The completive

[BURTON John]

> "Bin" (meaning "past perfect indicative") occurs in the first edition 
> of Murphy's Pidgin English book in 1945 (p. 27), so the "eminent 
> source" is clearly not correct.

Sure. I was referring to the discussion in Rick Goulden's 'The Melanesian
content in Tok Pisin' 1990. Pac. Ling. Ser B: 104 where he begins "In both
Tok Pisin and Bislama there is evidence of a weakly established past tense
marker 'bin'."

I will come back with a longer discussion at another time, but the eminent
sources (two of them actually) were none other than Tryon and Dutton, both
of whom went for radio station announcer explanations. Because this sounds
implausible, I didn't want to colour anyone's immediate reaction by
mentioning Dutton and Tryon straightaway.

John Burton