Atlas of Pidgin and Creole Language Structures Online

1. Introduction ⇫ ¶

Most of the population of the Republic of Vanuatu (estimated 218,000, July 2009) have some fluency in Bislama. It is used as a lingua franca, and increasingly as a first language, especially in urban centres (Port Vila, Efate and Luganville, Santo). The name of the language is variably pronounced /ˈbislama/ and /ˈbiʃlama/ in the language itself. An anglicized pronunciation may involve stress shift: /bɪˈslɑmə/. Vanuatu is an archipelago of more than 80 islands located in the south-west Pacific. Many Ni-Vanuatu people live and work in Australia and New Zealand, permanently or seasonally. The c. 80–100 vernacular languages of Vanuatu mainly fall into the Eastern Oceanic family; there are some Polynesian outliers in the central and southern islands. Vanuatu became independent in 1980. Before that, it was jointly administered as a colony by both Britain and France (and was known then as the New Hebrides).

2. Sociohistorical background ⇫ ¶

Archaeological evidence suggests that Vanuatu has been settled since c. 3200 BP. The region is characterized by extensive linguistic diversity; it is likely that during the history of Vanuatu some local languages have achieved lingua franca status in specific regions. It is not known how much these putative lingue franche were restructured or were distinctive by virtue of contact-induced change. Another pattern may have been extensive individual multilingualism. Both scenarios are found in Vanuatu today.

     First recorded contact of Ni-Vanuatu people with Europeans was in 1606 with the voyage of Pedro Fernández de Quirós, a Portuguese navigator who was sailing under a Spanish flag and who sent a boat ashore on Sakau Island off the north east coast. De Quirós’ trip was followed in 1769 by Louis-Antoine de Bougainville’s voyage. James Cook charted most of the Vanuatu archipelago in six weeks between 18 July and 31 August, 1772 and dubbed the islands the New Hebrides; this is what the islands were known as during the colonial period. Missionaries arrived in the region for long-term settlement in the 19th century, and it was probably a London Missionary Society ship that started the sandalwood trading rush in 1853. This lasted until the sandalwood was exhausted in 1865. Much of the external trade during the early and mid-1800s was with whalers and traders from China including those interested in the biche de mer ‘sea cucumber’, from which the language Bislama derives its name. By the end of the 1860s, ships recruiting labourers for plantation work in the south-west Pacific (mainly what is now Australia, Fiji, New Caledonia, and Samoa) were frequenting the islands of Vanuatu. Recruits were mainly young men between 15 and 35, though a number of women also signed on for three years’ work. The number of women is estimated at approximately 6-10% throughout Melanesia. Some labourers may have been effectively kidnapped, or “blackbirded” as the practice was known. The labour trade had a significant impact on the demographics of Vanuatu. Between 1870 and 1880 alone, 25,358 young men and women (out of a population of c. 100,000 at that time) left. Simultaneously, the islands experienced significant depopulation due to introduced diseases. Workers on the plantations generally returned to Vanuatu after their contracts were up, and with them, they brought back material culture and the Pidgin English spoken on the plantations in northern Queensland. This ultimately developed into the Bislama spoken today. For many years, especially in outer islands, Bislama carried connotations of roughness or urban savvy; it could be seen as inappropriate for women to use the language.

     Colonial administration of the islands was shared by the British and the French from 1906 to 1980 under a Joint Condominium government. During the Second World War, Vanuatu was an important staging post for the allied war in the South Pacific. Over 250,000 American troops (plus smaller numbers of New Zealanders and other Allies) passed through or were stationed in Vanuatu.

     Since independence, Vanuatu has had a stable democracy and a growing economy, but the per capita GDP remains quite low. A subsistence lifestyle continues to be typical in most islands. Exports are largely agricultural. Tourism, fishing, and financial services are important sectors of the economy.

     More detailed discussion of the history outlined here can be found in Clark (1979-1980), Crowley (1990), and Meyerhoff (2000a, on which I have drawn for this section and where full references can be found).

3. Sociolinguistic situation ⇫ ¶

Bislama is one of three official languages in Vanuatu, alongside English and French. The Constitution recognizes it as national language (with the proviso that it may, in theory, be replaced by any other autochthonous vernacular). A legacy of the colonial Joint Condominium is that families today must choose either French or English as the medium of education (in some areas, it is Hobson’s choice as there may be only one operative school). Some teaching in vernacular languages takes place in the first year or primary. There has been some effort to introduce basic education in Bislama in the urban centres, where it is the only L1 for many children, but there is considerable resistance to this because many people still perceive it to be “bad English”.

     Bislama is widely used in everyday life in Vanuatu. It is broadcast on national and private radio stations, used for some news reports on television, and articles (sports, news and lifestyle) and editorial pieces may be written in Bislama in the Vanuatu newspapers. It is the default medium of communication between people from different islands in Vanuatu. The Bible’s Old and New Testaments (with Psalms) have been translated into Bislama. There are published instructional materials (popular and more serious teaching materials) as well as a dictionary and grammar of the language.

     There is no standardized form of Bislama. The Vanuatu Literacy Council proposed a standard orthography in the 1990s, but this was not widely adopted. The orthographic conventions used by the Bible translation team are effectively the only written standard, but there is considerable variability in how Bislama is written and spoken. There are regional influences in the pronunciation, e.g. insertion of epenthetic vowels in consonant clusters by speakers from some of the north-eastern islands, prosodic features (often described as “pulling”) associated with speakers from Tanna, more or less prenasalization of intervocalic stops, presence or absence of word-initial /h/, devoicing of syllable-initial and final stops, etc. Some of these may be reflected in written representations of the language. In addition, perceptions about the structure of the language emerge in writing, e.g. the particle i (see §6) is a prosodic clitic and is often written attached to either a preceding pronoun (hemi instead of standard hem i) or a following verb (istap instead of standard i stap).

There has been no systematic published account of the spoken regional variation in Bislama. There is some anecdotal evidence that regional variation extends beyond pronunciation, e.g. the extent to which certain complementizers are used productively to introduce all subordinate clauses, or the use of se as a main verb in copular constructions. There is some lexical variation; this may be a reflex of an individual’s primary language of education, or it may reflect which colonial language was more dominant in a particular area.

Use of Bislama continues to spread, and some speakers of vernacular languages perceive it to be a threat to the vitality of their home language.

4. Phonology ⇫ ¶

The phonology and phonotactics of Bislama are described in Crowley (2004). Crowley says that there are only five phonemic vowels (see Table 1). While this is fundamentally correct, it is worth noting that quite a few speakers systematically distinguish tense and lax high front vowels in at least the pair [sit] ‘sheet’ and [sɪt] ‘shit’.

Diphthongs with rising offglides are /ai/, /oi/, /ei/ and /au/ (conventionally written <ae>, <oe>, <ei> and <ao>, e.g. klaem [klaim] ‘climb’, noes [nois] ‘noise’, plei [plei] ‘play’, nao [nau] ‘now’). Vowel combinations with open off-glides are /ua/, /oa/, /ia/, and /ea/, as in pua ‘poor’, loa ‘law’, bia ‘beer’, and wea ‘where’. The spelling of these is essentially phonemic. Word-finally there is variation between pure (monophthong) vowels and vowels with off-glides only with central vowels, e.g. me ~ mei ‘May’, mo ~ moa ‘more’, we ~ wea ‘where’, blo ~ blou ‘blow’. It is not entirely clear what the phonemic status of [oa] and [ea] is. Like [ua] and [ia] (which do not alternate with monophthong variants), they seem to head two syllables, while [ai] etc. head only one, and hence are diphthongs. Bislama also has two semi-vowels: [j] and [w].

     Table 2 shows the phonemic consonants. In addition, there is a glottal fricative [h].

Crowley (2004) shows a voiceless palatal stop /c/ (written <j>), but this seems to be an error. In earlier work (Crowley, no date), he is clear that <j> represents a palatal affricate and this is my own observation.

     The /r/ phoneme may be realized as a tap (more common) or a trill. Bislama derives mainly from non-rhotic varieties of English and this is reflected in the realization of, e.g. brata ‘brother’, neva ‘never’, tanem ‘turn’.

     Bislama uses a roughly phonemic orthography (but see §3).

5. Noun phrase ⇫ ¶

Bislama has no nominal gender system. It marks plurality with the determiner ol before the head noun (cf. (1)). A minority of speakers, mainly in urban centres, and perhaps only those with high English proficiency, may irregularly use a noun with plural suffix -s, with or without a Bislama determiner (cf. (2) and (3)). Nouns (including heavy NPs) may be followed by a postposed particle ia (4) which marks definiteness or specificity and can be used as a demonstrative (more research needs to be done on this; I use the abbreviation def in all examples simply in the interests of brevity).

Indefinite nouns occur with wan or sam (singular and plural respectively).

Bislama has a fairly typical Oceanic pronominal system, distinguishing dual and trial as well as singular and plural. Pronouns are free forms (i.e. can be used in isolation to answer a question such as ‘Who brought the nice cake?’ Mifala ‘We did; Us’). Hem (3sg) is gender-neutral. Pronouns can be focused by postposing nomo ‘only’ or wan ‘one’ (Bislama does not have a cleft construction for focusing, see §8).

     Coordination of pronouns traditionally occurs with the connective wetem ‘with’, rather than the connective mo ‘and’, e.g. Mi wetem Sale i go long Aore ‘Sale and I went to Aore’, but in younger and urban speakers it is possible to hear Mi mo Sale i go long Aore. The plural pronouns may combine with a specification of some members, e.g. Mitufala wetem Sale ‘We (dual) and Sale’, i.e. ‘Sale and I’.

     The normal demonstrative pronoun is hemia (hem-ia [3sg-def]), e.g. Yu wantem kaliko ia? No, mi wantem hemia. ‘Do you want this fabric? No, I want that one.’ The interrogative wanem ‘what’ can be used in relative clauses as well, as in (5).

     Adnominal possessives are formed with a prepositional phrase blong X ‘of X’ following the noun, e.g. pikinini blong mi i gat naen yia ‘my child is nine years old’.

     Indefinite pronouns are samting ‘something’ (cf. (6), (9)), wanem ‘what’ (cf. (5)) and (wan/sam) man ‘someone; people’ (cf. (7) and (8)). There are no negative polarity forms in traditional Bislama, but some speakers (perhaps those with higher English proficiency) may use enibodi in the scope of negation.

Cardinal (wan, tu tri, fo, faev [...]) and ordinal numerals (fas, seken, ted [...]) and adjectives precede the head noun in a complex NP (cf. (10)); PPs and relative clauses follow the head noun (cf.(11), (4b)). When used attributively numerals combine with the adjectival ending -fala. See §7 for predicative adjectives.

Adjectives are invariant. Comparatives and superlatives of most adjectives are expressed with a subordinate clause or PP, see §8.

6. Verb phrase ⇫ ¶

6.1 Verbal auxiliaries

Bislama has a small number of TAM particles that mark tense, aspect, and mood. They are shown in Table 4 and exemplified in (12)–(16). Another grammatical element preceding the verb is the agreement marker i/oli (3sg/3pl) (see, e.g., (13) and (27)).

In addition, there are several other verbs which may combine directly with a main verb to express desire (wantem ‘want’), inception of an action (stat ‘start’), direction (go and kam), and politeness (traem ‘try’).

These have not been included in Table 4 as auxiliaries because (i) a second agreement marker between the two verbs is possible (i.e. i wantem i droem) and (ii) it is possible to negate the second verb only (note that (ii) requires a biclausal construction with two sets of agreement, as in (19)). With the true auxiliaries in Table 4 negation takes both the auxiliary and main verb in its scope. Indeed, traem as a politeness marker must remain outside the scope of negation. Under the scope of negation it reverts to its lexical meaning.

6.2 Verbal negation

The negatives no (examples (19)–(21) above) and neva (22) occur between subject-verb agreement and the auxiliary/main verb.

In imperatives (where there is no agreement, see (20) and (21)), the negative constituent is clause initial.

6.3. Copular sentences

There is no universally-used copula verb in Bislama, but se appears to be grammaticalizing as a copula in some parts of the country (it seems to be less common in the north). Crowley (1989) suggests that this is an extension from use of se as a complementizer, reinforced and influenced by the French presentational c’est /sɛ/.

     The most typical strategy for expressing copular relations is through direct predication of some property. The complement can be modified with verbal markers (tense, aspect, mood auxiliaries).

Presentational sentences with hemia ‘this; that’ subjects often do not have i at the head of the complement (26). However, this is certainly possible (example (27) is from a vox pop report that seems to be verbatim transcription), and there is a related strong focus construction as in (28) that doubles hemia with a canonical subject and agreement before the predicate. More research is needed into the relationship between and different discourse functions of (26)–(28).

7. Simple sentences ⇫ ¶

Basic word order in main and subordinate clauses in Bislama is SVO. All arguments may be omitted: The primary constraint on deletion for subjects is person and number of the referent (this corresponds to informativeness of subject-verb agreement, Meyerhoff 2000b). For objects, the most important constraint is the discourse salience of the referent (more recently mentioned referents are more likely to be omitted, Meyerhoff 2003a). It is possible to front arguments for focus purposes: Either a gap in the basic sentence (cf. (29)) or a resumptive pronoun (cf. em in (30)) is possible when a constituent has been fronted.

Interrogatives do not normally use movement to the front (cf. (31)). A moved interrogative argument is pragmatically loaded and sounds abrupt, especially if the moved argument is a direct object. Moving the adjunct olsem wanem (as in (32)) is less inherently charged than a moved direct object, but (32) occurred in a string of queries which emphasized its challenging tone.

Existential sentences use the verb gat ‘have’, and there is no overt expletive subject (see (30) and (32)).

     Ditransitive verbs may use either a prepositional object (33) or a double object construction (34). The PP is much more common in my spoken corpus (example (34) is from court cross-examination). Because Bislama allows arguments to be omitted in discourse, the goal of the verb is often unexpressed (35). Less frequently the direct object is more salient and this is omitted (36).

Predicates may be intransitive, transitive or ditransitive. As noted in §5, adjectives such as gud ‘good’, red ‘red’ and laki ‘lucky, fortunate’ may be used adjectively modifying nouns, or as predicates, e.g. pepa we yu wantem i red ‘the paper you want is red’. Predicative adjectives may also be suffixed with -wan, e.g. redwan ‘red’.

8. Complex sentences and comparatives ⇫ ¶

The most common complementizer is se (< English say and French c’est, Crowley 1989). We (< English where) also introduces finite subordinate clauses (Crowley 1990: 330–338) and is the default relativizer. Olsem (‘like’ < English all the same) may be used with some verbs (Meyerhoff 2008). Nonfinite clauses are introduced with blong (< English belong).

     Comparatives and superlatives are expressed with bitim ‘beat’. Comparative constructions with bitim ‘beat’ are unattested until the latter half of the 20th century; Crowley (1990: 328) cites work by Guy (1975) where the comparison with bitim is clearly biclausal (bitim occurs with i, see examples (37) and (38)) but the grammaticalization of bitim as a preposition is occurring rapidly and it is perfectly acceptable now in its bare form (as in (39) and (40)).

There are no cleft constructions in Bislama. Topicalization is via fronting (see §7).

9. Reduplication ⇫ ¶

Reduplication in Bislama signals a number of functions, which can be subsumed under a general notion of “augmentative” (Meyerhoff 2003b). A plural subject NP may trigger reduplication on the verb, but verb reduplication also may signal repetition of, or intensity of, the activity. Reduplication on an adjective usually signals intensification. An example of verb and adjective reduplication is katkatem smolsmol [red.cut red.small] meaning ‘chop finely; mince’, i.e. cut repeatedly, until very small. Some lexical reduplication exists, e.g. kakae ‘food’ and singsing ‘sing; a song’.

     Productive reduplication targets the first syllable of a word and reduplicates onset, nucleus, and coda as a new syllable on the left edge of the word, e.g. faerap ‘pop’ > faefaerap ‘crackle’; slo ‘slow’ > sloslo ‘very slowly, carefully’. Some words do not reduplicate the coda, or do so variably. Native speakers report that V-initial syllables (which are rare) are not good candidates for reduplication, e.g. askem ‘ask’ but #/*askaskem is not used to produce ‘ask repeatedly; interrogate’.

     It is possible to reduplicate words and clauses, so a frequent means of indicating that someone stayed a long time some place is to say Hem i stap (i) stap (i) stap, or to express lengthy or effortful travel, Hem i go (i) go (i) go (i) go. I have recorded up to six iterations of stap in a conversation. It seems the limits on how many times a lexical item can be reduplicated are rhetorical.

     Clausal reduplication (41) allows speakers another option for intensifying a predicate. The final reduplication can be elided leaving only the complementizer (42).