Benjamin Pope — u7134733
LING2020: Structure of English
Australian National University 2023
A Comparative Study of English Varieties:
Bislama
and
Australian Standard English
Word Count: 1,986
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Introduction
This paper intends to explore the morphosyntactic structures of Bislama, a Vanuatu-English
creole, with Australian Standard English (AusE). Similar to other South Pacific creoles, the
substrate languages of Bislama lend it their grammatical structures, while using English for
vocabulary. This substrate grammar changes many of the fundamental constructions that are
familiar to us in AusE. Bislama doesn’t mark plurality using nominal inflection, and it
introduces a single set of pronoun. Dummy subjects, used so freely in AusE, vanish with the
introduction of the particle i to mark predicates. While a highly productive suffix marks
transitive verbs. These features show the radically different constructions that have developed
from Bislama’s substrate languages. These features extend the syntax-heavy focus seen in
English grammar, but provide powerful morphological constructions not present in AusE.
Background
Bislama (From the French bêche de mer, “sea cucumber” (Tryon, 1987)) is one of the three
official languages of the Republic of Vanuatu. Bislama is an English-based creole, and has
established itself as the lingua franca for the dozens of language groups indigenous to the
archipelago in the South Pacific(Crowley, 2004). During the nineteenth century, there was an
increase of language contact between Melanesian language communities and European
colonists. Trading routes through New Caledonia and Vanuatu shifted as whale populations
changed, and indentured labour on sugarcane plantations in Queensland increased, fleshing
out existing Pacific pidgins as different Melanesian language communities required means to
communicate. According to Tyron (1987, p. 3), this diversity of Melanesian language groups
led to the pidgin’s grammar being primarily sourced from the shared grammar of the
Melanesian languages, while the lexemes were pulled from English. At the turn of the
twentieth century, federation saw an end to the indentured labour and the return of ni-Vanuatu
peoples to the archipelago, helping spread the new contact language to the many islands
(Crowley 2008).
Over the next 100 years, although maligned as a “rough and inadequate plantation language”,
Bislama’s use persisted(Tryon, 1987). During the 1970s and 1980s, public perception of the
language changed, thanks to translations of the Holy Gospels and the New Testament into
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Bislama, while political parties and movements saw the language as a way to unite ni-Vanuatu
people. Since declaring independence from the British and French in the 1980s, Bislama has
become accepted as the language of government and administration in Vanuatu (Tryon, 1987:3).
While the origin of Bislama is a rich Venn diagram of influences, AusE has much simpler
origins. The penal colonies and settlements of the Australian Continent in the eighteenth
century and onwards, were not populated by a single English variety. Rather, transported
convicts and free-settlers from all over the British Isles arrived in Australia (Burridge,
2020:175). Although accents and varieties like Cockney English and Received Pronunciation
(or their proto-equivalents) existed — their use, distribution and history influenced by class
and nationality — constant waves of British immigration and the highly transient nature of
settlers meant there was constant changes in how the varieties were distributed across the
continent. Arrivals who came to work in industries like agriculture and resource extraction were
also more likely to be from rural areas and disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds
(Burridge, 2020). So while this deviated AusE from standards in the British Isles, the empire’s
consistent engagement with the continent, and the lack of large-scale language contact, have
maintained the stability of the variety and prevented it from deviating as much as Bislama.
Quantifiers and Plurals
While lexemes in Bislama are primarily sourced from English, the nominal inflections
commonly seen in AusE have not necessarily survived through language contact. The plural
morpheme -s is one of the most productive morphemes in English, and is realised on the
majority of English count-nouns. However, in Bislama noun lexemes are invariable to number
and instead the particle ol (from AusE ‘all’) or olgeta (from AusE ‘altogether’) is used to
express plurality (Crowley, 2004:50).
(1) haos. [Bislama]
house
‘The house.’ [AusE; Taken from Tryon (1987:24)]
(2) Ol haos. [Bislama]
PLU houses
‘The houses.’ [AusE; Taken from Tyron (1987:24)]
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At first glance one might incorrectly interpret the addition of ol as a definite article. While
AusE morphosyntax has both indefinite and definite articles, Bislama does not realise a definite
article, defaulting nouns to a definite state, as can be seen in example 1. In order to express
indefiniteness, speakers take advantage of the numeral wan (‘one’ in AusE) and the quantifier
sam (‘some’ in AusE) (Tryon, 1987:23).
(3) Wan haos. [Bislama]
One house
‘A house.’ [AusE; Modified from Tryon (1987:24)]
(4) Sam haos. [Bislama]
Some house.
‘Some houses.’ [AusE; Modified from Tryon (1987:24)]
This makes quantifiers all the more important, as they are needed to express both number and
definiteness. This is not uncommon in English varieties, even standards like AusE use articles
that must agree in both definiteness and number with the modified noun, however the definite
article ‘the’ is invariable to number. Its absence in Bislama takes this need for an article a step
further.
Examples of Bislama quantifiers include words like olgeta (AusE ‘all’); evri (AusE ‘every’);
plante (AusE ‘many’/‘plenty’); eni (AusE ‘any’); tumas (AusE ‘too much/many’); and naf
(AusE ‘enough’). However multiple words exist to convey each of these meanings — and like
the use of ol compared to olgeta for plurals — their use and frequency is dependent on the
speaker, who may favour particular constructions.
Pronouns
Another of the obvious morphosyntactic differences between the two varieties, is in the sets of
pronouns available to speakers. Unlike AusE, there is only a single set of pronouns in Bislama.
This set is invariable to case, meaning that unlike the separate sets we are familiar with in AusE
for subject, object and possessive pronouns, Bislama uses the one set in all contexts. Compare
the use of mi and em in the following examples:
(5) Mi kilim em. [Bislama]
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1.SG hit 3.SG
“I hit him.” [AusE; taken from Tryon (1987:19)]
(6) Em i kilim mi. [Bislama]
3.SG PRED1 1.SG
“He hit me.” [AusE; taken from Tryon (1987:19)]
There is no variation in their form, despite each word occurring in both positions. We do not
see this in the AusE equivalents, where we can see “I” realised as “me”, and “he” realised as
“him”.
The relation between the Bislama and AusE pronouns can readily be seen from this example.
Mapping our AusE pronouns to Bislama give the following pairs: I/me to mi, you to yu, and
he/she/it to em/hem2 . We becomes yumi (‘you’ + ‘me’), and they becomes olgeta (‘all’ +
‘together’) or even just ol. (Crowley, 2004:48), the same lexemes used to express plurality.
There exists an additional first-person plural pronoun mifala (‘I/me’ + ‘fellow’), which
excludes the addressee, as well as a plural second person, yufala (‘you’ + ‘fellow’) (Crowley,
2004). While there are varieties of Australian English that do include a plural second person,
this is usually produced by the addition of the -s plural morpheme generating ‘yous(e)’.
However, as Bislama does not inflect on the noun itself to produce a plural, the -fala morpheme
is a highly productive suffix that is used for all non-singular pronouns (excluding yumi and
olgeta). Bislama pronouns, although case invariable, are highly dependent on number. In AusE,
while only singular and plural are differentiated, Bislama also includes dual and trial pronouns.
Singular pronouns may use -fala in combination with an affix denoting number, -tu- (‘two’)
and -tri- (‘three’), to create pronouns for dual and trial subjects respectively.
(7) Mitufala i go long sanbij. [Bislama]
1.DUALexcl. PRED go LOC (sand)beach
‘We (He and I) went to the beach.’ [AusE; taken from Tryon (1987:19)]
(8) Yutrifala i laekem kakae ia. [Bislama]
1 PRED will be used henceforth to denote the i “predicate marker”.
2 It appears that more recent publications like Crowley (2008) opt to use hem, compared to publications like
Tryon (1987) that use em.
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2.TRIAL PRED like food here.
‘You (three) like this food’. [AusE; taken from Tryon (1987:21)]
Note that the pronoun in example 3, mitufala, could be substituted with yumitufala to denote
the speaker and the address going to the beach. If number is insignificant, the affix and suffix
may be omitted, resulting in the plural form yumi (Tryon, 1987, p. 20).
For third person dual and trial pronouns, the affix and suffix occur by themselves:
(9) Tufala i go. [Bislama]
3.DUAL PRED go.
“The two of them went.” [AusE; taken from Crowley (2004:48)]
(10) Trifala i go. [Bislama]
3.TRIAL PRED go.
“The three of them went.” [AusE; taken from Crowley (2004:48)]
However, this construction does not convey the idea that the two went together, but rather both
independently went. Conveniently, there is another productive morpheme that can encode this
information. As seen in the third person plural olgeta, the final -geta can be used with the dual
and trial affixes to express an action being performed together:
(11) Tugeta i go. [Bislama]
3.DUAL PRED go.
“The two of them went together.” [AusE; Taken from Crowley (2004:48)]
(12) Trigeta i go. [Bislama]
3.TRIAL PRED go.
“The three of them went together.” [AusE; Taken from Crowley (2004:48)]
It becomes apparent that as tugeta is derived from the English “together”, one may interpret
trigeta as “threegether”. While in AusE “together” can only be interpreted as the one morpheme,
Bislama is able to treat it as two morphemes, where the original semantic meaning is embedded
in the latter, and number can be encoded in the former.
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i — The Predicate Marker
Two forms of statements exist in Bislama: predicate and non-predicate sentences. Non-
predicate sentences are those where a noun phrase is referenced, but no information on the
subject’s actions is specified (Crowley, 2004:108). The following is a non-trivial example of a
non-predicate sentence:
(13) Hemia reva blong mifala. [Bislama]
DEM river POSS 1.PLexcl.
‘That’s our river.’ [AusE; Taken from Crowley (2004:109)]
However, most statements will be predicate sentences. Like AusE, in these sentences the
subject is followed by the predicate, but sandwiched between the two is the particle i. This
means i will tend occur directly after the first noun phrase, and it is widely agreed that it
constitutes with the verb phrase of clause (Meyerhoff, 2000:87).
(14) Ol driver i yusum rod ia. [Bislama]
PLU driver PRED use road DEM
‘The drivers use that road.’ [AusE; Modified from Meyerhoff (2015:87)]
(15) Set blong mi i braon. [Bislama]
shirt POSS 1.SG PRED brown
‘My shirt is brown’ [AusE; Modified from Crowley (2004:100)]
The second example shows the particle must follow the entire constituent, and not just a noun
and its modifier(s). The predicate marker is realised in different ways. Following the singular
pronouns mi and yu, and the plural first person pronoun yumi, the predicate is left completely
unmarked. If the predicate follows the plural third person pronoun olgeta, then the quantifier
ol appears before i.
(16) Yumi go long Tanna. [Bislama]
1.PLINCL go PREP Tanna.
‘We went to Tanna.’ [AusE; Taken from Tryon (1987:21)]
(17) Olgeta ol i go long Tanna. [Bislama]
3.PL QUANT PRED go PREP Tanna.
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‘They went to Tanna.’[AusE; Taken from Tryon (1987:21)]
Predicate marking is present in other South Pacific creoles like Tok Pisin and Solomon Islands
Pijin (Meyerhoff, 2000:85). One might infer from this distribution that this feature was
introduced to Bislama via its substrate languages and not English. The construction favoured
by Tryon — “ol i”— is also present in Tok Pisin. However, in Bislama the particles cannot be
separated with a verbal modifier, as can be done in the Tok Pisin construction. This has led
many to favour oli as the standard construction for third person plural predicate markers
(Meyerhoff, 2000:86).
In sentences absent of a traditional subject, that in AusE would require a dummy subject, the
predicate marker sits in a sentence initial position:
(18) I isi blong katem bata. [Bislama]
PRED easy PREP cut butter
‘It’s easy to cut butter.’ [AusE; Modified from Camden (2015:332)]
(19) I gat sikis man long nakamal. [Bislama]
PRED have six person LOC kava-bar
‘There were six people at the kava-bar (nakamal).’ [AusE; Modified from
Crowley (2004:29)]
In this way, Bislama seems void of these particular “dummy subjects” that we would see in the
AusE equivalents. Further research into the distribution of the fronted predicate marker and its
non-predicate equivalent would provide insight into the choices made my native speakers, and
what is recognised as a subject in these situation.
The Transitive Suffix
Bislama regularly marks verb transitivity through the use of a highly productive suffix. This
suffix is usually referred to in literature as /-Vm/ as the phonetic realisation of the morpheme
changes depending on the verb root, but is derived from the English word “them” or “’em”
(Crowley, 2004). Due to this, there exist many pairs of verbs with a transitive and intransitive
meaning (Tryon, 1987:34). We can see this in the following examples:
(20) Joseph i stap kuk. [Bislama]
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Joseph PRED CONT cookINTRANS
‘Joseph is cooking.’ [AusE; Modified from Crowley (2004:80)]
(21) Joseph i stap kukum raes. [Bislama]
Joseph PRED CONT cookTRANS rice
‘Joseph is cooking rice.’ [AusE; Modified from Crowley (2004:80)]
Though, like any morphosyntactic construction there is always exceptions. There are a number
of commonly used verbs that do not appear with the suffix even when expressing a transitive
action. Consider the following:
(22) Mi gat kava. [Bislama]
1.SG have kava
‘I have kava.’[AusE; Modified from Crowley (2004:79)]
Not,
(23) *Mi gatem kava.[Bislama; Modified from Crowley (2004:79)]
This morpheme is so frequently used, that Crowley (2004, p. 79) states that any transitive verb
that is newly imported from English to Bislama will possess this ending when used in a
transitive sense. A popular example for this is the verbalisation of ‘email’ from English. As we
can see in the following examples, it is realised as imel and imelem:
(24) Stanley i imel i kam long mi yestedei. [Bislama]
Stanley PRED emailINTRANS PRED came PREP 1.SG yesterday
‘Stanley emailed to me yesterday.’ [AusE; Taken from Crowley (2004:79)
(25) Bae mi imelem yu tumoro. [Bislama]
AUX 1.SG emailTRANS 2.SG tomorrow
‘I will email you tomorrow.’ [AusE; Taken from Crowley (2004:79)]
The productive nature of the morpheme, especially in new lexemes, shows speakers ability to
recognise the transitivity of a verb, and how it agrees with the other constituents in a verbal
sentence.
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Conclusion
This paper has briefly outlined some of the key differences in the morphosyntactic standards
of Bislama and AusE. A marker for plurality is absent in Bislama’s nominal inflection, leading
to more frequent use of quantifiers. The three sets of pronouns familiar to speakers of AusE are
replaced by a single set, that introduces new grammatical categories for number and person.
Bislama also utilises a marker for the predicate of a clause, and a highly productive suffix is
regularly used to mark transitive verbs in Bislama. These grammatical features highlight the
different constructions commonly used in the substrate languages of this South Pacific creole,
as well as display speakers abilities to identify grammatical aspects that are non-existent in
Australian Standard English.
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