Tok Pisin - Development of Tok Pisin

Development of Tok Pisin

Tok Pisin is a language that developed out of regional dialects of the languages of the local inhabitants and English, brought into the country when English speakers arrived. There were four phases in the development of Tok Pisin that were laid out by Loreto Todd.

  1. Casual contact between English speakers and local people developed a marginal pisin
  2. Pisin English was used between the local people. The language expanded from the users' mother tongue
  3. As the interracial contact increased the vocabulary expanded according to the dominant language.
  4. In areas where English was the official language a depidginization occurred (Todd, 1990)

Tok Pisin is also known as a "mixed" language. This means that it consists of characteristics of different languages. Tok Pisin obtained most of its vocabulary from the English language: i.e. English is its lexifier. The origin of the syntax is a matter of debate. Hymes (Hymes 1971b: 5) claims that the syntax is from the substratum languages: i.e. the languages of the local peoples. (Hymes 1971b: 5). Derek Bickerton's analysis of creoles, on the other hand, claims that the syntax of creoles is imposed on the grammarless pidgin by its first native speakers: the children who grow up exposed to only a pidgin rather than a more developed language such as one of the local languages or English. In this analysis, the original syntax of creoles is in some sense the default grammar humans are born with.

Pidgins are less elaborated than non-Pidgin languages. Their typical characteristics found in Tok Pisin are:

  1. A smaller vocabulary which leads to metaphors to supply lexical units:
    • Smaller vocabulary:
      Tok Pisin: "vot"; English: "election" (n) and "vote" (v)
      Tok Pisin: "hevi"; English: "heavy" (adj) and "weight" (n)
    • Metaphors:
      Tok Pisin: "skru bilong han" (screw of the arm); English: "elbow" (This is almost always just "skru" – hardly ever distinguished as "skru bilong han" except in liturgical contexts, where "brukim skru" is "kneel").
      Tok Pisin: "gras bilong het" (grass of the head); English: "hair" (Hall, 1966: 90f) (Most commonly just "gras" – see note on "skru bilong han" above).
  2. A reduced grammar: lack of copula, determiners; reduced set of prepositions, and conjunctions
  3. Less differentiated phonology: and are not distinguished in Tok Pisin (they are in free variation). The sibilants /s/, /z/, /ʃ/, /ʒ/, /tʃ/, and /dʒ/ are also not distinguished.
    "pis" in Tok Pisin could mean in English: "beads", "fish", "peach", "feast" or "peace".
    "sip" in Tok Pisin could mean in English: "ship", "jib", "jeep", "sieve" or "chief"

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