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1often as modifierA grammatically simplified form of a language, typically English, Dutch, or Portuguese, some elements of which are taken from local languages, used for communication between people not sharing a common language.
‘A pidgin adopts the vocabulary of the dominant language in the area, which is then grafted onto a local grammar.’
‘New hybrid languages, such as Creoles and pidgins, have been formed as a result of the modifications in languages that have been in contact.’
‘In diverse, stratified Hawaii, we all designate each other by race, using references that evolved from sugar plantation pidgin dating back to the late 1870 s.’
‘The author's brief and unhelpful comments make it sound like a pidgin.’
‘At times it almost sounds as though they're speaking some bizarre pidgin.’
‘Pinker and Jackendoff argue that modern language may have emerged from an ancient pidgin through evolutionary fine-tuning.’
‘This theory asserts a common origin for all European-based pidgins.’
‘Pidgin, a mix of African languages and English, also is common throughout southern Nigeria.’
‘Some linguists classify the Gullah language, spoken in the North Carolina islands, as a pidgin that is based on West African syntax.’
‘This varies from use as a first language through use as a second language, as a foreign language, as a component in a Creole or pidgin, right down to its use in fractured messages in airline terminals.’
‘At present, therefore, no single theory can adequately explain the origin of pidgin language.’
‘There is, however, some disagreement among scholars over the number of languages in sufficient contact to produce a pidgin.’
‘The ability of Pidgin to approach/approximate the intimate lives of Edgar and Katrina in the world of the novel is not privileged in school and is in fact penalized.’
‘For them, a pidgin is a marginal language which arises to fulfil certain restricted communicative functions among groups with no common language.’
‘His academic specialty is language change and language contact, with a concentration on pidgin and Creole languages.’
‘He could speak a smattering of Maori, or pidgin Maori, where the language is broken down and simplified, so he was given the job of interpreter.’
‘A creole is a nativized pidgin, expanded in form and function to meet the communicative needs of a community of native speakers.’
‘The names given to pidgin languages by linguists refer to their location and their principal lexifier or base language: that is, the language from which they draw most of their vocabulary.’
‘So far, none of the gang appeared to speak any English, but now he uttered a few words in a broken pidgin.’
‘Another characteristic of pidgins is lexical impoverishment.’
‘Pidgins, especially early in their development, rely primarily on nouns and verbs.’
‘As we all know, our pidgin dialect lacks the elegance and grace of the Queen's English.’
‘One characteristic of pidgins is the lack of inflectional morphology.’
‘They will create a new pidgin language that has a Spanish syntax, just as English is based on an Anglo-Saxon syntax.’
‘Kriol is also a pidgin, but has evolved into a separate language with its own structures and methods of orthography.’
‘Only at a later stage in its development does the pidgin develop productive internal resources for expanding its lexicon.’
‘On a discursive level, writers who utilize Taglish and Pidgin validate these languages as literary mediums of cultural expression.’
‘Other investigators argue that only in cases where more than two languages are in contact do true pidgins spring up.’
‘The choir were the most involved group in the church as well as some school children from a local school - they had to learn Pidgin.’
‘Creolization can take place at any point during the pidgin's life cycle, ranging from a jargon to an expanded pidgin.’
‘We mess up the English language with ebonics, Spanglish, Yiddish, Tagalog, and pidgin.’
‘Although the plantation setting was crucial for the emergence of pidgins in both areas, in the Pacific laborers were recruited and indentured rather than slaves.’
‘Lexical items in pidgin languages tend to cover a wider semantic domain than in the base language.’
‘Such a language will be rootless and will evolve within decades into some kind of Pidgin.’
‘On German plantations and wherever individuals speaking different languages met, a pidgin language referred to as Neo-Melanesian or Melanesian Pidgin developed.’
‘The translation often arrives back in a kind of pidgin language, but people still understand.’
language, dialect, patois, vernacular, mother tongue, native tongue, jargon, argot, cant, creole, lingua franca