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Trade Pidgins in China: Historical and Grammatical Relationships
Author(s) -
Li Michelle
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
transactions of the philological society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.333
H-Index - 26
eISSN - 1467-968X
pISSN - 0079-1636
DOI - 10.1111/1467-968x.12066
Subject(s) - pidgin , linguistics , locative case , china , history , portuguese , vocabulary , philosophy , archaeology , creole language
Sino‐western contacts began in the sixteenth century when Europeans started open trade with China. Two trade pidgins, Macau Pidgin Portuguese ( MPP ) and Chinese Pidgin English ( CPE ), arose during the Canton trade period. This paper examines the historical and grammatical relationships of these two pidgins by drawing data from nineteenth century phrasebooks. This study argues for a close connection between MPP and CPE with reference to three grammatical features which go beyond shared vocabulary: locative copulas, form of personal pronouns, and prepositional complementisers. While these grammatical properties find little resemblance in the recognised source languages for CPE , parallel uses are attested in MPP , which therefore appears to provide the model for these properties in CPE .