Cover not available
Part of
Variation Rolls the Dice: A worldwide collage in honour of Salikoko S. Mufwene
Edited by Enoch O. Aboh and Cécile B. Vigouroux
[Contact Language Library 59] 2021
► pp. 57–80

A local history of Tok Pisin

Language contact in Papua New Guinea

| University of Pennsylvania
Research on language contact in Papua New Guinea beginning in the mid 1960s, prior to national independence, revealed linguistic micro-evolution as constrained by society, culture, and people’s relationships “on the ground”. Among speakers of Buang, most men and women under 40 were already fluent in Tok Pisin. Many also spoke another Austronesian language learned at missionary schools: Yabem. Exploring the micro-evolution of Buang speech varieties along the river valley, this chapter situates ‘place’ as fundamental in the differentiation of Buang speech varieties. It further attempts to show how the inter-influence of speech varieties in complex repertoires can be culturally framed as natural and unproblematic.
Keywords: trade, exploitation and settlement colonization, language and place, bilingualism, Tok Pisin
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The early history of Tok Pisin
  • 3.Exploitation colonization in Papua New Guinea: Earliest impacts on Buang villagers
  • 4.The Bulolo Gold Rush of the 1930s
  • 5.World War II and beyond
  • 6.Discussion
  • Acknowledgement
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 12 October 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/coll.59.03san
References (66)
References
Barclay, G. 1978. A History of the Pacific from the Stone Age to the Present Day. London: Sidgwick and Jackson.Google Scholar
Bradshaw, J. 2016. Papuan Kâte and Austronesian Jabêm: Long contact, little convergence. Language & Linguistics in Melanesia 34: 59–76.Google Scholar
2017. Evidence of contact between Binanderean and Oceanic languages. Oceanic Linguistics 56: 395–414. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cheyne, A. [1853]2017. A Description of Islands in the Western Pacific Ocean. Miami FL: HardPress. (Kindle edn).Google Scholar
Claassen, O. R. & McElhanon, K. A. 1970. Languages of the Finisterre Range, New Guinea. Pacific Linguistics A-23: 45–78.Google Scholar
Corris, P. 1968. “Blackbirding” in New Guinea waters, 1883-84: An episode in the Queensland labour trade. Journal of Pacific History 3: 85–105. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1973a. Passage, Port and Plantation: A History of Solomon Islands Labour Migration 1870–1914. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press.Google Scholar
1973b. Editor’s Introduction to The South Sea Islanders and the Queensland Labour Trade. 1870–1914, P. Corris (ed.), xix–xlii. Canberra: Australian National University Press.Google Scholar
Crowley, T. 1990. Beach-La-Mar to Bislama: The Emergence of a National Language in Vanuatu. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
Deery, C. 2014. A New Deal for the Territories? The Abolition of the Indentured Labour System in Colonial Papua and New Guinea. Honours dissertation, University of Melbourne.Google Scholar
Denoon, D. 1997a. Land, labour and independent development. In The Cambridge History of the Pacific Islanders, D. Denoon, S. Firth, Jocelyn Linnekin, M. Leleisea & K. Nero (eds), 152–184. Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1997b. New economic orders: Land, labour and dependency. In The Cambridge History of the Pacific Islanders, D. Denoon, S. Firth, J. Linnekin, M. Leleisea & K. Nero (eds), 218–252. Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Firth, S. 1997. Colonial intervention and the invention of the Native. In The Cambridge History of the Pacific Islanders, D. Denoon, S. Firth, J. Linnekin, M. Leleisea & K. Nero (eds), 253–288. Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hall, R. A., Jr. 1943. Melanesian Pidgin English: Grammar, Texts, Vocabulary. Baltimore MD: Linguistic Society of America.Google Scholar
Hogbin, I. 1951. Transformation Scene: The Changing Culture of a New Guinea Village. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Jackson, J. 1974. Language identity of the Colombian Vaupés Indians. In Explorations in the Ethnography of Speaking, R. Bauman & J. Sherzer (eds), 50–64. Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar
Jourdan, C. 1985. Sapos Iumi Mitim Iumi: The Social Context of Creolization in the Solomon Islands. PhD dissertation, Australian National University.Google Scholar
Jourdan, C., & Keesing, R. 1997. From Pisin to Pijin: Creolization in process in the Solomon Islands. Language in Society 26: 401–420. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Keesing, R. 1988. Melanesian Pidgin and the Oceanic Substrate. Stanford CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Laycock, D. C. 1965. The Ndu Language Family. Pacific Linguistics, Series C, No.1. Canberra: Research School of Pacific Studies.Google Scholar
May, R. J. 2003. Harmonizing linguistic diversity in Papua New Guinea. In Fighting Words: Language Policy and Ethnic Relations in Asia, M. E. Brown & S. Gamguly (eds), 293–318. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Meyerhoff, M. 2000. Constraints on Null Subjects in Bislama (Vanuatu): Social and Linguistic Factors. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University.Google Scholar
Mihalic, F. 1971. The Jacaranda Dictionary and Grammar of Melanesian Pidgin. Madang, Papua New Guinea: Jacaranda Press.Google Scholar
Mosel, U. 1980. Tolai and Tok Pisin: The influence of the substratum on the development of New Guinea Tok Pisin. Pacific Linguistics Series B 73: Complete issue. Canberra: Australian National University.Google Scholar
Mosel, U. & Mühlhäusler, P. 1982. New evidence of a Samoan origin of New Guinea Tok Pisin (New Guinea Pidgin English). Journal of Pacific History 17: 166–175. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mufwene, S. S. 2001. The Ecology of Language Evolution. Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2002. Colonization, globalization and the plight of ‘weak’ languages. Journal of Linguistics 38: 375–395. (Review article, Nettle D. & Romaine, S. Vanishing Voices: The Extinction of the World’s Languages. Oxford: OUP). DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2008. Language Evolution: Contact, Competition, and Change. London: Continuum.Google Scholar
2015. Colonization, indigenization, and the differential evolution of English: Some ecological perspectives. World Englishes 34: 6–21. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mühlhäusler, P. 1978. Samoan Plantation Pidgin English and the origin of New Guinea Pidgin. Pacific Linguistics Series A 54: 67–119.Google Scholar
1981. Foreigner talk: Tok Masta in New Guinea. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 28: 93–113. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1985. The number of Pidgin Englishes in the Pacific. Pacific Linguistics Papers in Pidgin and Creole Linguistics Series A 72: 25–51.Google Scholar
New Guinea Annual Reports. 1941. Permanent Mandates Commission Minutes Relating to Examination of Reports on New Guinea. Report of a Commission to Inquire into the Matter of Native Labour in the Territory. <[URL]> (dead link on 16 December 2020).Google Scholar
O’Neill, J. 1979. Up from South. Melbourne: Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
Papua New Guinea. 1973. Papua New Guinea Village Directory. Konedobu, Papua New Guinea: Department of the Chief Minister and Development Administration.Google Scholar
Pawley, A. & Hammarström, H. 2018. The Trans New Guinea family. In The Languages and Linguistics of New Guinea: A Comprehensive Guide, B. Palmer (ed.), 21–175. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Queensland. 1885. Report of the Royal Commission on Recruiting Polynesian Labourers in New Guinea and Adjacent Islands. Notes and Proceedings of the Legislative Assembly, Queensland, Vol. 2. 1885.Google Scholar
Reed, S. W. 1943. The Making of Modern New Guinea. Philadelphia PA: The American Philosophical Society.Google Scholar
Romaine, S. 1988. Some differences between spoken and written Tok Pisin in Papua New Guinea. English World Wide 9: 243–269. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1989. Tok Pisin and English in Papua New Guinea. In World Englishes, K. Watson-Gegeo (ed.). Special issue of the South Pacific 64: 1–19.Google Scholar
Salisbury, R. F. 1962. Notes on bilingualism and linguistic change in New Guinea. Anthropological Linguistics 4: 1–13.Google Scholar
1970. Vunamami: Economic Transformation in a Traditional Society. Berkeley CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Sankoff, G. 1969. Wok bisnis and Namasu: A perspective from the village. New Guinea Research Bulletin 28: 61–81.Google Scholar
1970. Mutual intelligibility, bilingualism and linguistic boundaries. International Days of Sociolinguistics, 839–848. Rome: Istituto Luigi Sturzo. (Republished in The Social Life of Language, G. Sankoff, 1980, 133–141. Philadelphia PA: University of Pennsylvania Press).Google Scholar
1977. Multilingualism in Papua New Guinea. In New Guinea Area Languages and Language Study, Vol. 3: Language, Culture, Society and the Modern World. Pacific Linguistics, S. A. Wurm (ed.), C 40: 267–307. (Revised including updated statistics in The Social Life of Language, G. Sankoff, 1980, 95–132. Philadelphia PA: University of Pennsylvania Press).Google Scholar
1980. Multilingualism in Papua New Guinea. In The Social Life of Language, G. Sankoff, 95–132. Philadelphia PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1985. Contracts in Queensland: Touching pen and marking paper. In History and Ethnohistory in Papua New Guinea. Oceania Monograph 28, D. Gewertz & E. Schieffelin (eds), 100–126. Sydney: University of Sydney.Google Scholar
1993. Focus in Tok Pisin. In Focus and Grammatical Relations in Creole Languages [Creole Language Library 12], F. Byrne & D. Winford (eds), 117–140. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1996. The Oceanic substrate in Melanesian Pidgin/Creole revisited: A tribute to Roger Keesing. Pacific Linguistics Series C 133: 421–250.Google Scholar
Sankoff, G. & Laberge, S. 1973. On the acquisition of native speakers by a language. Kivung 6: 32–47.Google Scholar
Scarr, D. 1967. Recruits and recruiters: A portrait of the Pacific Islands labour trade. Journal of Pacific History 2: 5–24. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1990. The History of the Pacific Islands: Kingdoms of the Reefs. Melbourne: Macmillan Company of Australia. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Shineberg, D. 1967. They Came for Sandalwood: A Study of the Sandalwood Trade in the South-West Pacific, 1830-1865. Carlton: Melbourne University Press.Google Scholar
Siegel, J. 1985. Origins of Pacific Island labourers in Fiji. Journal of Pacific History 20: 42–54. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sinclair, J. B. 1966. Behind the Ranges Patrolling in Papua New Guinea. Melbourne: Pacific Publications.Google Scholar
1979. Foreword. In Up from South, J. O’Neill, vii–xxiii. Melbourne: OUP.Google Scholar
1981. Kiap: Australia’s Patrol Officers in Papua New Guinea. Sydney: Melbourne University Press.Google Scholar
Smith, G. 2002. Growing up with Tok Pisin. London: Battlebridge.Google Scholar
Sorensen, A. 1967. Multilingualism in the North West Amazon. American Anthropologist 69: 670–684. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stanford, J. 2009. “Eating the food of our place”: Sociolinguistic loyalties in multidialectal Sui villages. Language in Society 38: 287–310. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Thurston, W. R. 1987. Processes of Change in the Languages of North-Western New Britain. Canberra: Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University. Pacific Linguistics, Series B. 99: Complete issue.Google Scholar
Village Directory, 1960. Territory of Papua New Guinea: Department of Native Affairs. Port Moresby: W.S. Nicholas, Government Printer.Google Scholar
Wagner, H. 1987. Beginnings at Finschhafen: The Neuendettelsau Mission jointly with the Australian Lutheran Church. In The Lutheran Church in Papua New Guinea: The First Hundred Years, 1886–1986, H. Wagner & H. Reiner (eds), 31–98. Adelaide: Lutheran Publishing House.Google Scholar
Waterhouse, M. 2010. Not a Poor Man’s Field: The New Guinea Goldfields to 1942: An Australian Colonial History. Canberra: Halstead Press.Google Scholar
West, R. J. 1966. The historical background. In New Guinea on the Threshold, E. K. Fisk (ed.), 3–19. Canberra: Australian National University Press.Google Scholar
Wurm, S. A. & Laycock, D. C. 1961. The question of language and dialect in New Guinea. Oceania 32: 128–143. DOI logoGoogle Scholar