Abstract
After 140 years of near-total isolation, the inhabitants of Palmerston Island, a tiny atoll in the Cook Islands group, have developed a unique linguistic and cultural identity that draws on both English and Polynesian backgrounds. They consider themselves ‘English’ in many ways – ethnically, culturally and linguistically – yet also have strong ties to the rest of the Cook Islands, and to New Zealand. The small population and the isolation of the island mean that it is possible to (a) record all Palmerston Islanders, and (b) track all external influences on the language, making Palmerston Island a wonderful opportunity for studying the development of a linguistic and cultural identity in small mixed-origin communities. During four weeks of fieldwork in 2009, I spoke with all of the then-inhabitants of the island except for one elderly man, who is blind and deaf. Previous descriptions of Palmerston Island English have appeared in Ehrhart (1996), and Hendery and Ehrhart (2011, 2012). Ehrhart (1996) was based on fieldwork she conducted in the early 1990s, and as discussed there seems to have been some change in Palmerston English in the past twenty years. Hendery and Ehrhart (2011, 2012) describe the morphology and morphosyntax of Palmerston English, with particular attention to contact influence and ‘angloversals’. This present chapter will provide a more extensive description of the variety than previous work.
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | Further Studies in the Lesser-known Varieties of English |
Editors | Jeffrey P. Williams, Edgar W. Schneider, Peter Trudgill, Daniel Schreier |
Place of Publication | U.K. |
Publisher | Cambridge University Press |
Pages | 267-287 |
Number of pages | 21 |
ISBN (Electronic) | 9781316331910 |
ISBN (Print) | 9781107021204 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2015 |
Keywords
- English language
- Palmerston (Cook Islands)