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11 - Non-European Pidgins in Early European Colonial Explorations and Trade: Mobilian Jargon and Maritime Polynesian Pidgin in Contrast

from Part Two - Contact, Emergence, and Language Classification

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 June 2022

By
Emanuel J. Drechsel
Edited by
Salikoko Mufwene  and
Anna Maria Escobar
Salikoko Mufwene
Affiliation:
University of Chicago
Anna Maria Escobar
Affiliation:
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
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Summary

The discussion of language contact has paid increased attention to non-European pidgins for their linguistic and sociohistorical significance. Drechsel offers an in-depth comparative-contrastive analysis of two better documented cases: Mobilian Jargon of the lower Mississippi River valley and Maritime Polynesian Pidgin of the eastern Pacific. Beyond observable differences in function and form, this contrast, drawing on broad sociolinguistic-sociohistorical descriptions, recognizes major parallels in an initial typological scheme of non-European language contact: an analytic morpho-syntactic structure of both pidgins, indigenous paramount chiefdoms (including the incorporation of neighboring communities and contacts with distant peoples, be they with other native peoples or Europeans, by canoe on rivers or sailing at sea) and the fur trade as major sociolinguistic contexts (with the fur trade extending into the eastern Pacific as part of the early American trade with China). In a postscript, the contrast of Mobilian Jargon and Maritime Polynesian Pidgin raises an old historical question often neglected in the Anglophile literature: What was the sociolinguistic role of the Spaniards in the trans-Pacific galleon trade of American silver for Chinese silk, other textiles, and luxuries between Mexico and China from 1571 until 1815?

Keywords

Non-European pidginsMobilian JargonMaritime Polynesian Pidgintypological similarities of non-European pidgins: analytic morphosyntactic patternparamount chiefdomsand the fur tradequestion of the Spaniards’ sociolinguistic role as part of the trans-Pacific galleon trade between Mexico and China from 1571 until 1815
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Language Contact
Volume 2: Multilingualism in Population Structure
 , pp. 283 - 309
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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