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Possession in South Pacific Contact Languages

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Possession in South Pacific Contact Languages Possession in South Pacific contact languages JEFF SIEGEL This paper examines possessive marking in Pidgin Fijian as an example of morpholo^al simplicity in a restricted pid^n. This is attributed to a process UNIVERSITY OF NEW ENGLAND of simplification or lack of development in early second language acquisition. Here the only effect of the substrate languages appears to be in corxstituent ordering. The paper then goes on to look at morphological expansion in possessive marking in an expanded pidgin (or according to some, a Creole): Melanesian Pidgin (MP). This is attributed to functional transfer from the substrate languages in extended second language use. While many core features of the Central Eastern Oceanic substrate are found in MP the overt marking of alienable versus inalienable possession is not. One explanation is that this feature is "functionally expendable" or "inessential" in language (McWhorter 2002). However, the paper argues that the absence of formal marking of the alienable-iruilienable distinction in MP can be best accounted for by availabiUcy constraints that prevented transfer of this feature at an earlier stage of development. The goal of this paper is to identify processes that affect possessive marking in language contact by examining two contact languages of the South Pacific: Pidgin Fijian and Melanesian Pidgin. For each language, some background information is given, linguistic features in general and possessive marking in particular are described, and the processes that most likely account for these features are discussed. 1. Pidgin Fijian 1.1 Background Pidgin Fijian, spoken in Fiji, is a restricted pidgin—that is, a pidgin used only for limited intergroup communication. Its lexifier language (the language that provided the bulk of the vocabulary) is Fijian. Four phases can be identified in its development (Siegel 1992): 1. Before 1800, a "drastically simplified form of Standard Fijian" or Fijian Foreigner Talk was used for communication between Fijians and Tongans, Samoans and other islanders who visited Fiji (Geraghty 1984:34). 2. From 1800 to 1864, varieties of pidginised Fijian were used for communication between Fijians and European residents in the sandalwood and beche-de-mer trades and in the first plantations. 3. During the plantation phase, from 1865 tol920, a stable Pidgin Fijian developed on small European owned plantations. During this period over 27,000 labourers speaking over 100 indigenous languages were imported from the Pacific islands—primarily from what are now the countries called Vanuatu, Solomon Islands, Kiribati and Papua New Guinea (Siegel 1987). The pidgin was used by the Pacific Islanders for communication with Europeans and Fijians, and more importantly, among themselves. 4. At the beginning of the modern phase from 1921 to the present, most Pacific Islanders were repatriated. Those that remained and their descendants acquired standard Fijian. But Pidgin Fijian came to be learned by other ethnic groups VOLUME FOUR, NUMBER ONE 33 Possession in South Pacific contact languages and continues to be used for communication between Fijians and Indo-Indians (descendants of indentured labourers imported from India), and also Chinese (Siegel 1987). 1.2 Characteristics of Pidgin Fijian and morphological simplicity Example (1) illustrates some of the main features of stable Pidgin Fijian (PF) from both the plantation phase and modern phase, as compared to standard Fijian (SF): 1. use of full pronouns rather than subject marking pronouns; 2. no tense-mood-aspect marking (sfl as a generalised predicate marker); 3. no productive transitive/object-marking suffixes. (1) PF: koktyya sa musu na tahana 3SG PM cut ART branch 'He cut down the branch.' SF: e a musu-ka na taba-na (o koya) 3SG PAST cut-TR.OM DEF branch-3SG.POS PRP 3SG The most striking feature, however, is the reduced pronoun system. SF has from 70 to 135 pronouns, depending on how one counts them, indicating person, inclusiveness, and number (singular, dual, paucal, or plural). There is a subject- marking set, an objective set, an independent set, and four possessive sets—one postposed set for inalienable (direct) possession, and three preposed sets for alienable (indirect) possession, one each for edible, drinkable and neutral (see Schiitz 1985). In PF there are only six pronoun distinctions (see Table 1). Table 1: Pronouns in Standard Pijian and Pidgin Fijian Standard Fij an pronouns Pidgin Fijian pronouns subject marking objective independent possessive (neutral) 1 singular au au 0 yau nocpi koyau/koau 2 singular 0 iko oiko ruymu koiko 3 singular e a okaya nona kokoya/(o)qd 1 excl.dual keirau keirau 0 (i)keirau neirau 1 excl.paucal keitou keitou 0 (i)keitou neitou 1 excl.plural keimami kJeimami 0 (i)keimami neimami keitou/kitou 1 incl.dual (e) dam kedaru 0 (i)kedaru nodaru 1 incl.paucal ((e) da)tou kedatou 0 (i)kedatou nodatou 1 incl.plural (e)da keda 0 (i)keda rwda 2 dual (o) drau kemudrau 0 (i)kemudrau nomudrau 2 paucal (o) dou kemudou 0 (i)kemudou nomudou kemudou 2 plural (o) nl kemurtt 0 (i)kemunT nomunt 3 dual (e) rau rau 0 (i)rau nodrau 3 paucal (e) ratou iratou 0 iratou nodratou koratou 3 plural (e) ra ira oira nodra It is clear then that PF is characterised by morphological simplicity in comparison to SF. This seems to be the result of a process involved in early second language acquisition (SLA). This process is often called 'simplification', but this label implies that the complexity of the target language has been simplified or reduced by learners. The other way of looking at 34 MONASH UNIVERSITY LINGUISTICS PAPERS 2005 Possession in South Pacific contact languages this is that learners create a system that has not yet developed the complexity of the target. Evidence of similar simplification in SLA comes from one of the largest studies ever done of naturalistic adult second language acquisition: the European Science Foundation (ESF) project which took place in the 1980s. One of the findings of the study, described by Klein and Perdue (1997), was that all of the learners went through a stage where they spoke what they call "the Basic Variety". This was characterised by numerous structural features exhibiting morphological simplicity, including the following: 1. no inflections (lexical items used in invariant form); 2. minimal pronouns to refer to speaker, hearer and a 3rd person; 3. no anaphoric pronouns referring to inanimates; 4. only a few quantifiers; 5. a single word for negation; 6. only a few prepositions; 7. a few determiners, but no DET system; 8. copular constructions; 9. no complementisers; 10. use of temporal adverbs, rather than grammatical TMA markers; 11. "boundary markers" to express the beginning or end of some situation, such as work finish 'after work is/was/will be over'; 12. no substrate influence except in word order. The same characteristics are found in PF and also in other restricted pidgins, including: Pidgin Hindustani (Siegel 1987), Chinese Pidgin English (Baker 1987), Greenlandic Pidgin (van der Voort 1996), the Hiri Trading Languages (Eleman and Koriki; Dutton 1997), Nauru Pidgin English (Siegel 1990),'Ndyuka-Trio Pidgin (Huttar and Velanrie 1997), Pidgin Delaware (Goddard 1997), Pidgin Hawaiian. (Roberts 1995), Pidgin French of Vietnam (Reinecke 1971) and Russenorsk (Jahr 1996). (For other evidence, see Siegel 2003, 2004a.) 1.3 Possession in PF Possession in PF is also characterised by comparative morphological simplicity. As in other restricted pidgins, possession is shown by simple juxtaposition of the possessed NP and the possessor, rather than by any morphological means. (2) PF: na vale koyau ART house ISG 'my house' SF: na no-qu vale DEF POS'ISG house The reduced morphology also means that there is no marking of the alienable-inalienable distinction in PF even though it is found both in standard Fijian and in the Central Eastern Oceanic languages that made up the bulk of the substrate in the plantation phase when the pidgin stabilised. Since no distinction is made between alienable and inalienable possession, the inalienable possessive suffixes of standard Fijian are not productive. Most semantically inalienable nouns in PF have the SF 3SG possessive suffix -na fused to the stem—for example: tamana 'father'; tinana 'mother', but possession is marked by juxtaposition as in example (2) above: (3) PF: tamana koyau father ISG 'my father' SF: na tama-qu DEF father-1SG.POS VOLUME FOUR, NUMBER ONE 35 Possession in South Pacific contact languages While morphological distinctions of learners' first languages or the substrate languages are not usually reflected in a restricted pidgin, basic word order is. For example, Japanese OV constituent ordering is found in the pidginised English of Japanese plantation labourers in Hawai'i (Bickerton 1981:11): (4) da pua pipl awl poteito it the poor people all potato eat [The poor people just eat potatoes.'] In PF, the ordering in possessive constructions is different in the plantation phase and the modern phase. During the plantation phase, the ordering is possesed-possessor, as illustrated in examples (2) and (3) above. This follows that of the eastern Solomons languages spoken by the majority of Pacific Islands labourers in Fiji, for example: To'aba'ita (Lichtenberk 1984:51,53): (5) a. baru nau b. thama-ku canoe ISG father-ISG 'my canoe' 'my father' Arosi (Lynch, Ross and Crowley 2002:567): (6) a. ruma a-mu(a) b. na 'uwa-na canoe CLASS-GEN-2SG ART foot-3SG 'your house' 'his foot' In the modern phase, however, the ordering has changed to possessor-possessed: (7) a. kcTjou na vale b. harjau na tamana ISG ART house ISG ART father 'my house' 'my father' This reflects the ordering in Fiji Hindi, the main substrate language in current PF: Fiji Hindi: (8) a. hamar ghar b. iske pitS'ji POSS.1SG house POSS.3SG father-HON 'my house' 'his father' The use of PF has never extended beyond that of restricted communication between different ethnic groups in Fiji, and therefore its grammar has not expanded.
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