CONTACT LANGUAGES
CREOLE LANGUAGE LIBRARY (CLL) A companion series to the "JOURNAL OF PIDGIN & CREOLE LANGUAGES"
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CONTACT LANGUAGES
CREOLE LANGUAGE LIBRARY (CLL) A companion series to the "JOURNAL OF PIDGIN & CREOLE LANGUAGES"
Editors Pieter Muysken (Amsterdam) John Victor Singler (New York)
Editorial Advisory Board Mervyn Alleyne (Kingston, Jamaica) Norbert Boretzky (Bochum) Lawrence Carrington (Trinidad) Chris Corne (Auckland) Glenn Gilbert (Carbondale, Illinois) John Holm (New York)
George Huttar (Dallas) Salikoko Mufwene (Chicago) Peter Mühlhäusler (Adelaide) Pieter Seuren (Nijmegen) Norval Smith (Amsterdam)
Volume 17
Sarah G. Thomason (ed.) Contact Languages: A wider perspective
CONTACT LANGUAGES A WIDER PERSPECTIVE
Edited by
SARAH G. THOMASON
JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY AMSTERDAM/PHILADELPHIA
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences — Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Contact languages : a wider perspective / edited by Sarah G. Thomason. p. cm. -- (Creole language library, ISSN 0920-9026 ; v. 17) Includes bibliographical references and indexes. 1. Languages, Mixed. I. Thomason, Sarah Grey. II. Series. PM7802.C66 1996 417'.22-dc20 ISBN 90 272 5239 4 (Eur.) / 1-55619-172-3 (US) (alk. paper)
96-43552 CIP
© Copyright 1997 - John Benjamins B.V. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publisher. John Benjamins Publishing Co. • P.O.Box 75577 • 1070 AN Amsterdam • The Netherlands John Benjamins North America • P.O.Box 27519 • Philadelphia PA 19118-0519 • USA
Table of Contents Acknowledgments Contributors List of maps Introduction Hiri Motu Tom Dutton Pidgin Delaware Ives Goddard Ndyuka-Trio Pidgin George L. Huttar & Frank J. Velantie Arabic-based Pidgins and Creoles Jonathan Owens Kitúba Salikoko S. Mußvene Sango Helma Pasch Prior Pidginization and Creolization in Swahili? Derek Nurse Michif: A Mixed Language Based on Cree and French Peter Bakker & Robert A. Papen Media Lengua Pieter Muysken Callahuaya Pieter Muysken Mednyj Aleut Sarah G. Thomason Ma'a (Mbugu) Sarah G. Thomason Language Index Names Index Subject Index
vii ix xi 1 9 43 99 125 173 209 271 295 365 427 449 469 489 495 503
Acknowledgments The contributors to this volume have been so patient, during years of delay in the editing process, that I owe them an unusually emphatic expres sion of gratitude — not only for their lack of overt impatience, but for their amiable reaction to repeated editorial queries and requests for revision. The series editors, Pieter Muysken and John Singler, have provided valuable advice and helpful nudges throughout this period. My most enthusiastic thanks got to Anna Fenyvesi, whose extreme diligence and word-processing skill produced the final manuscript and whose moral support heartened me throughout the last stages of the process.
Contributors Peter Bakker Institute for General Linguistics University of Amsterdam Spuistraat 210 1012 VT Amsterdam The Netherlands Tom Dutton Department of Linguistics Research School of Pacific Studies The Australian National University P.O.Box 4 Canberra Australia Ives Goddard NHB Rm. 85, MRC 100 Smithsonian Institution Washington, D. C. 20560 USA George L. Huttar International Linguistics Center 7500 W. Camp Wisdom Rd. Dallas, TX 75236 USA Salikoko Mufwene Department of Linguistics University of Chicago 1010 East 59th Street Chicago, IL 60637
x
Pieter Muysken Instituut voor Algemene Taalwetenschap Universiteit can Amsterdam Spuistraat 210 1012 VT Amsterdam The Netherlands Derek Nurse Department of Linguistics Memorial University of Newfoundland St. John's Newfoundland Canada A1C 3X9 Jonathan Owens Universität Bayreuth Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaftliche Fakultät Arabistik Postfach 101251 D-8580 Bayreuth Germany Robert A. Papen Département de Linguistique Université du Québec à Montréal . .8888 Succursale A Montréal, Québec H3C 3P8 Canada Helma Pasch Institut für Afrikanistik der Universität zu Köln Meister-Ekkehart-Strasse 7 5000-Köln 14 Germany
Contributors
Contributors Sarah G. Thomason Department of Linguistics University of Pittsburgh Pittsburgh, PA 15260 USA Frank J. Velantie Afd. Alfabetisering (Volwassenen Edukatie) MINOV Commewijnestraat 31 Paramaribo Suriname
XI
List of Maps Map of Hiri Motu area Approximate current residential areas of Trios, Wayanas, and Bushnegro groups of Suriname Map of the Sudan Languages of the Southern Sudan and adjoining regions Position of the Kongo Kingdom in the 17th-18th centuries Map of Sango area Map of Media Lengua area
10 100 128 137 174 210 370
Introduction Sarah G. Thomason University of Pittsburgh
The best-known contact languages are pidgins and creoles with European lexicons, scattered along the major routes that were followed by European powers engaged in trade and colonization, starting in the Age of Exploration. These languages arose as a direct result of contact with Europeans, as re flected in the fact that their vocabularies are drawn primarily from the European languages of visiting traders, colonizers, or resident slavemasters. But it is becoming increasingly obvious that languages such as the Caribbean and Indian Ocean creoles, the various varieties of Pidgin English, and the several Portuguese-based creoles in South Asia and elsewhere owe their fame (and their prominence in the linguistic literature) to their links with European history rather than to any special linguistic status among contact languages. Pidgins and creoles with non-European lexicons are now being studied in many places around the world, and a third type of contact language — bilingual mixtures that (unlike pidgins and creoles) must have been created by bilinguals — has been reported reliably from widely separated locations. The purpose of this book is to present linguistic and historical sketches of some lesser-known contact languages, in an effort to provide some balance in the worldwide picture of these most dramatic results of language contact. An added goal is to facilitate the investigation of linguistic and historical similari ties and differences among contact languages of all three major types. The twelve case studies collected here range over all three types of contact languages, and several authors also deal explicitly with the problem of finding the boundary between contact language and dialect of the lexifier language. Three chapters focus on particular pidgins (Hiri Motu, Pidgin Delaware, and Ndyuka-Trio Pidgin), two on creoles (Kitúba, Sango), one on a
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Sarah G. Thomason
specific set of pidgins and creoles (Arabic-based languages), one on the question of early pidginization and/or creolization in Swahili, and five on bilingual mixtures (Michif, Media Lengua, Callahuaya, Mednyj Aleut, and Ma'a). The chapters are arranged according to the type of language: pidgins first, then the chapter covering both pidgins and creoles, then creoles, then the question-mark chapter on Swahili, and finally the two-language mixtures. Geographically, the Americas and Africa are best represented (five chapters each); there is one chapter each from the Pacific and northern Eurasia. This geographical skewing was not a deliberate choice. To some extent it resulted from a historical accident — several scholars who were asked to contribute were unable to do so in the end — but the main reason for the imbalance is that more contact languages that meet the basic criterion for inclusion are known in Africa and the Americas than in other parts of the world. This picture may change dramatically soon, as more information becomes available about contact languages elsewhere, notably among nonAustronesian languages of New Guinea (Foley 1986:30-31, Williams 1993). All the authors were asked to address a series of questions designed to make the case studies easy to compare with each other and with descriptions of other contact languages. The first set of questions concerned the circum stances of the language's use: location, number of speakers, domains of usage, other languages spoken by the users. The next set focused on demon strating the "languageness" of the language under consideration: is it crystal lized, so that it must be learned as a language rather than simply being produced by ad-hoc simplification (or other distortion) from any given speaker's native language? And is it mutually intelligible with any other language, specifically the main lexical-source language? The third set of questions was historical. In discussing the historical circumstances under which the contact language arose, authors were asked to distinguish carefully between documented social conditions and inferences drawn from inevitably incomplete documentation, and to lay out the bases for inferences drawn from linguistic facts. (For instance, if the language is a creole, is there direct evidence of a fully crystallized pidgin stage, or could creolization have been abrupt in a new contact situation?) Finally, authors were asked to describe the language briefly and to consider which of the three obvious candidates for sources of contact-language lexicon and grammar — the lexifier language(s), other language(s) spoken by the creators of the contact language, and univer sal structural tendencies — might be responsible, alone or in combination, for particular features found in the language.
Introduction
3
These questions could not be answered fully for all the languages, because of limitations in the available information or, as in the Swahili chapter, a scope that included non-contact varieties as well as contact lan guages. The chapters also differ in depth of coverage. In some cases the contact languages, and often their lexical and grammatical source languages as well, are still too little known to permit a detailed analysis; in other cases, such as Hiri Motu, more detailed discussions of certain topics are available elsewhere, so that readers are referred to other sources for details. The authors approach their topics in different ways as a result of the kinds of information that are available. So, for instance, Goddard's discussion of Pidgin Delaware is based on philological analysis of the documentation on this long-dead language, while Dutton and Muysken, to name just two of several authors, draw on their own fieldwork data in describing Hiri Motu and Media Lengua. An introduction to a book about contact languages must define the object of study: what is a contact language? The book's title presupposes that contact languages are a well-defined linguistic phenomenon, but — as with so much else in language-contact studies — the point is controversial. Probably no answer will satisfy everyone, but the following definition is at least consistent with the usage of all the contributors to this volume: a contact language is a language that arises as a direct result of language contact and that comprises linguistic material which cannot be traced back primarily to a single source language.1 Because the historical linguist's technical concept of genetic rela tionship requires that members of a language family descend primarily, as whole systems, from a single parent language, contact languages do not belong to any language family: by definition, their genesis was not a matter of descent with modification from a single parent. This definition is thus funda mentally historical; it is based on diversity in the sources of the linguistic structures rather than on (say) typological characteristics of the language. The reason for insisting on a historical definition is that synchronic definitions don't work; there is, for instance, no such thing as a master list of linguistic features that are universally shared by and exclusive to contact languages, or even pidgins and creoles as a set (leaving bilingual mixtures aside). There are, in my view, just three types of contact languages — namely, the types represented in this book. There are prototypical contact languages in all three categories, and there are also various kinds and degrees of deviations from the prototype. All these deviations (e.g. "semi-creoles" and "koinés") are best analyzed in relation to the prototype, as on a continuum, and not as
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Sarah G. Thomason
separate types of contact languages. Treating pidgins, creoles, and bilingual mixtures as discrete language types of course raises problems of identifica tion. There are many borderline cases: languages that have some pidgin characteristics but are analyzable as simplified versions of their lexifiers; speech forms that have some systematicity but are not clearly stable enough to be classed as languages; and so forth. But there are also many clear cases of contact languages. And since wrestling with fuzzy boundaries is a standard part of the historical linguist's job — consider, for instance, the impossibility of drawing a sharp dividing line between dialects of the same language and separate languages, during a process of language split — the discovery that fuzzy boundaries also exist in the study of contact languages is no surprise. Some languages are clearly contact languages; for other languages there is conflicting evidence, so that no firm identification is possible; and still other languages clearly are not contact languages. Of the languages covered in this book, most are definite contact lan guages by my definition: Hiri Motu, Pidgin Delaware, Ndyuka-Trio Pidgin, various Arabic-based pidgins and creoles, Kitúba, Sango, Michif, Media Lengua, Callahuaya, and Mednyj Aleut. Nurse argues that early Swahili was not a contact language, however, and Owens discusses (critically) the view that Arabic went through a pidgin stage. Ma'a is a contact language if it is a separate language, but its status as an independent language is debatable. Contact languages are not necessarily lingua francas,2 though many of them are. Of the ones discussed here, Hiri Motu, Pidgin Delaware, NdyukaTrio Pidgin, the Arabic-based pidgins and creoles, Kitúba, and Sango are (or were) also lingua francas; Swahili too has long served as a lingua franca, but it did not arise through pidginization or creolization. In sharp contrast, none of the bilingual mixtures fulfills (or fulfilled) such a function. This split is typical: bilingual mixtures usually or always serve as salient markers of ethnic-group identity (in fact, that's why they come into being), while pidgins and creoles arise as lingua francas. As noted above, a major purpose of this book is to make information about lesser-known contact languages more readily available. This in turn should enable specialists who are interested in generalizing over the whole range of contact languages to avoid the European-lexifier bias (especially for pidgins and creoles) of the majority of theoretical proposals in this area. The chapters provide two particularly striking illustrations of the usefulness of a broader data-base.
Introduction
5
The first concerns the issue of how many languages must be present in a new contact situation in order for a stable pidgin to develop. Virtually all generalizations about pidgin and creole languages cite the presence of more than two languages as a typical, or in some cases an absolute, condition for the emergence of a pidgin or creole. Probably the most widely cited formulation of this view is Whinnom's argument that "no pidgin has ever consolidated itself in other than a multilingual situation" (1971:104); numerous other authors (e.g. Mühlhäusler 1986:147) have accepted Whinnom's view. But two authors in this volume describe pidgins that apparently arose in twolanguage contact situations. Goddard suggests that Pidgin Delaware origi nated in communication between Delawares and Dutchmen and then spread to other European groups; Huttar & Velantie say that Ndyuka-Trio pidgin developed for communication between Ndyuka and Trio speakers only. To gether with other cases that have been described recently — most notably Kouwenberg's analysis of Berbice Dutch Creole as a two-language creole that arose out of contact between Dutch and the West African language Eastern Ịjọ (1994) — these examples show that the standard view about numbers of languages in pidgin genesis is simply mistaken. The second striking example is, in effect, the explanation for the first. Whinnom's common-sense reasoning behind his claim that more than two languages are needed for pidgin genesis is that, in a two-language situation, "there cannot be any rèally effective withdrawal of the target language" (1971:104). But here common sense is misleading. All three of the pidgins described in this book — Hiri Motu, Pidgin Delaware, and Ndyuka-Trio Pidgin — emerged in the first instance because the lexifier-language speakers deliberately withheld their full language from outsiders, instead using a simplified foreigner-talk variety that formed the basis for the eventual pidgin. Comparable cases are reported from other parts of the world, e.g. Halb deutsch (Lehiste 1965), but few of these turned into stable pidgins. The three examples side by side in this book provide solid evidence for the crucial importance of speakers' attitudes in determining the linguistic results of language contact. Another important feature of these papers is the thoroughness of the authors' descriptions of the historical circumstances in which the contact languages arose. These descriptions reveal a number of shared historical features, but there are also significant differences. Among the pidgins, Pidgin Delaware, Ndyuka-Trio Pidgin, and some Arabic-based pidgins arose as
6
Sarah G. Thomason
trade pidgins, as did many other pidgins around the world. The setting for the development of Hiri Motu was more complex: in Dutton's account, the Motu used their foreigner-talk variety with all foreigners, but a stable pidgin crys tallized only when many foreigners arrived — including the first police force, whose members came from other islands and were not Motu speakers — to provide a multilingual setting in which a single lingua franca was needed. The three creoles described in the book followed three different routes of development. East African Nubi, though connected with Arabic-based trade pidgins, was creolized when ethnically mixed soldiers established their own permanent settlements. Kitúba arose out of contact between West Africans and Bantu speakers, on the one hand, and among the Bantu speakers them selves in new multilingual settings, on the other; and Sango emerged as a work-group language. The five bilingual mixed languages fall into three general categories, historically speaking. Michif, Media Lengua, Mednyj Aleut, and Callahuaya all arose abruptly, by sudden creation, rather than gradually; but there were apparently two quite different motives for their development. The first three serve as the special languages of new ethnic groups or subgroups — the mixed-blood Métis (French, Cree, Ojibwe), acculturated Quechuas who belong neither to the Quechua world nor to the Spanish world, and mixed-blood residents of Mednyj Island (Russian, Aleut), respectively. The fourth, Callahuaya, functions as a secret language, used by male healers during rituals. The fifth bilingual mixture, Ma'a (Mbugu), is not the result of sudden creation but rather of long-term linguistic persistence in the face of intense cultural pressure from Bantu; far from being a new ethnic group, Ma'a speakers are an old community that has stubbornly resisted total cultural assimilation. At first glance, then, these five languages seem quite different in nature. But they share a characteristic social feature: all of them are in-group languages, used within the community as a sign of community solidarity and not understood by outsiders. They also share a salient linguistic feature: they are all comprised of two components, one from each of two source languages, and the linguistic material from each source language is adopted wholesale, without the kind of distortion that would occur in the absence of bilingualism. Finally, the structural descriptions in the first six case studies provide a strong antidote to the still common view that all pidgins and creoles have similar and simple structures. Features like the systematic OSV and SOV word order patterns of Hiri Motu, the noun class system of Kitúba, and the
Introduction
1
/kp/ and /gb/ phonemes of Sango will surely help to eradicate the idea that pidgins and creoles have maximally simple and more or less identical gram matical structures. The set of case studies in this book is a very small sample of the rich variety of contact languages around the world. We hope, in presenting these studies, to encourage other work along the same lines. Only with the accumulation of many solid case studies can our data-base become substantial enough to support robust generalizations about the nature and development of all types of contact language.
Notes 1.
At least one hedge must be added immediately: non-contact languages may, and often do, contain a great many loanwords, but few loanwords appear in the BASIC vocabulary. English is the most famous example of a loanword-heavy language, with up to 75% of its lexicon borrowed from French and/or Latin. But it is nevertheless easy to prove that English is a Germanic language, because the vast majority of the items in its basic vocabulary, together with most of its grammar, are of Germanic origin. An added complication is that "basic vocabulary" is not a precise concept. The idea is that basic vocabulary items are those that occur in every language, and are therefore (among other things) less likely to be borrowed than culture-specific words. In spite of its vagueness, this notion is of considerable methodological importance in historical linguistics.
2.
And of course not all lingua francas are contact languages. English, for instance, is the world's most-used lingua franca, and English itself is not a contact language.
References Foley, William A. 1986. The Papuan languages of New Guinea. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kouwenberg, Silvia. 1994. A grammar of Berbice Dutch Creole. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Lehiste, Ilse. 1965. "A poem in Halbdeutsch and some questions concerning substratum". Word 21.55-69. Mühlhäusler, Peter. 1986. Pidgin & creole linguistics. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Whinnom, Keith. 1971. "Linguistic hybridization and the 'special case' of pidgins and creoles". Pidginization and creolization of languages, ed. by Dell Hymes, 91-115. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Williams, Jeffrey P. 1993. "Documenting the Papuan-based pidgins of insular New Guinea". Atlantic meets Pacific: A global view of pidginization and creolization, ed. by Francis Byrne & John Holm, 355-367. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Hiri Motu Tom Dutton The Australian National
1.
University
Introduction1
Hiri Motu is the name now used officially to refer to the language that used to be known as Police Motu. This is a pidginized form of Motu, the native language spoken around Port Moresby, capital of Papua New Guinea, and for some fifty kilometers or so east and west of it along the coast (Dutton 1969) — see map.2 Until independence in 1975 Hiri Motu (as Police Motu) was the principal lingua franca between peoples speaking mutually unintelligible languages (including Europeans) and the unofficial language of administra tion of much of the southern half of the country that was then known as the Territory of Papua. In the years immediately preceding and following inde pendence Hiri Motu assumed an important role in national politics. Today not so much is heard of it in this role although it still has the potential to become so should social conditions change to favor it. It is still, however, an important language in Papua New Guinea and one of two recognized unofficial national languages of the country, even though it is not being learned and used by the younger generation to the same extent as previously, as Tok Pisin and/or English become more widely known.3 Historically the origin of this language is uncertain as there are no relevant written records. Until recently the popular view was that (and this is the view that underlies the name change from Police Motu to Hiri Motu) it is a continuation of a trade language used by the Motu on annual trading voyages, or hiri, to the Gulf of Papua where the Motu traded with linguistically unrelated peoples.4 However, recent research shows that this cannot be the case. Instead the language most probably developed out of a special variety or register of Motu used by the Motu in talking to those who came to visit or trade with them
Tom Dutton
10
Hiri Motu
11
in their own area, whether from linguistically unrelated areas or not. This variety was a simplified form of Motu, a kind of Motu Foreigner Talk, that was, it will be claimed, taken up, used, and spread in a revised form by members of the first police force and others in British New Guinea, as Papua was called then, from the late 1880s onwards. As a result it became associated with the police force and soon became known as Police Motu.
2.
Distribution and varieties
A survey of the distribution of Police Motu in 1961 (Brett et al. 1962) showed that it was at that time spoken throughout most of Papua except for those areas which had had little contact with the Administration (as, for example, in the Southern Highlands District and in distant parts of the Western, Gulf, and Milne Bay Districts) or where there were competing church languages (as, for example, in the Milne Bay and Western Districts). The Central District contained the highest number of speakers and the number of speakers dimin ished roughly in relation to the distance traveled away from Port Moresby in any direction. The only exception to this was in the coastal area of the Purari River delta where the language was adopted as the language of the Tommy Kabu Movement5 in the 1950s and was spoken "as a conscious preference" to the mother tongue of the members (Hitchcock & Oram 1967:11). In 1962 the number of speakers was estimated to be approximately 65,000, although this did not include 12,000 Motu and Koita villagers around Port Moresby who spoke Motu as their first or second language and who generally also know some kind of Hiri Motu. In the 1966 census, however, something like 110,000 persons over the age of ten years claimed to be able to speak "simple Police Motu", or at least could answer census questions in it, and in the 1971 census upwards of 150,000 persons living in Papua New Guinea are said to have spoken it. Not all of these were Papua New Guineans but the majority of those that were came from the six administrative districts that used to make up the old political unit of Papua. The present situation is unknown as there are no more recent census statistics available. There are some indications also, as noted above, that younger speakers are not learning the language but are learning and using Tok Pisin and/or English instead. Because of its wide distribution it comes as no surprise to find that there is no such thing as standard Hiri Motu. Instead it exists as a series of varieties
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Tom Dutton
(distinguishable chiefly by their sound systems and vocabulary) representing varying degrees of difference within two dialects — a Central one and a nonCentral one. Thus, for example, whereas speakers of the Central dialect generally maintain phonological distinctions made by the Motu (because their languages are closely related to Motu), speakers of the non-Central dialect do not. Consequently speakers of the non-Central dialect will be heard to say lau for both "I" and "go", whereas Central dialect speakers will say lau for "I" and lao for "go". Similarly, speakers of the Central dialect use more Motu words than speakers of the non-Central dialect do, the latter using words taken from different varieties of English or other languages of Papua. Thus, for example, speakers of the Central dialect will be heard to say ginigunana for "first" while those of the non-Central dialect will be heard to say namba wan, a form borrowed from the variety of pidgin English formerly spoken in Papua and the adjacent Torres Straits.6 Or again, while Central dialect speak ers will use rata for both "breast" and "milk", non-Central dialect speakers will use rata for "breast" and susu for "milk"; this latter word comes from some form of pidgin English or from one or more of the languages of Milne Bay, most probably Suau. Finally, whereas Central dialect speakers will say tamagu for "my father" and tamamu for "your father", non-Central dialect speakers will say lauegu tamana and oiemu tamana respectively. The Central dialect of Hiri Motu is that used mostly by the Motu and speakers of other closely related languages in the neighboring area who generally know some Motu. These languages are those generally referred to in the literature as Austronesian, as distinct from most others in Papua New Guinea, which are non-Austronesian or Papuan — see map. The other dialect is that used by speakers of all other languages, which are mostly not related to Motu, except in the Milne Bay Province and adjacent areas. These are all Papuan languages. This latter dialect is much more widespread than the former and several commentators have advocated that it, or selected parts of it, should be taken as the standard dialect for mass communication purposes. In fact the Central dialect is the one most used for these purposes.7
3.
The pidgin nature of Hiri Motu
As already indicated, Hiri Motu is a pidgin language. That is, it shares a number of features with pidgins observed elsewhere. Thus, for example, it is
Hiri Motu
13
reduced in structure compared with its major lexical-source language, Motu. It lacks, for example, most of the inflectional and derivational morphology of Motu, has no irregular verbs, makes no distinction between alienably and inalienably possessed nouns, has restricted adjective agreement, and has generalized dual forms and a universal postposition dekena or dekenai which is very much like long in English-based pidgins of the neighboring region. Its vocabulary is, moreover, restricted and not based solely on Motu. Hiri Motu can also be said to be like other pidgins in being nonnative to most speakers — there are reputed to be a number of speakers who speak it as their first language, but these have never been surveyed or studied — and in being used for communication between speakers of mutually unintelligible languages across Papua. Thus, even though, as will be argued here, Hiri Motu is most probably a continuation of a simplified form of Motu that was used for communicating with visitors to the Motu area, it has developed its own structure which has to be learned just as does that of other well-recognized pidgins. Thus Motu speakers cannot produce Hiri Motu by ad-hoc simplifica tion, just as English speakers cannot produce Tok Pisin, for example, by adhoc simplification of English (however much most nonspeakers think they can).8 It is, moreover, not immediately intelligible to Motu speakers who have not been previously exposed to it. In other words, Hiri Motu is a language in its own right and is not some debased or broken form of Motu.
4.
The origin and development of Hiri Motu
At the time of first European settlement in 1874 the coastal area around Port Moresby was occupied by two completely different and linguistically unre lated groups of people, the Motu and the Koita (or Koitabu as the Motu call them). The Motu lived in maritime villages between Kapakapa in the east and Galley Reach in the west and were divided into two groups or tribes, the Eastern Motu and the Western Motu, who lived east and west of Bootless Bay respectively. Of these two groups the Western Motu played the most impor tant role in the origin and development of Hiri Motu (as Police Motu), for it was they who were drawn into closest and increasing contact with foreigners after the arrival of the first Europeans. They were, however, distinguished culturally from their eastern counterparts by the fact that at the time of European contact (and for an unknown number of years before) they were
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Tom Dutton
involved in a complex network of trading relationships with linguistically related and unrelated groups east, west, and inland of their present position. The most spectacular and important part of this trade was the hiri, or annual trading voyage to the Gulf of Papua several hundred kilometers away to the west. During these voyages the Motu visited such groups as the Elema (the general name given to a group of coastal peoples speaking eight closely related languages of the Eleman Family between Cape Possession in the east and the Purari River delta in the west) and their neighbors immediately westwards, the Kikori, who inhabit the delta of the Purari River. These groups speak languages unrelated to Motu and only very distantly related to each other (if they are related at all). On these visits and on return visits made by some of these groups, the Motu and their trading partners communicated with each other in one or more of at least two different trade languages which were pidginized forms of the languages spoken by the Gulf traders. One of these languages, the Hiri Trading Language, Eleman variety, hereafter HTL(E), was based largely on the component languages of the Eleman Family, and the other, the Hiri Trading Language, Koriki variety, or HTL(K), was based on the single language, Koriki. Both of these languages had a number of features in common, although they were not mutually intelligible. The examples in Table 1 show what these languages were like, and most importantly, that they were quite different from, and should not be confused with, Hiri Motu, as has been the case in the past, although they were obviously similar in structure to it in many respects.
Table 1. The Hiri trading languages and Hiri Motu compared. HTL(K)
HTL(E)
Hiri Motu
English
Koa(nu) vapeo? who(his) canoe
A, neia enane eh, who his vevara? canoe Ara enane vevara. I my canoe
(Inai be ) daika (this focus) who ena lakatoi? his canoe (Inai be ) lau(this focus ) I egu lakatoi. my canoe
Whose canoe is this?
Na vapeo. my canoe
(It's) mine.
Hiri Motu
15 Eme enane rare you your name neia? who Ara enane rare I my name maro Moi. focus Moi
Oi- emu ladana you-your name (be ) daika? (focus) who Lau-egu ladana I- my name be Moi. focus Moi
E, uapekai. yes, stay Moi, anene pei Moi, come food navai. eat Na okuai! me give
Ene enane pamora you your friend rare maro neia? name focus who (Ara enane pamora (I my friend rare maro) Elamo. name focus) Elamo Elamo abuviti? Elamo stay E, abuv iti. yes, stay Moi, abusi ma Moi, come water siahu abulari. hot eat Ara porohalaia! me give
Enane pu miai go sago get anea! come
Abuari pai go sago avaia abusi! get come
Pu peo. sago not
Pai penepene sago some lasi. not
Oi- emu pamora you- your friend (be ) daika? (focus) who (Lau-egu pamora (I- my friend be ) Elamo. focus) Elamo Elamo ia noho? Elamo he stay Io, ia noho. yes, he stay Moi, oi mai Moi, you come aniani oi ania. food you eat Lau oi henia/ oi me you give/ you henia lau dekena! give me to Oi lao rabia you go sago oi mailaia! you bring Rabia (ia noho) sago (it stay) lasi. not
Ni noe koana? you name who
Na noe Moi. my name Moi
Ni vake(nu) your friend noe koana? name who (Na vake(nu) (my friend(his) noe) Elamo. name) Elamo Elamo uapekai? Elamo stay
What's your name?
My name is Moi.
What's your friend (or trade partner)'s name? (My friend (or trade partner)'s name is) Elamo. Is Elamo here? Yes, he's here. Moi, come and eat (some food).
Give it to me!
Go and bring some sago!
There's no sago.
16
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But the hiri was only part of the complex network of trade and exchange that the (Western) Motu were engaged in at the time of European contact, albeit the most spectacular part. Other parts of this network involved contact with speakers of other languages that lived in their immediate neighborhood and a little farther afield. Some of these trading groups spoke (and still speak) languages that are closely related to Motu, while the remainder spoke (and most still speak) languages which, as already indicated, are not related to Motu and are only distantly related to each other in groups or families, if they are related at all. The closest to the (Western) Motu were the Koita, who, at the time of first European contact, lived amongst the Motu as minority sections in Motu villages or in separate villages close by. Inland of the Koita and closely related to them linguistically lived the Koiari and the Mountain Koiari (also spelt Koiali). Because of their position, however, these two groups had little direct contact with the Western Motu, although there was some trade between them. They apparently knew very little if any Motu. Beyond the Koita the Motu also traded directly with linguistically related groups on either side. In the west they visited the Doura and Gabadi of the Galley Reach area and to the east they had developed rather special relation ships with the Vulaa, a tribe inhabiting Hula and associated villages around Hood Point. Motu villagers who did not go on the hiri depended on these people for fish while the hiri traders were away. In return the Vulaa received sago and other gifts from the returning hiri canoes. It is not known for certain what language was used by the Motu and their trade partners in these more local contacts, but it can be assumed on the basis of the available evidence that this was a simplified form of Motu, hereafter referred to as Simplified Motu. Thus, for example, when the Rev. W. G. Lawes of the London Missionary Society settled in Port Moresby in 1874 as the first European missionary amongst the Motu, he attempted to learn Motu. However, it was not until some time later that his son, Frank, who played with the boys in the village and learned Motu from them, drew his father's attention to the fact that he did not speak "true" Motu but only a simplified version of it,9 which he also used in making his first translations into Motu (Taylor 1978). Later Lawes noted that this simplified version of the language that he had been taught was characterized by "a good many colloquialisms" or "instances of pidgin Motuan" in use amongst the Motu which were "not correct grammatically" but were "sanctioned by usage" (Lawes 1896:30).
Hiri Motu
17
This Simplified Motu was, moreover, used by the Motu "in speaking to foreigners", although they themselves would "never do so amongst them selves". Although Lawes did not ever describe this foreigner talk in more detail we have been able to get some further insight into its nature and use in various ways. As a result it is possible to say that this Simplified Motu was not a separate language from Motu (in the sense that it was unintelligible to native Motu speakers and had to be learned by them as a second language), but was merely a special variety or register of Motu used for communicating with a particular class of people, notably those seeking entry to the Motu world. This variety was furthermore most probably not a stable one but probably varied from speaker to speaker over time, and depending on whether the person being spoken to was a complete stranger to the Motu or not. As a variety it was distinguishable from "true" Motu by a number of grammatical features of the sort already noted and to be discussed in more detail below, some of which are not found in Motu. Thereafter nothing is heard of this Simplified Motu until more than twenty years later when a distinct language with many of the same features appears that was to become known as Police Motu and later Hiri Motu. Although there is again no linguistic evidence on the point it is presumed, on the basis of other evidence to be presented, that the two are connected and that Police Motu is a continuation of this Motu Foreigner Talk or Simplified Motu (in a modified form) and not a separate development. There are two reasons for this. The first has to do with the fact that the received oral tradition claims that Police Motu is a continuation of a hiri trade language (as already indicated) and the second with social developments in the Port Moresby area following the arrival of London Missionary Society missionary Lawes in 1874. With respect to the received oral tradition it is to be noted that the principal reason for suggesting the name change Police Motu to Hiri Motu was that this language was supposed to be a "lineal descendant of the language of the Hiri" (Chatterton 1971:2). But it has already been shown that this could not have been the case, because not only did the Motu use at least two such languages (the HTLs) in hiri trading, but also these were markedly different from Police Motu, especially in vocabulary. So either the tradition has to be rejected as nonsense, or it has to be seen as having been misunder stood or misinterpreted at some point. Alternatively Police Motu has to be seen as a "lineal descendant" in a sense different from that normally accepted in linguistics. Given, however, that the Motu had another contact "language",
18
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Simplified Motu, which shares most grammatical features and vocabulary with Police Motu, a point which is demonstrated and discussed further below, the simplest explanation would appear to be that the tradition has indeed been misunderstood or misinterpreted at some time. This position is attractive, moreover, because it saves both the tradition, in a modified form, and the linguistic definition of continuation. Thus we may suggest that what the tradition really said was simply that Police Motu was the continuation of a trade language, one of several used, and not THE hiri trade language. Thus, both the received oral tradition, once reconstructed, and the linguistic evi dence are consistent with an hypothesis that Police Motu is a lineal descen dant of the contact "language" Simplified Motu. However, for this to be true particular social forces must have been active in and around Port Moresby to keep this simplified form of Motu alive and to extend its use into a general lingua franca before 1890, the year that the first police force was established in Port Moresby. One of these forces, notably the need to trade or converse with non-Motu coming into the Motu area, has already been referred to. A second force, probably not unrelated to the first, was that the Motu were apparently not keen for non-Motu to learn Motu; other forces have to do with social developments in the Port Moresby area following the arrival of mis sionary Lawes in 1874. Thus when news of the discovery of Port Moresby began to filter down through the Australian colonies and overseas, people of all sorts began making their way towards this new terra incognita as if drawn to it by some strange magnet. The first to do so were missionaries, who were soon followed by "scientists", entrepreneurs, explorers, adventurers, traders, and others, who in turn were followed by Government officials. Each of these groups had their effect on the use and transmission of different languages in the area, but it would appear to be the unofficial "visitors" who were the most important as far as the development of Police Motu was concerned. These "visitors" began coming to the area soon after Lawes arrived there in 1874 and continued to do so unchecked for the next sixteen years before the governor of the newly proclaimed colony of British New Guinea was in a position to control them. They included a wide range of ethnic types such as Chinese, "Malays", "South Sea Islanders", persons of mixed race, Maltese, Ceylonese, Indians, Filipinos, Europeans, Americans, and a large number of British-Australian origin. Many of these stayed and "married" Papuan women from the Port Moresby area and their descendants are still to be found there
Hiri Motu
19
today. Apart from a few extraneous cases these unofficial visitors generally fall into two classes: "South Sea Islanders" (who came mainly from what used to be called the New Hebrides but is now called Vanuatu) and "Malays" (who came from around the Singapore-West Indonesian area). Because these "visitors" were foreigners and were dependent on the Motu for food and other services, they would presumably have been in a situation similar to that that missionary Lawes was in when he first arrived. In other words they would have been treated like other visitors and addressed in Motu Foreigner Talk or Simplified Motu and not "true" Motu. And because these foreigners came from so many different sources (although collectively many of them may be labeled "South Sea Islanders" or "Malays"), and because they presumably had no language in common if they did not know some form of "broken" (or pidgin) English,10 the lingua franca of the Torres Straits and Queensland from where most, if not all, are known (or presumed) to have come to Port Moresby, there would have been increased pressure on them to learn and use some form of Motu as a lingua franca. Besides, they were in the minority and therefore in a weak social position. Consequently they would have been forced to accommodate to the Motu and not vice versa. Finally, because many of these foreigners were traders and traveled from one language area to another where some Motu was already known (and no English was) at the time of European contact,11 some form of Motu was bound to become the natural lingua franca between foreigner and non-Motu. In short, the whole sociolinguistic context of the Port Moresby area in the period preceding government intervention predetermined Motu in some form or other to becoming the established lingua franca of the area. But this was not just a change in frequency of use of the language; rather, it was a fundamental one in kind where its function was widened, or changed, from being a unidirectional, or vertical, one (that is, Motu-to-foreigner and vice versa) to a multidirectional, or horizontal, one (that is, foreigner-to-foreigner — includ ing non-Motu Papuans — and vice versa). Just what form of Motu developed out of this contact is difficult to say without written records. However, given (a) that present-day descendants say that some of their forefathers spoke "pidgin Motu", and (b) that, as will be indicated below, a subset of these foreigners was employed by the incoming Government from 1884 onwards and that thereafter Police Motu appears amongst those who were under their charge, it seems reasonable to assume that something similar was the lingua franca of this foreigner community.
20
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That is, it seems reasonable to assume that a form of Simplified Motu similar to that taught to Lawes, but not necessarily identical with it — in fact, most likely not identical to it, given the different origins, social standing, and presumably different language learning abilities of these foreigners12 — was the lingua franca of this community. In any case, it would seem to be highly likely that this community would play a significant role in establishing a form of simplified Motu as the general lingua franca of the Port Moresby area. But there were other important social changes in and around Port Moresby at the time which also had their effect on the language. These changes were intro duced by the establishment of a Government presence in Port Moresby. When the four-year-old Protectorate of British New Guinea was con verted into the colony of British New Guinea in 1888, Dr. (later Sir) William MacGregor was appointed first Governor. He arrived in September, 1888, proclaimed the colony, and immediately set about the two main tasks of getting to know as much of the country as possible and of building up a suitable administrative structure with the limited resources available. At that time the colony was divided into three divisions — Eastern, Central, and Western — with headquarters at Port Moresby and Samarai and outstations at Rigo and in the Louisiade Archipelago where gold mining was developing. Port Moresby had been surveyed as a town in 1886 but had not yet developed into anything resembling one. At this time much of the country was still unknown and not yet under government influence or control. Those areas that were under some sort of control were those more or less coextensive with mission influence or areas such as the following where commercial activity had been going on for some time: the Port Moresby-Aroma coast and immediate hinterland in the Central Division, the Kiwai area in the Western Division, and the coastal parts of the mainland tip around Milne Bay and islands in the Louisiade Archipelago in the Eastern Division. With MacGregor's arrival conditions changed dramatically for the na tive population. Hitherto, the Protectorate Government had been merely conducting a holding operation, attempting as far as possible to avoid distur bances and to protect the local population from undesirable outside influences and from itself. It had few legal powers to make laws and to enforce them. But a colony was a different matter and it was the change in the nature and methods of the colonial Government that had such an impact on the local population and, in turn, on the linguistic situation. Indeed, the impact was so
Hiri Motu
21
great that by the time that MacGregor left British New Guinea in 1898, what was later to become known as Police Motu had become the principal, al though not the sole, unofficial language of administration in many areas and the scene was set for its further expansion into other areas as similar policies and methods continued bringing new areas under control. The principal agents in this development were the three instrumentalities of law and order: the police force, the village constable system, and the prison system. These three systems were closely related and integrated and fed on, and into, each other in the following way: the prisons provided recruits for the police force and the village constable system, which in turn provided recruits for each other as well as fresh prisoners. When Sir William MacGregor arrived to proclaim the new colony of British New Guinea, one of the most pressing requirements was for a suitable police force with which to help extend government influence over an increas ing area and to enforce law and order over those areas. Hitherto administra tors of the Protectorate had to depend on "commodore justice" and on an unofficial police force composed of a heterogeneous collection of foreigners and local Papuans who acted in various capacities but who had never been trained in any way for the police work they could be called on to do. Consequently MacGregor soon set about organizing an official force which he called the Armed Native Constabulary. But as no trained personnel were available in British New Guinea to form the nucleus of this unit, MacGregor appealed to the Governor of Fiji for assistance, with the result that two Fijians and twelve Solomon Islanders from the island of Malaita were recruited to go to British New Guinea for periods between one and three years — the two Fijians, a sergeant and a corporal, for one year and the remainder, constables, for three years. The members of this force all spoke mother tongues which are Austronesian languages distantly related to Motu. In addition the Solomon Islanders probably spoke some form of Fijian as a result of having spent between six and twelve years working on plantations and/or for the Govern ment in Fiji before being recruited, and all are presumed to have also spoken some form of English as a necessary prerequisite to being chosen to serve under English-speaking commandants in British New Guinea. This nuclear force arrived in British New Guinea in 1890 and was gradually expanded by the addition of Papuan recruits mostly from the Kiwai area of the Western Division, until, by the end of MacGregor's term as Governor in 1898, the force consisted of one hundred and ten Papuan non-commissioned officers and constables drawn from most parts of the country then under control.
22
Tom Dutton
The way in which the police force was formed and developed has a number of implications for the history of Police Motu, whose name is so closely associated with it. The most important of these are: (i) Because the founding members of the force were drawn from areas outside the Central Division, where "true" Motu was (and still is) spoken natively, they did not know any Motu on arrival. Consequently they must have been forced to communicate with one another and with their superiors in some form of English, which the majority, if not everyone, must have known. For the founding Fijians and Solomon Islanders this English was most prob ably what is generally referred to as "broken" English but was in reality a form of pidgin English similar to that found in Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands today. Similarly the founding Papuan members from the Kiwai area of western Papua spoke a form of "broken" or pidgin English, a creolized version of which is the primary language in the Torres Straits today and whose official name is Broken (Shnukal 1988). Thus even though Police Motu eventually became associated with the force as THE language of the force, it was not the sole language of the force; "broken" or pidgin English was equally important in the formative years. In fact both languages were required for a long time as each was used in different parts of the country and a member of the force could be transferred from one part of it to another on duty at any time. But to understand why only Police Motu became associated with the force (as the name indicates) and what it was like, we have to turn to the second main implication of the way the force was formed mentioned above. (ii) Because the force was formed in the way it was and was housed and trained in Port Moresby, and because the language situation in that area was the way it was (viz. Motu was the most widely known language while at the same time very little English of any kind was known), the police could not avoid learning some kind of Motu if they were to carry out their duties in the Port Moresby area. Thus, it will be remembered that the initial nucleus of the force consisted of imported Fijian and Solomon Islanders and that Papuan members were only added "gradually" (to use MacGregor's words). When these imported men arrived they would immediately have recognized a number of what would today be called wantoks (or persons from the same area and/or cultural background) in Papua New Guinea amongst the foreigner population of Port Moresby. As these wantoks had been in Port Moresby for some time and were living in or near Motu villages, it is presumed that they
Hiri Motu
23
could speak some sort of Motu. In addition it is presumed that they would have very soon introduced their newly arrived "friends" into the Port Moresby scene, in particular to its local politics and the utility and necessity of knowing some kind of Motu for survival purposes in the Port Moresby area. Even if this had not taken place, the new arrivals would surely have quickly come to the same conclusion themselves, for they were very soon put to work after their arrival in the Rigo and Mekeo areas east and west of Port Moresby. Here they would have been working with Government officials and other employees, some of whom were the wantoks already referred to and all of whom it is presumed (for reasons given above) spoke some kind of Motu. Consequently, they would have been exposed to Motu being put to use in the field. Presumably they would also have been told (even if they had not needed to know) that in the Port Moresby area "Motu" was the most widespread language and that one had to be able to speak it if one wanted to communicate with the local people. At the same time, they were probably given some elementary advice about its nature and possibly even how easy it was to learn. However, they would hardly have needed much of that kind of instruction since all of these men, as already noted, spoke languages related to Motu. Indeed, they would themselves have easily recognized many of its basic words and structural elements as being similar to their own. This can be seen by looking at Table 2, in which Motu words are compared with some of the most common words from some of those languages that are known or are suspected as having been spoken by various members of the force. For similar reasons, the form of Motu adopted by these first police is likely to have been similar to that used by the Government officers, other employees, and unofficial policemen with whom they worked and/or whom they were replacing — in other words, some form of Simplified Motu. The formation of the police force was thus a new and important element in the development and spread of this variety of language. It provided a particular social environment in which men from different parts of the coun try (and overseas initially) were brought together to work. In this situation, which is akin to those on plantations elsewhere, some common language of communication was soon needed. Initially, for reasons already given, this language must have been "broken" (or pidgin) English. However, the use of "broken" (or pidgin) English in the Port Moresby area was limited by the fact that "Motu" was the established lingua franca there. Consequently, although "broken" English never died out, its use in the Central Division was more
24
Tom Dutton
Table 2. Some basic vocabulary and structural elements of Motu, Fijian, and some Solomon Islands languages compared. Fijian13 English belly bird bone butterfly come die eye five fly (v.) foot go he his hornbill house I in life lobster louse mother my name paddle road salt, sea sugarcane taro two what your (sg.)
Solomon Islands Languages
Motu boga manu turia bebe mai mase mata ima roho ae lao, laka ia -na bina ruma lau lalonai mauri ura tumu sina -gu lada hode dala tasi tohu taro rua dahaka -mu
Bau
Kadavu
Lau
Kwara'ae Kwai Is
kete manumanu sui beebee lako mai mate mata lima vuka yava lako koya -na
kete manumanu tua bebe lako mai mate mata lima vuka laga lako kia -na
oga manu sili bebe mai mae maa lima lofo 'ae lea nia -na bina luma ñau lalo mouri ura 'uu tee -gu sata fote tala asi ofu alo rua ta -mu
sira hai'no' sulia beb mai' mae maa lima loh a'e leka nia -n(a) bina lum naua sae maori deng 'uu tea' -ku sata fote tal asi uuh alo rua tae -mu
14
vale yau e lomani bula urau kutu tina -qu yava voce sala maasima dovu dalo rua cava -mu
vale yau i lomani bula urau kutu tina -qu ila voce saa levu maasima tovu suli rua yava -mu
oga no suli bebe mai mae maa nima lofo 'ae leka nia ? bina luma nau laona mauo uragou 'uu tee ? rata fotee tala asi ofu alo rua taa ?
Hiri Motu
25
restricted than elsewhere. The fact that recruits were taken to Port Moresby for initial training before being distributed around the various Government stations meant that the language traditions, once established, were perpetu ated and, moreover, that because, as MacGregor noted in his Annual Report for 1892/3 (p. xxviii), "thirty or forty men leave the force each year for their own villages", Police Motu went with them to distant parts at a constant rate. This situation was reinforced by the two other ancillary law enforcement agencies, the village constable system and the prisons, both of which were considered by Governor MacGregor as important agents of change. These systems contributed recruits to the police force from an increasingly wide area and returned Police Motu speakers with them. Thus by the time MacGregor's period of governorship came to an end in 1898 there had been significant developments administratively and socially which had their effects on the linguistic situation. At first, MacGregor, like his predecessors in the Protectorate, had to rely on the mission and a number of locally appointed "servants" to maintain some sort of law and order. How ever, after 1890, Government influence and control rapidly outstripped mis sion influence and became the decisive factor in linguistic developments. By this time "Motu" had become the unofficial language of administra tion. This "Motu" was that that subsequently became known as Police Motu (and now Hiri Motu) because of its association with the police, notwithstand ing the fact that it was just as much part of the prison and village constable systems as of the police force. Thereafter this language spread (along with "English") with expanding contact with Europeans, so that today the language is spoken throughout most of what used to be called Papua. In 1971, in response to changing political circumstances in Papua New Guinea, a Study Conference on Police Motu was organized by the Government in Port Moresby to consider various aspects of the language's future. One of the results of that conference was the adoption of a new name for Police Motu. It was felt that because the term Police Motu had "become an anachronism" (Chatterton 1971:1) the name ought to be changed to something more in keeping with the origin of the language. As a result it was changed to Hiri Motu because, as has already been pointed out, it was thought that the language was a continuation of the hiri trading language. This new name was subsequently adopted as the official name of the language despite the misunderstood oral tradition that lies behind it.
26 5.
Tom Dutton Sources of the structure and vocabulary of Hiri Motu
Sourcing the structure and vocabulary of Hiri Motu is complicated by several factors — the generally poor quality and amount of relevant early data available, the complex nature of the external history of the language, and the number and nature of possible source languages available. Assuming, how ever, that Hiri Motu developed out of Simplified Motu as the social evidence outlined above strongly suggests, all discussion of the source of non-Motu features in Hiri Motu must begin with Simplified Motu. Given further that Simplified Motu was a register of Motu and not a separate pidgin language, then it is also reasonable to assume, especially when there is no evidence to the contrary, that this variety was composed solely of Motu elements even though some of these were apparently not used in strictly Motu ways and even though the variety probably varied from speaker to speaker and from context to context. Consequently all non-Motu features found in Simplified Motu, and later Hiri Motu, must have come from some external source or sources if they were not the result of some universal or internally generated tendencies. There are three languages most suspect of being probable source languages for such non-Motu features: Koita, the Papuan language spoken in and around Western Motu villages; Kiwai, the Papuan language spoken by MacGregor's first Papuan police recruits; and "broken" English, the initial lingua franca assumed to have been spoken by the founding members of MacGregor's police force. Each of the three aspects of language, phonology, morphosyntax, and vocabulary, are involved and will be considered separately. 5.1. Phonology In the beginning, as has just been suggested above, Hiri Motu, as Simplified Motu, is most likely to have had a phonology similar to that of Motu. As this variety expanded into a pidgin, however, it became increasingly diversified and the pronunciation in particular began reflecting the features of the mother tongues spoken by the individual users.15 Even so, and despite still observable variation within it, the language developed a number of features which are fairly consistent across the non-Central dialect (and which therefore help define it) irrespective of the nature of the background phonologies of the individual speakers. These features are:
Hiri Motu (i) (ii)
(iii) (iv) (v)
27
the reduction of the Motu kw/gw + au sequence to ko, as in koraia "inceptive aspect marker" (< Motu gwauraia "to talk about") ; the absence of a distinction between Motu /gl and /y/. Thus whereas Motu distinguishes between guria "to bury" and yuria "to pray", there is no contrast between these words in the non-Central dialect of Hiri Motu — they are homophonous; the contrast between Motu /r/ and /l/ is generally neutralized so that words like lau "I" and rau "leaf are both pronounced lau; /h/ is often lost, especially word-medially; the Motu contrast between /ao/ and /au/, between /ae/ and /ai/ and between /oe/ and /oi/ is lost so that each pair is realized as /au/, /ai/, and /oil respectively.16
Distinctive as these features are, it is not possible to trace them to any particular source. On social and historical grounds Koita and Kiwai are the most suspect, if these features were not progressively acquired from other Papuan languages as the dialect developed or if they did not develop indepen dently. Both Koita and Kiwai have a number of these features in common with each other and Motu — e.g., Koita has a contrast between /g/ and /y/, both Koita and Kiwai have /h/ and an open syllable structure and /a+u/ sequences, and Kiwai has a contrast between /r/ and /l/ (Wurm 1973:226). Consequently it is hard to see how they could have been sources. Likewise the languages spoken by the Solomon Islander and Fijian policemen are not likely to have been sources as they are related to Motu and are similar to it in general structure. 5.2. Morphosyntax This is the area of principal difference between Simplified Motu, Hiri Motu, and Motu. Compared with Motu, Simplified Motu and Hiri Motu are gener ally much simpler in structure. They also include a number of features not found in Motu. The features which distinguish Simplified Motu and Hiri Motu from Motu are those set out in the Appendix together with comparative notes for a selection of other languages that are relevant to the problem of sourcing.17 Comparing the Simplified Motu and Hiri Motu features, it is to be noted that, except for four features for which there is no evidence in Simplified Motu (viz. 11, 13, 17, 18), the only features that distinguish Hiri Motu from Simplified Motu are:
28
Tom Dutton 2 3 8 20
"Have" and "have not" Subject and focus markers ese and be Dekena(i) as a generalized locative postposition Word order flexibility
Such a correspondence between the two languages implies that many of the features found in Hiri Motu were acquired from Simplified Motu, and that Hiri Motu is indeed a continuation of Simplified Motu, as the social evidence presented above suggests.18 Where these features came from in Simplified Motu and Hiri Motu is, however, another question and one the linguistic evidence cannot answer unambiguously. On the one hand, most of the fea tures that distinguish Simplified Motu and Hiri Motu from Motu have paral lels in one or more of the languages the Motu were in contact with at the time of first European contact. On the other hand, all except perhaps feature 14 (gwauraia) can be accounted for as simplifications of Motu by the application of universal simplifying principles. But without further evidence it is not possible to make out a convincing case for the primacy of either of these two sources over the other. Indeed, it is highly likely that contact-induced changes and simplifying principles conspired with each other to give the observed results. Where Hiri Motu differs from Simplified Motu, however, it must be the case that Hiri Motu developed those features independently after it diverged from Simplified Motu, that is, after Simplified Motu began to be used in a wider context. As already noted there are four features involved (2, 3, 8, and 20). However, as two of these (3, 8) have similar structures in one or more of the languages that the Motu were in contact with at the time of the foundation of the first police force, or that the police themselves spoke, and as they are, at the same time, derivable from Motu by universal simplifying principles, it is clear that they are in very much the same category as the similarities dis cussed above, i.e. they most probably result from the interaction of simplify ing principles and contact-induced change. The remaining two features are of a different kind because they are not found in Motu and cannot be said to be simplifications of Motu. In fact feature 2 is as complex in Hiri Motu as in Motu and feature 20 is more complex in Hiri Motu than in Motu. Taking each of these in turn: (a)
Feature 2: "have" and "have not"
Hiri Motu
29
In Simplified Motu the method of indicating "have" and "have not" appears to have been similar to the Motu method in which the prepositions mai "with" and asi "without" are used without a verb, as in examples (1) and (2): (1)
Lau na mai egu ira. I be with my axe "I have an axe."
(2)
Lau na asi egu ira. I be without my axe "I have no axe."
In Hiri Motu "have" and "have not" are expressed either by using dekena(i) "at" with noho "stay" or noho lasi "not stay",19 as in example (3), or by using the possessive pronoun with noho, as in (4): (3)
Lau dekena(i) be ira ia noho (lasi). I at focus axe it stay (not) "I have (no) axe."
(4)
Lauegu ira ia noho (lasi). my axe it stay (not) "I have (no) axe."
Interesting as these differences are, however, it is not possible to source them unambiguously. The reason is that there are many competing possibili ties. First, they could represent independent developments. Second, they could represent changes induced by contact with the HTL(E), which has a (partly) similar construction. A third possibility is that they could represent developments induced by contact with the form of 'broken" English assumed to have been spoken by unofficial "visitors" and the founding members of MacGregor's police force recruited in Fiji. This is so because one way of expressing "have" was probably (judging by the fact that it is currently used in Bislama and other modern forms of the "broken" English spoken in the South Pacific in earlier times) to use a possessive construction with stap "to be", as in the following example from Bislama:20 (5)
Akis bilong yu i stap? axe of you be "Do you have an axe?"
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A final possibility is that the constructions could have resulted from changes induced by HTL(E) and "broken" English constructions. Yet despite the uncertainty surrounding the origin of these "have" constructions, one thing is clear and that is that the constructions could not have come from the native languages spoken by MacGregor's policemen and those joining later, as these were Papuan languages which do not use similar constructions. Koita is excluded for similar reasons. (b) Feature 20: word order Word order in Hiri Motu is quite varied, depending on whether the subject (S) and object (O) are nouns or pronouns. There are four possibilities: (i) When both S and are nouns the order is S ese O V, as in example (6): (6)
Sisia ese boroma ia itaia. dog pig he see "The dog saw the pig."
(ii) When S is a noun and is a pronoun the order is be S ia V, or less commonly SVO, as in (7): (7)
Lau be sisia ia itaia. ~ Sisia ia itaia lau. I dog it see dog it see I "The dog saw me."
(iii) When S is a pronoun and is a noun the order is OSV, as illustrated in (8): (8)
Sisia lau itaia. dog I see "I saw the dog."
(iv) When S and are pronouns the order is OSV, or less commonly SVO, as in (9): (9)
Oi lau itaia. ~ Lau itaia oi. you I see ~ I see you "I saw you."
In Simplified Motu, however, word order was apparently invariably SOV (although there is unfortunately no evidence available for pronominal ob jects), as in (10):
Hiri Motu
31
(10) Ia mero itaia. he boy see "He saw the boy." This means that sometime between the documentation of Simplified Motu and that of Hiri Motu word order developed considerable flexibility, a flexibility not found in Motu, which has the basic order SOV for nominal Ss and Os but uses prefixes and suffixes on the verb for pronominal subjects and objects. Excluding ese and be, which are Motu features, either this develop ment must have been an independent one or it derives from the pidgin Englishes and/or other languages spoken by unofficial "visitors" or the first policemen. A further possibility is that it derives from Koita. Of these the most likely source is Koita, if any one particular source was responsible for this development in Hiri Motu, as it has some of the same flexibility as exhibited by Hiri Motu. For example both SOV and OSV word orders occur depending on the nature of the sentence (Dutton 1975). Whether or not Koita was the only or principal source, it would seem that the other possible sources named above could hardly have been sources as (i) the "broken" Englishes presumed to have been spoken by "visitors" and the early policemen did not have this kind of variation (judging by modern forms of them) and (ii) the majority of native languages spoken by the "visitors" and early policemen were Austronesian (including Indonesian, Solomon Islands, Vanuatuan, and Fijian languages) and Papuan ones which did not have this kind of variation. Clearly then it is not possible to identify the source or sources of word order flexibility in Hiri Motu with any confidence. 5.3. Vocabulary The vocabulary of modern Hiri Motu comes from several different sources. The largest percentage of words comes from Motu itself, as the name sug gests. This percentage includes the language's most basic vocabulary (that is, its pronouns, its names for common objects, body parts, kinship terms, adjectives, and simple action verbs) as well as a number of other words introduced by the South Sea Island pastor-teachers of the London Missionary Society who spearheaded the introduction of Christianity into Papua in the 1870s. These words include such items as pakosi "scissors", tamaka "shoes", pavapavana "king", and mamoe "sheep". The remaining Hiri Motu vocabu lary is made up of words that come from other languages of Papua as well as
32
Tom Dutton
from "broken" or other varieties of English that have been spoken in Papua throughout its history. Thus Hiri Motu contains such words as namba wan "first", bulamakau "beef, rais "rice", ti "tea", kesikesi or bisikesi "biscuit", traim "to try", and mikisim "to mix", which were part of the contact vocabu lary used by foreigners speaking "broken" or other forms of English, who came to the Port Moresby area in increasing numbers in the 1870s and 1880s. Subsequently other English words were added as new ideas and goods flowed into the country. The introduction of some of these can be dated quite precisely and their nature has changed over time as changes in technology and in English usage have occurred. The best examples of these are words for such introduced vehicles as aeroplanes, motor vehicles, and boats. Thus when aeroplanes were first introduced into Papua in the 1930s Papuans learned to refer to them as plaimasini or plaimasi "flying machines" in Hiri Motu. However, as aeroplanes became more popular and English speakers referred to them more generally as "aeroplanes" and eventually "planes", so the Hiri Motu word changed from plaimasini or plaimasi to elopleni and pleni. Simi larly trucks {traka in Hiri Motu today) were apparently first referred to as lori (from English "lorry"), and ships {boti in Hiri Motu today) as sisima or sitima (from English "steamer"). A small part of Hiri Motu vocabulary is also made up of words that come from languages both related and unrelated to Motu in Papua, and it is sus pected that many more such words were once part of the language.21 Some, such as kamkam "fowl, bush fowl", o kapore "oh sorry", dimdim "white man", and possibly susu "milk", can be traced to Suau, the Austronesian language related to Motu along the southern coast of the mainland just west of Milne Bay — see map. Others have come from Koriki (nakimi "brother-inlaw"), the substratum language of the HTL(K) trade language referred to above, from Binandere on the north coast (e.g. kiki "to yarn, tell a story"), 22 and from languages of the Torres Straits (mamoos or mamus "chief, police man"), all of which are unrelated to Motu. Thus linguistic features of Hiri Motu support the view suggested by social evidence that Hiri Motu is a descendant of SM, although it is not possible to identify the source or sources of most features of Hiri Motu that distinguish it from Motu and its predecessor Simplified Motu. Many of these were common to other languages that the Motu were in contact with at the time of first European contact but could equally well, and most probably do, represent the results of several processes — the application of universal
Hiri Motu
33
simplifying processes to Motu, changes induced by contact with one or more other languages which have similar structures, and independent develop ments.
6.
Conclusion
To recapitulate, in this paper I have argued, mainly on social grounds sup ported by comparative linguistic evidence, that Hiri Motu is not, as its name is meant to suggest, a continuation of one of the hiri trading languages used by the Motu in trading with linguistically unrelated peoples of the Gulf of Papua. Rather it is a descendant of a simplified form of Motu that was used by the Motu as a contact language with anyone coming to visit them in their own area. This language, unlike the hiri trading languages used by them, which were simplified forms of languages spoken by their Gulf trade partners, was a simplified form of their own language. This Simplified Motu was not related to those spoken on the hiri and was quite separate from them. It existed before the arrival of Europeans and other foreigners but was used by the Motu to communicate with the first European missionary in the area, Dr. Lawes, and taught to him as their language. The origin of this Simplified Motu is un known, but it most probably developed initially out of the contact between the Motu and their closest neighbors, the Koita, although others may have been involved. After the 1870s this Simplified Motu was extended in use by the arrival of a relatively large number of unofficial "visitors" who came to the area before a strong Government presence was established there. Some of these foreigners were later employed by the Government as interpreters, guides, boatmen, and unofficial policemen and were probably largely respon sible for a form of this language being adopted by members of the first official police force, from which the language took its early name, Police Motu. Thereafter the language became associated with the Government and the enforcement of law and order and spread with expanding Government control over the country. From that time on the history of the language became one of increasing competition with the other main lingua franca spoken in Papua before the Second World War, "broken" English. During this time also the language came into contact with other languages besides "broken" English as recruits were drawn into the police force from different areas and as the language expanded into different geographical areas. As a result the language
34
Tom Dutton
developed into two main dialects which varied in the sounds used and in some grammatical features (e.g. word order, object marking on verbs, possessive case) but especially in vocabulary (e.g. in non-Motu items obtained from other languages of Papua, "broken" English, and English). With the coming of the Second World War Police Motu was recorded and described for the first time and given official recognition. At the same time it was spread farther afield, was regularized, and was used increasingly for mass communication. After the war the language increased in status and "broken" English lost its identity as standard English was promoted officially with great vigor. In 1971 the name Police Motu was changed to Hiri Motu and the language began to acquire new ranges of vocabulary in keeping with increased contact with English and Tok Pisin, the other major lingua franca of Papua New Guinea since the Second World War, and in keeping with the changing social condi tions in an increasingly complex society. In 1975 it acquired equal status with Tok Pisin as one of two unofficial national languages.
Hiri Motu
35
Appendix Pidgin Features of Hiri Motu Compared with Those of Simplified Motu and Other Languages In the chart below, HM = Hiri Motu, SM = Simplified Motu, HTL(E) = Hiri Trading Language, Eleman variety, HTL(K) Hiri Trading Language, Koriki variety, and PPE
=
=
Papuan Pidgin English. Feature of HM
SM
HTL(E)
HTL(K)
PPE
l. No irregular verbs
Yes7 - most common ones like "corne, go" appear in simple form as in HM
Yes, no irregular verbs
Yes, no irregular verbs
Yes, no irregular verbs
2. "Have" and "have not" expressed by dekenai + noho orby POSS + N + noho
U ses both full form and short form ofMotu construetion with postposition mai "with"
Sometimes uses No verb used ita "with", sometimes amumuti "stay", but neither in negative sentenees
7- no evidence but presumably gat and stap as in Torres Straits Broken (of whieh PPE was an extension) and Bislama
3. Uses ese and be as subjeet mrkrs or foeus elements
No subjeet or foeus mrkrs (although evidenee very limited)
No subjeet mrkr No subjeet or mrkrs but foeus mrkr maro most eommonly used after subjeet
No subjeet or foeus marking elements
4. Restrieted dual pronoun form
Yes, same as in
HM
7 (free pronoun + oraore "two")
7 (free pronoun + 7 - no evidence rearea "two")
5. No bound
Yes, no bound forms; uses free pronouns taken from Eleman languages
Yes, no bound forms; uses free pronouns taken from Koriki
Yes, same as HM, exeept uses free pronouns derived from English
6. Transitive verbs Yes, same as in are marked by HM final-a
No, transiti ve verbs are not eonsistently marked
No, there is no transitive marker on verbs
No, although -im is often used in similar way
7. No noun classes Yes, same as in HM based on pos session (e.g. alienable vs. inalienable)
Yes, no noun classes but uses a relator enane derived from Eleman languages
Yes, no noun classes and no relators
Yes, same as in HM
Yes, same as in HM pronoun subjeets or objeets on verbs (exeept in Central dialeet); uses free pronouns derived from "true" Motu
Tom Dutton
36 8. Dekena(i) a generalized postposition
No, uses Motu postpositions
? - evidence patchy No, generalized No, uses along/long postposition used as generalized locabut when case is tive preposition marked there is for directions variation between suffix -ai « Motu) and preposed forms ta, ba and la « Eleman languages)
? - no evidence 9. Generalized forms for "like this, like that" and "how"
? - no evidence No, uses Eleman forms although these are similar in structure to HM ones, e.g. ma-feare (lit. this-like) "like this"
?- available 10. Restricted forms for "all" evidence suggests and "the whole" same as in HM
?- no evidence
? - no evidence
No, uses all and altugeta
? - no evidence
11. Restricted adjective agreement
? - no evidence
No, no adjective agreement at all
No, no adjective agreement at all
No, no adjective agreement at all
12. Simple imperative
Yes, same as in HM
Yes, but using Eleman material
Yes, but using Koriki material
Yes
13.Dohore and variants used before verb to indicate future
? - no evidence of ? - no tense No, but Koriki No, but baimbai such use in distinctions in material can be used in similar way available materials verbs, these being used in similar way indicated by although future tense is mostly indicated by adverbs of time such as aire "later, -varia on verbs afterwards", or vevere "tomorrow" for future; mamaro "now" for present. There is no evidence for past tense. If there is no adverb of time in sentence the tense can be read as past, present or future
14. Uses vadaeni, noho and gwauraia after verb to indicate completed, continuous, and intentive/inceptive aspect
No evidence of use of noho, but vada is used before verbs to indicate completed action (as in Motu) and gwauraia after verb (as in HM) to indicate intention
No, uses kaolaia ? - but -varia may after verbs for may be used for completed action intention and sinanaia (which is translation equivalent of gwauraia in HM) or mamaro after verbs for intention (which is translation equivalent of vadaeni in HM)
No? - but some evidence thatfinis is used in similar way for completive; evidence lacking for continuous .and inceptive aspects
Hiri Motu
1
15. Uses lasi as Yes, same as in generalized neg-HM: (a) lasi after ative: (a) after verbs; (b) lasi after verbs; (b) after adjectives adjectives 16.Reflexivity Yes, same as in expressed by HM sibona without special verb forms 17. Temporal ? - no evidence in clauses marked available materials. by negana(i) Juxtaposition the main relating device 18. Uses bema as conditional clause marker
? - no evidence in available materials. Juxta position the main relating device
19. Uses vadaeni Some use of "enough, okay' vadaeni similar to HM as sentence connective 20. Flexible word order depend ing on whether subjects and objects are
Yes, same as in HM: (a) lasi after verbs; (b) lasi after adjectives - no evidence
No,butpea is No, uses: (a) no be used in similar fore verbs; (b) no way: (a) pea after before adjectives verbs; (b) pea after adjectives ? - no evidence
■ no evidence
? - no evidence, Juxtaposition the main relating device
? - V + ane "and, No, uses juxtaposiwhen, if' or tion only juxtaposition used in available materials
- no evidence
No, uses V + ane No, although uses "and, when, if' sapos " i f in similar or juxtaposition way in available materials
No, although form tora "enough, okay" used in similar way
? invariable SOV SOV like Motu although no evidence for pronouns available
No, although form oaio "enough, okay" used in similar way
No, although finis "finished" and orait "okay" used in similar way sometimes
SOV
SVO
nouns or pronouns
Notes 1.
This paper is a condensed version of my book Police Motu: iena sivarai (1985).
2.
For descriptions of Motu see Lister-Turner & Clark (1930) and Taylor (1970). The standard variety is taken to be that described by Lister-Turner & Clark.
3.
Tok Pisin is the fastest growing language in Papua New Guinea. Until independence it was the principal lingua franca and unofficial language of administration of the northern half of the country, or that part of it that was known as the Territory of New Guinea. For detailed descriptions of it see Wurm & Mühlhäusler (1985) and references therein.
4.
For example, Chatterton (1950:5) says, "its origin dates back to before European penetra tion of Papua, when it was the trading language between the Motuans and their customers along the shores of the Gulf of Papua, to whom they bartered pots for sago."
38
Tom Dutton
5.
This was a movement led by Tommy Kabu. As a result of his wartime experiences Tommy Kabu felt that the only way to improve the living standard of his and other linguistically related peoples in the area was to adopt a single unifying language, Hiri Motu. At the time the population of the delta was estimated to be 6000, most, if not all, of whom belonged to the movement (Hitchcock & Oram 1967:5, 18).
6.
As will be indicated below, a form of Pidgin English now often referred to as Papuan Pidgin English following Mühlhäusler (1978) — but actually only an extension of the pidgin English formerly spoken in the Torres Straits and now creolized and referred to as broken (Shnukal 1988) — was spoken in some parts of Papua before Police Motu began to be disseminated.
7.
This is so mainly (a) because of its historical association with its parent Motu; (b) because this was the form of the language most similar to that propagated in early primers of the language; (c) because Central dialect speakers were the best educated (having been the first to be brought under mission and government control); and (d) because Central dialect speakers were readily available to act as translators and interpreters in Govern ment offices (on account of their distribution around Port Moresby, the admininstrative centre). Hence the impression usually given is that the Central dialect is the standard dialect, whereas there is no official standard dialect.
8.
The evidence for this claim is to be found in the various handbooks and language learning courses available on the language (e.g. Chatterton 1946 and others, Dutton & Voorhoeve 1974, Wurm & Harris 1963).
9.
Even so it was only with difficulty that Lawes was able to learn the true language, because many of the villagers were still opposed to imparting this knowledge to strangers, a position some of the older men maintained until the 1920s (Chatterton 1970:95).
10.
The use of the term "broken" English dates back to the very early days in Queensland. However, despite its name this language was really a pidgin language with features similar to those found in pidgin Englishes in the South-West Pacific and elsewhere today. In fact it is still referred to as Broken in the Torres Straits, where it has become creolized, as already noted.
11.
For example, Lawes notes in his journal on 4 April 1876 at Mailu (some 250 or more kilometers east of Port Moresby) that "as most of them know a little of the Port Moresby dialect I find I can communicate with them pretty freely", and again in June of the same year at Hula (about 100 kilometers east of Port Moresby) he notes, "most of the Hula natives understand more or less of the Port Moresby dialect".
12.
I say "presumably" here because without any evidence of the language learning abilities of these foreigners it is not possible to be more precise. Yet we know that individuals in general do display different language learning capabilities, and that level of education is not necessarily an indication of that ability. Thus, for example, J.H.P. Murray, the renowned Lieutenant-Governor of Papua for thirty-three years, admitted to attempting to learn "true" Motu but did not get very far with it. "It is said to be easy," he wrote in a letter to his brother George on 14th March 1904, "but for some reason or other I cannot get the hang of it" (West 1970:35). This lack of success annoyed him, the more so because of his knowledge of Latin, Greek, French and German — he was a judge and classical scholar. By way of contrast, most Papua New Guineans are excellent language learners and many are multilingual without ever having been to school.
Hiri Motu
39
13.
Bau and Kadavu are dialects of Eastern Fijian, which is generally distinguished from Western Fijian or Wayan.
14.
Hornbills are not native to Fiji.
15.
In general these languages are similar to Motu in having open syllables, five-vowel systems, and consonant systems that differ from it mainly in the number of distinctions made at the alveolar point of articulation. Probably the most extreme cases are to be found in some languages of the Gulf of Papua which do not have contrasts between stops, liquids, and/or nasals. As a result common Motu words like lau "I" or lao "go", dala "road", vanagi "canoe", and lasi "no, not" which contain some of these sounds are generally pronounced as , dana, maragi, and nasi respectively.
16.
These tendencies are apparently what has led some observers to claim that "it seems that there is some canon of "correctness" to which good speakers try to conform even when this involves distinctions which are not part of their native linguistic habits" (Wurm & Harris 1963:1). It has long been suggested by some that Hiri Motu, unlike Motu, has an /s/ phoneme. This latter claim must, however, be rejected as not substantiated by the data. Traditionally Motu had no /s/ phoneme — [s] was merely a distributional allophone of /t/ — although s was written by Lawes in reducing the language to writing and has become established. However, with the increasing familiarity with spoken and written English, from which many words are now borrowed into Motu, /s/ has become an added phoneme — e.g., sobea "to survey", so "saw, show", Sabati "Sabbath". The same has happened in Hiri Motu.
17.
The Simplified Motu features are based on those enumerated and discussed in Taylor (1978) and Dutton (1986) and those for Hiri Motu in Dutton (1985:8-16), which, for space limitation reasons, cannot be included here.
18.
Any other assumption is much more complex and therefore less preferable. For example, an obvious alternative is that Hiri Motu acquired its features independently of Simplified Motu and that both accidentally ended up with similar features because of similar social and linguistic forces acting on them.
19.
oth dekena(i) and noho come from Motu although dekena(i) in Hiri Motu is a generalized form of Motu deke + pronoun + ai, SL combination used to indicate nearness to persons, e.g. lau deke-gu-ai (lit. I towards-me-at) "near me" or "beside me". In Hiri Motu dekenaii) does not vary for persons and is used to express a wide range of locational meanings (such as "to, at, from") as well as the instrumental meaning "with".
20.
The most common way of expressing "have" in Bislama and Broken is by using the verb gat (< English got), but the following construction using stap is still very common, especially when the speaker is referring to an object that is on or about his/her person at the time of speaking.
21.
Thus, for example, Lock (n.d. : 3) noted that "nearly all the different tribes have their own formation of Police Motu" and (p.l) "the language takes its name from the Native Police Force whose members picked up more Motu words and added them to the Bastard language".
22.
See my 1980 article (fn. 5, pp. 194-95) for a discussion of the origin of nakimi and my 1987 article for an account of the origin of kiki.
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Tom Dutton
References Brett, R., et al. 1962. A survey of Motu and Police Motu. Port Moresby: Department of Information and Extension Services. Chatterton, Percy. 1946. A primer of Police Motu. Port Moresby: The Department of Education. Chatterton, Percy. 1950. A Primer of Police Motu. Cairns: Cairns Post. Chatterton, Percy. n.d. (but 1968). A primer of Police Motu. Sydney: Pacific Publica tions. Chatterton, Percy. 1970. "The origin and development of Police Motu". Kivung 3.95-98. Chatterton, Percy. 1971. Hiri Motu {Police Motu). Port Moresby: UFM Press. Chatterton, Percy. 1975. Say it in Motu: An introduction to the common language of Papua. Sydney: Pacific Publications. Dutton, .. 1969. The peopling of Central Papua: Some preliminary observations. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics B-9. Dutton, .. 1975. "A Koita grammar sketch and vocabulary". Studies in languages of Central and South-East Papua, ed. by T. E. Dutton, 281-412. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics C-29. Dutton, Tom. 1980. "A Note on the Origin of the Motu term hirï". Kivung 12/2: 189-206. Dutton, Tom. 1985. Police Motu: iena sivarai [= its story]. Port Moresby: University of Papua New Guinea Press. Dutton, Tom. 1986. "More on Simplified Motu". Language in global perspective: Papers in honour of the 50th anniversary of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, 1935-1985, ed. by Benjamin F. Elson, 525-48. Dallas, Texas: The Summer Institute of Linguis tics. Dutton, Tom. 1987. "The Origin of kiki 'to tell a story, yarn' in Police (now Hiri) Motu". Language and Linguistics in Melanesia 15(1-2). 112-24. Dutton, .., and C.L.Voorhoeve. 1974. Beginning Hiri Motu. Canberra: Pacific Linguis tics D-24. Hitchcock, N.E., and N.D. Oram. 1967. Rabia Camp: A Port Moresby migrant settlement {= New Guinea Research Bulletin, No. 14). Canberra: The Australian National University. Lawes, W.G. 1896. Grammar and vocabulary of the language spoken by the Motu tribe, New Guinea. (Third and enlarged edition.) Sydney: Government Printer. Lister-Turner, R., and J.B. Clark. 1930. Revised Motu grammar and vocabulary. Port Moresby: Government Printer. Lock, Maynard. n.d.(but 1942). Police Motu. Unpublished MS held in the Australian War Memorial, Canberra. Mühlhäusler, Peter. 1978. "Papuan Pidgin English rediscovered". Second International Conference on Austronesian Linguistics: Proceedings, ed. by S.A.Wurm & Lois Carrington, 1377-1446. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics C-61. Shnukal, Anna. 1988. Broken: An introduction to the creole language of the Torres Strait. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics C-107. Taylor, A.J. 1970. Syntax and phonology of Motu {Papua): A transformational approach. Canberra: The Australian National University dissertation.
Hiri Motu
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Taylor, A.J. 1978. "Evidence of a Pidgin Motu in the earliest written Motu materials". Second International Conference on Austronesian Linguistics: Proceedings, ed. by S.A.Wurm & Lois Carrington, 1325-60. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics C-40. West, Francis. 1970. Selected letters of Hubert Murray. Melbourne: Oxford University Press. Wurm, Stephen A. 1973. "The Kiwaian language family". The linguistic situation in the Gulf District and adjacent areas, Papua New Guinea, ed. by Karl Franklin, 219260.Canberra: Pacific Linguistics C-26. Wurm, S.A., and J.B. Harris. 1963. Police Motu: An introduction to the trade language of Papua (New Guinea) for anthropologists and other fieldworkers. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics B-l. Wurm, Stephen A., and P. Mühlhäusler, eds. 1985. Handbook of Tok Pisin (New Guinea Pidgin). Canberra: Pacific Linguistics C-70.
Pidgin Delaware Ives Goddard Smithsonian
1.
Institution
Introduction
Pidgin Delaware was used as a contact language between Indians and Euro peans on the Middle Atlantic Coast of North America during the Colonial Period. The Indians involved in its use were, in all known cases, speakers of varieties of Delaware, a grouping of two contiguous and closely related Eastern Algonquian languages, Munsee and Unami, each of which comprised a dialect continuum. Munsee was the language of the central and lower Hudson River Valley, westernmost Long Island, the upper Delaware River Valley, and the northern third of New Jersey; Unami was spoken to the south of Munsee in the Delaware River Valley and New Jersey.1 The European users were Dutch, Swedes, and English of the colonies of New Netherland, New Sweden, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey.2 Pidgin Delaware developed in the 1620s, and almost all documentation of it dates from the seventeenth century. It seems unlikely that, even at the height of its use, it would have been known by more than a few thousand people. Pidgin Delaware must have gradually gone out of use during the eighteenth century, although there is little documentation from this period. Presumably it was functionally displaced by American Indian Pidgin English, English, in some local situations other European languages, and, for a few non-Indians, Delaware. As late as 1785, however, the Delaware learned by Whites on the frontier contained Pidgin Delaware features. Pidgin Delaware was a pidginized form of Unami. Nearly all of its attested vocabulary has clear origins in Unami words and expressions. The dialects of Unami were most noticeably differentiated by phonological inno vations in Southern Unami that, under various conditions, dropped w, synco-
44
Ives Goddard
pated vowels, and deleted initial syllables. The Pidgin Delaware materials exhibit phonological features of both Northern and Southern Unami, but some words have only a Southern Unami shape or only a Northern Unami shape in all attestations. There are two major sources for Pidgin Delaware. The most extensive is from the Swedish Lutheran minister Johannes (or Johan) Campanius (b. 1601, d. 1683), who compiled a vocabulary of words and phrases in Pidgin Dela ware during his service in New Sweden, 1642-1648, and translated into it an adapted version of Martin Luther's Little Catechism, which he completed in Sweden in 1656. A small book containing the Catechism and vocabulary was published in 1696 for a Swedish Lutheran mission sent out the following year to the former Swedish colony, where it is reported to have been of some use in preaching to local Indians (Campanius 1696; Collijn 1937; Campanius 1938). The second major source is an anonymous vocabulary titled "The Indian Interpreter" compiled in West New Jersey in the late seventeenth century and surviving in a book of land records from Salem County, New Jersey (Anony mous 1684).3 Other sources for Pidgin Delaware include a few words and phrases in Lindeström's Geographia Americœ (Lindeström 1925:203; written in 1691 from notes made 1654-1656) and in a 1683 report by William Penn (Myers 1937:26-28), a few lines of dialogue and some numbers published by Gabriel Thomas (1698, 1:47, 2:7-13), and scattered words in various early records. It will be argued below (§8) that two other sources contain Pidgin Delaware and are in fact respectively the first and last documentations of it: an ostensible Northern Unami vocabulary from below the Falls of the Delaware at Trenton (de Laet 1633:75) and a Southern Unami vocabulary recorded among Dela ware emigrants in western Pennsylvania in 1785 (Denny 1860:478-481).4 This paper first surveys selected features of the phonology (§2) and morphosyntax (§3) of Unami and then describes the corresponding features of Pidgin Delaware — the phonology, as reflected in the different sources (§4), and the grammatical categories and word order (§5). Readers may wish to read the two phonology sections (§2 and §4) and the two sections on grammar (§3 and §5) in sequence. The sources of the Pidgin Delaware lexicon are examined in two sections, one treating more or less straightfor ward adaptations from Unami Delaware (§6) and one treating words that have idiosyncratic and miscellaneous derivations (§7). Agreement on these words in the various sources is considered as part of the evidence for the status of
Pidgin Delaware
45
Pidgin Delaware as a language, together with some aspects of Pidgin Dela ware vocabulary that shed light on the cultural context of its development. A final section summarizes the external history of this language (§8).
2.
Delaware phonology
The phonemes of Southern Unami (SU), as exemplified by twentieth-century Oklahoma Delaware, are displayed in Table l. 5 Some of the differences between Southern Unami and Northern Unami are relevant to understanding the sources of Pidgin Delaware. The Southern Unami vowels ɔ and ɔ reflect earlier wa and wa-, attested in Northern Unami (NU) and Munsee (Mu);6 in the corresponding sequences in Northern Unami the w is retained but the vowels are apparently rounded to [ɔ] and [ɔ] (generally written (o) and (oa) by the Moravians [e.g. Luckenbach 1838: 33]).7 (1)
SU -k 'and'
(2)
SU təlsi-né-ɔ 'they did it' ( CD *wətələsi-ne-wa8. NU (wtelsinewo) [wtəlsi-né-wɔ]. Mu wtəlnəməné-wa 'id.' (same inflection on a different stem).
Table 1. Phonemes of Twentieth-century Oklahoma Delaware (Southern Unami). Consonants p p-
m
t ts sn l
c čš š-
Vowels k x x-
l
h
ie e-
ə ə. -
-
46
Ives Goddard
In Southern Unami, short vowels (CD *a or *ə) have been lost before clusters beginning with s, š, or x, except after a rhythmically weak9 short-vowel syllable. In Northern Unami these vowels were retained in initial syllables (in known examples) but syncopated word-medially. (3)
SU xkó-k 'snake' ( CD *axko-k. NU (achgook) [áxko۔] (Luckenbach 1838:15). Mu axko-k.
(4)
SU skôntay 'doorway' < CD *əskwa-nte-w.10 NU (esquandey) [əskwantay] (Luckenbach 1838:39).
(5)
SU kší•k•an 'knife' ( CD *paxkdši-kan (cf. SU kší• 'my knife'). NU (bachkschigan) (Luckenbach 1838:43), (pachkschícan) (Zeis berger 1887:108), both [paxksí-k-an]. Mu paxkší-kan.
(6)
SU aləmské- 'they went' ( CD *aləməske-wak. NU (allumsgewak) [aləmské-wak] (Luckenbach 1838:42, 129).
Other rhythmically weak, short-vowel initial syllables were lost in Southern Unami and some varieties of Northern Unami. (7)
SU téme 'coyote, wolf' ( CD *rri9t9me-w (cf. mətme- 'he takes the trail'). NU (tímmeu) [táme-w] and (mĕtümmeu) [mətme-wl 'wolf (Zeisberger 1887:234). n
(8)
SU tá-x-an 'piece of firewood' ( CD *mdta-xan (cf. SU əətá-- 'my wood (pl.)')NU (tachan) [tá-x-an] and (metáchan) [mətá-x-an] (Zeisberger 1887:234).12
(9)
SU náni tnta-ləphitého-n 'there he killed him' 13 (ləp- ( CD *ə1ə-', cf. SU mpəlpi-téhɔ 'I killed him'). NU (nan wtenda luphittehan) [nán wtnta-təphitéha-n] (Lucken bach 1838:24); (plipitehan) [pələphitéhan] 'for one to strike him dead' (Brinton & Anthony 1889:118).14
Southern Unami retains some rhythmically weak, initial short-vowel syl lables, especially in shorter words.
Pidgin Delaware
47
(10) SU ahsn 'stone' ( CD *asən; cf. SU sənémhɔ-n 'metal spoon', ntasəéhɔ 'my spoon'. NU (achsün) [ahsn] 'stone', (achsünĕmhoan) [ahsəné-mh(w)ɔ-n] 'pewter spoon' (Zeisberger 1887:183, 142).
3.
Delaware morphology
Delaware words are typically morphologically complex. Primary noun and verb stems are composed of three types of constituent elements and may comprise an initial (in the case of a few basic nouns and intransitive verbs), an initial and a final, or an initial, medial, and final. Secondary finals derive stems from other stems, generally of a different category. The inflectional morphology includes a set of pronominal prefixes, an ablauting process on the first vowel of verbs in certain categories (called initial change), and numerous suffixes, which on verbs are arranged in seven position classes. Nouns are of either animate or inanimate gender; animate nouns include all logically animate beings and creatures and some non-animate objects (e.g. hítukw 'tree', ahp-n 'bread', hup-k-an 'tobacco pipe', ní-skɔn 'my elbow'). There are two sets of demonstrative pronouns, proximal and distal. Demon stratives are inflected or otherwise differentiated for gender and all other nominal categories and agree with the nouns they are in construction with or to which they refer. (11) SU yú 'this (inanimate)', wá 'this (animate)'; ni 'that (inan.)' ná 'that (anim.)'. Nouns are inflected for plural number (animate l-akl, inanimate l-al ( CD *-al). (12) SU ná hiló-s-ds 'that old man', pi. né-k hilo-s-ês-ak. SU ni ahsn 'that stone', pl. nél ahsna. Animate nouns may take an obviative ending, undifferentiated for number (l-al < CD *-al)\ the obviative is a secondary third-person category whose most salient function is to differentiate third-person animates. (13) SU ná lnu 'that man', né-l lênuwa 'that man (obv.), those men (obv.)'.
48
Ives Goddard
Nouns may be inflected for the absentative to indicate absence, loss, or death (anim. sg. l-al, inan. sg. l-el, other nominal categories 1-ənk()1). (14) SU á Inuwa 'that (absent or deceased) man', nikáhke ləúnka, nikáhke ləúnkahke 'that (abs.) man (obv.), those (abs.) men (nonobv. or obv.)'. Inflection for nominal possessor is by pronominal prefixes and possessorpluralizing suffixes. (15) SU nsí't 'my foot', ksít 'your (sg.) foot', wsí-t 'his foot'.
(16) SU nóx 'my father',ko-x 'your father',óxɔ'his father',15 nóxə 'our (exclusive) father', -ə() 'our (inclusive) fathe kó'Xəwa 'your (pl.) father', oxəwaɔ 'their father, their fathers'. Nouns also form a general locative with the suffix (1-ənkl). (17) SU hakihákan
'field', hakihákanink
'in the field'.
In addition to demonstrative pronouns there is a set of personal pronouns used for emphasis or contrast.16 (18) SUni'I',kl'you (sg.)', né'ka'he', nilóna 'we (exc.)', kilóna 'we(inc.)', kilówa 'you (pl.)', neká-ɔ 'they (anim.)'. Another pronoun set is used for reflexive objects and first- and second-person secondary objects (Goddard 1979:45-47). (19) SU nhákay'myself; me', khákay 'yourself; you (sg.)', hkaya 'himself. Verb stems typically are in derivationally related pairs, differentiated for gender. Intransitives are either animate intransitives or inanimate intransitives. (20) SU máxksu 'he is red' (animate intransitive stem lmaxkosi-1), maxke- 'it is red' (inanimate intransitive stem lmaxke-1). Transitive stems are specialized for objects of one gender as either transitive animates or transitive inanimates. (21) SU əáə 'I found him' (transitive animate lmaxkaw-1), əá 'I found it' (transitive inanimate lmaxk-1).
Pidgin Delaware
49
Intransitive verbs are inflected for subject, and transitive verbs for sub ject and (primary) object. Ditransitive verbs may also be inflected for a definite secondary object. The two major orders, independent and conjunct, use distinct sets of affixes for pronominal inflection;17 the second-person inflections in the non-negative imperative are also distinct. Each order has a number of submodes (Goddard 1979). (22) Independent order, indicative mode: SU kəníhəla 'you (sg.) killed him' (transitive animate stem lnəhl 'kill' + inflection lkə—a-(-w)l, ənihəláɔ 'you (sg.) killed them' (lkə—a-w-akl),wənihəláɔ'he killed him, them'(lw9-a-w-al), kənihəláwwa 'you (pl.) killed him' (Ikə-a-w-9wa-(w)l). (23) Conjunct order, subjunctive mode (suffix l-e-l): nhiláte 'if you (sg.) kill him, them' (l-at-e-l), nhiláte 'if he kills him, them' (l-at-el), nhilé'kwe 'if you (pl.) kill him, them' (l-ekw-el). (24) Imperative order, ordinary mode: nhil 'kill him, them (you sg.)' (1-Øl), nhílo- 'kill him, them (you pl.)' (l-o.l). The independent subordinative is used in focus constructions, including those with deictics (9) and particles (25) that function predicatively, and in senten tial complements (Goddard 1983:355-59). (25) SU tá háč təlkí-lən? 'how big is he?' (animate intransitive stem I9l9ki.1-l 'be (so) big' + lwə(t)-ənl 3 subd.).18 There is a marked preterite that implies an absence of current relevance (suffix l-əp, -əpan-l, etc.). (26) SU ahpúwak 'they are' (animate intransitive stem lapi-l 'sit' + l-w-akl), ahpópanik 'they used to be' (l-w-əpan-ikl). Negative verbs have both a negative particle and a negative morpheme as part of the inflectional ending complex (independent and conjunct l-(o)w(i)-l; imperative l-h-l, l-əyek-l, l-k9h-l). (27) SU nnéə'Isaw it', tá kó- nnemó wən T did not see it'. (28) SU ntakəót'Itold about it', máta ntak.dno-t-dmó-wdn 'I did not tell aboutit'.
50
Ives Goddard (29) SU pənáw 'look at him', káci pənawiyé-k-ac 'do not look at him'.
Of these negative particles, ta kó- and káci occur clause-initially and mata occurs preverbally.19 Word order is not used in Unami to differentiate grammatical functions. Subject, object, and verb may occur in any order. Position before the verb tends to be used for emphasis or new information, and hence indefinites. The word orders in the following examples are typical: (30) SU tá nhíle- ná l 'the man killed a bear, bears' (bear. OBV PRED he.kills.[him] that man);wənihəláɔnélmáxkɔ'he killed the bear, bears' (he.kills.him that.OBV bear.OBv). In equational sentences the new precedes the given: (31) SU éli khíkay méčini'because I'm an old woman now' (because old-woman now l pers./sg.).
4.
Pidgin Delaware phonology
The rendering of the sounds of Unami in the different sources on Pidgin Delaware varies considerably. There are three factors involved: the way the Unami sounds were pronounced by various speakers of Pidgin, the way the pronunciations of Pidgin were written down, and the way the written Pidgin words were transmitted in copying and printing. If the different written sources for Pidgin Delaware are considered together, evidence can be found for all the phonemic contrasts of Unami.20 A general idea of the various transcriptions may be gained from the way the numbers from 'one' to 'ten' are written in the four sources that record them (Table 2). The Munsee numbers illustrate the contrast between the two Delaware languages; from the different shapes of the numbers for 'five', 'nine', and 'ten' it is evident that the Pidgin numbers are specifically from Unami. The orthography of the de Laet vocabulary has a Dutch cast, but with many inconsistencies; these are caused in part by apparent attempts by the writer to use some spellings derived from a knowledge of other languages. The French-inspired (é) in 'one' (which seems to have spread to 'two'; Table 2) may reflect an attempt to capture a word-final short [I], a sound alien to
Pidgin Delaware
51
Table 2. The numbers from 'one' to 'ten'.
'one' 'two' 'three' 'four' 'five' 'six' 'seven' 'eight' 'nine' 'ten'
Munsee
Southern Unami
De Laet (1633)
Campanius (ca. 1645)
"Indian Thomas Interpreter" (1698) (1684?)
nkwti níša nxáh néwa nálan nkwəta-s nisas nxá-se nó.;li.' w i-mp at
kwêt-i nisa naxá né-wa palé-naxk kwtas ní.šas xá-s pé.škunk télənh
cotté nyssé nacha wyweb parenagh cottash nyssas gechas pescon terren
ciútte nissa nachhaa naéuwoc parénachd ciúttas níssas haas paeschung thæræn1
Cutte Nisha Necca Neuwa Palenah Cuttas Neshas Haas Pescunk Tellen
Notes: a b c d e f g h i
Kooty nisha nacha neo pelenach Kootash nishash choeshf peskonk telen
Also (nána). Misprint for *(nywe). Also (næuwo), (næwo). Also (pareenah), (pareenach). Most speakers have Mu xá-s. Probably the vowel sequence is misprinted. Also (pæschun), (paéskon). NU (metellen) [mətélən], (tellen) (Brinton & Anthony 1889:83, 140). Also (thææræn), (tææræn).
Dutch. The phoneme x is written (ch), (g), and (gh), but also (ck) (37), and Dutch recordings of Pidgin Delaware use these spellings for velar stops as well (37, 59, 243). The digraph (ch) is also used in its common French or English values, though probably not precisely enough to distinguish these from each other (45, 46), and it must be the English value of (sh) that is intended in 'six' (Table 2). In one case (sy) appears for š (37); perhaps (sj) was originally written. Other words in de Laet's vocabulary have (s) (or (ss)) for both č (58, 59) and š (Table 2: 'two', 'seven', 'eight', 'nine'). Many forms can be cited from Campanius that show a highly precise and consistent use of Swedish spelling conventions to render Unami phonetics. For example, in conformity with the Swedish of the time, long vowels and consonants are often indicated by doubling (Table 2: 'one', 'eight'; 32, 34, 37); also in conformity with Swedish, however, Campanius tends not to write long vowels before long consonants (Table 2: 'two'; 34, 36, 37), and he may
52
Ives Goddard
write a short stressed vowel as long before a short consonant (Table 2, note i; (tijrue) in 171; 192, 194).21 Campanius often uses accents to mark the main stress.22 The phoneme is rendered (k), (ck), and (ch) (Table 2; 'nine' and note g), in general conformity with Swedish spelling patterns; Campanius almost always intends (k) and (ch) before front vowels to have non-affricated values (contrast 43, 44). The phoneme x (a sound not found in Swedish) is sometimes written like (Table 2: 'five'; 37) or as (h) (Table 2: 'eight', notes a, d), but sometimes made distinct by adding a following (h), to give (ckh) (40, 229) or (chh> (Table 2: 'three'). 23 One word consistently has (32; 35, 36), (tz) (33; 37, 38), and (in some prevocalic occurrences) ((s)si) (33; 39).24 Even š before low or back vowels, which might be expected to be readily transcribed with Swedish (si), Campanius usually fails to write distinctly (Table 2: 'two', 'seven'; 37). (32) (142) (sijs) 'more'; cf. SU čí.č. (33) (137) (dakótze) 'cold'; cf. SU ntákɔhči 'I am cold'. 25 (34) (140) (nissiaanus) 'child'; cf. SU *nničá.əs 'my child'.26 (35) (3) (suck)'but'; cf. SU šúkw. (36) (136, 137) (chíssogh) 'sun'; cf. SU kíšox. (37) (146) (tzackamææs) 'eel', L (syackameck); (sehacameck);27 cf. SU šɔxamekw. (38) (142) (étzkans) 'needle'; cf. SU éškans,
éskanš.
(39) (5-6) (mosiuttamen) 'bring down' (cf. 120, 199, note 107); cf. SU nəməš.ó'tamən 'I hit it with a shot'. In a few words in which Campanius desired to write prevocalic š he eschewed Swedish (si) and used German (sch) (40, 41, 42, 262), a spelling that can also represent sk or sk (Table 2: 'nine').
Pidgin Delaware
53
(40) (136) (scháckhan), (144) (sáckhang) 'wind'; cf. SU kSàx.ə 'the wind blows'. (41) (150) (scháta), (siaata) 'tobacco', II (shauta); cf. SU kwšá.tay. (42) (149) (schameera), (schaméra) 'run', (shamahala); cf. SU ksa.méhəle. 'he runs'. 28 In two cases (ch) before (i) is used corresponding to č (43, 246); this spelling probably reflects the affricated pronunciation of Swedish (k) before front vowels, which must have been familiar to Campanius even if it was not his own (Haugen 1976:268-70). (43) (143) (chirῶkha) 'leather strap'; cf. SU či . ló . he . s. 29 One example seems to have (ch) before (e) for š: (44) (37, 144) (tackcheene) 'open, open the door'; cf. SU tunksé.ni 'open it'. The nearly complete overlap in the spellings of č and š in the Campanius and de Laet vocabularies suggests that even when they were distinguished from s they were not clearly distinguished from each other. (45) (139) (siææt) 'tendons', L (cheet); cf. SU wčé .t 'sinew'. (46) (138) (siættæn) 'lips', L (chettoen); cf. SU wsé.t.o.n. There is some variation in the forms recorded by Campanius that sug gests that he drew on information from different sources. He gives the variants of some words side by side in the same entry (41, 47, 48, 49), and some variants differ more than seems likely for renderings of the same pronunciation. (47) (138) (alænskan), (laénskan) 'hand', 30 L (rinskan) 'fingers'; cf. NU (linschgan) [-lənčkan] 'finger' (Brinton & Anthony 1889: 64). (48) (147) (homijmi), (mijmi) 'passenger pigeons', 31 L (mymy); cf. SU amí.mi, Mu mí.mi.w.32 (49) (150) (jaésskung), (jésquem) 'corn'; cf. SU xáskwi-m.33 In at least one case dialect variants (cf. 7-10) have been borrowed with differentiated meanings.
Ives Goddard
54
(50) (150) (assísko) 'black or soft stone', 34 (145) (sísko) 'clay'; cf. NU (assisku) [ahsí-sku] 'mud, clay' (Brinton & Anthony 1889: 23), SU sí-sku 'mud' (SU ɔpahsí.sku 'clay', lit. 'white mud'). Initials beginning with SU ɔ. and NU [wo-] (1) appear in Pidgin Delaware with or without the initial w; stems made with Iwa-p-l 'white' are attested in both forms. (51) (142) (wopæk) 'white'; 35 cf. SU . p . e . k '(inan.) which is white', Mu wá.pe.k. (52) (142) (opijmi) 'chestnuts'; cf. SU 5.p.i.m, Mu wa.pi.m. Corresponding to modem Unami / Campanius usually writes (r) (Table 2: 'five', 'ten'), but he has (1) consistently in some words (47) and writes a few words both ways. (53) (146) (tulpa), (turpa) 'tortoise'; cf. SU tó.lpe 'water turtle (sp.)', NU (tulpe) 'sea turtle' (Zeisberger 1887:206). (54) (138) (hwijl), (wijr) 'head', II (wheel) "the head"; cf. SU wíl '(his) head'. Some words have an (h) added before an initial vowel (48, 55), though in most cases initial vowels are kept (52) and initial (h) represents Unami h (56) or x (Table 2: 'eight'). 36 (55) (145) (hóckus) 'fox'; cf. SU .k.wds, some speakers (cf. 63).
h.k.wəs
(56) (8) (hirússus) 'old man'; cf. SU hiló.s.ds. Certainly, different speakers seem to be represented in these variants, and very likely, in some cases, different dialects of Unami. The transcription in "The Indian Interpreter" has both English and nonEnglish features; in fact, some words appear as doublets, with both kinds of transcription (57, 60, 67). (57) (dogwatcha), (taquatse) 'cold' (cf. 33). Some of the non-English features could have been acquired orally by an English speaker learning Pidgin from a Swede or a Dutchman. For example,
Pidgin Delaware
55
some words have (s) for Unami š or č, a highly unlikely substitution for an English speaker but a common one in the Dutch and Swedish sources. (58) (sinques) 'wildcat', (145) (síngwæs), (singues), L (synquoy); cf. NU (uchtschìnque) [wcínkwe.(w)], (tschínque) [čínkwe.(w)] (Zeisberger 1887:33,231),°SU čínkwe. 37 (59) II (sickenom) 'turkey', (147) (síckenem), L (sickenum), T (chekenip);38 cf. SU čí.k.əə, NU (tschìkenum) (Zeisberger 1887:206). For some of these there are also spellings using English conventions that render these sounds correctly. (60) II (singa) 'when', (152) (singa), II (chingo) 'when'; cf. SU cinke. Assuming that the numbers in "The Indian Interpreter" (Table 2) were learned orally from a Swede or Dutchman would explain why Unami š appears as II (sh) before vowels, where [š] would be possible in Swedish or Dutch, but as II (s) word-finally or before a consonant, where it does not occur. The assumption of learning from Swedish speakers would also explain why the Pidgin reflex of SU ní.s.a 'two' has a short (i) in the English sources; the shortening would reflect the Swedish syllable-balance rule (note 21), which typically results in the shortening of long vowels before long conso nants in Campanius's recordings of Pidgin. Other variations in the way Unami sounds are reflected in 'The Indian Interpreter" include, as in Campanius, the use of both (r) and (1) and the sporadic appearance of (h) before initial vowels. (61) II (renus) 'man', (19) (rhénus), L(renoes), II(leno) 'man'; cf. SU l. 39 (62) II (hapitcha) "by and by", (4) (apítzi) 'right away', T (a peechi); cf. NU (apitschi) 'after a little while, by and by' (Brinton & Anthony 1889:22). (63) II (hoccus) 'fox'; cf. (55). The phoneme x is written like h (Table 2: 'five', 'eight') or (Table 2: 'three').
56
Ives Goddard
Some words in "The Indian Interpreter" exhibit distinctively Swedish spelling conventions, in some cases strikingly similar to spellings used by Campanius (cf. also 55 and 63, 60). (64) II (hwissamech) 'catfish', (146) (hwíssamick); cf. SU wí.s.ame.kw, NU (wísameek) (Zeisberger 1887:34). (65) (hwissase) 'afraid', (23) (hwisásse); cf. SU wi.s.á.s.u afraid'.40
'he is
(66) II (twn) 'mouth', (138) (tῶn); cf. SU wtó.n '(his) mouth'. (67) (mwes) 'elk', (6) (moos) 'animal', T (moos) 'cows'; cf. SU mos 'elk', NU (moos) 'elk; cow' (Zeisberger 1887:48, 65); 41 cf. II (muse) 'cow'. (68) (iwse) 'meat, flesh', (48, 138) (ῶs) 'meat, flesh, body', T (youse) 'venison'; cf. SU wiyo.s 'meat'. It seems improbable that it is only by chance that these spellings match so closely ones used by Campanius. In particular, the use of (hw-) as a lexically determined orthographic equivalent of (w-) is a spelling convention only in Swedish (and perhaps cf. 54). 42 Since "The Indian Interpreter" was entered into the Salem land records before Campanius's vocabulary appeared in print, it is likely that a written Swedish wordlist with some relation to Campanius's work was one of its ultimate sources. The extent to which other non-English features in "The Indian Interpreter" (58, 59, 60) may derive from written rather than oral Swedish sources is inherently difficult to estimate, however. In contrast to the earlier sources, Gabriel Thomas's recordings of Pidgin Delaware are internally more consistent and seem to be original. English spellings for the vowels, with their inherent ambiguity, appear to be universal. The digraph (ch) is used not only for č but also to render x in most words (Table 2: 'three', 'five', 'eight'). (69) T (chase) 'skin(s)', (145) (hææs), II (hayes) 'an undressed skin'; cf. SU xé.s 'skin'. (70) T (marchkec) 'red', (142) (mæckhhchæck) 'red' (cf. note 35). This use of (ch) must reflect a knowledge of Dutch, German, or Welsh. The spelling (ch) is also used for preconsonantal h.
Pidgin Delaware
57
(71) T (ochqueon) 'matchcoats', (142) (äquijvan), (quijvan) 'cloth, article of cloth clothing', II (aquewan) 'coat, woolen clothing'; cf. SU ahkwí.'blanket', NU (achquíwannes) [ahkwí.wanəs] (Zeisberger 1887:24). In other words Thomas writes (h) for x and omits preconsonantal h. (72) T (hayly) 'much', 43 (ahalea); cf. SU xahé.li,44 NU (mcheli) (Brinton & Anthony 1889:49). (73) T (andogowa), (undogwa) 'yonder', (149) (úndaque), II (undoque); cf. SU wntahkwi 'direction' (used with deictics). Thomas writes (1) in five words (e.g. 74) and two personal names and (r) in two words (e.g. 75) and the placename Arwaymouse. Initial (h) is added in two words (74, 75), one occurring as a doublet without it. (74) T (halopa) 'tomorrow', II (alloppau), (aloppau); cf. SU (some speakers haláp.a).
aláp.a
(75) T (orit), (horit) 'good', (13) (urítt), (21) (hurít), (1) (hωrítt), II (olet), (Denny 1860:479, 480, 481) (wellett), (willet) (268, 269); cf. SU wəlt 'it is good'.
5.
Pidgin Delaware grammatical categories and word order
Pidgin Delaware makes essentially no use of the extensive inflectional mor phology of Unami. Instead, what few grammatical categories it has are indicated lexically and syntactically. To be sure, there are traces of many Unami inflectional morphemes frozen in invariant Pidgin Delaware words. But even in the few cases in which Pidgin Delaware attests more than one inflectional form made on the same Unami stem, it appears likely that the Pidgin forms are descriptively unanalyzable units. The pronominal categories are reduced to first, second, and third person, undifferentiated for gender or number, and are marked syntactically by independent words. There appears to be no indication of the contrast between singular and plural. The three most generally used pronouns reflect the first and second singular of the Unami emphatic pronoun set and an emphatic form of the inanimate singular proximal deictic.
58
Ives Goddard (76) First person: (2) (nijr), (2) (nijre); II
Campanius's first- and second-person forms in (-r) and (-re) are from inher ited dialectal variants directly reflecting PEA *ni.r, *ki'.r.47 The three common pronouns (76, 77, 78) are used for subject (e.g. 79, 80, 85, 96), object (83, 96), indirect object (82, 89), and possessor (84, 86, 94, 101). They are all attested for both singulars and plurals: e.g. first plural (80, 81, 95, 101), second plural (88, 89), third plural (80, 96). The third-person pronoun, which'is both deictic and anaphoric, was used by Campanius for animates (80, 83, 95, 96) as well as inanimates (93, 94). His forms with (-e) are mostly attested for possessors (84, 91, 100, 101, 102) and for objects (89, 96), but see also (106). First person: (79) II (Nee hatta), T (Nee hata) T have'. (80) (8) (chéko nijr paéntor jῶni tahoáttamen) 'what we understand they want' (INDEF lpers. understand 3pers. like). 48 (81) II (Ne olocko toon) 'we run into holes' (lpers. hole go). (82) T (Chingo kee peto nee chase ...) "When wilt thou bring me skins ...?" (when 2pers. bring lpers. skin). (83) (27) (jῶni, hícka oraaton nijr) 'he keeps me safe' (3pers. away[?] keep lpers.). 49 (84) (93) (nijre Nῶk) 'my father' (lpers. father). Second person: (85) (15) (chijr rῶe) 'you (sg.) say'. 50 (86) T (Keco kee hatah kee weekin?) 'what do you (sg.) have in your house?' (what 2pers. have 2pers. house). 51
Pidgin Delaware
59
(87) (110) (chijr paétton mítzi suvvijvan mvvs) 'you (sg.) give food to all the animals' (2pers. give eat all animal).52 (88) (37) (chijr matta sijs cavínn cattúnga) 'do not lie sleeping any longer (you pl.)' (2pers. not more lie sleep).53 (89) (94) (nijr paétton chijre) 'I give to you (pl.)' (lpers. bring you). (90) (12) (chijr Nitérvus) 'your wife'.54 (91) (12) (chijre Rheenus) 'your husband' (2pers. man). Third person: (92) (144, 149) (jῶni ) 'this way, that road'. (93) II (Kecko ke lunse une) 'what do you (sg.) call this?' (what 2pers. name 3pers.). (94) (94) (ock paétton jomi, mochijrick Nitáppi) 'and gave it to his disciples' (and give 3pers., great friend). (95) (15) (nijr rῶe, jῶni matta manúnckus) 'we should say, he is not bad' (lpers. say, 3pers. not bad).55 (96) (21) (matta jῶmí tahóttamen nijre) 'they do not love me' (not 3pers. love lpers.). 56 (97) (43) (jῶni Rῶaénse) 'his name', or perhaps 'that name'. 57 There are also three-syllable forms of the first- and second-person pronouns. These are derived from Unami plurals but used for both numbers in Pidgin Delaware.The longer second-person form is from the Unami first plural inclusive rather than the second plural; this reinterpretation in Pidgin reflects the fact that in Unami the inclusive pronoun has the same formal relationship to the second singular that the exclusive has to the first singular (18). (98) (1) (nircῶna) 'my, our', II (Ne rune) 'we' (107); cf. SU ni.ló.na 'we (exe.)'. (99) C ( l ) (chirῶna) 'your (sg.,pl.)', II(Ke runa) 'thou' (108) (ke rune) 'thee' (109); cf. SU ki.lóma 'we (inc.)' (cf. SU ki.ló.wa 'you (pl.)').
60
Ives Goddard
Campanius uses these forms only for possessors, a function also performed by the variants (nijre) (in a few cases) and (chijre). (100) (37) (nijre Skinck) 'my eye', (nirῶna Skinck) 'my eyes'. 58 (101) (8) (nijre Saccheeman) 'our superiors', (6) (nirῶna móchijrick Saccheeman) 'our great Lord'. 59 (102) (7) (chijre Nῶk ock chijre Anna) 'your (sg.) father and your (sg.) mother', (21, 122) (chirῶna Nῶk ock Anna) 'your (sg.) father and mother' .60 (103) (1) (chirœna Nissiaanus) 'your (pl.) children'. 61 Thanks to the use of the longer forms of the second-person pronoun, possessednoun phrases like (102) and (103) are distinct from appositional phrases like (104) and (105). (104) (121) (chijr Nῶk ock Anna) 'you fathers and mothers'. 62 (105) (122) (chijr Nissiaanus) 'you children'.63 Only one case has been noted of (chijre) used appositionally before a noun (106). (106) (41) (chijre renáppi) 'you people'. In "The Indian Interpreter" what appear to be the same three-syllable variants used by Campanius are written as two words. They are used as either subject or object; the first-person example is translated as a plural (107; cf. 81), and the two second-person examples are translated as singulars (108, 109). (107) (Ne rune huscu hwissase) "we are afraid" (lpers. pl.[?] very afraid). (108) II (Ke runa matauka) "thou wilt fight." (109) II (Ne taulle ke rune) "I will tel thee." 64 Campanius also attests a third-person pronoun that reflects the Unami thirdperson animate singular emphatic. (110) (30) (naéchkomæ) "his"; cf. NU (nekama) [né.k.əm] "he, she, it" (Brinton & Anthony 1889:93).
Pidgin Delaware
61
The two examples noted of this pronoun, which are within three lines of each other, are each used for a third singular animate possessor. Perhaps this pronoun was used optionally to avoid the potential ambiguity of (jῶi), which before a noun could be a demonstrative (92) as well as, apparently, a pos sessor (97). Pidgin Delaware has an interrogative-indefinite pronoun derived from the Unami inanimate interrogative-indefinite (111). In Pidgin it used not only as an interrogative and indefinite (112, 113, 117, 118), but also as the head of indirect questions (114, 116) and as a relative pronoun (115). (111) (1, 7) (chéko, kéko) 'what?; someone, something', II (Kecko) 'what?', (cacko) 'something', T (Keco) 'what?'; cf. SU kéku 'what?; something, thing' (contrast SU awé.n 'who?; someone, person, living thing'). (112) (151) (Matta chéko maramen) 'no one will buy' (not buy). 65 (113) (153) (bakanta chéko) 'to hit someone' (hit
INDEF
INDEF). 66
(114) (Kec-loe Keckoe kee Wingenum) 'say what you (sg.) want' (2pers. say INDEF 2pers. want).67 (115) (21) (thaan jῶni chéko tahóttamen nijr) 'to those that love me' (to 3pers. INDEF love lpers.). 68 In many cases a pronominal subject or object is not used where its identity can be understood from the linguistic or pragmatic context. (116) (21) (Kónna nijr nirῶna Nitáppi Zaéband, ock chéko pijri hatte mátta kommvvta) 'that we do not steal our neighbor's money or whatever else he has' (that lpers. lpers./poss. friend money, and what other have[,] not steal).69 (117) (153) (Nitappi, chékῶ pijri hatte?) 'Friend, what other (tradegoods) do you have?' (friend, what other have).70 (118) II (Kacko pata) 'What have you brought?' (what bring). (119) II (Match poh) 'he has come' (already come).71 (120) II (Matcha pauluppa shuta) "I have catcht a Buck" (already buck successfully-shoot).72
62
Ives Goddard (121) II (Nee Meele) 'I will give you (sg.)' (lpers. give). (122) (Singa ke petta) 'When will you (sg.) bring it?' (when 2pers. bring). (123) T (Mata namen megis) 'I saw no sheep' (not see sheep). (124) T (Kacha hatah?) 'How many have you?' (how.many have).
The negative is indicated in Pidgin Delaware by a particle, derived from one of the Unami negative particles. (125) (1) (matta) 'not', II (matta), T (mata); cf. SU mata (28). The negative most commonly appears clause-initially, preceding the subject noun phrase, if there is one (also 96, 112, 123). (126) (152) (matta nijr tappin) T am not going to sit' (not lpers. sit).73 (127) II (Matta Ne kamuta) T did not steal it' (not lpers. steal). (128) II (Matta ne hatah) T have nothing' (not lpers. have), Penn (mattá ne hattá) T have not' (in Myers 1937:27). It also occurs immediately preceding the verb (129; see also note 45). 74 (129) (15) (jῶni matta manúnckus) 'he is not bad' (3pers. not angry/ bad; 95); cf. (13) (mátta nijr manunckus) 'we are not angry' (not lpers. angry/bad). Although the second-person pronoun appears before the negative particle in many examples in Campanius having a prohibitive use, this usage is not completely consistent. (130) (13) (Chijr mátta KommWta) 'thou shalt not steal' (2pers. not steal; cf. 127).75 (131) (37) (chijr mátta sijs cavínn cattúnga) 'do not lie sleeping any longer' (88); cf. (142) (matta chijr sijs cattunga) 'do not sleep any longer' (not 2pers. more sleep).76 The most common orders of the basic elements in transitive sentences in Pidgin are SVO (93, 96) and SOV (120, 132, 133; note 53).77
Pidgin Delaware
63
(132) (8) (nijr ock jῶni móchórick tahóttamen) 'and we should love them a lot' (lpers. and 3pers. greatly love).78 (133) T (Kee squa og enychan hatah?) 'Have you (sg.) a wife and children?' (2pers. woman and child have). An indirect object seems to precede (82) or follow (87) the direct object. Pronominal possessors always precede the possessed noun (84, 90, 91, 100103). Nominal possessors, attested only by Campanius, precede or follow. (134) (15) (Renáppi Rῶénse) 'a person's name' (person name). (135) (19) (pijri Rheenus Nitervus) 'another man's wife' (other man wife). (136) (17) (vickchῶmen pijri Renáppi) 'another person's house' (house other person). 79 (137) (18-19) (Nitérvus pijri Rhenus) 'another man's wife' (wife other man).80 Attributives sometimes precede and sometimes follow their noun and some phrasal verbs are used in either order (207 [also note 130], 219). Campanius often adds (-s) or (-z) to preposed possessor or attributive noun phrases in imitation of Swedish; it seems unlikely that this was an established feature of Pidgin. (138) (4) (jœni móchijrick Saccheemans, hῶrítt Manettos Roaénse) 'the name of the great Lord God' (that great chief-'s, good spirit 's name).81 (139) (15) (Hocquaéssungz ock Hackingz hwrítt Manétto) 'the God of heaven and earth' (heaven-'s and earth-'s good spirit).82 In equational sentences the given noun phrase may precede or follow the new: (140) (17) (jœni nirῶna) 'this is mine' (3pers. lpers./poss.). (141) Lindeström (1925:203) (nittappe kire) 'you (sg.) are my good friend' (friend 2pers.).
64 6.
Ives Goddard Pidgin Delaware words from Ordinary Unami
Although the vocabulary of Pidgin Delaware is overwhelmingly derived from Unami, it has undergone many changes in the details of forms and meanings. Many primary lexical items in Pidgin appear to be identical to their Unami source, while others show cluster simplification or other types of shortening. Some Pidgin words derive from Unami but in deviant shapes. In some cases this deviation can be attributed to phonological simplification, one typical pattern being the loss of initial unstressed short-vowel syllables (also 68): (142) (143) (gῶs) 'nail'; cf. SU əó.s. (143) (141) (pack) 'weep'; cf. SU ləpákw 'he weeps'. Where there are deviations from what is attested in Unami, the explanation is not always clear. For example, the word for 'duck' (144) is onomatopoetic and shows dialectal variation even within Unami. (144) L (comconcke) 'duck', (147) (hvvijquinck) 'ducks', (hvviquinck), (quing-quing) 'duck', (quingquing) 'ducks'; cf. SU kwi'kwínkdm, NU (quiquingus) 'large wild duck' (Brinton & Anthony 1889:122). The full-syllable reduplication in the forms in de Laet and "The Indian Interpreter" is probably a contact-language innovation, but obviously the possibility of additional Unami dialectal variants as a source cannot be ruled out. A few Pidgin words are the result of segmenting complex Unami forms, not always at the morpheme boundary (221). Unami dependent nouns, which obligatorily appear with a possessive prefix, would ordinarily lose any trace of the prefix as a result of the phonetic adjustments that generally result in reduced initial clusters and loss of initial unstressed short-vowel syllables in Pidgin (66). Some body-part nouns incor porate the third-person prefix lwə-1, which is used in Unami with forms having an indefinite possessor (54): (145) (138) (wippit) 'tooth', II (wippet) "the teeth"; cf. SU 'his tooth; a tooth', níp.i.t 'my tooth'.
wí.p.i.t
(146) (138) (wikijwan) 'nose' (cf. 153); cf. SU hwikí. 'his nose, a nose'.
Pidgin Delaware
65
(147) (139) (hwisquan) 'elbow'; cf. SU wí.skɔn 'an elbow', wískɔna 'his elbow(s)', NU (wisquon) 'elbow' (Brinton & Anthony 1889:163).83 (148) (139) (onáck) 'forearm'; cf. SU 'his arm; an arm', Mu
wəáxk.u (149) (139) (hutucki) 'shoulder'; cf. SU wtk.i 'his shoulder; a shoul der'. Other body-part nouns probably reflect first-person-possessed Unami forms, with phonetic loss of the prefix n-: (150) (138) (híttaock) 'ear'; cf. SU nhítaɔk 'my ear'. (151) (139) (hícchas) 'fingernail'; cf. SU nhíhas 'my fingernail'. (152) II (hickott) "the legs"; cf. SU nhíka-t 'my leg'. (153) II (hickywat) "the nose" (cf. 146);85 cf. SU nhikí. 'my nose'. At least one noun seems to incorporate the second-person prefix lkə-1: (154) (139) (kitte) 'heart'; cf. SU kté. 'your heart'. 86 The few dependent nouns of relationship reflected in Pidgin either lose any prefix phonetically or incorporate the first-person prefix: (155) (140) (hissimus) 'brother', 87 (issimus) (also Penn, in Myers 1937:27); cf. SU naxvs.əməs 'my younger sibling'. (156) (139) (nῶk) 'father' (see 84, 102, 104), II (noeck); cf. SU nó-x 'my father' (16). (157) (140) (nijlum) 'sister', (nijlon) 'lover, mistress', Denny (1860: 480) (neelum) 'sister'; cf. SU ní.ləm 'my sister-in-law (man speaking)' (see §7 and note 148). One Pidgin kinship term is from the Unami vocative: (158) (8) (anna) 'mother' (cf. 102, 104; also Penn, in Myers 1937: 27), II (aana) "a Mother"; cf. SU ána. 'mother!'. 88 Pidgin nouns are typically taken from the uninflected singular of Unami (36, 37, 38, etc.), and the same form is used for both singular and plural (45,
66
Ives Goddard
48, 67, 71, 87, 100, 101, 103, 104, 105, 106, 145, 152, 175, 176).89 Some Pidgin nouns incorporate the Unami locative ending, but without a locative meaning; these are all words that would often occur in the locative: (159) (26, 149) hácking 'earth', II (hocking) "the ground"; cf. SU hábí 'earth', hák-ink 'on the ground'. (160) (144) (sippússung) 'tidal stream, inlet', II creeke"; cf. SU *si.p.ó.s.ink.90
(sepussing) "a
Some Pidgin nouns are attested with and without the Unami locative ending. (161) (50, 140) (nῶttaas), (nῶttas), (139, 140) (nωttæssungh), (nωttæssung) 'belly; purse, small bag' (both meanings are at tested for both the short and the long forms), II (nutas) "a bag or basket"; cf. SU .t.e.s 'bag, suitcase', NU (menutes) 'sack, bag' (Brinton & Anthony 1889:81). (162) (27, 33) (tutæænung) 'real property; kingdom', II (nee tuttona) "my country"; cf. SUo . t . é . nay 'town^o.t.é.nink 'to, in the town'. 91 (163) (nacking) "the hand"; cf. SU nnáxkink 'in my hand' (cf. 148 and note 30). In the case of most of these doublets there was probably no difference of meaning, though Campanius suggests one in at least one case. (164) (143) (hachi) 'dust' (cf. 159). Unami verbs are taken over by Pidgin Delaware in various inflected forms, but always singular. Inanimate intransitives generally appear in the independent indicative (75, 165). (165) (150) (aritt) 'weak'; cf. SU alt 'it is rotten'. One set, with common adjectival meanings, is from Unami conjunct parti ciples (51; note 35). Verbs commonly used in time expressions appear in various Unami inflectional forms: (166) (136, 152) (nissochkenácka) 'the day after tomorrow'; cf. SU ni.šo.k.wənák.a 'in two days' (changed conjunct mode, referring to past time).
Pidgin Delaware
67
(167) (137) (haas kucknuckhácki) 'a week'; cf. SU xá.š txo.kwənakháke 'in eight days' (conjunct subjunctive mode, referring to future time). (168) (137) (rhoongor) 'winter', (152) (rωongor) 'in winter'; cf. SU énta-ló-wank 'when it is winter'.92 Unami animate intransitive verbs most often appear in Pidgin Delaware in their first-person or third-person independent indicative form. The firstperson forms are usually reflected without the prefix, but some Unami vowelinitial stems appear in Pidgin with an initial (t) that reflects the Itl intercalated after prefixes before stems of this shape (see note 91). Some stems are reflected in more than one variant, corresponding to different Unami inflec tional forms. (169) (33, 36) (entaami) 'rise up' (used with second-person and thirdperson subjects); cf. SU ntá.mi 'I got up (from lying)' (cf. á-mi'he got up'). (170) (153) (pæwo) 'come (imperative)', (45) (pæævo), (paévvo), (136) (pæwo) '(it) comes', II (payo) "to come," T (peo); cf. SU -w93 'he comes'. (152)(æmpaa) 'come' ((singa æmpaa) 'when will you come back?'), (45) (phaa) '(let it) come', II (match poh) "he is come or coming" (119); cf. SU mpá T come'. (171) (2, 4, 15, 6) (ῶ) 'say (imperative), (I) say, (you) say, (he) says', (loe) '(you) say' (see 114); cf. SU luwe. 'he says' (underlying lətəwe-l). (6, 13, 23) (tírue), (20) (tijrue), (150) (téroah) '(he) teaches', '(we) saying', '(he) says', '(he) com mands', '(I) say', II (taulle) '(I) tell (you sg.)' (see 109);94 SU ntluwe 'I say', ktluwe 'you (sg.) say'. (172) (143) (darrasymi), (ratísimo) 'dream'; cf. SU ntəla.s.i.mwi dream', la.š.í.mu 'he dreams'.
'I
Pidgin verbs that resemble the bare stem of Unami (e.g. 33, 57, 42, 65, (phaa) in 170) have more than one possible source. Formally, they could be firstperson (or second-person) forms with the prefix lost phonetically; stem variants occurring after preverbs, which would carry the prefix; or impera tives (assuming that the intransitive imperative singular ending -/ had already been lost in some dialects, as optionally in modern Southern Unami; Goddard
68
Ives Goddard
1979:141-42).95 The appearance of initial (t) or (d) on some stems that have an underlying initial vowel in Unami (171, 172) suggests that the Unami sources of some apparent bare stems may also have been prefixed, but some Unami vowel-initial stems are reflected in Pidgin as a bare stems without (173, note 98). (173) (3) (rωaénse) 'name (noun); be named', II (looense) 'be named', (lunse) 'to name'; 96 cf. SU ntəluwé.nsi 'my name is (so)', luwé.nsu 'his name is (so)'. At least one Unami animate intransitive verb is reflected in Pidgin by its conjunct participle; it is always used attributively: (174) (1) (mâchijrick), (2) (móchijrick) 'big', II (mockerick); cf. SU me.xkí.lək '(animate) which is big'. Pidgin verbs derived from Unami inanimate intransitives are freely used with animate nouns (175, 176), and the Pidgin word for 'big' (174), derived from a Unami verb used only with animates, appears freely with inanimates (177). (175) (8) (hῶrítt Manétto) 'good God', (135) (hωrit Manétto) 'good angel', T (huska orit chekenip) 'very good turkeys' (see 75). (176) T (neskec kabay og marchkec moos) 'black horses and red cows' (see note 35). (177) (Makerick Kitton) 'Delaware River, lit. big river' (1682 deed to William Penn, in Myers 1937:77; see 174).97 Some Unami animate intransitive verbs are reflected in Pidgin by subordinative forms (25) or, equivalently, forms with an inanimate secondary object; the two Unami forms are identical in shape and have similar or overlapping functions (Goddard 1983:356-58). The attested examples are verbs that have an inherent locative valence and are often in focus construc tions with a deictic. (178) (41, 141) (tappin) 'sit, be (there)' (cf. 126); cf. SU ntáp.i.n 'I sit (there), I am (there)'. 98 (179) (142) (cavínn) 'lie down', 99 II (Cowin) 'sleep'; cf. SU nkáwi-n 'I sleep (there).', nkát.a-kawín 'I am going to sleep (there)', kawín 'one sleeps (there)'.
Pidgin Delaware (180) T (weekin) 'house' (cf. 182); cf. SU nəwí.hi.n wwí'k'i.n 'he lives (there)'.
69 'I live (there)',
(181) (150) (nῶpon) '[smoke tobacco]', 100 Denny (1860:480) (nopone) 'smoke'; cf. SU ó.ɔ. 'I smoke it' (cf. húpwe. 'he smokes'). A few Pidgin forms in (-ng) probably reflect the indefinite-subject inflec tion of the conjunct order: (182) (17) (wícking) 'dwelling, home'; cf. SU wí.k.ink 'one's home, the house where one lives' (a participle with the locative valence as head; cf. 180). One Pidgin verb has variant forms reflecting the Unami preterite in l-p(an-)l (cf. 26): (183) (4, 7, 10) (ánger), (anckarópp), (ankaróppan) 'die, dead'; cf. SU ánkəl 'he dies, is dying' and (preterite) ankəlo.p 'he died', ankəló.p.ana 'he (absentative) died'. Some Pidgin verbs reflect Unami intransitive forms from more than one mode: (184) (141) (mattapping) 'sit, take a seat',101 II (matapi); cf. SU éntaləmátahpink 'where one sat', nləmátahpi 'I sat down'. Some Pidgin verbs, which presumably originated in Unami questions, occur in second-person form (also 201). (185) (150) (kῶmæn) 'come from'; 102 cf. SU kó- 'you come from (there)' (tá hác kó.ə? 'where did you (sg.) come from?'). Some Pidgin words incorporate the Unami question particle tá with a firstperson or second-person verb form. These seem to have been used in Pidgin as frozen expressions, but Campanius's usage points also to a more general interrogative use for two of them (187, 188). (186) II (Tackomen) "whence carnest thou?", T (takoman?) "from whence com'st?" (cf. 185, note 102). (187) (151, 152) (tacktaan) 'where are you going?; whither?', II (tacktaugh) "whether goest thou?"; cf. SU tá hác ktá.n? 'where did you (sg.) go?', tá hác ktá? 'where are you (sg.) going?'. 103
70
Ives Goddard (188) (152) (tanundin) 'where can I get it?', (43) (tanúndin) 'how?'; cf. SU tá háč núntdn? 'where do I get it from?'.
Unami transitive verbs are usually reflected in Pidgin by an inflected form of the transitive inanimate stem (21). One common type matches the objective (definite-object) forms of the independent indicative, which have the ending complex SU -ə (Class la), - (Class lb), -o-n (Class 2), or -ən (Class 3): (189) (2) (tahóttamen) 'love, like'; cf. SU ntah.t- 'I love it'. (190) (145) (képton) 'tie up'; cf. SU nkáxpto.n 'I tied it'. (191) (8) (nææmæn) 'see': cf. SU nné.ə 'I see it'. As in the case of animate intransitive stems, the Pidgin continuations of some transitive inanimate stems must reflect unprefixed Unami forms. (192) (145) (kræænamen) 'hold on to'; cf. SU át.-ələə 'I am going to hold it', ə1əəə 'one holds it, it is held' (contrast ə 'I hold it'). 104 (193) (26) (oraaton) 'keep'; cf. SU nkát.a-wəlá.to.n 'I am going to keep it', wəlá.to.n 'it is kept' (contrast no.lháto.n 'I keep it'). Some Pidgin verbs reflect Unami absolute (indefinite-object) forms, which lack the final -() of the objective forms.105 (194) (150) (baarham) 'miss'; cf. SU mpálham 'I miss (it)'. (195) (3) (maranijto) 'do, make, work'; cf. NU (mallenito) [maləní . to .] 'he makes (it)' (Zeisberger 1887:119).106 Some Pidgin verbs appear to reflect the imperatives of Unami transitive inanimates, ending in -a (Class la) or -/(Class lb): (196) (3) (bakánta) 'hit'; cf. SU pahkánta 'hit it (imperative)'. (197) (152) (rωksi) 'cut into pieces'; cf. SU ló.ksi 'cut it up (impera tive)'. A few Pidgin verbs are from transitive animate stems and incorporate various inflectional elements.
Pidgin Delaware
71
(198) (2) (pæntor, paéntor) 'understand', (37) (pæntῶre) 'under standing', II (pentor) "the ear or hearing"; cf. SU kpnto.l 'I hear you, I understand you' (contrast ntamə 'I hear it'). Some transitive verbs are attested in Pidgin in more than one form: (199) (5-6) (mosiúttamen) 'bring down' (39),107 (shuta) 'catch' (120); cf. SU nəməš.ó.t. 'I hit it with a shot', məsó.t.a 'hit it with a shot (imperative)'. (200) (17) (pætton) 'bring, give', (144, 152) (pææt) 'bring here, give me', (pata, petta) 'bring', T (beto) 'bring (me)'; cf. SU mpé.t.o.n 'I brought it', mpé.t.u 'I brought (it)'. (201) (2) (quinkijnamen) 'desire', II (wingenum) 'have a mind to (have)', (wingenun) 'like, care for'; cf. SU əwinkí.ə 'you (sg.) like it', winkínam 'he likes (it)', NU (winginamen) [winkí.nmən] 'to delight in, to be pleased with' (Brinton & Anthony 1889:160). (202) (151) (kommijre) 'give in return', (152) (mijre) 'give in return', (150) (mijrikon) 'trade', (151) (miraana) 'give away', (152) (skomerijne) 'will give', (Meele) 'give', (SickeMelee) 'will give', (maleema) 'give (me)'; 108 cf. SU əí.li 'you give to me', mí.li(.l) 'give to me (imperative)', nəmí.lkwən 'he gave it to me', nəmi.lá.na 'I gave him or them (animate or inanimate) to him or them', (na)=č kəíli. '(then) you (sg.) will give it to me', mi.li.me 'give (it) to me (future imperative)'. 109 Pidgin words derived from Unami verbs are often used attributively (e.g. 174, 206) or as nouns (173, 198, 203, 205), and in some cases Unami nouns appear as Pidgin attributives (203) or verbs (204): (203) (2) (nissiaanus hwisásse) 'childlike fear' (child afraid/fear; cf. 34, 65). (204) (27, 52) (hackiháckan) 'field', (149) (hacchiháckan) 'to plant'; cf. SU haki.ha.han 'field', haki.há.k.. 'he plants'. (205) (1) (chíntika) 'holy (1), prayer (43)'; cf. SU nkntka 'I dance'.
72
Ives Goddard (206) (50) (chísbo) 'full', 'completely)', (1) (chísbo simoáckan) 'commandment' (full statement); cf. SU kí.spu 'he is full, has eaten his fill'. 110
The compounding of nouns and verbs serves to build up the vocabulary of Pidgin Delaware: (207) (145) (Manúnckus mochijrick Síngwæs) 'mountain lion' (an gry big wildcat), L (Synquoy Mackyrggh) (wildcat big). 111 (208) (149) (Mamantíckan takhan) 'peachtree, plumtree' (peach/ plum wood).112 (209) (140) (hââs táckquin) 'skin clothing' (skin wear).113 (210) II (Hockung Tappin) 'God' (above sit).114 Many Pidgin expressions are made with (hatte) 'have' 115 and (maranijto) 'do, make' (195): (211) (23) (hwisásse hatte) 'be afraid' (afraid/fear have).116 (212) (137) (nijr uránda hatte) T am hot' (lpers. hot/heat have). (213) (3) (maranijto manúnckus) 'to abuse, do wrong to' (make/do bad[n. 111]).117 (214) (141) (sevarænda hatte) 'be troubled', (10) (sevaraénda ma ranijto) 'offend'.118 (215) (Dutch rendering, ca. 1628) (collatis[-]marrenitten) '(she) ob serves the isolation taboos at first menstruation' ("she bewails or laments over her virginity"; Isaack de Rasieres, in Jameson 1909: 107). (216) (Dutch rendering, 1655 [recalling earlier events]) (rancontyn marenit) (1632), (Rancontyn Marinit) (1643), 'make peace, make a firm peace' (David de Vries, in Myers 1912:16 and Jameson 1909:230).119 Campanius used (chíntika) 'prayer, holy' (205) to form a number of expres sions pertaining to the Christian religion: (217) (4) (maranijto chintika) 'to worship, to pray' (make/do prayer/ holy).
Pidgin Delaware
13
(218) (37) (chíntika Manétto) 'Holy Spirit' (prayer/holy spirit).120 (219) (6) (chíntika saccheeman), (140) (sacchéman chintika) 'priest' (prayer/holy chief, and vice versa).121 (220) (1) (chíntika mamaræckhickan) 'holy scriptures' (prayer/holy writing).122 Although many of Campanius's coinages are inventive, they generally seem to conform to the structure and spirit of Pidgin. One set of striking neologisms that ring true uses 'fathom', the unit of measure for strings of wampum (221), in the meaning 'honor' to differentiate two ranks in the church hierarchy below bishops (222): (221) (139) (wíckan) 'one fathom', II (Cutte wickan cake) "one fathom of Wampum"; cf. SU na.fk.an 'my spine', ni.s.a.í.k.ane 'two yards of wampum', NU (guttawican) 'one fathom' (Zeisberger 1887:70), (tchaikane) '(so many) cubits' (Luckenbach 1838:27).123 (222) (116) (nissa Víckan) 'double honor', (114) (Kiútte Vickan Saccheeman chintika) 'priest' (one fathom/honor chief prayer/ holy; cf. [219]), (114) (passeera Víckan Saccheeman chíntika) 'deacon' (half fathom/honor chief prayer/holy). There are function words, particles, and the like in Pidgin that appear to reflect collocations of Unami elements and other major shifts of category: (223) (4) (taan), (2) (thaan) 'to, of, from, until' (115, n. 102); from Pidgin (taan) 'go' (. 103).124 (224) (49) (tarássi) 'end', (57) (Tharássi) 'death'; cf. SU ntala-=č ... 'I will stop ...' (preverb ala 'stop' with pronominal prefix and future enclitic).125 At least one Pidgin noun is also used prepositionally: (225) (144) (aana) 'road, way, route', (ana mochijrick bij) 'by sea' (road big water); cf. NU (aney) 'road, way' (Zeisberger 1887: 160). 126
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Ives Goddard
Some Pidgin Delaware words appear to exhibit patterns of word-final free variation. These patterns are reminiscent of, and sometimes identical to, some of the common patterns of variation that stem from the reflection in Pidgin of more than one inflectional form of some Unami words. Several of these patterns involve the addition of a nasal (including (-ng)),127 the replace ment of a nasal by a different nasal, or the unexpected presence or absence of a final vowel (see also 49, 40, 111, 200). In some cases only a form with the non-Unami innovation is found. (226) (136)(chischvickhe), (6)(chischvíckingh), (137)
Pidgin Delaware
75
(234) (145) (arum) 'dog'; cf. NU (allúm) (Zeisberger 1887:59), from PA *a6emwa (cf. SU mwé.k.ane). (235) (45, 51) (aéppe) 'also, with'; survives only in prefixed form in the pronominal set SU né.pe 'I also', etc. (236) (146, 151) (aétticke) 'perhaps, but, rather', T (etka) 'or; with (in lists)'; cf. SU ét 'maybe, I guess, I would conclude', Mu é.t (both shortened forms).133
7.
Pidgin Delaware words not from Ordinary Unami
Although there is variation exhibited within and among the different sources that document Pidgin Delaware, the agreements among these sources are sufficient to show that a Unami-based pidgin language was in use in the Middle Atlantic region during, at the least, the early Colonial period. The most telling of these agreements involve Pidgin words that deviate from Unami in some way and are thus unlikely to have been learned more than once directly from Indians speaking true Unami: (237) L (renoes) 'man', (19) (rhénus), (renus), (leno) (61); it is unlikely that the dialectal form in (-s) was in widespread use in Unami (the last source shows optional replacement by the usual form; see note 26). (238) (25) (síxi) 'quickly', II (mesickecy) 'make haste'; cf. perhaps SU məsí 'all over, here and there' + ksi 'quickly, hard' (not likely to have been a frequent combination). (239) (chirῶna) 'your', II (Ke runa) 'you' (see 99); though the exact usage differs, both Pidgin sources show a shift from first person inclusive to second person. (240) (1) (suhwijvan) 'all', once (26) (suhwij), <sawwe) 'all'; cf. SU čúwi 'full (of)', but wé.mi 'all' (unlikely to have been a common misunderstanding). (241) (153) (hiῶ mátzi) 'I am going away', II (Iough Matcha) "get thee gon"; cf. SU əá.č.i 'I go home', má.c.l 'he goes home', but the first word is uncertain.
76
Ives Goddard (242) (Dutch rendering, 1640s) (materiotty) 'cowards' (NYCD 1:182), (13)(mattarútti) 'good for nothing, useless', 135 II (Matta ruti) "its good for nothing"; no obvious source. (243) (115) (kaccheeus) 'drunk, drunkard', (Dutch rendering, 1658) (cacheus) "crazy, mad or drunk" (NYCD 13:84), II (cakeus) 'be drunk'; cf. SU nkak.í.wsi 'I am drunk', kí.wsu 'he is drunk'. The Pidgin sources consistently reflect the prefixed form of the stem (minus the prefix; cf. 171, 172) without the final vowel. (244) (Dutch rendering, 1640) (keene, keene, keene) 'thank you' (New York Historical Collections 1913:125), (4) (kéne), (27) (keene, keene) 'thank you', (English rendering, 1675) (kenon, kenon) (NYCD 13:524); no obvious source.136 (245) (27) (ítta) (a word used for salutation and address), Lindeström (1925:203) (ita),137 T (hita), (hitah) 'friend (vocative)'; no obvi ous source. (246) (2) (móchij) 'yes', 138 Lindeström (1925:203) (måkij) 'yes, in deed', II (mochee) "ay or yes," T (mogy) 'yes'; perhaps cf. SU nəmáwi=ĉ 'I will go and' (prefixed preverb and future enclitic; cf. 224 and note 125). (247) (6) (lamaéæs) 'fish', II (lamiss), T (lames) (a personal name); cf. rare dialectal SU lamé.s139 beside usual names (from PA * name-? sa).
The diversity in the Pidgin Delaware materials in part reflects the dialec tal diversity of Unami and is thus an indication that Pidgin was used over a dialectally diverse area. Since, however, there is notable variation of this kind within each of the major sources for Pidgin, it was not simply the case that there were regional variants of Pidgin based on local dialects. A further indication that Pidgin Delaware was learned by Delaware speakers is the fact that it was used in the Munsee-speaking areas of New Netherland. For example, the Dutch heard the Pidgin word (cacheus) 'drunk' used by Esopus Indians, near the northern edge of Munsee-speaking territory, in 1658 (243); de Vries recorded a Pidgin expression used by Indians on western Long Island, near the eastern edge of Munsee Speech, in 1643 (216); and Cornelius Melyn was addressed in Pidgin Delaware by Staten Island Indians in 1649 (244, 253; New York Historical Collections 1913:125).
Pidgin Delaware
77
Some variation in the Pidgin materials must be a result of the renewal of vocabulary and phonological shapes by Unami speakers whose usage re flected changes taking place in the Unami dialects. For example, the replace ment of (renoes) 'man' by (leno) (237) reflects both the fact that SU lə (without the -s suffix), which was probably always the most common form, eventually became the only Delaware word for 'man', 140 and also the fact that seventeenth-century Delaware r came to be completely replaced by l by at least the middle of the eighteenth century.141 Pidgin sources show a clear drift towards increasing use of / as opposed to r (Table 2; 53, 54, 74, 75). In contrast, variants showing the addition of h before initial vowels (48, 55, 62, 63, 74, 75) seem to persist in all major Pidgin sources, corresponding to the fact that this dialectal feature was still present in the pronunciation of some Unami speakers in the twentieth century. Similarly, the Pidgin materials show both the Northern Unami retention of w and the Southern Unami loss of w initially and intervocalically (1, 2, 51, 52, 71). As noted, some of the variation in Campanius and "The Indian Inter preter" seems clearly to indicate that these compilations were based on more than one source, which must have included other written materials (41, 47, 48, 49, 57, 60, cf. 64-68). This type of variation thus points to the active transmis sion of knowledge of Pidgin Delaware among Europeans, for which there is also internal evidence (see Table 2; 58, 59, and the discussion following 60). Only a few vocabulary items came into Pidgin Delaware from languages other than Unami. In most cases, however, it is likely, or at least quite possible, that these contributions to Pidgin by its European users were not introduced directly from their ultimate language of origin. (248) (13) (zaéband), (151) (zææband), (27) (sijband), (85) (zéban) 'money', II (sewan) 'wampum' (see also 221); New Netherland Dutch zeewant, sewan, etc. (Friederici 1960:675), a borrowing from Munsee *sé.wan 'loose wampum', lit. '(the) scattered (item)'. (249) (copy) 'horse', T (kabay); from Spanish caballo, but presum ably introduced by Dutch or English speakers who felt their own words were insufficiently exotic. (250) II (Cutte gull) "one guilder or 6 pence"; (gull) is ultimately from Dutch gulden 'guilder', but perhaps by way of Munsee or North ern Unami, one or both of which had this word (Brinton & Anthony 1889:45).
78
Ives Goddard (251) II (Cutte steepa) "one stiver or farthing"; (steepa) is not attested in Delaware but presumably had the same history as (gull) (250), ultimately from Dutch stuiver. (252) (brandywyne) "Rum, &c"; an English borrowing of Dutch brandewijn. (253) (Dutch rendering, 1640) (orit nietap) 'good friend' (New York Historical Collections 1913:125), (10)(nitáppi), (nitáppe) 'good friend',142 Lindeström (1925:203) (nittappe) 'good friend', II (netap) 'good friend', Penn (Myers 1937:27) (netap) 'friend'; this word seems not to be idiomatic in any variety of Delaware.143 (254) (squaw) "a wife," T (squa); from the southern New England pidgin (cf. Massachusett (ussqua), (squa) 'young woman' [Goddard & Bragdon 1988:725]; Narragansett (squàw) 'woman' [Williams 1936:134]).144 (255) II (papouse) "a sucking Child"; also from southern New England (cf. Narragansett (papoòs) 'child' [Williams 1936:28]). (256) (57, 85) (hulijken) 'good', only in (matta hulijken) 'wrong, evil (thing)' (also [21, 27] (hulijk), conforming to the pattern of final nasal loss); not idiomatic in Delaware (cf. (wuliken) 'it grows well' [Brinton & Anthony 1889:174]) but the usual word in New England (with dialectal variation) for 'be good' (cf. Western Abenaki (wligen) 'it is good' [Laurent 1884:66]; Southern New England Pidgin (wunnegin), (waureegun) [Goddard 1977:40]). (257) (148) (sállsenbras) 'sassafras tree'; ultimately from Spanish sasafrás.145
A number of place-names and personal names in early records appear to be Pidgin Delaware (see also 177), and some of these have the flavor of coinages by Europeans: (258) (Sewanhacky), (Sewanhacking) 'Long Island' (Tooker 1911: 232); obviously a jargon expression for 'wampum land' (cf. 248, 159). (259) (Hobocan Hackingh) 'Hoboken' (NYCD 13:1); evidently a jar gon expression meaning 'pipe place' (cf. [143] (hopóckan) '(tobacco) pipe'; 159).146
Pidgin Delaware
79
These two place-names seem to reflect, respectively, European interests and European metaphorical concepts, and their shape shows that they cannot have been formed in Unami. If they were single words, Unami morphophonemics (Goddard 1979:xiii-xiv) would exclude the h-initial forms of 'earth, land' (159) after the rhythmically weak (see note 9) final syllables of Munsee *sé.wan (248) and Unami hup..k .an 'pipe' (cf. Pidgin [143] (hopóckan)); if they were compound stems the first members would require the prenounforming suffix SU -í.i, Mu -í.(wi). (260) (Dutch renderings, 1649) (Kickeeu-sickenom), (Kickee Sickenom) (a chief with authority over lands on the Delaware River near New Sweden; NYCD 12:48-49), lit. 'Live Turkey' (1656; NYCD 1:598); cf. (141) (chícke) 'life, to live' (SU kí.k.e 'he heals, recovers, lives after peril of death'), (59). (261) (Dutch renderings, 1651) (Wappanghzewan), (Wappingzewan) (a chief with authority over land on both sides of the lower Delaware River above New Sweden; NYCDl:596-597), lit. 'white (?) wam pum'; (51?), (248). The contributions of Unami-speakers to the formation of Pidgin Dela ware appear not only in the overwhelmingly Unami vocabulary and grammar but also in some aspects of the way Unami forms were in effect selected. This is particularly evident in the reduction of gender and number categories. To European traders and settlers the wealth of Delaware inflectional morphology would have been an impenetrable mass of seemingly unmotivated and effec tively unlearnable variation (11, 12, 20, 21). The gender system would have been especially difficult to acquire, since many common objects (such as skins, kettles, and pipes) would have had to have been referred to with animate forms of demonstrative pronouns and verbs, which included the most common forms expressing adjectival meanings. In any attempt to use real Delaware for everyday purposes like trading, Europeans would constantly have been using inanimate forms for grammatically animate objects. The solution to this problem in Pidgin was to generalize the forms that referred to inanimate singular. This collapsing and generalization affected the demon strative pronouns (78), the interrogative-indefinite pronoun (111), and most intransitive verbs with adjectival meanings and transitive verbs. The only exceptions are the extremely common adjectival form for 'big' (174) and a few transitive verb forms that centrally (or only) refer to actions between
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Ives Goddard
people, especially between speaker and addressee (198, 202). No collapsing was possible in intransitive verbs referring to common human states and activities (such as 'fear' [65] or 'sleep' [179]), for which only animate forms exist in Delaware, and these were retained as such. It seems evident that this systematic selection of the inanimate singular as the sole third-person cat egory could only have been accomplished by speakers of Delaware, who must have generalized this pattern from the erroneous use of Unami gender by Europeans. Particularly in cases like the words for 'shoot', which are most commonly used, and most useful, with animate objects (e.g. 199),147 it seems unlikely that Europeans would have consistently learned and adopted the inanimate forms in Pidgin. What is especially striking about this generaliza tion is that it resulted in the collapsing of some distinctions that were common to all the native languages of those who used Pidgin Delaware, such as the distinction between singular and plural and the distinction between animate and inanimate interrogative-indefinite pronouns. Another feature of Pidgin Delaware that helps shed light on the context in which it was developed is the presence of what might be called low words. In Delaware more-or-less serious negative opinions can be expressed by adding to otherwise ordinary verbs and nouns morphemes that refer to inti mate body parts. These expressions are regarded as off-color and are avoided by most speakers, but some men of earlier generations were recalled in the 1960s as having been especially adept at creating them. Some formations of this type are used in Pidgin Delaware as ordinary words: (262) (141) (chalebackschaétti) 'poor man, beggar' (used by Campanius for 'servant'); cf. perhaps SU *kələp.akšé.t.i 'you are weeping (expletive)' (SU kəlp.akw 'you weep' with the incor poration of SU -sé't.i 'anus'). (263) (4) (manúm charakítte) 'be angry' ; cf. SU *manunka.lahkí't-i 'an angry so-and-so' (manunk- 'angry' [cf. note 111] + -a.lahki.t.i 'rectum'; or from the corresponding verb). (264) (115, 141) (nisketij) 'stingy' (only in (mátta nisketij) 'gener ous'); cf. SU *ní-skti 'dirty-butt' (ni.sk- 'dirty' +-ti 'hind parts'; or from the corresponding verb). It seems unlikely that Campanius appreciated the literal meaning of these undignified expressions or the racy import that they would have had in
Pidgin Delaware
81
Unami. Their use as ordinary words in Pidgin Delaware must reflect the somewhat rough-and-tumble, exclusively masculine social context in which Pidgin would have taken shape as a traders' jargon. The same social context accounts for some aspects of the Pidgin vocabulary referring to women: (265) II (Kins Kiste) "a Maid ripe for Mariage"; Pidgin (Kins) 'now' (C [21, 137] (kinz), (kintz) 'now, becoming, almost'; cf. SU č 'just (now)') and (Kiste) 'ripe' (cf. SU kí.ste. 'it is cooked, it is ripe'). The existence of the Pidgin expression for 'observe taboos at first menstrua tion' (215) also effectively documents the use of Pidgin to discuss the sexual availability of young women. In the same vein, the fact that the word given in different variants as 'sister' and 'lover' derives from the Unami for '(man's) sister-in-law' (157, 266) must reflect its use in negotiating sexual access to Indian women. In traditional Algonquian society the women of a man's generation were classified by the kinship system into sexually taboo "sisters" and sexually available "sisters-in-law"; any woman a man called sister-in-law (or the equivalent) was a potential sexual partner or wife.148 A European would be a classificatory "brother" of his Delaware trading partner and would seek or be offered sexual partners from among the women his brother called sister-in-law, who would often be 'sisters' to each other.
8.
History of Pidgin Delaware
The earliest reference to the existence of Pidgin Delaware was by Jonas Michaëlius, who in August, 1628, clearly and somewhat acerbically de scribed the language used between the New Netherland Dutch and the Indians as a "made-up, childish language", greatly simplified, by the conscious design of the Indians, from what the Indians spoke among themselves (Jameson 1909:128). The first permanent Dutch settlements in the territory of any of the Delaware groups had been not in Munsee-speaking territory on Manhattan but in Unami-speaking territory on the Delaware River, specifi cally on Burlington Island (at Burlington, New Jersey, some distance below Trenton) and at Ft. Nassau (on the site of Gloucester). The first settlers had arrived there in 1624, and they were all removed to Manhattan between November, 1626, and October, 1628 (Jameson 1909:84, 88; Weslager &
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Dunlap 1961).149 When de Laet brought out the Latin edition of his book The New World in 1633 he added a section on the Indians of New Netherland that had not been present in the Dutch edition of 1630 (de Laet 1633: Chapter 11; Jameson 1909:57-60). In this new section is a vocabulary that he specifically states to be from the Sankhikan Indians living on the upper Delaware River (meaning the upper part of the navigable river, which ended at the falls at Trenton). Most of the words de Laet gives could be either true Unami or Pidgin Delaware, but there is a complete lack of plural endings where the glosses call for them, which is a Pidgin feature. Distinctively Pidgin is the form of the word (Renoes) 'man' (237) and the Pidgin phrase (SynquoyMackyrggh) '(mountain) lion' (207). The phonological divergences from Unami also parallel those in Pidgin sources (Table 2; 37, 45, 46, 47, 48, 58, 59, 144, 207). A Dutch settler from the Delaware River must have been the ultimate source of de Laet's vocabulary, and it must have been settlers and traders who had been dealing with Unami-speaking Indians living on the Delaware River who introduced Pidgin Delaware to Manhattan after the settlement of New Amsterdam in 1626. The spread of the knowledge of Pidgin Delaware from Dutchmen to Swedes and from Swedes to Englishmen is effectively attested to by the documented use of Dutch interpreters by the Swedish settlers of New Sweden and of Swedish interpreters by the English in Pennsylvania (Myers 1912:86, 88; Weslager & Dunlap 1961:151, 181; Collijn 1937:8-9; Myers 1937:82; Goddard 1995). The last echoes of Pidgin Delaware are in the Delaware vocabulary recorded in 1785 by Ebenezer Denny. Most of this vocabulary is ordinary Southern Unami, but a few expressions that are not correct Unami match the Pidgin of the seventeenth century (Denny 1860:478-81): (266) (neelum) 'sister' (157). (267) (nopone) 'smoke (tobacco)' (181). (268) (keigh willet lenew) "you good men." (269)
Pidgin Delaware
83
The historical and linguistic data indicate that Pidgin Delaware origi nated as a contact language used between Dutch traders and speakers of Unami on the Delaware River in the 1620s and came to be used over the entire Delaware-speaking area for communication between Dutch, Swedes, and Britons and Unami-speaking and Munsee-speaking Delaware Indians. No direct or indirect evidence has been found to support the hypothesis of Thomason (1980:182-86; Thomason & Kaufman 1988:175) that Pidgin Dela ware was already in use in pre-contact times between Delawares and Iroquoian-speakers. Against this hypothesis is evidence that the Iroquoian neighbors of the Delaware did not speak Pidgin Delaware in the seventeenth century. There are direct statements about the difficulty of communicating with Iroquoian speakers and about the inability of interpreters for the Dela wares to understand them (Megapolensis, in Jameson 1909:172; NYCD 13:497). To communicate with Iroquoian speakers, Europeans struggled as best they could to learn their languages, perhaps acquiring pidginized ver sions of them (Thomason 1980:183). This effort is reflected in the vocabular ies that the Dutch recorded of Mohawk (van den Bogaert 1988:51-63) and the Swedes recorded of Susquehannock (Campanius 1696:157-160). It is also significant in this regard that early accounts of Iroquois Indians are scattered with Iroquoian words (chiefly Mohawk), while accounts of Munsee-speakers and Unami-speakers use Pidgin Delaware words in describing and quoting the Indians. Thomason discusses the fact that there is no evidence that Pidgin Dela ware was used by any Indians other than Delawares, and hence no evidence that would directly support pre-European use. 151 She further amply docu ments that there is essentially nothing in the grammar or lexicon of Pidgin that must come from Germanic languages, but a good deal that can only come from Delaware. Especially telling are certain features of word order, such as object optionally before verb (132, 133), optional (but predominant) sen tence-initial negative particle (96, 112, 123, 127, 128), and the possibility of given information following new (141); these features are characteristic of Unami, absent or rare in Germanic, and unmotivated by putative universal patterns of unmarked word order. The typological parallels that suggested to Thomason (1980:180-81, 184) that a pidgin arising between Europeans and Indians would contain substantial contributions from the language of the Europeans cannot be accepted as decisive. The typology must be based on the full range of occurring types, and Pidgin Delaware provides a surprisingly
84
Ives Goddard
well documented case of a type she considered unlikely or impossible: a pidgin used between Europeans and non-Europeans that was based exclu sively on one of the languages of its non-European users. The Pidgin Delaware case also suggests the circumstances under which such a pidgin with a non-European base can arise. Whether or not, to use the traditional terminology of pidgin studies, the Delawares were dominant and the Dutch subordinate, it is entirely to be expected that the tiny population of the first Dutch settlers and traders, especially on the Delaware River, would have tried to deal with the local Indians in the Indian language. Michaëlius's early and contemporary description of the conscious role played by Delaware speakers in simplifying their language to create Pidgin Delaware can be taken at face value and is confirmed by the systematic pattern of the collapsing of Unami categories found in Pidgin. Thus the particular (and typologically atypical) facts of its formation are indeed accounted for by particular features of its sociolinguistic setting, which may well also be atypical among docu mented cases (Thomason 1980:181). The example of Pidgin Delaware shows that in the formation of a pidgin the particular circumstances of the contact situation can completely overwhelm any effect from general typological characteristics observed to be significant elsewhere.
Notes 1.
General information on the Delaware languages and dialects is in Goddard (1978a:7273); their names are discussed in Goddard (1971:14, 22); historical and ethnographic background and maps of locations are in Goddard (1978b). There is evidence for three major Unami dialects, Southern Unami (which became the dominant form of speech among the emigrant Delawares that ended up in Oklahoma), Northern Unami (the dialect used by the Moravian missionaries in their linguistic materials and translations from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries), and the poorly known Unalachtigo.
2.
From 1676 to 1702 New Jersey was two separate English colonies, West New Jersey and East New Jersey (Barber & Howe 1844:20, 29).
3.
I am indebted to Lorraine Williams for a facsimile copy of the manuscript. It has been published by Nelson (1894:133-139) and, somewhat less reliably, by Prince (1912). Nelson gives the title of the volume in which it is found as "Salem Town Records, Liber B", while Prince gives it as "Salem Surveys, No. 2". As it is apparently upside down within the volume as later used, the modern archival pagination runs in reverse. Nelson describes it as "recorded" (i.e. copied into the records), a description supported by the fact that the first page appears to have been written on the verso of another document; Prince refers to it as "inserted," as though it were a separate manuscript. Both Nelson and
Pidgin Delaware
85
Prince ascribe to it the date of 1684, Prince reporting that it is "next to" a deed bearing this date; the facsimile of the first page, however, clearly shows the presence of the number 1686 on the other side of the leaf. An autopsy of the manuscript, which I have not yet had the opportunity to undertake, should resolve these minor discrepancies. Besides Prince, Pidgin Delaware has been discussed by Thomason (1980), focussing on "The Indian Interpreter," and Holmer (1946), on the basis of Campanius; the transcrip tions of Delaware words given by Holmer are not reliable. 4.
Cited Pidgin Delaware words and phrases are identified below by initial, as follows: = Campanius (1696); D = Denny (1860); II = Indian Interpreter (Anonymous 1684); L = de Laet (1633); T = Thomas (1698). Page references are added for Campanius. Other sources are given in full.
5.
Each word has a single main stress, indicated by an acute accent. There are also geminates: pp, tt, čč, kk, hh, mm, nn, 11, ww.
6.
Historically CD *wa(-) ) Southern Unami ɔ(-) except after CD *; there are a few exceptions or restorations.
7.
Phonemic transcriptions of Southern Unami and Munsee are given in italics; these are based on my field recordings (1965-1970). Letter-for-letter transliterations of Northern Unami (in the Moravians' German-based orthography) and of Pidgin Delaware are in shallowpointed brackets; approximate phonetic interpretations of these transcriptions are in square brackets (some decisions about how similar the details of these phonetic interpretations should be to modern Southern Unami are unavoidably arbitrary). Vertical bars set off segments, morphemes, and morpheme complexes written in morphophonemic (underly ing) transcription; they correspond to the slashes (virgules) in Goddard (1979). Capitali zation in the sources has generally been preserved only in cited phrases. Asterisked preforms are Common Delaware (CD) or, where there is no Munsee cognate, pseudoCommon Delaware. Other protoforms are Proto-Algonquian (PA) or Proto-Eastern Algonquian (PEA).
8.
Some vowel sequences arising from the loss of w in Southern Unami are retained, while others insert y, as in this case.
9.
Rhythmically weak short vowels are the odd-numbered vowels in underlying or Common Delaware sequences of one or more non-final short-vowel syllables ending in a single consonant or consonant + w (Goddard 1979:ix, 21); as a result of analogical leveling, vowel weakening is no longer a completely automatic process synchronically.
10.
Cf. the particle Mu əskwá .ntĕ 'at the door'. In Unami, uninflected inanimate nouns replace a stem-final CD *-e.w with -ay.
11.
Cf. (misprinted) (metimnewak) [mətemé-wak] 'wolves' (Zeisberger 1821:57); L (metumnu) (also misprinted). The same entry in Zeisberger (1887:234) also has (tumme), which is probably the Southern Unami form; Southern Unami has undergone an innova tion whereby animate nouns in -V.w drop the -w and shorten the vowel unless a suffix follows. Munsee has wí.xče.w 'wolf'.
12.
Cf. (tachanall) (3x) and (metachenall), (metachanall) (Luckenbach 1838:43, 247, 248). Munsee has xws 'piece of firewood'.
13.
In Delaware compound verb stems the hyphen marks the phonological word boundary after a preverb and indexes the component parts if they are discontinuous. Forms of
86
Ives Goddard English he are the conventional glosses for the Algonquian third-person animate singular and third-person animates undifferentiated for number; equivalent English translations might be any of the forms of he, she, it, or they, depending on context. Forms of English it conventionally gloss Algonquian inanimates.
14.
Glossed in the source: "to knock somebody on the head"; the stem can be glossed 'kill, strike dead, kill by a blow to the head with a blunt instrument'. The ɔ. in the last syllable of the Southern Unami example is an analogical innovation.
15.
Animate nouns are always obviative when possessed by a third-person animate.
16.
Compare the uses of the emphatic pronouns in Fox (Dahlstrom 1988:166-177).
17.
With a corresponding noun phrase overtly present in the clause, the third-person pro nominal inflection on nouns and verbs functions as agreement.
18.
The particles are tá 'how? where?' (interrogative deictic) and háč (interrogative; dialectally héč).
19.
The most commonly used negative particle in the independent order is tá kó. (akó-, kó-); máta is used with subordinative and conjunct verbs and occasionally with the indepen dent indicative, notably in fixed expressions; káči is the prohibitive 'don't'; there are other specialized and idiomatic negative expressions.
20.
In the present paper it is not possible to comment on all the philological details of even the cited Pidgin forms, and many problems in the interpretation of the attested Pidgin materials are not discussed.
21.
Phonetically Swedish has short vowels before long consonants and long vowels before short consonants in accented syllables.
22.
Generally the acute accent is used; the accented form of (w) is (cb). (aé) is the accented form of (æ) (Table 2: 'four', 'nine', and notes and g); probably this was a printer's substitution. The use of what is printed as a Greek omega (ω, ῶ) (rarely (w), (W), or (vv)) for a vowel corresponding to Unami ɔ. (or sometimes u) was probably an adaptation of the medieval and early modern Swedish use of (w), in the value (uu), for long (u) (e.g. Old Swedish (tw) for (tu) 'thou' [Haugen 1976:304]; Amandus Johnson, in Lindeström 1925:xli); (ω,ῶ) generally contrasts with sometimels ), the usual writings of the vowel corresponding to o. In the examples in this paper, accented spellings of words in Campanius have been cited in preference to unaccented variants.
23.
The spelling (ckh) can also represent kh (167, 122).
24.
The phone [c] was not found in Swedish; [š] only occurred prevocalically, as a pronuncia tion of (sj) (then written (si)). The pronunciation of Swedish (sj) as [š] is supposed to have been already established by the seventeenth century, but the pronunciations of (sj) in modem Swedish cover a considerable range and Campanius's inconsistency in spelling Unami š and his hesitancy to use (si) suggest that there were phonetic differences between the Swedish and Delaware sounds that caused him to fail to identify Unami š with his pronunciation of Swedish (si) in most cases. (I am grateful to Börje Westlund and Einar Haugen for help with the Swedish facts.)
25.
Cf. tahkč-u 'he is cold'.
Pidgin Delaware
87
26.
SU nní.č.a.n 'my child' (now especially 'my daughter'; cf. Tenychan'child' [133]) + non-productive diminutive l-əsl (note 140; cf. 58, 160); such formal diminutives are common as dialect variants in Algonquian.
27.
The latter part of Campanius's form has apparently been influenced by (6) lamaéæs 'fish' (247); II (seh) must be a copying error for *(sch).
28.
I take the variant (4) (skameera) 'run' as an error, perhaps merely a misprint, and not an indication that the Pidgin Delaware words with (sch-) for Unami k(w)š- were pronounced with [sk] (cf. 262).
29.
Pidgin (chirῶkha) points to a dialectal form *či.ló.k.ay, without the non-productive diminutive l-əsl of the attested Unami form {-ay is regularly rendered or reflected in Pidgin by (-a); cf. 41, 162, 225); the reverse relationship is more common (see 34 and note 26).
30.
Campanius (1696:30, 102) uses this word for 'hand' and 'hands', and lists the two variants as synonyms of (nach) (cf. SU nnáxk 'my hand').
31.
Given with (kaak), but this is elsewhere 'goose'.
32.
The Moravians have NU amimi (Luckenbach 1838:28), (amémi) (Zeisberger 1887: 143), but the de Laet vocabulary suggests that there was a Northern Unami dialect (perhaps Unalachtigo) in which the form of this word matched Munsee.
33.
The consistent (j) for x in this word is difficult to explain; conceivably it reflects a Swedish pronunciation of Dutch (g) [y].
34.
The gloss is "swart eller blööt steen", but perhaps swart is a misprint for swagt 'weak, fragile', influenced by the gloss in the preceding entry, gråsteen 'granite, lit. grey stone'.
35.
There is also a variant (147) (waépæck), (wepeck), that probably has its first vowel by contamination with (145) (neskæck) 'black' (cf. Mu né.ske.k '(irían.) which is black') and (142) (mæckhhchæck) 'red' (Mu mé.. '(inan.) which is red'). These Munsee forms are participles and as such have initial change, the ablauting of initialsyllable lal or ləl to le.1; the corresponding Unami participles must also have earlier had initial change, but in twentieth-century Southern Unami the change has been leveled out in stems of certain shapes, including these, and the forms are SU sšk.. and máxke.k.
36.
The addition of h- before initial vowels was a characteristic of the speech of some Unami speakers in the twentieth century; there were also a few cases of dialectal disagreement on the presence of h- in the speech of those that consistently distinguished h-initial and vowel-initial words: SU halpánkəl, alpánkəl 'barrel' (a loan from Dutch half anker [Goddard 1974:154]).
37.
The Pidgin forms with (-s) reflect dialectal variants with the non-productive diminutive -(ə)s (cf. note 26).
38.
Utterance-final devoicing in Unami probably accounts for the occasional appearance of final stops in a few dialectal Pidgin variants where Unami has nasals (see also ex. 153).
39.
The longer form contains the non-productive diminutive -(ə)s (231; cf. 34, 71, and notes 26 and 37).
Ives Goddard
88 40.
Cf. SU nəwi.š.á.s.i
41.
Campanius uses this word for game animals (C [5-6] (mosiuttamen MWS) 'hunt', lit. 'bring down animals' (see n. 107); [52] mochijrick mws 'elk', lit. 'large animal') and domesticated animals (C [19] (móchijrick mws), here used for 'ox or ass'). There is good evidence that the Delaware word means 'elk' (genus Cervus; e.g. Zeisberger's gloss "Eur[opäischer] Hirsch") and not 'moose' {Alces); in Delaware, as in North American English and in the Swedish of New Sweden (Campanius 1696:52), the inherited word for 'moose' {Alces) was applied to 'elk' {Cervus).
42.
An English writer's knowledge of the vocalic (w) of Welsh might account for (66-68), but it seems unlikely that such a writer would have used (w) only in three words that, after all, hardly present problems for English spelling.
43.
In huska hayly, Chetena koon "very great hard frosts," lit. 'very much strong snow/ice'.
44.
In SU xahé-li the initial xah- is a renewal of under-characterized x- 'big, etc.'; cf. SU xé-lo-k 'there are many of them', beside newer xahé-lo-k.
45.
I assume that the two occurrences of II(Me) T' are copyist's errors: II(Me Matta wingenun) T do not care for it', (Me mauholume) 'I will buy it' (cf. II (Nee mauholum) 'I will buy', (Ne Maugholame) 'I bought it'). The entries withMeT are three lines apart and in each case precede a word beginning withm orMand follow an entry beginning with(M). The same error is found in II (Munockon) 'm[il]k or a woman's [breast]' (the entry after (Papouse) 'a sucking child') beside II (Nonackon) 'milk'; cf. SU no.ná..an 'milk; breast'. Prince (1912:515) and Thomason (1980:175, 189) concluded that Pidgin Delaware had (Me) T , taken from English, but two examples written by a copyist who evidently knew Pidgin poorly, if at all, are insufficient to support a conclusion so inconsistent with the otherwise complete lack of English words in Pidgin.
46.
Also (C) (chijk); used in three instances (7, 7, 10) for second singular subjects (with Swedish skal, skalt 'shall' in the corresponding translations) and uncertain in the other occurrence (13) (the Swedish translation has 'we').
47.
These longer forms survived in modern Delaware only as dialectal Munsee sandhi variants used before enclitics (marked with preceding =): Mu ní.l=ha né.ka ó.əh1 'I'm his grandmother' (I.EMPH=PRED he.EMPH his.grandmother). There is every likelihood, however, that they existed in at least some seventeenth-century Unami dialects.
48.
Swedish back-translation alt thet wij förstå, them wara till godt behag 'everything that we understand to be pleasing to them'. Campanius (1696) includes the Swedish text of the catechism and other materials (referred to here as the Swedish model), his Pidgin Delaware rendering, and a more or less literal translation back into Swedish of the Pidgin Delaware rendition (referred to here as the Swedish back-translation).
49.
Swedish back-translation Gud ... be skiärmer och bewarar mig 'God ... protects and preserves me'. hícka'away (?)', attested in Pidgin Delaware only in the occurrences of this phrasal verb, is probably SU (ka 'over there (indefinite)'.
50.
Swedish back-translation tu talar.
51.
Thomas: "What hast got in thy house?"
'I am afraid'.
Pidgin Delaware
89
52.
Swedish model: han gifwer diuren sina födo 'he gives the animals their food'. The (vv) in the last two words (and wherever it appears in Campanius) is a printer's substitution for (w) or ().
53.
The preceding context is: (jῶni hωrítt chíntika Manétto, Kintz póho thaan suhwijvan anckaroppan renáppi, nijr robe: ...) 'The Holy Spirit will right away call to all dead people and say to us: ...' (3pers. good prayer/holy spirit, now call to all dead person, lpers. say).
54.
This may be the only example in Campanius of a form in (-r) used for a possessor.
55.
Swedish model Wij ... skole ursaka honom 'we should forgive (excuse, pardon) him'; back-translation wij skolom säija: then Menniskian är intet så ond 'we should say, this person is not so bad'.
56.
Swedish back-translation the intet älska mig.
57.
Swedish back-translation: thet namnet 'that name', referring back to Gudz Namn 'God's name'.
58.
Swedish back-translations: mitt öga, min ögon.
59.
Swedish back-translations: (8) wåra herrar och förmän; (6) wår stora HErre.
60.
Swedish back-translations: (7) tin Fader och tina Moder, (21) tin Fader och Moder.
61.
Swedish back-translation: edre barn.
62.
Swedish back-translation: I Fäder 'you parents'.
63.
Swedish back-translation: I Barn.
64.
In "The Indian Interpreter" and in Thomas all the second-person pronouns in the English translations are singulars {thou, thee, thy); very likely both authors were Quakers.
65.
Swedish: Thet är ingen som wil kiöpa.
66.
Swedish gloss: Slå någon.
67.
(Kec-loe) is miscopied for *(Kee loe). The translation in the original is: "Say thou what thou hast a mind to."
68.
Swedish back-translation: på them som mig älska.
69.
Swedish back-translation: så at wi wår nästa hans penningar/ eller hwad mehra han äger/ icke borttaga; the word order in Campanius's Pidgin is influenced by Swedish, but this does not account for the omission of the subject pronoun beforehátte'have'.
70.
Swedish gloss: Gode wän/hwad har tu mehr för wahrur.
71.
(match), (matcha) (120), (137, 153) (mætzi) 'now, already'; cf. SU mé.či.
72.
For (pauluppa) cf. SU pal.ae 'buck', now usually 'dollar' (beside xinkɔlp.ae 'buck'); for (shuta) see (39, 199, note 107).
73.
Campanius's situational translation is: T have no time to sit'.
74.
The clause-initial position of Pidgin (mátta) 'not' matches that of modern SU tá kó., and the pre-verbal position is that of modern SU máta (27, 28). The pidgin may accurately
90
Ives Goddard attest an earlier stage of Unami, since the tá of SU tá kó. (also used as a negative in other particle phrases) is evidently historically a reduction of mata .
75.
Swedish model and back-translation: Tu skalt icke stiäla.
76.
Swedish back-translation to p. 37: liggen icke nu längre och sofoven; Swedish gloss to p. 142: Soof intet mehr nu.
77.
Thomason (1980:177-78); other orders in Campanius's translation appear to reflect the word order of the Swedish model.
78.
Swedish: wij skole myckit hålla af them; the appearance of (ock) 'and' in second position mimics the location the synonymous Swedish (och) often has when used as a clause connective.
79.
Swedish model (given also as the back-translation): tin nästas hus 'your neighbor's house'.
80.
Swedish model: tins nästas hustru 'your neighbor's wife'; back-translation: ens annars mans hustru 'another man's wife'.
81.
Swedish back-translation: then stora HErrans Gudz Namn.
82.
Swedish back-translation: himmelens och jordenes gode Gud.
83.
'Elbow' is animate and so takes the obviative ending l-al in the third-person-possessed form (see 15); since, however, the indefinite-possessor form has no third-person pos sessor, it does not take the obviative ending. SU wí-skɔn 'an elbow' is apparently unrecorded, but it is constructed on the model of other animate dependent nouns with indefinite possessor, like wté. 'a heart' (cf. wté.ha 'his heart').
84.
Campanius differentiates (nach) 'hand' (note 30) and (onáck) 'forearm'; these are both from the same Delaware word, though conceivably from different dialects.
85.
For dialectal Pidgin (t) corresponding to Unami n, see note 38.
86.
Campanius also uses (27) (chítto) and (54) (chítta); the position of the accent and the variants of the second vowel are unexplained but presumably secondary.
87.
Also used with extended meaning: (21) híssemis 'generation'.
88.
This is the word Campanius uses for 'mother' throughout his translation, but in his vocabulary he also gives (139) (kahæss); cf. SU nkáhe.s 'my mother', NU (Gáhowees) (Zeisberger 1887:126).
89.
The interpretation of II (ponacka) "two hands" and II (olocko) "holes" (81) is uncertain.
90.
The locative of unattested Unami *sí.p.o.s, equivalent to SU sí.p.u 'river, stream' + non productive diminutive l-əsl (cf. note 26).
91.
The initial (t-) in the Pidgin forms shows that these were taken from the Delaware possessed stem; the pronominal prefixes insert a following ltl before underlying (or historical) vowel-initial stems that are not dependent nouns (contrast 16). The use of the possessed forms of 'town' to mean '(one's) territory' was presumably earlier found in Unami, but it is attested in twentieth-century materials only for the Munsee cognate: Mu nto.té-noy 'my allotment (on the reservation)'.
Pidgin Delaware
91
92.
Campanius's words for 'winter', 'spring', and 'morning' have an ending (-or) that may reflect an iterative ('whenever it is...') unattested in later varieties of Delaware; since other Algonquian languages point to an iterative ending PEA *-i.r, however, the vowel (o) would not be expected in Delaware.
93.
Almost always pé. in modern Southern Unami (Goddard 1979:viii, xx).
94.
II (taulle) could be from SU ktli 'you (sg.) say to me'.
95.
Cf. SU mpá 'I come', kpá 'you come', nkáí-a-pá 'I am going to come', pá, pá-l 'come (imperative sg.)'.
96.
(151) (chékco rcoænse) 'what is (that) called' (what be.named; Swedish Hwad heter thet); II (Kecko Looense) 'what is thy name[?]' (what be.named), (Kecko ke lunse une) 'What dost thou call this [?]' (what 2pers. name 3pers.).
97.
For the variation between (Kitton) and II (kitthanning) 'river' compare (161-163); cf. NU (kittan) [khíthan] 'great river' (Brinton & Anthony 1889:54), NU (kidhannünk) 'in the main R[iver]' (Zeisberger 1887:160).
98.
This form would be used in sentences like: náni ntáp.i.n 'I stayed there; that is where I stayed' (Goddard 1983:356-57). Campanius has a second Pidgin variant from this stem: (20) (háppi) 'stay'; this has the accent and stem shape of the non-third-person forms (SU ntáp.i 'I sit, stay'; cf. SU ahpú 'he sits, stays') but lacks any trace of the prefix or intercalated ltl (cf. 173; contrast 171, 172; for the added (h-, cf. 48, 55).
99.
Also 'bed'; cf. SU kéhkawink 'bed', lit. 'where one sleeps'.
100.
The gloss is omitted, but the entry is followed by the word for 'tobacco' (41).
101.
Campanius: 'to sit down and rest'.
102.
(150) (taan kῶmæn) 'where are you coming from?', (37) (Kῶmen taan Hácking!) 'come out of the earth (imperative)' (come.from PREP earth); cf. Lindeström (1925:203) (tanckomen kire) 'whence comest thou?'.
103.
From the same Unami stem there is also: (4) (taan) 'go', II (toon) (81); cf. SU ntá.n T go (there)'.
104.
This Unami Class lb stem (in -əə) has apparently assimilated to the Class la type (with -amən) in Pidgin. Indefinite-subject transitive inanimates like the second form given here are rarely used in modern Southern Unami but were very likely more common earlier.
105.
By convention, in the glosses of transitive absolute forms the object is parenthesized.
106.
Cf. SU maní . to . 'he makes (it)', backformed from, e.g., əní.to.n T make it' (nn ( *ln); some dialects of Northern Unami also had this assimilation: NU (manitol) 'make it (imperative)' (Luckenbach 1838:27).
107.
(5-6) (mosiuttamen MWS) 'hunt, lit. bring down animals', (57) (mosiuttamen) 'make fall', (105) (mosiúttamen) 'have power over'.
108.
(151) (kékω kommijre) 'what will you give in return?' ; (54) (matta ock nijr hátte chéko kommijre) 'and we do not have anything to give (you) in return' (renders: 'nor have we deserved it'; for (ock) see note 78); (152) (chéko nijr mijre) 'what shall I give you in return?'; (150) (mijrikon) 'trade', (151) 'we want to trade'; (151) (kotz mátta miraana)
Ives Goddard
92
'why don't you give (that) away'; (152) (chææk skomerijne) 'I'll give you money'; II (Nee Meele) "I will give thee," (B.C SickeMelee) "B.C. will give me so much for it," (Maleema cacko) "give me something". II (Si-) may reflect *=či, a variant of =č 'future' (cf. note 125). 109.
For the future imperative see Goddard (1979:58, 145, 191).
110.
(50) (chísbo ncDttaas) 'full belly', (101) (Singa chir chísbo hátte Kavvín Kattúnga) 'when you have fully slept' (when 2pers. full have lie sleep).
111.
(Manúnckus) 'bad-tempered, bad' (Swedish ond); cf. SU manúnksu 'he is angry'; for the other words see (174) and (58).
112.
(149) (Mamantíckan) 'peach, plum', (143) (Mamantickan) 'game', II (mamantuikan) ma.mantí.an; (and variants) "a peach or cherry"; cf. SU ma.mantí.k.anak 'dice' (sg. Indian dice were made from plum pits). (144) (táckhan) (and variants) 'wood, tree'; cf. SU tá.x.an 'a piece of firewood' (8).
113.
(140) (hââs) cf. (69). (140) (táckquin) 'wear, clothing'; cf. SU nták.. 'I wear it'.
114.
(142) (hóckung) 'up, heaven', II (hockung) 'up, up above', (hockcung) "a chamber" (i.e. an upper room, a sleeping loft); cf. NU (hokunk) 'above, above the earth' (Brinton & Anthony 1889:49), SU hukwé.yunk 'up, up above' (with added syllable). II (tappin): see (178).
115.
(1) (hátte), (13) (hattéu), II (hatta), T (hatah) (79, 86); cf. SU hát . e . 'it is (there)'.
116.
(23) (nijr Renáppi, móchæærick hwisásse hatte) 'we people are very much afraid' (lpers. person very afraid/fear have), (móchæærick) 'very, very much' modifies the phrasal verb; it is not the same word as (móchijrick) 'big' (174), as in the example in note 118, but reflects a Unami participle *me.x.é.lhik from *(m)xé.lət 'there's a lot of it', NU (mechelit) "much," (chelit) "a great deal" (Brinton & Anthony 1889:27, 77; other Pidgin sources [see 72] reflect the corresponding particle).
117.
(3) (chijr matta maranijto manúnckus, chirῶna Saccheemans, horít Manéttos Rwaénse) 'you are not to abuse God's name' (2pers. not make/do bad 2pers./poss. chief-' s good spirit's name).
118.
(21, 141) (sevaraénda) 'sadness, sad' (Swedish bedröfwelse, bedröfwat), (141) (mochijrick sevarænda hatte) 'be greatly troubled' (Swedish wara myckit bekymrad); cf. SU ši.ye.ləntam 'he is sorry', NU (schiwelentam) 'he is sorry, grieved' (Zeisberger 1887:179).
119.
Cf. (54, 151) (rankúnti), used in expressions for giving to mean 'freely and in a friendly fashion (but with expectation of a return gift)'; (8) (ranckúnti) does not form a phrasal verb with the preceding (maranijto), whose object is the following clause, but is used to mean 'according to their will' (Swedish til wiljes). A Delaware tradition about the first coming of the Europeans contains the expression SU kəmanni . tó .nen=č ktəli-=č -ɔ-wəlankuntí.ne.n 'we and you will make it so that we will have a lasting peace' ; the first verb contains the stem -manni.t- (from *-malni.t-), corresponding to Pidgin (marenit), and the second verb has wəlankunti- 'be at peace with each other', corresponding to Pidgin (rancontyn). This súggests that Unami expressions may have been the model for some phrasal-verb constructions in Pidgin Delaware.
Pidgin Delaware
93
120.
(135) (manétto) 'God, spirit, angel', Lindeström (1925:203) (manitto) 'the evil one', Danckaerts (1913:76) (maneto) 'the Devil', II (manitto) 'the Devil' (in a second hand: "God"); cf. SU 'god, manitou'.
121.
(140) (sacchéman) 'lord, superior, ruler' (shape influenced by Swedish man 'man'), (Dutch rendering, 1640s) (sackema) (NYCD 1:180); cf. SU sa.k. 'chief'.
122.
(1) (mamaræckhíckan), (143) (malæckhíckan), (143) (aamaræckhickan) 'book, letter, writing, paper', (mamolehickon) 'book, paper'; cf. NU (mamalekhikan) [ma . ma . le . khí . kan] 'writing, letter, book' (Brinton & Anthony 1889:72).
123.
(cake) 'wampum' reflects SU ké.kw 'wampum (collective)'. Twentieth-century Dela wares gave the unit of measure for strings of wampum (SU -a . i . k . an; cf. NU (-awican), (-aikan)) as a yard (three feet), measured from the nose to the fingertips of the laterally extended hand; this seems to agree with the etymological meaning 'spine length' (cf. SU na.í-k.an 'my spine'). Earlier sources from both New England and the Middle Atlantic always refer to measuring wampum strings by fathoms (six feet); possibly the difference has something to do with the fact that a fathom of white wampum was worth the same as a yard of black wampum (Williams 1936:155).
124.
Other examples: (57) (chéko paéwo taan jῶni) 'who comes to him'; (57) (nirῶna chíntika taan chijr) 'our prayer to you'. Campanius uses an apparent variant (4, 25, 43, 135) (taani), (7) (thaani) for 'on, in'.
125.
(49) (thaan nircbna chíckhæ tarássi) 'until the end of our life' (to/until lpers./poss. life end); (94) (singa Boquíckan mítzi tarássi) 'after supper' (when night eat end); (57) (hωrísso Tharássi) 'a peaceful (?) death'. The syllable (-ssi) may reflect a dialect variant *=či of the future enclitic =č (see also 246).
126.
Cf. Mu á.nay 'road, path'; NU (anenk) 'on the road' (Luckenbach 1838:64).
127.
Pidgin (-ng) (or (-ngh)) reflects Unami -nk [-ŋg] but was presumably pronounced [-ŋ] by Germanic speakers.
128.
Most probably II (kishquecon) also means 'day', and the copyist has either skipped to the gloss on the line below or omitted the word for 'eight' that stood before it.
129.
(13) (chéko Renáppi hátte máramen) 'what someone has to trade' (what person have trade), (32) (chijr, hátte máramæn nijr) 'you have bought (= redeemed) us', (151) (maramæn) T want to buy from you', (151) (maramæn) T want to sell', Lindeström (1925:203) (kecko hatte marrama) 'what hast thou to sell?', II (Nee Mauholum) "I will buy," (Ne maugholame) "I bought it," (Kee-mauholume) "wilt thou buy."
130.
Cf. (137) (suckra mochijrick pævo) 'there is a lingering rain' (rain big come); Swedish thet kommer longsamt rägn. (suckolan) 'rain' (used attributively); cf. SU só.k.əla.n 'rain; it is raining'.
131.
(15) (singa Renáppi Rῶbénse simáckot) 'when a person's name is mentioned' (or the like); cf. (1) (chísbo Simoáckan) 'commandment' (full talk/statement), (63) (simockan) 'command', (152)(Pijri Simockan) 'talk, conversation' (other [= various] talk/ statement).
132.
E.g. (1) (renáckát), (6) (renáckot), 'thus, so'; cf. SU li.ná.k.ɔt 'it appears (thus)'.
Ives Goddard
94 133.
The Pidgin Delaware word points to the existence of dialectal Unami *étke 'perhaps', a direct reflex of PA *ye.t(w)eke (reflected by Fox ye.toke, Ottawa i-tik, Ojibwa i.tok); all these Algonquian words are sentence enclitics (occurring after the first word of a clause).
134. With (153) (hiῶ) compare: (36) (hiῶ qui síxi) 'shall soon' (?), II (lough undoque) "goe yonder" (cf. 73), (Hyoah netap) "thou good friend, or good be to thee friend." 135.
Campanius (1696:53, 54, 128) uses this also for 'sin, sinner'.
136.
Cf. SU wans-i 'thank you', Mu anši.k.
137.
(27) (Keene, Keene ítta) 'thanks', (153) (itta ikale) 'go before' (?; (ikale) is SU íka lí '(to) over there'); Lindeström (1925:203) (ita kire) 'God's peace, welcome, how are you?', (kicksj ita) 'that's so' ((kicksj) = (kítzi) 'true', from SU khičí.i).
138.
(2) (móchij) 'yes', (152) (mochij apitzi) 'you will get it right away' (for (apitzi) see 62), (153) (mochij matzi) 'go in peace' (for (matzi) see 241).
139.
Recalled by one speaker as having been used by one man and his immediate family; also attested in the vocabulary recorded from the scout Black Beaver in 1853 (Whipple et al. 1855:58). SU lamé.s must have been a back-formation from the diminutive namé.t.ət 'little fish' in a dialect in which the shift of / ([1] or [r]) to n was an active process of diminutive consonant symbolism. Modern Unami has fossilized traces of this consonant symbolism (hló .s.ds 'old man', hinó.t.ət 'wren', as if 'little old man'; the same metaphor in Shawnee pasito 'old man', pasito.θ 'wren'); a Pidgin example is II (peray) "a Lad" (cf. SU pí.lae 'youth' [Speck 1931:170]), diminutive (penaetit) "a boy" (cf. SU pinaé.tət, the name of Col. Jackson, the last traditional chief of the Turkey phratry; 'little boy' would be a typical nickname, and nicknames often show shortening of vowels and consonants, as here with the i and t).
140.
An exactly parallel innovation replaces a dialect word for 'child' having the -s suffix with a form without this suffix that matches the modern word (34, note 26).
141.
The de Laet vocabulary shows only r (de Laet 1633:75-76), while in the second half of the eighteenth century recordings of Unami by the Moravians and Denny (1860) have only /.
142.
Swedish gode wän (153); used by Campanius for 'neighbor' in the Biblical sense, i.e. 'fellow man'.
143.
Although the Swedish sources show a Delaware shape for this word, the others, both earlier and later, have the two-syllable shape of the term of greeting and address used between Indians and Europeans from southern New England to Virginia in the Colonial period (Goddard 1977:39); cf. (nétop) 'friend', "the general salutation of all English toward them," from Rhode Island (Williams 1936:2), and (netab) 'a friend', "the principall word of kindness," (netap) 'my dear friend', from Virginia (Strachey 1953: 184, 194).
144.
Cf. (139) (ãquæo) 'woman' (cf. SUxkwé . (w)), diminutive (1) (ãquættæt) 'girl'; "The Indian Interpreter" has replaced the first of these while retaining (aquittit) "a little girl," but Thomas has (squatid) 'girl', an altered form of the diminutive that conforms to the new word for 'woman'.
145.
Peter Kalm recorded (saltenbras) and (salssenfras) in use among the Swedes on the lower Delaware River in the eighteenth century (Friederici 1960:561).
Pidgin Delaware
95
146. It is significant that this first mention of Hoboken, in 1630, refers to it explicitly as "the land by us called Hobocan Hackingh"; the later spelling Hoboken conforms to that of a town in Belgium. The name cannot be from Munsee, the local variety of Delaware, which has Mu matásən 'pipe'. 147. Also (151) (pomúttamen) 'shoot'; cf. SU mpəó.t. 'I shot it (with an arrow)'; only animate objects are attested with these words in Pidgin. 148. Ojibwa has ni.nim 'my sister-in-law (man speaking); my brother-in-law (woman speak ing)' (exactly matching SU ní.hm [157]) and its diminutive ni.nimošše.n? 'my crosscousin of opposite sex; my lover, sweetheart'. 149. Some information on this move that actually refers to events of 1626 is dated to 1628 by Weslager & Dunlap (1961:75). 150. The use of American Indian Pidgin English in some of Denny's glosses is another example of the side-by-side existence of Pidgin English and Pidgin Algonquian on the East Coast (Goddard 1977:41). A further illustration of this situation is the phrase (Tatapa — you; all one this) used by a judge in Connecticut in 1704; the judge spoke these words while patting his head in order to convey the idea 'head' to the Indian defendant (Goddard 1977:37-38). The first phrase is probably Pidgin Massachusett (Massachusett (tatuppe) Tike', (yeu) 'this') and the second is the equivalent in Pidgin English. 151. Lindeström's (1925:203-204) mention of Delaware warpath language provides no evi dence for Iroquoian knowledge of Pidgin Delaware, as Thomason (1980:185-86) argues, since all evidence and direct testimony agree that a knowledge of Pidgin Delaware did not confer the ability to understand real Delaware (Michaëlius, in Jameson 1909:128).
References Anonymous. 1684. "The Indian Interpreter". Trenton: Salem Town Records book B.6468, in the State Archives of New Jersey, MS. Barber, John W., and Henry Howe. 1844. Historical collections of the State of New Jersey. Newark: Justus H. Bradley. Brinton, Daniel G., and Albert Seqaqkind Anthony, eds. 1889. A Lenâpé-English dictio nary (= The Pennsylvania Students' Series, 1). Philadelphia: The Historical Society of Pennsylvania. Campanius, Johannes. 1696. Lutheri Catechismus Öfwersatt på American-Virginiske Språket. Stockholm: Burchardi. (Facsimile edition issued with the title: Martin Luther's little catechism translated into Algonquian Indian, bound with Collijn 1937, Stockholm: Ivar Hæggström and Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1937.) Campanius, Johannes. 1938. Luther's Catechism translated into the American-Virginian language. Translated by Daniel Nystrom and E.W. Olson. New York: Swedish American Tercentenary Association. Collijn, Isak. 1937. The Swedish-Indian Catechism: Some notes. Issued with the facsimile reprint of Campanius (1696). Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell.
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Dahlstrom, Amy. 1988. "Independent pronouns in Fox". In honor of Mary Haas, ed. by William Shipley, 165-94. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Danckaerts, Jasper. 1913. Journal of Jasper Danckaerts 1679-1680, ed. by Bartlett Burleigh James and J. Franklin Jameson. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. (Re printed: New York: Barnes & Noble, 1959.) de Laet, Johannes. 1633. Novvs Orbis: Seu descriptionis indiæ occidentalis libri XVIII. Leiden: Elzeviers. Denny, Ebenezer. 1860 [1785]. "A military journal kept by Major Ebenezer Denny". Memoirs of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania 7.478-81. Philadelphia: The Historical Society of Pennsylvania. Friederici, Georg. 1960. Amerikanistisches Wörterbuch und Hilfswörterbuch für den Amerikanisten. (= Universität Hamburg, Abhandlungen aus dem Gebiet der Auslands kunde, 53; Reihe B. Völkerkunde, Kulturgeschichte und Sprachen, 29.) Second edi tion. Hamburg: Cram, de Gruyter & Co. Goddard, Ives. 1971. "The ethnohistorical implications of early Delaware linguistic materials". Man in the Northeast 1.14-26. Goddard, Ives. 1974. "Dutch loanwords in Delaware". A Delaware Indian Symposium, ed. by Herbert Kraft, 153-60. (= Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission Anthropological Series 4, general editor Barry Kent.) Harrisburg: Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, The Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. Goddard, Ives. 1977. "Some early examples of American Indian Pidgin English from New England". UAL 43:37-41. Goddard, Ives. 1978a. "Eastern Algonquian languages". Northeast, ed. by Bruce G. Trigger, 70-77. (= Handbook of North American Indians 15, general editor William C. Sturtevant.) Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution. Goddard, Ives. 1978b. "Delaware". Northeast, ed. by Bruce G. Trigger, 213-39. (= Handbook of North American Indians 15, general editor William C. Sturtevant.) Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution. Goddard, Ives. 1979. Delaware verbal morphology: A descriptive and comparative study. New York: Garland. Goddard, Ives. 1983. "The Eastern Algonquian subordinative mode and the importance of morphology". UAL 49.351-87. Goddard, Ives. 1995. "The Delaware Jargon". New Sweden in America, ed. by Carol E. Hoffecker, Richard Waldron, Lorraine E. Williams, and Barbara E. Benson, 137-49. Newark: University of Delaware Press. Goddard, Ives, and Kathleen Bragdon. 1988. Native writings in Massachusett. 2 vols. (= Memoirs of the American Philosophical Society, 185.) Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society. Haugen, Einar. 1976. The Scandinavian languages: An introduction to their history. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Holmer, Nils. 1946. John Campanius' Lutheran Catechism in the Delaware language. (= Essays and Studies on American Language and Literature, 3.) Uppsala: The American Institute in the University of Uppsala. Jameson, J. Franklin, ed. 1909. Narratives of New Netherland 1609-1664. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. (Reprinted: New York: Barnes & Noble, 1967.)
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Laurent, Joseph. 1884. New Familiar Abenakis and English Dialogues. Quebec: Leger Brousseau. Lindeström, Peter. 1925 [1691]. Geographia Americae: With an account of the Delaware Indians. Translated by Amandus Johnson. Philadelphia: The Swedish Colonial Soci ety. Luckenbach, Abraham, trans. 1838. Forty-six select scripture narratives from the Old Testament.... Translated into Delaware Indian. New York: Daniel Fanshaw. Myers, Albert Cook. 1912. Narratives of early Pennsylvania, West New Jersey, and Delaware 1630-1707. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. Myers, Albert Cook, ed. 1937. William Penn his own account of the Lenni Lenape or Delaware Indians, 683. Moylan, PA: Albert Cook Meyers. Nelson, William. 1894. The Indians of New Jersey. Paterson, New Jersey: The Press. NYCD = Edmund B. O'Callaghan, ed. 1853-1887. Documents relative to the colonial history of the state of New York, 15 vols. Albany: Weed, Parsons. New York Historical Collections. 1913. New York: New-York Historical Society. Prince, J. Dyneley. 1912. "An ancient New Jersey Indian Jargon". American Anthropolo gist, n.s. 14.508-24. Speck, Frank G. 1931. A study of the Delaware Indian Big House Ceremony. (= Publica tions of the Pennsylvania Historical Commission, 2.) Harrisburg: The Pennsylvania Historical Commission. Strachey, William. 1953 [1612]. The historie of traveil into Virginia Britania, ed. by Louis B. Wright and Virginia Freund. (= Works Issued by the Hakluyt Society, second series, 103.) London: The Hakluyt Society. Thomas, Gabriel. 1698. An historical and geographical account of the Province and Country of Pensylvania; and of West-New-Jersey in America London: A. Baldwin. (Facsimile reprint: New York: for Henry Austin Brady by Francis Michelin, 1848.) Thomason, Sarah Grey. 1980. 'On interpreting "The Indian Interpreter"'. Language in Society 9.167-93. Thomason, Sarah Grey, and Terrence Kaufman. 1988. Language contact, creolization, and genetic linguistics. Berkeley: University of California Press. Tooker, William Wallace. 1911. The Indian place-names on Long Island and islands adjacent, with their probable significations, ed. by Alexander F. Chamberlain. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons. van den Bogaert, Harmen Meyndertsz. 1988. A journey into Mohawk and Oneida country, 1634-1635, transl, and ed. by Charles T. Gehring and William A. Starna, with wordlist and linguistic notes by Gunther Michelson. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press. Weslager, CA., in collaboration with A.R. Dunlap. 1961. Dutch explorers, traders and settlers in the Delaware Valley, 1609-1664. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Whipple, Amiel Weeks, Thomas Ewbank, and William Wadden Turner. 1855. Explora tions and surveys for a railroad route from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean: Report upon the Indian tribes. Washington, DC: War Department. Williams, Roger. 1936. A key into the language of America [1643]. Fifth edition. Providence: The Rhode Island and Providence Plantations Tercentenary Committee, Inc.
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Zeisberger, David, trans. 1821. The history of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.... Translated into the Delaware Indian language. New York: Daniel Fanshaw. Zeisberger, David. 1887. Zeisberger's Indian dictionary. Cambridge: John Wilson and Son, University Press.
Ndyuka-Trio Pidgin George L. Huttar University of Texas at Arlington Summer Institute of Linguistics and Frank J. Velantie Suriname Ministry of Education
1.
Introduction
The name we have given in our title to the language under discussion here is intended to summarize the social and linguistic circumstances of its origin: it arose for purposes of general communication, especially for trade, when speakers of Ndyuka and speakers of Trio came in contact, and reflects lexical and structural features from the languages of both groups. The Ndyuka society and its language were apparently formed in the early eighteenth century when large numbers of slaves escaped from plantations of the Suriname coastal area and made their way to east-central Suriname. Later two other "Bushnegro" societies, as they are called, formed in eastern Suriname: the Paramaccans and the Alukus (also called "Bonis"). These three groups are politically distinct; they refer to themselves, as well as to their speech varieties, by three distinct names. Nevertheless, there is a high degree of linguistic similarity among the three varieties, a similarity which on the one hand unites them linguistically and on the other hand sets them apart from the Bushnegro varieties of central Suriname (Saramaccan and Matawai, and
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George L. Huttar and Frank J.
Velantie
Approximate current residential areas of Trios, Wayanas, and Bushnegro groups of Suriname
Ndyuka-Trio Pidgin
101
Kwinti)1 and from Sranan. All of these varieties are creoles. Besides the distinctions just mentioned, Ndyukas recognize a number of geographical dialects within what they refer to as Ndyuka tongo "Ndyuka language". The number of Ndyukas today is estimated at around 16,000. The other party in the rise of the pidgin were Trio Indians, living today in southeastern Suriname along the upper Tapanahoni River and its tributary the Palumeu, and in southwestern Suriname along the Curuni. Their language belongs to the Cariban family, as do that of the Wayanas, the other major Indian group of southern and southeastern Suriname, and Kalinya (Carib) of coastal Suriname. As seen in §2 below, the Trios earlier lived lower on the Tapanahoni, where many Ndyukas live today. Their current population is estimated at around 1200, mostly living in two villages (indicated by "T" on the map). 2 This paper summarizes what is known of the history of the language (§2) and describes its phonology (§3), syntax (§4), and lexicon (§5), with a brief comment about its semantic organization (§6). It builds on, but does not presuppose acquaintance with, material from Huttar (1982), supplementing and correcting that material through documentary research and fieldwork carried out in Paramaribo in 1989.3 In order to address the question of the sources of features of a pidgin, the language is viewed throughout the descrip tive sections (§§3-6) in relation to Ndyuka and Trio (and occasionally Sranan and Wayana). A map is included to clarify some points about relations between Bushnegroes and Indians mentioned in the historical section, while an Appendix provides a small amount of information on a trade jargon used between Wayanas and Alukus.
2.
Historical and cultural context
Ndyuka-Trio Pidgin is one of at least three languages reported to have been used between blacks and American Indians of Suriname and French Guiana. It is one of two "trade languages" (handelstalen) referred to by de Goeje (1939:10) as in use between Bushnegroes (Ndyukas and Alukus) and Indians (Trios and Wayanas) in southern Suriname, while Coudreau 1895 mentions what is apparently another variety.4 Known written reference to this language begins with reports in the early twentieth century (de Goeje in Franssen Herderschee 1905b, with details first appearing in de Goeje 1906, 1908a).
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George L. Huttar and Frank J. Velantie
Trade between either Ndyukas or Alukus and Indians is reported in several nineteenth-century sources (von Sack 1821, Crevaux 1883, Kappler 1887, Coudreau 1895). De Goeje's observations suggest that the language must have arisen and become fairly stabilized lexically before the late nineteenth century:5 The Negroes who established themselves on the Djuka Creek two centuries ago found Trio Indians living on the Tapanahoni. They maintained continu ing relations with them; only later did they come in contact with the Wayanas, and the settling of these Indians on the Tapanahoni dates only from the second half of the nineteenth century. The trade dialect shows clear traces of these circumstances. It consists almost entirely of words borrowed from Trio or from Negro English. The words which are derived from Carib have likewise been introduced by the Negroes; in modern day Negro English one still finds many of these words, mainly names of animals or plants, which the Negroes at some time had to ask from the original population (1908a:215).
At one point ( 1908a:31) he suggests that the Ndyukas and the Trios were trading with each other since not long after the former established themselves on the Tapanahoni, that is, shortly after the treaty of 1760 (Mosis & Scholtens 1988:3; Thoden van Velzen & van Wetering 1988:11,403). Although he does not give reasons for this surmise, it is confirmed by Ndyuka oral history as reported by older Ndyuka men today. De Goeje and others make frequent mention of the Ndyukas' efforts to prevent others from interfering with their lucrative trade with the Indians, a phenomenon observed at least as early as an expedition in 1861 (van Coll 1903:605-606). Franssen Herderschee (1905a: 90, 115-116) reports that the Alukus went to war against the Oyampis in the early 1840s in order to get control of trade with the Europeans of the Oyapock River (on the eastern border of French Guiana) and hence with the Indians of the interior. Von Sack's account of his travels in Suriname in 1810-1812 refers to hunting dogs that the Ndyukas obtained by exchange with "Acouri" Indians6 (1821:109). Neumann states (1967:91) that the Ndyukas had replaced the Saramaccans as the main trading partner of the "Akuris" by around 1800. Although the language apparently arose in a trade situation, or a general contact situation leading to a trade relationship, between Ndyukas and Trios, its use has not been limited to that context. Crevaux (1883:276) reports that he was addressed in this language by a Trio woman, and gives a transcription of what she said that is in general agreement with the form of the language as it is spoken today.7
Ndyuka-Trio Pidgin
103
Ndyuka trade with other groups, at least in the past, has been reported. For example, von Coll (1903:609-610) refers to their trade with the Akurios, whom he identifies as the Oyampis, a group living in extreme southeastern Suriname and northern Brazil. A number of flora and fauna terms in Ndyuka do indicate the likelihood of contact with the Oyampis (Huttar 1989). De Goeje (in Franssen Herderschee 1905b: 130) reports that the Ndyukas would travel for trade purposes to the Yari River in northern Brazil just south of southeastern Suriname, as well as to the Curuni River in far southwestern Suriname. Unfortunately, these reports do not indicate what language was used in any of these trade situations. Wayanas lived on the Yari and Paru Rivers in Brazil in the eighteenth century, while the Curuni has been Trio territory (de Bruijning & Voorhoeve 1977:616, 659). Today, Ndyukas report that the language is now used for their trade and general conversation with the Wayana Indians as well as with the Trios, although contact with the latter group is still more frequent.8 Some of the Wayanas moved to the Tapanahoni and the Palumeu at the urging of the Ndyukas in around 1865 (Neumann 1967:92). De Goeje's observation (1906: 5) that "Wayanas frequently act as middlemen between Trios and Bushnegroes" indicates some of the importance of the relations between Ndyukas and Wayanas early in this century. By de Goeje's time the Trios had already withdrawn as far as possible from the neighborhood of both Bushnegroes and whites (de Goeje 1908b:22). Personal observation by the second author9 indicates that Ndyuka trade with the Trios and Wayanas continued to flourish into the 1960s. Increasing travel of the Indians to the coastal area beginning around this time has not only cut back on such trade, but has also given some Indians the option of using Sranan in their relations with the Ndyukas. Both of these trends have contributed to the pidgin's decline in use, so that today many Ndyuka men in their 30s (perhaps even older) and younger do not know it. Ndyukas refer to the language as Alukuyana, the name they also give to the Wayanas and their language, and Ingii "Indian". Wayanas call it Mekolo "Negro", a term they also use to refer to Ndyukas and their language. There is, however, no hint of any misconception by either group that in speaking this language they are speaking the language of the other group. The language must be specially learned, usually by observation; it cannot be produced on the basis of a knowledge of Trio or Ndyuka alone.
104 3.
George L. Huttar and Frank J. Velantie Phonology10
While Ndyuka (N) has only five vowel qualities in contrast — /i e a o u/ — Trio (T), like Wayana (Jackson 1972:48), has seven: /i e a o u ï /. The pidgin has only the five of N, although apparently free variation includes at least the high central [ï]: the first vowel in punyeke "white-lipped peccary" can be either [u] or [ï], for example. More often T /ï/ corresponds to pidgin /i/, as in T wïw'i, pidgin wiwi "ax". N also has contrast of nasalization, vowel length, and tone. There is free variation in the first of these in some forms in the pidgin, so that one hears, for example, both silon11 and silo for "be, have". Some interjections are pro nounced with exaggerated length and high pitch. The forms nóno "No!" from N and nonó "hole, ground" from T differ by pitch only. There may be a few other pairs of this sort, such as dili (dílil) "expensive" (cf. N díi, Sranan 'diri) and dili (dilî?) "three" (cf. N dií, Sranan dri). Voiceless and voiced stops contrast in N, but not in T, which does not appear even to have voiced variants of the stops. They do not contrast in the pidgin, although voiced allophones do occur (after nasals, for example, and apparently in free variation in some words elsewhere). N has /1/, not /r/, while T has [r] and lateralized r in free variation. Our own work on the pidgin shows [1] almost exclusively, although de Goeje and van Tuinen (as presented in de Goeje 1908a) list several instances of [r]. As pointed out by de Goeje (1906:111), most intervocalic /d/'s in N and Sranan correspond to /1/ in the pidgin: compare N and Sranan dede with pidgin alele "die" and Sranan frede with pidgin pelele (and N feele) " afraid", for example. The pidgin has [p] and [f] in free variation. A somewhat parallel phe nomenon is found in the speech of the Sipaliwini River Trios, for whom Jones (1972:43) reports free variation between [p] and [] in unstressed syllables. T has no consonant sequences except for nasal-obstruent sequences across syllable boundaries. N also has these sequences, plus syllable-initial clusters where the second is /w/ or /y/. The pidgin has the latter feature — e.g., dyampo ~ yampo "collared peccary" — as well as word-initial /tl/ [ti] ~ [tr]: tron ~ don ~ tolon "turn".12 On intonation, see §4, Syntax.
Ndyuka-Trio Pidgin 4.
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Syntax
The syntax of the pidgin closely follows that of T, resembling that of N only when N and T are alike.13 Basic clause-constituent order is SOV (although transitive sentences with both nominal S and nominal are unusual), as in T, while N has SVO order: (1)
S O V Tano mati ondoo kolu so teke. Tano partner 100 guilder ? take 'Tano's partner took 100 guilders."
When S is pronominal, the order is OSV, occasionally SOV (Ndyuka is SVO, while a pronominal S in Trio is usually marked only in the verb, giving simply OV): (2)
(3)
O S V Disi pumi luku. 3rd 1st see "I see him." S V Kaikushi pumi wani wa. dog 1st want NEG "I don't want dogs."
Although our sample of sentences with indirect object is very small, IO appears to immediately follow S: (4)
S IO V Pumi tata mati so apukuta teke. 1st father friend ? paddle take "My father gave his friend a paddle."
Other sentence constituents occur either initially or after S: (5)
Time Loc Tide pumi apataya today 1st village "Tonight you'll stay in
S V piyu silipi ye. 2nd sleep EXCLAM my village!"
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(6)
(7)
S Time Accomp O V Mékolo so grandwei Tlio akoloni brudu miang. ? long.ago Trio ACCOMP blood eat/drink negro "Long ago the blacks drank blood with the Trios [to take an oath]." S Degree O Pumi so trángamee oto 1st ? hard game/meat "I want meat very much."
V wani. want
(See also the Locative examples below.) Predicate complements follow S:14 (8)
(9)
Time S PredComp Tide tuna munu. big today/now water/river 'The river is high now." S Piyu
PredComp moime
ye!
2nd
good/beautiful
EXCLAM
"You're great!" Vocatives occur either initially or finally, response particles initially, and the exclamatory particle ye finally: Voc (10) Mati, partner "Friend,
S V piyu kon? 2nd come have you come? [greeting]"
S V Voc (11) Pumi kon pai. 1st come friend "Friend, I have come." S PredComp Time (12) Mekolo mati fosi ye. negro friend first EXCLAM "Long ago the blacks became our friends indeed!"
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Response V (13) lya silon. yes be/have "Yes, there are." Yes/no questions are distinguished from statements (and from com mands) by final rising intonation, as in both T and N — indicated here by a question mark: (14) Walapa sale? bow bring "Did you bring any bows?" (15) Walapa sale. bow bring "I brought bows." WH-questions frequently begin with the questioned constituent (a ques tion mark is used in the following examples merely to indicate interrogative status, not to indicate final rising of intonation): S Accomp V (16) Sama piyu akoloni kon? who/what/which? 2nd with come "With whom did you come?/Who came with you?" Time S (17) Onten piyu when? 2nd "What day did
V kon? come you come here?"
S V (18) Omeni Wayana kon? how many? Wayana come "How many Wayanas came?" If is questioned, it may occur either in first position or in the usual position after S: O (19) San what? "What
S V piyu sale? 2nd bring did you bring [to sell]?"
108
George L. Huttar and Frank J. Velantie s (20) Piy 2nd "What
o v sama so sale? who/what/which? ? bring did you bring [to sell]?"
The question word for "where" derives from N "Where is it/she/he?", but is a single morpheme in the pidgin:15 Loc S (21) Ndyuka: Pe a where? 3rd sg. "Where is it?"
V de? be.at
Loc S V (22) Peade so piyu kalala silon? where? ? 2nd bead be/have "Where are your beads?" The locative/existential/possessive verb silon may be omitted in such ques tions: Loc (23) Peade where? "Where
S pumi kaikushi? 1st dog are my dogs?"
Tense distinctions are indicated by adverbs: S Time PredComp Time Means (24) Panakiri granwee mati wa, tidei yenulu whiteman long.ago friend NEG now eye "Long ago the whites were not our friends, now before you as friends]."
V luku. see [you] see [them
Semantic relations between propositions are expressed by juxtaposition of sentences, each followed by a pause (indicated here with commas):16 (25) Panakiri tinigenee so kon, nono, whiteman only ? come no pelele, hesime busi kibri, sontem fear quick jungle hide maybe
moime wa, good NEG alele, nono, die no
ala Tlio all Trio takrume pai! bad friend
Ndyuka-Trio Pidgin
109
"If only whites came, no, that would not be good, all the Trios would be afraid, and would quickly hide in the jungle, where perhaps they would die — no, that would be bad, friend!" Within the noun phrase, possessors and other modifiers always precede the head, as appears to be the case in T. In N, possessors either precede or follow the head, while other modifiers precede the head. (26) purni sisa 1st sister "my sister" (27) Mayoli pataya Mayoli village "Mayoli's village" (28) kili kaikushi man dog "male dog" (29) sineki nono snake hole "snake hole" In the following sentence, piyu sale can be taken as a postnominal relative clause modifying kaikushi, but another interpretation seems equally possible, with "dog" as the object of "bring": Loc
S S V (30) Peade pumi kaikushi piyu sale? where? 1st dog you bring "Where is my dog that you brought/were to bring?" Or: "Where did you bring my dog?" There are a few noun-verb sequences that function semantically (and presumably syntactically) as nouns (31) or as verbs (32-33), with OV or Adjunct-V order of their constituents: V (31) siliba kisi fish catch "fishhook"
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(32)
Loc V nonó trowe ground throw "fall"
O? V (33) mato waram fire warm "burn" Intensive adverbs follow the adjective or verb they modify, as in T. In N they precede attributive adjectives, but follow predicates, whether adjectives or verbs. Adj Int (34) mumpi fulu greedy much "very greedy" S (35) Disi 3rd "It's
V Int dili mama. expensive very too expensive."
V (36) Woto game/hunt "[This dog]
Int mama. much is an excellent hunter."
Negation is marked by a form at the end of the sentence, thus immedi ately after the verb. Sentences can be negated in T by adding a suffix {wa for many verbs) to the verb, while in N the negative occurs immediately after S. S V Neg (37) Kaikushi silon wa. dog be/have NEG "There are no dogs here." O V Neg (38) Oli wani wa. woman want NEG "[They did] not want women."
Ndyuka-Trio Pidgin
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The pidgin, like T, has postpositions; N has prepositions, but in locative/ directional phrases it frequently also has a postposition in addition to the preposition (Huttar & Huttar 1994). By far the most common postposition in the pidgin is akoloni, "with (accompaniment)", but locatives baka "behind" and ondoo "under" have also been heard: Accomp O V (39) Tlio akoloni, Mekolo akoloni kasaba miang. Trio with negro with cassava eat "[They] eat cassava with the Trios and the blacks." Loc V (40) Bidon baka silon. metal.barrel behind be/have "[They] are behind the barrel." Loc V (41) Manyan ondoo silon. mango under be/have "[It] is under the mango tree." Location and direction are, however, frequently given with no adposition: Manner Loc V (42) Hesime busi kibri. fast jungle hide "[They] quickly hid in the jungle." Loc S V (43) Tepu pumi komoto. Tepu 1st leave "I've come from Tepu." S Loc V (44) Ala kiyo pataya waka. all young.man village go "All the young men went to the village." The postposition akoloni in (39) above is also used for "two", and by some speakers as part of "three", etc.:17
George L. Huttar and Frank J. Velantie
112 (45) dili akoloni three with "three"
Causation or reason is expressed by dati meke; this may be taken as an unanalyzed whole from N, where it has a similar function as well as sentenceinitial position, since dati hardly occurs in the pidgin otherwise: S PredComp (46) Dati meke mekolo wayana mati. that make negro Wayana partner "That's why Ndyukas are friends of Wayanas." Although some forms occur both reduplicated and unreduplicated (e.g. siki, sikisiki "sick"), there is no clear syntactic difference between the two. There are three forms, so (as in examples 1,4, 6,7, 20, 22, and 25 above), -me, and a-, whose functions are not at all clear. A very cursory discussion of the first two of these is given in Huttar (1982), while de Goeje goes into a bit more detail. His hypothesis about the origin of so is worth repeating in full here (1908a:215-16): Often one encounters "so" before the verb. How one gets this word is not easy to say. An explanation which is at least somewhat satisfactory is the following: Trio: (toena) so wai = "I want to have (water)," in which so = the verb "want". This verb is always inflected with the auxiliary verb form wai, which = 1st person sing. pres. tense indic, mood of the auxiliary verb. Negro English: (mi) wanni = "(I) want to have." Now since "I want" would be one of the first expressions that one would have needed to use, it is possible that the blacks considered "waf as equivalent to "wann/", had to maintain "so" to be understandable even though it was inexplicable to them, and so said, "toena so wannf'; by analogy they also placed "so" before other verbs, and this was regarded by the Indians as a form corresponding to their te, ti, t, which is often placed before the stem of a verb or adjective in Cariban languages.
The form -me occurs frequently, but not obligatorily, after stative predicates, as in exx. (9) and (25) (moime, takrume), and after the same forms function ing adverbially as (25) (= 42) (hesime). Some of these forms, such as moi "good", are also always given with -me (i.e. moime) in isolation as transla tions of Ndyuka words, for which reason we have followed de Goeje in writing the entire form as one word. Some speakers include the -me in translating numerals higher than two, as in dilime "three".
Ndyuka-Trio Pidgin
113
Occasionally - occurs after nonstative predicates, as in the following explanatory comments from de Goeje (1908a:216): In Trio and other Cariban languages mee (or pee) is used to express the socalled translative or essive; exactly the same function is performed by mee in: matti-mee wanni = (I) want (to become your) friend. In addition, mee is used after some words borrowed from Negro English, which can be used in the same way, such as mooi-mee, pretty, pikien-mee, small, a little, etc.
It appears that for some forms, such as moime, the -me is now an inseparable part of the form. For some others, the -me sometimes occurs, and sometimes does not. It is not clear whether the occurrence of /a/ before some forms is a phonological or a syntactic phenomenon. As it often occurs immediately before a verb (or as a part of a verb the etymon of which does not begin with a), it may be a sort of pronominal reprise of the subject, deriving from Ndyuka or Sranan 3rd singular pronoun a — as de Goeje (1908a:216) suggests. Yet it also occurs with forms other than verbs, chiefly proper names:18 (47) aplatti "share" Sranan prati "share" (cf. N paati "share") (48) alele "die" Sranan and/or N dede "die" (49) Alitaní "Litani River"; Alawa "Lawa River"
5.
Lexicon
The lexicon is derived almost entirely from N (or Sranan) and T, with a significant contribution from both sources, but somewhat larger from the former. Other sources include other local Indian languages (Kalinha and Wayana in particular) and French. Personal pronouns and most adverbs and verbs are from N/Sranan, while nouns derive nearly equally from both sources. Many forms presumably contributed by the Ndyukas show a closer phonological resemblance to Sranan than to modern (late twentieth century) N itself. One possible explanation for this is that N actually was phonologically closer to Sranan at the time the pidgin first arose than it is now. If that is the reason for the resemblance of some of the words in the pidgin to Sranan, we have here another piece of evidence for the relatively early origin of the pidgin, especially if we can get some idea of when Sranan and N started
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diverging phonologically (assuming that they ever were more alike than they are now). 19 Another very likely reason for the appearance of Sranan-derived rather than N-derived words in the pidgin, however, is the propensity of Ndyukas to use Sranan rather than their own language in dealing with outsiders, appar ently as a means of protecting their way of life from outside curiosity and interference. Such a practice seems quite clearly to have been the case for N (and other Bushnegro — see Green 1974:15) interaction with people from coastal Suriname (see discussion in Huttar 1987), and it is not unreasonable to assume a similar practice in their relations with the Indians with whom they came in contact. De Goeje (1908a:204-14) gives a list of words and sentences compiled by a Bishop van Tuinen. The following summary of origins of lexemes largely follows the organization (by de Goeje?) of van Tuinen's list, but includes additional forms that have turned up in our own documentary re search and fieldwork. The list is surely not complete, but it is as far as we know representative. Many meanings for which van Tuinen (or de Goeje 1906 before him) gives only a form derived from N are shown below as having an additional form from T or some other source. Our work has been almost entirely with native speakers of N, while van Tuinen and especially de Goeje in their travels had significant contact with both Bushnegroes and Indians (Franssen Herderschee 1905a, 1905b, de Goeje 1908a, 1908b). Where a T-related and an N-related form are in use for the same meaning, Ndyukas refer to the use of the former as talking more dipi "deep" — i.e. further removed from common knowledge and everyday experience.20 In the following lists, N = Ndyuka/Sranan, T = Trio, = Kalinha/Carib, W = Wayana, and F = French. Where two sources are given as "X and Y", the language has two forms, one from each source; "X and/or Y" means that one form has two possible sources. If a form could have come from either T or Kalinha, or from either T or Wayana, only T is given, as the more likely source. Some of the N forms originally derived from K. BODY PARTS, etc.:
N : blood, mouth, beard,21 neck, foot/leg, feces, fever T: eye, ear, stomach, penis, cough (?)
Ndyuka-Trio Pidgin
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FAMILY, SOCIAL RELATIONSHIPS, ETC.:
N:
sister, brother, friend/trade partner, friend (term of address), language, paper, payment T: man, woman, child, Bushnegro,22 shaman, medicine/magic, merchan dise23 K: white man, old man W: headman T and N: mother, father, child24 MATERIAL CULTURE:25
N: jungle shelter, mosquito net, boat pole,26 arrow,27 club, pin, needle, garden, soup, salt, barbecue rack, fan, pot, calabash, large metal barrel, storage drum/chest, storage basket/trunk, basket, can/plate, bowl, string/ rope, lock, cigar, comb, loincloth, ornamental band worn on calf, pipe, shirt, cloth(es), ring T: house/hut, canoe, gunwale, bow, iron arrowhead, nail, machete, knife, woven backpack, feathered headpiece K: paddle, gun (?), ax, kashiri, hot Indian drinks W: cotton belt F: bottle (via W?) ?: village, former garden,28 necklace of brown seeds N and T: scissors, hammer, bead, mirror N and F: strong drink N and W: button T and F: hat N and ?: hammock29 N and/or T: cassava sieve, woman's apron N and T and W: fishhook NATURE:
N:
night, star, mountain/hill, jungle, path, savanna, hinterland, creek, river mouth (= body part), rapids, swamp, island, gasoline, smoke, ash, char coal, sand T: sun, moon/month, rain, ground, rock/stone, water/river, sea, fireAight/ candle/tinderbox/matches, resin (for torch) N and/or T: morning30
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ANIMALS:
N:
capuchin monkey, howler monkey, great anteater, jaguar/various cats, fish, bird, black curassow, parrot, trumpet bird, bee/wasp T: spider monkey, white-lipped peccary, deer K: tapir, turtle, dog31 Saramaccan: collared peccary ?: game/meat32 PLANTS:
N: pineapple, cassava, papaya T: tree, banana/plantain, napi (tuber), sweet potato, reed for arrows, sugar cane, sailgrass N and ?: tobacco, rice PRONOUNS:
N: I, you, he/she/this, all, other, who/what/which33 N and ?: who? ADVERBS, ETC.:
N: much, few/a little, all, here (= this), far, behind, under, upstream, down stream, beyond, finished, today/now, fast, slow, where?, when?/why? (= who/what/which), perhaps, yes, various greetings T: yesterday, with N and T: only, no N and ?: very/too, long ago N and/or T: tomorrow (= morning) ADJECTIVES:
afraid, angry, big, small/young, dead, drunk,34 good, high, short, long/ tall, delicious, lazy, skinny, beautiful (= good), wet , ripe, bad, strong, heavy, sick, three, four, five, six T: thick/fat (= T-derived form for "big"), one, two (= with) K: old(?) (= old man) ?: red (two forms) N and T: big, black and/or W: fat N and ?: white N:
Ndyuka-Trio Pidgin
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VERBS:
arrive,35 leave behind/remain behind, burst/split, understand/know, break/open, dance, drink/eat,36 go/walk, cut (off)/injure, laugh, lie/de ceive (two forms), loose, make, take, name, dig up, pluck/remove, speak, talk,37 hurt, roll, shoot, hit, close, sharpen, steal, return, blow out/rest, fasten, fight, fight/be angry, distribute/share, forget, sell, hide, wait, want, throw away/divorce/abandon, exist T: perform magic (= shaman) K: (?)paddle N and T: sleep T and/or W: carry/bring
N:
6.
Semantics
We have not studied the semantic organization of either N or T extensively enough to make significant observations about the pidgin in relation to those languages. We do note that the use of one form (nyan) for both "eat" and "drink" is a feature of the pidgin not found in either N (or Sranan) or T.
7.
Conclusion
The trade language here called Ndyuka-Trio Pidgin appears to have been in use for 150-200 years, and to have been stable in structure during the period (100 years) for which we have any written record of utterances in it. Its phonology for the most part includes only those contrasts found in both sources. Its lexicon derives from both Ndyuka/Sranan and Trio, with the former predominating in the pronouns, adverbs, and verbs but the two sources fairly equally balanced in the nouns. Its syntax, by contrast, is essentially Trio, not Ndyuka, being consistent with what is known about that of Trio for every feature which we have examined. Ndyuka-Trio Pidgin is somewhat unusual among pidgins in that it is consistently SOV, and in that one of its two main sources is a creole language.
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Appendix: Wayana-Aluku trade jargon As we know of nothing else published about the trade jargon ("jargon de traite") used by Alukus and Wayanas, we here present a translation of de Goeje's material on the language (1946:100-101), followed by a brief commentary of our own (starting immedi ately after the word list): Trade jargon 2. In their conversation with the black maroons of Suriname, the Indians of the interior make use of a trade language. In the Tapanahoni and the surrounding regions it is the creole language of Suriname, mixed with Trio words. In the Lawa and Litani [near the Alukus, not the Ndyukas — tr.] it is a very simplified Wayana mixed with Kalinha (Galibi) words. The mistakenly used prefixes of these Kalinha words bear testimony that they are the remains of a trade jargon formerly used by the French in their speech with the Kalinhas of the coastal region. Here is its [vocabulary] list: stomach parika hammock hamaka okiri powdered mixture man Wayana Kalina of pepper and salt pome peíto tomorrow koropo subject friend y-akere-nu creek polili i-pawana-li earth, ground nono friend village pati garden, plantation maina test of mar you (sg.) amole inele maroke he riageability a awini katuli backpack merchandise y-eneka-li other, others amu omatau everything, -one papuru ring beautiful kuranu kusi, kusi-kuši bring, carry s-alei quick, soon good irupa buy s-apui quick t-aka-ne drink s-eneli strong tope hear š-etai s-ikapui awempo do, make finished lie (deceive) ekali give s-iri, s-ili throw, throw away s-imai attach, tie kulua-pok sad, angry kutamke (Negro eat s-one fell word?) š-eketei n-amai bathe oneself s-ukumiti fall n-atati s-ukuti die understand, know n-ikluti see s-ene burn n-isan not see s-ene-wa go arrive n-ompui not give s-ili-wa (etc.) hello! arikito! not want ise-pa (Arawak word?)
Ndyuka-Trio
Pidgin
119
Crevaux (1882a) has entries in his brief vocabulary of Wayana (Roucouyenne) for 44 of the meanings given above. In 37 of these 44, the form given by de Goeje is the same, or nearly the same, as one given by Crevaux. In 4 cases, Crevaux gives a form that differs in a phonologically significant way, leaving 3 for which the forms given by Crevaux are entirely different from what de Goeje reports for the trade jargon. Such correspondence would support de Goeje's characterization of the jargon as basically Wayana with some Kalinha words, but for two considerations. First, since the trade jargon was apparently already in use with outsiders, there is a definite possibility that Crevaux was given words in that jargon rather than in Wayana. Unfortunately, he does not comment on how he came by his wordlist, so it is difficult to judge on that basis to what extent this may have been true. Forms like parika and hamaką (cf. Portuguese, Spanish barriga and Arawak, Spanish hamaca) strengthen the impression that he has recorded a trade jargon here. Second, a check of most of the forms in the jargon against de Goeje's Wayana vocabulary in the same volume (1946:137-238) suggests that very few of the forms given for the jargon are in fact traceable to Wayana. Two or three times as many correspon dences, on the other hand, can be found with Trio forms as given in de Goeje (1906:7187) and Leavitt (1971). Since even a cursory check of the above list against Hoff (1968) and Aloema et al. (1987) shows even more correspondences with Kalinha, it appears that de Goeje's list shows more of the "mixing" with Kalinha words than of the "very simplified Wayana" he mentions. The last three entries provide some grammatical information, namely that negative is expressed by wa or pa placed after the verb, sentence final, in agreement with Crevaux (1882a) on Wayana, with regard to both the position of the particle and the alternation of the forms. De Goeje (1946:110, 120, 124), however, describes Wayana wa as coming before a noun that it negates, or being used as a negative reply, "No!", while other forms are used as negative suffixes on verbs. In Trio, however, wa is a common negative suffix on verbs (Leavitt 1971:9). Thus here, too, the above list gives more support for Trio than for Wayana sources for features of the trade jargon. De Goeje's list is difficult to interpret for phonological information, given that he appears to be representing some noncontrastive differences, especially in the vowels. However, his use of ë as one of the vowel symbols suggests that the jargon had at least six vowels, thus more than the i, e, a, o, u of Aluku.
Notes 1.
See Huttar (1988) for the place of Kwinti with respect to the other five Bushnegro creole varieties.
2.
Ivan Schoen, personal communication, 1989.
3.
Documentary research was carried out by the first author, who alone is responsible for the form of this paper (including any English translations of quotes from sources in other
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George L. Huttar and Frank J. Velantie languages), while the second author, a native speaker of Ndyuka, interviewed and/or collected word lists from three Ndyuka men, one Ndyuka woman, and one Wayana man. None of our material comes from spontaneous language use. From our interpretation of the records, presumably some at least of the documentary material was spontaneously produced. Special thanks are due to the library staff of the Stichting Surinaams Museum for their patience and expertise in facilitating the documentary research, and to the National Science Foundation for their support under Grant No. BSN8811211. Our thanks to William J. Samarin for helpful comments on an earlier version of the paper, and to Carolyn Dyk for producing the map.
4.
De Goeje (1939:10) enumerates the languages heard in the Indian village Koemakapán, and includes "four creole languages, Negro English, Cayenne patois, Aluku-Wayana trade language, and Ndyuka-Trio trade language" ("vier creoolsche talen, Negerengelsch, patois van Cayenne, Boni-Oajana handelstaal, Djoeka-Trio handelstaal"). Ear lier (1906: 6), however, he says that the Aluku and Wayanas conversed in "Indian" ("het Indiaanscn"), in contrast to the Ndyukas and Trios. But he later (1946:100-101) confirms his 1939 view of the language as other than Wayana (see Appendix to this paper). Ndyukas confirm that there is a language spoken between Alukus and Wayanas that differs from Wayana and from the Ndyuka-Trio pidgin. Coudreau (1895:602) refers to a language used by the "créoles" of French Guiana in addressing Émerillon Indians, and includes this sample, without translation: Mo même, créole, bon, mo même; to même, Émerillon, pas bon, to même.
5.
Neumann (1967:93) draws a similar conclusion from de Goeje's writings: "Die Handels sprache muss...schon vor der Mitte des 19. Jh. existiert haben".
6.
De Goeje (1906:6) identifies this group with the Trios.
7.
'"Panakiri ouani oua, blancs besoin pas. A la pikininialele, là enfants morts. Nono poti, terre trou. Echimeu ouaca, vite pars. Cassava mia oua, cassave manger pas.'" Instead of "Whites not needed...there children dead...earth hole...quickly leave...no cassave to eat", we take these utterances to have meant "Whites not wanted...all children dead...(they have been) put in (this) hole...quickly leave...(there is) no cassava to eat" (or the last part can be taken as "leave right away, don't stay around to eat"). De Goeje (Franssen Herderschee 1905b: 130) interprets the individual words in a way consistent with our interpretation.
8.
There are about 1200 Wayanas living in Suriname today (Ivan Schoen, personal commu nication, 1989).
9.
The second author lived in Drietabbetje, residence of the paramount chief of the Ndyukas and regular stopping place for Indians headed downriver, until the mid-1970s.
10.
For Ndyuka phonology, we use Huttar & Huttar (1994:544-94); for Trio, Jones 1972.
11.
Syllable-final V+N represents a phonologically nasalized V, phonetically realized some times as V followed by nasal, sometimes as nasalized V.
12.
On the relation between /1/ and vowel length in the pidgin and vowel length in N, see Huttar (1982:3).
13.
Comparison of the pidgin syntax with T syntax is hindered by the unavailability of a systematic description of Trio. Our comments on T syntax in this paper are based on
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examples scattered through the vocabularies and morphological descriptions of de Goeje (1909) and Leavitt (1971). For Ndyuka syntax, we follow Huttar & Huttar 1994. De Goeje (1908a:215) pointed out that the pidgin sentence structure was "in general the Indian" one, citing among other features the occurrence of object before verb, adverbial adjunct before verb, and negative wa after verb. All examples in this paper are from the pidgin, except as otherwise identified. 14.
Pace Huttar (1982:4-5).
15.
Neither pe nor a is a form in the pidgin, while de is used (by some speakers?) instead of the more usual silon "be, have".
16.
The example is from de Goeje (1908a:214), where nothing is reported about pauses. Our statement about pauses is based on our own fieldwork.
17.
De Goeje (1946:77) gives T akoolon for "un autre". For the pidgin, he glosses akoloni, okoloni as "beide, te zamen" ("both, together").
18.
The addition of initial a to etyma beginning with a consonant (particularly r) is also found in Ndyuka itself: e.g. rain > alen "rain", (English or Dutch) rat > alata "rat", rice (or Dutch rijst) > alisi "rice". Likewise, some Ndyuka personal names appear to alternate between forms with and without initial a, e.g. Puyenke ~ Apuyenke.
19.
Smith (1987:150) suggests that Ndyuka and Sranan split around the first decade of the eighteenth century.
20.
Dipi is a term that is commonly used in Suriname, including in Sranan as spoken by various ethnic groups, to refer to language phenomena that are relatively difficult to understand, and hence all the more mysterious. Hindi of India, for example, is dipi compared to Sarnami Hindi spoken in Suriname; Sranan speakers consider Saramaccan more dipi than Ndyuka, with which it shares a much higher number of cognates.
21.
The corresponding form in modern N, baiba, means "chin", while Sranan barba means "beard".
22.
De Goeje (1908a:205) suggests that this form, mekolo, comes from negro, but "by what route cannot be determined". He gives mékolo as the Wayana form for (Bush)negro (1946:147), and mékolo as one of three T forms for a Ndyuka (1906:74).
23.
De Goeje (1908a:205) suggests Trio ekelama "buy" as a possible source of pidgin atemete. Crevaux (1882b:39) gives arépété for "bagages, objets d'échanges".
24.
The N-derived form is pikinini; the other form, kami, is presumably from T kami "term of address for younger sibling or grandchild" (Leavitt 1971:61-62). But cf. T sikami "boy" (de Goeje 1906:73) and W kahmi "child, term of address" (de Goeje 1946:145).
25.
Called "Ethnographie" in the original list presented by de Goeje (1908a:205).
26.
De Goeje (1980a:206) considers this form, kula, to have come into the pidgin from "Negerengelsch" (which can be either N or Sranan in his scheme), which in turn borrowed it from Kalinha. But since there is a likely kiKongo source for this word in N (see Huttar 1985:59), we assume that Kalinha was the borrowing language rather than the source language. With regard to the pidgin, we assume for simplicity's sake that the pidgin got the form directly from N.
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27.
De Goeje says (1908a:206) that this form, kwama, is from Kalinha; but it is also found in N.
28.
The form is kawalimbo. Cf. kaipïrïmbo, from ka:pïrï "make" and -mbo "former" (Hoff 1968:137). Kawembo also occurs alongside gron as an alternative form for "garden".
29.
The form from N, , may in turn derive from Arawak directly or via Portuguese.
30.
"Morning/tomorrow" is toko-toko, which de Goeje (1908a:207) suggests derives from T or N tokro, a quail (Odontophorus guianensis) whose call is heard shortly before daybreak. The modern N word is tokoo; Ndyukas also consider this bird an announcer of daybreak.
31.
Kaikushi; cf. kaiku:si, "jaguar", T kaikui "jaguar, dog". For W, de Goeje (1946:160) gives kaikui for both meanings, but de Goeje (1909:293) gives both kaikúsi and kaikui for "jaguar". De Goeje (1946:248) gives kaikushi for "jaguar" in Triometesem (Wayaricule), a Cariban language of southeastern Suriname and southwestern French Guiana.
32.
De Goeje (1908a:209) gives T joti "game" and W woto "fish" as possible sources of pidgin oto "game, meat".
33.
Sama is presumably from N sáma "who?"; cf. Ndyuka sama "person" (with low tone on both syllables, rather than the high-low tone sequence of sáma), Sranan suma "who?".
34.
Sungu means "sink" in N, but de Goeje gives "dronken" ("drunk"), not "verdronken" ("drowned"), as the meaning of the form in the pidgin.
35.
Komopo, from Sranan komopo "come from, come out of' (cf. N komoto).
36.
De Goeje (1906) gives ñami, de Goeje (1908a) miang or miáng, and our own fieldwork nyan; cf. N nyan (with N alternant nyami).
37.
Krutu, Sranan krutu "hold council, criticize" (cf. Ndyuka kuutu).
References Aloema, Nardo, M. J. Pierre, and . N. van der Ziel. 1987. Kalinha — Nederlands Woordenboek. Paramaribo: Instituut voor Taalwetenschap. de Bruijning, C. F. A., and J. Voorhoeve. 1977. Encyclopedie van Suriname. Amsterdam: Elsevier. van Coll, C. 1903. "Gegevens over Land en Volk van Suriname". Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch-Indie, 55.451-650. Coudreau, Henri. 1895. Chez Nos Indiens: Quatre Années dans la Guayane Française (1887-1891). Paris: Librairie Hachette et Cie. Crevaux, J. 1882a. "Vocabulaire Français-Roucouyenne". Grammaires et vocabulaires roucouyenne, arrouague, piapoco et d'autres langues de la région des Guyanes, ed. by J. Crevaux, P. Sagot, and L. Adam, 1-20. Paris: Maisonneuve et Cie, Libraireséditeurs. Crevaux, J. 1882b. "Quelques Mots de la Langue des Indiens Trios". Grammaires et vocabulaires roucouyenne, arrouague, piapoco et d'autres langues de la région des
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Guyanes, ed. by J. Crevaux, P. Sagot, and L. Adam, 39-40. Paris: Maisonneuve et Cic, Libraires-éditeurs. Crevaux, J. 1883. Voyages dans l'Amérique du Sud. Paris: Librairie Hachette et Cie. Franssen Herderschee, A. 1905a. Verslag van de Gonini-Expeditie. Leiden: E. J. Brill. (Originally in Tijdschrift van het Koninklijk Nederlandsch Aardrijkskundig Genoot schap, 1905.1-174.) Franssen Herderschee, A. 1905b. Verslag der Tapanahoni-Expeditie. Leiden: E. J. Brill. (Originally in Tijdschrift van het Koninklijk Nederlandsch Aardrijkskundig Genoot schap, 1905.847-1032.) de Goeje, C. H. 1906. Bijdrage tot de Ethnographie der Surinaamsche Indianen. Leiden: E. J. Brill. de Goeje, C. H. 1908a. Verslag der Toemoekhoemak-expeditie. Leiden: E. J. Brill. de Goeje, C. H. 1908b. Beiträge zur Völkerkunde von Surinam. Leiden: E. J. Brill. de Goeje, C. H. 1909. Etudes Linguistiques Caraïbes. Amsterdam: Johannes Müller. de Goeje, C. H. 1939. "Bij primitieve volken". De Gids, pp. 1-31. de Goeje, C. H. 1946. Etudes linguistiques Caribes, vol. 2. (= Verhandelingen der Koninklijke Nederlandsche Akademie van Wetenschappen, Afd. Letterkunde, New Series, Part 49, No. 2.) Amsterdam: N. V. Noord-Hollandsche Uitgevers Maat schappij . Green, Edward Crocker. 1974. The Matawai Maroons: An acculturating Afro-American society. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America dissertation. Grimes, Joseph E., ed. 1972. Languages of the Guianas. Norman, OK: Summer Institute of Linguistics. Hoff, B. J. 1968. The Carib language. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Huttar, George L. 1982. A Creole-Amerindian pidgin of Suriname. Society for Caribbean Linguistics Occasional Paper No. 15. Huttar, George L. 1985. "Sources of Ndyuka African vocabulary". De Nieuwe WestIndische Gids 59.45-71. Huttar, George L. 1987. "The Afaka script: An indigenous creole syllabary". The Thirteenth LACUS forum 1986, ed. by Ilah Fleming, 167-77. Lake Bluff, IL: Linguis tic Association of Canada and the United States. Huttar, George L. 1988. Notes on Kwinti. Society for Caribbean Linguistics Occasional Paper, No. 19. Huttar, George L. 1989. "The Portuguese contribution to the Ndyuka lexicon". Estudios sobre Español de América y lingüística Afroamericana: ponencias presentadas en el 45 Congreso Internacional de Americanistas {Bogotá, julio de 1985), 263-79. Bogotá: Instituto Caro y Cuervo. Huttar, George L., and Mary L. Huttar. 1972. "Notes on Djuka phonology". Grimes 1972.1-11. Huttar, George L., and Mary L. Huttar. 1994. Ndyuka. London & New York: Routledge. Jackson, Walter S. 1972. "A Wayana grammar". Grimes 1972.47-77. Jones, Morgan W. 1972. "Trio phonology". Grimes 1972.42-46. Kappler, August. 1887. Surinam: Sein Land, seine Natur, Bevölkerung und seine KulturVerhältnisse mit Bezug auf Kolonisation. Stuttgart: J. G. Cotta'sche Verlagsbuch handlung.
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Velantie
Leavitt, Claude W. 1971. Trio language analysis. Alalapadoe, Surinam: Stencil. Mosis, André, and Ben Scholtens. 1988. "Bosnegers en Overheid: Ontwikkeling van de politieke verhoudingen, 1650-1988 (4): Vernieuwing van de vredesverdragen in de 19e eeuw". De Ware Tijd, 21 October 1988, 3. Neumann, Peter. 1967. Wirtschaft und materielle Kultur der Buschneger Surinames: Ein Beitrag zur Erforschung afroamerikanischer Probleme. (= Abhandlungen und Berich te des Staatlichen Museums für Völkerkunde Dresden, Band 26.) Berlin: AkademieVerlag. Sack, Albert von. 1821. Beschreibung einer Reise nach Surinam und des Aufenthaltes daselbst in den Jahren 1810, 1811, 1812, so wie von des Verfassers Rückkehr nach Europa über Nord-Amerika, Second Part. Berlin: Haude & Spener. Smith, Norval S. H. 1987. The genesis of the creole languages of Surinam. Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam dissertation. Thoden van Velzen, H. U. E., and W. van Wetering. 1988. The great father and the danger: Religious cults, material forces, and collective fantasies in the world of the Surinamese Maroons. Dordrecht: Foris Publications.
Arabic-based pidgins and creoles Jonathan Owens Universität
1.
Bayreuth
Introduction: Social and historical background
In this paper I will discuss all the varieties of pidgin and creole Arabic known to date.* In §1 I will give the historical background to the development of Arabic-based /'s in the two periods and areas where they are documented, the early Islamic period (ca. 700-1000 A.D.) and the 19th-century southern Sudan and Chad. In §2 I survey briefly the / varieties, and in §3 I explore in some detail the social and demographic factors which led to the emergence of the Arabic-based /'s in the southern Sudan, Chad, and East Africa. Section 4 provides a linguistic sketch of one creole Arabic variety, Kenyan Nubi, and a discussion of the linguistic interrelations among the different varieties of Sudanic / Arabic, Sudanic colloquial Arabic, and substratai languages. 1.1. Classical Arabic and Arabic dialects It is well known that Classical Arabic (CA, attested between ca. 550-800) differs considerably from the modern Arabic dialects. That varieties sepa rated by over 1000 years should differ is hardly cause for discussion. What is not so clear is how the differences arose. There is agreement on some basic points. First, modern dialects differ considerably among themselves and in very many respects cannot be historically derived from CA via traditional comparative methods. Second, the modern dialects are phonologically and morphologically less complex than CA. And third, CA was but one variety of Old Arabic existing alongside Old Arabic dialects (Rabin 1951).
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At this point opinion splits. One school holds that CA was a variety spoken by Bedouin tribes (Fiick 1950). A second sees CA as an intertribal koine of some sort (Spitaler 1953, Corriente 1976), which perhaps was originally a functionally-restricted variety used in poetry (Zwettler 1978); it was not the language of everyday use. If one adopts the second viewpoint (which I personally favor), the modern dialects can be seen to a large degree as a continuation of old Arabic dialects, whose character is inferrable in part by the comparative method. If one adopts the first viewpoint, that CA was the spoken variety of the Bedouin Arabs, the question to be answered is how the dialects came to diverge from CA. One answer invokes the role of a / variety. Versteegh (1984) proposes that pidginization/creolization played a key role in the development of early Arabic dialects. He notes that as the conquer ing Arabs spread over a large area of the Mediterranean and the Near East, they came into contact with non-Arabs — Persians, Copts in Egypt, Berbers in North Africa, etc. — and that these peoples had to learn Arabic. Since, however, Arabs were generally a minority in the newly-conquered territories, the subordinate populations did not have adequate opportunity to properly learn Arabic, and hence used language-learning strategies that produced intermediate pidginized varieties. The modern dialects derive ultimately from this pidginization process, and in the end the Arabs themselves, at least'the city dwellers, took over this variety as their own (Versteegh 1984:69). There are at least three problems with Versteegh's thesis taken in its strongest form (cf. below), that the modern dialects at some point have pidgin ancestors. First, although Arabic dialects are structurally simpler than CA, the differences between them and CA are far less than what one finds between modern-day Arabic creoles and modern dialects (see §4.4). This is also true, apparently, for earlier times (ca. 1050). A brief fragment of an early Pidgin Arabic variety discussed by Thomason & Elgibali (1986) deviates almost as much from a modern Arabic dialect as it does from CA (see §2.1). If pidginization/creolization played a significant role, then one might expect to find a greater divergence between CA and Arabic dialects.1 Secondly, /'s generally arise in areas with a high degree of linguistic heterogeneity; but in most conquered areas there were only one or two languages other than Arabic (Aramaic and Greek in the Levant, Coptic in Egypt). Moreover, as Goodman (1986) points out, the Arabic language often penetrated into lands, such as the Levant, well before the areas had been
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brought under Arabic political control. These factors would have favored the growth of bilingualism more than pidginization/creolization. Thirdly, Versteegh's thesis, entailing that the Arabs gave up their own "high" variety in favor of the low one which the conquered peoples used, and made it their own, is not what one usually finds in pidginization/creolization situations, though Versteegh suggests a similar process in the spread of Vulgar Latin in the Roman Empire. One could, perhaps, ask for well-docu mented parallels to substantiate his suggestions. It should be noted that by pidginization Versteegh understands not neces sarily an end point represented by a stable variety, but rather a process of untutored second language learning (1984:40). In these terms Versteegh is certainly correct in pointing out the relevance of pidginization to the develop ment of Arabic in the eighth and ninth centuries, for at this time Arabic acquired large groups of native speakers. I think his thesis that pidginization played a CRUCIAL role awaits a more precise examination of the linguistic and demographic situation in the early Islamic period. 1.2. Sudanic / Arabic For over 1000 years, starting from about 700 A.D., the southern boundary of Arabic speakers lay in the Sudanic region, first around Aswan (see §2.1 below) and then in a region stretching from central Sudan across central Chad to Lake Chad. A major trade and pilgrimage route followed an East-West direction over the area, from West Africa to Egypt and/or Mecca, and in the 16th century the first of a number of centralized kingdoms,2 the Funj empire, developed in east-central Sudan. It is virtually certain that Arabic served as a trade language for the entire region throughout the period, as the data dis cussed in §2.1 below confirms. Unfortunately, before the 19th century no other documentation for the use of nonstandard Arabic in the region has been reported. Since it is in the Sudanic region that the best-attested Arabic-based /'s are found, it is necessary to summarize the historical background of the region. Demographics are discussed in §3. The Sudan underwent drastic political and economic changes in the course of the nineteenth century, changes which left their linguistic mark as well, most particularly in the southern third of the country, approximately south of the Sobat and Bahr el-Ghazal rivers. It is in this region that the present-day Sudanic / Arabic varieties developed in the second half of the
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19th century. A brief historical sketch of this region in the 19th and 20th centuries is thus in order.3 In 1820 Muhammad Ali, ruler of Egypt, turned his expansionist plans southwards and established suzerainty in the northern and central Sudan in an area centered roughly around Khartoum. Trade contacts with the northern most of the southern tribes, the Shilluk, were established, and within a few years, 1839-1841, Muhammad Ali dispatched a series of three expeditions under a Major Selim to explore the Nile south of Khartoum. These expedi tions reached Gondokoro near modern-day Juba, and instituted the first trade contacts between the North and the southern hinterland. Initially the main object of export from the South was ivory, and this was effected on a seasonal basis: every year during the Nile high water, traders sailed to the South and returned before the dry season rendered the Sud swamp impassable. The ivory trade was initially a government monopoly, but the increasinglypowerful trading community, a mixed group of Europeans and Arabs of different nationalities, was eventually granted the right to trade directly in the South, and after 1854 the first permanent trading settlements were established there.4 These proliferated quickly, and by 1869 the German explorer Schweinfurth observed traders' camps or 'zeribas' connected by a transport system (Junker 1888:33) at a distance of every 18-21 miles in the Bahr el-Ghazal region and across into what is today Zaire. Zeribas were also established east and north of Gondokoro, and south into northern Uganda. In addition, itinerant Sudanic colloquial Arabic-speaking traders or 'jallabi' (pl. jallaba) began coming in increasing numbers from Darfur into the South, some of them returning annually to the North, others settling permanently in the South. Frequent intercamp contact continued into the period when the South was ruled directly by the Egyptian government (Junker 1891,111:378). The trading settlements were initially manned largely by northern Sudanese Arabs and Nile Nubians (not to be confused with the Nubi of East Africa), many of whom married local women and settled permanently in the South. Relations between the camps and the local tribes were, allowing for local variations, bad. As early as 1863, for instance, Grant (1864:357) reports that the Bari used every opportunity they could to steal from the "Turks", and later Gessi (1892:211) observed that, although the Egyptian government had been established at Rumbek for some years, the Dinka-inhabited area around the outpost was unsafe for travel. The militarily superior northern traders freely commandeered cattle and provisions for themselves from among the
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local groups, and because the traders' agents were paid partly in slaves (Gray 1961:46 ff.), and because it provided a lucrative export commodity, slave taking became common. Many of the slaves themselves became integrated into the military structure of the camps, so that soon the southern population outnumbered the northerners (see (2) below). The trading camps thus became entities unto themselves, supporting populations of up to 10,000, cut off from the indigenous population except to the extent that the camps had to requisi tion their supplies and labor in one way or another from the local population. In response to the increased trafficking in slaves, which by 1870 (Schweinfurth 1918:479) had outstripped ivory as the premier export from the South, the Egyptian government sought to place the South directly under its control, a mission entrusted successively to Baker (1870-1873), Gordon (18731876), and Emin Pasha (1878-1888). Because of their lack of resources and manpower, the government often simply commissioned the standing army of one trader or another to serve as a government force, and in many respects, e.g. the practice of plundering local villages for provisions, relations between the camps and the native populations remained unchanged (see e.g. Junker 1891, 1:279, 322, 355, 340, 438, 512, Gessi 1892:430). The government established a measure of control along the Nile; in the western areas and in Bahr el-Ghazal province its control was far more tenuous (Junker 1888: 49). During the period of Egyptian rule, a significant number of Egyptian functionaries entered the southern Sudan (Kaye 1988:47), their number reaching perhaps 300-400. However, the greater number of government soldiers were locally recruited (see e.g. Stanley 1890:136). The anti-slavery efforts, and even more the encroachment of the Egyp tian government, which from 1878 made a concerted effort to keep northern traders out of the South, were enough to antagonize many of the permanent traders, particularly those in the western areas, and some rebelled. The most serious revolt was that of Sulaiman, son of Zubeir Rahman, in 1877-79, and although the revolt was put down, one of Zubeir's lieutenants, Rabeh, took a sizable group with him into the Chari-Logone river basin, eventually captur ing the kingdom of Bornu. It is this group which Zeltner (1988:265) quite plausibly suggests was responsible for bringing Turku (see §§2.2, 4.2) to the Chari river basin.5 The Egyptian government never established wholly effective control over the South, and during the Mahdist uprising, with Khartoum falling in 1885, the South was invaded as well (in 1884); most of it was lost either to the
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Mahdi's troops or to indigenous groups. Soon only a few government settle ments remained along the Nile south of Gondokoro. Stanley (1890:246) reports that at this time the governor, Emin Pasha, had about 1300 regular soldiers more or less under his command, along with 3,000 irregulars and camp followers. Jephson (1890:222) gives a higher figure for Emin's Equatoria followers, putting the figure at 8,000. In 1888 Emin was forced to abandon the last settlements, and he withdrew to northern Uganda, from where in 1889 most of his Egyptian administrators and officers returned first to the East African coast and then to Egypt or Europe.6 A number of Emin's soldiers and camp followers (700 according to Saghayroon 1981:28) stayed in Uganda, however, and these were quickly co-opted first by the British East Africa Company as early as 1893, then by the British government to help establish British control in Uganda and Kenya. Some of his former troops served the Germans in Tangyanika as well (Furley 1959:326; see §3.2). These soldiers eventually settled in Uganda and Kenya, where their descendants, the (East African) Nubi, still live. In the southern Sudan former soldiers and camp followers of the traders, as well as some former government troops (Junker 1891, III:405, 454, 479), stayed on. Some of these joined the Mahdists, while others formed themselves into private armies with local spheres of influence (Collins 1962:71), and through these groups the / Arabic was kept alive. The British established control of the Sudan in 1898, though the Mahdists had been driven out of parts of the South by Belgian forces as early as 1896. After numerous local rebellions were suppressed in the South, that area enjoyed a measure of peace until around independence in 1956. At that time a rebellion against the central government broke out, continuing intermittently until the present day.
2.
Varieties of modern Arabic-based p/c's
There are four varieties of modern Arabic-based p/c's. Two of these are still spoken today. One is known only through a work written around 1930, and the other, Maridi Arabic, has been termed the oldest pidgin on record (Thomason & Elgibali 1986). Beyond summarizing them in this section, I will have nothing to say about them — for Maridi because there is no new data to add, and for Turku because a detailed treatment can be found in Tosco & Owens (1993).
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2.1. Maridi Arabic The existence of early Arabic pidgins, or pidgin-like varieties, is confirmed by an eleventh-century text discussed by Thomason & Elgibali (1986). It appears in an 11th-century work on geography written by the Andalusian (Spanish) Al-Bakri, a geographer who himself never left his native land. It is a short text, a little over 50 words, which is said to represent a very bad form of Arabic spoken by people in the region of Maridi. Mainly on the basis of plausible historical and textual evidence, Thomason & Elgibali conclude that the pidgin was spoken in Mauritania. There are other indications, however, pointing to a textual source in Upper Egypt or northern Sudan. In particular, the text contains linguistic features which today are found either uniquely or largely in Egyptian Arabic, e.g. CA q = ', fw' < fwq "on", and CA j = d (dwmaa < jwmaa "Juma"); the last is a correspondence which as a perfectly regular feature is attested today only in Upper Egypt (Behnstedt & Woidich 1985:1 Off.; see Kaye 1985). The text, moreover, was recounted to Al-Bakri by a trader from Aswan who had heard it in the course of his travels. It is, then, quite plausible to assume that the text represents a variety spoken somewhere in Egypt or the Sudan but which Al-Bakri or his source transposed to Mauritania to conventionally represent a bad form of Arabic spoken there. The text itself is likely a caricature which is partly based on an actual spoken pidgin variety, but which is also partly taken from local Arabic dialects and partly perhaps deliberate distortion in order to produce a "bad" Arabic (e.g. incongruous use of the dual; see Owens 1989 for discussion). The preponderance of evidence thus points to a source for the Maridi text in the upper Nile valley. If this is the case, it would indicate the possible presence of Arabic-based pidgins in the region for nearly a thousand years. 2.2. Turku Turku, as mentioned in §1.2 above, was brought to Chad and NE Nigeria by Rabeh's soldiers ca. 1900. Writing of the colloquial Arabic spoken in the Lake Chad area, Lethem (1920:xiii) reports that words and phrases intro duced by the followers of Rabeh "are generally known as 'turuk', this being the term applied in Bornu to Rabeh's non-Arab Sudanese troops". Even today the Kotoko in northern Cameroon refer to Rabeh's troops as 'turks' (Zeltner & Tourneux 1986:11). Turku was thus a nonnative Arabic which had its
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origins in the same social milieu as did the / varieties of the Sudan (see §1.2). I have no information about the number of Turku speakers, though Maigret (1931, cited in Samarin 1955:259) reported that Turku was one of the three trade languages (along with Sango and Bangala) used in French Equato rial Africa. It was used primarily in Chad and northern Cameroon, though I believe it never played an important role in Nigeria (see Tosco & Owens 1993 for discussion as to why). Precise linguistic details of Turku are known through a lexicon (about 1500 entries), a very inadequate five-page grammar, and collection of short phrases/texts by Gaston Muraz (ca. 1929), a French colonial medical officer. Though not the work of a professional linguist, the practically-oriented gram mar, the oldest detailed grammar of a Sudanic Arabic / available, contains enough data to construct a basic grammar and provide comparative material. It can, for example, be ascertained that Turku was an expanded and probably stable pidgin (see Prokosch 1986, Tosco & Owens 1993). (I have no informa tion about its status as a creole, and suspect it was not one.) In addition, Derendiger (1912), describing the variety of Arabic spoken in Bagirmi, notes that a continuum existed from a colloquial Arabic dialect to a pidginized form. Derendiger offers only fragmentary evidence of this continuum, con centrating on the standard dialect in the area. What examples he does give of the pidginized form resemble Turku and other Sudanic p/c's. So far as is known, there is no variety in present-day Chad or the Central African Republic known as Turku. Turku was, however, a vehicular language which the French colonial government found useful (hence Muraz's book), and in present-day Chad Arabic continues to survive in various pidginized forms (alongside the colloquial Chadian Arabic spoken by ca. 300,000 people), none of which, unfortunately, have yet been described. Future research will thus have to determine whether modern Arabic pidgins continue Turku or arose independently.7 2.3. Juba Arabic The / of the southern Sudan is often conventionally termed "Juba Arabic" (Watson 1984, Miller 1983, 1985). This term unfortunately appears to restrict the variety to the area of Juba, or to suggest some special historical link between it and the area of Juba. The language in fact is the lingua franca of the
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entire southern Sudan, and is spoken by southerners living outside the south (e.g. in the Khartoum area). Other terms however, like "southern Sudanese Arabic" or "lingua franca Arabic of the Southern Sudan", are either too unwieldy (second alternative) or misleading in their own way (colloquial Arabic dialects are also spoken in the South). Although it is mainly a second language, Mahmud (1983) reports that in Juba (and no doubt elsewhere) the language has gained native speakers; Miller (1985:155) reports that as many as 40% of the population of Juba (total ca. 200,000) now speak Juba Arabic as a mother tongue. According to Mahmud (1983:109), interethnic group marriage is the most important factor favoring the use of Arabic in southern households, with 40% of Mahmud's respondents from households of mixed marriages reporting Arabic as their first language, against 15% of those from households where the parents spoke the same language. The southern Sudanese languages spoken alongside Juba Arabic include Bari, Lotuxo, Moru, Madi, Zande, Dinka, and Nuer, as well as a host of smaller languages. Juba Arabic is structurally quite distinct from and mutually unintelligible with any variety of colloquial Arabic. This structural distinctness will be briefly illustrated in §4.4. below. The structural differences are reflected in the social status of the languages. Miller (1985, 1988:304) says that southern Sudanese consider colloquial Arabic and Juba Arabic different languages and that those southerners with a knowledge of both mix and manipulate the two according to the exigencies of the situation. The difference between the two can take on strong symbolic significance. Bell (1974:4), for instance, notes that one objective propagated by the Azania Liberation Front, the southern Sudanese movement which fought the central government up to 1972, was furthering of a common southern Sudanese nationality through the develop ment of the "pidgin Arabic spoken in the South". No important structural differences between pidginized and creolized varieties of Juba Arabic have been reported, although detailed linguistic and sociolinguistic data is lacking. Under influence from colloquial Sudanese Arabic a continuum has developed (Mahmud 1979, Miller 1985, 1986) rang ing from pidginized varieties on to colloquial dialects, a situation which renders an adequate characterization of Juba Arabic all the more difficult. Watson (1984, also 1989:108), for example, makes valuable attempts to render a description of the basilectal Juba Arabic variety; he presents a number of constructions with variant realizations, one closer to Sudanic
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colloquial Arabic than the other(s) (e.g. on pp. 17 and 39 on the passive), without any comment on the sociolinguistic implications of using one form or the other. No dialect surveys of Juba Arabic exist, though there are clearly dialect differences, and grammatical sketches and sociolinguistic surveys are limited mainly to the Juba variety (Nhial 1975, Mahmud 1979, 1983, Miller 1983, 1985, 1986, 1988, Watson 1984, 1989, Vincent 1986). 2.4. East African Nubi East African Nubi, also known as KiNubi (Kaye 1991:5), is spoken as a first language by 10,000-15,000 Kenyans and an unknown number of Ugandans. The number of Ugandan speakers was for many years considerably larger than those in Kenya, though because of their close association with the Amin regime (he himself is a Kakwa) many fled Uganda to Kenya at his downfall. There were once also East African Nubi speakers in Tanzania and Somalia; whether some still remain is unknown. In East Africa Nubi is almost exclu sively a first language, except perhaps in northern Uganda, where, because of proximity to the southern Sudan, Nubi functions to some degree as a lingua franca. Juba Arabic and Nubi are mutually intelligible, and Nubi, like Juba Arabic, is not mutually intelligible with colloquial Arabic. Almost all Nubi are bilingual in Swahili and Nubi, and it is not uncommon for them to speak other languages as well (Heine 1982:16). The Nubi are mainly urban dwell ers, the largest concentration in Kenya being in the Kibera area of Nairobi; smaller settlements are found in Eidama Ravine, Kisumu, Nakuru, and Mom basa. In Uganda the largest settlements were at Bombo and Kampala/Mengo, as well as smaller settlements in most other cities.
3.
The genesis of Sudanic / Arabic
Discounting possible, though presently unverifiable, influence from pidgin/ trade languages prior to 1820, the formative period of Sudanic / Arabic has to be placed between 1854 and 1888, the period between the opening of the South to large-scale northern influence and the expulsion of the Egyptian government from the South. I take 1888 to be the endpoint because at about this time East African Nubi became isolated from the Arabic of the South, so present-day similarities between East African Nubi and Juba Arabic (see §4.2
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below) must be accounted for by their common pre-1888 origin. That is, the Arabic of the South had crystallized in a stable pidgin or creole variety by 1888. Two important characteristics of Sudanic / Arabic are thus of general interest for creole studies (Carrington 1987:78): it stabilized (a) within little more than one generation and (b) within a social milieu where native speakers of Arabic constituted no more than 10-25% of the total population. To gain a closer insight into the genesis of Sudanic / Arabic in the 19th century (§3.4), it is necessary to look more closely at the language situation of the 19th-century South (§§3.1, 3.5), its demography (§3.2), and the social structure of the population (§3.3). 3.1. The languages of the South The southern Sudan is (and in the 19th century was) a linguistically heterogeneous area. Its languages fall mainly into two large clusters, Eastern and Central Sudanic (Greenberg 1966:85ff.). Niger-Congo is represented by Zande (Adamawa-Eastern branch). (1) Language of the southern Sudan (partial list):
While there is some mutual intelligibility among these languages — I have placed brackets around those which are to a degree mutually intelligible8 — the diversity is considerable.
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Languages of the Southern Sudan and adjoining regions
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3.2. The 19th-century population Thanks to the observations of the German explorer Schweinfurth (1918:50508), who traveled around the Bahr el-Ghazal area during 1868-1871, we have some rough estimates of the population in the region. The picture he paints is of a great upheaval. He divides the population into the following categories; the list in (2) is supplemented by the observations of other writers. (2)
A. Indigenous populations, not connected with trading camps: 190,000. B. Camp populations: (i) The traders' soldiers, officials, and translators: 5,000-10,000. Particularly important here are the Nile Nubians, who consti tuted the largest single northern group.9 Translators were mainly southern Sudanese from various ethnic groups born and brought up in the North, though there were also southerners, particularly in the early years of southern penetration, who were sent by chiefs of various southern groups to the camps of traders in the South for the express purpose of learning Arabic (Petherick & Petherick 1869, I:141,274). (ii) Permanently settled traders (jallaba): 2,000. (iii) Seasonally migrant traders: 2,000. These moved back and forth between Darfur and the South. They were mainly from western Sudanese Arabic tribes, like the Baggara. Gessi (1892:386), who was largely responsible for excluding northerners from the South after 1878, estimated that up to 20,000 jallaba had been active in the South. Being itinerant, this group had the least intense contact with the southern Sudanese. (iv) Slave soldiers (called faruch, basingers, or nyarakik): 5,000, from various southern ethnic groups. These were mainly offspring of the soldiers. They worked as gun carriers and comprised the main fighting force of the zeribas (traders' camps). During the period of government rule some of these troops became regular government soldiers, some continued to serve local traders, and others constituted a floating element owing allegiance variously to the govern ment/traders/Mahdists/local groups, according to the prevail ing political climate (see below).
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(v) Field and household slaves from southern Sudanese ethnic groups: 40,000. Every soldier had at least one slave; Gessi (1892:222), who admittedly was prone to some exaggeration, gives a ratio of 10 or 20 to one (slaves to soldiers). In this category belong concu bines. Writing during the period of Egyptian rule, Gessi reports in a letter (1892:433), "I must not forget to mention that 100 regular troops have been sent from Khartoum to Lado, another 100 will follow shortly. These men will have no women with them. As soon as they arrive in the interior they will each lay claim to 3 wives, 3 concubines, and many servants." (vi) Other camp followers: 1,000.10 Total camp population: 55,000-60,000. Of the ca. 250,000 inhabitants of Bahr el-Ghazal in 1870, 60,000, or about one quarter, belonged to the trading camps. Of those in the camps, only 9,00014,000 would have been native or near-native Arabic speakers (see n. 9 for Nile Nubians) — that is, (2) B.iii. Schweinfurth's estimates, it should be noted, describe the situation in 1870, sixteen years after the establishment of the first trading camp in the South. Two factors would have favored a gradual decrease in the percentage of native Arabic speakers. First, given the population growth through birth within the camps (see §3.4), the percentage of native Arabic speakers would have tended to decline. Secondly, the government policy (after 1878) of prohibiting northern traders in the South and of favoring the recruitment of native southerners to the army would have led to a relative decrease in the number of native Arabic speakers. Reports by writers after Schweinfurth tend to confirm this development. Junker (1891, III:526, III:572, I:462), for ex ample, writes that in the government post at Bor the Egyptian officer in charge had a household of 32 persons, including 6 concubines; a clerk had 28 in his household, a sergeant 12, and so on. The bulk of these household followers were from the South. Casati, an Italian who served the Egyptian government for ten years in the South, reported that he had 3,000 troops under him, two-thirds of whom were volunteers from the area or freed slaves (1891, I:49). Jephson, who accompanied the Stanley/Emin Pasha relief expedition and spent a number of months alone with Emin and his followers, reports (1890:48) that most of Emin's soldiers in the South did not want to accom-
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Emin to the coast because, though they were called 'Sudanese', they were really recruited from southern tribes — Dinka, Madi, Bari, Azande, Bongo, Makaraka, Mangbetu, Moru and others. The situation among Emin's followers in Uganda was similar. Furley (1959:316), for instance, reports that in their camps in the 1890s there were 10 camp followers — one can assume not mother-tongue colloquial Arabic speakers — for every soldier, and the soldiers themselves would not all have been native colloquial Arabic speakers. The ratios can be judged with some accuracy for the Sudanese serving the Germans in Tanganyika, from figures found in the German Reichstag Report of 1897-98 {Stenographische Berichte, pp. 248-49), which contains basic statistics on the colonial police and army forces; these are divided between Bantu and Sudanese troops, and the Sudanese are divided in turn into various subgroups.11 As of April 1898 there were 762 Sudanese troops, 466 soldiers, and 296 police. The soldiers were divided into 14 companies and the police were stationed around 13 different regions. In the preceding year 126 Sudanese had died, deserted, or (the large majority) been discharged, ostensibly because they were weary of service, though more likely because the German administration feared that a rebellion by the Sudanese in Uganda, begun in 1897, would spread into their own territory. A breakdown is given of the 762 Sudanese troops according to 50 different groups, only some of which clearly correspond to known ethnic or linguistic entities, and some of which would allow overlap with other groups in the count. I could identify about 35 of the groups, though the largest, termed "Sudanese" (= 134), is too general to ascertain what language they spoke. Subtracting this from the total, one is left with 628. Of these, 11 groups can be positively identified as possibly having a good command of colloquial Arabic. It is in fact unlikely, however, that all would have known Arabic well. Nubi clans are reckoned patrilineally according to tribal origin, so to be called a "Jaali" (an Arabic tribe), for instance, one would have needed only to have a "Jaali" father or grandfather. Nothing can be directly inferred about the language competence of the individual. Of the appellations used in the report, the following are all groups from northern Sudan or from Arabic countries: Nubians (= 107), Jaali (Ja'aliin, a northern Sudan Arab tribe, 19), Dagalani (?Dongola Nubians, 5), Barbarani (?from the city of Berber in n. Sudan, 7), Dongolani (Dongola Nubians, 3), Abbadi (Abbaabda, an Arabicized Beja group, 1), Chami (Shami, from Syria/Damascus, 1), Arabs (18), Turks (6), Kurds (2), and Syrians (1): The subtotal of these is 170, or 27% of the total (of
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628). This means that only 27% of the troops at most are likely to have had a good command of Arabic. When one recalls that each soldier had a household of 5-10 followers, most of whom would have been from the southern Sudan, with some perhaps from East Africa, the percentage of fluent Arabic speakers falls well below 10%. Allowing, conservatively, 5 followers for every soldier, 628 x 5 = 3140 + 628 = 3768, the percentage of potential Arabic speakers falls to 4.5%. If the Tanganyika situation is representative of that in Britishcontrolled East Africa, one can understand that post-creolizing processes would have been virtually nonexistent. 3.3. Social structure in the southern Sudan Junker presents evidence for an emerging tripartite social structure in the South by 1885. His best evidence pertains to the better-documented Egyptian government-controlled areas, though there is some indication that the situa tion was mirrored in other areas as well. At the bottom were local groups who had only transitory contact with the government camps and traders — at best brief trading exchanges or employment as porters, at worst victimization at the hands of a plundering expedition. At the top were the northerners, Sudanese, Egyptian, and Nubian officers and the northern traders who had managed to remain in the South. In the middle were the southern soldiers, whether born in the camps or recruited from the indigenous population. On the one hand they distanced themselves from the southern villagers, a process observed by Baker as early as 1864: All the best slave hunters, and the boldest and most energetic scoundrels were the negroes who had at one time themselves been kidnapped. These fellows aped a great and ridiculous importance. On the march they would seldom condescend to carry their own gun; a little slave boy invariably attended to his master, keeping close to his heels, and trotting along on foot during a long march, carrying a musket much longer than himself; a woman generally carried a basket with a cooking pot and a gourd of water and provisions, while a hired native carried the soldier's change of clothes and ox-hide upon which he slept. Thus the man who had been kidnapped became the kidnapper and the slave became the master... (Baker, quoted in Bradnum 1969:236)
On the other hand, according to Junker there was a tension between the northerners in the South and the southern black troops. He contends that the northerners tended to eschew the company of southerners, even if they were
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their own soldiers, and that the southerners in turn got along most easily with officers of black origin (1891, I:543), for instance those from the Nuba Hills (I:340, 356). This point is further substantiated by Gessi (1892:429), who observed that "during the war [against Sulaiman; see §1.2] we had clear proofs that it was the Arabs and not the natives who revolted... the negroes helped the Egyptian government." Although Gessi betrays an open anti-northern bias, his observation does bear witness to an Arab-southern Sudanese division. Tensions were greatest between the southern troops and lower ranking Nubians (Junker 1891, I:543, III:427, Emin/J. 180, 182, 190), particularly after the closing of the South to northerners and the repression of the slave trade (III:136; see Jephson 1890:110 for further evidence). In non-government-controlled areas Junker reports (1888:33) that, early on in the development of the network of trading camps, southerners living along the transport network joined, or were forced to join, the camps, forming an army (see (2) B.iv) which became the core of Sulaiman's troops (see n. 5 above), as well as participating in the Mahdist invasion of the South (Junker 1888:33, Emin/J. 1888:196, 199, 208). Junker observes (1888:33) that these were a "terror to the free indigenous groups" (cf. the Baker quote above). But Emin also reports (185, 208) that southerners in the army of the Mahdist leader in the South, Karamallah, found him excessively strict and fled his service. In 1884-85 there were at least two mutinies by southern troops in Mahdist employ in the South (Collins 1962:47). Here too evidence suggests a class of southerners distinct from both the local groups and the ruling elite. Junker's three-class analysis of southern society finds confirmation in the cleavages that became evident during the Mahdist invasion of the South. The indigenous population rose against the government forces, though they generally did not work in close alliance with the Mahdists (Junker 1888:145, 165 n. 2, 1891, III:458), and frequently fought them as well (Collins 1962:73, 75, 83, 114, 133). Aside from those who were officers of the Egyptian government, though even here there were exceptions, the Nubians and Arabs supported the Mahdists (Junker 1891, III:459, Jephson 1890:283). The south ern troops in government employ strongly opposed the Mahdists (Junker 1891, III:427, 478) and frequently had to fight the indigenous population as well. Irregular southern soldiers tended to change their loyalty according to the exigencies of the situation, sometimes supporting the government (Junker 1888:73, Emin/J. 214) or the Mahdists (Emin/J. 199, 205), sometimes joining
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the local groups against either (Emin/J. 185, 204, 220), and sometimes estab lishing their own local areas of control (Collins 1962:71). The three-cornered fight among indigenous groups, Mahdists/Northerners, and southern govern ment troops reflected three basic divisions in southern society. 3.4. Emergence of a / Four factors are frequently, if not always, relevant to the development of a /: speakers of diverse languages must be (i) mixed together (Whinnom 1971) and (ii) in daily contact, and (iii) either this mixture occurs in the presence of a dominant people using another language (the European-based creoles) or at least none of the languages of the various groups has a 'prestige' status and another language is available as the prestige model (Lubumbashi Swahili — Polomé 1968:14, Tok Pisin — Stoller 1979:75). Finally, (iv) the prestige target either cannot be learned by the subordinate groups, for what ever reason (when the prestige language is the language of the superordinate group), or, with the acquiescence of the superordinate group, a simplified version of a more complex variety becomes established.12 I now examine these points relative to the emergence of Sudanic / Arabic. These four factors obtained in the traders'/government camps that facili tated the emergence of a Sudanic Arabic-based /. First, the soldiers in the southern camps, as noted above, quickly gathered a slave and soldier popula tion taken from various southern ethnic groups. Many intermarriages in the camps would have been intertribal, a factor reported to favor creolization (Mahmud 1983; Polomé 1983:130 on Lubumbashi Swahili). Secondly, the contact among the different groups within the camps was regular. It had to be, for in daily life the camps were largely cut off from the local populations. The traders were universally hated by the southern tribes, even if alliances with local groups were regularly formed to further the activities of the traders and the local chiefs. Intensity of contact is further indicated by the presence of female slaves — male slaves more often being sent north for further exportation — who often became the wives of the northern soldiers. Nearly all writers remark on the large number of wives among the camp soldiers. Grant, for example, describing a seasonal trading camp at Faloro in northern Uganda (1864:332), reports that female slaves far outnumbered males, and Stanley, describing the situation over 25 years later (1890:136), writes that some of Emin's officers
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had between 18 and 100 women, children, and servants working in their homes. The women slaves had an important domestic function. Casati (1891, I:267) observes that they were the effective household heads, a situation Saghayroon reports as continuing among the East African Nubi (1981:86). When traveling, the government troops of the South never went without their wives and servants (Junker 1891, II:216, 254). The male offspring of these marriages were integrated into the socioeconomic milieu as soldiers, soon numbering as many as the northerners themselves (see §3.2 above). The slaves, concubines, and their offspring would undoubtedly have continued to speak a southern Sudanese language, though at the same time a language developed, the / Arabic, which would have been used between the different groups. Thirdly, the language of the dominant group was Arabic (§3.2). Finally, the question has to be posed why a / Arabic rather than a colloquial Arabic dialect developed in the South. This brings us to the fourth point, whether or not it was possible for colloquial Arabic to be learned. The answer is no, for demographic and social reasons. In the camps (traders', later government) a mixed population emerged which by 1880 is reported in many places to be roughly on the order of 10:1 in favor of native southerners vs. northerners, a large preponderance of non-colloquial-Arabic speakers. Fur ther hampering the acquisition of a colloquial Arabic dialect was the exist ence of a social stratification separating southerners from the northerners (see §3.3 above). Moreover, the important domestic role of southern women would have meant that the first language learned by children was either an indigenous language or a nonstandard form of Arabic spoken by the women and their offspring, or both. The reason for the emergence and stabilization of Sudanic / Arabic is to be sought in the crystallization of a class of southern ers who no longer belonged to indigenous southern groups, but who were also not part of the ruling northern elite. Parallels with the early development of the Atlantic creoles on the West African coast (Hancock 1986) are important, perhaps crucial. In both places the emergence of a stable / coincided with the formation of a social class that stood between an indigenous population and a dominant class. On the West African coast these were the creoles, who had a position between the whites and the African majority. In the 19thcentury southern Sudan the new class comprised the soldiers of the traders and the Egyptian government who had a station between the northern Arabs and Nile Nubians, on the one hand, and the surrounding African groups on the
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other. What I would hypothesize, then, is that for both the creoles and the southern Sudanese soldiers, the / was an expression of social class. 3.5. Language use in the 19th-century South Amidst all the figures and descriptions of life in 19th-century southern Sudan, it is difficult to determine exactly what languages/dialects were spoken by whom. Outside of the trading camps it appears that what little Arabic was used was restricted to some of the chiefs (Saghayroon 1981:4). In describing his travels in Equatoria, Casati, for example, reports on numerous occasions (1891, I:102, 144, 149, 196) conversations with local inhabitants in African languages, but none in Arabic, and he emphasizes the language and cultural differences between southerners and Arabs (1891, I:263). Both Schweinfurth and Junker emphasize the role of translators (Arabic-southern Sudanese languages) in their travels. Junker never traveled without translators for the local languages. As an extreme example, Jephson (1890:406), traveling south of Equatoria province, describes one chain of translation he needed to speak to a Munyoro chief that went from Swahili to Arabic to Alur to Lunyoro (and back). Within the camps both Arabic and local languages were used. Casati (1891, I:58) notes that among the southern soldiers divisions ran along ethnic lines, and Junker (1891, I:303) reports that no officer of the Egyptian govern ment would have marched against 'rebellious' southerners with a contingent composed solely of troops from one ethnic group, the danger of insubordina tion from a homogeneous group being too great. Junker further writes (1891, I:315) of large government caravans divided into discrete groups of Bari, Moru, Kakwa, Nubians, and others, and their wives and servants arranged "partly according to tribe, partly according to where their men were in the caravan". Ethnically-based divisions and solidarities such as the ones repre sented in these reports were no doubt symbolized inter alia by language differences (see also Jephson, cited in Stanley 1890:134). Crabtree (1913: 155) notes that among the East African Nubi there could always be found a speaker of any of the languages of the southern Sudan.13 Arabic was of course also important. Gordon, observing the traders' camps in Equatoria in 1875, wrote, "no nation could uproot Egypt from these lands even if they possessed them. Arabic [what variety is not stated] must be the language of these countries" (letter quoted in Gray 1961:113), and
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Mahmud reports (1983:13) that among Emin's southern soldiers who entered Uganda with him were those who spoke only Arabic. One reason for a mutiny by the Sudanese troops in Uganda in 1897 was that none of the British officers could communicate with their men in Swahili or Arabic (Furley 1959:321). It would appear, then, that in the camps Arabic was an important lan guage, though it had not displaced the local languages. What forms of Arabic were used is not entirely known. Colloquial Arabic was certainly used by Arabs and many Nile Nubians, and their use of dialect features is reflected today in the many traces of frozen morphological material found in East African Nubi (Owens 1985a:250 ff.). Among the southerners, knowledge of Arabic varied from place to place. Junker (1891, I:283), for example, writing about his 1876 travels, notes that around the newly-founded (1874) government station of Lado few of the Bari had learned Arabic, whereas just across the Nile near the longer-established Gondokoro they had "acquired the vehicularly necessary Arabic words". When describing the actual Arabic used by southerners, Junker is inconsis tent. In places he speaks of "vehicular" or "indigenized" ("negrisiertes" — 1891, I:172) Sudan Arabic, and elsewhere of two Azande princesses who spoke "some Arabic" (I:505). There were also southerners who had learned fluent colloquial Arabic, both in Khartoum (I:375) and perhaps in the South as well (III:150), though reading between the lines it would appear that refer ences to "Arabic" in the South by Junker and other European observers often refers to something other than a colloquial Sudanic Arabic dialect. One report explicitly confirms this. Stanley (1890:168) relates the complaints of his Zanzabari porters, who object to being called "slaves" by Emin Pasha's troops: "...we know enough Arabic to know what they mean, bad as their slang Arabic is...". However, direct comments on the Arabic used became available only in the 20th century, these mainly from colonial officers and missionaries. Crabtree (1913:154), writing about the languages of Uganda, speaks of a "modified form of Arabic" called Nubian, noting that it forms a lingua franca of sorts along the Nile valley. Other than Muraz (see §2.2), the only actual early textual data comes from Thorburn (1924).
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Structural features
In this section I will first (§4.1) give a skeletal outline of Kenyan Nubi (KN), which will serve as a reference point for a comparative discussion of other Sudanic / Arabic varieties (§4.2) and the relationships between the / varieties, substratai languages (§4.3), and colloquial Arabic (§4.4). 4.1. sketch of Kenyan Nubi In this section I will give a skeletal outline of Kenyan Nubi (my own data). The choice of Kenyan Nubi (KN) is one of convenience: it is the bestdescribed Arabic-based / in print (Heine 1982) and the one I am most familiar with (Owens 1977). 'UN' marks examples from Uganda Nubi. 4.1.1. Phonology The phonemic inventory is given in (3). (3)
p b f v m w
t d s z n l,r
c j sh
k g
i e h
u o ,
ny y
Stress is distinctive, both lexically and grammatically; compare ína "we, us" and iná "there", amsúku "catching" and amsukú "caught". The main syllable types are CV and CVC. Sandhi phenomena are important in Nubi. East African Nubi words undergo a fair degree of alternation in fast speech. I briefly mention (nonexhaustively of course) three important phenomena here. First, VOWEL HAR MONY is a lexically-defined phenomenon. Leaving out of account a word-final vowel, a word can have only front vowels i, e or back vowels o, u; the low vowel a occurs in both contexts: tegíli "heavy", shunú "what", and áshrubul ásurubu "drink", but kábitu "write" and boyí "far", where word-final vowel does not fall under the rule. Vowel harmony is also a morphological rule. Two sets of morphemes can be distinguished. The morphemes gi- "progressive", bi- "future", and fi "at" have the form before back vowels (4a), while ta
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"of, ma "with", and na/la "to, for" have the form Ce before front vowels, Ca before a, and Co before back vowels (4b): (4)
a. fi bé "at home", fu sú "at the market" bi-jére "will run", bu-fútu "will pass" b. te bé "of home", ta rági "of a man", to sunú "of what"
This is more typical of UN than of KN. In close juncture a high vowel i, u of a morpheme-final CV syllable tends to be lost: (5)
gi ásadu→ gásadu "is asking", bi ágderi→ bágderi "will be able", bu-dugu íta → budugíta "you will be hit"
Before pronoun objects, final high vowels of verbs tend to be dropped, with the stress of the pronoun (always initial) remaining on the "new" syllable. In disyllabic verb stems the lexical stress of the verb is lost; in tri- or more syllabic stems the stem stress becomes secondary. (6) bu-dugú íta → bu-dugíta "will hit you" ásadu úmwon → ásadúmwon "asked them" gi-nadi ítakum → gi-nadítakum "are calling you (pl.)" Similar rules apply to further combinations with pronouns (e.g. preposition + pronoun, as in na íta → néyta "to you"). 4.1.2. Morphology In the verbal noun, the penultimate syllable is stressed, as in áshrubu "drink": ashrúbu "drinking", jére "run" : jére "running". The most significant deriva tional process is compounding. Compounds are syntactically similar to in alienable related nouns, though ta " o f can never occur between the nouns in a compound, as it can in a sequence of nouns, and in some compounds the first noun may lose its secondary stress; examples are mamá arús "bride", waja rás "headache", and gálam híbiri "pen". A predicative adjective (used only as a finite predicate) is formed from a transitive verb by the addition of ma-, e.g. séretu "tear" : maséretu "torn". Reduplication in Nubi has an intensive or distributive meaning; many, though not all, verbs can be reduplicated, and other word classes allow reduplication on a less regular basis. Examples are given in (7):
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gátagáta "cut in pieces", kubu "spill" : kubkub "spill carelessly", jérejére "run all over", kurukum "yellow" : kúrukumkúrukum "dark yellow", guwóm guwóm "very fast" (UN).
The verb has the following structure: (8)
ANT
FUT
PROG (stem)
(kán) (bi) (gi) úwo áshrubu "he drank", úwo ma bi-gi-ashrubu "he won't be drinking", kán úwo bi-áshrubu "he would have drunk". The sequence is as stated, bi and gi are prefixes, while kan can occur before the subject. All combinations of prefixes + stem occur. Subject + bare stem = past, kán + bi = counterfactual. The stem has a single segmental form. The imperative is the bare stem (+ kum pl.): rúwa "go!", rúwa- "go (pl.)!". The negative imperative consists of máta(-kum) + stem, as in mata(kum) rúwa "don't (pl.) run!", or mata + V-k in pl., as in máta ágilib-kum "don't turn (pl.)!". 4.1.3. Clause structure The canonical clause structure is Adv S V O Adv. The basic typology is SVO; adverbial elements (time, place, manner) occur freely initially or, more com monly, at the end of the clause. A very few verbs allow SVOO (wedí "give, send", nadí "call, name"), and a larger number allow SVOAdj (e.g. so "make into something"). Generally an IO is marked by lalna. (9)
a. Kásulu gumásh dé nedíf. wash clothes the clean "Wash those clothes clean." b. Úwo wedí ána ája dé or Wedí he gave me thing the gave "He gave me that thing."
aja thing
dé na ána. the to me
The optative is formed with ke(de) "let, should" (UN also kelé): (10) a. Ké ítakum rúwa. let you/pl go "You (pl.) should go." b. Kelé gusú. let looked "Let it be looked for." (UN)
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An unspecified subject is indicated by means of a verb stressed on the final syllable with the subject deleted. This is generally translated as a passive, though intransitives occur as well: (11) a.
Úmwon gi-jere "they are running" : gi-jeré "someone is run ning". b. Adurb ína iná kamán ína sídu géliba ténna. shot us there again we closed hearts our "We were attacked, but we dug ourselves in." (UN)
Equational sentences have a zero verb in the present and kan in the past: (12) a. b.
úwo tájirilmálim. "he is rich/a teacher." úwo kán tájirilmálim. "He was rich/a teacher."
Existential sentences are marked by fi. This is used with all locative predi cates, and with a VN marked by the preposition fi it signals an action occurring at the time of speaking: (13) a.
Úwo fi fi bé/iná. he exist at home/there "He is at home/there." b. Bagará fí na ana. cows exist at me "I have cattle." c. Uwofi fi ashrúbu. he exist at drinking "He is drinking (right now)."
There also exists a "contingent be", which either represents a state of affairs as temporary or conveys an element of speaker subjectivity to the statement. (14) Úwo tájiri. "He is rich." vs. Úwo kún tájiri. "He is temporarily rich/ appears (to me) to be rich." Besides the use of existential sentences to indicate possession (second ex ample), there is a morphological verb "have", éndiléndis(i): (15) Úwo bi-éndi mótoka. he FUT-have car "He will have a car."
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The most important FOCUS construction consists of a left-topicalized constituent followed by the morpheme yd. This morpheme can in principle mark any constituent in any part of the sentence (one per major S), and used alone it serves as a presentative locative (in variation with the common yadál yadé). (16) a. Nyerekú fi fi skul yadá. child exist at school "The child is at the school right there." b. Úw wósul yá/yadá. he arrived "Here he has arrived." (UN) Ana biyo yd tinén. I
bought FOCUS
two
"I sold/bought TWO." As a focus marker the ya-marked constituent is normally S-initial, and any major constituent, including the verb, can be topicalized with yd. S-initial Q markers are generally marked by yd (focused constituent is in boldface): (17) a. Kátifu wáraga yá mdriya dé so. write letter FOCUS wife the did "Write a letter is what my wife did." b. Mára táki dé bará yá ána áj. wife your the only FOCUS I want "It is only your wife whom I want." Munú yd gi-já? who
FOCUS
PROG-come
"Who is coming?" Some DEPENDENT CLAUSE MARKERS are adverbial — báda "after", bakán "when", láman/náman/ládi "up to", and mishán/misén "because" — and one is conditional: kán "if. (18) a. Fi bakán dé ína dúrubu ládi ína ámurugu járman. at place the we shot until we removed Germans "At that place we attacked until we removed the Germans." (UN)
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úmwon ásuma kúra gi-kóre bumára dé they heard feet PROG-run much DEF jére. ran they heard our footsteps coming loud, they fled." (UN)
RELATIVE CLAUSES consist of allab + S. The markers allab are optional (though they usually occur). The DO extraction site is optionally marked by a resumptive pro, the locative site by fógo,14 and a definite relative clause is usually closed by dé.
(19) a.
Kéli (al) gi-gén jám séderi dé tayí. dog (that) PROG-stay near tree DEF mine "The dog which is sitting next to the tree is mine." (UN) b. bagara al íta áyinu (úwo) dé cow which you saw (it) this "the cow which you saw" c. ká ø ána kán kéytu gumás tayí fógo yá iná. had sewn clothes mine in-it FOCUS there place ø I "The place where I had sewn my clothes is over there."
The NOUN CLAUSE MARKERS are ø, zalja (gal), gal, kélkedé (after verbs of wishing and kútu "make"). (20) a. Ana árufu za gal kalám táki batál. I know that word your bad "I know that what you say is bad." b. Ana asuma min sabí tayí za (gal) azól nade I heard from friend mine that man that lísa má já. still not come "I heard from my friend that that man didn't come yet." c. Kalám al kútu anás náde ké jére bára áwaja. word whi