Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-18T11:19:34.290Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Tongan Chiefly Language: The Formation of an Honorific Speech Register

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 November 2010

Jason D. Haugen  and
Susan U. Philips
Jason D. Haugen
Affiliation:
Anthropology Department, 10 N. Professor St., Oberlin College, Oberlin, OH [email protected]
Susan U. Philips
Affiliation:
Anthropology Department, University of Arizona, Mailing Address: 6650 N. Los, Arboles Tucson, AZ 85704, [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In this paper we examine the formation over time of a lexical honorific speech register, Tongan lea faka'eiki, or ‘chiefly language’. Use of the comparative historical method enables us to consider honorific register formation within a framework of greater temporal and spatial scope that has been typical for studies of register formation, and to identify some properties of such formation that have not been documented before. Our evidence shows that the higher and lower levels of honorification in this speech register have been formed at different times and through predominantly different etymological processes, even as they draw on the same broader set of word formation processes. In recorded speech, the differences between the sources of the two sub-registers are even more pronounced, preserving and reproducing the historical differences in their formation.*

Type
Articles
Information
Language in Society , Volume 39 , Issue 5 , November 2010 , pp. 589 - 616
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Agha, Asif (1994). Honorification. Annual Review of Anthropology 23:277–302.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Besnier, Niko (2003). Polynesian languages. In Frawley, William J. (ed.), International encyclopedia of linguistics, Vol. 3, 361–68. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Biggs, Bruce G. (1978). The history of Polynesian phonology. In Wurm, Steven. A. & Carrington, Lois (eds.). Second international conference on Austronesian linguistics, Proceedings, Fasc. 2: Eastern Austronesian, 691–714. Canberra: Australian National University.Google Scholar
Biggs, Bruce (1996). The comparative Polynesian lexicon project (POLLEX). Electronic File.Google Scholar
Blixen, Olaf (1966). Lenguaje honorifico y comportamiento reverente en Samoa y Tonga. Comunicaciones Antropologicas del Museo de Historia Natural de Montevideo, 1, 6:1–39.Google Scholar
Blixen, Olaf . (1967). Acerca del lexico honorifico de Futuna (Horn). Moana: Estudios de Antropologia Oceanica, 1:1–7.Google Scholar
Blixen, Olaf . (1969). La dispersion del lenguaje honorifico en Oceania. Moana: Estudios de Antropologia Oceanica, Volume 1, Number 3, pp. 1–17.Google Scholar
Bott, Elizabeth (1982). Tongan society at the time of Captain Cook's visits: Discussions with Her Majesty Queen Sālote Tupou. Wellington, N.Z.: The Polynesian Society.Google Scholar
Cain, Horst (1986). A lexicon of foreign loan-words in the Samoan language. Kölner Ethnologische Mitteilungen, Band 7. Köln: Böhlau.Google Scholar
Capell, A. (1968). A new Fijian dictionary. Suva, Fiji: Government Printer.Google Scholar
Churchward, C. Maxwell (1959). Tongan dictionary. Nuku'alofa: The Government of Tonga.Google Scholar
Churchward, Spencer (1951). A Samoan grammar. Melbourne: Methodist Church of Australia.Google Scholar
Davidson, Janet. M. (1979). Samoa and Tonga. In Jennings, Jesse D. (ed.), The prehistory of Polynesia, 82–109. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Davies, J. (1988/1851). A Tahitian and English dictionary. Editions Haere Po No Tahiti.Google Scholar
Dixon, R.M.W. (1971). A method of semantic description. In: Steinberg, Danny D. & Jakobovits, Leon A., eds., Semantics: An Interdisciplinary Reader in Philosophy, Linguistics, and Psychology, 436–471. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Duranti, Alessandro (1992). Language in context and language as context: The Samoan respect vocabulary. In Duranti, Alessandro & Goodwin, Charles (eds.), Rethinking context: Language as an interactive phenomenon, 77–100. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Errington, Joseph (1988). Structure and style in Javanese. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Free Wesleyan Church (n.d.). Vocabulary for the three classes of people in the Tongan society: Commoners, nobles and the royalty. In Ko e kalama ‘i he lea faka-Tonga, 32–33. Nuku'alofa, Tonga: Free Wesleyan Church Office of Education. In print and circulation 1987–1990.Google Scholar
Geraghty, Paul (1994). Linguistic evidence for the Tongan empire. In Dutton, Tom & Tryon, Darrell T. (eds.), Language contact and change in the Austronesian world, 233–49. New York: Mouton de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gifford, Edward W. (1929). Rank and language. In Tongan Society, 119–22. Bernice P. Bishop Museum Bulletin 61.Google Scholar
Goldman, Irving (1970). Niue. In Ancient Polynesian Society, 395–405. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Grimes, Charles E. & Maryott, Kenneth R. (1994). Named speech registers in Austronesian languages. In Dutton, Tom & Tryon, Darrell T. (eds.), Language contact and change in the Austronesian world, 275–319. New York: Mouton de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haviland, John (1979). How to talk to your brother-in-law in Guugu Yimidhirr. In Shopen, Timothy (ed.), Languages and their speakers, 161–239. Cambridge, Mass: Winthrop Publishers, Inc.Google Scholar
Herda, Phyllis S. (1990). Genealogy in the Tongan construction of the past. In Herda, Phyllis, Terrell, Jennifer & Gunson, Niel (eds.), Tongan culture and history, 21–29. Canberra, Australia: Department of Pacific and Southeast Asian History, Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University.Google Scholar
Hill, Jane & Hill, Ken (1978). Honorific usage in Modern Nahuatl: The expression of social distance and respect in the Nahuatl of the Malinche volcanic area. Language 54, 123–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hocart, A.M. (1929). Lau islands, Fiji. Bernice P. Bishop Museum Bulletin 62. Honolulu: Bishop Museum.Google Scholar
Hovdhaugen, Even (1986). The chronology of three Samoan sound changes. In Geraghty, Paul, Carrington, Lois & Wurm, Steven A. (eds.), Focal II: Papers from the fourth international conference on Austronesian linguistics, pp. 313–31. Canberra: Australian National University.Google Scholar
Irvine, Judith T. (1995). Honorifics. In Verschueren, Jef, Ostman, Jan-Ola & Blommaert, Jan (eds.), Handbook of Pragmatics 1995, 1–22. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Irwin, Geoffrey (1992). The prehistoric exploration and colonization of the Pacific. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keating, Elizabeth (1998). Power sharing: Language, rank, gender ands social space in Pohnpei, Micronesia. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kirch, Patrick V. (1984). The evolution of the Polynesian chiefdoms. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Krupa, Viktor (1982). The Polynesian languages: A guide. Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Lynch, John (1998). Pacific languages: An introduction. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press.Google Scholar
Māhina, ‘Okusitino (1986). Religion, politics, and the Tu'i Tonga empire. M.A. Thesis in Anthropology, University of Auckland.Google Scholar
Martin, John (1979/1827). An account of the natives of the Tongan Islands (as told by William Mariner). New York: AMS Press.Google Scholar
Meleiseā, Malama (1987). Lagaga: A short history of Western Samoa. Apia, Western Samoa: University of the South Pacific.Google Scholar
Milner, G.B. (1961). The Samoan vocabulary of respect. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 81:296–317.Google Scholar
Milner, G.B. . (1993/1966). Samoan dictionary. Aotearoa, N.Z.: Polynesian Press.Google Scholar
Pawley, Andrew (1966). Polynesian languages: A sub-grouping based on shared innovations in morphology. Journal of the Polynesian Society, 75:39–64.Google Scholar
Philips, Susan U. (2007). Changing scholarly representations of the Tongan honorific lexicon. In Makihara, Miki & Schieffelin, Bambi (eds.), Consequences of contact: Language ideologies and sociocultural transformations in Pacific societies, 189–215. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Philips, Susan U. . (2010). Semantic and interactional indirectness in Tongan lexical honorification. In Kiesling, Scott (ed.), special issue on indirectness, Journal of Pragmatics, 42, 2:317–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Poulsen, Jens (1977). Archaeology and prehistory. In Rutherford, Noel (ed.), Friendly Islands: A history of Tonga, 4–26. Melbourne: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Pukui, Mary Kawena & Elbert, Samuel H. (1986). Hawaiian dictionary. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schmidt, Hans (2003). Loanword strata in Rotuman. In Henning, Andersen (ed.), Language contacts in prehistory: Studies in stratigraphy, 201–246. Amsterdam: John Benjamin.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shumway, Eric (1971). Respect terminology for nobility and royalty. In Intensive course in Tonga, 602–604. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.Google Scholar
Sperlich, Wolfgang B., ed. (1997). Tohi vagahau Niue: Niue language dictionary. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press.Google Scholar
Stasch, Rupert (2002). Joking avoidance: A Korowai pragmatics of being two. American Ethnologist 29:335–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taliai, ‘Opeti Manisela (1989). Social differentiation of language levels in Tonga. University of Auckland Master's Thesis.Google Scholar
Tent, Jan & Geraghty, Paul, eds. (2003). Borrowing: A Pacific perspective. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.Google Scholar
Tregear, Edward (1969/1891). The Maori-Polynesian comparative dictionary. Oosterhout N.B, The Netherlands: Anthropological Publications.Google Scholar
Tregear, Edward . (1895). Ceremonial language. New Zealand Institute Transactions (Royal Society of New Zealand), 27:593–97.Google Scholar
Tu'inukafe, Edgar & Holding, Robert G. (1992). A simplified dictionary of Tongan. Aotearoa, N.Z.: Polynesian Press.Google Scholar