Language Contact in the Early Colonial Pacific

Emanuel J. Drechsel is a senior faculty member of Interdisciplinary Studies at the University of Hawaii, Mānoa, and has regularly taught courses in linguistic anthropology, ethnohistory, and related topics. He has long been interested in non-European pidgins, and is the author of a well-received case study entitled 'Mobilian Jargon' (1997) of greater Louisiana. His more recent research has focused on the eastern Pacific.

• Part I. Questions, Theories, and Methods of Historical Sociolinguistics: 1. Introduction; 2. Maritime Polynesian Pidgin and Pidgin and Creole linguistics; 3. Ethnohistory of speaking as a historical-sociolinguistic methodology; Part II. Historical Attestations of Maritime Polynesian Pidgin (MPP): 4. Emergence, stabilization, and expansion; 5. Resilience against depidginization and relexification; 6. Survival in niches; Part III. Structure, Function, and History of Maritime Polynesian Pidgin: 7. Linguistic patterns; 8. History and social functions; 9. Conclusions: linguistic, sociohistorical, and theoretical implications.

'This study is of major importance, highlighting the key role of Hawaiian in shaping interethnic contact, and showing how Hawaiian and East Polynesian linguistic unity profoundly affected early European contact throughout the Pacific.' William H. Wilson, University of Hawai'i