Abstract
Abstract As mentioned in earlier chapters, Melanesian Pidgin (MP) is spoken in three countries of the southwest Pacific, each with its own dialect: Papua New Guinea Tok Pisin, Vanuatu Bislama, and Solomon Islands Pijin. These dialects are differentiated by a number of lexical, phonological, and morphosyntactic features. Clark (1979) and Mühlhäusler (1979, 1985a ) say that MP stabilized in the 1870s and 1880s on the plantations of Queensland and Samoa, while Keesing (1988) proposes an earlier date. However, here I argue that at least some of the salient grammatical features of MP did not stabilize until much later, based on the fact that several variants for these features were still in use until the early twentieth century. It was at this time that more complete stabilization began, and this took place on the internal plantations of the New Guinea islands, the Solomon Islands, and the New Hebrides (now Vanuatu).
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