Article published in:
Pidgins and Creoles beyond Africa-Europe Encounters
Edited by Isabelle Buchstaller, Anders Holmberg and Mohammad Almoaily
[Creole Language Library 47] 2014
► pp. 41–56

The ‘language of Tobi’ as presented in Horace Holden’s Narrative

Evidence for restructuring and lexical mixture in a Nuclear Micronesian-based pidgin

| Edge Hill University
In 1836 the American sailor and trader Horace Holden published an account of two years’ captivity on the island of Tobi, western Carolines, to which he appended a short vocabulary and numerous sentences in ‘the language of Tobi’. Examination of this material shows that most of the identifiable items in the vocabulary can be traced to Tobian, a Western Chuukic language, which is part of the Nuclear Micronesian subgroup within Austronesian, and for which we have a reasonable amount of modern data. However, the structural and especially syntactic features of the sentences appended in the five ‘dialogues’ consistently show few if any of the morphological features of modern Tobian. This chapter discusses the status of Holden’s material as a probable pidgin with a lexicon showing some admixture from Malay, Palauan and maybe Spanish.
Published online: 29 January 2014
https://doi.org/10.1075/cll.47.03gra
References

References

Anonymous
1835 Art. II. Lord North’s Island; narrative of two seamen, respecting their sufferings on that island; facts relative to the islanders, their means of subsistence, dwellings, habits, laws, language, religion, &c. The Chinese Repository 3: 450–457.Google Scholar
Barnard, Capt., E.
1980 Naked and a Prisoner: Captain Edward C. Barnard’s Narrative of Shipwreck in Palau, 1832–33, K.R. Martin (ed.), Sharon MA: Kendall Whaling Museum.Google Scholar
Capell, A.
1969 Grammar and Vocabulary of the Language of Sonsorol-Tobi [Oceania Linguistic Monographs 12]. Sydney: University of Sydney. (Earlier published by the author in 1951 as the Coordination Investigations into Micronesian Anthropology memoir 30, New Haven CT).Google Scholar
von Chamisso, A.
1902 Adelbert von Chamisso’s sämtliche Werke. Leipzig: Max Hesse.Google Scholar
Eilers, A.
1936 Ergebnisse der Sudsee Expedition 1908–1910, II: Ethnographie: B. Mikronesien Band 9. Westkarolinen 2. Halbband: Tobi und Ngulu, Vol. 9, G. Thilenius (ed.). Hamburg: Friederichsen, De Gruyter.Google Scholar
Hale, H.
1846 Ethnography and Philology. Philadelphia PA: Lea and Blanchard.Google Scholar
Holden, H.
1836 Narrative of the Shipwreck, Captivity and Sufferings of Horace Holden and Benj. H. Nute. Boston MA: Russell, Shattuck and Co.Google Scholar
Jensen, J.T., Pugram, L.D., Defeg, R. & Iou, J.B.
1977 Yapese-English Dictionary. Honolulu HI: Pacific and Asian Linguistics Institute, University of Hawai’i.Google Scholar
Oda, S.
1977 The Syntax of Pulo Annian, a Nuclear Micronesian Language. PhD dissertation, University of Hawai’i.
Pickering, J.
1845 Memoir of the language and inhabitants of Lord North’s Island. Memoirs of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences for 1845, 204–244.Google Scholar
Quackenbush, E.H.
1968 From Somsorol to Truk. PhD dissertation, Cornell University.
Sohn, H. & Tawerilmang, A.F.
1980 Woleaian-English Dictionary [Pacific and Asian Linguistics Series]. Honolulu HI: University of Hawai’i Press.Google Scholar
Whinnom, K.
1971 Linguistic hybridisation and the ‘special case’ of pidgins and creoles. In Pidginization and Creolization of Languages, D. Hymes (ed.), 91–115. Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar
Wilson, J.
1799 A Missionary Voyage around the Southern Pacific Ocean in the Years 1796, 1797 and 1798, in the ship Duff, Commanded by Captain James Wilson. London: T. Chapman.Google Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 1 other publications

BUCHSTALLER, ISABELLE & NIKOLAS DANE WILLSON
2018. Marshallese English: A first sketch. World Englishes 37:2 ► pp. 356 ff. Crossref logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 28 february 2021. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.