Cover not available
Part of
Pidgins and Creoles beyond Africa-Europe Encounters
Edited by Isabelle Buchstaller, Anders Holmberg and Mohammad Almoaily
[Creole Language Library 47] 2014
► pp. 7–40

Ethnohistory of speaking

Maritime Polynesian Pidgin in a trilogy 
of historical-sociolinguistic attestations

| University of Hawai‘i at Manoa

Because most non-European pidgins-creoles have not survived into modern times, their study requires alternative, complementary historical analyses under the heading of the ethnohistory of speaking: philology (or the systematic reconstitution of early attestations by triangulation with contemporaneous or modern comparative linguistic data) and ethnohistory (or the critical interpretation of historical documents by ethnological criteria). Three examples illustrate Maritime Polynesian Pidgin, a Polynesian-based pidgin of the eastern Pacific for the early colonial period, with grammatical patterns and uses reminiscent of Pidgin Hawaiian, but extending regionally to the Society Islands, New Zealand, and overseas locations and with a greater time depth since the late eighteenth century. These data also lend startling support to the “broken Polynesian” portion of South Seas Jargon (Clark 1977, 1979).

Published online: 29 January 2014
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/cll.47.02dre
References
Académie Tahitienne
1999 Dictionnaire Tahitien/Français. Fa‘atoro parau Tahiti/Farāni. Pape‘ete: Académie Tahitienne, Fare Vāna‘a.Google Scholar
Andrews, E. & Andrews, I.D
1944 A Comparative Dictionary of the Tahitian Language. Tahitian-English with an English-Tahitian Finding List. Chicago Il: Chicago Academy of Sciences.Google Scholar
Axtell, J
2001 Natives and Newcomers. The Cultural Origins of North America. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
Baker, P. & Winer, Lise
1999 Separating the wheat from the chaff. How far can we rely on old pidgin and creole Texts? In St. Kitts and the Atlantic Creoles. The Texts of Samuel Augustus Mathews in Perspective, Philip Baker & Adrienne Bruyn (eds), 103–122. London: University of Westminster Press.Google Scholar
Barman, J. & McIntyre Watson, B
2006 Leaving Paradise. Indigenous Hawaiians in the Pacific Northwest, 1787–1898. Honolulu HI: University of Hawai‘i Press.Google Scholar
Barrère, D
1989 A Tahitian in the history of Hawai‘i: The journal of Kahikona. Hawaiian Journal of History 23: 75–107.Google Scholar
Barrère, D. & Sahlins, M
1979 Tahitians in the early history of Hawaiian Christianity: The journal of Toketa. Hawaiian Journal of History 13: 19–35.Google Scholar
Bickerton, D
2008 Bastard Tongues. A Trailblazing Linguist Finds Clues to Our Common Humanity in the World’s Lowliest Languages. New York NY: Hill and Wang.Google Scholar
Bickerton, D. & Wilson, W.H
1987 Pidgin Hawaiian. In Pidgin and Creoles Languages. Essays in Memory of John E. Reinecke, G.G. Gilbert (ed.), 61–76. Honolulu HI: University of Hawai‘i Press.Google Scholar
Biggs, B
1971 The languages of Polynesia. In Linguistics in Oceania [Current Trends in Linguistics 8] Thomas A. Sebeok (ed.), 466–505. The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar
Chappell, D.A
1997 Double Ghosts. Oceanian Voyagers on Euroamerican Ships. Armonk NY: M.E. Sharpe.Google Scholar
Clark, R
1977 In search of Beach-la-Mar: Historical relations among Pacific Pidgins and Creoles. Working Papers in Anthropology, Archaeology, Linguistics [Maori Studies 48]. Auckland: Department of Anthropology, University of Auckland.Google Scholar
1979 In search of Beach-la-Mar: Towards a history of Pacific Pidgin English. Te Reo 22: 3–64.Google Scholar
1990 Pidgin English and Pidgin Maori in New Zealand. In New Zealand Ways of Speaking English [Multilingual Matters 65], Allan Bell & Janet Holms (eds), 97–114. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar
Colnett, J
1940 [1789–91]  The Journal of Captain James Colnett Aboard the Argonaut from April 26, 1789 to Nov. 3, 1791 , ed. with an introduction and notes by F.W. Howay. Toronto: The Champlain Society. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cook, J
1961 The Journals of Captain James Cook on His Voyages of Discovery, Vol. 2: The Voyage of the Resolution and Adventure 1772–1775 [Hakluyt Society Extra Series No. 35], ed. by J.C. Beaglehole with the assistance of J.A. Williamson, J.W. Davidson & R.A. Skelton. Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar
Crowley, T
1990 Beach-la-Mar to Bislama. The Emergence of a National Language of Vanuatu [Oxford Studies of Language Contact]. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Davies, J
1851 A Tahitian and English Dictionary with Introductory Remarks on the Polynesian Language and a Short Grammar of the Tahitian Dialect. With an Appendix Containing a List of Foreign Words Used in the Tahitian Bible, in Commerce, Etc., with the Sources from Whence They Have Derived. Tahiti: London Missionary Society’s Press.Google Scholar
Day, A.G
1991 An early Hawaiian vocabulary. The Hawaiian Journal of History 25: 21–30Google Scholar
Dening, G
1980 Islands and Beaches. Discourse on a Silent Land: Marquesas 1774–1880. Honolulu HI: University Press of Hawai‘i.Google Scholar
Drechsel, E.J
1983 Towards an ethnohistory of speaking: The case of mobilian jargon, an American Indian Pidgin of the Lower Mississippi Valley. Ethnohistory 30: 165–76. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1997 Mobilian Jargon. Linguistic and Sociohistorical Aspects of a Native American Pidgin [Oxford Studies in Language Contact]. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
1999 Language contact in the early colonial Pacific: Evidence for a maritime Polynesian jargon or pidgin. In Creole Genesis, Attitudes and Discourse [Creole Language Library 20], John R. Rickford & Suzanne Romaine (eds), 71–96. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2007b Sociolinguistic-ethnohistorical observations on Pidgin English in Typee and Omoo . In ‘Whole Oceans Away’. Melville and the Pacific, J. Barnum, W. Kelley & C. Sten (eds), 49–62. Kent OH: Kent State University Press.Google Scholar
2008 Mobilian jargon in historiography: An exercise in the ethnohistory of speaking. Southern Anthropologist 33: 24–36.Google Scholar
Forthcoming. Language Contact in the Early Colonial Pacific. Maritime Polynesian Pidgin Before Pidgin English [tentative title]. Cambridge: CUP. DOI logo
Dumont d’Urville, Jules S.C
1834–35 Voyage pittoresque autour du monde. Resumé général des voyages de decouvertes de Magellan, Tasman, Dampier, Anson, Byron, Wallis, Carteret, Bougainville, Cook, Lapérouse, G. Bligh, Vancouver, d’Entrecasteaux, Wilson, Baudin, Flinders, Krusenstern, Porter, Kotzebue, Freycinet, Bellinghausen, Basil Hall, Duperrey, Paulding, Beechey, Dumont d’Urville, Lutke, Dillon, LaPlace, B. Morrell, etc, 2 vols. Paris: L. Tenré and Henri Dupuy.Google Scholar
Forster, G
2000 [1777] A Voyage Round the World, N. Thomas & O. Berghof with the assistance by J. Newell, 2 vols. Honolulu HI: University of Hawai‘i Press.Google Scholar
Forster, J.R
1996 [1778] Observations Made During a Voyage Round the World, N. Thomas, H. Guest & M. Dettelbach with a linguistics appendix by K.H. Rensch. Honolulu HI: University of Hawai‘i Press.Google Scholar
Gallagher, M
1995 The Tahiti connection: Planting Christianity in Hawai‘i. The Pacific Journal of Theology, Series 2, 14: 23–30.Google Scholar
Goddard, I
1973 Philological approaches to the study of North American Indian languages: Documents and documentation. In Linguistics in North America [Current Trends in Linguistics 10], T.A. Sebeok (ed.). 727–745. The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar
Gumperz, J.J. & Hymes, D
(eds) 1972 Directions in Sociolinguistics. The Ethnography of Communication. New York NY: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.Google Scholar
Hancock, I.F
1977 Recovering pidgin genesis: Approaches and problems. In Pidgin and Creole Linguistics, A. Valdman (ed.), 277–294. Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Howe, K.R
1984 Where the Waves Fall: A New South Sea Islands History from First Settlement to Colonial Rule [Pacific Islands Monograph Series 2]. Honolulu HI: University of Hawaii Press.Google Scholar
Hymes, D
1974 Foundations in Sociolinguistics. An Ethnographic Approach. Philadelphia PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Keesing, R.M
1988 Melanesian Pidgin and the Oceanic Substrate. Stanford CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Krech, S. III
1991 The state of ethnohistory. Annual Review of Anthropology 20: 345–375. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kuykendall, R.S
1924 An Hawaiian in Mexico, 1789–1790. Thirty-Second Annual Report of the Hawaiian Historical Society for the Year 1923, 37–50. Honolulu HI: Paradise of the Pacific Press.Google Scholar
Monaghan, L
2011 The expanding boundaries of linguistic anthropology: 2010 in perspective. American Anthropologist 113: 222–234. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mühlhäusler, P
1997 Pidgin and Creole Linguistics, expanded and revised edition [Westminster Creolistics Series 3]. London: University of Westminster Press.Google Scholar
Muysken, P
1994 Column: The first seven years, fat or lean? Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 9: 103–107. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pukui, M.K. & Elbert, S.H
1986 Hawaiian Dictionary. Hawaiian-English, English-Hawaiian, revised and enlarged edition. Honolulu HI: University of Hawai‘i Press.Google Scholar
Rensch, K.H
2000 The Language of the Noble Savage. Canberra: Archipelago Press.Google Scholar
Roberts, J.M
1995a Pidgin Hawaiian: A sociohistorical study. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 10: 1–56. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1995b A structural sketch of Pidgin Hawaiian. Amsterdam Creole Studies 12: 97–126.Google Scholar
Sahlins, M
1992 Anahulu. The Anthropology of History in the Kingdom of Hawaii, Vol. 1: Historical Ethnography, with the assistance of D.B. Barrère. Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Savage, J
1807 Some Account of New Zealand; Particularly the Bay of Islands and Surrounding Country; With a Description of the Religion and Government, Language, Arts, Manufactures, Manners, and Customs of the Natives, &c. &c. London: J. Murray.Google Scholar
Saville-Troike, M
1982 The Ethnography of Communication. An Introduction. Baltimore MD: University Park Press.Google Scholar
Silverstein, M
1996a Dynamics of linguistic contact. In Handbook of North American Indians, Vol. 17: Languages, I. Goddard (ed.), 117–136. Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution.Google Scholar
1996b Encountering language and languages of encounter in North American ethnohistory. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 6: 126–144. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Thomason, S.G
1983 Chinook jargon in areal and historic context. Language 59: 820–870. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2003 The journal ten years later. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Linguistics 18: 267–272. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tyerman, D. & Bennet, G
1832 Journal of Voyages and Travels by the Rev. Daniel Tyerman and George Bennet, Esq., Deputed from the London Missionary Society to Visit Their Various Stations in the South Sea Islands, China, India, &c. Between the Years 1821 and 1829, compiled from original documents by J. Montgomery, 3 vols. Boston MA: Crocker and Brewster.Google Scholar
Wahlroos, S
2002 English-Tahitian Tahitian-English Dictionary/Fa‘atoro Parau Marite/Peritane-Tahiti Tahiti-Marite/Peretane. Honolulu HI: Mā‘ohi Heritage Press.Google Scholar
Weinreich, U., Labov, W. & Herzog, M.I
1968 Empirical foundations for a theory of language change. In Directions for Historical Linguistics. A Symposium, W.P. Lehmann & Y. Malkiel (eds), 95–195. Austin TX: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Williams, H.W
1971 Dictionary of the Maori Language, 7th edn, revised and augmented by the advisory committee on the teaching of the Maori language, Department of Education. Wellington: GP Publications.Google Scholar