Trivia

[courtney jill handman]

I think there is another question that follows on what David Counts wrote;
namely, what dialect or sociolect will this dictionary try to document?
There has been alot written for many years about the varying dialects,
minimlly, the difference between urban and rural Tok Pisin.  Mihalic has
said that in his dictionary he was trying to target the rural version.
And it seems that at that time (in the 50s and up to maybe the 70s when
Sankoff started to discuss creolization) people who knew the lexical
items that were associated with the urban dialect -- mostly Anglicisms --
also knew the corresponding words in the rural.  I'm not sure to what
extent that is the case now.  Have the dictionary editors decided on what
dialect(s) they will be focusing on?  

Courtney Handman


On Wed, 8 Nov 2000, David Counts wrote:

> Srikes me that along with trivia, part of the problem for anyone dealing
> with this is trying to decide when one is dealing with a foreign "loan" into
> TP and when the speaker has been code-switching -- dipping into his/her
> "other language store" to grab a term felt to be appropriate and/or
> intelligible to the audience.  Example:  in the midst of a squabble about
> someone having climbed a compound fence surrounding a village house in West
> New Britain, the injured party (a man versed in several languages including
> English) was heard to yell at his opponent: "i gat lo! yu no ken brukim
> premisis bilong mi!"
> 
> What was he doing:  I assumed code swtching at the time, but now I am not so
> sure.  Em tasol liklik bagarap billlong mi.
> 
> David Counts
> 

_____________
Courtney Handman
Graduate Student 
University of Chicago