Katharina Schweighofer

FROM SIMPLIFIED ENGLISH TO COMPLEX : A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF TOK PISIN AND JAMAICAN

DIPLOMARBEIT

zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades Magistra der Philosophie

Studium: Lehramtsstudium UF Englisch / UF Geographie und Wirtschaftskunde

Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt Fakultät für Kulturwissenschaften

Begutachter: Postdoc-Ass. Mag. Dr. Nikola Dobrić MA Institut: Anglistik und Amerikanistik

Mai/2016 i

Klagenfurt, 12.05.2016

ii

Dedication

I dedicate this thesis to my wonderful and amazing fiancée Dominik.

You have always been there for me, even in times when I did not believe in myself.

Thank you for your incredible support.

I love you.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank my mother Beate and my father Karl for their unconditional love and

care for me throughout my life. I do not know what I would have done without them.

Special thanks needs to be given to my supervisor Postdoc-Ass. Mag. Dr. Nikola Dobrić MA.

With the help of his advice and instructions, I could always keep a clear head and stay on

track.

iii

Table of Contents 1. Introduction ...... 1

2. Pidgins and creoles ...... 4

2.1. Development of pidgins ...... 5

2.2. Development of creoles ...... 10

2.3. Various pidgin and creole types ...... 13

2.4. Different theories of origin ...... 15

3. Tok Pisin ...... 19

3.1. History of Tok Pisin ...... 20

3.2. Present-day use and future prospects of Tok Pisin ...... 23

3.2.1. Linguistic development of Tok Pisin...... 25

3.3. Grammatical aspects of Tok Pisin ...... 28

3.3.1. Word order ...... 28

3.3.2. Noun phrase ...... 29

3.3.2.1. markers ...... 30

3.3.2.2. system ...... 32

3.3.2.3. Preposition and ...... 34

3.3.3. Verb phrase and predicate marker ...... 35

3.3.3.1. Negation ...... 37

3.3.3.2. Tense, aspect and modality markers ...... 38

3.3.4. Dependent clause constructions ...... 42

3.3.5. Conjunctions and questions ...... 44

4. Jamaican Patois ...... 46

4.1. History of Jamaican Patois ...... 46

4.2. The creole continuum ...... 49

4.3. Recreolisation ...... 52

4.4. Views of Jamaican Patois ...... 53

4.5. Grammatical features of Jamaican Patois ...... 55

4.5.1. Word order ...... 55 iv

4.5.2. Noun phrase ...... 56

4.5.2.1. Plural marker ...... 58

4.5.2.2. Personal pronoun system ...... 60

4.5.2.3. Possession and preposition ...... 61

4.5.3. Verb phrase ...... 63

4.5.3.1. Negation ...... 64

4.5.3.2. Tense, aspect and mood marking ...... 65

4.5.4. Dependent clause constructions ...... 69

4.5.5. Conjunctions and questions ...... 70

5. Similar grammatical features in Tok Pisin and Jamaican Patois due to English ...... 72

5.1. Form, position and use ...... 72

5.2. Position and use ...... 74

5.3. Use ...... 80

6. Conclusion and future outlook ...... 83

References ...... v

References for figures ...... viii

Table of figures ...... viii

List of tables ...... viii 1

1. Introduction

“Language is a process of free creation; its laws and principles are fixed, but the manner in which the principles of generation are used is free and infinitely varied. Even the interpretation and use of words involves a process of free creation” (Chomsky 2003, 402).

Language creation takes place in situations in which groups of human beings with different cultures and, consequently, diverse have to converse with each other, even though no mutual language is accessible. The result of this is the development of common, though linguistically reduced mixed speeches defined as pidgins and creoles (Bakker 1995, 25).

Although such languages are highly significant today and are thus found all over the world, as

Figure 1 and 2 indicate, they have not always been seen in a positive way (Kaye and Tosco

2003, 10-11). This negative attitude was mainly due to the fact that pidgins and creoles have adopted numerous words from other languages, in particular European languages such as

English, imperfectly and thus, were considered by many scholars as inferior forms of their source languages, which were often termed as “broken English” (Holm 2000, 1).

However, this view changed after recognising the potential of the grammatical system of the pidginised and creolised languages. Since the linguistic systems are individually formed and, consequently, differ widely from the ones of their input languages, they are today regarded as new and properly structured speeches (Holm 2000, 1). In addition to this, it has been found that research on pidgin and creoles can aid in to further discover how natural languages are actually developed and acquired in the human brain (Kaye and Tosco, 8), mainly because of the fact that most of them originated in a time frame of 350 years to the present and can therefore be retraced (Wekker 1996, 139).

Two of these developed languages are the creoles Tok Pisin and Jamaican Patois. Tok Pisin, a creole that has English as its lexifer (Holm 2000, 95-96), is applied to many different private and communal purposes all over Papua New Guinea in the Pacific Ocean 2

(Mühlhäusler 2003, 1-2) and is now attained as a uniform language to enable communication among approximately 5.1 million residents and 750 indigenous speeches (Tryon and

Charpentier 2004, 9). Jamaican Patois (Sebba 2002, 228) - also referred to as Jamaican Patwa by its communicators, or named Jamaican Creole (Patrick 2004, 407) - is applied as a communication tool by most inhabitants of (Sebba 2002, 204), which is regarded as the most prominent country for the usage of such an English-based creole (Holm 1989, 469).

The preferred and thus, most used term in this thesis is Jamaican Patois.

Although Tok Pisin and Jamaican Patois are spoken very far from each other today, they have one important thing in common, namely English as their base language. This mutual unit aroused a great deal of interest to make a comparative analysis between the languages Tok Pisin and Jamaican Patois, though not from a general point of view, but in terms of their linguistic systems. In order to do this, the following question was raised: which linguistic similarities are available between the two creoles due to the impact of English? In addition to this, it became extremely motivating to find out how these features are related to each other. Since, however, their linguistic systems are extremely broad, it has been decided that the focus will mainly be on the syntax. Therefore, the main aim of this paper is to discuss the relation of common grammatical structures between Tok Pisin and Jamaican Patois that have been directly taken over from their source language of English and thus, have not been created during the developmental process of the creoles.

Before giving a brief overview of how the diploma thesis is ordered, it needs to be noted that some authors have given their opinion on some similarities. I incorporated them in this comparative analysis, but added my personal findings, as well as interpretations.

With regards to the structure of this diploma thesis, it is divided into five chapters. The main body starts with the explanation of the emergence of pidgins and creoles, which implies the origin of both terms and different developmental stages. In order to understand which 3 factors could have triggered the origin of such languages, various contact situations and numerous theories will be highlighted.

The following chapter focuses on Tok Pisin. First, the role of Tok Pisin in the state

Papua New Guinea today will be shown. Then, its historical expansion, the distribution of the language in this country and a short prospect of its development in the future will be presented.

In addition to this, the linguistic growth of Tok Pisin through its various developmental stages will be shown using an example. After this, a close look at its syntactic, as well as morphological features with the help of numerous examples will be done. In this context, the stems that are from English will clearly be specified.

Chapter four discusses Jamaican Patois. This starts by providing general information on creole. After that, the development of the language and the prominent creole continuum, which offers valuable insight into the progress of this language and its effects on the speakers will be shown. Furthermore, the recreolisation process and a survey, in which selected inhabitants assessed the view of the creole as a language, will be presented. Then, grammatical features of

Jamaican Patois will be indicated with the help of certain excerpts. In the same context, references to English will be made whenever possible.

Chapter five deals with grammatical similarities of Tok Pisin and Jamaican Patois with relation to English on the basis of three categories. In the last chapter, a conclusion on the similarities will be provided and a short future outlook on the development of equal features of both languages will be demonstrated. 1

1. Throughout the diploma thesis, the words in Tok Pisin and Jamaican Patois are written in italics, while the corresponding in English are treated with quotation marks or single quotation marks when they are mentioned within a quotation of selected examples. In many cases, the authors have provided such single quotation marks, in others, however, they have not been indicated and thus, have been added by me with a clear reference. All examples that include phrases or sentences are treated within quotation marks, even the sentences that are written in Tok Pisin and Jamaican Patois. 4

2. Pidgins and creoles

Figure 1 and 2, provided by Arends, Muysken and Smith (1995), show the distribution of pidgins and creoles on earth. A separated figure is offered by them to indicate the numerous languages in the . In Figure 1, it can be seen how far apart Tok Pisin and Jamaican

Patois actually are from each other (see red arrows - added by me).

Figure 1: A selection of pidgins, creoles, and mixed languages without the Caribbean Source: Arends, Muysken and Smith 1995, xv.

Figure 2: A selection of creoles in the Caribbean Source: Arends, Muysken and Smith 1995, xv. 5

In order to comprehend pidgins and creoles and thus, to understand Tok Pisin and Jamaican

Patois more precisely, it is necessary for this paper to explain how such languages are established, as well as developed, which will be discussed in the following subchapters.

2.1. Development of pidgins

According to Mühlhäusler (1997), it is not entirely clear where the word pidgin actually came from since there are many different theories available (1). Kaye and Tosco (2003) point out that the word pidgin might have been created because Chinese people could not correctly say “. . . the English word ‘business’” (14-15). Mühlhäusler (1997) argues that the term might also be descended from pidjom, the word for trade in the Hebrew language or from the “. . .

South Seas pronunciation of English ´beach´ (beachee) . . .” (1). For these reasons, as

Mühlhäusler further claims, each theory might be responsible for the naming of the term (1).

Pidgins are seen as helpful communication tools to surmount the language barrier among linguistically diverse groups of human beings, in particular when there is no other shared language accessible and when the participants do not want to or are not able to acquire the speech of their counterparts (Sebba 2002, 14), for instance, due to certain purposes, such as distrust (Holm 2000, 5). Thus: “Pidgins are examples of partially targeted second language learning and second language creation . . .. Pidgin languages by definition have no native speakers – they are social rather than individual solutions – and hence are characterized by norms of acceptability” (Mühlhäusler 1997, 6).

When being created, a pidgin obtains features from each of the languages involved in the developing process; hence, it is often regarded as a mixture between them (Sebba 2002, 25). In such cases, according to Holm (2000), people who have limited social power, mainly speakers of local languages or also termed as the substrate, tend to apply lexical items from the dominant group of people, such as Europeans (5). Thus, most words, approximately 80% (Mühlhäusler 6

1997, 102), of a pidgin are provided by one language, the so-called lexifer or also termed as the superstrate language (Sebba 2002, 25). Since they cannot fully acquire all the functions of this language in a short time, a simplified, as well as restricted variety of the lexicon is learned

(104), which means that only the linguistic features that are needed to create a communication for a certain situation are implied (Velupillai 2015, 15). Therefore, the lexical items in a pidgin language are usually minimised. This reduction, however, is balanced to some extent as the meanings of these words are either expanded or used in another context (Holm 2000, 5).

Moreover, as most pidgins evolve due to the influence of European colonies in particular countries, it can be said that in many cases European languages, such as English or French, are the lexifers for a vast number of pidgins, e.g. Tok Pisin (Sebba 2002, 25). If, for instance, the superstrate language English provides most of the lexical items for a pidgin, the latter is then termed as an English-based pidgin (Todd 1984, 3). However, the languages of the colonisers cannot be generally accepted as the lexifers as some pidgins have non-European languages as their superstrates (Sebba 2002, 25), or have received an equal number of words from both languages (Mühlhäusler 1997, 5).

In terms of the grammatical features of a pidgin, they are in most cases provided by the participating subordinated language, the substrate (Sebba 2002, 25), which influences the lexical items of the dominant language. Consequently, the structure, the meaning and hence, also the way in which the items are applied in the superstrate language might be modified, while inflections or other complex constructions will be simplified or no longer used. The dominant group acquires the majority of these modified grammatical items so that they are able to communicate with their counterparts. As a consequence, they stop speaking the language previously applied in their own community, such as their mother tongues and thus, exclusively use the newly developed language (Holm 2000, 5). Whenever this is the case, a new language 7 develops in which the functions, as well as the structures are limited in comparison to the superstrate, as well as substrate languages (Mühlhäusler 1997, 162).

Furthermore, with the naming of superstrate and substrate languages, speakers of the local speeches appear to have an inferior part whenever a pidgin is created. Thus, they are often considered to be less important compared to the communicators of the lexifer. This approach, however, needs to be criticised as it has been proven that the syntax unquestionably plays an important role in the structure of such pidginised and creolised languages (Sebba 2002, 25-26).

According to Smith (2002), it can hardly be argued that the lexicon of a language is more significant than its grammar (24). In addition to this, in some cases, it is impossible to precisely define the dominant language, as well as the subordinate speech as such languages have contributed an equivalent amount to the formation of a pidgin. These languages are then called adstrates and not termed as superstrate or substrate (Sebba 2002, 25-26).

Pidgins can develop through various phases, also called stages, for the use of different purposes ranging from conversations with restricted issues, such as bargains, to perhaps more complex discussions, such as important debates in the parliament. Whenever the language of communication is needed for a more demanding purpose, the functions, as well as the structure of a pidgin grow and thus, it develops into a highly complex linguistic system. These pidgins, e.g. Tok Pisin, will usually be in use for a long time if adequate circumstances are given. Such a developmental continuum, however, cannot be applied to all pidgin languages. For example, if a pidgin is no longer required (Sebba 2002, 100-01), or if the communication is not to be continued (Todd 1984, 3), it is very likely that it has a short life span and might therefore soon go extinct (Sebba 2002, 101). 8

The developmental stages of a pidgin are described in more detail below; (see Figure 3):

Figure 3: Developmental stages of pidgins and creoles Source: Mühlhäusler 1997, 6.

The first stage, which is also referred to as the one poorly structured, in the process of the formation of a pidgin is called jargon (Sebba 2002, 102). It is characterised by a handful of simple expressions (Mühlhäusler 1997, 5), a restricted lexicon and insecure grammar (Sebba

2002, 102). Thus, it evolves mainly impulsively, for instance when tourists simplify their mother tongues for a short time in order to buy something from a merchant in a country that speaks a different language. Fixed structures (Holm 2000, 5), as well as standardised rules in which way such features need to be applied cannot be found (Sebba 2002, 103). According to

Mühlhäusler (1997), there is no need for such patterns considering the fact that it is only applied for short conversations that are constrained in its context (5) by speakers with different speeches

(Sebba 2002, 103).

In addition to this, speakers of a jargon do not care whether the words or phrases are properly used while talking as their overall aim is only to successfully speak to a person in order to make a deal with them (Sebba 2002, 103). Since the functions of such a jargon only serve for the time of a particular contact situation, they have to be recreated by participants in every new situation (Velupillai 2015, 19).

In a few situations, the jargon might be used more frequently and thus, might further evolve into a stable pidgin. This is regarded as the second stage, which implies an individual linguistic 9 system (Sebba 2002, 105). This, however, can only take place when the pidgin is no longer influenced by any other base language. Since regular structures in terms of the lexicon, as well as the grammar are created, in contrast to the jargon, the high degree of variability of diverse features is limited here. The functions of these features, however, are not expanded; instead they are restricted and thus, sometimes fail to fulfil some of the needs of their own speakers in comparison to first languages (Mühlhäusler 1997, 162). This is mainly due to the fact that the process of stabilisation in terms of syntax takes place incrementally, meaning that not all of the features are changed at once (138). As a consequence, Velupillai (2015) argues that this pidgin cannot serve as a first language for a particular group of people (20).

Moreover, this stabilised pidgin does not evolve into the next stage if it is further applied for numerous limited functions as its features remain restricted (Sebba 2002, 106).

Nevertheless, it might be in use in this stage for a long time, years or centuries in particular, if the contact situation, in which the language is used, is continued (Velupillai 2015, 20). If this is the case, the stabilised pidgin language is considered to be extremely significant for its communicators (Mühlhäusler 1997, 162).

However, if the pidgin grows further, it might move into the expanded stage, also known as the extended stage. Then, this pidgin, though only applied as a second language, is considered to be similar to “normal” languages, as it is characterised by a complete linguistic system and thus, offers an enormous range of functions. For example, it might be applied as a communication tool in churches, in newsletters or in hymns, to name only a few. Therefore, apart from being acquired as a mere spoken variety, such as it was the case with jargon, it is now also used as a written language, which implies a high degree of stylistic variation (Sebba

2002, 106-07). In addition to this, due to its expanded features, in many cases, this pidgin serves as a lingua franca for a vast number of human beings of a certain society (134). If this is the 10 case, this particular form of a pidgin is most likely to develop into a creolised language (107).

Such an occurrence will be discussed in the following subchapter.

2.2. Development of creoles

In order to understand why creoles are called that today, Holm (2000) clearly describes the genesis, as well as the development of this term, starting with the Latin word creare, which means “to create” in English (9). The word creare further evolved into the Portuguese expression criar translated into English “to raise somebody”. In addition to this, it became the suffix crioulo in the Brazilian language, which was applied to designate newly born people from Europe and from Africa. Due to another expansion of the word, where it reached its ultimate meaning, it began to be used to indicate the conventions and the language of the newly born people in Europe and Africa. As a consequence, the term was adopted by a vast number of languages, such as English, where it became the lexical item “creole” (Holm 2000, 9).

According to Todd (1984), whenever a pidginised language turns into the native speech for a vast number of human beings of a certain community, in particular children who apply the pidgin acquired by their parents as their mother tongue, it is named a creole (4). With the help of their linguistic capacity, the children, also known as the next generation, apply the imperfect speech of their parents and refine its features into a new linguistic system (Mühlhäusler 1997,

8), -see Figure 4- so that they are able to talk about their entire linguistic requests without being constrained in their expressions (Todd 1984, 4). This system then consists of complicated grammatical structures, such as it is seen in other native languages (Holm 2000, 7). Due to the fact that the complexity of the structure of the creole has increased in contrast to the pidgin, the language of the children varies significantly from the reduced version of their parents; hence, it is often incomprehensible to them (Mühlhäusler 1997, 8). In such situations, it needs to be pointed out that this language can simultaneously be applied to a pidgin as well as a creole merely for two distinguished groups of communicators (Sebba 2002, 134). 11

Figure 4: Creole - a native language Source: Mühlhäusler 1997, 8.

Due to this development, the creole is a highly flexible and creative language, which cannot be compared to any extended form of a pidginised language (Todd 1984, 4). Such creoles, which are also called hybrid languages as they have their origins in two different languages and are influenced by diverse cultural backgrounds (Mühlhäusler 1997, 7).

According to Sebba (2002), a vast number of scholars claim that the development of a creole does not necessarily take place in a constant order involving all the above mentioned stages

(108). This means that it can arise from any phase, no matter whether it is the jargon, the more stabilised form of a jargon or the extended pidgin (Sebba 2002, 108); (see Figure 5).

Since the formation of creoles is not a uniform process, Mühlhäusler (1997) provides three different types of such languages (9); (see Figure 5). The first type is applied when a jargon immediately evolves into a creole (Mühlhäusler 1997, 8-9). This is the case, when children are born into societies where the language of their parents is still an unstable pidgin. This process is characterised by a rapid development occurring mainly within one generation, but without the growth of a stabilised or expanded pidgin (Sebba 2002, 134-35). As Mühlhäusler (1997) observes, only a minority of creoles, such as the Tayo of , belong to this type

(9).

The second type refers to creoles that arise from stabilised pidgins, such as the North

Australian Kriol, without the development of an expanded pidgin. Moreover, the third type is used when all stages, even the expanded pidgin, are implied in the creolisation process. The 12 majority of creoles, such the West African PE, are part of this type (Mühlhäusler 1997, 9), which undoubtedly has the slowest developmental process (Sebba 2002, 135). As a result, the structure of the creoles is related to the one of the pidgin from which it develops (101).

Figure 5: Different types of creoles Source: Mühlhäusler 1997, 9.

According to Sebba (2002), the first and the second type are relatively rare as they only appear when children would acquire any non-extended pidgin but not the one of their parents, for example in slavery (108).

In addition to this, the creole is not necessarily regarded as the last stage of the above described phases as it can further develop into the so-called post-creole, which is characterised by the decreolisation process (Smith 2002, 209). This means that after being an independent language for a long time, the creole might have close contact with its lexifer again. As a consequence, it might adopt some of the linguistic features of the source language and might become similar to it (Mühlhäusler 1997, 211). If worst comes to worst, it might lose all of its grammatical and lexical functions. Since it is often the case that not all speakers adopt the new version of the creole, and some only a close form of it, different varieties of the same creole are then the outcome of this decreolisation process, which is referred to as a continuum (Smith

2002, 209). According to DeCamp (1971), such a linguistic situation can clearly be seen in terms of the creolised language in Jamaica (350), which is precisely explained in chapter 4.2. 13

According to Sebba (2002), apart from showing how pidgins and creoles develop in terms of their linguistic systems, it is also important to discuss various contact situations, from a social point of view, in which a vast number of pidgins and creoles emerged (26).

2.3. Various pidgin and creole types

According to Velupillai (2015), as some of the existing pidgins have their origin in a combination of numerous or even all contact situations, it is difficult to draw a clear line between the following categories (24). Although Sebba (2002) has the same opinion as

Velupillai, he, nevertheless, claims that a classification is valuable and thus provides seven different types for that (26), which are demonstrated as follows:

1. The first type, the so-called military and police pidginised language, refers to situations

in which soldiers or police officers from different linguistic, as well as racial

backgrounds came into contact and needed to live with each other for a long time. Since

they needed a common language in order to talk to each other, a pidgin developed,

which promptly served as a communication tool among these people. For example, the

pidgin Juba Arabic applied in South Sudan, which has its original lexifer in the Arabic

language, belongs to this type (Sebba 2002, 27).

2. Pidgins and creoles that emerge from seafaring or trade situations are categorised in the

second type. The majority of such languages originated from a mixture of both situations

as the crew members of ships were often regarded as traders, as well. Sabir, the pidgin

and ancestor of the later developed Portuguese-based creoles in , is one

example for this as various sailors from Portuguese transmitted this language to the

prevalent slave trade in West Africa, where it soon served as a means of communication

for linguistically diverse people (Sebba 2002, 28).

Moreover, there are some pidgins and creoles which evolved exclusively from a trade

situation, meaning that no seafarer’s pidgin was part of the process, e.g. the so-called 14

Chinook Jargon used to trade fur in the Northwest of America (Sebba 2002, 28).

According to Velupillai (2015), trade does not automatically occur with the help of

ships, although this was often the case in the past (24). In contrast to the trading

situation, only a minority of pidgins were solely created on ships, as in many cases the

crew spoke the same language and thus, no foundation for the development of such a

language was provided (Sebba 2002, 28).

3. Furthermore, whenever labourers with different languages came into contact on

plantations, the so-called plantation pidgins and creoles were developed. Such situations

occurred mainly in the colonisation period where European colonisers built a vast

number of plantations in diverse countries and occupied many cheap workers, such as

indigenous people, as well as migrants. When their work was over, most of them moved

back to their families and consequently, distributed the new language, the pidgin, among

their home town. In terms of slaves, as they did not leave the plantations, they were

more or less responsible for the establishment of a creole within the plantation. Since

the pidgins in , New Guinea (Tok Pisin) or the creoles in the Caribbean

(Jamaican Patois) and many others evolved from such a plantation system (Sebba 2002,

29-30), this type serves an important basis for the understanding of these languages

(Velupillai 2015, 27).

4. The fourth type involves pidgins that arise in mine and construction situations. The

development of such pidgins is similar to those of the plantations due to the fact that

after working in mines or other construction areas under multilingual conditions, many

labourers returned to their families and consequently, distributed the learned pidgin, e.g.

Pidgin A-70 spoken in Cameroon (Sebba 2002, 30).

5. Another situation that may be responsible for the development of a pidgin-like variety

is immigration. This takes place when immigrants have only restricted interactions with 15

the local people and thus, acquire merely some words of the indigenous language. One

example of this category is the language Gastarbeiterdeutsch (Sebba 2002, 31).

6. Moreover, tourist pidgins are extremely common all over the world as they are evolved

when consumers and vendors from linguistically diverse backgrounds come into

contact. Due to the fact that these languages are rather ephemeral, they cannot entirely

be regarded as correct tourist pidgins. In order to create such a proper pidgin, the two

communicators need to see each other regularly, for instance through frequent visits by

the tourists. As such continuity is, however, rather seldom, only one possible example

for such a pidgin has been observed so far, namely in Bangkok where street vendors

have adopted a particular pidgin with English as its lexifer in order to converse with

tourists (Sebba 2002, 31).

7. The ultimate type of pidgins and creoles implies pidgin-like in urban contact

situations. Such languages are mainly created among young citizens who belong to

culturally, as well as linguistically different impoverished communities. These societies

are established when, for instance, tons of people from rural areas move to specific parts

of a city in order to improve their social standards, but fail to gain such fortunate

circumstances. Sheng, also known as Swahili-English, spoken in Nairobi and Kenya,

can be assigned to this type (Sebba 2002, 32).

Apart from the above mentioned social circumstances, the following chapter discusses assumptions about the genesis of pidgin and creoles in order to understand such languages in all their aspects.

2.4. Different theories of origin

Although there are more theories available, the following are considered by Sebba (2002) as highly significant and thus, most appropriate for explaining the evolution of pidgins and also of creoles (72). 16

Monogenesis and relexification: Since there are many resemblances among a vast number of pidgins and creoles on earth, regardless of their geographical location and their lexifers, this approach suggests that all these languages share the same progenitor. This means that the contact languages that exist today are connected to a prevalent Mediterranean-based pidgin

(Sebba 2002, 72-73), which derived most vocabulary items from Portuguese during its formation probably around 1600 (Mühlhäusler 1997, 103). Kaye and Tosco (2003) claim that the mentioned language was considered to be a variety of Sabir, which served as a lingua franca in the Mediterranean area at that time (57). With the help of European colonies, this language was brought to a vast number of different countries and consequently, provided the basis for other pidgins, as well as creoles (Sebba 2002, 73).

The creation of the latter named languages was possible with the help of the relexification process, which is regarded as a significant part of the monogenetic theory. This notion claims that once Sabir was used by a vast number of French, Spanish and English colonisers, to name only a few, the majority of its lexical items were substituted by words from the above mentioned

European speeches. Although a lexical shift took place, the grammar of the proto-pidgin, however, remained almost the same (Sebba 2002, 73). In other words, the lexicon was provided by the coloniser’s language, while the grammar was still from the source pidgin (Kaye and

Tosco 2003, 57).

This theory is supported by the fact that some lexical features of this proto-pidgin are still visible in a substantial number of today’s pidgins and creoles. For example, the word savvy meaning “know” remained constant in Tok Pisin as save, in the West African Pidgin English and Jamaican Patois as sabi, to name only a few. Although this theory clarifies the genesis of numerous languages, and thus, also their resemblances among each other (Sebba 2002, 73), it is criticised by Velupillai (2015) since it fails to imply pidgins and creoles that have not developed from European languages (146). 17

Similar to the monogenesis is the approach of nautical jargon, which proposes that many pidgins and creoles could have also emerged from only one French- or English-based pre-pidgin spoken on ships (Sebba 2002, 76). Mühlhäusler (1997), however, criticises this view to some extent as he argues that it is not entirely clear whether or not, and thus, also to which extent mariners influenced the linguistic systems of pidgins and creoles even though they certainly played an important role in spreading speeches all over the world (96).

Polygenesis and independent parallel development: This theory claims that pidgins and creoles emerged from numerous independent roots and not only from one base language as the monogenetic theory maintains. Although these languages might not have had the same initial phase, resemblances in terms of grammatical features might have occurred due to similar series of actions or methods during their developmental processes. Since the influence of the

Portuguese-based pidgin can be found almost everywhere on earth mainly because of European colonies, it has been a long time until linguists have found pidgins which apply to this theory and not to the monogenetic one. For example, numerous pidgins in Asia, Africa and in the

Oceanic area, such as Juba Arabic or Pidgin Fijian, show grammatical similarities though they are clearly not linked to European languages. For these reasons, in order to refer to all pidgins, it somehow needs to be argued that more than one ancestor language is responsible for the emergence of pidgins and creoles (Sebba 2002, 76-77).

Universalist theories: According to Muysken and Veenstra (1995), these theories propose that grammatical similarities of pidgins and creoles mainly occur because of universal linguistic features, which are generally produced in a human brain when learning a language (121). Todd straightforwardly explains this approach with the following statement: “…pidgins and creoles are alike because, fundamentally, languages are alike, learning processes are alike and simplification techniques are alike” (Todd 1984, 26). As a result, since many pidgins and creoles show similar features, even though their base languages do not imply these structures 18

(Muysken and Veenstra 1995, 121), the universalist theory, which might refer to all of these languages, proposes to be the most feasible and adequate approach to understand the evolution of linguistic features in pidgins and creoles (Mühlhäusler 1997, 112).

Even though Sebba (2002) refers to the common core theory, as well, he claims that this approach is remarkably similar to the universalist concept as the common core of syntactic features among numerous speeches can also be regarded as linguistic universals; hence, it is often difficult to make a clear distinction between them (78). Therefore, a further explanation about this theory will not be given.

Substrate theories: Since substrate languages often have the same syntactic features, these theories suggest that they are responsible for the resemblances among a substantial number of pidgins and creoles. This situation, however, is only possible when local languages actually have some structures in common, which are then adopted by pidgins when being established.

For example, although Jamaican Patois and originated from different lexifers, namely English and French, as well as different substrates, such as diverse West African languages in the Caribbean in times of slavery, they have many mutual features. The main reason for this is that these West African speeches were related to each other and thus, shared similar structures, which were then absorbed by the above mentioned creoles during their individual developments (Sebba 2002, 78).

After having provided a general insight into pidgins and creoles from a linguistic, social and historical point of view, the creoles Tok Pisin and Jamaican Patois will now be discussed in more detail, starting with Tok Pisin in the following chapter.

19

3. Tok Pisin

According to Smith (2002), the English-based creole Tok Pisin (17) is besides the local speech Hiri Motu and English acknowledged as a nationwide official language of the state

Papua New Guinea (21). Unlike the other languages, it is acquired by the majority of inhabitants, namely by an estimation of approximately three to five million human beings

(Smith and Siegel 2013, 214); thus, its use as means of communication is distributed almost all over the country (Tryon und Charpentier 2004, 10), (see Figure 6). Its appearance is regarded as highly significant as it functions as a major language of interaction (Mühlhäusler 2003, 1-2) in this nation, which is home to a fifth of the languages known on earth (Smith 2002, 8). Today, while most communicators of Tok Pisin attained it as their second language, for a substantial and rapidly increasing number of citizens, this speech is already the mother tongue (200).

Furthermore, it is applied to a vast number of different purposes (Mühlhäusler 2003, 1), e.g. in the holy books, as a communication tool in public administration, as well as in Wantok, a newspaper, which is published once in a week in Papua New Guinea, to name only a few (Tryon und Charpentier 2004, 10). According to Smith (2002), due to the fact that not many newspapers are written in a pidginised language, this is highly remarkable for Tok Pisin (4). Prior to Tok

Pisin, other names were taken for this language, such as Melanesian Pidgin or New Guinea

Pidgin (Mühlhäusler 2003, 2). Even though English is regarded as one of the creoles’ source languages (Smith 2002, 17), people who speak English, but not Tok Pisin, cannot understand it

(Holm 2000, 96). 20

Figure 6: A map of Papua New Guinea Source: Mühlhäusler 2003, 3.

In order to understand the importance of Tok Pisin today, as well as its grammatical system, it is necessary to demonstrate the languages’ historical development.

3.1. History of Tok Pisin

Romaine (1992) sees Tok Pisin as a relatively young contact language considering the fact that the evolution from its earliest stage to its contemporary usage has taken place within approximately 150 years (1). Its emergence started when numerous residents of the Bismarck

Archipelago were recruited by the Germans in order to work on their plantations in in the year 1878. After arriving there, they were perhaps exposed to an existing English-based jargon, which was used by inhabitants from who had come to this working place in

1865 (Mühlhäusler 2003, 5). Since they could neither talk to each other nor to the Europeans due to a diverse linguistically background, they needed a particular language that was understandable for all participants (Smith 2002, 14). As a consequence, they declined the 21 various available speeches and stabilised them into one major language, namely Tok Pisin, which then functioned as a lingua franca there. During their approximately five year stay, they further expanded the structure of the pidgin and took it with them when returning home to the

Bismarck Archipelago (Mühlhäusler 2003, 5).

One significant factor for the growth of Tok Pisin was that the leaders, as well as the commanders of the plantations were not English, but Germans (Mühlhäusler 2003, 5) due to the fact that the latter governed New Guinea at that time. Since English was not truly present in this country (Romaine 1995, 86), the creole could not use it as a prototype in order to develop similar constructions. As a result, Tok Pisin build up its own structures, and soon amplified its range of lexical items (Mühlhäusler 2003, 5), which, apart from English, involved certain features of German and of numerous indigenous languages due to the above mentioned reasons

(Smith 2002, 17).

After their work on the plantations, the labourers distributed Tok Pisin to a vast number of villages at the beginning of the 20th century. In 1914, when the German regiment was replaced by the Australian government, Tok Pisin was further diffused to huge areas of the country.

Consequently, it was acquired as a second language in many different contact situations, such as at home or at different working places, e.g. in the government. In addition to this, since many different speeches existed at that time in New Guinea, Tok Pisin was applied as a communication tool in order to overcome the various linguistic differences (Mühlhäusler 2003,

6).

The positive and increasing growth of this pidgin into a stabilised language was stopped for a short time by WWII. Due to Japanese attacks, plantations and religious places were destroyed, where the language was previously mostly acquired. Therefore, a vast number of youths merely learnt a limited version of it. In addition to this, those who spoke Tok Pisin started to communicate with people of other English-lexified pidgins, which had a significant impact on 22 the structure of this pidgin. Moreover, since other troops arrived, German’s influence in the standardisation of the language was discontinued (Mühlhäusler 2003, 6-7).

Apart from the above mentioned detrimental factors of the war, a few beneficial effects could have also been observed. The Allies used it as a means of communication in numerous radios and in brochures. Due to this situation, its social position improved, which means that the pidgin was then considered as the language of free-speech and thus, no longer restricted to being the speech of the labourers. After 1945, the local government recognised its potential and applied it within their different departments, as well as in a substantial number of newspapers

(Mühlhäusler 2003, 7). Thus, apart from its mere use as a non-written language, it started to function as a as well (Romaine 1995, 86).

From this moment on, the language was further expanded from a social and geographical point of view. For instance, it started to standardise in churches and in the news. Since the people of New Guinea enhanced their degree of mobility, different sociolects of Tok Pisin emerged. This led to the fact that even indigenous people and migrants were in favour of this expanded pidgin, and thus, could learn it in many social settings (Mühlhäusler 2003, 7).

Furthermore, Tok Pisin was increasingly applied by members of families, in particular adults, who had different languages as their mother tongues (Sebba 2002, 107). The diversity of languages was mainly due to the fact that labourers from numerous plantations came to a particular area of the nation, e.g. Malabang a village in Manus, and married females who did not speak the same language (Mühlhäusler 2003, 4). After a while, beginning approximately in the 60s, children of these families gained the pidginised speech of their parents as their first or native language (Sebba 2002, 107) and as a consequence, were responsible for the fact that Tok

Pisin has developed into a creole (Verhaar 1995, 2). Nevertheless, it needs to be added that since these children were exposed to a multilingual context, they often attained more than one language as their mother tongue (Sebba 2002, 107). 23

Although Tok Pisin was still regarded as a significant language of communication for hundreds of different speeches (Romaine 1995, 85), due to the fact that the nation became independent, new circumstances arose, which changed the position and the features of this language. Since some territories gained enormous power, Tok Pisin was sometimes replaced by local languages. In addition to this, the prestigious language English became increasingly apparent in the country and strongly influenced the structure of Tok Pisin. Another factor was that the lexical items of the German language diminished in Tok Pisin as the Germans were no longer there (Mühlhäusler 2003, 7-8). The following subchapter explains the current situation of Tok Pisin and attempts to make a prognosis of its development.

3.2. Present-day use and future prospects of Tok Pisin

According to Mühlhäusler (2003), today, Tok Pisin is divided into different varieties, which are available in the whole country (3-4). The first one is named bush pidgin or also referred to as Tok Bus, which is mainly applied in isolated areas (Mühlhäusler 2003, 4). Verhaar

(1995) claims that in these regions most residents prefer speaking their indigenous language rather than the bush pidgin (4). Tok Bilong Asples is another , regarded as the conventional version of Tok Pisin and mainly applied in rural villages (Mühlhäusler 2003, 4).

Although English is to some extent spoken there as well, this variety of Tok Pisin is more desired by local people, in particular when it comes to religious activities (Verhaar 1995, 4).

As Mühlhäusler (2003) points out, the third dialect, which is known as the urban variety of Tok Pisin, can either be termed as Tok Bilong Taun or Tok Skul (4). Romaine (1995) claims that this variety has adopted many features of English and as the name implies, is used mainly in cities among highly educated inhabitants who are frequently in contact with speakers of the

English language (86). Tok Masta, the fourth dialect, is used by people of the colonies who had no ambition to acquire the Tok Pisin generally applied by the inhabitants. The structures of this dialect are considered to resemble those of English rather than those of Tok Pisin. As a 24 consequence, people who speak Tok Masta often struggle to comprehend those of the other of Tok Pisin, and vice versa (Mühlhäusler 2003, 4).

The above mentioned lexical differences of Tok Pisin have primarily emerged due to various contact situations with the lexifer English, as well as with the culture of the colonisers in the country, whereby it needs to be mentioned that merely a minority of indigenous people, primarily those who lived in cities, were exposed to English before Papua New Guinea gained independence. Today, these sociolects are acquired as pidgins and, as mentioned above, sometimes even as creoles (Mühlhäusler 2003, 3-4).

Furthermore, the contact between English and Tok Pisin has been extremely intense recently in numerous different social situations (Smith 2002, 202). In terms of future prospects,

Mühlhäusler (2003) argues that due to the influence of English and local vernaculars, a vast number of functions of Tok Pisin might perhaps decrease including the fact that it might stop being the main language of communication for the country (8). In addition to this, Tok Pisin speakers might start adopting frequently used words from English, no matter whether they entirely fit into their sentences or not (Smith 2002, 203). As a consequence, if English and Tok

Pisin are further used in close contact with each other for many years, it might be possible that

Tok Pisin takes over all the functions of its lexifer and thus, might unite with it in the end

(Mühlhäusler 1990b, 179). Such a scenario might occur if politicians stop supporting Tok Pisin in the future (Mühlhäusler 2003, 8). Due to this process, the position of Tok Pisin as an independent and stable language is highly in danger (12).

Nevertheless, this development is only speculation and cannot precisely be predicted as

Tok Pisin is still widely used as a mother tongue for numerous growing residents, which somehow indicates that it might continue to be applied in the future (Mühlhäusler 2003, 8). In addition to this, due to the impact of other existing speeches and various contact situations in

Papua New Guinea, new lexical features occur, which might help Tok Pisin to preserve its own 25 structures embedded in its own system (Smith 2002, 213). For these reasons, even though

English has always played an essential role in the existence of Tok Pisin (Mühlhäusler 1990b,

179), it cannot be argued at the moment that Tok Pisin has developed into a continuum like the one in the Caribbean (Smith 2002, 210).

Since the birth of Tok Pisin was not a long time ago in contrast to other languages, there is a vast amount of information about it accessible today, such as the precise documentation of the emergence of the linguistic features of the language (Mühlhäusler 1990b, 177). The latter is shown with an example in the following chapter.

3.2.1. Linguistic development of Tok Pisin

As has been noted, the creole Tok Pisin evolved from a simplified system to a compounded one (Mühlhäusler 2003, 8); thus, all the described developmental stages took place during its evolution (Sebba 2002, 134). According to Smith (2002), due to this process, it had a relatively long life span as a non-native language before it turned into one and hence, it is considered to be highly different compared to the pidgins and creoles that developed more rapidly (6).

Mühlhäusler (2003) demonstrates a text example that indicates how the grammatical structures of Tok Pisin could perhaps have looked like in the various stages, which will be presented consecutively, meaning from the earliest to the latest, starting with the jargon (9).

In order to understand the differences between the individual stages in terms of the linguistic features, it is important to show the individual expressions in English. The text is a shortened excerpt of the original one.

English: “On this island there are plenty of roads which allow people to go into the

interior . . .” (Mühlhäusler 2003, 9).

Jargon: “Plenty little road along island. You fellows can go inside.” English: “‘Many small roads on island. You fellows can go inside.’” (Mühlhäusler 2003, 9; single quotation marks added) 26

Since the person struggles to talk about their thoughts properly, the outcome is a radically reduced version of the languages involved, which contains certain characteristics. For example, the sentences in this expression are extremely short. While the impact of English is clearly visible in the syntactic, lexical and morphological features, such as fellows, the form “to be” is missing. In addition to this, some grammatical items have more than one function, such as

“plenty”, which is used as an adverb, as well as an adjective. In its source language English, however, this is not possible as it merely serves as an adjective (Mühlhäusler 2003, 10).

Stable pidgin: “Planti liklik rot i stap long ailan hia. Yumi ken go long ailan.”

English: “‘Many little roads exist on island here. We INC can go into the island.’” (Mühlhäusler 2003, 9; single quotation marks added)

The more complicated linguistic structure of the stabilised pidgin is no longer seen as a version of its lexifer as it has developed its own grammatical features. For example, the phonology of certain lexical components is in this phase completely different in comparison to

English mainly due to the fact that the of some of them, such as ailan “island”, have been made easier. In addition to this, words, such as liklik “small”, are newly created and can be regarded as a mixture of lexical items from diverse languages. Furthermore, the impact of local vernaculars on the grammatical system of Tok Pisin can clearly be observed when taking a look at yumi, which means “inclusive we” (shortened into INC - see above) in contrast to yupela, meaning “exclusive we” (Mühlhäusler 2003, 10). The exact difference between these two pronouns will be discussed in chapter 3.3.2.2.

Expanded pidgin: “I gat planti liklik rot long despela ailan long go insait long en.” English: “‘There are plenty of little roads on this island to go inside into it.’” (Mühlhäusler 2003, 9; single quotation marks added)

As compared to English, the extended pidgin offers a highly independent linguistic system.

For example, speakers of such a pidgin are able to extend the length of the sentences and make them more complicated. In addition to this, they are able to arrange the words in numerous ways 27 mainly due to the fact that many transformations can be made, such as in terms of i gat planti rot in the above mentioned example. Moreover, in this stage, some features are further expanded, such as the preposition long meaning for example “in, at, on” and many more, which can now be used as a conjunction, which also means “in order to” (Mühlhäusler 2003, 11).

Creole: “Lo tesela ailan I gat planti ol liklik rot lo go insait lo en . . .” English “‘On this island there are many PL small roads to go into it . . .’” (Mühlhäusler 2003, 10; single quotation marks added)

Whenever a pidgin develops into a creole, features of the former stages are further expanded or newly invented, which are then considered highly sophisticated. For example, in contrast to the extended pidgin, some of the items, mainly function words, are phonologically reduced, such as the preposition lo from long. Furthermore, while the particle ol before liklik is a mandatory plural marker in this example, in the previously described stages, it is not and thus, can be used optionally. As a consequence, although English is one of the source languages of this creole, with the help of the example, it becomes apparent that these two languages have almost nothing in common anymore (Mühlhäusler 2003, 11-12).

Apart from the creole, which is usually the last stage of such a developmental continuum, another phase, the so-called post-creole has recently emerged due to the intensive contact between English and Tok Pisin (Mühlhäusler 2003, 11-12).

Post - creole “I got plenti liklik rod on disfella ailan long go insaid.” English: “‘There are many small roads on this island to go in.’” (Mühlhäusler 2003, 12; single quotation marks added)

In the post-creole phase, some linguistic features of Tok Pisin are exchanged by those of the , which means that the structure, as well as the phonology of these lexical items then resemble those of the lexifer, such as got, which was formerly used as gat

(Mühlhäusler 2003, 12). Due to the above mentioned reasons and, according to Smith (2002), as Tok Pisin is permanently influenced by many different languages, e.g. English or other local 28 languages, its grammatical system is not static and thus, will further grow in the future (201).

Nevertheless, for the time being, in order to understand what is going on in the linguistic system of today’s Tok Pisin, the following chapter deals with the languages’ grammatical features.

3.3. Grammatical aspects of Tok Pisin

The grammatical features are explained, as well as analysed with the help of different examples. The latter are firstly provided in Tok Pisin and then translated into English. As the language offers a wide range of linguistic features, it is not useful to discuss the whole linguistic system. For this reason, the focus is fundamentally on the syntax, as well as on some parts of the inflectional morphology.

Since there are numerous different varieties of Tok Pisin available, Verhaar (1995) claims that he uses the mesolectal form of Tok Pisin, which is spoken in rural regions, when explaining grammatical features (4). The same applies to Faraclas (1990, 92).

3.3.1. Word order

Most sentences of Tok Pisin are usually ordered in the popular -verb- format as English, its source language, and many local vernaculars of Papua New Guinea; (see example

1 below). This order has been present since the creole had been further developed and consequently, stabilised as a proper language (Smith 2002, 115). It, however, is not exclusively constrained as it can be shifted in order to give priority to a particular information (163). This piece of information, also referred to as the topic, is then positioned at the beginning of a sentence to tell the listener that these details are extremely significant, regardless of whether the component is the subject and whether it fits the subject-verb-object structure. This is totally different to the English language, where the subject is normally positioned initially (161).

In Tok Pisin, the subject of a sentence often varies as it can either be a noun, a personal pronoun, or even a phrasal unit. Whenever a substantive is applied as a subject, a pronoun, such 29 as em in example 1, might immediately follow the mentioned item and thus, repeats it. This pronoun, also referred to as the resumptive pronoun, then precedes the verb (Verhaar 1995, 30).

1) “Renbo em i mak bilong promis.” “‘The rainbow is a sign of a promise.’” (Verhaar 1995, 29)

In addition to this, in Tok Pisin, there are, however, particular sentences that do not have a subject in contrast to English. This is the case when an impersonal subject, such as “it” in

English, instead of a personal one is included in a sentence. While in English the impersonal

“it” is totally fine as the subject, in Tok Pisin, this linguistic construction does not exist. Hence, in place of an impersonal subject, Tok Pisin speakers have acquired a different feature for this, namely the impersonal predicate marker i, which is positioned before verbs (Verhaar 1995, 29).

A closer instruction of this marker will be given in chapter 3.3.3.

Furthermore, in terms of objects, the direct one is usually set immediately after the transitive verb in a sentence unless an indirect object interferes, then it is placed after the indirect one, similar to the English language. While the above mentioned construction is used with numerous predicates in English, in the creole, it occurs merely with two in a certain context situation

(Verhaar 1995, 30-31), namely “. . . givim ‘to give’ and soim ‘to show’” (31).

Apart from the arrangement of the items in sentences, the following chapters take a close look at some individual grammatical components, starting with the noun and thus, also the noun phrase.

3.3.2. Noun phrase

Mühlhäusler (2003) claims that the majority of Tok Pisin speakers attempt to make noun phrases with only one noun; hence, complicated sentence structures, which involve numerous different features, are not produced (19). When speaking of bare nouns in noun phrases, they may either have a definite or a generic meaning. In order to indicate the latter, the verb save is 30 required, such as in example 2, while the former does not need such a particular feature

(Faraclas 2007, 366).

2) “Banana (i) save swit” “´Bananas are tasty´” (Faraclas 2007, 366)

Although the nominal phrase is considered to be rather simple in Tok Pisin, determiners nevertheless occur in order to describe the nouns, which might either be placed before or after them (Mühlhäusler 2003, 19). In terms of adjectives, for instance, whenever such a grammatical item precedes a noun, in most cases, the suffix -pela is added to it (Smith 2002, 62). Due to significant and recent impacts of Tok Pisin’s lexifer English, however, speakers of Tok Pisin might leave out the suffix -pela before such substantives (65). In addition to this, it is very common by a vast number of Tok Pisin communicators to place the particle ia directly after a human being in order to emphasise it. Although this indicator is not applied constantly (148), it has developed into an important grammatical function for native speakers of the creole (150).

Furthermore, as opposed to English “the”, a definite article, in fact, cannot be found at the moment (Velupillai 2015, 38) as many nouns have already a definite meaning and do not need an article to denote it. Indefinite articles, however, do exist, which are indicated with the numeral wanpela “one” and are merely found before singular nouns without a definite meaning

(Faraclas 2007, 366-67). In addition to this, dispela “this”, which is a demonstrative element, can also be applied as an article to refer to particular things or to emphasise them (Velupillai

2015, 38). Due to its current use, the latter might perhaps emerge with the help of grammaticalisation and thus, be defined as the new definite article in future (Smith 2002, 149).

Since nouns do not only occur in the singular, the plural is discussed in the following chapter.

3.3.2.1. Plural markers

The plural of nouns is usually indicated with the word ol, which in most cases needs to be placed before particular nominal constituents (Aitchison 1990, 15), such as in the example 31

“. . . ol man ‘men’ . . .” (20). Before human beings and the adjective sampela, which translated into “several” (20), - the latter might appear in Tok Pisin in order to designate an amount or a certain number of a particular word (Smith 2002, 147) - this marker definitely needs to be applied as it is mandatory. When it comes to nouns that are not alive, however, ol might be used, though it is not necessarily required (Aitchison 1990, 20-21). In addition to this, whenever a noun is depicted by an adjective, ol is normally set before both of them (18).

In reality, however, this is different, according to Smith (2002) as the use of ol depends mostly on the speaker and thus, it is sometimes not acquired in a sentence, although it often should have due to the above mentioned regulations (66). As a consequence, its occurrence often varies in a random way and thus, can no longer be seen as general standardised function among its speakers (Smith 2002, 69-70).

Furthermore, since English and Tok Pisin are again in extensive contact with each other today, speakers of the creole have adopted the suffix-s from its source language to indicate plural nouns, as well, besides using the optional marker ol (Smith 2002, 65). This is mostly the case in terms of plural words which have recently been taken over from English by the speakers of Tok Pisin without changing the form of these items (72). If a word, however, does not have its derivation from the English language but from another local , the suffix -s in most cases is not attached to it; yet rare exceptions are possible (74). The suffix -s is often applied unpredictably, particularly by speakers living in an urban environment; hence, it varies significantly in different sentences for instance by the same communicator (Mühlhäusler 1985b,

276 quoted in Smith 2002, 71). For some words, however, the s- suffix will soon be applied as a mandatory grammatical construction (Smith 2002, 210).

According to Aitchison (1990), while -s can be applied alone with nouns, it can also occur together with the above mentioned ol (15) as in “. . . ol sandwiches ‘sandwiches’ . . .”

(21). Due to the fact that the English element –s supports ol, they are in harmony with each 32 other for the moment. However, this might change in the future when speakers stop using one of them in order to make this plural construction easier (Aitchison 1990, 23). The combination of these two plural components is not possible when a certain noun is preceded by numbers, such as in “. . . tu wiks ‘two weeks’ . . .” (21). Apart from its function as a marker for plurality, the feature ol could also serve as a pronoun in the third person plural; (see subchapter below).

This, however, might be confusing in some cases, for instance when i, the grammatical indicator of the predicate is missing, as it is not entirely clear whether the plural marker or the plural pronoun is used (Smith 2002, 175).

3.3.2.2. Personal pronoun system

According to Velupillai (2015), the classification of the personal pronouns which might also appear as subjects and objects, is considered to be complicated to understand due to its numerous features (38); (see Figure 7 below).

Figure 7: Personal Pronoun Pattern Source: Mühlhäusler 2003, 17.

The first, second and third person singular are considered to be the same as the singular personal pronouns in English (Smith 2002, 76), although a significant difference in terms of the usage of the third person singular needs to be noted due to the fact that it does not indicate the 33 aspect of gender, meaning that em is a general term for “he, she, it” in English (Faraclas 1990,

114). As a consequence, since em does not distinguish between female, male or case, its meaning is sometimes vague and hence, may confuse listeners (Smith 2002, 154). Instead of em and to reduce the above mentioned confusion, speakers could apply proper nouns and add the particle ia, e.g, meri ia “the woman”. Such a construction is mostly applied when speakers struggle to identify the gender of a person that is spoken about from the context (174).

In contrast to English, the personal pronoun system implies a so-called dual and a trial number in addition to the “normal” plural one (see Figure 7). In Tok Pisin, the former one is taken when speakers talk about precisely two human beings, while the trial form, as the name denotes, designates three people (Velupillai 2015, 39). Therefore, tupela, “they two”, for instance, is only applied when speaking of people and thus, cannot occur with reference to things or plants. While the trial form, tripela “they three” usually has the same function as tupela, and hence, in most cases, appears with people, it has been observed that it might occasionally occur with inanimated lexical items, as well (Smith 2002, 80). According to Smith

(2002), apart from the above mentioned regulations, many Tok Pisin communicators in his research often applied ol when talking about only two human beings, as well (175).

Furthermore, while in English “you” is taken for the second person singular and plural, in

Tok Pisin, however, “you” is not a general item for them as there are two different forms given.

These are yu for one person and yupela for more than two people. Though it might be possible that yupela could lose its function to yu in the future, this has not taken place yet (Smith 2002,

81).

Another important function of the pronoun system is the use of inclusive and exclusive features in the first person dual, trial and plural form. For example, whenever a speaker uses the pronoun yumi “we all”, this means that the listener being communicated to is involved in a certain situation. If, however, the word mipela is used instead, the recipient of this 34 communication is excluded and thus, not part of an action. A considerable number of people who speak Tok Pisin as their second language struggle to apply the inclusive and exclusive variants appropriately in their sentences. The main reason for this is that these forms are not given in their mother tongues, and thus, these people have failed to acquire it correctly. In order to overcome the difficulty with inclusive and exclusive, yumipela has been developed, which is similarly applied as “we” in English and thus, does not imply the feature of such a distinction any longer (Mühlhäusler 2003, 17-18).

3.3.2.3. Preposition and possession

The most important preposition to indicate location in Tok Pisin is long, which means, to name only a few, “in, at, on, and to” in English (Faraclas 2007, 371). While in most cases, long precedes noun phrases (Todd 1984, 201), (see example 3), in some other situations it might occur after them in order to give them a more precise meaning, such as “. . . antap long ´on top of´ . . .” (Faraclas 2007, 371). According to Mühlhäusler (2003), since numerous prepositions of the lexifer English have been exchanged by the item long, it functions as a universal feature for many different prepositional clauses today (37). Nevertheless, it needs to be argued that whenever a verb of movement is applied and precedes a particular location, long is often left out by Tok Pisin speakers though it normally should be involved; hence, it is regularly absent

(Faraclas 2007, 371).

Furthermore, possessions may be indicated with the help of the preposition bilong “of”, which is placed between two nouns in order to show their relation with each other. While the main noun, also known as the possessed one, precedes bilong, the adjusted noun, the possessor, is placed after the preposition; (see example 3). Bilong, however, is not particularly necessary as two nouns can occur next to each other without the help of this possession marker to indicate possession. If this is the case, the possessor is then the main noun and will be placed before the adjusted noun, which is then the possessed one (see example 4). As the example shows, this 35 construction is clearly different from English, but resembles a vast number of local speeches

(Faraclas 2007, 368).

3) “Mi kam long haus bilong yu wantaim Peti” “´I came to your house with Peti´” (Faraclas 2007, 371)

4) “. . . pikinini Sipik ´a Sepik child.´” (Faraclas 2007, 368)

Apart from showing the features of a noun phrase, it is also important to discuss the functions of a verb phrase, which is demonstrated in the following chapters.

3.3.3. Verb phrase and predicate marker

According to Mühlhäusler (2003), the construction of a verb phrase might either occur with only a single verb or with the help of many (20). While verbs in Tok Pisin resemble the structure of the imperative form of English in most cases, such as kam “come”, some look rather like the , such as bruk “broke”. Even though they look similar, the verbs often do not have the same meaning as those in the lexifer, e.g., kranki “wrong”, which is derived from “cranky”

(Todd 1984, 205).

Todd argues (1984) that all the verbs in Tok Pisin are not adjusted in terms of the plural or a particular person, such as the following example shows: “Em i stap – ‘He stays’” (205; single quotation marks added). Hence, unlike English, the verbs remain in the same form and are not modified at all, not even when speakers say something in the past or in the future. Moreover, if they are not particularly labelled or if it is not obvious from context, stative verbs, such as save

“know”, usually indicate the present. Non-stative items, such as go “go”, in contrast, regularly show the past tense if they are not tagged with the help of certain indicators (Faraclas 2007,

356). However, in order to demonstrate different tenses for instance, a verb phrase might apply 36 determiners for this, which are positioned either before or after the verbs (Mühlhäusler 2003,

20). A closer explanation of this is provided in chapter 3.3.3.2.

As Mühlhäusler (2003) observes, in order to speak of a verb phrase, also known as the predicate, the predicate indicator i is generally necessary, which is set before such a unit (20);

(see example 5).

5) “Pik i bagarapim gaten.” “‘The pig ruined the garden.’” (Mühlhäusler 2003, 20; single quotation marks added)

According to Mühlhäusler (1990a), i descended from the English personal pronoun “he”, which was created during the development of the language and thus, did not function as an indicator for verb phrases from the beginning on (239). The predicate marker occurs only with subjects, such as pronouns or nouns, in the third person, no matter whether they are applied in the plural or in the singular and thus, not in any other (Verhaar 1995, 70), as well as in imperative constructions. Therefore, if other personal pronouns, such as mi and yu function as subjects and are placed before the verb phrase in questions, as well as declarative sentences, the predicate marker i is generally not applied (Mühlhäusler 1990a, 236-37); e.g. “. . . Mi les ‘I am tired’. . .” (Verhaar 1995, 70). If, however, a particle is positioned between them, then i needs to be included, such as “. . . Mi wanpela i les ‘I alone am tired’. . .” (Verhaar 1995, 70).

In addition to this, Smith (2002) argues that some speakers occasionally leave out i before a predicate; hence, its use varies substantially among them, which also means that it is more common in some areas of Papua New Guinea than in others (117-18). He further claims that the main reason for this could be that in some areas, the impact of local languages which also have such a marker was more significant on Tok Pisin than in other areas (200). While i plays a significant role in the speech of a vast number of Tok Pisin speakers today (117-18), due to a further development in terms of grammaticalisation, however, he further argues that i 37 could be directly attached to some verbs in order to arrange new lexical items in the future and thus, its feature for marking predicates could diminish (121).

Furthermore, the predicate in Tok Pisin can either be verbal or non-verbal whereas in

English, it can only be the former (Verhaar 1995, 28). While sentences normally occur with the inclusion of verbs, in Tok Pisin, however, the verb might be left out, such as the English word

“be”, also called the copula, in order to link two nouns with each other (Faraclas 2007, 364), e.g. “. . . Em i Praim Minista ‘He is the Prime Minister’ . . .” (Verhaar 1995, 28). As a consequence, there is no verb in the mentioned sentence, and hence, also no verbal predicate.

Whenever this is the case, the second noun phrase, such as Praim Minista, becomes the predicate, which is considered to be non-verbal as there are only nouns (28).

When it comes to copulas, the verb stap is needed in order to indicate a place or an existence with the help of an object that cannot be omitted (Faraclas 2007, 364); (see example

6). Besides its locative connotation, stap might also assist as an auxiliary particle to show the progressive tense; (see chapter 3.3.3.2 for further information). In addition to this, whenever speakers include adjectives after the verb, sentences with or without copulas are possible

(Faraclas 1990, 152). The main reason why it might be left out in such constructions is that adjectives are often applied as predicates and hence, do not need such a copula before them

(Faraclas 2007, 365).

6) “Yu stap long gaden.” “‘You are on the farm’.” (Faraclas 1990, 152; italics added)

3.3.3.1. Negation

According to Mühlhäusler (2003), responsible for the negation in Tok Pisin is the particle no (21), translated into English “not”, which is positioned directly after the predicate particle i and before the verb phrase; (see example 7). If, however, the predicate marker does not exist, the negation appears after the subject and before the predicate. Apart from no, a 38 second marker, the so-called nogat, might occur, particularly when giving a negative response to a preceding question. The phrase of this question, thus, does not need to be repeated by the speakers (Verhaar 1995, 39). In addition to this, with the help of sapos, which is generally placed before nogat, it might appear in if-sentences meaning “if not” (Smith 2002, 189).

7) “Em i no laikim mi.” “‘She does not like me.’” (Verhaar 1995, 39)

3.3.3.2. Tense, aspect and modality markers

In Tok Pisin, the various tense, aspect and modality markers are often regarded as ambiguous as some of them are part of a different class in comparison to those in English. For example, while in English the present continuous is part of the tenses, in Tok Pisin it belongs to the group of aspects (Smith 2002, 124). The differences between them are shortly summarised by Smith as follows: “In simple terms, tense, mood and aspect (hereafter TMA) markers grammaticalize various phenomena related to verb phrases, such as time, type of action and possibility of outcome” (Smith 2002, 124). Todd (1984) claims that they are indicated with the help of numerous auxiliary verbs and certain determiners (205), which are discussed below, starting with the tense markers:

Whenever the auxiliary verb bin is used, which originated from “been” in English, people talk about events in the past tense. Since, however, many items automatically refer to the past, although they look as if they were in the present, the past is generally not marked by a vast number of speakers and thus, bin is not particularly necessary (Smith 2002, 129-30). Therefore, in terms of non-stative verbs and when it is clear from context that speakers talk about the past, bin is optional (Faraclas 2007, 356). Nonetheless, when it is not clear from the information at which time an event has taken place, bin is a helpful tool to distinguish the present from the past tense (Smith 2002, 129-30). 39

If the component bin appears, it is positioned immediately in front of phrasal verbs or merely one verb, and also adjectives (see example 8). However, if the particle i, the indicator for verb phrases, and the item no “not” for negations, are applied, bin is usually not directly positioned before the verb. Although it was once thought otherwise due to the fact that it is not always needed, many communicators still use bin in their daily speech to mark the past tense, according to Smith’s research (Smith 2002, 129-30).

8) Past tense: “Mi bin save long yu” “´I knew you´” (Faraclas 2007, 356)

Bai, the second tense marker, is used to indicate that people are referring to the indefinite future. Approximately 60 years ago, due to the process of phonological reduction, bai emerged from the adverb baimbai meaning “by and by” in English. Before this process of grammaticalisation, instead of bai, baimbai served as a marker to show future situations

(Romaine 1992, 244-45), which however, no longer exists in the speech of Tok Pisin speakers

(Smith 2002, 126). The future marker bai is preferably positioned next to the subject of a noun phrase and thus, it is likely that it precedes predicative phrases; (see example 9). The second example shown below might also occur in this arrangement, though it is an older version of the placement of bai (Romaine 1992, 248).

9) (both is possible): “Mi bai go.” “‘I’ll go.’” (Romaine 1992, 245) “Bai mi go.” “‘I’ll go.’” (Romaine 1992, 245)

Apart from the tenses, the aspect markers are explained below with the help of examples.

In order to show the continuous form, the marker wok long or i stap can be used; (see example 10). The former one is placed before the verb, while the latter may be positioned after 40 it when referring to places. The continuous aspect might occur in the past tense, as well; hence only bin, the marker for this tense, needs to be positioned before them (Faraclas 2007, 357-58).

While active verbs usually occur together with the help of wok long, stative verbs, on the contrary, normally appear with the item i stap. In some cases, however, it might be possible that wok long, as well as stap may both be used to indicate the continuous form. If this situation occurs, wok long might then be set before the verb and stap after it in one sentence (Smith 2002,

133-34); (see example 10).

10) Continuous action: “Mi save olsem yu (wok long) wokabaut (i stap)” “´I know that you are walking´” (Faraclas 2007, 357)

Moreover, Tok Pisin speakers need the verb save, also known as sa or sae, translated into

English “to know”, to refer to general habits; (see example 11). If one of these constituents is not applied, habits are not indicated. While it might appear in the present tense, it may also be applied in the past or in the future for instance; hence only the corresponding markers need to be placed before it (Faraclas 2007, 358). In addition to this, save, often occurs superfluously and more often than it is actually needed by speakers of different parts of the country (Smith

2002, 132).

11) Habitudes: “Mi save wokabaut go wok” “´I always walk to work´” (Faraclas 2007, 358)

In addition to this, the verb pinis, derived from the English word “finish”, is usually positioned after the main verb and has the function of specifying a completed situation. It is, however, not always required when verbs or other items with reference to completion are applied and when this aspect is obvious from context. For example, the English past tense or future 2 might also be introduced with the help of pinis in combination with the 41 appropriate tense and aspect markers. If this is the case, the former remains after the predicate, while the latter precedes it (Faraclas 2007, 358-59).

12) Completed action: “Em i kam pinis – ‘He came/has come.’” (Todd 1984, 205; single quotation marks added)

Besides the above mentioned future marker bai, laik may also serve as an indicator for forthcoming situations in the future (Velupillai 2015, 39). In addition to this, laik might also be used to show that speakers like having a particular thing (Smith 2002, 128).

13) Proximate future action: “Em i no laik kaikai – ‘He won’t soon eat’” (Todd 1984, 206; single quotation marks added)

While the indicators of the tenses and aspects have already been discussed, the following takes a look at modality.

In Tok Pisin, the most frequent particles to indicate forms of modality are the items inap, ken and mas. Inap descended from the English lexical item “enough” and is used to show the feature of ability to do something. In addition to this, ken developed out of “can” and has the same role as in English, namely to serve for any form of permission (Velupillai 2015, 39). In some cases, however, the difference between the above mentioned modal markers is vague as ken might be used for capability, while inap may be applied for permission. As a consequence, the grammatical features of these modal markers are often turned upside down (Smith 2002,

137). The third form of modality is mas from “must”, which is a marker for duty (Velupillai

2015, 39), as well as a feature to indicate the truth (Smith 2002, 136). As they are placed similarly, only one example is shown by Todd (1984) as follows:

14) Obligation: “Ol i ken krungutim ain – ‘They can bend iron’ . . .” (Todd 1984, 205; single quotation marks added)

Apart from the above mentioned modality markers, Smith (2002) claims that other markers, e.g. “should”, “could or “will”, to name only a few, are rarely used by Tok Pisin speakers (137). 42

Since there are many tense, aspect and modality markers, which may appear together in one single predicative phrase, Sankoff (1991, 64 quoted in Smith 2002, 140) offers a diagram of how the individual items are usually arranged; (see Figure 8). While the items mas, as well as wok long have not been taken into consideration here, the future tense indicator bai has been left out as it is regarded to be not a part of this unit (Smith 2002, 140); (V stands for verb).

Figure 8: Tense, aspect and modality markers in one verb phrase Source: Sankoff 1991, 64 quoted in Smith 2002, 140.

As the above mentioned pattern is only a theoretical guideline, Tok Pisin speakers might not exclusively follow this structure while speaking (Smith 2002, 140-41). Another factor of the syntax of Tok Pisin is the establishment of clauses, which are discussed in the following chapter.

3.3.4. Dependent clause constructions

Faraclas distinguishes between subordinated clauses and relative clauses in the grammatical system of Tok Pisin. Adverbs, such as the items sapos translated into English “if” and taim, which means “when” in English may be positioned initially in a subordinated clause that is not incorporated in another one; (see example 15). The position of such a clause is not restricted as it can be before the main clause or after it. Whenever a subordinated clause is embedded in the main clause, the particle olsem English “that” might be used to introduce it. If this is the case, the subordinated clause is considered to serve as an object referring to a particularly mentioned verb in the preceding main clause. Apart from olsem, na translated into “and” can also be applied to start such a clause (Faraclas 2007, 361-62); (see example 16). According to Smith

(2002), due to the influence of English, some Tok Pisin speakers sometimes apply dhet from the English word “that” instead of olsem. As a consequence, he further argues that this item 43 might be used more frequently in the future and thus, might evolve into a significant feature of dependent clauses in Tok Pisin (161).

15) “Taim yumi go taun, bai yumi raun” “´When we go to town, we´ll walk around´” (Faraclas 2007, 361)

16) “Mipela hamamas olsem yu kam”. “´We´re happy that you´ve come´” (Faraclas 2007, 362)

Furthermore, in Tok Pisin, the introduction of a relative clause may either take place with the help of the relative pronouns husat translated into English “who” and we, which means

“where” in English, the element ia (no ) (Faraclas 2007, 362), and personal pronouns, such as em or any other pronoun that is suitable (Smith 2002, 150), e.g. the impersonal marker i; (see example 17), or without particular indicators. Whenever a subject of a relative clause gives reference to the one in the principal clause, all the above mentioned markers may appear in order to start the relative clause. In terms of an object, however, when describing a noun in the preceding main phrase, the introduction of the relative clause can only take place with the items husat and we, as well as the element ia (Faraclas 2007, 361-62).

17) “Meri ia (we) (i) gat kus ia i go haus” “´The woman who has a cold went home´” (Faraclas 2007, 362)

While husat and we, which are also used as interrogative particles, (see chapter 3.3.5.), are normally directly positioned after the subject of the principal clause in order to point to it, ia might either precede such a phrase or follow it (Faraclas 2007, 362). The pronoun we is generally applied when speakers refer to any form of locative position, but might also be taken when referring to human beings (Smith 2002, 153). In terms of husat, this relative marker merely occurs with people (151). Since ia may either occur as a relative pronoun or as a feature 44 to emphasise nouns, as mentioned in chapter 3.3.2., in many cases, it is not entirely obvious which one of them is taken and thus, the difference between them is often confusing (154-55).

Although these indicators are not necessarily needed for relativisation, as mentioned above, the pronouns, nevertheless, are frequently applied among a vast number of Tok Pisin speakers

(Smith 2002, 151). Therefore, they are considered to play an important part, in particular in the creolised variety of Tok Pisin (154).

The last chapter of the grammatical features of Tok Pisin, focuses on conjunctival elements and the establishment of questions.

3.3.5. Conjunctions and questions

Conjunctions: In order to link two nominal constituents together to create noun phrases

(Verhaar 1995, 160), or to group clauses to make longer and more complex sentences

(Mühlhäusler 2003, 22), na “and”, tupela “two” and o “or” as conjunctional particles might be applied for that (Verhaar 1995, 161). Na is mostly used to join clauses rather than nouns as it looks more natural; (see example 18 provided by Mühlhäusler). Additionally, nau “now”, which is normally a temporal device (Smith 2002, 192), is often applied as na by a vast number of Tok Pisin speakers due to the fact that they do not differentiate between them (186). In addition to this, to understand the function of tupela, an example is provided as follows: “. . . man tupela meri bilongen (‘a man and / together with his wife’)” (187; single quotation marks added). Tupela could be replaced by wantaim in the near future which has the same meaning as the former due to the fact that it is more frequently applied today (186-87).

18) “Man i kam na em i sindaun.” “‘The man came and he sat down.’” (Mühlhäusler 2003, 22; single quotation marks added)

Apart from the above mentioned common conjunction markers, a vast number of others also exist (Smith 2002, 185). Naming only a few, these include: Tasol, which means “but” when 45 it is applied at the beginning of a phrase or “only” or “just” when it is placed somewhere else.

In addition to this, bat meaning “but”, which has obviously been borrowed from English, long wanem translated into English “because” (187-88), or nogat meaning “otherwise” – apart from its function for negations, which was discussed in chapter 3.3.3.1. - might also occur as conjunctive particles (189).

Questions: According to Mühlhäusler (2003), the most prominent question words in this language, which are normally set at the beginning of a sentence or in the middle when applied as an object after the phrasal verbs, are “. . . haumas ‘how much, how many’, husat ‘who’, we

‘where’, and wonem ‘what’ . . .” (18). (See example 19 for the latter). Other question words are for instance, bilong wanem which means “why” and olsem wanem translated into “how” in

English. While the former is considered to be positioned at the beginning of a sentence, the latter generally occurs after verbs (Smith 2002, 164-65).

19) “Yu lukim wonem samting?” “‘What is it you see?’” (Mühlhäusler 2003, 18; single quotation marks added)

Since it is obvious that these interrogative words introduce a question, speakers do not raise their intonation (Mühlhäusler 2003, 18). In many situations, however, questions may occur without interrogative words and as a consequence, look like normal sentences or imperatives.

If this is the case, speakers need to change their intonation, otherwise they might confuse their listeners (21).

This chapter provided an insight in the development of the language Tok Pisin, discussed various features of its syntax and demonstrated the distribution of Tok Pisin today. In order to draw a comparison between Tok Pisin and Jamaican Patois, it is necessary to show the development as well as its syntactic features of the latter, which will be provided in the following chapter and subchapters. 46

4. Jamaican Patois

As Figure 2 has shown and according to Todd (1984), creoles are to be found on each archipelago in the (53). This is also true for Jamaica, where Jamaican Patois, which might also be named otherwise as mentioned in the introduction, is a national language and spoken by approximately 2.5 million inhabitants. Apart from Jamaica, Jamaican Patois is also acquired by a substantial number of people as a mother tongue or as a second language in other nations, such as Great Britain (Patrick 2004, 407). The contemporary creole is characterised by a certain rhythm and consists of numerous grammatical features of English.

Although it is considered to be a type of the English language, it is often incomprehensible to many people of America, as well as Britain (Cassidy 2007, 1), which is mainly due to the fact that some expressions are often left out or are used differently in comparison to English (8).

In order to understand the creole and its relation to English, it is important to show the historical development of the language.

4.1. History of Jamaican Patois

Since Jamaican Patois started to develop approximately 300 years ago when English was transported to the island of Jamaica with the help of the colonisers (Cassidy 2007, 1), it is regarded by Wekker (1996) as an old creole (139). Before the arrival of the Spanish in 1509,

Jamaica first belonged (Sebba 2002, 204) to local people, the so-called Arawaks (Patrick 2004,

407). The Spanish remained there until the British came to the island in the year 1655, and dispelled them (Sebba 2002, 204). As a consequence, only a minority of Spanish colonists, as well as inhabitants remained on the island when the British took over the country (Holm 1989,

470).

In the year 1656, other British colonisers, such as those from Scotland or Ireland, came to

Jamaica and began to establish a considerable number of sugar plantations throughout the 47 country. Since owners of the plantations were in need of many workers, slaves were brought to the island from different countries of Africa for over two hundred years (Sebba 2002, 204).

Therefore, the number of slaves increased enormously to approximately 40000 in 1690 and was further continued, while in contrast, the size of the white population started to diminish (Cassidy

2007, 16).

Since numerous slaves spoke diverse mutually incomprehensible speeches, they could not communicate with each other or with their commanders on the plantations. In many cases, numerous slaves without a mutual language were thrown together as the colonisers did not want to give the slaves the opportunity to easily hatch plans for their possible escape (Sebba 2002,

203). As a consequence, in order to eliminate this language barrier, the African people started to acquire the dominant language, which was English (Cassidy 2007, 49), which was considered an elegant and highly powerful speech at that time (Wassink 1991, 57). This, however, took place under vicious slavery conditions (Patrick 2004, 407) during the intensive contact with the

British colonisers (Sebba 2002, 203).

As the colonisers spoke different dialects, such as -English, Welsh, Scots etc. on the plantations, the slaves learned diverse types of English, as well, depending on the fact with which form of the lexifer the slaves were in contact during their work (Cassidy 2007, 49).

However, due to the influence of numerous languages, as well as their own native language, it was impossible for the slaves to learn the linguistic system of English in a complete way (21).

Thus, a mixture of the various types of English and different African languages was the outcome and provided the origin of the creole (11). Since the creole contained only pieces of the languages involved in this process (Wassink 1991, 58), it was not regarded as an elegant language (Cassidy 2007, 23), and thus, had a lower social acceptance than the language of the colonisers (Wassink 1991, 57-58). 48

After a certain time in contact with each other, this newly developed language was also adopted to some extent by the colonisers and thus, served as a means of communication not only among the slaves, but also between the slaves and the commanders (Cassidy 2007, 21).

Since the slaves were now able to talk with their bosses, they benefitted from their newly acquired speech as it helped them to improve their jobs and hence, their conditions on the plantations (15). For these reasons, around 1700, the earliest variety of Jamaican Patois could further develop into a stabilised pidgin (Kouwenberg 2008, 7). In addition to this, since hundreds of plantations with approximately 300,000 slaves existed in Jamaica from about 1750 until the beginning of the nineteenth century (Lalla and D'Costa 1990, 84), Jamaican Patois was acquired by all of these slaves, which led to the distribution of the language throughout the whole country (80).

The cruel conditions of slavery were finally stopped in the early nineteenth century, after a long struggle for liberation (Cassidy 2007, 19). Many groups of slaves moved to remote areas and lived there relatively isolated with the previously acquired creole. As a consequence, without the influence of British colonisers, the language could maintain its original structure

(Patrick 2007, 127). Other people, however, stayed close to the cities, where English was spoken to a high degree, and thus, were further in contact with the British (Patrick 1999, 25).

As a result, this situation triggered the development of different varieties of one and the same language (Patrick 2007, 127), and thus, was responsible for the complicated linguistic conditions of the country (Sebba 2002, 203).

Moreover, with the immigration of Chinese, Indians and many other different cultures in the country from 1845 onwards, the structure of Jamaican Patois was further developed (Patrick

2004, 408). Due to this high degree of mobility, the population of Jamaica was soon dominated by diverse ethnic groups, while white people continued to decrease constantly up to the year

1962 when Jamaica gained its independence (Patrick 1999, 25). Today, the majority of the 49 inhabitants of the island, more than 90%, descended from an African country, while the remaining 10% of the population descended from China, Europa, or India, among others

(Patrick 2004, 408).

Throughout the years, Jamaican Patois assisted as a tool of communication for a vast number of linguistically diverse ethnic groups in Jamaica, as mentioned above. Therefore, the creole gained significant importance and thus, is used in many different public organisations

(Patrick 2004, 407-08). Even though the majority of the residents have acquired Jamaican

Patois at the moment, many of them, however, prefer speaking a form of English. Since the latter is highly important to them, a vast number of inhabitants think they are communicators of the English language, while in fact, they are speakers of the creolised language (Sebba 2002,

204). Due to the fact that English has always been present as a dominant language even today

- spoken by a few people as a mother tongue and preferably used in the economy, as well as in the educational sector-, to which Jamaican Patois has permanently been subordinate, the potential of Jamaican Patois as a nation-wide speech was only realised by the governing authority in the 21st century (Patrick 2004, 408).

A closer inspection of the influence of English will be explained in the following chapter.

4.2. The creole continuum

Today, Jamaican Patois is regarded as a complex language as it is characterised by a high degree of variability (Patrick 2004, 408), which means that it is not spoken by all residents equally (Cassidy 2007, 2), as mentioned above. This situation is clearly explained by DeCamp as he states that “. . . there is a linguistic continuum, a continuous spectrum of speech varieties ranging from the ‘bush talk’ or ‘broken language’ . . . to the educated standard . . .” (DeCamp

1971, 350). According to Sebba (2002), with the educated version, DeCamp means a variety similar to (211). This situation is clearly demonstrated by Sebba on the basis of the following figure: 50

Figure 9: The Jamaican Patois continuum Source: Sebba 2002, 211.

Each rung of the above illustrated ladder between the basilect and Jamaican Standard, the acrolect, can be seen as a different version of the creole, the so-called mesolects (Sebba 2002,

212); (see explanation below). The basilect, as well as the acrolect differ significantly in terms of their structures from each other (Patrick 2004, 408-09), which can clearly be seen in Figure

9 when taking a look at the numerous varieties of only one sentence in only one language (Sebba

2002, 211).

Since the basilect, also referred to as the broadest creole, is primarily acquired by impoverished people, as well as by residents that lack education (Sebba 2002, 211-12), particularly in rural areas (Patrick 2007, 127), it is positioned at the end of the figurative ladder

(Sebba 2002, 211-12). Cassidy (2007) claims that this variety was once the language for the slaves on the plantations, which has not changed its standards, as well as its mixed linguistic system since then (2). Although it is mainly spoken by non-educated people, it needs to be mentioned that they can speak the mesolects to some extent as well, if they want to and hence, do not exclusively talk in the basilect (Sebba 2002, 212).

In contrast to this, apart from its pronunciation, the acrolect version, is strikingly similar to the grammatical and lexical system of . Since English is regarded as highly remarkable, this version is placed at the highest position of the symbolic ladder and thus, also 51 of the creole continuum (Sebba 2002, 212). Due to the fact that it is applied and thus, also acquired in educational centres (Patrick 2004, 408), it is mainly spoken by affluent inhabitants, as well as by highly educated people (Sebba 2002, 212). People who speak Standard English in

Jamaica are likely to achieve better-paid occupations and are considered to have more impact on the public than the speakers of the other varieties. These people mainly live in cities and hence, belong to the upper-class of Jamaica. Since it is regarded as beneficial for their future lives, many children who are raised in a Jamaican Patois environment are motivated by their parents to learn the lexifer as best as they can (Justus 1978, 43-44).

Although both varieties are considered to be the idealised forms of Jamaican Patois (Patrick

2004, 408), only a minority of inhabitants speak either the basilect or the acrolect. In fact, most spoken varieties of Jamaican Patois are situated somewhere in the middle of the above mentioned forms (Sebba 2002, 210), which are called the mesolects. Some of them are positioned closer to the top of this emblematic ladder, which means that they share more mutual items with the acrolect variety of Jamaican Patois and thus, resemble it (212). In contrast to this, some of the mesolectal varieties are more like the basilect and thus, are similar to the broadest creole (Cassidy 2007, 3). For these reasons, the grammatical system of the speakers of the different mesolect varieties can be seen as mixture of the linguistic systems of English and basilect (Patrick 1999, 293).

Furthermore, there are also some communities who are able to communicate in the acrolect as well as in the basilect. In many cases, these speakers tend to use the basilect at home and

Standard English at work or whenever they are in public. However, there are also some of these bilinguals, the so-called parvenu, who do not want to talk the basilect any longer as for them it is clearly below their social status (Cassidy 2007, 3).

The above mentioned linguistic situation, referred to as decreolisation, started to develop when participants of the creole began to adopt some of the grammatical features of English, 52 while in the same context dropped some of the creole. It might turn into such a continuum consisting of various varieties if some people or even generations are differently exposed to this process (Holm 2000, 9-10), depending, for instance on social classes as some had more access to English than others (Patrick 2004, 408). Such a situation is only possible when the dominant language, English in this case, has invariably been in touch with the creole (Holm 2000, 9-10).

In contrast to the decreolisation process, in recent years the recreolisation process has become apparent, which is demonstrated in the following chapter.

4.3. Recreolisation

Apart from the above labelled process of decreolisation, Jamaican Patois provides also a perfect example for recreolisation. As noted, in terms of decreolisation, the communicators tend to adopt more features from Standard English than from the basilect. When it comes to recreolisation, however, the communicators acquire more elements from the basilect than from

Standard English, as the name implies; thus the structure becomes similar to the creole, which can be seen in Great Britain at the moment (Sebba 2002, 225).

In order to understand the process of recreolisation, the history of this development in Great

Britain needs to be indicated. In the 1950s and 60s, a vast number of people with diverse

English-based creoles, who understood Standard English to some extent, moved from the

Caribbean to Britain. While these migrants belonged to the upper class in the Caribbean, in

Britain, they were all thrown together mainly due to similarities in terms of their class and race, and hence, became part of the working class. Due to being in close contact with other cultures of the same class, -apart from the acquisition of the language of their parents-, the children of these diverse communities developed one language, London Jamaican, which is primarily a combination of a version of Jamaican Patois and English, though other versions of the migrants might have contributed to the construction of this language, too (Sebba 2002, 227-28). 53

Today, the process of recreolisation in Britain is mostly because of the fact that a substantial number of the teenagers of the above mentioned migrant communities regard Jamaican Patois as appealing and thus, adjust their speech to this one rather than to English. With the use of this formed language, they want to show that they are proud of their cultural heritage, such as the

Rastafarianism style or genres. Since the speech that these adolescents apply has developed from more English-based creoles in London, it is not necessarily regarded as a variety of the creole continuum in Jamaica (Sebba 2002, 231-33).

Sebba (2002) provides one example for the language London Jamaican as in “. . . did ’im give you what you a look for? . . .” which is translated into “. . . ‘did he give you’ . . .” (231; single quotation marks added). While ’im in this context, for instance cannot be found in

English, the placement of did before the subject as an auxiliary item is absent in the linguistic system of Jamaican Patois (Sebba 2002, 231). Besides London Jamaican, the local variety of

British English is also their mother tongue. As a consequence, when talking to other children of their communities, it is possible that the communicators start to mix their two native languages, which is referred to as code switching (233).

Since Jamaican Patois has long been regarded as a non-elegant language, as mentioned above, it is interesting to show the reputation of this language today.

4.4. Views of Jamaican Patois

The Jamaican Language Unit carried out a survey where they wanted to find out what inhabitants actually thought of Jamaican Patois (The Jamaican Language Unit 2005, 5).

First and foremost, the participants of the “Language Attitude Survey of Jamaica” (short

LAS) were asked whether speakers of Jamaican Patois were more intelligent and educated than

English communicators. More than half of the participants regarded speakers of English as more intellectual and sophisticated. In contrast to this, less than 10% of the interviewees thought this 54 about the Jamaican Patois. Approximately 30% of the entire sample believed that both would have reached equal intelligence and education. Moreover, the participants were asked whether

Jamaican Patois speakers were regarded to be more honest and also more helpful than the communicators of the dominant language. The participants considered both language speakers as equally truthful and supportive (The Jamaican Language Unit 2005, 19-20).

Furthermore, the interviewees were invited to answer a question about which communicator they believed had more money and was considered to be friendlier. According to the survey,

44% of the interviewees claimed that Standard English speakers would be more affluent, while only 8% thought this about speakers of Jamaican Patois. Most participants, 46.5%, in fact believed that the two groups of communicators would possess an equal amount of money. In contrast to money, Jamaican Patois speakers were regarded as friendlier than the speakers of the dominant language. Almost 40% believed this, while approximately 25% saw it the other way around. The rest, 35%, stated that both were equally sociable (The Jamaican Language

Unit 2005, 19-20).

In short, apart from a few stereotypes, such as in terms of money, education and intelligence, the outcome of the survey was that Jamaican Patois was generally seen as a positive language. For these reasons, many interviewees considered Jamaican Patois as a proper language and wished that it would serve as the second official language of the country (besides

English), as well as desired a bilingual school consisting of English and Jamaican Patois for their children rather than a monolingual English teaching educational institution (The Jamaican

Language Unit 2005, 5).

After providing the history, as well as a general overview of the different varieties of

Jamaican Patois, this chapter deals with the grammatical features of this language. Since there are more varieties available, most researchers, such as Patrick (2007), provide examples of the basilect, as well as to some extent of the mesolect (128). Therefore, it is vital to point out that 55 the following discussion will focus mainly on the former. In some examples, the latter will occur as well.

4.5. Grammatical features of Jamaican Patois

According to Patrick (2007), due to its long history, Jamaican Patois is considered to be the most thoroughly investigated creole in the Atlantic (149). Since numerous features have their origins in African languages, the most important distinctions between Standard English and

Jamaican Patois can be found in the grammatical system and not in terms of pronunciation or lexicon. Due to these major differences, Jamaican Patois is not a traditional dialect of English; instead it is an independent language (Cassidy 2007, 49).

Furthermore, during the construction of the syntactic system of Jamaican Patois, it was most likely that the items that were similar in African languages, as well as in English were also present in the creole. The main reason for this was that they were easy to acquire by the learners.

In terms of linguistic structures which were not known in one of the two languages or varied clearly, however, they were not likely to have survived in these languages because they were too difficult to learn for the communicators. For these reasons, since both languages did not share many mutual items, a vast number of the structures of their grammatical systems were not taken (Cassidy 2007, 50). Although it seems that the language lacks organisation, there are many regulations in its linguistic system (8), which are described in the following chapters.

4.5.1. Word order

The word order for all sentences, including imperatives and questions with or without yes and no answers in Jamaican Patois is in the usual subject-verb-object format (Winford 2008,

21), as in “mi a di tiicha, ‘I am the teacher’” (Sebba 2002, 209). This, however, is excepted in situations (Patrick 2007, 149), where the highlighter a together with a particular adjective or other component is positioned at the beginning of a phrase (138). This is done to indicate a 56 difference or to give priority to a particular piece of information (140). If such a structure appears with an adjective, this item will not only be set at the front after a, but also where it normally should be, which means that it is then mentioned twice in one single sentence (138).

According to Holm (2000), apart from the occurrence of a, iz might also be applied for this by mesolectal speakers (204).

However, since the sentences maintain the same structure in most cases, inversions with the help of auxiliary verbs, question pronouns or negators are not possible in Jamaican Patois

(Patrick 2004, 419). Therefore, in order to distinguish between declarative sentences and questions, speakers of Jamaican Patois tend to increase their intonation at the end of a query

(Winford 2008, 21). In order to understand the SVO order in more detail, different grammatical features need to be explained, starting with noun phrases, including the plural marker, personal pronouns, the possession and prepositions, which is shown as follows.

4.5.2. Noun phrase

Although Patrick (2004) distinguishes between different count, proper, and mass nouns similar to English, some of the nouns in Jamaican Patois, in fact, do not belong to the same category as in English (432). For example, while some are regarded as countable in the creole, in their lexifer, they are classified as mass items. Since the first classification of nouns are the one that can be counted, they might be accompanied by plural markers, modifiers, definite or indefinite articles, and might have a generic meaning. Although this cannot be applied to mass nouns as they cannot be counted, as their name implies, it might happen that they have a definite or an indefinite meaning. The functions of mass nouns resemble those of proper nouns. The only difference between them is that proper nouns might appear in the plural when representing human beings (Patrick 2004, 432). From a general point of view, bare nouns may either refer to a definite or a generic meaning. If they are not preceded by a certain modifier, they usually 57 indicate a generic meaning, though there are exceptions possible depending on the context

(Patrick 2007, 142).

Furthermore, in the basilectal Jamaican Patois, there is only one indefinite article accessible, namely wan, which descended from the English word “one”. Since it has an indefinite connotation, similar to English a, it merely occurs before singular nouns. Thus, it cannot determine plural nouns and bare nouns with a generic meaning that have no plural and also no singular meaning. The indefinite article is sometimes applied to indicate emphasis since it is often left out by Jamaican Patois speakers. Moreover, apart from the indefinite article in

Jamaican Patois, it is also possible to find a definite article named di, which descended from the English word “the” (Patrick 2007, 142-43), and emerged thanks to the decreolisation process (Holm 1988, 191). It is usually placed before definite bare nouns with a specific meaning, though not before generic ones with exceptions in the mesolect (Patrick 2007, 142-

43).

In addition to this, one important function of the article in Jamaican Patois is that speakers preferably use it when they want to emphasise the specificity of a noun and not when it is needed to indicate the of it (Patrick 2004, 433). Due to the specific meaning of particular nouns, non-stative verbs can be affected in terms of their tenses in a sentence. When taking a look at example 1, since the noun manggo is not regarded as specific and has also no definite meaning, it does not have an article; thus, the verb appears in the present. If, however, the noun has a specific, as well as a non-definite meaning and is preceded by a particular article, such as wan in example 2, the sentence is in the past tense. The same tense is also used in example 3 when the noun is specific, as well as definite (Patrick 2007, 142).

1) “Di uman sel manggo” “´the woman sells mangoes´” (Patrick 2007, 142)

58

2) “Di uman sel wan manggo” “´the woman sold a mango´” (Patrick 2007, 142)

3) “Di uman sel di manggo” “´the woman sold the mango´” (Patrick 2007, 142)

Apart from the above mentioned articles, it is also possible that the demonstrative elements dat “that”, as well as dis “this” are used in front of a singular noun and thus, cannot be applied with markers for plurality or even with plural nouns. Although the demonstrative elements indicate definiteness, they cannot appear together with di due to their equal position

(Patrick 2007, 143-44).

Since many particles of English, such as the articles, had not been taken over when Jamaican

Patois was constructed, it is no wonder that individual bare nouns can be interpreted in many different ways. While the use of articles is considered to be easier in contrast to English, it cannot be regarded as a perfect example for other creoles (Patrick 2004, 434).

4.5.2.1. Plural marker

In the basilectal variety of Jamaican Patois, the plural of nouns is indicated with the help of the particle –dem. It originated from dem, the third person of the plural in the personal pronoun system; (see personal pronoun chapter 4.5.2.2. below). While the pronoun dem precedes nouns, the plural marker is usually suffixed to them; (see example 4). In some cases, however, instead of being added immediately to a particular noun, this element might be positioned at the end of a nominal phrase. The plural marker is merely used with nouns in the 3rd person that have a definite meaning, which are normally preceded by definite particles, such as di (Patrick 2007,

143). Therefore, it is not possible to apply -dem in the first person or when groups of people are straightforwardly spoken to, such as in the English example “. . . ‘All you boys!” . . .” (Patrick 59

2004, 435; the quotation mark after “boys” is wrongly used in Patrick and has not been changed; it should also be a single quotation mark as the one before “All”).

4) “. . . di gyal-dem, ‘the girls’.” (Sebba 2002, 209)

Apart from serving as a marker for plurality, as well as a personal pronoun, it might also be used as a demonstrative element, such as English “these” or “those”, which is then positioned in front of a noun. If this demonstrative particle is applied, then, the plural marker is not added to the noun (Patrick 2007, 143-44).

Furthermore, besides dem, many speakers of Jamaican Patois are able to use the marker –s, directly added to nouns in order to indicate plurality (Patrick 2007, 143). It is possible, yet does not happen very often, that a double marking of –s and –dem might appear in one noun phrase.

If this is the case, the substantive is then suffixed by the particle -s, whereas the component - dem is not; instead it is positioned at the end of the nominal phrase in order to seclude it; (see example 5 provided by Patrick). Although the suffix –s is increasingly applied, particularly in the mesolect (Patrick 2004, 435), some basilectal communicators fail to use it correctly, e.g., the attachment of –s to numerous nouns which in fact should express a singular meaning. As a consequence, if it is wrongly applied, it often confuses mesolectal speakers or other more educated people (Cassidy 2007, 52).

5) “Frenz an a uol-dem, . . ..” “‘Friends in general, . . ..’” (Patrick 2004, 435)

Apart from using the above mentioned plural markers, numerals may also occur to indicate a plural meaning (Cassidy 2007, 51). According to Patrick (2004), if these quantifiers are used, the suffix –dem is usually not taken, while the marker -s appears in rare cases (436). In addition to this, as however, many bare nouns with a generic meaning often automatically refer to the plural, they usually do not need any type of plural marker (Patrick 2007, 142). As a 60 consequence, the different markers are frequently left out by speakers of Jamaican Patois

(Sebba 2002, 209).

4.5.2.2. Personal pronoun system

In the pronoun system of the basilectal Jamaican Patois, there is only one constituent for the subject, the objective element and in addition to this, the pronoun, which is clearly different to Standard English as all of them are individually given (Sebba 2002, 208);

(see Figure 10 below demonstrated by Sebba). The items are divided among number and person, but show no differences in terms of gender or case (Cassidy 2007, 53).

Figure 10: Personal Pronoun System Source: Sebba 2002, 208.

The pronoun im is generally used in the basilect, no matter whether speakers talk about female and masculine topics, things or animals; hence, it is translated into English “he”, “she” and “it”. The component unu is merely in use in the plural unlike the English particle “you”. In addition to this, it might be applied in the same way as “one” in English and thus also has an indefinite function (Patrick 2007, 146). One example that includes mi is shown by Patrick as follows:

6) “Mi no biliiv nobadi de, tu mi, laik Mada R” “´I don´t believe there´s anybody, to me, like Mother R´” (Patrick 2007, 146)

In the above mentioned sentence, one can find the personal pronoun mi twice. While mi at the front is applied as a subject, which means “I” in English, the second mi serves as an object, which is translated into “me”. Since it might be used as a possessive marker, as well, mi can also be used as “my”. The same is also true for the other personal pronouns (Patrick 2007, 146). 61

According to Sebba (2002), the personal pronouns have originated from English either from the same pronoun or the corresponding objective item (208).

In addition to this, since the personal pronoun system of the mesolect varieties is closer to

Standard English, it, though not uniformly, might be modified by gender or case. This means that besides im, the third person singular is divided into (h)ii for “he”, shi for “she”, and i, it and hit for “it”. In the mesolect, (h)ii is used for males, shi for women and it for things, as well as animals (Patrick 2007, 145-46). According to Cassidy (2007), although the personal pronouns “she” and “he” are occasionally used in the mesolect, “her” is not applied and thus, the function of the case is often absent and sometimes confusing (55).

4.5.2.3. Possession and preposition

According to Patrick (2007), although there are several possessive constructions with the help of nouns, as well as pronouns available in Jamaican Patois, their structures do not differ greatly from each other (144).

Patrick (2004) claims that Jamaicans are able to indicate a possession with two nouns (the first noun shows the owner of the ownership demonstrated in the second noun), as in “. . . Jien pat ‘Jane’s pot’” (432). Since, however, the attachment of –s in order to indicate the possessor of the second substantive as it is the case in English in the above mentioned example, is not possible in Jamaican Patois, it cannot be regarded as the same construction as in the lexifer

(Patrick 2004, 432). Furthermore, similar to English, the ownership of a proprietor might be shown with the help of the element a “of”; (see example 7 provided by Patrick). Although

Jamaicans are familiar with this prepositional structure, it is not as frequently used as the formerly discussed one with the two nouns (Patrick 2007, 145); (see example above).

7) “. . . mi fiil di anz a dopi, man” “´. . . I´ve felt the hands of ghosts, man´” (Patrick 2007, 145) 62

Moreover, possession might be indicated with the help of particular adjectives, which need to be placed before a particular noun as they determine it. While these elements have adopted the patterns of the items of the personal pronoun system and thus, look similar, (see chapter

4.5.2.2.), the difference between them is that the particle fi is usually positioned before these adjectives – attached to them with the help of a dash – to introduce a possessive noun phrase;

(take a look at the end of example 8). Apart from these possessive adjectives, one can also find pronouns for possession in Jamaican Patois. Although these pronouns look the same as the adjectives, their function is different considering the fact that they do not determine a particular noun, but occur instead of it (Patrick 2007, 145); (see example 8 provided by Patrick).

8) “. . . di fuor touzn mi mek a fi-mi!” “´. . . the four thousand [dollars] I make is mine!´” (Patrick 2007, 145)

Furthermore, in the grammar of Jamaican Patois, prepositional constructions might appear with particular locative components, such as iina, fran or a. The former one, also known as ina when not being stressed, is translated into “in, inside, to, into”. Besides serving as a locative indicator, it might also be applied to point to a particular time frame (Patrick 2007, 148).

Whenever this is the case, according to Patrick (2007), iina is translated into “during”, such as in “. . . iina die, ´during the day´. . .” (148).

The second preposition fran, in English “from” or “out of” is similarly used in Jamaican

Patois as its translations in the English language. Moreover, in order to indicate a position, as well as a movement to a particular place, the preposition a or sometimes also de and da meaning

“at, in, on, to” are taken. However, whenever the prepositions a and iina are placed between verbs of movement and popular places, they often do not occur because they can be left out by

Jamaican Patois speakers (Patrick 2007, 148-49).

After the discussion of the noun phrase, the following chapters discuss the verb phrase including negations and the various tense, aspect and mood markers. 63

4.5.3. Verb phrase

The verbs in Jamaican Patois are generally derived from English, but only in the simplest forms as possible, which means that these items have generally adopted the infinitive or present tense form, such as “sing”. In some cases, however, past tense verbs, such as lef “left”, have been picked to be in use in the present in the basilectal Jamaican Patois (Cassidy 2007, 58).

According to Patrick (2004), the verbs in the basilect are not modified in terms of number or person, which means that -s is not added to those of the present when referring to a third person in the singular (415); (see example 9). In addition to this, the verbs stay the same in all the tenses (Cassidy 2007, 58), which means that there are no irregular verbs (Patrick 2004, 416), and in terms of the past, -ed will not be suffixed to them (Patrick 2007, 128). The main reason for the missing inflections is that the former slaves of Africa, which provided the grammar for

Jamaican Patois, did not have such grammatical constructions; hence, speakers of the basilect have also not acquired it (Cassidy 2007, 58). However, this is different in the mesolect version of Jamaican Patois where inflections, such as the ed-suffix, frequently happen, though not as uniformly as in English (Patrick 2004, 414-15).

9) “Dis wan swiit im.” “‘This one pleases her.’” (Patrick 2004, 415)

According to Holm (2000), in order to show different tenses and aspects, particular markers need to be positioned before the verbs (174). The different tense markers are discussed below;

(see chapter 4.5.3.2.). Unless there is such a marker before the verb, stative verbs usually refer to the present tense. In contrast to this, some statives, if a particular context enables it and almost all non-stative verbs, which show short activities, without being marked, indicate the past tense

(Patrick 2007, 128-29), the simple past to be precise (Holm 2000, 177). If it is not clear from context whether verbs without a marking refer to the past or the present and thus trigger 64 confusion among its speakers, they inevitably need to be accompanied by a certain marker

(Patrick 2007, 128).

Furthermore, according to Patrick (2004), while in English there is only one form of the verb “be”, in Jamaican Patois there are different varieties, which are called the copulas (420).

In order to link a pair of noun phrases with each other, the copula a is needed (see example 10 by Patrick). In addition to this, de, which originated from the English word “there”, mainly appears in front of locative prepositions and particular locations, (see example 11), or at the end of an interrogation. However, when an adjective interferes none of the two mentioned copulas occurs (Patrick 2007, 139). As all the other verbs in Jamaican Patois, these copulas are not modified in terms of gender or tenses. Thus, whenever basilectal speakers refer to a different tense, a specific tense indicator needs to be placed before the copula (Patrick 2004, 420). In the mesolectal variety, instead of the above mentioned copulas, iz or woz, or no form is applied for the copulas (Patrick 2007, 139).

10) “Di saiyans man a mi kozin” “´The science man is my cousin´” (Patrick 2007, 139)

11) “. . . Im de a yaad ´She is at home´ . . .” (Patrick 2007, 139)

4.5.3.1. Negation

The negation in the basilectal Jamaican Patois is indicated with the help of the negator no, which usually appears before predicates (Holm 1988, 171), when no adverbs are used between them (Patrick 2007, 136). See example 12, where the negator precedes the verb biznis and follows the subject im.

In order to negate something in a particular tense or aspect, the individual markers for this

(see chapter below) need to be placed after no due to the fact that its feature is regarded as tense- 65 neutral (Patrick 2004, 414). In the mesolectal Jamaican Patois, apart from no, duont (Patrick

2007, 136), which is a result of the decreolisation process (Holm 1988, 172) and neva might also serve as negators that are positioned before the verb phrase (Patrick 2007, 136). While the former might be applied to the entire range of tense and aspect markers in sentences (Patrick

2004, 417), the feature of the latter is restricted to the past (414). In addition to this, in terms of negative reactions to a certain question, they can either be started with the particle no or duont

(Patrick 2007, 137).

12) “Im no biznis huu it kyach.” “‘He didn’t care who got shot.’” (Patrick 2004, 414)

According to Patrick (2007), the negations of English, such as “weren’t”, have not been adopted by Jamaican Patois speakers and are not to be found (137).

4.5.3.2. Tense, aspect and mood marking

Since the most important auxiliary verbs for the indication of tenses or aspects, such as

“have”, “be” or “do”, and thus, also their features are not present in Jamaican Patois -although they might be applied as main verbs apart from “be”- particular markers are needed (see definition in chapter 3.3.3.2.). However, this is not true for modal auxiliaries as they are given to a large extent in Jamaican Patois (Patrick 2004, 416); (see below).

According to Patrick (2007), in the basilect, ben is the most common marker for the anterior tense (also known as the past tense) (129) - implies not only the past, but also the past perfect,

(see example 13) -, which originated from the item “been” from the past perfect in English

(Holm 2000, 178). This particle might be modified into different varieties, such as “. . . men, wen, min and en . . .” (Patrick 2007, 129).

13) “Sapuoz man ben get op an kyatch yu hin de?” “´Suppose somebody had gotten up and caught you in there?´” (Patrick 2007, 129) 66

In some cases, in the mesolect, in particular among speakers who live in cities, did - though not regarded as the same feature as in English, as indicated above- and neva might be applied for the past. Although inflections for the past tense usually occur in the mesolect, if neva is used, they are not allowed (Patrick 2004, 413-14). In addition to this, since all these particles mark verbs, they are usually placed before it (Patrick 2007, 128-29). This is not possible where the verb, such as the copula before adjectives, as discussed, is absent. If this is the case, ben or did are then simply placed before the adjective (130). However, all these markers might be left out if it is obvious from context that speakers talk about events in the past, as already mentioned

(Patrick 2004, 413). In order to avoid ambiguity and to emphasise a situation in the past perfect for instance (see example 13), the markers might be used, though it is not mandatory (Patrick

2007, 129).

Moreover, in order to specify situations in the future (Durrleman 2008, 29) – also referred to as irrealis - (Holm 2000, 187), the marker wi is normally applied to Jamaican Patois; (see example 14 provided by Durrleman). Similar to English “will”, it is set before the main verbs of a predicative phrase (Durrleman 2008, 29). In addition to this, apart from wi for general situations (Patrick 2007, 133), the combination of a and go might be applied as an indicator for the proximal future (Durrleman 2008, 29). Since in many cases a will be left out, speakers have to know the difference when, for instance, go is applied as a normal lexical item or when it is used to show a concrete situation in the future. Conditionals or the future perfect are not possible in Jamaican Patois (Patrick 2007, 133).

14) “Jan wi nyam dat” “‘John will eat that.’” (Durrleman 2008, 29; single quotation marks added instead of using Durrleman’s double quotation marks to indicate the English translation)

While the above mentioned markers are used for tenses, the following are used for aspects until the ones for modality are described. 67

In terms of the progressive aspect in Jamaican Patois, there is more than one indicator accessible, namely a, da and de, which are positioned before verbs; (see example 15). They are used to indicate a length of a short time frame (Patrick 2007, 130), instead of pointing out when a particular situation happens as tenses normally do (Holm 2000, 180), while verbs without such a specific marking are not able to do this. In the mesolect variety, -in, which is immediately added to verbs, might occur with the help of the copulas iz, woz, be (the latter in a more educated variety) or without any of them. In addition to this, besides using the progressive in the present, it is also possible to apply it for future situations, for which the following structure comparable to “going to” in English is needed (Patrick 2007, 130): “. . . a/da/de + go + V . . .” (Patrick

2007, 130).

15) “Hongri a gi mi hel” “´Hunger is killing me´” (DeCamp, June 1958 quoted in Patrick 2007, 130)

In the grammatical system of the basilect, one can also find the past continuous, also named the anterior with the additional progressive. For this, the markers dida, bena, wena, and bende are needed. While the latter marker is established with the help of the past tense marker ben and the progressive marker de, (see example 16), which is also the most frequent one in the basilect, the former indicate a combination of three of the past tense markers which are individually linked to the continuous particle a (Patrick 2007, 131).

16) “Mi ben de go dong de” “´I was going down there´” (Patrick 2007, 131)

For complete actions, which means that situations are over, as its name implies (Holm 2000,

186), such as the present perfect tense in English, the marker don is required. It has no fixed meaning and thus, may occur with non-stative and stative phrasal verbs, as well as with predicate adjectives. However, it is usually not used together with markers of other tenses and aspects (Patrick 2007, 132). In addition to this, don might precede the predicate or follow it, 68 although in some cases, it might be positioned in both positions and thus, might occur twice

(Alleyne 1980, 92 quoted in Patrick 2007, 132). If an object is placed after a verb, unless it precedes the predicate, don needs to be positioned after the object and thus, after the whole verb phrase (Patrick 2007, 132).

Durrleman (2008) claims that don can be used as a completive marker or an anterior; hence, has two diverse functions (37): If don appears with non-stative verbs, it indicates the completive aspect and can be positioned before or after the verb phrase whereas in terms of the anterior, don needs to precede the verb phrase, no matter whether it is stative or non-stative (Durrleman

2008, 37); (see example 17 for the latter provided by Durrleman):

17) “Im don nuo se mi laik im” “‘S/he already knows that I like her/him.’” (Durrleman 2008, 37; single quotation marks added instead of using Durrleman’s double quotation marks to indicate the English translation)

Moreover, according to Holm (2000), the habitual aspect illustrates situations that repeatedly appear in a long time frame instead of taking place only once and thus, show duration

(182-83). Patrick (2007) claims that in Jamaican Patois, there are no specific markers for habits, which means that verbs that stand unaccompanied might automatically refer to such structures,

(130-31), although in a minority of cases, a, the indicator for the continuous form might also appear (Christie 1986, quoted in Holm 1988, 159).

The following markers are used for mood marking.

Furthermore, Durrleman (2008) distinguishes between three different classes of modal verbs in Jamaican Patois (26-27). The first class is characterised by modals which have the ending a, such as shuda “should” or wuda “would” in English. While a here is translated into

English “have” and thus, seems to be an indicator for the present perfect tense, in Jamaican

Patois, it does not refer to the past (Durrleman 2008, 26); (see example 18 provided by 69

Durrleman). In order to show a different tense or aspect, the corresponding markers, which are described above, are needed. If this is the case, the modal verbs of the first category need to be positioned before particular tense, as well as aspect indicators. In terms of the modal auxiliaries of the second class, such as mos (30-31), translated into “must” in English (Patrick 2007, 133), and the third class, for instance (h)afi “had to” in English, kyahn, which is in English “can”, the tense indicators are placed before them, whereas the aspect markers follow them (Durrleman

2008, 30-31).

18) “Im shuda neva tiif di manggo-dem” “‘S/he never should’ve stolen the mangoes.’” (Durrleman 2008, 26; single quotation marks added instead of using Durrleman’s double quotation marks to indicate the English translation)

Patrick (2004) points out that different modal verbs might be linked together in a sentence

(416-17). This, however, does not apply to modal verbs which are part of an equal category as only one of each class can be taken because of their similar placements (Durrleman 2008, 28).

If three modal verbs occur one after the other, mos of the second class, needs to be placed between the ones of the first class and the third category (Patrick 2004, 417); (see example 19 provided by Patrick):

19) “Wi wuda mos hafi riich soon!” “‘We really ought to arrive soon!’” (Patrick 2004, 417)

Clauses are also present in Jamaican Patois. A close description of their functions is provided below.

4.5.4. Dependent clause constructions

In Jamaican Patois, since the subordinated clauses which are not entrenched into another one are applied for instance to point out conditional or temporal expressions – regardless of whether they are positioned before or after the principal clause -, they have an equal function 70 as the ones in the English language. In terms of the embedded ones, similar to English, constituents that are used to introduce such clauses normally occur with verbs which demonstrate someone’s opinion, the frame of mind and many more (Patrick 2007, 135-36).

Furthermore, in terms of relative clauses, it might be started with a relative pronoun referring to a subject or a direct object. If the former is the case, the pronoun “who”, huu for the mesolect or huufa for the basilect, which are merely used for human beings, is applied and positioned after it; (see example 20 provided by Patrick). In place of the direct object in the relative clause, wa (t) “what” is taken in the basilect. Besides wa (t), prepositional elements, like we or whey, or resumptive pronouns might be used as a relative pronoun instead of an object in order to introduce such a clause. Since most of the relative pronouns are applied as question words as well, it is most likely that the former mentioned ones have adopted the pattern of the latter (Patrick 2007, 135-36).

20) “Aal huu insaid a di man likl plees daiv dong pan de grong” “´All who were inside of the man´s little place dove down on the ground´” (Patrick 2007, 136)

In addition to this, in many cases the relative clause is not introduced with a relative pronoun referring to the subject or object as they are often left out by speakers of Jamaican Patois. In comparison to the English language, however, it is not possible to leave out such a pronoun for the subject (Patrick 2007, 135-36).

The last grammatical features that are discussed here are the conjunctions and the questions.

4.5.5. Conjunctions and questions

In terms of conjunctions, noun phrases or sentences are joined together with the help of only one conjunctional element, namely an “and” (Patrick 2007, 148), which is shown in example

21 provided by Patrick.

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21) “Mek wi go ina owa pakit an bai di lika . . .!” “´Let us go in our pockets and buy the liquor . . .!´” (Patrick 2007, 146)

In terms of questions, apart from yes/no questions, they are usually introduced with the help of question words, which are the same as the relative pronouns huu-fa, huu, we and wa, as mentioned in chapter 4.5.4. In addition to this, particular adjectives, such as wich in English

“which” and adverbs, e.g. wen in English “when”, hou translated into “how” or wa mek into

“why”, to name only a few, are also used to indicate a question; (see example 22). In Jamaican

Patois, the words are often emphasised with the particle a, which is usually placed before them.

This, however, does not apply to the question word wai from English “why”, which can be found in the mesolectal version of Jamaican Patois, though not in the basilect (Patrick 2004,

430). In some cases, a might confuse its speakers as it can either be a highlighter or a copula, as mentioned above. Although Jamaican Patois speakers do not set verbs before subjects whenever question words are applied to form interrogatives, the structure of them, nevertheless, follows the one in English (Cassidy 2007, 56).

22) “Hou dem spiik da wie . . .?” “‘How come they speak that way, . . .?’” (Patrick 2004, 431)

According to Patrick (2007), although a vast amount of information has been precisely described by researchers, further research needs to occur in order to understand its structures to the fullest (149).

After having discussed the creoles Tok Pisin and Jamaican Patois in terms of their development, today’s use, as well as their individual grammatical systems, the following chapter focuses on equal syntactic features in both languages that are present due to the impact of the English language. This comparative analysis is based on the theoretical grammatical input given by numerous authors in the individual chapters of Tok Pisin (chapter 3.3) and Jamaican 72

Patois (chapter 4.5). General similarities among the creoles without the influence of the lexifer as chapter 2.4., “Different theories of origin”, suggests, will not be taken into consideration here. Those features that have more differences than similarities will also not be discussed, such as the prepositions.

5. Similar grammatical features in Tok Pisin and Jamaican Patois due to English

The grammatical features that are more or less similar in all three languages, as Figure 11 clearly visualises, will be divided into three categories. The first category deals with structures that are similar in form, position and use. These structures then have the same lexical forms, can be found at the same place in a sentence, and convey the same information in all three languages. The second category implies those features that are equal in position, as well as use, but not in form. Thus, the items differ in terms of their lexis. The third class indicates structures that merely resemble each other in terms of their usage.

Tok Pisin Jamaican Patois

similarities

English

Figure 11: Similarities in Tok Pisin and Jamaican Patois due to English

5.1. Form, position and use

Plural marker

The grammatical feature that clearly belongs to this category is -s. 73

What has become obvious after discussing the individual creoles and what Bobyleva (2011) has also written in her article is that the plural marking of nouns in Tok Pisin and Jamaican

Patois might take place with the help of the suffix -s (40-41), which can be regarded as a grammatical feature that has been adopted from English (43).

In both languages, this inflectional marker is most likely to be found with words that have recently been taken over by the creole speakers from their lexifer, though not always because other items might also receive this marker in a few situations (Bobyleva 2011, 43). In addition to this, it merely appears with nouns that can be counted in both creoles similar to English, and thus, cannot be added to mass nouns. The indication of -s is not always required due to the fact that some nouns without a certain marking might automatically refer to the plural when context allows it; thus, it is often taken randomly (52-53). If it is, however, not entirely clear from context whether a particular noun is in the plural or in the singular, it can be considered as an important tool to indicate the difference.

Although speakers of all varieties, no matter whether it is the basilect or the acrolect, are able to apply -s in Jamaican Patois, in Tok Pisin, however, apart from some exceptions, it is mostly acquired by people who speak a version closely related to English. Therefore, while in

Jamaican Patois, -s is not considered to be an exclusive result of decreolisation as it existed long before this process and thus, has survived after the origin of the creole and during its development (Bobyleva 2011, 42-43), in Tok Pisin, in fact, it can be ascribed to that (44). Even though this plural marker is not as constantly applied as the one in English, its function, when it is taken, namely to show a singular noun in the plural, is equal in all three languages (52-53);

(see examples 1-2 below – similarity -s is highlighted).

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1) Tok Pisin and English2: “mipela sa go baim ol sandwiches na drinks . . .” “‘We go and buy sandwiches and drinks’.” (Aitchison 1990, 20; red colour added)

2) Jamaican Patois and English: “. . . neva falo frenz an a uol.” “‘. . . never follow friends in general.’” (Patrick 2004, 435; s -z in this case- highlighted by me)

In addition to Bobyleva’s (2011) arguments, as it is equal in form, position and use in Tok

Pisin and Jamaican Patois, as well as in English, this feature undoubtedly needs to be placed into this category.

5.2. Position and use

After discussing the syntax of the individual creoles, it can be argued that numerous features are a part of this class as they are placed at the same position and have the same functions, but differ in terms of their lexical items in Tok Pisin, in Jamaican Patois and also in English.

Word order

The first one that belongs to this category is the word order in sentences - though not questions - as it is similar to English (see examples 3-4 – similarity is highlighted). As Holm

(2000) argues, unless a particular item is placed at the beginning of a sentence for emphasis

(234), the word order in the two creoles is normally structured according to the SVO-format, which means that the subject is placed first, followed by the predicate and the object (236).

This, however, is not surprising because according to Sebba (2002), the sentences of a vast number of creoles – though not all - are established in this way mainly because of the ones of their base languages (41), which is English in the case of this comparative analysis.

Due to the same position and use, it can be said that by taking a look at normal sentences in

Tok Pisin, as well as in Jamaican Patois, in most cases, one can state which lexical items are

2. Examples in English are not separately shown as the similar features are emphasised in the individual translated sentences of Tok Pisin and Jamaican Patois. 75 referred to as the subject, the verb and the object as they are normally positioned one after the other. In addition to this, apart from the equal word order, the subject, as well as the objects of

Tok Pisin, Jamaican Patois and English might consist of similar items as they can either be a noun or a pronoun as most examples above show, and thus, not anything else. In terms of verbs, however, they might either consist of verbs, similar in all languages, or adjectives, which is definitely not an equality and hence, will not be further discussed here.

S - V - O

3) Tok Pisin and English: “Ol gol i stap long graun.” “‘The gold is in the ground.’”

S - V - O

(Mühlhäusler 2003, 20; single quotation marks, forms and letters (SVO) added)

S - V - O

4) Jamaican Patois and English: “Mi rispek ar . . .” “‘I respect her . . .’”

S - V - O (Patrick 2004, 426; forms and letters (SVO) added)

Noun phrase - articles

Two other grammatical features that fit into this category are the indefinite article

(wanpela in Tok Pisin and wan in Jamaican Patois) and the demonstrative element (dispela in

Tok Pisin and dis in Jamaican Patois). Holm (2002) argues from a general point of view that in creoles, the articles are not certainly applied in the same way as those of their superstrates as their functions are often considered to be a mix of the lexifer and the subordinated language 76

(214). However, when it is applied to Tok Pisin and Jamaican Patois, though it is not always necessary, it can be argued that the position, as well as the feature of the articles is highly related to English. As English “a” and “an”, in both creoles, the indefinite article is merely taken before singular nouns and has the same function, namely to point to a noun that has no definite meaning; (see examples 5-6 – similarity highlighted). In terms of the demonstrative element in the creoles and English “this”, it is positioned before a singular noun in order to show a particular substantive with a more definite meaning and thus, also has a similar position and use in all three languages (see examples 7-8 – similarity highlighted).

5) Tok Pisin and English: “wanpela pikinini man – ‘a boy’” (Todd 1984, 204; single quotation marks and red colour added) 6) Jamaican Patois and English: “Im woz a baaba ya nuo . . .” “´He was a barber you know . . .´” (Patrick 2007, 131; red colour added)

7) Tok Pisin and English: “Dispela man (i) dai” “´This/That man died´” (Faraclas 2007, 367; red colour added)

8) Jamaican Patois and English: “. . . dis ting-ya ´this (here) thing (here)´”. (Patrick 2007, 144; red colour added)

Dependent clauses

Furthermore, it has become apparent that subordinated clause and relative clause constructions are also part of this type. Similar to English, the position of subordinated clauses that are not included in another clause in Tok Pisin and Jamaican Patois can either be in front of the main clause or after it (see examples 9-10), while the ones that are included cannot be freely placed.

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subordinated clause main clause

9) Tok Pisin and English: “Sapos mi go taun (orait) bai mi kisim pepa” “´If I go to town, I will get the documents´”

subordinated clause main clause

(Faraclas 2007, 359; forms and descriptions added)

subordinated clause main clause

10) Jamaican Patois and English: “If yu av wan baks a machiz, yu mos jraa chrii stik” “´If you have a box of matches, you must draw three sticks´”

subordinated clause main clause (Patrick 2007, 135; forms and descriptions added)

According to Holm (2000), for the introduction of a relative clause, Tok Pisin and Jamaican

Patois, as well as numerous other creoles possess a vast number of relative pronouns (226), which in both cases, as well as in English are used to give additional information about a subject or an object in the main clause and thus, are placed after them. In terms of objects, Tok Pisin,

Jamaican Patois and English might leave out such a relative pronoun at the beginning of this clause. In addition to this, when taking a look at the functions of the individual relative pronouns, it is worth noting that huufa, also huu in Jamaican Patois, and husat in Tok Pisin is only applied with human beings as “who” in English and thus, can be seen as an important similarity to be taken over from the lexifer; (see examples 11-12; similarity highlighted). For these reasons, apart from the equal position of subordinated clauses and relative clauses, the use of them is also similar in the compared creoles, as well as in English.

11) Tok Pisin and English: “Na mi bin wanda osem usat stret raitim disa leta” “‘And I wondered who had written this letter’ [Manus, F, 16]” (Smith 2002, 152; single quotation marks and red colour added)

12) Jamaican Patois and English: “. . . di wan huu did go an dig it . . .” “´. . . the one who went and dug it up´” (Patrick 2007, 148; red colour added) 78

Possession

Moreover, another grammatical similarity in terms of position and use is the possessive construction with the help of “of” in English, bilong in Tok Pisin and a in Jamaican Patois; (see examples 13-14; similarity highlighted). As Holm (2002) explains, in order to show possession in this way regarding the fact that other varieties exist, as well, the prepositional element in the two creoles is placed in the midst of two nouns: it follows the possessed one and precedes the one that refers to the possessor (221-22), which is the same as in English (218). Since the lexical items do not resemble in any possible way, the similarities of possessive constructions in all three languages need to be classified in this category.

13) Tok Pisin and English: “dua bilong haus” “´the door of the house´” (Faraclas 2007, 368; red colour added)

14) Jamaican Patois and English: “. . . di anz a dopi . . .” “´. . . the hands of ghosts . . .´”3 (Patrick 2007, 145; red colour added) Conjunctions

The conjunctional element “and” in English, na in Tok Pisin and an in Jamaican Patois is a similar structure of this category; (see examples 15-16; similarity highlighted). According to

Holm (2000), in both creoles, it is used to link constituents of sentences with each other and thus, are positioned between them (228). As the conjunctional items in the three languages resemble not only in terms of their position and use, but also to some extent from a lexical point of view, it can be argued that the two creoles have adopted it from English without having gone through a major change.

15) Tok Pisin and English: “Mi go painim abus na em go huk” “´I went hunting and she went fishing´” (Faraclas 2007, 370; red colour added)

3. The same example as in chapter 4.5.2.3., only in a shortened version. 79

16) Jamaican Patois and English: “Jos kom dong an staat shat . . .” “´He just came down and started to shoot . . .´” (Patrick 2007, 134; red colour added)

Future and modality markers

After analysing the tense, aspect and modality markers in Tok Pisin and Jamaican Patois, it has been found out that only the future marker and the ones of modality can be considered to resemble the one in English, though they have different lexical items.

According to Sand (2012), future markers for the indication of certain future situations are normally visible in all creoles that have English as their lexifer and thus, have mostly derived their meanings from “will”, “go” and “shall” (2129). Apart from its usage, a substantial point for this discussion here is the equal position of this marker. In all three languages, it, e.g. bai in

Tok Pisin, wi in Jamaican Patois and “will” in English, in most occurrences appears before the main verb (see examples 17-18; similarity highlighted). The only exceptions might be in Tok

Pisin, where speakers can either place the future marker before or after a noun, as has been noted by Romaine (1992) on page 39, or in English when “not” interferes.

17) Tok Pisin and English: “Mipela bai go – ‘We’ll go’” (Todd 1984, 203; single quotation marks and red colour added)

18) Jamaican Patois and English: “Mi wi go de sonde . . .” “´I will go there on Sunday . . .´” (Patrick 2007, 133; red colour added)

In terms of modality markers – the individual names will not be given-, all of them appear before the main verbs in Tok Pisin, Jamaican Patois and English, and unless certain particles, such as negation or other tense and aspect markers come in between, they are also applied in the same way, namely to show, as it names implies, types of modality, such as possibility or obligation; (see examples 19-20; similarity highlighted). Due to these exceptions in terms of 80 position, the future and modality markers could have also been placed into the category “use”.

However, because they all occur in front of verbs in general, it can be argued that their placement is to some extent the same.

19) Tok Pisin and English: “. . . mi mas go l(ong) aiskul . . .” “‘. . . I must go to high school . . .’ [West Sepik, F, 15]” (Smith 2002, 136; single quotation marks and red colour added)

20) Jamaican Patois and English: “Mi hafi gaan.” “‘I must leave.’” (Patrick 2004, 417; red colour added)

5.3. Use

The grammatical features that are discussed here are only similar in terms of their usage due to English and thus, are dissimilar in their forms and their position.

Negation

One important feature that needs to be discussed here is the construction for negations.

According to Sand (2012), in order to show negation in creoles, the item no, derived from “not” in English, is applied and precedes the predicates in a vast number of creoles that have English as their lexifer, such as Tok Pisin and Jamaican Patois (2130).

Since it is used in Tok Pisin, Jamaican Patois, as well as in their lexifer, it can be argued that speakers of these different speeches have a common understanding of its function and thus, immediately know when something has been negated. Although no can be found as a lexical item in Tok Pisin, Jamaican Patois and in English with an equal meaning, the form is a controversial issue as it is not exclusively the same in all three languages when being applied as a part of the verb phrase. The main reason for this and for the fact that it has been categorised into this class is that no in the creoles is translated into English “not” and not necessarily into 81

“no”. In addition to this, the position of no is also not similar. While no in the creoles is set before tense, aspect or modality markers, if they are given, the particle in English, as well as

“not” appears after auxiliary verbs; (see examples 21-22; similarity highlighted).

The only exception, however, is when no is placed at the beginning of a sentence in order to give a negative answer to a question, then it is equal in all its aspects in the languages and should normally be placed in the chapter of form, position and use. Apart from these slight differences, it can, nevertheless, be argued that no has the same interpretation in the creoles, as well as in English and thus, is undoubtedly a significant similarity among them.

21) Tok Pisin and English: “. . . Yu no ken go skul . . .” “‘. . . you shouldn’t go to school . . .’ [Simbu, F, 19]” (Smith 2002, 137; single quotation marks and red colour added)

22) Jamaican Patois and English: “Yu no nuo im?” “‘Don’t you know her/him?’” (Durrleman 2008, 39; single quotation marks added instead of using Durrleman’s double quotation marks to indicate the English translation; red colour added)

Personal pronoun system

The only similarity in terms of the personal pronoun system is that the first pronoun mi in

Tok Pisin, mi or a in Jamaican Patois and the second person singular yu in both creoles, though not the other pronouns, resemble the function of “I” and “you” in English to some extent (see examples 23-24; similarity highlighted), apart from the expansion of their function of also serving as objects and . Since there are, however, too many dissimilarities, this system will not further be discussed here.

82

23) Tok Pisin and English: “Mi kros moa long yu” “´I´m angrier than you´” (Faraclas 2007, 364; red colour added)

24) Jamaican Patois and English: “A dat mi a tel yu” “´That´s what I´m telling you´” (Patrick 2007, 140; red colour added)

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6. Conclusion and future outlook

In order to understand what pidgins and creoles are from a general point of view, the second chapter provided an insight into the formation and development of such languages. In the third and fourth chapter the historical evolution, the present day use and a selection of features of the grammatical system of Tok Pisin and Jamaican Patois were presented. The focus of this paper was to investigate the relation of similar grammatical structures between Tok Pisin and

Jamaican Patois that have been directly adopted by them from their source language of English and hence, have not been created during the developmental process of the creoles.

Although Tok Pisin and Jamaican Patois arose under different social conditions and contact situations thousands of kilometres apart, their complex grammatical systems contain a few equal features due to the impact of their common unit of English and thus, are to some extent related to each other. While the influence of structures of their lexifer has become obvious after having compared both languages with relation to English, it nevertheless needs to be argued that most features have not directly been taken over, instead they have been slightly modified and adapted to fit into the individual linguistic systems of the creoles. For these reasons, some features are more similar in the two creoles than others. In order to show how they are presented and related, they were classified into three different categories, named as “form, position and use”; “position and use”; and “use”; (see Table 1 below).

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Table 1: Summary: similar grammatical features in Tok Pisin, Jamaican Patois and English

Summary: similar grammatical features Tok Pisin Jamaican Patois English Position, form and use plural marker -s -s “-s” word order SVO SVO SVO indefinite article wanpela wan “a/an” demonstrative dispela dis “this” particle subordinated clauses and relative clauses Position and use relative pronoun husat huu/huufa “who” possession bilong a “of” conjunction na an “and” future marker bai wi “will” modality markers all modal verbs negation no no “not/no” personal pronoun mi mi/a “I” Use (1st person sg) personal pronoun yu yu “you” (2nd person sg)

Real similarities between Tok Pisin and Jamaican Patois that have undoubtedly been adopted by both of them from English are those of the first category. During the comparison, only one feature of the two creoles could have been observed to fulfil the requirements of this class. The plural marker -s can be considered as a real equal feature as the form, the position, as well as the use of -s are identical in all three languages. Since it neither differs from a lexical, structural nor functional point of view, this feature has not been modified in any way during the growth of the two creoles. With the help of -s, it was possible to find out that a direct connection between the grammatical systems of Tok Pisin and Jamaican Patois due to their lexifer, in fact, exists. As a result, although structures of this class are rare in the compared languages, the suffix

-s is undeniably the most significant similarity and thus, also highly important for this comparative analysis.

The second category “position and use” is home to most of the grammatical features of this comparative analysis as the word order, the articles, the dependent clauses, possession, conjunction, the future and the modality marker are categorised here. These structures share a 85 high degree of equality in the grammatical systems of the two creoles, but are not exclusively the same. The main reason for this is that unlike the above mentioned plural marker, they do not have the same lexical items and thus, not the same forms in the individual languages.

Therefore, they cannot be regarded as a similarity that have been directly taken over from

English. Since, however, the position and use is in most cases striking similar, it can, nevertheless, be argued that they are present due to the influence of English and hence, show a significant relation between the two creoles.

In terms of the third category, which represents the similarity of use, only the negation structure and parts of the personal pronoun system, such as the first and second personal pronoun, can be found. Although they are present in the two creoles due to the influence of

English, they are only partially similar. While they have the same function in Tok Pisin and the

Jamaican Patois, they are neither equal in form nor position. One important point between the features of this category needs to be made here as in contrast to the personal pronouns, it is immediately obvious when the negation structure has been used by the speakers of Tok Pisin, the Jamaican Patois and English as their lexical forms are only slightly different. Nevertheless, it needed to be classified here, because in most cases the form is not exclusively the same as in

English and neither is the position. The main reason for these differences in this comparative analysis is that they might be further influenced by numerous other structures from different languages that have an impact on the form and position of the features of Tok Pisin and

Jamaican Patois.

Undoubtedly, the relation between Tok Pisin and Jamaican Patois due to the influence of English in terms of their grammatical systems is given. While most of the discussed similarities are from English and thus, have not been made up during the developmental process, not many features have been directly taken over from English without further modification, which, however, might change in the future. A future outlook might be that more 86 similar features that have the same form, position and use in the grammatical systems of Tok

Pisin and Jamaican Patois and thus, have been directly taken over from English exist in all three languages and hence, might indicate a closer relationship between these languages. If this actually happens, a more precise comparative analysis between Tok Pisin and Jamaican Patois with relation to English might be possible. In order to examine this and to understand this process, researches on this outlook need to take place in future. v

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References for figures

Arends, Jacques, Pieter Muysken, and Norval Smith. 1995. Pidgins and Creoles: An Introduction, edited by Jacques Arends, Pieter Muysken and Norval Smith. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins B.V.

Mühlhäusler, Peter. 1997. Pidgin and Creole Linguistics: expanded and revised edition. London: University of Westminster Press.

Mühlhäusler, Peter. 2003. “Sociohistorical and grammatical aspects of Tok Pisin.” In Tok Pisin Texts: From beginning to the present, edited by Peter Mühlhäusler, Thomas E. Dutton, and Suzanne Romaine, 1-34. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins B.V.

Sebba, Mark. 2002. Contact Languages: Pidgins and Creoles. Basingstoke: Palgrave.

Smith, Geoff P. 2002. Growing up with Tok Pisin: Contact, creolization, and change in Papua New Guinea’s natural language. London: Battlebridge.

Table of figures

Figure 1: A selection of pidgins, creoles, and mixed languages without the Caribbean ...... 4 Figure 2: A selection of creoles in the Caribbean ...... 4 Figure 3: Developmental stages of pidgins and creoles ...... 8 Figure 4: Creole - a native language ...... 11 Figure 5: Different types of creoles ...... 12 Figure 6: A map of Papua New Guinea ...... 20 Figure 7: Personal Pronoun Pattern ...... 32 Figure 8: Tense, aspect and modality markers in one verb phrase...... 42 Figure 9: The Jamaican Patois continuum ...... 50 Figure 10: Personal Pronoun System ...... 60 Figure 11: Similarities in Tok Pisin and Jamaican Patois due to English….…..……………..72

List of tables

Table 1: Summary: similar grammatical features in Tok Pisin, Jamaican Patois and English 84