Re: Pidgins and Creoles II

On Wed, 27 Oct 1999, Theodore Kloba wrote:

> I'm interested in hearing what others here have done with pidgins &
> creoles.  I'm thinking about making Abibin a creole of Agryziexabeiue
> and another [as yet undetermined] language.
>
> Are there any online resources regarding pidgins & creoles?  I remember
> reading a few vague statements about simplified grammar in pidgins, with
> the only specific example being the common use of reduplication for
> plurals.
>
I once found a decent set of pages on Lingua Franca, but they were
develish difficult to find. However, http://www.uwm.edu/~corre/franca
should be the address. I'd really advise you to take advantage of the
recent reprint, though, and order Holm, Pidgins and Creoles, I and II.
The Cambridge Language Surveys series is excellent, and gets out of
print far too fast.

> The angle I've started taking is to map a word in Agryziexabeiuie (with
> its more complicated phonology) to the simpler Abibin phonetics.  The
> grammars of the two languages will be very different.
>
Phonetics needn't be very much simplified, as shown by the French
pidgins, which are as nasal and vowely as French itself. Grammar is
the important point, esp. tense, aspect, number and gender.

Boudewijn Rempt  | http://denden.conlang.org/~bsarempt