Introduction

Papua New Guinea is one of the most linguistically diverse nations on earth. In this multilingual society Tok Pisin, English-based pidgin, is one of the most popular and important languages, along with English and Hiri Motu. Development of this lingua franca has passed many modifications and continues to extend, that can result in creole pidgin.

The study on pidgin and creole languages was established in the middle of twentieth century, until then the pidgins were considered as a jargons, dialects or auxiliary languages (Sebba 1997, Arends 1995, Chew 2009). There are several theories have been developed concerning the origin of pidgins and creoles, which are divided into two parts: theories focusing on the European and non-European input. In the context of this paper was taken the theory by Peter Mühlhäusler about the stages of the pidgins development. Based on his hypothesis, we intend to demonstrate how Tok Pisin has extended and to which of the stages it belonges. For this purpose, the texts in Tok Pisin and English, taken from the internet source ABC Radio Australia, will be compared and analysed, regarding the features of extended Tok Pisin on of the stages mentioned by Mühlhäusler.

The procedure will be as follows: at first, we will turn our attention to the origin of pidgin and its etymology. Then the theories of pidgins will be represented and discussed. Subsequently some functions of pidgins will be short presented. In the second chapter the main features of Tok Pisin, its historical development and modern status will be considered. The last chapter is aimed to analyse the structure of language and its particular character. A conclusion of this work will reflect on the content we will have seen.

The origin of Pidgin.

The Language as human ability has the feature to change over time in its phonetic, morphological, semantic, syntactic, and other features. Some languages such as Latin vanish, the others spread, but there are always external facts having the influence on language, such as trading, slavery or colonization. The languages get in touch with each other leaving variety of consequences, which have been distinguished by Sebba as consequences of six kinds (Sebba 1997:10-16):

1. Vocabulary and Grammar “borrowing”

2. Code Switching

3. Language Convergence

4. Pidginisation

5. Creolisation

6. Language Mixing (also called Language Intertwining)

The most extensive consequences are left by English becoming international language: in some countries it is the first foreign language has been learned, in others it is an official second state language. After the colonial period English has left its mark in history of every colonized country creating such new languages as pidgins and creoles.

The most appropriate definition of pidgins was proposed by J. Arends as follows:

“Pidgins are languages lexically derived from other languages, but which are structurally simplified, especially in their morphology. They come into being where people need to communicate but do not have a language in common. Pidgins have no (or few) first language speakers, they are the subject of language learning, they have structural norm, they are used by two or more groups, and they are usually unintelligible for speakers of the language from which the lexicon derives” (Arends 1995:25).

The beginning of pidgins and creoles study Mühlhäusler refers to the first international conference on creole studies, attracting a total of thirteen participants, was held in Jamaica in 1959 (Mühlhäusler 1986:46). DeCamp (1971: 14) also contends that “the birth of the field of pidgin-creole studies may be dated from that April afternoon in Jamaica, when Jack Berry suddenly remarked “All of us are talking about the same thing”. The result of this gathering was the postulating of many questions, such as monogenesis, which were subsequently to dominate the field.

However, J. Arends observes that in most studies of pidgin and creole languages, pidgins fare rather poorly. According to his opinion, they are assumed to be simple versions of creoles, or even worse: it is stated that creoles are just pidgin suddenly acquired typical creole – like structural properties upon becoming mother tongues. Moreover, the forms of Pidgin English of Pacific, especially New Guinea are not unambiguous examples of pidgins, which are often given as examples as well, as they may be both first and second languages and have been spoken for many generations(Arends 1995:25).

The etymology of the word “pidgin” was called in question, but this has been settled recently. The main discussion of this point took place in Hancock 1979, but more recent research takes the Chinese Pidgin English pronunciation of the English word business for the reference point (Baker, Mühlhäusler 1990: 93). The generic term for all pidgins arises from the word spelled “pigeon” was firstly used in 1807 concerning Chinese Pidgin English and became widespread much later. Until then, instead of this term acted the notion “jargon” for all the North American pidgins. Besides the jargons there was also term lingua franca used by Europeans with reference to pidgins. Now, these terms have different functions in opposite to originally usage for very similar phenomena. Now they denote different types of language: a “jargon” more for a rudimentary pidgin and a “lingua franca” defined as a language use for wider pidginized or not pidginized communication or as “contact language” which is used by individuals for overcoming the challenge of Babelization (Arends 1995:25). Other definition for Lingua franca is considered by J. Richards as a “common language” in the sense of being “common” to both speakers (Richards et al. 1996:214).

Originally, the common usage of term “lingua franca” refers to a “contact language” the Arab traders spoke, and spreading wider the Turks used it contacting with travellers, wars’ prisoners and crusaders from Western Europe; it acted as a “common language” between speakers with different first languages (Chew 2009:1–4). Chew (2009) cites as an example China the 19^th century were as lingua franca was taken pidgin (from the Cantonese pei tsin “pay money”, which is what traders in Canton called the pidgin English they used there from the 1600s to the 1900s) developed from contacts between Chinese and English in commercial situations, which happened along the ports on Chinese eastern coastline. As main functions of pidgins the scientist calls the facilitation of communication in such restricted context as trade, forced labor, and further marginal contacts between different linguistic backgrounds. His resume is following: “They are a kind of lingua franca because they allow the communication between two strangers who need to communicate” (Chew 2009: 4).

In opposite to Arends determination Chew defines pidgins as simplified dialects, “where commonly shared features of their language are retained and nonshared features ignored but were a great deal of communication can still take place” (Chew 2009: 6). There is a tendency some pidgins to grow and become indeed new languages because of people’s need of communication on a more advanced level, so pidgins simplicity does not fit their expanding needs any more. This “new” language is certainly a new mixture rather than a dialect of the language which is kind of provision of the words. Chew points out the phenomenon of the South Seas pidgin was used as a lingua franca for communication between the English and men from several islands in Oceania coming to work on long-term contracts in plantations in Queensland. Because of the numerous varieties of languages spoken in their home in Papua New Guinea and other Oceanic islands these newcomer workers often kept using pidgin after coming home. “Gradually, this pidgin expanded into a “real” language – a branch of which is Tok Pisin, spoken today in Papua New Guinea alongside the hundreds of indigenous languages there” (Chew 2009: 6).

Sebba (1997) identifies pidgins as a result from the communicative actions of elder generation of speakers who already have a native at minimum one language. He uses the term “auxiliary” languages regarding to pidgins because of the need by their speakers to add to their own native language another one, “to bridge a communicative gap with speakers of come”. Following features of pidgins were emphasised as the main ones:

1. Pidgins have no native speakers, i.e. they are second languages for everyone who speaks them;

2. They are governed by convention, i.e. they have vocabulary and grammatical structures, however basic, which are accepted by their speakers. It is not the case that “anything goes”;

3. They are mutually intelligible with their source languages. Thus “Pidgin English” is sufficiently different from English that a native speaker of English must learn it in order to be able to understand and speak it properly.

4. Pidgins have grammars which are simpler than the grammars of their source languages (Sebba 1997: 14-15).

Theories of pidgins.

The theories of pidgins and creoles are divided by Arends (1995) into two groups: focusing on the European and non-European input:

Theories focusing on the European input.

• Monogenetic theories

• Monogenesis and the Lingua Franca

• Restricted monogenesis

• European dialect (partial) origin hypotheses

• English dialects, French dialects, Dutch dialects

• Theories concerning the influence of the Atlantic slave trade

• Influence from English in Africa, from nautical language, from English in the Americas

• Mixed European-source creoles

• Foreigner talk and baby talk

• Imperfect second language learning (Arends 1995:87–98)

Theories focusing on the non-European input.

• Substrate,

• superstrate,

• adstrate (Arends 1995:99)

As the point of this paper is pidgin of Papua New Guinea Tok Pisin, we will take into consideration the non-European input.

In compare with other languages, Mühlhäusler distinguish the pidgins from others by:

• their development from less complex to more systems;

• contact and influence of number of substrate, superstrate and adstrate languages on their linguistic development in differing ways (Mühlhäusler 2003).

There is another comparison made by Ingo Plag that regards how the language’s verities within one area, such as Middle and High German and pidgins develop:

“The evidence of continuity can be found in written sources, which document the gradual development from one stage of the language to the next. With pidgins and creoles matters become utterly confusing. In respect to their linguistic properties pidgins seem to be very different from creoles, and both creoles and pidgins are very different from the superstratum and substratum languages involved in their formation. To complicate the situation further, pidgins are often abandoned before they develop into creoles, or creoles become repidginized. These linguistic facts seem to be the direct consequences of the social instability which is characteristic of the genesis of pidgins and creoles” (Plag 1994: 5-6).

In continue of speaking about the origin of pidgins it is necessary to turn to the question of developmental dimension, which determine the way the language change. Mühlhäusler first claimed that data from languages present a problem to “certain views of language history and relationships, in particular the view that languages are genetically related to a single ancestral language” (Mühlhäusler 1986: 252). Considering the idea of “linguistic relatedness”, Ishtla Singh (2000) regards this idea as a fundamental to the most of research in historical linguistics. She defines two main principles in historical linguists based comparative and internal reconstruction:

1) languages “stable” and “unstable” elements, and

2) certain types of change in language are internally motivated (that is, not caused by language contact but by “growth” processes intrinsic to the development of the language); these changes are therefore regular and rule-governed (Singh 2000:22).

Schuchardt also believed that “all languages had, at some point in their history, undergone significant changes even in their core, because of language contact, thought that they were" (Schuchardt 1917).

In study of development of pidgin and creole languages Mühlhäusler establishes to distinguish the following major stages (Mühlhäusler 1986:5):

I jargon pre-pidgin, multilingual idiolect, secondary hybrid

II pidgin pidgin, basilectal pidgin, tertiary hybrid

III expanded pidgin extendet pidgin

IV creole

The first type is called as a stripping process, which “involves a shrinkage in inventories of lexical and grammatical expressions (=reduction) on the one hand, and a drift or development towards grammatical regularity (=simplification)”, what means that rules can be applied to a various number of items and structures (Mühlhäusler 1986: 135), on the other. The second type he sorts to the general postulate of grammaticalization concerning the formation of new grammatical categories. These two processes may be supposed “to take place in chronological order in that the former precedes the letter, and they appear to cut across the developmental stage” – proposes Mühlhäusler. However, Boretzky criticizes this theory suggesing essentially that pidginization as a continuous process, and prejudices Mühlhäusler’s four stages in representing particular steps in the development of pidgin and creoles (Boretzky 1991:31).

Considering the both studies together, Mühlhäusler compares the present-day creole with a pidgin that was spoken centuries ago. Contacting with each other they reach some stages, where the phenomenon of creolization occurs:

a) with pidgins that are very rudimentary and unstable, that is, so-called jargons;

b) with elementary stable pidgins; and

c) with stable expanded pidgins (Mühlhäusler 1986:8).

According to developmental history, Mühlhäusler distinguishes three main sociolinguistic types of creoles:

Type 1

jargon

│

│

│

│

↓

creole

e.g. Hawaiian Creole English

Type 2

jargon

│

stabilized pidgin

│

│

↓

creole

e.g. Torres Straits Creole English

Type 3

jargon

│

stabilized pidgin

│

Expanded pidgin

↓

creole

e.g. New Guinea Tok Pisin

Figure 1. Types of Creoles (from Mühlhäusler 1986: 8)

Taking into consideration the role of the lexifier languages (the dominant language providing the basis for the majority of vocabulary) Mühlhäusler claims that they influence the development of a linguistic continuum in right social circumstances. This continuum he calls as a restructuring continuum and characterises it “by the fact that the different varieties located on it are roughly of the same linguistic complexity”. Restructuring continuum is the opposite of the developmental continuum, where differential complications encounter. Mühlhäusler depicts this contrast as follows:

developmental

dimension

jargon

stable jargon

expanded pidgin

creole

post-pidgin

continuum

post-creole

continuum

lexifier

language

restructuring

Figure 2. The stages of the pidgins development (from Mühlhäusler 1986:11)

Functions of pidgins.

In spite of general simplification of the pidgins and creoles they function multifarious in the communication, and are classified as follows (Mühlhäusler 1986:81–82):

Functions

Propositional

(referential)

Directive

Integrative

Expressive

Phatic

Metalinguistic

Poetic

Heuristic

Role in communication

The massage itself, the information exchanged, information whose truth value can be established

Getting things achieved, manipulation of others

Creation of social bonds, use of language as an index of group membership

Expression of own personal feelings toward the message or interlocutors

Keeping open channels of communication, counteracting socially undesirable silence, creation of rituals

Use of language to discuss language

Use of language to focus on the message for its own sake, to play with verbal material

Use of language for obtaining information

Pidgins were created to promote the communication between the speakers with different native languages and cultures when they contact with each other and establish some relationship, which have mostly marginal character.

In field of sociolinguistics the study of pidgins and creoles takes an important place. In the light of the social context of the language’s origins Mark Sebba classifies pidgins basing on their historical background rather than on linguistic factors such as the number of languages in contact. Some pidgins do not fit any of categories, that is why there is division into seven broad types:

1. Military and police pidgins

2. Seafaring and trade pidgins

3. Plantation pidgins

4. Mine and construction pidgins

5. Immigrants’ pidgins

6. Tourist pidgins

7. Urban contact vernaculars (Sebba 1997:26)