Atlas of Pidgin and Creole Language Structures Online

1. Introduction ⇫ ¶

Pidgin Hawaiian was an Austronesian-lexifier pidgin formed originally in early contact between Hawaiians and outsiders in the 1790s (Bickerton & Wilson 1987; Roberts 2005). It was spoken mostly within Hawai‘i but eventually spread in the 1820s and 1830s to Eastern Polynesia, Tonga, and California; it also contributed lexically to Eskimo pidgins in Alaska (Drechsel & Makuakane 1982; van der Voort 1997). Initially its use was limited to interaction between native Hawaiians and outsiders, but by the 1880s it had become the primary means of communication for Chinese, Portuguese, and Japanese contract labourers employed in the sugar industry. It was at this time when Pidgin Hawaiian stabilized as a language grammatically distinct from vernacular Hawaiian. Its use declined twenty years later and it became extinct in the late 20th century.

2. Sociohistorical background ⇫ ¶

Although the first instance of Hawaiian contact with Westerners occurred in 1778, sporadic and seasonal visits by Euroamerican explorers and fur traders did not commence until the late 1780s. At the time Hawai‘i served as a convenient port-of-call for resupplying ships on trans-Pacific and Arctic voyages. Though such visits were intermittent and few in number, most occurred in the same locales (primarily Kealakekua, Hawai‘i, and Waimea, Kaua‘i) and relied on a small pool of native Hawaiian and non-native interpreters (Schütz 1994). The early emergence of a small settler population of American and European non-native speakers was likely crucial to the development of linguistic conventions. The linguistic abilities of two settlers, Elliot de Castro and Archibald Campbell, are fortuitously preserved in early sources (Campbell 1816; von Chamisso 1856), which show that they spoke simplified varieties of Hawaiian unmistakably related to later Pidgin Hawaiian. In fact, the first Pidgin Hawaiian features (specifically pi mai ‘come’ and nuinui ‘a lot, many’) were recorded in 1789, barely 11 years after first contact (Martínez 1789). Many characteristic lexical features found in the later Pidgin were attested by the 1810s, suggesting considerable continuity between the earliest contacts with Westerners and the fairly stable Pidgin Hawaiian of the 1880s and 1890s.

The use of simplified, or Jargon, Hawaiian expanded in the 1810s and 1820s with the inception of the sandalwood and whaling industries. The first missionaries also learned and used features associated with later Pidgin Hawaiian in the early 1820s, as their diaries and correspondence reveal. Contact between Hawaiians and Euroamericans intensified in the 1830s and 1840s; whaling ships brought increasing numbers of foreigners to Hawaiian ports, the Hawaiian population in towns such as Honolulu began to swell as a consequence of economic dispossession, and many Hawaiians joined the crews of whaling ships as sailors. Documentary evidence shows that simplified varieties of both Hawaiian and English were spoken in Hawai‘i during this period, including a mixture of the two languages. Jarman (1838: 124) alluded to the acquisition of Hawaiian by Anglophone sailors visiting Honolulu, while Munger (1852: 63–64) recalled his own acquisition of Hawaiian aboard a whaling ship. Dana (1840: 176) recorded the use of both simplified Hawaiian (including features such as hanahana ‘work’ and mamuli as a future marker) and pidginized English by Hawaiian sailors on leave in San Diego, California. Simplified varieties of English related to later Hawai‘i Pidgin English and general Pacific Pidgin English developed alongside Pidgin Hawaiian and the first features linked to later Hawai‘i Pidgin English (zero copula and future marker by and by) were attested as early as the 1790s (Roberts 2005).

The ratification of the Reciprocity Treaty with the United States in 1876 made the exportation of sugar profitable, precipitating a large migration of contract labour. According to Reinecke (1969: 52, 55) and Takaki (1983: 45), over 37,000 Chinese entered Hawai‘i between 1877 and 1897, about 10,000 Portuguese from Madeira and the Azores arrived between 1878 and 1887, and over 200,000 Japanese immigrated between 1885 and 1924 as plantation labourers. The Hawaiian population also declined sharply throughout this period. Plantation censuses published in immigration reports show that Hawaiians made up 13.7% of the workforce in 1888, and the percentage dropped to 6.1% a decade later. By the mid-1880s, when massive importation of Japanese labour commenced, most speakers of simplified Hawaiian were likely non-native learners. It was in the last quarter of the 19th century when Pidgin Hawaiian stabilized as the prevailing contact medium.

3. Sociolinguistic situation ⇫ ¶

In the 1880s and 1890s Pidgin Hawaiian served as the primary interethnic contact medium on plantations and elsewhere. At the same time, Hawai‘i Pidgin English spread as a contact medium used by non-native speakers of English but its use was initially limited to Honolulu and other communities with large numbers of Anglophones. Gradually Hawai‘i Pidgin English began to displace Pidgin Hawaiian on plantations and by the 1910s it had largely replaced Pidgin Hawaiian as general lingua franca. Glick (1938: 41), writing of the 1870s and 1880s, noted that “Hawaiian, or perhaps more precisely, a debased form of the Hawaiian language, became the first chief medium of communication between the Chinese and other members of the plantation communities – later replaced by the fairly complete ‘Island Jargon’ or ‘pidgin English’.” Jones (1942: 96, 176) similarly noted that in the 1880s “Pidgin Hawaiian was the language of the fields, and many of the Portuguese, both men and women, became adept in its usage.”

            Criminal court records directly attest the general use of Pidgin Hawaiian prior to annexation in 1898. For example, a Japanese immigrant was beaten to death in 1892 by a German overseer at Kekaha Sugar Company (located in Waimea, Kaua‘i), and court testimony shows that the immigrant, the overseer, the German assistant manager, and the plantation doctor all used Pidgin Hawaiian in cross-ethnic conversation. In that year native Hawaiians comprised only 2.2% of the Kekaha workforce, so the general use of Pidgin Hawaiian was not due to accommodation to native speakers. Pidgin Hawaiian was a true tertiary hybrid in the sense of Whinnom (1971).

        Competition from Hawai‘i Pidgin English however led to the eventual demise of Pidgin Hawaiian. Initially, simplified English was useful only in contacts with other Anglophones and flourished in urban centres such as Honolulu. But with the rise of the prestige of English, Hawai‘i Pidgin English came to displace Pidgin Hawaiian initially in contacts with white Anglophones and later in contacts with other foreigners, probably first in Honolulu and then on plantations and in other rural areas. At the same time, the lexifier underwent decline, with most younger native Hawaiians shifting to Hawai‘i Creole English.¹ The rate at which Hawai‘i Pidgin English displaced Pidgin Hawaiian may be assessed by examining the relative proportion of these languages in reported speech recorded in court testimony. Usage of Pidgin Hawaiian held steady at around 80–90% until 1895 and then fell sharply in the following decade, with the proportion shrinking to 54% at 1900, 30% at 1905, and 18.5% at 1910. As the decline of Pidgin Hawaiian progressed, its use became more and more limited to contacts with native speakers of the lexifier – constituting in essence a return to the linguistic situation before 1876. Only a handful of Pidgin Hawaiian texts are known from the 1920s, and Pidgin Hawaiian had all but disappeared from the data by 1940. However, fieldwork by William Wilson, Larry Kimura, and others show that Pidgin Hawaiian remained in existence at least through the 1960s and 1970s. The last known speaker of Pidgin Hawaiian, Mr Tomás Quihano of Kalapana, Hawai‘i, died in the 1980s. However Pidgin Hawaiian has contributed several lexical items to Hawai‘i Pidgin English and current Hawai‘i Creole English, including kaukau ‘food, eat’ and moemoe ‘sleep’.

4. Phonology ⇫ ¶

Pidgin Hawaiian largely maintains the contrasts of its lexifier, which is notable for having one of the smallest phonemic inventories in the world (consisting of only eight consonantal and five vowel contrasts, plus vocalic length; see Table 1 for the vowels).

However, since no confirmed recordings of Pidgin Hawaiian exist, it is not known whether length was phonemic since it was seldom represented orthographically. In addition to the five monophthongal vowels, Pidgin Hawaiian had at most nine diphthongs, /iu/, /eu/, /ou/, /au/, /ei/, /oi/, /ai/, /ao/, and /ae/. Orthographic evidence shows that /ao/ and /ae/ were often merged with /au/ and /ai/, whereas /ai/ and /ei/ were occasionally reduced to monophthongs /a/ and /e/, e.g. pepeau ‘ear’ and kakuana ‘brother’ vs. pepeiao and kaikua‘ana in the lexifier. Mid vowels were also often raised (pehia ‘why, how’ vs. Hawaiian pehea).

The consonant inventory (shown in Table 2) is unusual for its exclusion of alveolar and voiced plosives and the inclusion of the glottal. Allophonic variation typically reflected first language interference, e.g. Japanese speakers would have realized /l/ as [ɽ] (represented as <r> in written sources). Glottal plosives were not phonemic in any of the substrate languages of Pidgin Hawaiian and thus were subject to reduction or replacement. They were frequently lost in medial position (e.g. pi mai ‘come’ from pi‘i mai ‘climb here’), whereas onset glottal plosives were sometimes realized as /h/ by Chinese speakers (e.g. houkou ‘you (pl.)’ and hike ‘know’ for ‘oukou and ‘ike). Since the orthography used to represent Pidgin Hawaiian in written sources rarely marked glottals and vowel length, Pidgin Hawaiian examples appearing in this survey will lack these features.

5. Noun phrase ⇫ ¶

The plural is optionally indicated by the prenominal marker mau, but usually number is unmarked and mau never occurs with quantifiers or cardinal numerals (e.g. alua moa ‘two chickens’, not *alua mau moa). Nā, the plural definite article from the lexifier, is not used in Pidgin Hawaiian.

(1)       Wau    aole     nana   kela     mau     poho          kiwi.

            1SG     NEG    see       that     PL       container   horn         

            ‘I didn’t see those bullhorn containers.’ (4CR-288/OS, 11/2/1899)²

All determiners precede nominals, which include the proximal demonstrative keia, the distal demonstrative kela, definite articles ke and ka (conditioned by the first phoneme of the noun), and indefinite articles akahi (singular) and kekahi (plural). Articles are generally optional and generic nouns are sometimes determined by the definite article. Definiteness, however, is most often indicated by kela instead of ke/ka, the latter occurring most commonly with oblique nouns contained in prepositional phrases. Ke/ka rarely determines subject nouns, and almost never agentive subjects. Kela is not restricted by the grammatical function of the noun and it also often precedes proper nouns.

Numerals and quantifiers also precede the noun. Possessive noun constructions exhibit possessum-possessor order and may optionally contain a marker for the possessor:

On rare occasion, however, possessor-possessum order may occur. Adnominal adjectives follow the noun, as (5) also shows. In place of predicate adjectives, Pidgin Hawaiian has neuter verbs that occur in verbal position and which may co-occur with tense-mood-aspect markers:

(6)       Oe       ikaika  no,       ina       oe        ikaika  oe        pimai.

            2SG     strong MOD,  if          2SG     strong 2SG     come

            ‘Are you so strong? If you’re strong, come to me.’ (5CR-126, 1/9/1893)

Like pu ‘same as’ facilitates adjectival comparison of equality, while the comparative of inequality involves its negation:

(7)       Kela     pepa    nuinui maikai aole     like      pu        kela     pepa    ia         Wainui.

            that     paper  very     good    NEG    same   as        DEF     paper  DEF     Wainui

            ‘That paper is much better than Wainui’s newspaper.’ (KNEP, 4/23/1884)

Pronouns retain the dual from the lexifer but generally eliminate the inclusive-exclusive distinction. Pronouns do not mark case distinctions (cf. 1SG wau in 8) and all are drawn from the nominative set of the lexifier, except for iaia which bears the objective/oblique inflection ia- (iā- in the lexifier). A minority of texts attributed to Chinese from the 1870s and early 1880s draw all pronouns from the objective/oblique set (1SG iawau however is an innovation in the pidgin), but these also occur regardless of grammatical function. Objective/oblique pronouns are also rarely used to mark the subjects of temporal clauses (cf. 10), and only occasionally the objects of transitives. Although possessive pronouns were commonly used prior to the stabilization of Pidgin Hawaiian, they do not form a productive part of its grammar. Instead the null possessive construction described above was used for pronominal possessors (cf. 9). There are a number of different forms used for reflexives, including suffixation of the pronoun with kino ‘body.’

(10)     Mahope    ia‘u             nana    lili,       wau     lohe     kela   wai         nuinui    walaau.

            later         1SG.obl     look    little,    1SG     hear    DEF  water    much     chatter

            ‘Then when I looked around a little, I heard the water make a lot of noise.’

            (KHPA, 4/3/1886)

6. Verb phrase ⇫ ¶

Verbs in the lexifier and the pidgin belong to three main classes: (1) agentive intransitive (usually labelled intradirective in the literature on Hawaiian), (2) stative/patientive intransitive, and (3) transitive. Verbs belonging to the second category (often called neuter in Polynesian linguistics) may indicate adjectival states as well as changes of state in Polynesian languages, in which case the patient is realized as the grammatical subject and the agent as an optional oblique phrase (Hooper 1984, Bauer 1993, Harlow 2007).³ However, in Pidgin Hawaiian neuter verbs are often reclassified as transitives (with the agentive argument realized as subject), or formally converted into transitives via the prefix hana- ‘make’:

(11)     Wau    paa      mamua            halepaahao.

            1SG     be.held            before prison

            ‘I was previously confined in prison.’ (4CR-288/OS, 11/2/1899)

(12)     Keia     keiki    liilii      paa      ka        pakeke.

            this      child    little     hold    DEF     package

            ‘This little child was holding the package.’ (5CR-1371, 4/1/1896)

(13)     Wau    hanapaa    ka     lima     Kapule,      wau  holina    no.

            1SG     hold           DEF  arm     Kapule       1SG  haul.in  MOD

            ‘I grabbed Kapule’s arm and I cried for help.’ (5CR-1188, 4/18/1892)

Pidgin Hawaiian does not have a passive construction. Direction of movement is indicated most often by postverbal modifiers mai ‘hither’, aku ‘away’, malalo ‘down’, and maluna ‘up’.

(14)     Kela     Kipau  kii        mai      kela     wahine            iaia.

            DEF     Kipau fetch    DIR     DEF     wife     3SG

            ‘Kipau brought his wife here.’ (5CR-951, 7/1/1885)

(15)     Kela     Mariano         hina    malalo,            kela     Rego    kui       no.

            DEF     Mariano         fall       down  DEF     Rego   punch MOD

            ‘Mariano fell down, Rego punched him.’ (5CR-1381, 9/16/1895)

(16)     Wau    nana   no        Akoi    pii        maluna.

            1SG     see       MOD   Akoi    climb   up

            ‘I saw Akoi climb up.’ (4CR-288/OS, 11/2/1899)

Tense/aspect in Pidgin Hawaiian (cf. Table 4) is primarily expressed optionally via adverbs, several of which are based on manawa ‘time’: kela manawa ‘then’ (past tense), keia manawa ‘now’ (present tense), and pauloa manawa ‘always, often’ (habitual aspect). Other adverbials include mamua ‘before’ (past tense and/or perfective aspect), mahope ‘later’ (future tense), and pau ‘finish’ (completive and/or perfective aspect).⁴ These may occur anywhere in the clause. Less common is the postverbal imperfective marker ana.

(17)     Pehea  pauloa   manawa   makemake  ike     Edita.

            why     all          time         want          see    Edita

            ‘Why do you always want to see Edith?’ (NK, 12/8/1888)

(18)     Ina      aole   loaa     kela     kala,      mahope oe      ike.

            if          NEG get       DEF    money   later      2SG   see

            ‘If you don’t get the money, you will be sorry.’ (1CR-1711, 10/4/1892)

(19)     Pau     noho   oe        me       Kalo?

            compl live      2SG     with    Kalo

            ‘Have you stopped living with Kalo?’ (5CR-895, 5/1/1883)

Deontic and dynamic modals in Pidgin Hawaiian are strictly preverbal: makemake (desire), hiki (ability), kuleana (permission), and pono (necessity). Pono and kuleana when negated also indicate prohibition. See Table 5 for modality expressions.

(21)     Wau    makemake    kue        Pake         hanahana  hamabuga.

            1SG     want             oppose  Chinese   make          trouble

            ‘I want to oppose the Chinese who are causing trouble.’ (HH, 2/20/1894)

(22)     Wau    aole     hiki      hele     mawaho.

            1SG     NEG    MOD   go        outside

            ‘I couldn’t go outside.’ (5CR-1414, 2/3/1897)

(23)     Kela     wahine            aole     pono    noho   malaila.

            that     woman           NEG    MOD   be.at    there

            ‘That woman shouldn’t have been there.’ (5CR-1136, 6/8/1891)

Epistemic modals however may occur variably in different positions in the clause. These include no (probability/certainty) and paha (possibility/uncertainty). The following examples illustrate how epistemic modals may occur preverbally, postverbally, or at the end of the clause:

(24)     Oe       paha    panipani         kela     wahine            au.

            2SG     MOD   have.sex          DEF     wife     1SG

            ‘Maybe you slept with my wife.’ (4CR-187/OS, 3/5/1900)

(25)     Iaia     lawe     paha    aole     paha,   aole     wau     ike.

            3SG     take     MOD   NEG    MOD   NEG    1SG     know

            ‘Maybe he took it, maybe not, I don’t know.’ (5CR-1166, 12/10/1891)

(26)     Oe       hanai    moa          paha?

            2SG     raise      chicken    MOD

            ‘Do you raise chickens, perhaps?’ (1CR-4069, 2/23/1906)

Pidgin Hawaiian utilizes a null copula for identification, attribution, possession, location, and existence in most cases, as illustrated by (27-30).

(27)     Akau   inoa     wau,    wau     noho   ma       Nawiliwili.

            Akau  name   1SG     1SG     live      LOC    Nawiliwili

            ‘Akau is my name, I live in Nawiliwili.’ (5CR-1075, 12/15/1888)

(28)     Owau  kela     alua     ipu       paka.

            1SG     that     two      pipe     tobacco

            ‘I had those two pipes.’ (5CR-772, 8/20/1880)

(29)     Awalu makou ma       kela     rumi.

            eight    1PL     LOC    DEF     room

            ‘Eight of us were in the room.’ (5CR-1228, 11/25/1892)

(30)     Nuinui            pihi      ma       kela     uwapo.

            many  fish      LOC    DEF     wharf

            ‘There’s lots of fish at the wharf.’ (KNA, 8/16/1906)

Less commonly, noho ‘sit’ indicates location and residence, as shown in (4) and (27), and loaa ‘found, obtained’ occasionally occurs in predicates of possession and existence. As for negation, Pidgin Hawaiian employs aole as the universal negator. About 40% of the time, the negator occurs between the subject and the verb, as it is in (1), (4) and (22). Otherwise it occurs in the clause-initial position, leftward of the subject (20).

7. Simple sentences ⇫ ¶

The basic constituent order in declarative and subordinate clauses is SV(O), which occurs about 90% of time in the corpus. Otherwise VS(O) (the basic order in the lexifier) is used, primarily in the case of stative/patientive verbs. Prior to the pidgin’s stabilization, VS(O) order occurred as much as 50% of the time. Most of the above examples exhibit SV(O) order; here are two VS(O) sentences with stative/patientive verbs:

(31)     Nui      loa       maka‘u           wau     kela     kanaka.

            much  very     afraid  1SG     that     person

            ‘I am very scared of that person.’ (5CR-1414, 2/3/1897)

(32)     Ina      loaa     iaia      akahi   omole, iaia      inu      no.

            if          get       3SG     INDF   bottle, 3SG     drink  MOD

            ‘If ever he gets a bottle, he would drink from it.’ (5CR-1078, 11/14/1889)

Objects in ditransitive clauses occur in theme-recipient and recipient-theme order with roughly equal frequency. Indirect objects are generally not marked.

(33)     Wau  makana   keia     upena    kela   haole.

            1SG   give          this      net         DEF  white.person

            ‘I gave this net to the white person.’ (5CR-1453, 12/4/1897)

(34)     Mahope wau  makana   kela   haku      kela     dala.

            later       1SG  give          DEF  boss       DEF    money

            ‘Then I gave the money to the boss.’ (5CR-1228, 11/25/1892)

Serial verbs, or serial-like constructions, sometimes occur to indicate direction and successful perception:

(35)     Moaka   lawe  kela     wahine  ia         Kipau  hele   ma       Koloa.

            Moaka  take  DEF     wife       DEF     Kipau go      LOC    Koloa

            ‘Moaka took Kipau’s wife away to Koloa.’ (5CR-951, 7/1/1885)

(36)     Wau    nana   Wong  See      ike       no.

            1SG     look     Wong  See      see       MOD

            ‘I spotted Wong See.’ (5CR-809, 10/6/1881)

Subjects of independent clauses are optional and may be null if there is a discourse antecedent. As mentioned above, reflexives involve either modified pronouns or the usual forms. Reciprocals also utilize unmodified pronouns in either a single clause or a pair of clauses:

(37)     Laua   huki    ka        lauoho            laua.

            3DU     pull     DEF     hair     3DU

            ‘They were pulling at each other’s hair.’ (5CR-1083, 6/17/1889)

(38)     Kalo    huhu   wau,    wau     huhu   iaia.

            Kalo    angry  1SG,    1SG     angry  3SG

            ‘Kalo and I were angry with each other.’ (5CR-895, 5/1/1883)

8. Interrogatives and focus constructions ⇫ ¶

Polar questions occasionally utilize the interrogative marker pehea in clause-initial position (cf. 39), although normally such questions are unmarked (cf. 40):

(39)     A:  Pehea   nui    opiuma?  B:   Nui      no.      A:           Pehea        piha          kela         pono?   B:        Piha    no.

                  Q       much  opium            much  MOD       Q        full   DEF  container       full     MOD

            ‘A: Was there a lot of opium? B: A lot.  A: Were the containers full? B: They were full.’

            (4CR-288/OS, 11/2/1899)

(40)     A:          Oe     ike            mamua       Lauman  puhi?            B:       Ae,       wau     ike.

                 2SG  see    before      Lauman    smoke               yes      1SG    see

            ‘A: Did you previously see Lauman smoke? B: Yes, I did.’ (4CR-288/OS, 11/2/1899)

Interrogative phrases in content questions include pehea ‘what, how, why’, mahea ‘where’, owai ‘who’, nowai/nawai ‘for whom, whose’, ehia/ahia ‘how many, how much’, hola ahia, pehea ka manawa ‘when’. Usually, they are fronted to the beginning of the clause (e.g. 41) but sometimes they occur in situ (e.g. 42).

(41)     Pehea  oe        ninau  kela     makai?

            what   2SG     ask      that     policeman      

            ‘What did you ask that policeman?’ (5CR-1188, 4/18/1892)

(42)     Hallo   aikane,            hele     mahea?

            Hello   friend, go        where

            ‘Hello friend, where are you going?’ (5CR-1273, 3/7/1894)

Objects may also be fronted for topicalization without special marking:

(43)     Kela  huli          wau     kanu   mamua    akahi     manawa.

            that   taro.top   1SG     plant   before      one        time

            ‘That taro top I planted once before.’ (5CR-1185, 8/11/1891)

Clefting constructions for both subjects and objects utilize the relative particle ka/kela mea:

(44)     Oe       ka        mea     pepehi kela     wahine            oe.

            2SG     DEF     thing   beat     DEF     wife     2SG

            ‘You’re the one who beat your wife.’ (4CR-187/OS, 3/5/1900)

(45)     Bia      no        kela     mea     maua   inu.

            beer     MOD   DEF     thing   1DU     drink

            ‘Beer is what we drank.’ (5CR-1420, 4/20/1897)

A non-pronominal subject may also be fronted with a resumptive pronoun in subject position. The following sentence conveys contrastive topic, as it directly follows a description of the corresponding actions of the keiki liilii ‘smaller child’:

(46)     Kela     keiki    nui      iaia      kiloi     pohaku           makou.

            DEF     child    big       3SG     throw  rock    1PL

            ‘As for the larger child, he threw rocks at us.’ (5CR-1371, 4/1/1896)

9. Complex sentences ⇫ ¶

The coordinating conjunctions in Pidgin Hawaiian are a ‘and’ and aka ‘but’. There are no complementizers for complement clauses, as (47)-(48) involving verbs of cognition and speaking show:

(47)     Pehea  oe        kamailio   oe      hele   moemoe?

            why     2SG     talk          2SG  go      sleep

            ‘Why did you say that you were going to sleep?’ (5CR-1219, 11/26/1892)

(48)     Wau    manao oe        kolohe kela     lio        wau.

            1SG     think   2SG     injure  DEF     horse   1SG

            ‘I think you injured my horse.’ (5CR-1186, 10/10/1892)

Adverbial clauses include those headed by kela/ka manawa ‘when’, no ka mea ‘because’, mamua ‘before’, mahope ‘after, later’, and ina ‘if’.

            Subject relative clauses exhibit zero relativizers and gaps (cf. 49), while direct object relative clauses may often utilize the relative particle ka/kela mea ‘the thing’ (e.g. 51–52):

(50)      Oe       ike     kela    dala       kela    pukiki             poina     maluna    kela    pahu?

            2SG    see    DEF   money   DEF   Portuguese    forget    upon       DEF   box

            ‘Did you see the money the Portuguese left on the box?’ (1CR-4453, 7/17/1908)