Cameroon Pidgin English (CPE) is an English-lexified Atlantic expanded pidgin/creole spoken in some form by an estimated 50% of Cameroon’s population, primarily in the anglophone west regions, but also in urban centres throughout the country. Primarily a spoken language, CPE enjoys a vigorous oral presence in Cameroon, and the linguistic examples illustrating this description are drawn from a spoken corpus consisting of a range of text types, including oral narratives, radio broadcasts and spontaneous conversation. The authors’ typologically-framed investigation of the features of the language, from its phonetics, phonology and lexicon to its syntax and discourse structure, allows the reader a clear view of the linguistic character of CPE, offering a comprehensive description of the language that will be of interest to creolists as well as linguists interested in African languages, contact linguistics and comparative linguistics.
Author(s): Miriam Ayafor, Melane Green
Series: London Oriental and African Language Library
Publisher: John Benjamins
Year: 2017
Language: English
Pages: 314
City: Amsterdam/Philadelphia
Tags: linguistics, creoles and pidgins, Atlantic creoles, Africa
Dedication
v
Acknowledgments
xv
List of maps and figures
xvii
List of tables
xix
Abbreviations and symbols
xxi
Chapter 1. Introduction
1–12
Chapter 2. History and sociolinguistics of CPE
13–29
Chapter 3. Phonetics, phonology and orthography
31–46
Chapter 4. The lexicon
47–78
Chapter 5. The syntax of the noun phrase
79–101
Chapter 6. Pronouns
103–131
Chapter 7. Tense, mood, modality, aspect and negation
133–157
Chapter 8. The simple sentence
159–194
Chapter 9. Complex predicates
195–214
Chapter 10. The complex sentence
215–240
Chapter 11. Information structure
241–261
Chapter 12. Selected texts
263–282
Appendix: Participant data
283–298
References
293–307
Subject index
309–314
