Pidgins and Creoles

This course deals with the English-based creoles of the Caribbean, West Africa, and the Pacific. These languages, a large number of which came into being among the slave populations of the Americas in the early days of colonization, appear to be strange mixtures of the European (in our case: English) vocabulary and the non-European grammars involved. This mixture poses a lot of interesting empirical and theoretical problems that touch upon issues related to the fields of language contact, first language acquisition, second language acquisition, sociolinguistics etc. We will focus on the empirical analysis of different creoles by taking a close look at both contemporary and (very recently discovered) historical texts and analyze their grammatical and phonological structure. We will then see how the language facts can be explained by different theories of creole genesis. Since many modern and older creole varieties are still not very well studied, this course will provide the students with the opportunity to do some original research (guidance and help will be provided by the teacher). The students' willingness to participate in this type of work is therefore essential. Prerequisites: Familiarity with basic concepts of phonology, morphology, and syntax. Students are required to read the first chapter (pp.1-36) in Sebba, Mark (1997) Contact Languages: Pidgins and Creoles London: Macmillan. Anglistik - Sprachwissenschaft I Universität Siegen SoSe 2010 Univ.-Prof. Dr. Plag Ingo