WHAT IS A PIDGIN
A Pidgin is essentially a contact language, a variety which had no native speakers and
developed for some practical purpose among groups of people who did not know each other
languages; this is the approach generally accepted, as illustrated in the following definitions. Mc
Mahon (1994:253) states that pidgins 'develop in a situation where different groups of people
require some means of communication but lack any common language. Crucially, a pidgin is
nobody's first language; all its speakers learn it as adults as a second or further language, and all
have native speakers of their own'. Fernandez (1998:212) states that 'a pidgin is a language made
up of elements of several other languages (at least, more than two), and used mainly for “trading
contacts”; in other words, it is an auxiliary language that has no native speakers'. De Camp
(1971, quoted in Romaine 1993:23) defines a pidgin as 'a contact vernacular, normally not the
native language of any of its speakers ... 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'.
Characteristics of Pidgins
Pidgins are used in contact situations and therefore have restricted functions. Thus,
pidgins are generally characterized by an absence of complex grammatical structures and a
limited vocabulary. However it has been pointed out that 'pidgins do not simplify the grammars
of their superstrate and substrate languages, but also restructure them to produce a new linguistic
system' (Mc Mahon 1994: 254). The following points are said to be characteristics of pidgins.

Pidgins rarely exhibit inflectional morphology, so that no marking for gender, case,
number, tense, and so generally occurs

Inflectional suffixes are rare in Pidgins, as for example the '-s plural' or ' s possessive' in
English

Many words in Pidgins can be borrowings used to take on new meanings.

The syntax may be quite different from the other language of contact (Yule 234)

The lexicon of a pidgin is characteristically reduced by comparison with the superstrate
and substrate languages

Widespread absence of number distinctions in nouns is typical of pidgins (Romaine 27)

Words are often multifunctional, acting as nouns, verbs and adjectives; and there is no
compounding, so that the expression of complex ideas is complex.

Pidgins tend to have a fixed, invariable word order, which is characteristically SVO
What is a Creole?
The term Creole is believed to be derived from Portuguese crioulo and originally was
used to talk about people of European origin, born and grown up in a colony; later the term was
extended to indigenous natives and finally the term was applied to certain languages used in
colonies.
The development from a pidgin to a Creole has been called 'creolization', it is believed to
happen when a pidgin becomes the first language of a community . Therefore, according to this
view, the creole is the language of the children of pidgin speakers and has a large number of
native speakers. This approach is generally agreed by most scholars. McMahon (1994:254) states
that 'a pidgin becomes a creole when it is adopted as the native language of a speech community'.
Fernandez (1998:212) also states that 'when a pidgin becomes the language of a community of
speakers – as in the plantations of the deep South in USA – it becomes a creole'. Romaine
(1993:38) points out that 'the development from pidgin into creole involves an expansion of
expressive forces in response to communicative needs', a definition close to Hyme's (1977, cited
in Romaine 1993:38) 'the process of creolization involves an expansion of inner form and
complexification of outer form'.