Language Contact in the Early Colonial Pacific
Maritime Polynesian Pidgin before Pidgin English
Cambridge Approaches to Language Contact Series

This volume presents a historical-sociolinguistic description and analysis of Maritime Polynesian Pidgin. It offers linguistic and sociohistorical substantiation for a regional Eastern Polynesian-based pidgin, and challenges conventional Eurocentric assumptions about early colonial contact in the eastern Pacific by arguing that Maritime Polynesian Pidgin preceded the introduction of Pidgin English by as much as a century. Emanuel J. Drechsel not only opens up new methodological avenues for historical-sociolinguistic research in Oceania by a combination of philology and ethnohistory, but also gives greater recognition to Pacific Islanders in early contact between cultures. Students and researchers working on language contact, language typology, historical linguistics and sociolinguistics will want to read this book. It redefines our understanding of how Europeans and Americans interacted with Pacific Islanders in Eastern Polynesia during early encounters and offers an alternative model of language contact.

Part I. Questions, Theories, and Methods of Historical Sociolinguistics: 1. Introduction; 2. Maritime Polynesian Pidgin and Pidgin and Creole linguistics; 3. Ethnohistory of speaking as a historical-sociolinguistic methodology; Part II. Historical Attestations of Maritime Polynesian Pidgin (MPP): 4. Emergence, stabilization, and expansion; 5. Resilience against depidginization and relexification; 6. Survival in niches; Part III. Structure, Function, and History of Maritime Polynesian Pidgin: 7. Linguistic patterns; 8. History and social functions; 9. Conclusions: linguistic, sociohistorical, and theoretical implications.

Emanuel J. Drechsel is a senior faculty member of Interdisciplinary Studies at the University of Hawaii, Mānoa, and has regularly taught courses in linguistic anthropology, ethnohistory, and related topics. He has long been interested in non-European pidgins, and is the author of a well-received case study entitled 'Mobilian Jargon' (1997) of greater Louisiana. His more recent research has focused on the eastern Pacific.