A Linguistic Study of Nigerian Pidgin
Chapter One
Purpose of study
The study was conducted with the aim of:
- Finding out the prospect of Pidgin as a language of communication.
- Showing people’s attitude towards Pidgin used in Ipodo community market in Lagos.
- Analyzing how Mother Tongue interferes with Nigerian Pidgin.
CHAPTER TWO
REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE
INTRODUCTION
This chapter will review some major contributions of various scholars to the study of Pidgin; as such only contributions relevant to this study will be reviewed.
ETYMOLOGY OF ―PIDGIN‖
There are at least six possible linguistic sources for the term pidgin. Mühlhäusler
(1986) and Romaine (1988) as cited in Malmkjær (1991) state that:
- According to the “Oxford English Dictionary”(OED) and Collinson (1929), “pidgin” is a Chinese corruption of the English “business”;
- Others consider it a Chinese corruption of the Portuguese word for business, “occupação”;
- Or derived from the Hebrew for exchange or trade or redemption, “pidjom”;
- Or it may derive from a South Seas pronunciation of English “beach”, namely “beachee”, because the language was typically used on the beach;
- Or it may derive from the South American Indian language, Yago, whose word for people is “pidian”;
- According to Knowlton (1967), Professor Hsü Ti-san of the University of Hong Kong has written in the margin of a page of a book on Chinese Pidgin English (Leland, 1924) that the term “pidgin”may be derived from the two Chinese characters, “pei” and “ts’in” meaning „paying money‟. Many expressions in pidgin and creole languages have more than one source, so it is possible that all of these accounts are true.
DEFINITIONS OF A PIDGIN
Several definitions have been given on pidgins and creoles. The terminology of pidgin-creole studies reflects the traditional classification and theory of origin of these languages. Each pidgin or creole has been traditionally classified as a deviant dialect of a standard language. Pidgins and creoles are often also called mixed languages and an even more descriptively misleading explanation suggests that a pidgin or a creole is only a potpourri with no uniform coherent structure of its own.
Decamp (1987) however, opines that pidgins and creoles are genuine languages in their own right, not just macaronic blends or interlingual corruptions of standard languages. He describes a pidgin as an incidental communicative language within a multilingual setting which “is the native language of nobody. Its vocabulary is donated by the sociopolitically dominant language in the original contact situation”, most especially, with the European imperialists. Pidgin is therefore an amalgam of the main, foreign or superstrate language and the indigenous or substrate language. Stockwell (2002) observes that because of the overwhelming colonial expansion of the British imperial power, around a quarter of all pidgins and Creoles have English as element.
Pidgins have thus been called contact, trade, or auxiliary languages. Kleinecke
(1959); as cited in Hall (1966) says “a pidgin is a contact vernacular, normally not the native language of any of its speakers”. It is used in trading or in any situation requiring communication between persons who do not speak each other’s native languages. It is characterized by a limited vocabulary, an elimination of many grammatical devices such as number and gender, and a drastic reduction of redundant features. This reduction has been often called simplification. Reinecke (1964: 534) claims that “a minimum or makeshift language” will arise “when men of different speech are thrown into contact and must reach an understanding…” In defining a pidgin, Todd (1974) as cited in Gani-Ikilama (2005) sees pidgins as marginal languages which arise to fulfill certain restricted communicative needs among people who do not share a common language. Todd (1984:3) also states that it
“is a communication system that develops among people who do not share a common language”. Crystal (1987:334) agrees to this by saying that “a pidgin is a system of communication which has grown up among people who do not share a common language, but who want to talk to each other, for trading or other reasons. He also says it is “a language with a reduced rang of structure and use, with no native speakers. To Romaine (1988:224), a pidgin is “a language which has been stripped of everything but the bare essentials necessary for communication.”
CHAPTER THREE
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
INTRODUCTION
The methodology to be used for this study is contextual. The chapter is split into three segments: sources of data, data collection technique and data analysis.
SOURCES AND COLLECTION OF DATA
Data were collected through face to face interviews. Ipodo community market in Ikeja was visited and traders were interacted with in their day to day transactions, which were analyzed in the project. Also, the study employed the use of secondary sources of data.
METHOD OF DATA ANALYSIS
This segment will be concerned with the detailed examination and presentation of data that will be obtained for this study from the lexical and syntactic structures that have been extracted from the texts. As a descriptive study, the analysis will be approached on the bases of language structure, status and function.
Below are the procedural steps that will form the analysis:
- Identification of some lexical items and grammatical structures peculiar to NP usage in the selected texts.
- Categorization of some of these lexical items based on their source languages.
- Explanations of their meaning as different or same as that of the source languages.
CHAPTER FOUR
ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION OF DATA/FINDINGS
INTRODUCTION
In this chapter, details of the collected data will be analyzed, discussed and interpreted
CHAPTER FIVE
SUMMARY, CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS
SUMMARY
This study was carried out on the linguistic study of Nigerian Pidgin, using Ipobo community market in Lagos as case study. This research begins with a brief background to the study and what the researcher intends to unravel as well as the importance of such a study. The researcher tries to identify various contributions of scholars that are related and serve as bases for this work. They include, definitions, functions, features, status of Pidgin and also the theoretical framework the researcher adopts for the work.
The researcher uses Jowitt„s (1991) ―Theory of Interlanguage” and Fishman’s theory of the “Great Tradition”. Thereby being able to establish the presence of various Nigerian indigenous languages in NP as well as to express the fact that, due to the reason that many indigenous languages have contributed to the NP vocabulary it should be given a linguistic investigation so as to discover more possible reasons why it should be given an official recognition. In addition, this study has been able to provide answers to the research questions.
CONCLUSION
Based on the above findings, we can now conclude that NP is really Nigerian and has borrowed much of its vocabulary from various indigenous Nigerian languages, therefore may not be mutually intelligible to speakers of Pidgin outside Nigeria who are not conversant with Nigerian languages. This is because NP has identifiable elements that make it typically Nigerian such that it cannot be tagged as “foreign”.
Our research also reveals that while some NP vocabulary derived from the base language-English tends to change in form and meaning, the vocabulary borrowed from indigenous Nigerian languages tend to maintain their form and meaning in most cases. Hence, NP is easy to learn and it is easily acquired from the environment; this is because various linguistic groups identify with it. Thus, NP has proved to be Nigeria’s greatest asset
from the pre-independence struggle as the instrument of uniting the people of our multilingual nation.
RECOMMENDATIONS
In the light of our findings we can therefore recommend that:
- Nigerian indigenous languages and NP should achieve an equilibrium with respect to each other, such that where interferences take place it will manifest itself as a modification of NP lexis, rather than as the importation into NP of a borrowed word from the Nigerian indigenous languages.
- It is expedient that the Nigerian government gives official recognition to NP so that it can correctly feature in the life of Nigerians without anybody feeling ashamed of it. This will also help linguists to focus more on it.
- The government with the help of linguists should integrate the various dialects of NP from different regions so as to establish a high bred NP that everyone can identify with and adopt without any resistance.
- They should also seek to modify and standardize NP, thereby adopting or creating a simplified and proper orthography or writing system for it and teaching it in schools especially the preliminary classes and secondary schools so as to facilitate the government’s goal of increasing literacy.
- The governments’ recognition of NP will bestow a status on it that will help the Nigerian population to give respect and regard to it as a language in its own right.
People will no longer see it as an “errand boy”, but a language that has a proper describable form which is worthy of any effort that is made to learn it. The use of NP should therefore be encouraged in education, in literature, in the media, in arts and entertainment, and also in official or public speeches.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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