LING3003 Linguistics Field Trip

Hawaii Field trip 2009

Introduction: the Hawaiian islands

Aims • Islands as natural laboratories

• Study language situation

1. The Hawaiian language: Polynesian language, in danger of extinction, revitalization in progress

2. Hawaiian Creole English (aka Pidgin)

- as featured in LING2040 Languages in Contact

3. Other immigrant languages: Okinawan, Japanese, Korean, Cantonese/Hakka, Philippine languages

The Hawaiian Islands

• Most isolated archipelago on earth

• Series of volcanoes created successively by “hot spot”, latest island 500,000 years ago

• Settled by Polynesian seafarers from Marquesas between 300-600 AD

• ‘discovered’ by Captain Cook in 1778

The Hawaiian Islands

7 inhabited islands:

• Oahu: Honolulu, Pearl Harbor• Hawai’i: “The Big Island”• Maui• Moloka’i• Lana’i • Kaua’i• Ni’ihau: privately owned, beyond Kaua’i;

Hawaiian spoken natively

The Austronesian languages

• Austro-nesian: “southern island” language family

• Aboriginal languages of Taiwan: Amis, Zhou, Seediq- diversity of these languages suggests Taiwan as Austronesian homeland

• Major languages: Malay, Bahasa Indonesia, Tagalog, Samoan, etc

Settlement of Hawaii

• Evidence for two waves of settlement:1. From Marquesas -- the legendary menehune

“little people” of Kaua’i2. From Tahiti (South Pacific)

• Navigation by stars and natural signs: clouds, migrating birds

• The Pacific golden plover or kolea

Typological features of Austronesian languages

• (Apparently) simple phonological systems, as in Hawaiian: 8 consonants including the okina (glottal stop) as in Hawai’i

5 vowels with phonemic length distinction = 10 vowel phonemes (‘aina “meal” vs ‘āina “land”)

• Disyllabic roots: Malay mata “eye”, Hawaiian manu “bird”

• Verb-initial constituent order: VSO (Hawaiian), VOS (Malagasy) or VSO/VOS (Samoan, Seediq)

Hawaiian today

• Revitalization in progress

• Pūnana Leo (“Language nest”) schools

http://www.ahapunanaleo.org/

• Media: newspaper columns, new radio bulletins in Hawaiian

• http://news.iciba.com/a/20081212/546281.shtml