dc.contributor.author	Lindstrom, Lamont
dc.date.accessioned	2008-06-25T08:15:13Z
dc.date.available	2008-06-25T08:15:13Z
dc.date.issued	2007-12-17
dc.description.abstract	People throughout Vanuatu frequently mix Bislama (that country’s national Pidgin) into their vernaculars. Extensive code-mixing is an obvious indicator, and sometime cause, of language change or even language replacement. This paper discusses several sorts of Bislama code-mixing on Tanna among speakers of that island’s Kwamera language. It assesses levels and kinds of Bislama use in four village debates, tape-recorded in 1982 and 1983. Among other uses, Kwamera speakers mix Bislama when interjecting, reiterating, reporting speech, neutralizing marked vernacular terms, and qualifying what they say. The paper concludes with some remarks on the phonological, morphological/syntactic, and lexical/semantic consequences of recurrent language mixing—on how Islanders’ insertions of Bislama into their oratorical and everyday talk may or may not be effecting linguistic change in Kwamera. Bislama, so far at least, has enriched more than it has impoverished Tanna’s linguistic ecology. Speakers’ frequent Bislama mixes have not yet seriously undermined their vernacular.
dc.description.sponsorship	National Foreign Language Resource Center
dc.identifier.citation	Lindstrom, Lamont. 2007. Bislama into Kwamera: Code-mixing and language change on Tanna (Vanuatu). Language Documentation & Conservation 1(2):216–239.
dc.identifier.issn	1934-5275
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/10125/1773
dc.language.iso	eng
dc.publisher	University of Hawai'i Press
dc.subject	Vanuatu
dc.subject	Tanna
dc.subject	Bislama
dc.subject	Kwamera
dc.subject	code-mixing
dc.subject	language change
dc.title	Bislama into Kwamera: Code-mixing and Language Change on Tanna (Vanuatu)
dc.type	Article
dc.type.dcmi	Text
prism.number	2
prism.publicationname	Language Documentation & Conservation
prism.volume	1

Bislama into Kwamera: Code-mixing and Language Change on Tanna (Vanuatu)

Files

Original bundle

License bundle

Collections