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It was a metaphorical reference to RISC ("reduced instruction set") CPU
design in computers. The idea was that they perform their operations
faster if they had the equivalent of a smaller vocabulary and simpler
rules. As opposed to CISC ("complex instruction set") chips which had a
larger vocabulary and, potentially, got clogged up. Nice idea and for a
while Macs had RISC chips in them while PCs had CISC chips, but since
about 2000 designers have more or less given up on RISC for mainstream
use and both Macs and Windows run on the same chips. RISC survives in
things like the iPod.<br>
<br>
The metaphor is that a pidgin has a reduced vocabulary and less complex
grammar so that learners can get up to spoken fluency faster. It is not
a bad metaphor because RISC designers originally believed that their
creations would have the superior performance - it was nothing to do
with simple=inferior. But in the end, in general purpose tests, both
designs are proven do about the same nowadays. In the same way I
suggest that, for general purposes, English and TP achieve about the
same. Bilingual speakers tend to prefer TP to accompany tasks in
everyday life, but code shift to English for specialist types of
commentary. I mean bilingual speakers from birth, for whom the learning
phase is long in the past.<br>
<br>
The problem as I said is that in non-specialist writing we often see
the sense conveyed that the "reduction" is achieved on the fly. I don't
mean this in the way the caricature expat achieves this (prefixing
sentences with "em i ..." has just been suggested), but that each
generation "creates" TP for itself, borrowing from English to keep up
as technology changes.<br>
<br>
To extend the metaphor, debates about RISC v CISC date back decades.
Similarly, the point of pidgins, i.e. why speakers choose between a
pidgin and non-pidgin for a particular utterance, must be something
weighed up for centuries past.<br>
<br>
John<br>
<br>
Martha Macintyre wrote:
<blockquote cite="mid:C74E6804.AD42%25marthaam@unimelb.edu.au"
type="cite">
<pre wrap="">Not sure what you mean by a 'reduced instruction set'. In what way
'reduced'?
But I agree about the NGO usage - my experience has been that a local person
is given the task of translation into TP. While expatriates do mangle TP and
interpolate English words, I have often heard PNG people speaking amongst
themselves and sprinkling sentences with English words. The main difference
is of course that the latter maintain TP grammatical structures.
But terms to do with computers for instance seem to me to be all recent
direct borrowings - 'crash', 'inbox', file, virus, etc. and are used in TO
spoken in offices.
On 16/12/09 10:17 AM, "John Burton" <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:john.burton@ANU.EDU.AU"><john.burton@ANU.EDU.AU></a> wrote:
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">I (mildly) disagree because this gives the impression that pidgins are
not only "reduced instruction set" versions of their donor languages,
the reduction is happening continuously in the present.
TP, TSC, Bislama, and SIP originate with two regional pidgin provinces*
- Central Pacific Pidgin and various pidgins spoken in the mainland of
Australia, whether by cane cutters or Aboriginal people. Obviously the
main donor language is English and many of the words do look the same as
modern English ones, but they've been away a long time.
(* if there are intending PhD candidates about, here's a great topic)
The donor English of the 1840s had many words we can barely recognise
the usage of today:
English pull, to row a boat / TP pul, to paddle a canoe - last
convincing mainstream citation in the OED is to a passage in Dickens.
English foreward, the fore part of a ship / TP poret, the bow - can't
say I have ever heard a native speaker of English utter this, although
movies and books say they do.
English heavy / TP hevi (or heve), as a noun** - there are many words
like this whose idiomatic usages are worlds apart and very likely have
roots some way back in time.
e.g. ** wanpela heve i stap = "group of 77 nations unite against bid to
scrap Kyoto"
"Vaialens" is fine in a "whatever" sort of way. David Week is thinking a
foreign NGO created this word. We can't know this. NGOs generally leave
TP notices to local staff, do they not.
John
Martha Macintyre wrote:
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">most of Tok Pisin's lexicon is comprised of
alternative spellings of English words - it's just that some have been
around longer than others
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap="">_______________________________________________
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</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap=""><!---->
</pre>
</blockquote>
<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Dr John Burton
Fellow, Australian Anthropological Society
Fellow, Resource Management in Asia-Pacific Program
Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies
Building 9, H C Coombs Building
Australian National University
ACT 0200
Australia
tel + 61 2 6125 9978 (8786 direct)
fax +61 2 6125 1635
mob 0423 941 419
john.burton at anu.edu.au
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://rspas.anu.edu.au/rmap/">http://rspas.anu.edu.au/rmap/</a>
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