The Tok Pisin’ text analysis

Before we will turn to the texts analysis it is important to consider Mühlhäusler’s stages of development of pidgins, which have key value for the further analysis in the context of this paper.

For the basis of following analysis is taken the theory by Peter Mühlhäusler (see Figure 2). According to his developmental dimension of Tok Pisin’s history there are found the language forms in their increasing linguistic complexity (grammaticalized forms), and by-tern of restructuring dimension the language becomes kind of the superstrate language: such as English in the case of Tok Pisin (Mühlhäusler 1986:8; 2003:9). There were illustrated the different forms found along these two dimensions with an example made by Mühlhäusler:

English: On this land there are plenty of roads which allow people to go into the interior and produce goods which help to develop our country (Mühlhäusler 2003:9).

In the different stages of development of Tok Pisin the example text will be as follows:

1. Plenty little road along island. You fellows can go inside. You fellows work.

Many small roads on island. You fellows can go inside. You fellows work.

All right. Him plenty good

All right. That’s very good

2. Planti liklik rot i stap long ailan hia. Yumi ken go long ailan.

Many little roads exist on island here. We can go into the island.

Sapos you wokim, orait yu ken mekim kirap kantri bilong yumi.

If you work, well you can make go ahead this country belonging to us.

3. I gat planti liklik rot long dispel ailan long go insait long en. Yumi ken wokim.

There are plenty of little roads on this island to go inside into it. We can work.

Samting i kirapim kantri bilong yumi.

Something PR develop country belonging to us.

4. Lo tesela ailan I gat planti ol likik rot lo go insait lo en na woki ol samti we krapi kantri bolo yumi.

On this island there are many small roads to go into it, and work things which develops country belonging to us (Mühlhäusler 2003: 9–10).

These examples are commented with the notes, how the language is changing from stage to stage:

1. Jargon

As a putative speaker of this text Mühlhäusler considers a White man using a mixture of Foreigner Talk English and various lexical conventions for Pacific Pidgin English. He finds it very difficult to express the whole complex of thoughts using this language form, because:

1. there is influence of English in the lexis, morphology (e.g., fellows) and syntax.

2. the sentence length is very restricted. Co-ordination and embedding are absent.

3. there is widespread grammatical multifunctionality, e.g., in the case of plenty (adjective and adverb) unlike in English, where it is only used adjectivally.

4. the copula (equivalent of “to be”) is also absent.

2. Stabilized Tok Pisin, as found from about 1890 onwords

As a putative speaker of this text is considered a Native. It is easy to note, that the example sentence does not refer to the English variety any more but it is the language in the full sense of word. There are some written evidences in the language. Mühlhäusler notes following points:

1. For most words there is a standard pronunciation which usually not differs from English. Nature processes have simplified consonant groups, as in ailan “island”.

2. The form liklik “small” possibly arose from the encounter between the English “little bit” and the Tolai ikilik “small”.

3. The pronoun yumi “inclusive we”, as compared with yupela “exclusive we”, illustrates how local languages influence the structure of Tok Pisin.

4. Coordination and subordination are possible, using the conjunction sapos “if”, for example.

5. The causative is constructed by means of a syntactic paraphrase, mekim kirap “make go ahead”.

3. Expanded Tok Pisin, as found since approximately 1930 in regions close to the coast.

Mühlhäusler accepts this stage of language as the “classical” Tok Pisin. As main features he defines its lexical and grammatical autonomy in relation to English, such as following points:

1. The phonology of the language becomes more complicated without the influence of English being responsible. For example, the word length of kirapim “make, go ahead, develop” and the increasing number of consonant groups.

2. Further conjunctions appear, e.g., long “in order to”, which has developed from preposition long “in, at, on, etc”.

3. The internal development of a word formation component in the language can be seen in the example of kirapim “make, go ahead, develop”.

4. Sentences become longer and more complex. The word order is freer, since a number of transformations are possible. An example of this is i gat planti rot “there are many roads”.

4. Creolized Tok Pisin.

This stage of pidgins development is characterized by the transition from second to first language. Pidgin is rapid and extensive restructured, especially in the case of the young generation. The adaption to the norms of the non-native Tok Pisin occurs parallel to increasing age of creole speakers of Tok Pisin. Next features of the text are:

1. The operation of numerous phonological processes, mainly those which reduce semantically “empty” grammatical words. Note lo instead of long (preposition), bolo instead of bilong (possessive marker) and the transitive verbal ending –i (in woki etc.) instead of –im.

2. The plural marker ol, which is optional in the second-language varieties (especially in the case of inanimate nouns, see Mühlhäusler 1981), is obligatory here.

3. Relative clauses are introduced by the newly created relative noun we “where”.

4. Here we have a single sentence structure with a multiple embedding.

5. (It is not obvious from the written example but) the speech tempo has increased considerably as compared with the other varieties (Mühlhäusler 2003).

There is a text from the “ABC Radio Australia”, the web site in Tok Pisin and in English languages taken to be analysed for this paper. The lexical and grammatical structures in Tok Pisin text will be pointed out and compared with its English equivalent. The analysis will show to which level of Tok Pisin mentioned above the modern language belongs. For this both of texts will be compared and the corpus text will be restructured in units of language showing the way the pidgin differs from its substrate language, English.

The following text is a news article telling the recent developments in the world and particularly the meteorite has fallen in Russia:

Wanpela traipela meteor or ston paia wantaim pudaun i kam daun long sentrol Russia, na brukbruk nambaut long planti eria na kamapim ol guria na brukim nambaut ol window na planti handred pipol i kisim bagarap.

Wanpela meteor or stone ibin paia antap long wanpela city insait long sentrol Russia, na planti handred pipol ibin kisim bagarap taim ol glas na pipia bilongen i flai nambaut. Bigpela moning bilong winta long hap ibin mekim ples i lait olgeta taim despela traipela ston ibin paia lait wantaim na flai antap long kilaut bilong Chelyabinsk, samting olsem 1,500 kilometa long  east bilong Moscow.

Ol ofisal long hap bilip olsem despela meteor mas paia samting olsem 10,000 metres antap long city, na traipela ol paia ibin lait wantaim na pudaaun ikam daun long graun. Bihainim paia, ol bigpela guria ibin kamap na pipol ibin pudaun nambaut. Alarm bilong ol kar ibin wok long singaut nambaut na planti ol window ibin bruk nambaut long ol city.