The making of makee in Chinese Pidgin English

Abstract

People of different cultures have been in constant interactions with the Chinese in forms such as religion, commerce, customs, and language. An important period of East-West connection was Portuguese expeditions to China in the 16th century which was followed by massive trade and cultural exchanges between Europe and China in the 18th century. Such sociohistorieal context was the catalyst for the emergence of a contact language called Chinese Pidgin English (CPE). CPE is a pidgin language formed in Canton (now Guangzhou) in the 18th century. The lexicon of CPP predominantly comes from English; the grammar shows recombination of features from both English and Cantonese. This paper aims to explain the origins of the polyfunetionality of <i>makee</i> by examining the possible models of the lexical and grammatical usages of <i>makee</i> in CPP. Although the word <i>makee</i> is derived from English make, the usages of <i>makee</i> to some extent resemble the functions of the corresponding verbs <i>make/do</i> in English, as well as <i>zou6</i> 'do, make' in Cantonese. Besides as a lexical verb, <i>makee</i> develops other functions including a causative verb, an imperative marker, a light verb, and a verbalizer. The origins of some of the lexical and grammatical meanings, notably 'produce' and a causative verb can be attributed to structures available in English and Cantonese. The use of <i>makee</i> is particularly frequent in second-person imperatives to indicate commands. As a verbalizer, <i>makee</i> has little semantic content; however, functionally it transforms the predicate into a verbal expression; thus, emphasizing the meaning of action. When functioning as a light verb in the construction [<i>makee</i> X], X is underspecified for part-of-speech membeßhip. The function of <i>makee</i> is to verbalize X, so that the whole construction is interpreted as verbal. The functions of <i>makee</i> as an imperative marker and a verbalizer are innovations developed independently of the contributing languages. The semantic overlap, specifically 'act', between causatives and imperatives may motivate the use of <i>makee</i> in both semantic domains.