Cameroon Pidgin English

A comprehensive grammar

Editors

Miriam Ayafor | University of Yaoundé 1

Melanie Green | University of Sussex

Hardbound – Available

ISBN 9789027238269 | EUR 110.00 | USD 165.00

Paperback – Available

ISBN 9789027262400 | EUR 36.00 | USD 54.00

e-Book –

ISBN 9789027266033 | EUR 110.00/36.00*
| USD 165.00/54.00*

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.

[London Oriental and African Language Library, 20] 2017. xxi, 314 pp.

Publishing status: Available
Published online on 10 November 2017

https://doi.org/10.1075/loall.20

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments | pp. xv–15

Abbreviations and symbols | pp. xxi–21

List of maps and figures
List of tables

Chapter 1. Introduction | pp. 1–12

Chapter 2. History and sociolinguistics of CPE | pp. 13–29

Chapter 3. Phonetics, phonology and orthography | pp. 31–46

Chapter 4. The lexicon | pp. 47–78

Chapter 5. The syntax of the noun phrase | pp. 79–101

Chapter 6. Pronouns | pp. 103–131

Chapter 7. Tense, mood, modality, aspect and negation | pp. 133–157

Chapter 8. The simple sentence | pp. 159–194

Chapter 9. Complex predicates | pp. 195–214

Chapter 10. The complex sentence | pp. 215–240

Chapter 11. Information structure | pp. 241–261

Chapter 12. Selected texts | pp. 263–282

“This is a thoroughly well-written and extensively researched monograph on the grammar of Cameroon Pidgin English. It is clearly the most ambitious of all grammars, few as they may be, that have been published so far. For me, it will be the reference grammar for CPE given the breadth of coverage and the copious number of examples used.”

Eric A. Anchimbe, University of Bayreuth

“The thoughtful reader will find this grammar of Cameroon Pidgin English satisfying, reliable, and most laudably, thought-provoking.”

David Douglas Robertson, University of Victoria, on Linguist List 29.4003

“This book tells us a great deal about the language, and incidentally shows us what can be extracted from a well-conducted corpus-based study and deserves to be emulated. There are many ways to write a good creole grammar, and this is one of the best.”

Anthony P. Grant, Edge Hill University, in Journal of Linguistics 2018, pp. 1-5

“This book and the corpus on which it is based [...] constitute an important advance for the description and documentation of African (contact) languages.”

Kofi Yakpo, The University of Hong Kong, in Language Vol. 95, Number 3, September 2019

Cited by (11)

Cited by 11 other publications

Order by:

Wildsmith-Cromarty, Rosemary, Colin Reilly & Seraphin Kamdem

2023. Investigating the opportunities and challenges for African languages in public spaces: an introduction. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 44:9 ► pp. 765 ff.

Ambele, Eric A. & Richard Watson Todd

2022. Translanguaging patterns in everyday urban conversations in Cameroon. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 2022:273 ► pp. 181 ff.

Connell, Bruce, David Zeitlyn, Sascha Griffiths, Laura Hayward & Marieke Martin

2021. Language ecology, language endangerment, and relict languages: Case studies from Adamawa (Cameroon-Nigeria). Open Linguistics 7:1 ► pp. 244 ff.

Caron, Bernard

2020. Methodological and technical challenges of a corpus-based study of Naija. In West African languages. Linguistic theory and communication,

Caron, Bernard

2021. Clefts in Naija, a Nigerian pidgincreole. Faits de Langues 52:1 ► pp. 159 ff.

FitzGerald, Sarah

2020. A corpus‐based method for identifying word class in an English lexified extended pidgin. World Englishes 39:2 ► pp. 348 ff.

Operstein, Natalie

2020. Lexical diversity and the issue of the basilect/acrolect distinction in Lingua Franca. Language Ecology 4:2 ► pp. 202 ff.

Yakpo, Kofi

2020. Sociolinguistic characteristics of the English-lexifier contact languages of West Africa. In Advances in Contact Linguistics [Contact Language Library, 57], ► pp. 62 ff.

Yakpo, Kofi

2024. The indigenization of Ghanaian Pidgin English. World Englishes 43:1 ► pp. 182 ff.

Ozón, Gabriel, Sarah FitzGerald & Melanie Green

2019. Chapter 1.6. Addressing a coverage gap in African Englishes. In Corpus Linguistics and African Englishes [Studies in Corpus Linguistics, 88], ► pp. 144 ff.

Green, Melanie & Gabriel Ozón

2018. Chapter 12. Information structure in a spoken corpus of Cameroon Pidgin English. In Information Structure in Lesser-described Languages [Studies in Language Companion Series, 199], ► pp. 329 ff.

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 24 october 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

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