Atlas of Pidgin and Creole Language Structures Online

1. Feature description ⇫ ¶

Many pidgins and creoles around the world have a word such as piccaninny, pikin, or pickney for ‘child, offspring; small, little’ or similar meanings. It is commonly supposed that these words go back to Portuguese pequeno/‑a, pequenino/‑a, or even pequenininho/‑a (with double diminutive marking), all meaning ‘(very) small’.

Pequenino is among a small number of Portuguese words with a world-wide distribution in pidgins and creoles, others being grande ‘big’ or save ‘know’ (see Feature 110). Portuguese overseas exploration and contact with non-Europeans started in the second half of the 15th century and piccaninny, grande, and save are attested quite early both in Portuguese-lexicon and non-Portuguese-lexicon contact languages.

2. The values ⇫ ¶

Since a word can only be present or absent, two values are possible for this feature:

	A word derived from pequenino exists	39
	A word derived from pequenino does not exist	37
Representation:		76

Value 1. Pequenino is attested in a great variety of forms, from disyllabic to tetrasyllabic and with various phonological changes, as illustrated in the following examples:

It is comparatively easy to trace the Portuguese-lexicon creole forms back to their respective Portuguese etyma. For example, Cardoso (2013) derives the Diu Indo-Portuguese forms as follows: “the word pikənin [from Portuguese pequenino] co-exists with piken [from Portuguese pequeno/pequena]”. By contrast, the etymological history of pequenino in the non-Portuguese-lexicon contact languages is very complex and beyond the scope of this article.

Value 2. Those languages where a word derived from pequenino does not exist use lexifier (4) or substrate words (5) to refer to ‘child’ or ‘small’, e.g.

3. Distribution and function ⇫ ¶

Numerical. A little over half of the APiCS languages (39) have a word derived from pequenino but, as will be shown below, pequenino is only found in two main groups of contact languages.

By lexifier. Pequenino is attested in 12 of the 14 Portuguese-lexified creoles in APiCS and it is an adjective (‘small, little’) in these languages (cf. e.g. Batavia Creole pikninu; Maurer 2013b). Note that the Portuguese words for ‘child’ are unrelated to pequenino/pequeno. They are criança ‘child’, menino/-a ‘boy, girl’ and filho/-a ‘son, daughter’. Unsurprisingly, Portuguese-lexicon contact languages derive their words for ‘child’ from these etyma rather than from pequenino. Compare for example Fa d’Ambô (na)min(a) (Post, p.c.) or Principense minu (Maurer, p.c.), both from menino. The one Portuguese-lexified creole where a reflex of pequenino can also be used as a noun is basilectal Cape Verdean Creole of Santiago, where pikinóti is an adjective but can also refer to a child (‘little one’; Lang 2013).

While most Portuguese-lexified creoles thus derive their words for ‘small’ from Portuguese pequeno etc. and their words for ‘child’ from menino etc., the Gulf of Guinea Portuguese-lexicon creoles present an exception in that pequenino is either marginal or completely absent: Angolar has an ideophone pinini which always co-occurs with txo ‘small’ (Maurer 2013a) and possibly derives from pequenino or pequenininho, and in Principense, the words for the adjective ‘small’ are kêtê (from Bantu or Edo) and kitxi (unclear etymology; Maurer, p.c.). The same is true for Fa d’Ambô, where ‘small’ is kitsyi (Post, p.c.).

There is an indication in Cape Verdean Creole of Santiago that the more basilectal varieties use forms derived from etyma with diminutives while more acrolectal varieties prefer the simplex form: “Pikénu ‘small’ exists only in the acrolect. In basilectal creole ‘small’ is pikininu or, more often, pikinóti” (Lang 2013, general comments).

It is striking that of the 27 non-Portuguese-lexified contact languages in APiCS that have a word derived from pequenino, a full 23 are pidgin or creole Englishes. The other four – Afrikaans, Eskimo Pidgin, Fanakalo and Pidgin Hawaiian – have had some contact with or input from (pidgin) English in their history (van Sluijs 2013b; van der Voort 2013a; Mesthrie & Surek-Clark 2013a; Roberts 2013a). The only English contact languages where pequenino is not attested are African American English, modern Hawai‘i Creole (but pequenino existed at earlier stages, the first attestation being from 1791; Baker & Huber 2001: 202) and Singlish, which is a rather young contact language and has a separate development.

There is no evidence whatsoever in APiCS of pequenino in any of the French, Spanish, and – except for the languages mentioned in the previous paragraph – African or other creoles, even if they are spoken in close proximity to the English creoles, as for instance in the Caribbean. This suggests that piccaninny is a characteristic feature of English-lexicon contact languages and that the early form pequenino (together with some other Portuguese words) formed part of a

“repertoire of techniques and lexical items which was built up gradually and informally as anglophones exploited the trading routes pioneered earlier by the Portuguese … [W]henever an anglophone ship was a first such vessel to call at a particular settlement on the coast of Africa, Asia, America, or at a Pacific island there would be people on board with prior experience of communicating with non-anglophones who would draw on that experience. In this way words and other linguistic features could be spread far and wide without the existence of a stable nautical pidgin” (Baker & Huber 2001: 192-193).

It is interesting that all 23 English-lexified contact languages with a reflex of pequenino converted the Portuguese adjective into a noun, rather than adopting the Portuguese word meaning ‘child’ (the phonological similarity between menino ‘child’ and pequenino ‘small’ may have played a role in this process). Adjectival uses exist, but they are only found in Chinese Pidgin English, Early Sranan, Nengee, Saramaccan, and Sranan, i.e. in early English-lexicon contact languages and in the “deep” creoles of Suriname. This suggests that adjectives derived from pequenino may have been more widespread in earlier stages of pidgin and creole Englishes.

4. History ⇫ ¶

In Baker & Huber’s (2001: 197-204) list of earliest attestations in English-lexicon contact languages, piccaninny or similar variants with four syllables are the only forms attested in Pacific pidgin and creole Englishes (found from ca. 1800 on). The examples in the APiCS database show that this is still the case today, compare e.g. Norf'k pikinini (Norf'k nini seems to be a secondary development, through clipping of piki-.). The tetrasyllabic variants are also the earliest forms in the Atlantic English creoles. They appear from the mid-17th century on, e.g. pinkinine or pekinini in Early Sranan. Already at that time, however, they varied with disyllabic pikien, pikin, pekin. According to APiCS, tetrasyllabic or derived trisyllabic variants are today found in only six of the 17 modern Atlantic English creoles, in three of which they are in competition with disyllabic forms: Bahamian Creole pickaninny, Gullah pickaninny ~ pickney, Jamaican pikini ~ pikni, Nicaraguan Creole English piknini, San Andres Creole English pikniny, and Vincentian Creole pikinani ~ pikni.

The earliest attestations gathered by Baker & Huber (2001: 200) suggest that in Atlantic English creoles disyllabic pikin, pikni, and their variants started to replace tetrasyllabic piccaninny from the second half of the 18th century onwards. It is possible that the disyllabic form developed in one anglophone creole location and then spread through population replacement. However, since disyllabic forms may well have come into being independently in several locations through normal language change, more research is necessary here.