Iconicity in pidgins and creoles

Abstract In this chapter, a survey is provided on the presence of iconicity in pidgins and creoles. It will be shown that ideophones are virtually nonexistent in pidgins, even where lexifiers have them. They are quite common in creoles, especially when they also occur in substrate languages, but direct transfer from substrate languages of forms with their meanings appears rare. Likewise, productive reduplication is rare in pidgins, even when found in the contributing languages, but it is found in almost all creoles, even when lexifiers typically do not use productive reduplication. The semantic patterns of reduplication (intensity, plurality, distribution, diminution, and mitigation) seem to have developed spontaneously rather than being inherited from substrate languages, which could have been a source of inspiration. Creole languages but not pidgins appear to be rich in metaphors, regularly inspired by substrate languages. As for syntactic diagrammatic iconicity, creoles do not stand out from other natural languages.