Circumlocutions with the noun peopo ‘people’ in Hawai’i Creole English

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the use of circumlocutions with the noun peopo in Hawai’i Creole English from The Revelation of St. John Divine in the HCE Bible. These examples are contrasted with their equivalents from King James’ Bible. The main aim is to conduct a quantitative analysis of selected circumlocutions. Moreover, possible grammatical structures for circumlocutions are analysed. Circumlocution is, in fact, an effective word formation process in Hawai’i Creole English since it allows its speakers to create new lexical items that can bridge lexical gaps in their lexicon.


Introduction
Pidgin and creole languages used to be perceived as broken and imperfect (Walczyński 2012: 27); however, many studies have challenged this approach. Pidgins and creoles transpire and are used in multicultural and multilingual settings, that is, in areas where one common mode of communication is required.
The main purpose of this paper is to present the process of circumlocution as a productive word-formation process in Hawaiian Creole English (henceforth HCE). Sadler (1974) and Mühlhäusler (1985) have investigated this process in Tok Pisin. Nevertheless, their studies are narrowed only to enumerating existing circumlocutions, neglecting the context where lengthy expressions occur.
This paper presents an analysis of circumlocutions with respect to the approach taken from the field of second language acquisition by Boreder et al. (1993). Additionally, the context for selected circumlocutions with peopo and a quantitative analysis are provided. Examples of circumlocutions with peopo are taken from the Hawai'i Creole English Bible and they are contrasted with their equivalents from King James' version of the Bible, for the reason that these versions show the closest resemblance. All the examples come from The Revelation of St. John Divine. The study is carried out via AntConc, version 3.5.8. The freeware enables to filter the text, select all the necessary examples and classify them.
The word peopo occurs throughout The Revelation of St. John Divine in the HCE Bible frequently. The word is used 214 times in the studied fragment. What is more, it is employed in numerous circumlocutions. For this reason, the word has been chosen for the sake of this study.
As regards Hawai'i Creole English, The Atlas of Pidgin and Creole Language Structures Online states that there are nearly 600,000 speakers who use this language as their mother tongue. Moreover, there are 100,000 speakers of the creole located on the US mainland. The language is used on a daily basis. Moreover, there are literary works produced in this language as well.

Circumlocution
According to Worden (2016), circumlocution is a communicative strategy which consists in providing a description of an object, location, idea or action instead of an exact name. Savignon (1983: 6) defines it as "the effective use of coping strategies to sustain or enhance communication". Some scholars perceive circumlocution not only as a communication technique but also as a lexical repair strategy (Paribakht 1985).
Circumlocution, according to Jourdain and Scullen (2002), is not only employed by native speakers of a language. On the contrary, this process is commonly used by non-native speakers. Dobao (2007) claims that learners of a second or foreign language come to communicative situations with limited knowledge of the language. Even advanced and proficient students may have language problems, especially in spontaneous interactions.

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Beyond Philology 17/1 Broeder et al. (1993) present a way of coining new lexical items via circumlocution which consists in the combination of two or more already existing lexemes and the combination of lexemes and one or more derivational affixes. The authors claim that composite word formation processes present in learners' mother tongues might influence head-ordering in noun-noun word formation. Thus head final preferences are held by, for instance, Swedish or Turkish speakers of English, whereas French, Arabic or Punjabi are languages where head initial may be favoured in coining new compounds. However, there are languages, such as Dutch and German, where both types of head ordering are in constant competition, therefore, these speakers of English would use both types interchangeably. Broeder et al. (1993: 50-55) investigated three groups of people learning different languages, namely, Dutch, English and Swedish. The Dutch group consisted of Arabic and Turkish native speakers. The English group included people speaking Punjabi and Italian as their mother tongues. The last group included Spanish native speakers learning Swedish. The researchers concentrated on analysing the following structures: N+N head-final, X+N+N head-final, N+N linear, N+N head-initial and N+prep+N head-initial, where N stands for a noun, X for a modifier and prep for a preposition. Table 1 presents the data. Table 1 Number of N-N compound types (Broeder et. al. 1993 The study shows that the most common type of compounds for the non-native speakers of Dutch is N+N head-final. However, the most complex lexical items are found in X+N+N head-final, N+prep+N head-initial and N+N linear structures. Examples are presented in Table 2. Similarly to the Dutch learners, for the learners of English, the most common type of compounds is N+N head-final. However, English non-native speakers tend to create elaborate constructions with the N+prep+N head-initial type. Examples are shown in Table 3.

Circumlocution in Second Language Acquisition
Lastly, Swedish non-native speakers, similarly to the two previous groups, tend to coin new lexical items in the N+N head-final manner. However, the authors found examples of compounds which represent head-initial N+N compositions (see Table 4).
The least popular type of coining new N-N compounds is linear noun + noun. Two ways of creating noun compounds are absent from English and Swedish, namely, N+N headinitial and X+N+N head-final respectively. The remaining ways of creating circumlocutions by non-native speakers of the Germanic languages are relatively common; however, the head-final composition is the most popular. Table 3 Complex N-N compounds amongst English non-native speakers (Broeder et. al. 1993 Table 4 Complex N-N compounds amongst Swedish non-native speakers (Broeder et. al. 1993 All things considered, studies presented above prove that circumlocution is a widely common process used by non-native speakers of any language. This proves that circumlocution is an extremely useful communication strategy for learners of a second language. Dobao (2007: 7) postulates that the circumlocution strategy should be used by students of foreign languages since it helps them to achieve successful communication. In a similar vein, Salomone and Marsal (1997: 480) suggest that students using circumlocution exhibit more cognitive flexibility, that is, they express their opinions more freely, they are more creative and eager to voice their judgements.

Circumlocution in Tok Pisin
Possibilities for pidgins and creoles to develop their vocabulary are limitless. This can be achieved via circumlocution, which allows speakers to describe objects, phenomena or actions in a picturesque manner (Naro 2000: 38). An outstanding example of this process is Tok Pisin where speakers of this language have created lengthy descriptions.
As may be inferred, circumlocution is a crucial turning point in the development of pidgins or creoles, for the reason that this process opens up new avenues for any language to enrich its vocabulary. This, in turn, gives a possibility to change circumlocutions into compounds. Tok Pisin has many circumlocutions as well as circumlocution-induced compounds in its lexical inventory. According to Mühlhäusler (1985), many perplex circumlocutions vanish from Tok Pisin as soon as the expressions become more common. As a result, more economical lexical items enter the lexicon in their place. The first possible simplification is the substitution of a circumlocution with a borrowing from one of the languages which are in close contact with the pidgin. Examples of such a process are presented in Table 5.
Another way of simplifying circumlocutions is the substitution by a lexified equivalent. Examples of this process are presented in Table 6.  Although some cases of circumlocution are replaced by more effective ways of expressing the same idea, still there are some expressions which cannot be substituted. According to Mühlhäusler (1985: 102), some circumlocutions must have become conventionalised and using, for example, a borrowing would sound unnatural. Table 7 presents examples of circumlocutions which are still used in Tok Pisin. Taking this into consideration, even though circumlocution may be substituted by shorter and more effective communicative strategies, it is still used by Tok Pisin native speakers to express their thoughts. Sadler (1974: 24) proposes 13 wordformation processes in Tok Pisin, including 4 techniques involving circumlocution (see Table 8). The examples of circumlocution provided by Sadler (1974) are isolated from their context. By way of explanation, Mühlhäusler (1985) argues that Sadler's (1974) approach to studying circumlocution is flawed since the author neglects the fact that a circumlocution might have a different meaning when the phrase occurs in a different context. Therefore, it is absolutely vital to emphasise the role of the context in which a given example of circumlocution appears (Mühlhäusler 1985: 661).
All things considered, circumlocution is a vital wordformation process. Not only does it enable non-native speakers to converse despite impaired vocabulary, but it also allows native speakers to enrich their lexicon and be more creative. The process is also a driving force in language evolution since, as has already been explained, circumlocutions may give rise to compounds which occur to be extremely useful in naming new objects, phenomena and activities.

Circumlocutions with peopo in Hawai'i Creole English: Examples
The word peopo 'people' is frequently used in elaborate descriptions in the HCE Bible. People is defined by the On-line Cambridge Dictionary as 'men, women, and children generally'. Examples (1)-(15) contain the headword peopo. Its meaning is altered in each instance since it is accompanied by a series of modifiers whose primary purpose is to narrow the meaning.
The examples are arranged in forms of tables divided into three sections. On the left side, the top box contains an example of circumlocution from the HCE Bible. Below the box, the literal translation is provided. The box on the right contains an equivalent from King James' Bible. Below the table, excerpts with the example of circumlocution from the HCE Bible and King James' Bible are provided.
Examples (1)-(3) include relative clauses where a general statement about particular people is expressed. This general statement allows to narrow the meaning of peopo, a more general word.
( Examples (4)-(13) contain relative clauses where an action is described. The description of an activity allows one to specify the class of people.
(4) da peopo dat work fo him servants the people who work for him As has already been stated, the phrases in (4)-(13) are coined by the addition of a relative clause with dat. Interestingly, there are two circumlocutions where the phrase with the word guy is used, namely, (11) and (12). By way of explanation, circumlocution (10), God's Baby Sheep Guy, is used. There are a few instances where there is a modifier preceding the head word, namely, examples (10)-(13).
Let us consider example (14). Even though it does not contain the word dat, it is an example of a relative clause. The action in this phrase is expressed by the reduced relative clause playing plenny guitars. Contrary to the previous pattern, example (15) does not include any relative clause. In this case, a prepositional phrase is used in order to specify the meaning of peopo. All things considered, the process of modifying the basic meaning of the head word peopo consists in adding a relative clause after the noun. There are only minor exceptions where different grammatical structures might be used, namely, a reduced relative clause or a prepositional phrase. The process of circumlocution allows one to create a multiword lexeme which functions as if it were a single noun. All the examples in this section refer to particular groups of people.

Analysis of circumlocutions with peopo
As has already been stipulated, the word peopo comes from the English word people. In the creole, the word preserves the original English meaning. All the circumlocutions with peopo are listed in Table 9. The head word occurs with various modifiers which change its basic meaning. These words, together with the head word, are listed in Table 10.  As can be seen, the noun is the most frequent word class amongst all the listed word classes. It is due to the fact that nouns carry the most fundamental meaning for circumlocutions. Additionally, there are articles, prepositions, a relative pronoun, determiners, verbs and auxiliary verbs. Amongst these word classes, the adjective plays an important role as well, carrying some additional meaning. The remaining word classes are used mainly to align nouns and adjectives into adequate structures. Table 12 presents three structures which are possible for the head word peopo. The relative clause is the dominating one. This type of construction occurs as many as 28 times (93%), whereas a reduced relative clause and a prepositional phrase appear only once each. The studied text does not present many examples of circumlocution with peopo. There are 15 circumlocutions; however, they are rarely used throughout the text. Table 13 presents the examples of circumlocution. The table includes their grammatical functions, their literal meanings and actual meanings. All things considered, the phrases with the word peopo function as nouns. The grammatical construction that dominates in these examples is the relative clause. The head words are mostly modified by nouns and/or adjectives.

Conclusions
It appears that circumlocution in Hawai'i Creole English is a valuable linguistic device which enables the speakers of the creole to converse. Moreover, this communicative strategy allows HCE native speakers to bridge lexical gaps in their lexicon.
The circumlocutions with peopo are used to achieve a greater degree of specificity and precision. It is noteworthy that certain grammatical structures are favoured whereas other constructions do not appear to be so common. The vast majority of lexemes are coined via adding a relative clause to the head word. There are only single instances of different structures, that is, a reduced relative clause and a prepositional phrase.
This study demonstrates that the process of circumlocution is a popular means of communicating one's ideas. However, a deeper study is advised since the HCE Bible is a specific text where circumlocutions may be favoured. Thus real-life interviews with HCE speakers or a study of contemporary written texts in HCE would be vital to understanding grammatical structures of this creole.