A History of English Language

A history of the english language 314
bilong (from the verb ‘belong’) serves a number of functions in Tok Pisin that in English
would be assigned to varying case forms, including possession: ‘my mother’ is mama
bilong mi; ‘John’s house’ is haus bilong John. With a greatly reduced system of
inflections and a correspondingly greater reliance on function words and word order,
pidgin and creole languages show clearly the analytic structure that we noted when we
observed the development from Old English to Middle English.
The other side of lexical impoverishment is the visibility and richness of certain
aspectual distinctions, some never explicitly marked in the verb phrase of historical
English. For example, habitual or continuing action is indicated in Hawaiian Creole by
including the particle stay in the verb phrase, and other creoles have similar markers: I
stay run in Kapiolani Park every evening indicates habitual or repetitive action rather
than action completed at a certain point. Similarly, the accomplishment of purpose is
made explicit in creole languages around the world. The English sentence “John went to
Honolulu to see Mary” does not specify whether John actually saw Mary. Such ambiguity
must be resolved in Hawaiian Creole. If the speaker knows that John saw Mary, the
appropriate sentence is John bin go Honolulu go see Mary. If John did not see Mary or if
the speaker does not know whether John saw Mary, the appropriate verb form expresses
intention without expressing completion: John bin go Honolulu for see Mary. 43
Another important factor of language in general which the study of pidgins and creoles
clarifies is the idea of a linguistic continuum. Whereas earlier observations noted only a
binary distinction between the standard language and the “patois,” research during the
past quarter century has made it clear that there are multiple, overlapping grammars
between the basilect (the most extreme form of pidgin or creole) and the acrolect (the
standard language). These intermediate grammars are known as mesolects. There is often
an observable hierarchy of linguistic features associated with various points on the
continuum (for example, different past tense formations of verbs, some closer than others
to the standard). If a speaker has a nonstandard feature located near the basilectal
extreme, it is likely that the speaker will also have all of the other nonstandard features
that are increasingly closer to the standard language. This technique of analysis is known
as an “implicational scale.” 44 The regularity of such scales in pidgin and creole languages
world-wide leads to yet another interesting problem: the order of acquisition of the scaled
features
43
These examples are from Derek Bickerton, “Creole Languages,” Scientific American (July 1983);
rpt. in Language, Writing and the Computer (New York, 1986), pp. 24–30.
44
On the theory underlying the creole continuum, see Derek Bickerton, Dynamics of a Creole
System (Cambridge, UK, 1975).