Introduction

Most studies of creolisation have emphasised the massive qualitative changes accompanying the acquisition of a pidgin as a native language by a new generation of children. There are few reasons for doubting the importance of children in the development of some creoles, though the number of such ‘ideal’ (in a Bickertonian sense) creoles is probably quite restricted. More numerous and, arguably, equally important, are instances where the expansion of a pidgin occurs with a generation of adult speakers who change their primary language as they migrate to the new urban centres of the developing nations. Thus, in the southwest Pacific, in Papua New Guinea (Tok Pisin), the Solomons (Pijin) and Vanuatu (Bislama), this second type of creolisation is becoming increasingly common. Valuable general remarks about the transition from rural pidgin-vernacular bilingualism to urban (creolised) pidgin monolingualism can be found in the writings of Jourdan (1985). Referring to Tok Pisin, the Pidgin English of Papua New Guinea discussed in this paper, Elton Brash made the following observations about the linguistic adaptations accompanying the changeover from a rural to an urban environment (1975: 323):