taught Friday the English language so well that he can answer him almost any question. In their first meaningful dialogue, Crusoe has a mind to try if Friday has any inclination for his own country again; he asks him whether the nation that he belonged to never conquered in battle. At which his servant smiles and says [Yes, yes, we always fight the better]; that is, he means always get the better in fight; and so they begin the following discourse:

Crusoe: You always fight the better; how came you to be taken prisoner, then, Friday?

Friday: My nation beat much for all that. (#1)

Crusoe: How beat? If your nation beat them, how came you to be taken?

Friday: They more many than my nation, in the place where me was; they take one, two, three and me: my nation over-beat them in the yonder place, where me no was; there my nation take one, two, great thousand. (#2)

Crusoe: But why did not your side recover you from the hands of your enemies, then?

Friday: They run, one, two, three and me and make go in the canoe; my nation have no canoe that time. (#3)

Crusoe: Well, Friday, and what does your nation do with the men they take? Do they carry them away and eat them as these did?

Friday: Yes, my nation eat mans too; eat all up. (#4)

Crusoe: Where do they carry them?

Friday: Go to other place, where they think. (#5)

Crusoe: Do they come hither?

Friday: Yes, yes, they come hither; come other else place. (#6)

Crusoe: Have you been here with them?

Friday: Yes, I have been here. (#7) (Defoe: Robinson Crusoe: 283-284)

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We can clearly see that Crusoe talks to Friday in normal Standard English. He does not oversimplify his speech but he does not use any overly complicated words or structures either. We observe that Friday, in general, is able to form syntactically correct sentences.

In utterance #1, we remark, on the grammatical level, the omission of the third person singular –s ([my nation beat]). Friday thus always takes the infinitive form. However, Friday is able to apply the construction /possessive pronoun + substantive/ correctly ([my nation]).

Utterance #2 reveals further common features such as the lack of the copula before adjectives in the present ([they 0 more]) and the realization of the personal pronoun /I/ as [me]. We detect a wrong negation ([no] instead of /not/) and problems with counting: Friday does know the numbers but he has difficulties with the cardinal numbers: instead of saying “three”, he counts up from one to three. Yet Friday can apply a correct relative clause ([in the place where I was]) and a correct comparison ([more than]).

In utterance #3, we find out that not only the first person singular form is unknown to Friday but also the first person plural: he says [they and me run] instead of “we”.

Utterance #4 shows that Friday knows how to form a correct plural by adding –s. Thus to him the logical plural form of “man” is *mans+. What, of course, he cannot know is that some nouns require an irregular plural.

In utterance #5, we find that Friday does not make use of an indefinite article ([to 0 other place]), something which he should be able to as he applies the definite article and possessive pronoun correctly as the utterances above show.

In utterance #6, we see that Friday repeats the question word by word, a typical feature of a person who does not have an extensive lexicon. This reminds us of Poe´s figure Jupiter who sometimes repeats the question as well.

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Utterance #7 demonstrates that Friday is able to form a perfectly correct present perfect tense ([I have been there]).

Later, Crusoe inquires if Friday could tell him how one might go from this island and get among the white men they talked about earlier. The latter says [Yes, yes, I might go in two canoe.] It is remarkable that Friday always says “yes” twice. Contrary to utterance #4 above, he omits the plural –s ([two canoe]). Nevertheless, he correctly makes use of a modal verb ([you may go]) and a prepositional phrase ([in two canoes]). On the semantic level, it is unclear what “two canoes” means. At last, with great difficulty, Crusoe concludes that it must be a large boat as big as “two canoes”. This manifests that Crusoe taught Friday only the names of items that he really needs to know for his daily work and for communication. (cf. Defoe: Robinson Crusoe: 285)

One time Crusoe asks Friday who made him. He replies [It was one Benamuckee that lived beyond all.] Here, as opposed to utterance #5 above, he properly makes use of an indefinite pronoun. Friday could describe nothing of this great person but that he was very old, [much older], he said, [than the sea or land, than the moon or the stars.] We see that he applies both the comparative ([much older]) and the comparison ([older than]) correctly. (cf. Defoe: Robinson Crusoe: 286)

Crusoe begins to instruct Friday in the knowledge of the true God. He asks him if ever he went thither (on the top of a mountain) to speak to his God. He said [No; they never went that were young men; none went thither but the old men.] Interestingly, here Friday knows the irregular plural form of “man”, something which he was not able to do in utterance #4 above. He seems not to make a distinction between concrete and abstract nouns as he always uses the relative pronoun “that”. Yet he can apply an irregular past tense ([they went]) and negative constructions ([they never went]; [none went but old men]). (cf. Defoe: Robinson Crusoe: 287)

Crusoe´s and Friday´s metaphysical conversation goes on, a proof of Friday´s intelligence and eagerness to learn. Here we notice a decisive difference between Defoe´s depiction of Friday and Poe´s depiction of Jupiter.

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While Jupiter is characterized as superstitious and not very intelligent, Friday is characterized as a person with the ability to learn quickly, to grasp things and with logical thinking. Friday observes that God must be stronger than the Devil, which Crusoe confirms. This leads Friday to the question why God does not kill the Devil. Crusoe answers God will punish the Devil in a way that is similar to death. Finally Friday concludes that thus all wicked people will be pardoned by God. From this we derive that Friday has comprehended one fundamental aspect of the Christian religion. Linguistically, we see that Crusoe´s speech is quite difficult but Friday has no problem understanding and answering to it. The discourse develops as follows:

Friday: Well but you say God is so strong, so great; is He not much strong, much might as the devil? (#8)

Crusoe: Yes, yes, Friday; God is stronger than the devil – God is above the devil and therefore we pray to God to tread him down under our feet and enable us to resist his temptations and quench his fiery darts.

Friday: But if God much stronger, much might as the wicked devil, why God no kill the devil, so make him no more do wicked? (#9)

Crusoe: God will at last punish him severely; he is reserved for the judgment and is to be cast into the bottomless pit, to dwell with everlasting fire.

Friday: Reserve at last!' me no understand – but why not kill the devil now; not kill great ago? (#10)

Crusoe: You may as well ask me, why God does not kill you or me, when we do wicked things here that offend Him – we are preserved to repent and be pardoned.

Friday: Well, well, that well – so you, I, devil, all wicked, all preserve, repent, God pardon all. (#11) (Defoe: Robinson Crusoe: 288-289)

Utterances #8 and #9 reveal some contradictory use of the copula before adjectives in the present: in utterance #8 Friday uses it ([God is strong]) whereas in utterance #9 he does not ([God 0 much stronger]).

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Utterances #10 and #11 show some contradictory use of the definite article: in utterance #10 he makes correct use of it ([the devil]) while in utterance #11 he does not ([0 devil]).

After some more time, Friday can understand almost all Crusoe says to him and speak pretty fluently, though in broken English.

After some considerable time, being upon the top of the hill of the island, Friday looks earnestly towards the mainland and in a kind of surprise, starts jumping and dancing and calls out to Crusoe. [Oh, joy!] says he; [Oh, glad! There see my country, there my nation!] In this utterance, we see that Friday does not make use of a subject. Normally he would start this sentence with [Me see my country] but here he starts the sentence with the predicate (joy). The reason may possibly be that Friday is so excited about seeing his home country that he forgets about his acquired grammatical knowledge. (cf. Defoe: Robinson Crusoe: 296)

One day, walking up the same hill, Crusoe called to his servant and said “Friday, do not you wish yourself in your own country, your own nation?” [Yes], he said, [I be much glad to be at my own nation.] In this dialogue, we detect huge differences to Friday´s usual speech: in the previous sentence, for the first time he refers to himself not as /me/ as usual but as [I]. Crusoe then asks him what he would do there. Would he turn wild again, eat men's flesh again and be a savage as he did before? Friday looks full of concern, shakes his head and says [No, no, Friday tell them to live good; tell them to pray God; tell them to eat corn-bread, cattle flesh, milk; no eat man again.] As opposed to above, Friday does not start the sentence with /I/ again but refers to himself by saying his name. (cf. Defoe: Robinson Crusoe: 298)

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The last passage in this chapter (as it is their last conversation that they have alone on the island) is meant to outline how faithful and devoted Friday has become to his master: One day Crusoe tells him that they would make a big boat in which Friday should go home. The latter answers not one word but looks grave and sad. He asks him [Why you angry mad with Friday? What me done?] Earlier, I showed that Friday was able to form a correct present perfect tense in a declarative sentence but here, in an interrogative sentence, he is not. Crusoe denies that he is angry with him at all. Friday asks [Why send Friday home away to my nation?] Strangely, in this utterance Friday does not begin the sentence with /I/ but he uses the possessive pronoun /my/. In the following discourse, Crusoe recalls Friday was saying that he wished to be in his home country. Friday replies that he would not think of going there without his master. The latter asks what he should do there. Friday suggests he could do much good there, teaching the wild men as he taught him. Crusoe tells Friday to go there without him, leaving him here to continue his life as he did before. Friday looks confused, runs away to fetch a hatchet, takes it up hastily and gives it to Crusoe. The latter asks what to do with it; Friday requests Crusoe to kill him. The master does not know why to do so; the servant replies he would rather be killed than be sent away from him. This he speaks so earnestly that Crusoe sees tears stand in his eyes. In a word, he plainly discovered the utmost affection for him and a firm resolution in him. He calms him down, saying that he would never send him away from him if he was willing to stay with him. (cf. Defoe: Robinson Crusoe: 299)

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12.4 Summary

In Trinidad Creole, characteristic features on the phonological level are non- rhoticity, the dropping of /h/ in initial position and the final consonant cluster reduction.

The plural is expressed in articles, demonstratives and quantifiers. The Trinidadian Creole lacks the personal pronouns “him”, “her” and “us”. Possession is expressed by juxtaposing the subject pronoun and the object or by adding “own” to the pronoun. Further characteristics are the absence of the copula before adjectives in the present, the omission of third person singular –s and Double Negation.

Friday is depicted as grateful and devoted and later as feeling affection towards Crusoe. Friday shows some features typical of the Trinidadian Creole which are listed above.

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13 Conclusion

My diploma thesis deals with the topic of Pidgin- and Creole languages on both the linguistic and literary levels and is thus divided into two parts: the first part summarizes the linguistic theories; the second one explores selected languages and their depictions in famous literary pieces of the 18th and 19th centuries.

Pidgins are defined as contact or trade languages that emerged out of different languages, developed for situations in which members of unintelligible speech communities without a common language need to communicate with each other. Their vocabulary, grammar and syntax are simplified and limited, difficult constructions are avoided.

The etymology of the word “Pidgin” is not wholly clarified yet the closest explanation is that it derives from words meaning “*doing+ business” or “people *businessmen+”; “*poorly developed+ language” or “beach” *where the Pidgin language was used].

As for the history of Pidgins, already in the oriental High Cultures, ancient times and medieval crusades, Pidgins have been used all over the world as a lingua franca among speakers with different linguistic backgrounds. Modern Pidgins as we know them arose in the 19th century when slaves were deprived of their native languages and forced to create a Pidgin to communicate.

Creoles are characterized as developing out of a Pidgin to the native language of a speech community either under conditions of social upheaval, rapid social change or close mixture of ethnically diverse groups. Their vocabulary, grammar and syntax are large enough to meet the communicative needs of their speakers.

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The etymology of the term “Creole” goes back to the Iberian meanings “home- born slave”, “white person originating from the colonies”; most likely it refers to “*descendant of+ European or Negro settlers in the West Indies or stemming from these areas” or more precisely “a white man of European descent born and raised in a tropical or semitropical colony”.

As far as the history of Creoles is concerned, many of them have come into existence in the last 500 years resulting from the worldwide expansion in European maritime power and trade in the Age of Discovery that led to extensive European colonial empires and intensive slave trade. As a consequence, most European-based Creole languages arose in the equatorial belt around the world and in areas with access to the oceans.

Early discussions of Pidgins and Creoles in the 19th century were restricted to terming such languages as marginal, uneducated, inferior English with a poor pronunciation and simple grammar that slaves used to unsuccessfully imitate the language of their owners. Thanks to Schuchardt, Hesseling and Reinecke, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, these varieties were examined more properly and after World War II, the study of Pidgins and Creoles found its breakthrough.

Several Theories of Origin of Pidgins have been proposed: The Nautical Jargon Theory underlines the significance of nautical speech and the lack of grammar of sailors who passed on their language to indigenous people. The Baby Talk Theory claims that native speakers tend to simplify their language when addressing people who do not know their language. The Monogenesis and Relexification Theory believes that all European-based Pidgins have a common origin and ancestor, a West African Portuguese Pidgin of the 15th century that was relexified in the slave factories of Western Africa and later carried on to India and the Far East. The Independent Parallel Development Theory (or Polygenesis Theory) says that Indo-Europeans Pidgins developed independently but parallel under similar conditions.

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The linguistic development of Pidgins and Creoles can be traced back to four stages or phases: At first in the Jargon Stage, the variety is unstructured, unstable and lacks rules; it is characterized by cross-language communication and transfer of structures. Then in the Stabilization Stage, the future development of the language is determined and the language becomes unified and independent. Later in the Expansion Phase, the range of communicative functions increases, while borrowing decreases. Finally, when it comes to the Creolization, the variety is about to become a full language and mother tongue for the speech community.

In phonology, the vowels are limited to the cardinal vowels of the vowel triangle. In the consonant system, fricatives are replaced by plosives. Consonant clusters are simplified, stress is automatically on the first syllable.

Morphology of English-based Pidgins and Creoles corresponds to those of English, from which they are derived. They lack our familiar categories of grammatical inflection – a major type of simplification. Compounding and reduplication is widespread.

Syntax differs from that of the corresponding combinations in European languages. It lacks number, case, gender, tenses and omits cohesive devices. It displays a fixed word order for both questions and statements.

The vocabulary is provided by the upper strate. The lexicon of earlier Pidgins is rather small and shows compounds and periphrasis. More stable Pidgins with a larger vocabulary produce new words. Many words are borrowed or taken as loan words, often the meaning is shifted or extended.

Whenever a Creole language comes into direct contact with its superstrate language, the process of Decreolization can occur. The post-creole continuum is a scale of varieties (mesolect) between the Standard Language (acrolect) and the Creole (basilect).

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Lorenzo Dow Turner is the father of Gullah studies as he did a seminal study of the Gullah language based on his field research in rural communities in coastal South Carolina and Georgia in the 1930s and 1940s. He is credited with proving that Gullah is not a kind of substandard English – but rather strongly influenced by (West) African languages; simply because Gullah communities are located where enslaved Africans once lived and worked on plantations that were owned by American colonists.

Thus Gullah preserves features of vocabulary, grammar and idiom that other kinds of Black English have lost – features of African languages brought in by plantation slaves as far back as 300 years ago. This preservation was possible largely due to geographical isolation from the outside world, although in the last few decades some modernism has affected the Gullah community.

Gullah sounds like English but there is a flavour of the West African coast in its pronunciation, intonation and stress. It relies on short, loosely connected sentences that lack many of the grammatical markers. The greatest number of Gullah words is English.

For more than one year, Edgar Allen Poe was actually in the area where Gullah is spoken and depicted this variety in his short story “The Gold-Bug”. He depicts the black servant Jupiter in a typically mid-19th century racist and stereotypical way. The black servant is presented as superstitious and lacking in intelligence, further as cowardly, proud, easily offended and with a low self-esteem. Jupiter shows many linguistic features typical of black slaves and Gullah speakers. Further, Jupiter is slowly in answering questions or repeats the question. He is neither able to understand difficult formal language nor to correctly reproduce words longer than three syllables.

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As far as the linguistic situation on the island of Trinidad is concerned, two languages are spoken: A French-based Creole called Kwèyòl and Trinidadian English. The most acclaimed and active linguist on these varieties is Lise Winer. Historically, after the island had been discovered by Christopher Columbus in 1498, the Spaniards unsuccessfully ruled Trinidad from 1507 to 1797. Many French-speaking people immigrated during this time. Later, the British took over the island.

Kwèyòl is a French-based Creole with some Spanish and little English influence. Its significance has steadily declined in the past. Trinidadian English shows many linguistic simplifications, substitutions, neutralizations and reductions on the level of phonology. Its morphology contains many dialect elements and lacks several grammatical elements of Standard English.

The Trinidadian Creole is depicted in Daniel Defoe´s novel “Robinson Crusoe”. The indigenous servant Friday is depicted as grateful and subject and later as showing affection towards Crusoe. Friday shows some features typical of the Trinidadian Creole.

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14 Zusammenfassung in deutscher Sprache

Meine Diplomarbeit beschäftigt sich mit dem Thema der Pidgin- und Kreolsprachen sowohl in sprach- als auch in literaturwissenschaftlicher Hinsicht und ist daher auch in zwei Teile gegliedert. Der erste Teil besteht aus linguistischer Theorie; der zweite handelt von ausgewählten Sprachen und deren Darstellung in bekannten literarischen Werken des 18. Und 19. Jahrhunderts.

Unter dem Terminus „Pidgin“ versteht man eine neue, wesentlich vereinfachte Sprache, die aus mehreren Sprachen zusammengemischt wurde; also keine Muttersprache, sondern vielmehr eine Kontakt- oder Handelssprache, die entwickelt wurde damit Personen mit unterschiedlichem linguistischen Hintergrund – also ohne gemeinsame Muttersprache – miteinander kommunizieren können. Vokabular, Grammatik und Syntax sind daher also stark simplifiziert.

Über die Etymologie des Begriffes “Pidgin” sind sich die Sprachwissenschaftler und Soziolinguisten nicht ganz einig, die wahrscheinlichste Erklärung ist eine Ableitung von wirtschaftlichen Begriffen wie „Handel, Geschäft oder Geschäftsmann“ aus älteren chinesischen, portugiesischen oder hebräischen Sprachen.

Historisch gesehen gab es die ersten Pidginsprachen bereits in antiken Hochkulturen und während der mittlelalterlichen Kreuzzüge; sie entstanden immer dann, wenn Menschen mit verschiedenen Muttersprachen keine gemeinsame Sprache zur Kommunikation fanden. Moderne Pidginsprache in unserem Sinn gibt es seit dem 19. Jahrhundert, als afrikanischen Plantagensklaven in Amerika verboten wurde, ihre Muttersprachen zu verwenden und die daher eine neue Form der Kommunikation finden mussten.

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Wenn sich eine Pidginsprache aus dem frühen Stadium zu einer stabilen, ersten Sprache – also Muttersprache – einer Sprachgemeinschaft weiterentwickelt, dann spricht man von einer „Kreolsprache“. Dies passiert entweder durch sozialen Aufruhr, rasche soziale Veränderungen oder enge Verschmelzung von ethnisch unterschiedlichen Gruppen. Vokabular, Grammatik und Syntax können von der vorherigen Pidginsprache abweichen und sind nun wesentlich komplexer.

Die Herkunft dieses Begriffes kommt aus einer früheren iberischen oder französischen Sprache, das Wort bedeutete ursprünglich entweder „Sklave der zuhause geboren wurde“ oder „weiße, europäische Person aus den (semi)tropischen Kolonien“. Die am weitesten verbreitete Bedeutung im englischen Sprachgebrauch lautet „(abstammend von) europäischen oder negroiden Siedlern in oder aus den West Indies“.

Frühere Diskussionen von Pidgin- und Kreolsprachen im 19. Jahrhundert beschränkten sich darauf, diese Sprachen als minderwertige Randsprachen mit falscher Aussprache und äußerst simpler Grammatik abzuwerten, die von Sklaven verwendet werden, um die höherwertige Sprache ihrer Besitzer erfolglos nachzuahmen. Erst dank Schuchardt, Hesseling und Reinecke wurden diese Sprachen im späten 19. und frühen 20. Jahrhundert gründlich erforscht und fanden diese Studien nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg ihren endgültigen Durchbruch.

Die Entwicklung ist in vier Abschnitte zu unterteilen: In der Jargon-Phase ist die Sprache noch unstrukturiert, instabil und ohne feste Regeln; es dominieren die Kommunikation zwischen mehreren Sprachen und der Transfer von Strukturen. Die Stabilisierungs-Phase ist deshalb so wichtig weil sich jetzt die zukünftige Entwicklung der Sprache entscheidet und die Sprache unabhängig wird. Während der Expansions- Phase sind die Zunahme der kommunikativen Funktionen sowie ein Rückgang von Fremdwörtern zu erkennen. Abschließend kommt es zur Kreolisierung, die Sprache kann jetzt eine vollwertige Sprache sowie die Muttersprache der Kinder werden.

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Die Phonologie beschränkt sich auf die Kernvokale aus dem Vokaltrapez sowie eine Vereinfachung von seltenen Konsonanten. Die Betonung liegt automatisch auf der ersten Silbe des Wortes.

Die Morphologie ist jener der übergeordneten Sprache sehr ähnlich, lässt jedoch bekannte grammatikalische und kohesive Elemente der – in diesem Fall – englischen Sprache vermissen, dafür findet man die Verdoppelung Silben und Worten.

Der Syntax bei Aussagesätzen und Fragen ist dieselbe, grammatikalische Elemente wie Zahl, Fall, Geschlecht und Abwandlung fehlen. Die Wortstellung in Aussagesätzen und Fragesätzen ist dieselbe.

Der Großteil des Vokabulars kommt von der übergeordneten Sprache, frühe Pidginsprachen weisen viele Verdoppelungen und Umschreibungen auf. Gut entwickelte Pidginsprachen produzieren viele eigene Wörter, die Bedeutung von Lehnwörtern kann sich verändern oder erweitern.

Wenn eine Kreolsprache mit der übergeordneten Sprache in direkten Kontakt kommt, dann spricht man von einer Dekreolisierung. Es entsteht das sogenannte Post- Kreol-Kontinuum, in dem viele Variationen zwischen der Standardsprache und der Kreolsprache entstehen.

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Dem dunkelhäutigen Sprachwissenschaftler Lorenzo Dow Turner ist es zu verdanken dass der Gullah Dialekt endlich gründlich erforscht, ausreichend anerkannt und richtig bewertet wurde: als eigene Sprache mit jahrhundertelangen (west)afrikanischen Wurzeln und Traditionen, was auch durch ihre Herkunft und Geschichte (Sklavenhandel, Migration und Arbeit auf den Plantagen) bewiesen ist. Viele sprachliche Elemente stammen noch aus der Zeit vor 300 Jahren und wurden durch geographische Isolation von der Außenwelt lange Zeit beibehalten, auch wenn die Gullah Gemeinde in den letzten paar Jahrzehnten etwas modernisiert wurde. Grammatik und Syntax basieren auf afrikanischen Traditionen, während das Vokabular zum Teil aus dem Englischen kommt. Edgar Allan Poe, der selber über ein Jahr lang in South Carolina stationiert war, hat die Sprache der Gullah in seiner Kurzgeschichte „Der Goldkäfer“ recht authentisch dargestellt, auch wenn der schwarze Diener „Jupiter“ eher stereotyp und rassistisch (abergläubisch, feige und mit begrenztem Horizont) beschrieben wird. Das wissen nur wenige, denn die meisten Leser konzentrieren sich eher auf die spannenden Abenteuer während der Schatzsuche.

Auf der karibischen Insel Trinidad werden hauptsächlich zwei Sprachen gesprochen: die auf Französisch aufbauende Kreolsprache Kwèyòl und trinidadisches Englisch. Vieles davon wurde von der sehr aktiven Sprachwissenschaftlerin Lise Winer erforscht. Historisch gesehen wurde Trinidad im Jahre 1498 von Christoph Kolumbus entdeckt und in den anschließenden 300 Jahren ziemlich erfolglos von den Spaniern kolonisiert. Während dieser Zeit wanderten viele Franzosen und französisch sprechende Leute ein. Im Jahre 1797 übernahmen die Briten die Insel.

Kwèyòl ist eine Kreolsprache, die auf Französisch aufbaut, mit einigen spanischen und wenigen englischen Einflüssen. Allerdings verlor diese Sprache mit der Zeit immer mehr an Bedeutung. Trinidadisches Englisch weist viele phonologische Vereinfachungen und Reduktionen auf. Die Morphologie enthält viele Dialekt Elemente und es fehlen einige grammatikalische Aspekte des Standard Englisch.

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Daniel Defoe´s Roman „Robinson Crusoe“, der zumindest zum Teil auf einer wahren Begebenheit basiert, ist in erster Linie für spannende Abenteuer auf einer exotischen Insel berühmt. Auch hier ist nicht vielen Lesern bekannt dass der Trinidad Dialekt – lange vor dem Beginn der modernen Sprachwissenschaft – einigermaßen authentisch dargestellt wird. Hier allerdings wird der Eingeborene „Freitag“ als intelligent und zum Erlernen einer Fremdsprache fähig beschrieben.

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