Grammatical Features

Hawiian Pidgin-Creole also has distinct grammatical forms not found in SAE, but some of which are shared with other dialectal forms of English or may derive from other linguistic influences.

Forms used for SAE " to be":

• Generally, forms of English " to be" (i.e. the copula) are omitted when referring to inherent qualities of an object or person, forming in essence a stative verb form. [like Russian]

Da baby cute. (or) Cute, da baby.

The baby is cute.

• When the verb " to be" refers to a temporary state or location, the word stay is used (see above).

Da book stay on top da table.

The book is on the table.

Da water stay cold.

The water is cold.

For tense-marking of verbs, auxiliary verbs are employed:

• To express past tense, Hawiian Pidgin-Creole uses wen (went) in front of the verb.

Jesus wen cry. (DJB, John 11: 35)

Jesus cried.

• To express future tense, Hawiian Pidgin-Creole uses goin (going) in front of the verb.

God goin do plenny good kine stuff fo him. (DJB, Mark 11: 9)

God is going to do a lot of good things for him.

• To express past tense negative, Hawiian Pidgin-Creole uses neva (never).

He neva like dat.

He didn't want that. (or) He never wanted that.

• Use of fo (for) in place of the infinitive particle " to". Cf. dialectal form " Going for to carry me home."

I tryin fo tink.

or

I try fo tink."

I'm trying to think.

• Popular phrases:

A variety of phrases is present in the language of local Hawaiians, including:

" Ho, cuz, I like sample" translates to " Could I have some? "

" You like try dat? " = " Do you want to try it? "

" No can" = " I can't"

So, as you can see Hawiian Pidgin-Creole is a well developed language separate from English, Hawaiian and the other languages that helped to create it.

LET’S LOOK AT ONE MORE EXAMPLE OF A CREOLE AGAIN FROM THE U.S. CALLED GULLAH

SLIDE: 14 GULLAH LANGUAGE

The Gullah language (Sea Island Creole English, Geechee) is a creole language spoken by the Gullah people (also called " Geechees"), an African American population living on the Sea Islands and the coastal region of the U.S. states of South Carolina and Georgia.

Gullah is based on English, with strong influences from West and Central African languages such as Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa, Mandinka, Wolof, Bambara, Fula, Mende, Vai, Akan, Ewe, Kongo, Umbundu, and Kimbundu.

// African origins

Like other Atlantic creoles, Gullah derives from the pdigins that developed along the West African coast in the 1600s and 1700s as a way for Africans to communicate with Europeans and with members of other African tribes with whom they traded.

Lorenzo Turner's research

In the 1930s and 1940s an African American linguist named Lorenzo Dow Turner did a seminal study of the Gullah language. Turner found that Gullah is strongly influenced by African languages in its sound system, vocabulary, grammar, sentence structure, and semantic system.

Turner identified over 300 loanwords (BORROWED WORDS) from various African languages in Gullah and almost 4, 000 African personal names used by Gullah people. He also found Gullahs living in remote sea-side settlements who could recite songs and story fragments and do simple counting in the Mende, Vai, and Fulani languages of West Africa.

Before Lorenzo Turner's work, mainstream scholars viewed Gullah speech as substandard English, a hodgepodge of mispronounced words and corrupted grammar uneducated black people developed in their efforts to copy the speech of their English speaking slave owners.

But Turner's study was so well researched and so convincingly detailed in its presentation of evidence of African influences in Gullah that academics soon reversed course. After Turner's book was published in 1949, scholars began coming to the Gullah region on a regular basis to study African influences in Gullah language and culture.

SLIDE 15: GULLAH VERBAL SYSTEM