Tok Pisin Texts: From the Beginning to the Present (review)

Tok Pisin texts: From the beginning to the present is a collection of texts in Tok Pisin (Neo-Melanesian), an English-based pidgin that serves as the principal lingua franca of Papua New Guinea (arguably the most linguistically diverse country in the world).

The book begins with an introduction to Tok Pisin that situates the language in its social and historical context and provides a very brief sketch of its grammar. The rest of the book consists of a sampling of Tok Pisin texts from the earliest stages of the language’s development to the present.

The texts are organized into nine sections: (1) ‘From early contacts and Gut Taim Bilong Siaman’ covers the earliest period of Tok Pisin’s development, when parts of Papua New Guinea were under German administration; (2) ‘Indigenous voices 1920–1945’ covers the rise of Tok Pisin as a lingua franca; (3) ‘The use of Tok Pisin by missions and government’ documents the use of Tok Pisin in missions and by the government; (4) ‘Indigenous voices 1950–1970’ covers the spread of Tok Pisin to speakers of Papuan languages in the highlands of Papua New Guinea; (5) ‘Traditional indigenous voices 1970 to present’ provides commentary on Tok Pisin in Tok Pisin after its role as a lingua franca was firmly established; (6) ‘Translation of foreign voices’ illustrates the use of Tok Pisin in the translation of foreign literature (cartoons, the Bible, propaganda, etc.); (7) ‘Urban Tok Pisin and the influence of English’ covers the impact that urbanization and increasing exposure to English has had on Tok Pisin; (8) ‘New written genres’ covers the emergence of written genres of Tok Pisin (e.g. newspapers, letters) as the language is increasingly used for written communication; and (9) ‘Creolized varieties of Tok Pisin’ covers the changes that Tok Pisin has undergone as it is acquired by speakers as a first language.

The book contains a total of 100 texts ranging in length and content from cartoons to letters to folk tales. Each begins with some background information and ends with commentary on noteworthy aspects of the text. Each text has an English translation. Interlinear glossing is also provided, except in some of the earlier texts, which closely follow English norms of spelling and grammar. The Tok Pisin texts do not conform to any sort of standard notation, which is regrettable but probably inevitable given the diverse sources of the texts.

One shortcoming of the book is the bibliography, which is less comprehensive than one might wish. It omits various important references, such as Roger Keesing’s Melanesian Pidgin and the Oceanic substrate (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988) or Ulrike Mosel’s Tolai and Tok Pisin: The influence of the substratum on the development of New Guinea Pidgin (Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1980).

The main attraction of this work is that it fills a previously unoccupied niche by providing a reasonably compact source book for students of Tok Pisin, who can get from it a broad sampling of the language over the course of its development and use it as a springboard for more in-depth study.