| Unserdeutsch | |
|---|---|
| Rabaul Creole German | |
| Native to | Papua New Guinea |
Native speakers | 110, almost all in Australia (2016)[1] |
German-based creole | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-2 | crp |
| ISO 639-3 | uln |
| Glottolog | unse1236 |
Unserdeutsch ('Our German'), orRabaul Creole German, is aGerman-basedcreole language that originated inPapua New Guinea as alingua franca.[2][3] The substrate language is assumed to beTok Pisin,[4] while the majority of the lexicon is fromGerman.[5][6][7]
German was the language of instruction in Catholic mission schools, which is where the language originated, and children residing in a German-run orphanage later used the language regularly outside of their classrooms.[8] The language developed into a first language for some when these children had families of their own.[9] Oral stories tell a version that Unserdeutsch originated by children sharing stories where they used German vocabulary with Tok Pisin grammar, this change in language is referred to asrelexification.[10][11][7]
The majority of Unserdeutsch speakers and their families migrated toAustralia after Papua New Guinea'sindependence in 1975. During fieldwork conducted by researchers between 2014 and 2017, there were about 100 speakers found in Australia and around 10 speakers found in Papua New Guinea.[7][6] The language is no longer learned as a first language.[9]
Most speakers of Unserdeutsch arebilingual; speaking eitherStandard German,English,Tok Pisin orKuanua. Most surviving speakers are middle-aged or older, although younger members of the community may comprehend the language. Unserdeutsch is likely a descendant of a pidginised form of Standard German which originated in theGazelle Peninsula of New Britain duringGerman colonial times among the Catholic mixed-race (Vunapope) community. With increased mobility and intermarriage, it has been disappearing in the last few decades.
Unserdeutsch presumably influenced the development of its neighbour,Tok Pisin. UnlikeNamibian Black German inNamibia, it is a creole; indeed, it is the only creole that developed from colonial German.[12]
Further, Unserdeutsch is only composed of three characteristics: movement rules, questions and question words, according toBickerton and hisbioprogram hypothesis.[13]
| alle | boy-s | raus | schuv | him | boat |
| PL | boy-PL | get.out | shove | TR | boat |
| German | English | German | Ger/Eng | English | English |
'Everybody get out, shove the boat!'[8]
The below table shows Unserdeutsch's consonantalphonemes:[14]
| Labial | Dental/Alveolar | Postalveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n | ŋ | ||||
| Plosive | voiceless | p | t | k | |||
| voiced | b | d | ɡ | ||||
| Affricate | pf | ts | tʃ | ||||
| Fricative | voiceless | f | s | ʃ | (ç) | (x) | h |
| voiced | v | ||||||
| Approximant | l | j | |||||
| Rhotic | r | ||||||
The below table shows Unserdeutsch's vowelphonemes:[14]
| Front | Back | |
|---|---|---|
| Close | i | u |
| Mid | ɛ | ɔ |
| Open | a | |
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Unserdeutsch is typical of creole languages[15] in that it reflects the lexicon of one language overlaid upon a substrate grammar – in this case German and Tok Pisin, respectively.[16] Grammatically, Unserdeutsch bears many similarities to L2 varieties of German, suggesting incomplete language acquisition on the part of students in the German-speaking colony.[17] Grammatically, Unserdeutsch morphology adheres to "average" creole characteristics,[18] but because Unserdeutsch was never formally standardized, being used only informally as an in-groupregister, there is an unusually high degree of grammatical variation among speakers of Unserdeutsch, both between familial groups andindividual speakers.[19]
More recently,Australian English has also influenced the language in several ways. Certain syntactic constructions appear to have been borrowed directly from English,[20] including an English-likepassive voice construction utilizing a copula.[21] Both of these features are generally rare in creole languages, which indicates an early, pervasive English influence that might have included conscious modeling of English sentence structure.[21]
Unserdeutsch word order is rigidlySVO and lacks theV2 constituent order of subordinate clauses found in Standard German.[22] This tendency extends even to imperative sentences and yes/no questions, which demonstrates a strong substrate influence from Tok Pisin.[22]
Furthermore, evenWH-fronting is optional in Unserdeutsch,[17] and these types of interrogatives often come at the end of a sentence, as in Tok Pisin, rather than at the beginning as in Standard German or English.[23] However, some speakers prefer to use a German-modeled sentence pattern in which the interrogative is in head position.
The use of either construction appears variable among speakers of Unserdeutsch.[24]
Unserdeutsch nouns are derived almost exclusively from the German lexicon,[25] but noun morphology is much lesssynthetic than Standard German.[22] Unserdeutsch nouns do not change to indicategrammatical gender orcase, nor is there overtplural marking.[22]
Rather than taking specific singular and plural forms, as in Standard German, Unserdeutsch nouns are pluralized almost exclusively by the pronominal markeralle, unless plurality is already indicated by a numeral or pronoun, in which case it is omitted entirely.[22][17][26] Thus, most nouns in Unserdeutsch are pluralized as in the following example:
There are few frequently used nouns which retain Standard German plural forms and are thus double-marked for plural.[22] These irregular forms are retained perhaps owing to frequency of use.[28]
Like German but unlike its substrate language, Tok Pisin, Unserdeutsch usesdefinite and indefinite articles. However, unlike German, these articles are not inflected for gender or case, and in fact the Standard German articles are merged into a single articlede;[29][30] this is possibly due to influence from English.[31] Articles are normally only used with singular nouns, with the generalized plural markeralle functioning as a definite plural article.[32][30] The full Unserdeutsch article set is as follows:
| Singular | Plural | |
| Definite | de | alle |
| Indefinite | ein | Ø |
Speakers of Unserdeutsch often omit articles altogether in speech.[32][33]
Nearly all Unserdeutsch verbs are lexically derived from Standard German, but the Unserdeutschinflectional system exhibits strong influence from English and Tok Pisin, and is considerably moreisolating than Standard German.[34] Many of the distinguishing characteristics of Standard German verbs, such asseparable prefixes, second- and third-person stem change and thestrong/weak distinction, are not present in Unserdeutsch.[33][34]
Verbs are generally not inflected according toperson or number.[35] Thus, the present tense form of most Unserdeutsch verbs is identical to the Standard Germaninfinitive, which is not conjugated.[22] A small number of verbs take an infinitive form that is instead modeled after the German third-person singular form (geht, 'go') or verb stem (bleib, 'stay'), and sometransitive verbs of English or Tok Pisin origin take the Tok Pisin suffix -im (adoptim, 'to adopt').[22] The following example illustrates verb morphology compared to Standard German:
De Koenigin anfang.
There is no overtpreterite in Unserdeutsch,[17] but a generalized past tense can be indicated through the use of the uninflected verbhat ('have') alongside a highly regularized German participle form, which is constructed by the addition of the prefixge- to the infinitive. Even verbs borrowed from English or Tok Pisin are prefixed in this way. Thus:
There are few high frequency verbs that exhibit past tense forms closer to their Standard German counterparts, although these forms are lexicalized and non-productive.[36]
There is also a form of weakly grammaticalized future tense marked by theauxiliarywit ('will,' from Germanwird), which is used with the infinitive[37] in the following way:
Overall, though, the marking of tense is optional, and many speakers of Unserdeutsch do not distinguish between tense-specific forms.[38]
Unusually for a creole language,[35] Unserdeutsch has acopula which is, by contrast to the rest of the verb system, conjugated in present tense.[39] The copular forms are very similar to their Standard German counterparts. In past tense, the copula is simplywar; it is not conjugated at all.[35] Thus:
| Singular | Plural | |
| 1st person | i bin | wir bis |
| 2nd person | du bis | eu seid |
| 3rd person | er/sie is | die sind |
| Singular | Plural | |
| 1st person | i war | wir war |
| 2nd person | du war | eu war |
| 3rd person | er/sie war | die war |
Some speakers preferentially use an uninflected copula,bis, as in:
Notably, whether inflected or not, the copula isfrequently deleted in spoken Unserdeutsch.[39]
The Unserdeutschaspect system is fairly complex.[36] Typical of a creole language, most of these constructions are formed by the addition of preverbal markers.[41]
Progressive or habitual aspect is expressed using the so-calledam construction, formed using the particleam and the infinitive verb.[36][21]
Habitual past action can be marked using the auxiliarywit (or sometimeswid) along with an infinitive verb, a construction that functions similarly to English past tensewould phrases.[36] Thewit auxiliary can also express conditional aspect, although this usage is rare.[37]
There is no trueimperative in Unserdeutsch.[42] Command statements are formed identically to declarative clauses, and unlike English or German (but similar to Tok Pisin) these constructions retain SVO word order.[43]
It is possible in Unserdeutsch to form directional serial verbs using the so-calledkomm construction. This compound verb construction uses the verbskomm andgeht, which are reanalyzed as directional markers.[39]
Interestingly, it is also possible to form an English-like passive voice construction[37] using the past tense copulawar, thepast participle, and theprepositionbei.
This passive construction is very rare, and is a clear example of secondary adstrate influence from English.[44][45]
Verb phrases arenegated by the particleni ('not,' from Germannicht), which is usually placed at the beginning of the phrase. In a fewidiomatic expressions, the negator is post-verbal, more closely mirroring German negation syntax.[46]
Unserdeutsch uses a hybrid system ofpersonal pronouns, demonstrating heavy influence from both the substrate and lexifier languages.[48]
| Singular | Plural | |
| 1st person | i | wi / uns |
| 2nd person | du | eu / du |
| 3rd person | er / sie | die |
Two pronouns, first-person pluralwi and third-person singular masculineer, have distinct object forms (uns andihm, respectively), reflecting Standard German pronominal case marking.[49] It has been suggested by Volker (1982)[26] that, when used insubject position, the first-person pluraluns isexclusive, although this is disputed.[50] Volker (1982) also identifies an object form of first-person singular,mi, which is not attested elsewhere.[51]
Use of the second-person pluraleu is rare, anddu is sometimes substituted.[49] The third-person pronouns mark biological sex only, and there is no equivalent to the German or English neuter forms.[48] There are noformal pronouns in Unserdeutsch, perhaps reflecting non-European cultural conceptions of friendship and acquaintance in the South Pacific.[52] The second-person singulardu can be used in place of the Standard German impersonal pronounman, mirroring English usage.[49][51]Reflexive andreciprocal pronouns are not used in Unserdeutsch; rarely, these are formed by combining the pronoun withselbs ('self') or direct borrowing of the English "each other."[53][35] In some cases, personal pronouns can be omitted entirely.[51]
The Unserdeutschpossessive pronouns, while outwardly similar to their Standard German counterparts, do not take case, gender or number endings.
| Singular | Plural | |
| 1st person | mein | Ø |
| 2nd person | dein | euer |
| 3rd person | sein / ihre | Ø |
There is no first-person (outside of the nameUnserdeutsch) or third-person plural possessive pronoun; in order to express these forms of possession, speakers generally use a prepositional construction withfi.[54]
With very few exceptions, Unserdeutsch adjectives are lexically identical to their German counterparts.[48] As with other parts of speech, these adjectives are considerably more analytical than those of Standard German.[33] Adjectives precede the referent, and show no agreement for case or gender. There is an attributive marker reanalyzed from the Standard German adjective endings[55] into a uniform and invariant -e, which is suffixed to an adjective that precedes a verb.[37] Thus:
A handful of high frequency adjectives, such asgut, retain their Standard Germansuppletive forms (such asbesser andbeste).[56]
Thecomparative forms of most Unserdeutsch adjectives are marked analytically using the particlemehr ('more').[48] The superlative is formed using the suffix -ste, but without the vowel changes that characterize this process in Standard German.[57] Thus, the comparative and superlative constructions are formed as follows:
A few high frequency adjectives retain their German synthetic comparative and superlative forms.[48]
Aside from possessive pronouns, Unserdeutsch has three constructions that mark possession, each modeled after forms found in one of the dominant languages of the area, Tok Pisin, German and English.[54][53][17]
The first of these forms uses a preposition,fi, to express possession, similar to the Tok Pisinbilong construction.
The second form simply juxtaposes the possessor immediately before the item possessed, as is found is many dialects of German.
The last form is modeled after English, wherein the possessor takes an overt -sgenitive suffix.
This English-modeled form is less common than the other two.[58]
