Talk:Pidgin (language)

To Do's for this article

This Pidgin article is developing nicely. Some further references would bring the level closer to what is needed for full approval. Leaning so heavily on just a few sources limits the article's authority. McWhorter's The Power of Babel, while generally a relatively accessible discussion of the nature of language, doesn't have the authority of his journal articles and other academic publications. It is probably best recommended in a list of suggested further sources for lay readers. A few more academic publications (e.g., those of John Holm or Gillian Sankoff) probably merit some reference here.

Richard J. Senghas 01:46, 14 September 2007 (CDT)

Disambig?

We now have Pidgin chat client. Do we need a disambiguation page? Should this article mention the other? Sandy Harris 16:52, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Yes, it seems that the two terms are quite competitive, judging by a Google search. Pidgin should redirect to a disambiguation page, I suppose. That would mean the articles wouldn't have to refer to each other as anyone searching for 'pidgin' would get the disambig page. John Stephenson 04:04, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Native speakers?

The current definition starts "A language with no native speakers..". I'm not certain that's always true, but it is certainly one way to make the rather tricky distinction between a pidgin and a creole — once there are native speakers, it is a creole. Does it belong in the definition, though?

Later, "Tok Pisin" (which I'd call "Pidgin" or "Neo-Melanesian Pidgin", as the only person I know who'd spent much time in PNG did) is used as an example of a pidgin. That certainly has native speakers, though, so it does not fit our current definition. Sandy Harris 09:58, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

I much prefer short definitions. Here, mine would be:

"A language, often with relatively simple grammar and vocabulary, created spontaneously for communication between groups with no common language."

Compare that to the current

"A language with no native speakers and relatively few uses, created spontaneously by two or more groups with no common language, using vocabulary and grammar from multiple sources; often a pidgin's grammar is rudimentary, and it has a restricted set of words, but in time they can develop into more complex 'expanded' pidgins with many more functions."

A definition is not the place to discuss what they may evolve into, or to give other detail. Sandy Harris 10:17, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

I would define pidgins as never having native speakers. As you say, when nativised they are creoles, and these languages are much more complex than pidgins. There is a process of 'gradual creolisation' which occurs in some cases, but something becoming a creole is not a pidgin, even if not (yet) a fully-fledged creole. Tok Pisin is probably an example of this. The general definition in creolistics literature is to use 'pidgin' to refer to the non-native systems which are spontaneously created.

Confusingly, there are a handful of languages that are actually creoles but are labelled 'pidgins' by users or other groups, e.g. Hawaiian Pidgin is actually a creole, and Tok Pisin is a pidgin for some speakers and increasingly a creole for many, if not the majority. So, yes, Wikipedia's reference to Tok Pisin can be removed as it is a complex case.

As for the definition, unfortunately 'pidgin' is one of those complex ones that are difficult to make succinctly without misleading readers. Your reduced definition seems to rule out expanded pidgins as pidgins and doesn't mention where the lexical items and the grammatical structure come from, which is key to the definition (they are not artificial languages). There is a huge amount of misinformation about pidgins and creoles out there - e.g. 'broken' English, 'simple' language, etc. - and I was trying to cover all the bases. John Stephenson 05:19, 8 March 2010 (UTC)