Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-29T15:23:32.189Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

11 - Non-European Pidgins in Early European Colonial Explorations and Trade: Mobilian Jargon and Maritime Polynesian Pidgin in Contrast

from Part Two - Contact, Emergence, and Language Classification

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 June 2022

By
Emanuel J. Drechsel
Edited by
Salikoko Mufwene  and
Anna Maria Escobar
Salikoko Mufwene
Affiliation:
University of Chicago
Anna Maria Escobar
Affiliation:
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Get access

Summary

The discussion of language contact has paid increased attention to non-European pidgins for their linguistic and sociohistorical significance. Drechsel offers an in-depth comparative-contrastive analysis of two better documented cases: Mobilian Jargon of the lower Mississippi River valley and Maritime Polynesian Pidgin of the eastern Pacific. Beyond observable differences in function and form, this contrast, drawing on broad sociolinguistic-sociohistorical descriptions, recognizes major parallels in an initial typological scheme of non-European language contact: an analytic morpho-syntactic structure of both pidgins, indigenous paramount chiefdoms (including the incorporation of neighboring communities and contacts with distant peoples, be they with other native peoples or Europeans, by canoe on rivers or sailing at sea) and the fur trade as major sociolinguistic contexts (with the fur trade extending into the eastern Pacific as part of the early American trade with China). In a postscript, the contrast of Mobilian Jargon and Maritime Polynesian Pidgin raises an old historical question often neglected in the Anglophile literature: What was the sociolinguistic role of the Spaniards in the trans-Pacific galleon trade of American silver for Chinese silk, other textiles, and luxuries between Mexico and China from 1571 until 1815?

Keywords

Non-European pidginsMobilian JargonMaritime Polynesian Pidgintypological similarities of non-European pidgins: analytic morphosyntactic patternparamount chiefdomsand the fur tradequestion of the Spaniards’ sociolinguistic role as part of the trans-Pacific galleon trade between Mexico and China from 1571 until 1815
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Language Contact
Volume 2: Multilingualism in Population Structure
 , pp. 283 - 309
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Baker, Philip & Winer, Lise. 1999. Separating the wheat from he chaff. How far can we rely on old pidgin and creole texts? In St. Kitts and the Atlantic creoles. The texts of Samuel Augustus Mathews in perspective, ed. by Baker, Philip & Bruyn, Adrienne, 103–22. London: University of Westminster Press.Google Scholar
Banks, Joseph. 1962. The Endeavor journal of Joseph Banks 1768–1771, ed. by Beaglehole, J.C., 2 vols. Sydney: Trustees of the Public Library of New South Wales in Association with Angus and Robertson.Google Scholar
Barman, Jean & Watson, Bruce McIntyre. 2006. Leaving paradise. Indigenous Hawaiians in the Pacific Northwest, 1787–1898. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai‘i Press.Google Scholar
Beck, Robin. 2013. Chiefdoms, collapse, and coalescence in the early American South. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Biggs, Bruce. 1981. Complete English–Maori dictionary. Auckland: Auckland University Press.Google Scholar
Bjork, Katherine. 1998. The link that kept the Philippines Spanish: Mexican merchant interests and the Manila trade, 1571–1815. Journal of World History 9.25–50.Google Scholar
Botta, Paul-Émile. 1831. Observations sur les habitants des îles Sandwich. Nouvelles annals des voyages et des sciences geographiques 52.4.129–76. (For an English translation of the Hawai‘i portion, see Knowlton 1984.)Google Scholar
Bradley, Harold Whitman. 1968. The American frontier in Hawaii. The pioneers 1789–1843. Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith.Google Scholar
Buchstaller, Isabelle, Holmberg, Anders, & Almoaily, Mohammad (eds.). 2014. Pidgins and creoles beyond Africa–Europe encounters. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.Google Scholar
Buschmann, Rainer F. 2014. Iberian visions of the Pacific Ocean, 1507–1899 (Palgrave Studies in Pacific History). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Camino, Mercedes. 2009. Exploring the explorers: Spaniards in Oceania 1519–1794. Manchester: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar
Chappell, David A. 1997. Double ghosts: Oceanian voyagers on Euroamerican ships. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe.Google Scholar
Clark, Ross. 1977. In search of Beach-la-Mar: Historical relations among Pacific pidgins and creoles. Working Papers in Anthropology, Archaeology, Linguistics, Maori Studies, No. 48, Department of Anthropology, University of Auckland.Google Scholar
Clark, Ross. 1979. In search of Beach-la-Mar: Towards a history of Pacific Pidgin English. Te Reo 22.3–64.Google Scholar
Clark, Ross. 1990. Pidgin English and Pidgin Maori in New Zealand. In New Zealand ways of speaking English, ed. by Bell, Allan & Holms, Janet, 97–114 Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar
Cook, James. 1955. The journals of Captain James Cook on his voyages of discovery, vol. 1: The voyage of the Endeavor 1768–1771 (Hakluyt Society Extra Series No. 34, ed. by Beaglehole, J.C. with the Assistance of Williamson, J.A., Davidson, J.W., & Skelton, R.A.. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Crawford, James. 1978. The Mobilian trade language. Knoxville, TN. University of Tennessee Press.Google Scholar
Crowley, Terry. 1993. Pre-1860 European contact in the Pacific and introduced cultural vocabulary. Australian Journal of Linguistics 13.119–63.Google Scholar
Davies, William D. 1986. Choctaw verb agreement and u niversal grammar. Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing Company.Google Scholar
Dordillon, René Ildefonse. 1931–2. Grammaire et dictionnaire de la langue des îles Marquises (Travaux et mémoires de l’ins titut d’éthnologie 17–18). Paris: Institut d’éthnologie.Google Scholar
Drechsel, Emanuel J. 1983. Towards an ethnohistory of speaking: The case of Mobilian Jargon, an American Indian pidgin of the lower Mississippi valley. Ethnohistory 30.165–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Drechsel, Emanuel J. 1996. An integrated vocabulary of Mobilian Jargon, a Native American pidgin of the Mississippi valley. Anthropological Linguistics 38.2.248–354.Google Scholar
Drechsel, Emanuel J. 1997. Mobilian Jargon: Linguistic and sociohistorical aspects of a Native American pidgin (Oxford Studies in Language Contact). Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Drechsel, Emanuel J. 2007. Language and cosmopolis among Native peoples of eastern North America. Invited paper at the Workshop Cosmology and Society in the Ancient Amerindian World, Santa Fe Institute, NM, October 28–31.Google Scholar
Drechsel, Emanuel J. 2008. Mobilian Jargon in historiography: An exercise in the ethnohistory of speaking. Southern Anthropologist 33.24–36.Google Scholar
Drechsel, Emanuel J. 2014a. Language contact in the early colonial Pacific: Maritime Polynesian Pidgin before Pidgin English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Drechsel, Emanuel J. 2014b. Etymological vocabulary and index of Maritime Polynesian Pidgin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Forster, George. 2000 [1777]. A voyage round the world, ed. by Thomas, Nicholas & Berghof, Oliver with the assistance of Jennifer Newell, 2 vols. Ionolulu, HI: University of Hawai‘i Press.Google Scholar
Gowen, Herbert H. 1892. The paradise of the Pacific: Sketches of Hawaiian scenery and life. London: Skeffington & Son.Google Scholar
Hymes, Dell. 1980. Commentary. In Theoretical orientations in creole studies, ed. by Valdman, Albert & Highfield, Arnold, 389–423. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Jacob, Betty, Nicklas, Dale, & Spencer, Betty Lou. 1977. Introduction to Choctaw. Durant, OK: Choctaw Bilingual Education Program, Southeastern Oklahoma State University.Google Scholar
Kamakau, Samuel Mānaiakalani. 1996 [1868]. Ke Kumu Aupuni. Ka mo‘olelo Hawai‘i no KamehameIa Ka Na‘i Aupuni a me kāna aupuni i ho‘okumu ai. Honolulu, HI: Native Books.Google Scholar
Knowlton, Edgar C. Jr. 1984. Paul-ÉmIle Botta, visitor to Hawai‘i in 1828. Hawaiian Journal of History 18.13–38.Google Scholar
McWhorter, John H. 2000. The missing Spanish creoles. Recovering the birth of plantation creoles. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Melville, Herman. 1968 [1846]. Typee: A peep at Polynesian life, ed. by Hayford, Harrison, Parker, Hershel, & Thomas Tanselle, G., with a historical note by Howard, Leon. Evanston & Chicago, IL: Northwestern University Press and the Newberry Library.Google Scholar
Mufwene, Salikoko S. 2003. Contact languages in the Bantu area. In The Bantu languages, ed. by Nurse, Derek & Philippson, Gerard, 195–208. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Mühlhäusler, Peter. 1997. Pidgin and creole linguistics, expanded and revised ed. (Westminster Creolistics Series 3). London: University of Westminster Press.Google Scholar
Mühlhäusler, Peter, Dutton, Tom E., Tryon, Darrell T., & Wurm, Stephen A.. 1996. Post-contact pidgins, creoles, and lingue franche, based on non-European and Indigenous languages. In Atlas of languages of intercultural communication in the Pacific, Asia, and the Americas, vol. 2.1: Texts, ed. by Wurm, Stephen A., Mühlhäusler, Peter, & Tryon, Darrell T., 439–70. Berlin: Mouton de Guyter.Google Scholar
Newbury, Colin. 1980. Tahiti Nui: Change and survival in French Polynesia 1767–1945. Honolulu, HI: University Press of Hawai‘i.Google Scholar
Pukui, Mary Kawena & Elbert, Samuel H.. 1986. Hawaiian dictionary: Hawaiian–English, English–Hawaiian, revised and enlarged edI. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai‘i Press.Google Scholar
Pukui, Mary Kawena, Elbert, Samuel H., & Mookini, Esther T.. 1974. Place names of Hawaii, revised and expanded edI. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai‘i Press.Google Scholar
Reinecke, John E. 1969. Language and dialect in Hawaii. A sociolinguistic history to 1935, ed. by TsuzIki, Stanley M.. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai‘i Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Restall, Mathew (ed.). 2015. Colonial Mesoamerican literacy: Method, form, and consequence, special issue, published in collaboration with the John Carter Brown Library, of Ethnohistory 62.3.Google Scholar
Roberts, Sarah J.M. 1995a. Pidgin Hawaiian: A sociohistorical study. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 10.1–56.Google Scholar
Roberts, Sarah J.M. 1995b. A structural sketch of Pidgin Hawaiian. Amsterdam Creole Studies 12.97–126.Google Scholar
Roberts, Sarah J.M. 2003. Reduplication and the formation of Pidgin Hawaiian. In Twice as meaningful. Reduplication in pidgins, creoles, and other contact languages, ed. by Kouwenberg, Silvia, 307–18. London: Battlebridge.Google Scholar
Roberts, Sarah J.M. 2005. The emergence of Hawai‘i Creole English in the early 20th century: The sociohistorical context of creole genesis. Doctoral dissertation, Department of Linguistics, Stanford University, Ann Arbor, MI, UMI Dissertation Services.Google Scholar
Roberts, Sarah J.M. 2013. Pidgin Hawaiian. In The survey of pidgin and creole languages, vol. 3: Contact languages based on languages from Africa, Australia, and the Americas, ed. by Michaelis, Susanne, Maurer, Philippe, Ha spelmath, Martin, & Huber, Magnus, 119–28. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Roux, Jean. 1985 [1773]. Journal du Voyage fait Sur le Vaisseau du Roi Le Mascarin, commandé par Mr. Marion Chevalier de l’Ordre Royal et mil itaire de St. Louis, Capitaine de Brulot: accompagné de la Flutte Le Marquis de Castries, pour faire le Voyage de l’Isle Taity ou de Cythère, en faisant la decouverte des Terres Australes, passant à la nouvelle hollande, à la nouvelle Zélande, &c. &c. In Extracts from journals relating to the visit to New Zealand in May–July 1772 of the French ships Mascarin and Marquis de Castries under the command of M.-J. Marion du Fresne, transcribed & translated by Ollivier, Isabel, with an appendix of charts and drawings compiled by Jeremy Spencer (Early Eyewitness Accounts of Maori Life 2), 118–207. Wellington: Alexander Turnbull Library Endowment Trust with Indosuez New Zealand Limited.Google Scholar
Sakoda, Kent & Siegel, Jeff. 2003. Pidgin grammar: An introduction to the creole language of Hawai‘i. Honolulu, HI: Bess Press.Google Scholar
Schwaller, Robert C. (ed.). 2012. A language of empire, a quotidian tongue: The uses of Nahuatl in New Spain, special issue of Ethnohistory 59.4.Google Scholar
Shoemaker, Nancy. 2015. Native American whalemen and the world: Indigenous encounters and the contingency of race. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Silverstein, Michael. 1972. Chinook Jargon: Language contact and the problem of multi-level generative systems. Language 48.378–406, 596–625.Google Scholar
Silverstein, Michael. 1996a. Dynamics of linguistic vontact. In: Handbook of North American Indians, vol. 17: Languages, ed. by Goddard, Ives, 117–36. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution.Google Scholar
Silverstein, Michael. 1996b. Encountering language and languages of encounter in North American ethnohistory. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 6.126–44.Google Scholar
Spoehr, Alexander. 1986. Fur traders in Hawai‘i: The Hudson’s Bay Company in Honolulu, 1829–1861. Hawaiian Journal of History 20.27–66.Google Scholar
Stocking, George W. Jr. 1965. On the limits of “presentism” and “historicism” in the historiography of the behavioral sciences. Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 1.211–18.Google Scholar
Thomason, Sarah G. 1980. On interpreting “The Indian Interpreter.” Language in Society 9.167–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thomason, Sarah G. 1983. Chinook Jargon in areal and historic context. Language 59.820–70.Google Scholar
Thomason, Sarah G. (ed.). 1997. Contact languages: A wider perspective. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tryon, Darrell T. & Charpentier, Jean-Michel. 2004. Pacific pidgins and creoles: Origins, growth and development (Trends in Linguistics, Studies and Monographs 132). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Versteegh, Kees. 2008. Non-Indo-European pidgins and creoles. In The handbook of pidgin and creole studies, ed. by Kouwenberg, Silvia & Victor Singler, John, 158–86. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell Publishing.Google Scholar
Wahlroos, Sven. 2002. English–Tahitian Tahitian–English dictionary/Fa‘atoro Parau Marite/Peritane–Tahiti Tahiti–Marite/Peretane. Honolulu, HI: Mā‘ohi Heritage Press.Google Scholar
Williams, Herbert W. 1971. Dictionary of the Maori language, 7th ed., revised & augmented by the Advisory Committee on the Teaching of the Maori Language, Department of Education. Wellington: GP Publications.Google Scholar
Wolf, Eric. 1982. Europe and the people without history. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×