THE ROLE OF DIFFUSION IN THE GENESIS OF HAWAIIAN CREOLE

The historical diffusion of lexical and grammatical features from one pidgin to anl,ther has been well documented for the Pacific region, pa rticularly by Baker (1993) who argued that items were spread individua lly in the early nineteenth century via an ad hoc foreigner talk regis ter. Noting the profound similarities between Hawai'i Creole English ( HCE) and the Caribbean English Creoles (CECs) which led Bickerton (198 1) to propose the language bioprogram hypothesis, Goodman (1985) sugge sted a stronger model of diffusion, one which involved the transmissio n of a structurally complex pidgin or creole from the Caribbean to Haw ai'i. Helm (1986) and Dillard (1995) have endorsed Goodman's hypothesi s. This study, drawing on a wealth of pidgin/creole data spanning the previous two centuries, finds little support for Goodman's proposal Te xtual evidence shows that the nineteenth-century pidgin of Hawai'i lac ked not only the structure of later HCE but also displayed far stronge r links with neighboring Pacific pidgin Englishes than the CECs. Furth ermore, the creole TMA system and for-complementation patterns are rev ealed to have developed late and primarily (though not entirely) withi n the population of native-born speakers, as predicted by the bioprogr am. However, while the Face of creolization was fairly rapid in Hawai' i, HCE did not form entirely within a single generation.