Pacific Pidgins and Creoles

Focus on Tok Pisin

Seminar paper from the year 2005 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1,0, University of Duisburg-Essen, 13 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: This essay aims at taking a closer look at the Pacific pidgin Tok Pisin. Especially the development of the pidgin into a creole will be considered in the following text. The chapter on the history of Tok Pisin is preceded by an excursus on the conditions of language contact and the definition and genesis of pidgins in general. The history and thus the development into a creole as well as the current situation of Tok Pisin is completed with some examples of the lexicon of the creole. Here I laid certain emphasis on the different origins of English influence on Tok Pisin, as the social backgrounds of those who introduced the first form of the pidgin, the foreigner talk, are still reflected in the Tok Pisin vocabulary. Additionally I paid regard to the German influence on the pidgin and the linguistically changed situation under Australian administration after WWI. This part of the essay includes a brief paragraph on the sociolinguistic conditions and the conscious use of speech acts with in the pidgin. Finally I tried to give a rather short overview on the phonological and morphological features of Tok Pisin as well as on its grammar.