Re: Creole vs. Pidgin

Tom Wier wrote:
> Usually, and more importantly, unlike
> natural languages which one speaks from birth, pidgins tend to tolerate a
> very high degree of variation within the language in terms of what's
> grammatical and what isn't.
Tend to, but not always.  For instance, in Bislama, pronouns
obligatorily mark number (singular/dual/trial/plural) and
inclusive/exclusive in the first person, thus:
Person  Singular   Dual         Trial        Plural
1 excl  mi         mitupela     mitripela    mipela
1 incl             yumi(tupela) yumitripela  yumipela
2       yu         yutupela     yutripela    yupela
3       em         tupela       tripela      olgeta

From what I understand, if you're referring to three people in the
second person, you *must* say _yutripela_, you cannot simply say
_yupela_.

> The critical difference between a creole and a pidgin is that a creole is
> a pidgin which has gained a large enough* body of native speakers, such
> as Tok Pisin in New Guinea, to become "self-actualized"
In most uses, but I've seen _creole_ used for contact languages with no
native speakers

--
"[H]e axed after eggys: And the goode wyf answerde, that she coude not
speke no Frenshe ... And then at last a nother sayd that he woulde haue
hadde eyren: then the goode wyf sayd that she vnderstood hym wel." --
William Caxton
http://members.tripod.com/~Nik_Taylor/X-Files
http://members.tripod.com/~Nik_Taylor/Books.html
ICQ: 18656696
AIM Screen-Name: NikTailor