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The influence of Edward Young's St Kitts Creole in Pitcairn Island and Norfolk Island toponyms

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 March 2017

JOSHUA NASH
JOSHUA NASH*
Affiliation:
School of Behavioral and Social Sciences, University of New England, Armidale, NSW 2351, [email protected]
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Abstract

Edward Young, the midshipman who sided with Fletcher Christian during the Mutiny on the Bounty, which took place in 1789, was an English and St Kitts Creole speaker. The influence of Young's Kittitian lexicon and grammar toponyms (placenames) in the Pitcairn Island language – Pitcairn – exists in features such as the use of articles and possessive constructions. Pitcairn was moved to Norfolk Island sixty-six years after the settling of Pitcairn Island in 1790 by the mutineers and their Polynesian counterparts. While Kittitian for ‘for, of’ and Kittitian-derived articles ha/ah only occur in a few documented placenames in Pitcairn, the fer and ar/dar elements of possessive constructions in placenames in Norfolk, the Norfolk Island language still spoken today by the descendants of the Pitcairners, are more common than in Pitcairn placenames. It is argued that the use of the for/fer possessive construction and article forms are key social deictic markers of identity and distinctiveness, especially in Norfolk placenames. Their usage delineates Pitcairn blood heritage and ancestry (Norfolk: comefrom) as either Pitcairner or non-Pitcairner, and has been expanded in and adapted to the new social and natural environment of Norfolk Island. The analysis draws on primary Norfolk placename data and compares it to secondary Pitcairn data.

Type
Research Article
Information
English Language & Linguistics , Volume 22 , Issue 3 , November 2018 , pp. 483 - 497
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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Footnotes

1I thank Philip Baker for comments on an earlier draft and Ian Hancock for comments on a more recent version. Emil Mittag provided editorial assistance.

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