A pidgin window on early language?

We observed in the introduction that pidgins have been used by a number of authors to draw inferences on early human language. The question now is whether, or to what extent, such a procedure is justified. On the basis of the observations, one may hesitate to answer this question in the affirmative. Ignoring the fact that the evolution of early language may have involved a cognitive and socio-cultural ecology that contrasts with that in which KPS and other pidgins arose, there are also a number of other factors that make it hard to establish a reasonable analog between the two kinds of phenomena, such as the following:

(a) Pidgins, at least in their ‘‘stripping’’ phase, have been described as being the result of a process from grammatically complex to less complex forms of language. According to our findings on grammaticalization, which are in accordance with what many other authors have argued for, the evolution of early language must have proceeded in the opposite direction from less complex to more complex grammar.

(b) While pidgins are morpho syntactically impoverished vis-à-vis the languages from which they are derived, there are usually quite a number of ‘‘non-pidgin’’ features that survive the pidginization process: Pidgins are—at least to some extent—derived from other languages and inherit a number of properties of these languages. For example, Fanagalo, Kituba, and KPS are pidgins that grew out of Bantu languages spoken natively, that is, of Zulu and other varieties of Nguni languages, Kikongo, and Coastal Swahili, respectively. This is reflected, for example, in the fact that all three exhibit structural properties bearing witness to their origin as Bantu languages: They have retained some relics of Bantu noun class systems, of Bantu verbal derivational extensions, and of Bantu word order arrangements. There is no conceivable analog of such a situation in early language.

(c) In their genesis, pidgin speakers had at least some linguistic material to build on: They had at all times what Bakker (2003) calls a ‘‘functionally adequate language’’, namely their first language, which in some way also provided a model for developing the pidgin.

(d) The development of pidgins has also been shaped in some way or other by language contact and bilingualism. For example, speakers of KPS had, in addition to their respective mother tongues, other languages to draw on; many of these speakers knew several other Kenyan vernacular languages. Furthermore, they had Coastal Swahili in the form of its standardized variety constantly accessible to them via speakers of Standard Swahili, as a medium of education, broadcasting, in speeches held in more formal situations such as public gatherings, election campaigns, etc. Accordingly, pidgin speakers were exposed to multiple models provided by other languages or language varieties, and it would be surprising if the structure of the pidgins would not have been influenced by these models.

(e) Irrespective of the fact that early-language speakers may not have been able to dispose of the cognitive endowment that mod ern-language speakers do, pidgin speakers were able to draw on cognitive skills that were available to them on the basis of the communicative networks they were exposed to—in particular skills that would enable them to establish and express relations among different concepts.

(f) A paramount sociolinguistic characteristic of pidgins can be seen in the fact that their use tends to be restricted to very few domains of social interaction, such as those of trade or labor (e.g. Bakker 1995; Holm 2000). There is no reason to assume that early language was similarly restricted in its use.

The situation of early language is therefore likely to have contrasted sharply with that of pidgins: There was no language on which early language was built, there were no other languages around to serve as possible models and, accordingly, there were no models that could have served as cognitive templates to shape early language, etc. This raises the question of what justification there may be to draw on pidgins as possible analogs of early language. The only possible justification that we are aware of is that some pidgin properties, such as the ones listed in (1), may resemble properties that are hypothesized to have characterized early language, as has been argued by a number of authors (especially SankoV 1979; Bickerton 1990; Romaine 1992b: 234; Aitchison 1996; Jackendoff1999; Calvin and Bickerton 2000: 137; Givo̒n 2002a, 2005). For example, with reference to the scenario of grammaticalization that we proposed in “A scenario of evolution” (Figure 2.1 in “A scenario of evolution”), the structure of KPS and a number of pidgins can be located largely within layers IV and V, that is, it tends to lack the properties of the final layer VI.

Any hypothesis to the effect that pidgins provide an analog of early language needs to account for the differences that we listed above, by showing that these differences are either irrelevant or epi-phenomenal. So far, such an account does not exist.

Nevertheless, there are also reasons why a pidgin like KPS is relevant for a reconstruction of early language. These reasons all relate to the second component of pidgin development that we dealt with in “The rise of new functional categories”, namely to the way in which a language having little in terms of grammatical complexity gains in complexity.

The first reason for arguing in favor of a systematic link between pidgins and early language concerns the rise of functional categories. From all we know, there was a stage in the history of KPS and other pidgins where structures such as the ones discussed in “The rise of new functional categories” and “On pidgins and other restricted linguistic systems Discussion” were absent, that is, where these languages were morphosyntactically poorer than they are now. Disposing of hardly any distinct grammatical morphology, of no formal apparatus to signal syntactic relations, nor of any productive means of clause subordination, the speakers of these languages created a range of novel functional categories by combining existing material in new ways. On the basis of our bridge hypothesis (see “The present approach”) we argue that the strategy employed by KPS speakers was the same as the one that characterized the behavior of early-language speakers. This strategy can be characterized in the following way:

(34) A salient strategy used to develop new functional categories

a. Use existing linguistic forms in new contexts to suggest novel meanings.

b. Use ‘‘concrete’’ (physically definable, easily accessible, clearly-delineated, etc.) concepts to describe more ‘‘abstract’’ concepts.

c. Describe functional distinctions concerning semantic and syn tactic relations by means of lexical concepts and constructions.¹

In accordance with this strategy, we observed that speakers of Kenya Pidgin Swahili extended, for example, the use of the verb toka ‘come from’ from its canonical position before nouns to occur before verbs, whereby toka lost its ‘‘concrete’’ meaning of physical motion [To come from a place] and assumed a more ‘‘abstract’’ function [To come from an action], namely that of denoting immediate-past tense (see example (9)). In this way, lexical concepts were pressed into service to express specific functional concepts.

The second reason concerns the speed required for the rise of new functional categories. Under ‘‘normal’’ circumstances, this may involve one or more centuries to take its course—even if there is a great range of variation from one case to another. The pidgin evidence that we surveyed suggests that essentially the same process can take place within a few generations. The case of KPS is particularly noteworthy since it shows that under appropriate conditions a language can acquire a whole range of new grammatical use patterns and categories within half a century. This suggests that the speed of grammaticalization is contingent upon the linguistic and sociolinguistic environment in which it takes place; but more research is required on this issue.²

The third reason is perhaps the most relevant one with reference to any hypothesis on language genesis. Mühlhäusler (1986: 135) describes ‘‘structural expansion’’ in pidgins as being roughly synonymous with the processes of grammaticalization and addition of lexical resources. Ignoring lexical expansion, our observations on KPS suggest that structural expansion is in no way restricted to extended pidgins. Once there is a sufficient stock of lexical items used regularly by a group of speakers and this is passed on to other speakers, the ground is cleared for functional use patterns and categories to evolve: In regularly used collocations of two lexical items there is some probability that one of them will assume an ‘‘auxiliary’’ function, and that some of these collocations will turn into grammatical use patterns. Thus, pidgins can show us how a communication system relying primarily on lexical items, disposing only of a minimal apparatus of derivational and inflectional trappings and of marking clause subordination, gains in structural complexity, developing towards ‘‘fully fledged’’ languages.

Fourth, while the newly evolving patterns and categories may be influenced by models provided by the source language or other languages that are available to the pidgin speakers, this is not necessarily so. We saw in “The rise of new functional categories” that the pidgin speakers created some novel functional categories which do not appear to have analogs in the source languages concerned, such as an immediate-past tense form by means of the verb toka ‘come’ or a category of deontic modality built on the adjective mzuri ‘good’. Since these are grammaticalizations that can also be found in non-pidgins across the world (Heine and Kuteva 2002a), it is reasonable to assume that they are based on universal strategies of grammaticalization.

And finally, the study of pidgins offers a convenient laboratory for studying language evolution: Most modern pidgins arose within the last two centuries; in many cases we know roughly the time when and under which sociolinguistic circumstances they arose, when specific grammatical structures emerged, and how they evolved. Accordingly, pidgins provide a useful tool for reconstructing the emergence and development of grammar.

To conclude, there appears to be justification to link the ontological domain of pidgin speakers to that of early-language speakers—in spite of all the caveats that we pointed out above. But, as we hope to have shown, little would be gained by simply equating the two domains— that is, by arguing for example that the former can be used as a readily available template to understand the latter.

¹ We are concerned here with pidgins; otherwise, grammaticalization is by no means confined to lexical concepts, as we observed above.

² Philip Baker rightly reminds us that with regard to the speed required for the rise of new functional categories one needs to take account of the possibility that a particular pidgin derives in part at least from an earlier pidgin, as is certainly the case in the southwest Pacific area.

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باحثون يرصدون أثر تغيّر المناخ في دم البشر

المزيد

مواضيع ذات صلة

An elementary linguistic system?

Other restricted systems

The relationship between verbs and constructions

Advantages of a constructional approach to verb argument structure

Assumptions

Grammaticalization in other pidgins

On pidgins and other restricted linguistic systems Discussion

The rise of new functional categories

Goldbergs construction grammar

The architecture of construction grammars

The Generalisation Commitment

Comparing Construction Grammar with Cognitive Grammar