[Mihalic] New PhD thesis - Jana Harvey's Tok pisin and the internet

[Robin Hide]

This looks interesting-
Robin

Tok Pisin on the Internet
by Harvey, Jana R., Ph.D., Ball State University, 2007, 170 pages;
Abstract
Internet message boards are a medium by which educated Papua New Guineans 
who are living outside of Papua New Guinea (PNG) maintain ties to one 
another and to their home country. One of the languages that they use on 
these message boards is Tok Pisin (TP), an English-based creole spoken in 
PNG that has changed rapidly in the approximately 120 years since its 
creation as a pidgin.

Romaine (1992) suggests that decreolization by means of new changes toward 
English is occurring in the TP language. Smith (2002) disagrees and claims 
that there is no evidence for decreolization. This study shows that there 
is evidence in favor of decreolization, in particular a Matrix Language 
(ML) turnover (Myers-Scotton 2002), in the TP used on seven Internet 
message boards. This conclusion is also derived through the study of 139 
letters to the editor in the TP weekly newspaper Wantok written during 2003 
and 2006.

In looking for English 'late system morphemes,' whose existence in 
bilingual complementizer phrases that have TP as the ML would indicate the 
beginning of a ML turnover (Myers-Scotton 2002), this study counts deletion 
of the TP particle i as a late system morpheme.

Results show that on Internet message boards, the particle i only marks the 
predicate in 33% of the locations where it would occur in Standard TP. In 
Wantok letters to the editor, i occurs 95% of the time. Internet users are 
more likely to be influenced by English and have less access to Standard TP.

Although TP is still valued by highly educated Papua New Guineans in the 
English domain of the Internet to discuss personal topics and show 
solidarity with one another, it is not their first choice of language, and 
the loss of the particle i shows evidence for a ML turnover having begun in 
the language. One conclusion that may be drawn from this study is that 
planning for the future of TP by the leaders of PNG is essential to 
maintain TP as a community language.
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