On the Natural Environment as a Conceptual Source and Target in Tok Pisin

Abstract

The study of the relation between language and the natural environment in non-European languages is one of the foci of contemporary ecolinguistics (Penz & Fill, 2022, pp. 247–248). It remains in line with the anthropological proposition to investigate the semantic systems of non-Western languages, whose number is decreasing as a result of fast modernization and the spread of Western culture across the world (Keesing, 1985, p. 214; Mühlhäusler, 1995, p. 282; Mallett, 2003, p. 131). Subscribing to this perspective, the present paper discusses nature-related concepts in the lexicon of Tok Pisin, a creole of Papua New Guinea, lexified by English and the indigenous languages. It employs the methodological framework of cognitive and cultural linguistics (Dancygier & Sweetser, 2015; Langacker, 1994, p. 31; Palmer, 1996; Sharifian, 2017) to present the use of a broad range of natural terms as conceptual sources and targets of both metaphors and metonymies. It is argued that the Oceanic cognitive schema of integrity of humans and the natural world (Flassy, 2018, p. 73; Singh, 2022, p. 4), together with concepts related to the local fauna, flora, climate, and topography, produce an emic and culture-specific view of the natural environment of Melanesia, which gives Tok Pisin semantics a strongly relativist character.