Word-formation Processes in Pidgins and Creoles. A Comparison of Tok Pisin and Papiamentu

Seminar paper from the year 2014 in the subject American Studies - Linguistics, grade: 2,0, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (Amerikanistik), course: Proseminar English Linguistics - Pidgins and Creoles, language: English, abstract: Pidgins and Creoles are often considered to have a lower status than "real" languages. But they do have grammar, phonetics and also morphology and therefore should not be marked with a bad connotation. In contrast: they are full developed languages. The theory that "morphology [is] essentially alien to creole languages" is not verified anymore and has to be revised (Seuren, Wekker 1986). It is a fact that Pidgins and Creoles have less morphology and lexicon than their lexifiers, but nevertheless a sufficient lexicon does exist and even with interesting differences between the languages. We can see this on Holm's statement that "Papiamentu's historical movement toward Spanish has included its early relexification and lexical expansion as well as later structural borrowing.", which shows clearly that word-formation processes on lexicon in Papiamentu exist. As well for Tok Pisin it is said that "the lexical influence of local languages on the pidgin was considerable." (Holm 2000).
In this term paper, I will explore the interesting topic of word-formation processes in Tok Pisin and in Papiamentu: what do they have in common, are there any differences, and which reasons can be found for that? From all the existing wordformation processes I will examine borrowing and conversion in detail. All this will be mainly investigated on the works of Sebba, Holm, Mühlhäusler, Plag, Bartens and on the basis of Kouwenberg.

To understand the differences and similarities in the word-formation processes better, we have to consider briefly the historical background of the two languages: Tok Pisin is spoken in Papua New Guinea and was colonized and as a consequence thereof influenced in the 19th century by the English, the German and the Dutch. Above all the established Samoa plantations in 1860 by the Germans had an enormous influence on the development of this Pidgin, because it was used for communication with the inhabitants. Papiamentu instead is spoken in Netherlands Antilles including Curaçao, Aruba and Bonaire and was colonized by the Spaniards and the Dutch in the 16th and 17th century. Later on came the Sephardic Jews with their trinlingualism as well and influenced this Creole. This caused a lack of a homogenous superstrate in Papiamentu. This inhomogeneity is also underlined by the belonging islands: Papiamentu on Curaçao borrows more from Dutch, whereas Papiamentu on Aruba borrows more from Spanish and English.