Tok Pisin

Since its second issue in November 1969, Kivung (rebranded as Language & Linguistics in Melanesia - LLM in 1981) has come to be a repository for writing about the languages of Melanesia and a reflection of the many interests of members of the Linguistic Society of Papua New Guinea. In this repository, there are many articles on Tok Pisin, the most widely spoken language in Papua New Guinea.

While all of the issues of Kivung / Language & Linguistics in Melanesia are online, and there is much valuable research on Tok Pisin and languages related to it, it is not always easy to sift through the many volumes of the journal to search out what is needed. Nor is it easy to see immediately where researchers have been particularly active over the years (e.g., education and sociolinguistics) and which areas have been neglected (e.g., phonology and syntax).

In an effort to stimulate further research into Tok Pisin (and to organise my own research a bit better!), I have put together the following bibliography of articles related to Tok Pisin and its closely related languages (Solomon’s Pijin, Bislama, Torres Strait Creole, and PNG English), from the earliest issues of Kivung to the 2020 issue of Language & Linguistics in Melanesia. The articles have been arranged in three lists: by topics, by chronological order, and by authors' names.

This paper examines the numeral systems and the change in these systems in the Papuan language Mian (Trans New Guinea, Ok family) due to the influence of Tok Pisin. Mian has a binary numeral system consisting of a word for 'one' and a word for 'two'. As in other Trans New Guinea languages, there is also a body-part tally system in which certain points on the arms, the upper body, and the head and face are associated with numbers. The highest number in the Mian body-part system is 27. With the advent of western cash economy and currency Tok Pisin numerals and the decimal system have taken hold in the community and spread quickly. While the old binary system is still in use for both counting and modification of a noun in a noun phrase, the body-part tally system is defunct. This is in contrast to some other Trans New Guinea languages, for example Kalam and Oksapmin, in which the body-part system is still employed by older speakers. There is no evidence that the terms of the Mian body-part system have ever been used as numerals in the noun phrase. I suggest that the Mian system had a particularly hard time in surviving because it was restricted to the counting of temporal units even at the time when the linguistic work on Mian began.

As mobile phones become more and more commonplace in communities across Papua New Guinea, Tok Pisin is developing linguistic resources to talk about how they work and how they are used. This paper uses recorded interviews with Tok Pisin  speakers from across the country to analyse the emerging discourse about mobile phones, investigating lexical, grammatical and semantic innovations and the degree to which they are entrenched in spoken language. These innovations are frequently based on English, and include both loanwords and loan-based creations; both material and structural borrowing; and both code-switching and true borrowing. The analysis is used to evaluate the state of Tok Pisin in response to new technology, and suggest recommendations for future Tok Pisin dictionary projects.

Drugi tom "Debiutów Naukowych" został podzielony na trzy części. W pierwszej części publikacji przedstawiono prace poświęcone analizie deskryptywnej języka specjalistycznego (business communication) oraz języka kreolskiego Tok Pisin. Ponadto przedstawiono tu rozważania dotyczące technik
kompresji tekstów specjalistycznych, implikacje terminologiczne kulturologicznej i naukowej warstwy słownictwa specjalistycznego poświęconego pająkom
oraz możliwości wykorzystania paralelnych korpusów tekstowych w warsztacie terminologa, terminografa i tłumacza tekstów specjalistycznych. Druga część prezentuje zagadnienia związane z przekładem literackim, natomiast część trzecia to owoc rocznej pracy studentów Koła Naukowego "BAJT", a mianowicie "Studencki Słownik Terminoelementów Angielskiego Języka Medycyny".

The aim of this thesis is to examine whether the German-based creole language Unserdeutsch is a relexificated Tok Pisin. On the basis of a small corpus, the morphosyntax of the verb in Unserdeutsch is compared to three input languages: Tok Pisin (substratum), German (superstratum) and English (adstratum). It will become evident that the morphosyntax contains features of all three input languages. I claim that there are three main factors influencing the structural genesis of Unserdeutsch: firstly, the substratum influence of Tok Pisin, the Papua languages, the oceanic languages and a few further languages, secondly, the continuous contact with the lexifier language German as well as the contact with English after 1948, and thirdly, the category reduction and the regularization of verbal paradigms in favor of transparency.

トックピジンの語彙の複雑性

Because of its origins in a master-servant colonial environment, and because of the perception of pidgin languages as "simple", the general public in Papua New Guinea tends to think of Tok Pisin Papua New Guinea Pidgin English as a "primitive" language without the complexities of natural languages, and therefore not suitable for "real" communication. This perception is examined using research into the universal patterns of complexity found in the taxonomies of the semantic fields of colour, zoological, botanical, and geometric shape terminology. This research has shown that languages develop terminology in these fields in universal patterns of increasing complexity. In all four semantic fields, Tok Pisin ranks high in the degree of spe-cialised complexity of the terminology available to its speakers. This indicates that Tok Pisin has a more complex lexicon than many non-pidgin languages in the world and that the common perception of the language as being "too simple" for efficient communication is false. Folk wisdom in Papua New Guinea would have it that Tok Pisin Papua New Guinea Pidgin English is a "primitive" language that cannot be used to communicate complex ideas. Both expatriates and indigenes often make claims which they usually do not back up with linguistic proofs that it would be impossible to differentiate details of thought in Tok Pisin to the degree necessary for communication in the modern world. This is an interesting hypothesis for linguists since, while pidgin languages are by definition simplified in comparison with non-pidgin languages, Tok Pisin is unusual among pidgin languages in being not only a means of everyday communication, but also a means of communicating for the purposes of artistic self-expression, magic, religion, linguistic play, and taboo, not only for the minority of speakers for whom it has

People often use conceptual metaphors to understand abstract domains in terms of more directly perceptual domains, as in the English metaphor UNDERSTANDING IS SEEING. The sensory domain of TASTE is more complex and culturally conditioned than other senses. This article investigates how the TASTE domain is structured in several languages in Papua New Guinea (Dawawa, Gadsup, Gwahatike, Guhu Samane, Kamano Kafe and Tairuma) and explores how these language communities use this domain to metaphorically conceptualize more abstract experiences (particularly those of speech and interpersonal relationships). The article also compares these metaphors with those in English and Tok Pisin, the two main languages of wider communication.

For the past 9 years, SIL PNG has regularly offered courses in Biblical Hebrew to Papua New Guinean translators and pastors. The courses were both designed and then refined to fit with the Melanesian cultural and linguistic context in which they were offered. This paper looks at the linguistic factors that affect the teaching of Hebrew in this context, examining points of similarity between PNG languages and Biblical Hebrew that can be exploited, and differences that need particular attention in the classroom setting. Recommendations are made for effectively teaching Biblical Hebrew in this linguistic environment.

In postcolonial Melanesia, cultural discourses are increasingly organized around creole words, i.e. keywords of Bislama (Vanuatu) and Tok Pisin (Papua New Guinea). These words make up (or represent) key features of an emerging ethnolinguistic worldview, which is partly born out of the colonial era, and partly out of postcolonial ethno-rhetoric. This paper explores two cultural keywords of Melanesia kastom 'traditional culture' in Bislama and pasim bilong tumbuna 'the ways of the ancestors' in Tok Pisin. The words kastom (from custom) and pasin (from fashion) are examples of semantic cryptodiversity, i.e. of words with an English surface, but with Melanesian-specific meanings. The study explores the pancronic semantics of three kastom meanings in Bislama, and pays specific attention to the shift from " negative " to " positive " , following from postcolonial rhetoric of, and its re-evaluation of the importance of ancestral practices. The Tok Pisin phrase pasin bilong tumbuna 'ways of the ancestors' 117 shares with kastom a number of semantic tropes and discursive functions, but it is used in a more descriptive and less celebratory way. Sociality terms in postcolonial discourse make up a fertile ground for understanding neo-cultures through their keywords.

Contemporary Tok Pisin and Hawaiʻi Creole English share many similar grammatical patterns, such as no ken for negative constructions and the-im transitive verb ending, as well as a number of lexemes of non-English origin, such as kanaka 'native', and kaukau 'sweet potato' in Tok Pisin and 'food' in Hawaiʻi Creole English. This discussion asks whether these similarities are signs of a shared ancestry-for example, the Proto Pacific Pidgin English posited by Keesing (1988)-or simply the result of both having originated in English and Oceanic environments. To answer this, grammatical forms in Tok Pisin are compared with those in Hawaiʻi Pidgin English, from which Hawaiʻi Creole English developed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, using data collected from family memories of a grandfather who learned Hawaiʻi Pidgin English as a teenager in the 1890s. Although there are similarities in some prominent words and morphemes such as the possessive brong / bilong and the adjective marker-fela, these can be explained as the result of borrowing individual items (and some grammatical 'baggage') from an earlier Chinese Pidgin English to which the first speakers of each language were exposed. The underlying grammatical structure of Tok Pisin is Oceanic, while that of Hawaiʻi Pidgin English is not, and there are significant differences in the ways that these shared words and morphemes are used. The evidence, therefore, points away from the two languages sharing a common ancestor.

This chapter outlines the publishing history of The Phantom, an American comic-strip character, in Australia and the Oceanic region. It focuses on the character's appearance in "Wantok", a Catholic newspaper published in Papua New Guinea (PNG), printed in Tok Pisin, a widely-spoken indigenous dialect that is one of PNG's three official languages. The chapter examines how The Phantom became a unique cultural phenomenon in PNG, which saw the character used in government information programs, and become a significant motif in tribal art, especially on ceremonial war shields crafted by local artists in the Western Highlands of PNG

In this paper I will be examining and evaluating three conversational implicatures from the gospel of Matthew along with their translations in Tok Pisin, a lingua franca of the country of Papua New Guinea. My purpose in the examination is to evaluate whether the implicatures they contain are likely to communicate the same truth conditional meaning in the translation as in the original. After the evaluation I will show my proposed additions to the translations to ensure that the original truth conditional meanings are preserved.
For evaluation of the implicatures I will be utilizing principles from the theory of conversational implicature proposed by Paul Grice. Specifically, I will be referring to his super maxims of quality, quantity, relation and manner and his theory of implicature through violation of these maxims. (Grice 1989)

This research presents language policy and creole languages’ official status in states. I’ve chosen three language to be researched: Bislama (from Vanuatu), Haitian Creole (Haiti) and Tok Pisin (Papua New Guinea). All these languages are creole languages and they have an official status along side with previous colonial language: English and French. The aim of my work is to study the states’ language policy with the help of following research questions: 1) What kinds of political choices have been made in a state while granting the official status to a creole language? and 2) Why has the choice favoured the creole languages? My theoretical framework is that the language policy centres around language teaching at schools.

According to my results the creole languages have relatively strong status in their respected countries but the every-day life in these languages isn’t that rich as one might think. Especially higher educated people tend to favour the other, Indo-European, language that also has an official status The school system also neglects the creole language compared to their Indo-European counterparts.

Key words: language policy, Creole Languages, Tok Pisin, Bislama, Haitian Creole.

Tok Pisin is an English-based creole spoken in Papua New Guinea by approximately 122,000 people (Lewis et al. 2013).  The typical word order of this language is SVO, and it is closely
related to other Austronesian English-based creoles.  Like any related languages, the suffix –pela occurs frequently in Tok Pisin (Verhaar 1995).  This paper focuses on the distribution and functions of this suffix in Tok Pisin, and attempts to analyze whether there is a single –pela suffix in this language or multiple, homophonous suffixes with this form. 
Based on the distribution, productivity, and various restrictions that occur with the two primary functions of this suffix, it appears that there are two homophonous –pela suffixes.

Because modern Hawaiian Creole English and Melanesian Pidgin (e.g., Tok Pisin) have many apparent similarities, it is logical to assume that they share a common ancestor. Nevertheless, careful examination of the speech of an early speaker of Hawaiian Pidgin English and modern Melanesian Pidgin shows that these similarities are only lexical and morphemic, not syntactic, and are more likely to be due to the influence of Chinese Pidgin English than to a common Proto-Pacific Pidgin English ancestor.