[Mihalic] New book: Tok Pisin Texts

[Thomas H. Slone]

I just finished looking through a new book Peter 
Mühlhäusler, Thomas E. Dutton & Suzanne Romaine, 
Tok Pisin Texts: From the Beginning to the 
Present, Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 
2003.

It's quite interesting to see the evolution of 
Tok Pisin laid out all in one place using mostly 
previously unpublished texts.  Pages 1-34 discuss 
history and grammar and pages 35-280 present a 
range of text examples with literal word-by-word 
glosses and translations.  Particularly 
interesting are some of the earliest texts, 
including one from 1844.

Here my notes for the dictionary

i: pp. 37-38, a text from the 1880s shows the use 
of "he" as a third person pronoun.  The authors 
state this as evidence that "he" is the origin of 
the predicate marker "i" in modern Tok Pisin.

boi: p. 2, the authors claim that the Tok Pisin 
"boi" combines the Hindustani "bhoi" (carrier or 
bearer) with the English "boy"

aniani: p. 13, the authors claim this is the Tok 
Pisin word for onion.  I only previously seen 
this in print except in the the title of the book 
Kaikai Aniani.  Is this word really used (as 
opposed to "anian")?

meri: p. 45, in addition to the English origin 
("Mary" + "marry"), they say that it was 
reinforced by the Tolai "mare" (beautiful)

maski: p. 45, widespread in pidgins & creoles 
(but reinforced by German "macht nichts"); see 
the Linguist List for a discussion of this: 
http://www.linguistlist.org/issues/7/7-861.html#5

tete: p. 61, "tete" was used in a 1939 letter 
meaning "today".  In modern Tok Pisin, I have 
seen "tete" in Stori Tumbuna.  I asked a fluent 
Tok Pisin speaker (East Sepik Province) what 
"tete" meant.  He translated it as implying 
immediacy and not meaning "today" per se.  His 
example was "Tete mi paitim yu!" meaning "I'm 
going to beat you up right now!"  Is there 
confirmation on the this meaning?  Do "tete" and 
"tude" both come from the English "today"?

On p. 59, Mühlhäusler reports that he recorded an 
elderly Tok Pisin speaker using the following 
German-origin words: snaidejunge (apprentice 
tailor), snaider (tailor), schule ([to go to] 
school), and yar (year).

monki: p. 71, monkey (is this used?)

marimari: from the Molot language of New Ireland 
, "to love" or "to have pity" (Mihalic says it's 
from the Gazelle Peninsula)

kandere: pp. 94-95, alternate meaning "penis" 
(Tok Bokis); Mühlhäusler confirmed the sexual 
allusion because the word starts with "kan"

stesin: p. 143, the authors say this word is from both the English "plantation"
  and "station"

stik: p. 155, "twist tobacco" (Mihalic reports "stik tabak" and "tabak stik")
stinge, p. 155, "twist tobacco"

meme: p. 212, the authors say this is 
onomatopoeic or from the Tolai "me" (also 
onomatopoiac (Mihalic just says that it's from 
the Gazelle Peninsula)

pulim tang: pp. 217-218 (synonym of givim tang which is in the revision)

bubu: p. 270, also occurs in Bislama, "Crowley 
(1990) believes that both Malo and Rzga 
[languages] bumbu and Mota [language] pupua are 
possible sources, as is Fijian bubu." (Crowley, 
Terry [1990]. Beach-la-Mar to Bislama. The 
Emergence of a National Language in Vanuatu. 
Clarendon Press: Oxford.)  This word does not 
occur in Solomon Islands Pijin (Jourdan 2002) or 
Torres Strait Broken (Shnukal, 1988).  Is is from 
Pacific Pidgin English?
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.anu.edu.au/pipermail/mihalic/attachments/20040402/4d517dfd/attachment.htm