Arabic Linguistics

ARABIC PIDGINS AND CREOLES FROM
A COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE *
25
Andrei A. AVRAM
University of Bucharest
1. Introduction
Varieties of restructured Arabic figure less prominently in the literature on
pidgin and creole languages. As will be shown below, however, evidence from
Nubi (henceforth N) 1 , an Arabic-based creole spoken in Kenya and Uganda, and
from Juba Arabic (JA) 2 , an Arabic pidgin spoken in the Sudan, raises issues of
interest not only to creolistics.
The present article is organized as follows. Section 2 examines the validity
of a number of morphosyntactic diagnostic features suggested in the literature. In
section 3 I look into an alleged difference between pidgins and creoles. The origin
of a complementizer derived from a verbum dicendi is analyzed in 4. Section 5
examines the mechanism of forming passive verbs. In 6 I outline the role of tone
as a mark of morphosyntactic distinctions. The role of pidginization strategies in
the emergence of lexicalized compound nouns is discussed in section 7. The
conclusions are summarized in 8.
The length of the quotations has been kept at a reasonable minimum. All
citations in JA and N are presented in the system of transcription used in the sources
mentioned. Relevant items are in bold characters. All examples are accompanied by
their translation. The following abbreviations are used in the glosses: COMP =
complementizer; DET = determiner; FOC = focus marker; FUT = future marker;
GEN = genitive; NEG = negator; PAST = past tense marker; PROG = progressive
aspect marker; REL = relativizer.
2. Morphosyntactic diagnostic features
Feature-based approaches to pidgin and/or creole languages have recently
been enjoying a certain popularity in creolistics (see e.g., Baker 1995a, 1995b and
* Work on this paper was made possible by a Mellon Research Fellowship at the Consejo
Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Madrid. I gratefully acknowledge their support.