English and Melanesian Pidgin in the Admiralty Islands

This paper looks at the language of adolescents in the Admiralty Islands, who are educated through the medium of English but are fluent in Melanesian Pidgin English (Tok Pisin). It was found that lexical innovation in Manus included massive borrowing of English lexical items, especially verbs, into Tok Pisin. However, in most cases the borrowings are integrated rather than forming obvious code switches. The introduced words and phrases have the potential to influence the evolving grammar of Tok Pisin, and it seems that English and Tok Pisin are moving closer together, but descriptions of the phenomenon as a post-creole continuum appear to be premature