Solomon Islands Pijin: phonetics and phonology*

A brief history of Solomon Islands Pijin

Solomon Islands Pijin is one of the three Melanesian pidgins (along with Tok Pisin spoken in Papua New Guinea, and Bislama spoken in Vanuatu) that are, more or less directly, the offshoots of the Pacific trade jargon of the early 19^th century, known as Beach-la-Mar (Clark 1979; Keesing 1988). This early jargon is probably based on a pidgin that developed in Australia between the British settlers in New South Wales and the aboriginal population at the end of the 18^th century (Troy 1985; Baker 1993). It further expanded and stabilized during the plantation period of the second part of the 19th century that linked the Melanesian archipelagos of Vanuatu and the Solomons to Australia. The labour trade to Queensland lasted for roughly 40 years, from 1863 to 1906. At the beginning of the trade period, the Australian planters started to recruit in New Caledonia, the New Hebrides, the Melanesian archipelago closest to Australia; when recruiting in the southern islands became difficult, they moved north towards the Banks Islands, the Santa Cruz archipelago and later, around 1874, toward the Solomon Islands. Around 13,000 Solomon Islanders were taken to Queensland during the forty-year period. The pidgin language (called Kanaka Pidgin English) that was used on the plantations became the lingua franca spoken among Melanesian workers (the Kanakas, as they were called) who did not share the same language, and between Melanesians and European overseers. When Solomon Islanders went back to the Solomons at the end of their contract, or when they were forcefully repatriated at the end of the labour trade period (1904), they brought Melanesian pidgin to the Solomon Islands. The result was that the pidgin became quite spread-out throughout the eastern part of the archipelago, but, not having a social raison d’être, it remained largely unused, except for affect. Back in the 1980s, old people could still remember the stories that were told by the old former Queensland hands many years after their return.

Following the annexation of the Solomon Islands by the British (1893), the pidgin became the medium by which Solomon Islanders interacted with British colonial officers and with other Solomon Islanders from different ethnic groups. Some employees of the early colonial administration, such as the constabulary, were recruited among pidgin speakers because their knowledge of the language meant that they had had previous contact with Europeans.

One of the first outcomes of the Pax Britannica in the Solomon Islands (1920) had been the expansion of a small local plantation economy that had appeared as early as 1910. The plantations required many labourers, and they were recruited from different islands. Solomon Islanders began to migrate within the archipelago, between the areas supplying the labour force (typically Malaita island) and the plantation areas (Guadalcanal and Russell islands). Not surprisingly, the first labourers to be recruited to work on the Solomon Islands plantations were men who had been to Queensland before and who knew pidgin. Thus, the Kanaka Pidgin English of Queensland was reactivated on a larger scale by people building on their previous knowledge of it. In those days, young men did not learn to speak that language until they went to work on the plantations. Over the years, circular migration allowed one or two generations of young men to be in contact with the pidgin, particularly in work-related activities. As a result, the pool of pidgin speakers progressively enlarged, and the language proved so successful as a lingua franca that it expanded very quickly within the population. On plantations, workers and overseers alike learnt the pidgin by listening to other people talk; workers learnt it from their fellow workers. The unspoken sociolinguistic rule was that people spoke their vernacular language with people belonging to their language group and used the pidgin with everybody else, the overseers included. Some old-timers acted as interpreters for the newcomers (niusam). Progressively the pidgin acquired local characteristics (phonetic and lexical particularly) and speakers came to refer to it as Pisin. It is now called Pijin and referred to as such hereafter.

Another important event in the history of Pijin is World War II and the presence of the American army in the archipelago in 1942. Even though most plantation labourers were repatriated during that time, many Solomon Islands men (around 2,000) were enrolled in the Solomon Islands Labour Corps and in the British Solomon Islands Protectorate Defence Force, in which 680 Islanders enlisted (Laracy 1983). Solomon Islanders who witnessed that period say that they spoke to the American soldiers in pidgin and sometimes in English when it was known to them. Many of the American soldiers had some very rudimentary knowledge of the Pidgin English spoken then in New Guinea. This pidgin, now called Tok Pisin, then called Melanesian pidgin, was one of the forty Pacific languages that the American army deemed potentially useful to their soldiers fighting in the Pacific. They taught it to the troops through the medium that had some phrases in Tok Pisin. Even though it is difficult to assess the degree of the transformation that Pijin underwent during that period, it is obvious that the more intensive the contact with English, the more the presence of English was going to be felt in Solomons Pijin.

It is during the time of Maasina Rulu ‘the rule of brotherhood’ (maasina ‘brotherhood’ *Are*Are, a language spoken in Papua New Guinea, and rulu ‘rule’ English), the politico-religious movement that swept the island of Malaita after World War II (1944−1952) that Pijin became a political tool. The lingua franca became crucial to the movement very early on, as it was the only language that could be understood by all ethnic groups alike. It is through Pijin that the political ideology of the movement was disseminated in the Protectorate. Pijin assisted in the communication of the ideas of Maasina Rule (Bennett 1979), but also in forging the unity of the movement: linguistic barriers were broken down, and the notion of group identity gradually incorporated the wider notion of brotherhood. Through Pijin, the movement mobilized the Malaitan population and spread through traditional exchange networks, through mission links and through very large political meetings where people from different language groups came together.