Nigerian Pidgin and the Languages of Southern Nigeria

Abstract

Although several linguists have noted the similarities between the Atlantic Creoles and West African languages, none has systematically compared the structures of a geographically and genetically balanced sample of West African languages with a creolized language of the Atlantic Basin. This study examines the structural similarities between Nigerian Pidgin and all of the languages of southern Nigeria for which fairly comprehensive descriptions have been written to date. The results show that linguistic work on West African languages has progressed to the point where claims regarding the influence of these languages on Atlantic Creoles can be substantiated with concrete evidence from a truly representative sample of languages.

Transfer and the Substrate Hypothesis in Creolistics

“…With the significance of proper names (approximately 87% of the items discussed by Turner) disputed and with some of the other words being in restricted usage (e.g., only in songs), the contribution may, from a dialectologist perspective, be only minimal. 12 Nonetheless, Turner has inspired considerable research on African substrate influence in the New World's Creoles, including: Alleyne (1971Alleyne ( , 1979Alleyne ( , 1980Alleyne ( , 1986Alleyne ( , 1988, Allsopp (1977), Boretzky (1983Boretzky ( , 1988, DeBose and Faraclas (1988), Faraclas (1987Faraclas ( , 1988a, Gilman (1986), Holm (1980aHolm ( , 1980bHolm ( , 1986Holm ( , 1988aHolm ( , 1988b, Holm and Oyedeji (1984), Koopman (1986), Lefebvre (1986Lefebvre ( , 1988, Manessy (1985aManessy ( , 1985bManessy ( , 1986, Maurer (1987), Robertson (1988), Singler (1984Singler ( , 1988a, and Smith, Robertson, and Williamson (1987). 13 Many of these have shown little improvement over Turner's methodology (discussed in the next section), a weakness that has contributed not only to the stagnation of the substrate hypothesis (at least until recently 14 ) but also to its being slow in convincingly countering the exaggerated significance of Bickerton's LBH.…”

“…The former may have been subsequent to and may have needed the latter to support it. It may also be convenient to distinguish those who invoke substrate influence from single languages or groups of typologically related languages (e.g., Alleyne, 1988;DeBose & Faraclas, 1988;Faraclas, 1987Faraclas, , 1988aLefebvre, 1986Lefebvre, ,1988Sylvain, 1936) from those who refer to, for instance, all the languages of the coast of western and central Africa. One of the problems, particularly with such major works as Alleyne (1980), Holm (1988a), Jourdain (1956), and Turner (1949), is random reference to various African languages, down-playing the typological differences between them.…”

Towards a model of language contact and change in the English-lexifier creoles of Africa and the Caribbean

“…West African (balanced) and English (deranked) causatives are found in almost all AECs that I surveyed. Causatives involving balanced structures are therefore not only typical of African AECs, which are geographically coterminous with West African languages, but they also extend to the Caribbean, thereby providing further evidence for the areal-typological links of the AECs within West Africa (see Faraclas 1988;Yakpo 2012) and between West Africa and the Americas (see Muysken and Smith 2015). The AECs therefore show a dual "European" and "West African" areal-typological profile with respect to causative formation, reflective of their multiple genealogical heritages and the areal forces that have shaped individual creoles on both sides of the Atlantic.…”

Transfer Constraints and Substrate Influence in Melanesian Pidgin

“…Many scholars have pointed out striking structural and semantic simi larities between features of pidgins or creoles and their substrate languages (e.g., Alleyne, 1980;Faraclas, 1988Faraclas, , 1990Keesing, 1988;Koopman, 1986;Lefebvre, 1986Lefebvre, , 1993. At the same time, others have been skeptical of using these apparent similarities as evidence of strong substrate influence, em phasizing instead the influence of the superstrate (e.g., Chaudenson, 1992;Wittmann & Founder, 1983) or language universals (Bickerton, 1981(Bickerton, , 1984.…”