1. LING3003 Linguistics Field Trip Hawaii Field trip 2009 Introduction: the Hawaiian islands

2. Aims Islands as natural laboratories Study language situation 1. The Hawaiian language: Polynesian language, in danger of extinction, revitalization in progress 2. Hawaiian Creole English (aka Pidgin) - as featured in LING2040 Languages in Contact 3. Other immigrant languages: Okinawan, Japanese, Korean, Cantonese/Hakka, Philippine languages

3. The Hawaiian Islands Most isolated archipelago on earth Series of volcanoes created successively by “hot spot”, latest island 500,000 years ago Settled by Polynesian seafarers from Marquesas between 300-600 AD ‘discovered’ by Captain Cook in 1778

4. The Hawaiian Islands 7 inhabited islands: Oahu: Honolulu, Pearl Harbor Hawai’i: “The Big Island” Maui Moloka’i Lana’i Kaua’i Ni’ihau: privately owned, beyond Kaua’i; Hawaiian spoken natively

5. The Austronesian languages Austro-nesian: “southern island” language family Aboriginal languages of Taiwan: Amis, Zhou, Seediq - diversity of these languages suggests Taiwan as Austronesian homeland Major languages: Malay, Bahasa Indonesia, Tagalog, Samoan, etc

6. Settlement of Hawaii Evidence for two waves of settlement: 1. From Marquesas -- the legendary menehune “little people” of Kaua’i 2. From Tahiti (South Pacific) Navigation by stars and natural signs: clouds, migrating birds The Pacific golden plover or kolea

7. Typological features of Austronesian languages (Apparently) simple phonological systems, as in Hawaiian: 8 consonants including the okina (glottal stop) as in Hawai’i 5 vowels with phonemic length distinction = 10 vowel phonemes (‘aina “meal” vs ‘āina “land”) Disyllabic roots: Malay mata “eye”, Hawaiian manu “bird” Verb-initial constituent order: VSO (Hawaiian), VOS (Malagasy) or VSO/VOS (Samoan, Seediq)

8. Hawaiian today Revitalization in progress Pūnana Leo (“Language nest”) schools http://www.ahapunanaleo.org/ Media: newspaper columns, new radio bulletins in Hawaiian http://news.iciba.com/a/20081212/546281.shtml