Arabic Linguistics

equires, however, that evidence should be produced that the respective substrate
languages of e.g. JA, N, Sranan and Tok Pisin, all have similar or identical
compounds likely to have served as a model for these pidgins and creoles.
Evidence from JA and N thus shows that greater care needs to be exercized
when attempting to trace back lexicalized compound nouns to the substratal input,
and that identical pidginization strategies may independently yield identical
outcomes across pidgin or creole languages.
8. Conclusions
This paper has attempted to show, on the basis of selected data from JA and
N, that the study of Arabic-based pidgins and creoles can bring to light facts and
phenomena of interest first and foremost to pidgin and creole linguistics: the
validity of some diagnostic features suggested in the literature; apparent
grammaticalization and the role of the substratal input and of the ―partial model‖
in the lexifier; the existence of a productive passive formation mechanism; the use
of tone to encode morphosyntactic distinctions; universal pidginization strategies.
Under the circumstances, it is regrettable that textbooks of or introductions
to pidgin and creole studies tend to focus on Atlantic and/or Pacific varieties with
a European lexifier and only infrequently refer to and include data from Arabicbased
pidgins and/or creoles 16 .
Finally, at least some of the phenomena discussed above, namely the
apparent grammaticalization of a verbum dicendi into a complementizer and the
formation of passives by changing tonal marking on active transitive verbs, should
be of interest to grammaticalization studies and respectively general linguistic
typology as well.
Notes
1. See e.g. Nhial 1975, Owens (1985, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1997, 2001: 260-261), Miller (1993,
2002), Kaye and Tosco (1993), Avram (1994, 1995) and Wellens (2003). Differences between the two
varieties of N (from Kenya and from Uganda respectively) are mostly ignored in this article.
2. See e.g. Nhial 1975, Prokosch (1986), Vincent (1986), Miller (1993, 1994, 2002),
Tosco (1995).
3. For KN cf example (20) in section 2.
4. Note that gal/gále is not the only complementizer. Other complementizers include Ø,
kede and keli (see Miller 2002: 35).
5. A topic marker, according to Pasch and Thelwall (1987: 135).
6. Among the substrate languages belonging to the Bantu family, Luganda is, after
Swahili, the second important source of lexical items in N (Pasch and Thelwall 1987: 140).
7. Cf. also Owens (1990).
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