Lecture , 8, Lecture Intonation in English Outline Intonation: definition, approaches, functions

pidgin language, by contrast, though used for much the same purposes of communication between speakers of mutually unintelligible languages (usually in the Third World), is developed out of a mixture of the languages of the communities concerned. Holm (1988: 5) gives one of the clearest definitions of a pidgin language:
A pidgin is a reduced language that results from extended contact between groups of people with no language in common; it evolves when they need some means of verbal communication, perhaps for trade, but no group learns the native language of any other group for social reasons that may include lack of trust or of close contact. Usually those with less power (speakers of substrate languages) are more accommodating and use words from the language of those with more power (the superstate), although the meaning, form and use of these words may be influenced by the substrate languages. When dealing with the other groups, the superstrate speakers adopt many of these changes to make themselves more readily understood, and no longer try to speak as they do within their own group. They co-operate with the other groups to create a makeshift language to serve their needs.
the vocabulary of a pidgin is usually drawn primarily from the prestige language of the dominant group in a situation of language contact. Its grammar, however, retains many features of the native languages of the subordinate groups. The prestige language which supplies the bulk of the vocabulary is the one which is usually thought of as being pidginized, hence the name Pidgin English.
Thus a pidgin is a simplified language that develops as a means of communication between two or more groups that do not have a language in common, in situations such as trade. Pidgins are not the native language of any speech community, but are instead learned as second languages. Pidgins usually have low prestige with respect to other languages
When a pidgin is acquired as the first, native language of a group of speakers (as happened historically to generations of speakers under the social and geographical displacement that accompanied slavery), it is said to constitute a