Abstract

One of the salient features of Bislama, an English-lexifier pidgin/creole that is spoken in Vanuatu, is the presence of a suffix on transitive verbs of the shape -Vm. This paper traces the historical development of this suffix from its sporadic appearance in the early nineteenth century to its very regular use in present-day Bislama. This paper demonstrates that there has not been a simple progression from occasional use of -Vm to general use over time. Rather, the suffix went through some fits and starts and at one stage almost disappeared before regaining vigour, eventually generalising to the productive pattern that we find today. Substrate languages have played a part in this, though there has not been a single direct substrate parallel. In the earliest years, there was somewhat indirect Australian substrate influence, while only later was there reinforcement from Oceanic substrate patterns. However, purely language-internal pressures also played a part, and the generalisation of the transitive marker was not simply a case of direct substrate modelling.

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