35 an artificial, idealized, and exaggerated system containing a conglomeration of the forms most deviant
from SE, as some linguists have done. Labov 1990:25 warns us against such descriptions characterizing them as “a kind of grammaire des
fautes, a pedagogical caricature of the language rather than a portrait of it.” Such a system exists only in the minds of linguists rather than in the minds of ordinary speakers. Labov ibid. continues:
Whatever value such constructions have for teacher or learners, they cannot contribute any- thing to our study of the adequacy of languages. If such “pure” creoles are not used, they are
not used for some good reason. We can only argue from grammars that are used for the serious purpose of communication in everyday life.
The selection of the basilect as the object of our study helps us deal with some of the problems
associated with investigating a language closely related to SE. First of all, the basilect tends to be the most stable part of the continuum. Second, it should be obvious that the part of HCE which provides us
with the most useful data is the part which differs most from SE. A study searching for the NSM primitives in SE would be a meaningless and redundant exercise since the NSM formulation is specified
in SE.
Third, as Labov 1990:6 observes, closely related systems tend to interfere with each other more than distinct ones. In our study, a major concern is how having such closely related systems might affect
speaker’s intuitions about sentences. As previously mentioned, decreolization is widespread in the continuum. Speakers are often competent in a range of registers. So, for example, it might be easy to
mistake an SE sentence for an HCE sentence if it is pronounced with HCE phonology. HCE can be very tolerant of SE loan words, depending on the lexical domain. Furthermore, NSM clauses are simple, and
NSM discourse structure bears a remarkable resemblance to HCE discourse structure.
A question naturally arises, “How does one know when one has good basilectal data?” I believe I should state outright that I am unaware of any objective criteria for determining what good basilectal
data is. Currently, “you’ll know it when you hear it” is the only guide I have.
4.2 Data Sources
As previously mentioned, this study attempts to find exact semantic equivalents to the NSM primitives. Establishing a given HCE word as semantically equivalent to an NSM primitive requires data of a very
high quality. It is not the sort of thing one can do by, say, browsing through a dictionary. Since quality basilectal data is so important to this study, I will be accessing the basilect from two
different angles: my own native intuitions and a corpus of text taken from several writtenrecorded sources.
4.2.1 About myself
I am a native speaker of HCE. I am a Caucasian-Japanese male. I was born and raised within a commu- nity of basilectal speakers on the island of Kaua‘i. Probably the most vigorous period of HCE usage in my
life extended roughly from the 7th grade until my junior year in college, as I became more socially active. During college, I was also exposed to other neighbor island HCE variants, especially from Maui
and the big island of
Hawai‛i.
36
4.2.2 Written corpus
In compiling this written corpus, I have chosen to avoid completely the enormously complex and not directly relevant issue of transcription. Therefore, all citations appear as they do in the original.
2
Oral histories make up the overwhelming majority of our corpus. An oral history is conducted as an interview. The interview situation is not an ideal environment, but neither is it a bad one. It tends to be
more formal and less spontaneous than natural discourse. Furthermore, the interview is conducted to make certain information accessible to as wide an audience as possible. Thus, the interviewee may be
feel compelled to use “proper” English. He may end up using “harder” words than he is accustomed to. Nonetheless, I believe that such interviews can provide us with some valuable data. The skilled
interviewer specializes in minimizing his own contribution and maximizing the contribution of the in- terviewee. We often find that when an interviewee gets absorbed in his subject matter, he gets excited,
loses himself, and forgets about all about “talking proper”.
The Center for Oral History at the University of Hawai‛i has made available to the general public
both recorded and transcribed materials. I have found basilectal speech of a high quality in several of their interviews.
In the following list of speakers, I will include not only the source of the interview, but also the speaker’s name, the speaker’s code used to identify the speaker in citations, ethnicity, age, level of
education if indicated, occupation, and the number of pages of text. From the oral history of long-time Waikiki residents Center for Oral History 1985:
Masayuki Yoshimura MY, Japanese, 70, 12th grade, retired salesman. 33 pages. Sam Uyehara SU, Japanese, 76, retired restaurant owner. 55 pages.
From the oral history of Koloa, Kaua‘i Center for Oral History 1987: Mitsugi Muraoka MM, Japanese, 82, retired plantation worker. 60 pages.
From the oral history of Lana‘i ranch Center for Oral History 1989: Ernesto Richardson ER, Hawaiian, 79, retired paniolo the local term for a ‘cowboy’ and truck driver.
153 pages. From the oral history of Waipi‘o Valley,
Hawai‛i Ethnic Studies Oral History Project 1978: Albert Kalani AK, Hawaiian, 70, retired Parks and Recreation employee and retired taro farmer.
Bilingual Hawaiian and HCE. 82 pages. Fannie Duldulao FD, Hawaiian, 67, 8th grade, taro farmer. 58 pages.
George Farm GF, Chinese, 69, 12th grade, taro farmer. 59 pages. Nelson Chun NC, Chinese, 78, 8th grade, taro, lotus, and water chestnut farmer. 124 pages.
Merrill Toledo MT, Caucasian-Portuguese, 42, 12th grade, taro and sugar cane farmer. 36 pages. Tom Araki TA, Japanese, 70, taro farmer. 26 pages.
William Kanekoa WK, Hawaiian, 62, 9th grade, taro farmer. 30 pages.
From an oral history of Kalihi, O‘ahu Ethnic Studies Oral History Project 1984: Yen Cheung Au YA, Chinese, 90, 4th grade, retired Pearl Harbor Shipyard worker. 55 pages.
From an oral history of Kona, Hawai‛i Ethnic Studies Oral History Project 1981:
Eugenio Bala EB, Ilokano, 73, pool operator, former coffee picker, ranch hand, and janitor. 15 pages. Katherine “Nina” Kalaiwa‘a NK, Hawaiian, 70, taro farmer. 45 pages.
The Watumull Foundation Oral History project contains two important interviews 3 pages: one with On Char OC Char 1976, a retired local Chinese man who owned a store in downtown Honolulu
2
The systems of transcription used by the Center for Oral History are designed to be readable to speakers of SE. The other transcription systems used in this corpus attempt to be more “faithful” to the distinctive features of HCE, but
also reflect our tentative understanding of HCE phonology. My own example sentences use a version of the Bickerton and Odo 1976 transcription system replacing medial
and word final \t\ with \o\. I would like to warn the reader that I myself have not done a substantive analysis of HCE phonology and that HCE pnhlnonolognyoins hardly a settled matter.
37 and one with John Kuakini Lindsey JL Lindsey 1979, a retired part-Hawaiian paniolo with Parker
ranch on the island of Hawa iꞌi.
In addition, I have obtained a private oral history 31 pages of a Japanese man BB, not his real initials, 78, who lived in an isolated rural part of the island of
Hawai‛i before he moved to work in the pineapple plantations in Central O‘ahu. All names of individuals have been withheld at the request of the
author. The corpus also includes the appendix 43 pages of Watson’s anthropological study 1972 which
contains narratives of basilectal part-Hawaiian children. Their names and speaker codes are as follows: Ahi AH, Hele HE, Hipa HI, Kaipo KP, Kaleo KL, Kali LI, Keahi KH, Keaka KK, Kehi KE,
Keiki KI, Kekoa KO, Kiele LE, Kina KA, Kona KN, Maile MI, Malo ML, Nakau NU, Noela NO, Paki PA, and Peke PE.
Finally, this study uses some data from the three texts found at the end of Bickerton and Odo’s 1976 study.
It took 2-3 man-weeks to scan the 908 pages of text and convert them into computer readable form. The processing, analysis, maintenance, editing, organization, and displaying of such a massive volume of
data would not have been possible without a battery of fairly complex computer programs to assist in automating as much of the task as possible. In all, I spent about 4 man-months programming almost
4000 lines of emacs-lisp code, 3 flex programs, and 11 linked Makefiles. The analysis chapter which follows will be structured around the corpus findings, but it will not be
completely dependent on the corpus for its conclusions. Introspective judgements will be regarded as the final arbitrator of acceptability or non-acceptability of primitives and their combinations.
Nevertheless, this study benefits greatly from the confirmation of examples in actual speech. Having such a rich empirical base assures us that the findings of this study do not rest on any one person’s
idiolect.
38
Chapter 5 Analysis sections
This chapter provides an introduction to the individual primitives, citing their importance in linguistic description and recounting their history. It then describes the organization of the individual sections
devoted to each of the 37 primitives. The individual sections themselves immediately follow, presenting the HCE corpus evidence for each primitive and all of their syntactic valences.
5.1 The primitives
The following is the list of primitives to be covered:
PRIMITIVES COVERED IN THIS STUDY
Substantives I
YOU SOMEONE
SOMETHING PEOPLE
Mental Predicates THINK
KNOW WANT
FEEL SAY
Determiners THIS
THE SAME OTHER
Quantifiers ONE
TWO MANY
ALL Actions, Events
DO HAPPEN
Evaluators GOOD
BAD Descriptors
BIG SMALL
Time WHEN
AFTER BEFORE
Space WHERE
UNDER ABOVE
Taxonomy, Partonomy KIND OF
PART OF Metapredicates
NOT CAN
VERY Interclausal Linkers
IF BECAUSE
LIKE They will be studied in the order listed.
5.2 Importance of primitives
It is not possible fully justify, in our limited space, why every primitive in this set is needed. Nevertheless, I would like the reader to consider the number of linguistic domains where these
primitives play a major descriptive role cf. Goddard 1997: Lexical: Moral concepts GOOD, BAD, PEOPLE, DO, HAPPEN, Speech acts SAY, Location WHERE,
ABOVE, BELOW, Emotions FEEL, Prototypes LIKE, Lifeforms KIND OF, and Hu- man artifacts PEOPLE, SOMETHING, DO
Syntactic phenomena: Intonation I, Coordination THE SAME, Negation NOT, Modality CAN, and Topicalization THINK of
Syntactic categories: Gender SOMEONE, SOMETHING, PEOPLE, Animacy SOMEONE, SOMETHING, Pronominals I, YOU, SOMEONE, Evidentials THINK, KNOW, SAY, Factives KNOW,
Imperatives I, WANT, YOU, Experiencer constructions FEEL, Demonstratives THIS, Reflexives THE SAME, HAPPEN, TIME, Reciprocals THE SAME, HAPPEN, OTHER, TIME, Obviatives OTHER,
Number ONE, TWO, MANY, Benefactives GOOD, Adversatives BAD, Augmentatives BIG, Diminutives SMALL, Tense WHEN, BEFORE, AFTER, Classifiers KIND OF, Conditionals IF,
Interrogatives NOT, KNOW, WANT, Superlatives VERY, Causatives BECAUSE, Semblatives LIKE, Inalienable possession PART OF, and Masscount noun classes KIND OF, PART OF, SOMETHING
