English Straight and Tok Pisin Stret: A Case Study from the Perspective of Cognitive Linguistics

Abstract The framework of cognitive linguistics can be an efficient tool to represent the conceptual scope of meaning extension in reduced lexicons of pidgins and creoles. Image-schema based metaphors (Lakoff, 1993; Cienki, 1998) underlie the usage of English straight and its Tok Pisin counterpart stret, but the creole employs the concept in more contexts than English. The resultant variation in the scope of metaphor takes the form of a particular source domain being used to conceptualize more target domains than in the lexifier language. Functioning mainly as a compensation strategy, the variation is the effect of strong influence of English on the conceptual system of the creole.


Introduction
Contact languages derive the bulk of their lexicons from dominant lexifier languages. Pidgins have small lexicons "tailored to meet the functional needs" of their users (Sebba, 1997, p. 17). Creole lexicons are more complex, but still more basic than those of fully developed languages. Whereas a native speaker of a fully-fledged language can use between 15,000-20,000 and 50,000 lemmas 1 (Aitchison, 2003, p. 7;Nation & Webb, 2011), a speaker of a contact language rarely has more than 2,000 words at their disposal. Because such languages have far fewer lexemes to express a comparable number of concepts (Romaine, 1988, pp. 34-35), they reduce synonymy and extend the use of polysemy (Sebba, 2002, pp. 53-54).
Tok Pisin is an extended creole used in Papua New Guinea, where it functions alongside other indigenous pidgins, such as Hiri Motu, indigenous languages, such as Buang, Motu, and Tolai, and its lexifier English, which Krzysztof Kosecki enjoys high prestige in the area (Zimmermann, 2010, p. 1;Walczyński, 2012, pp. 147, 179). Around 122,000 people speak it as their first language, more than 4 million people use it as their second language, and around 50,000 are monolinguals (Ethnologue, 2019). The lexicon of Tok Pisin ranges from some 800 words in rural areas to 2,500 words in the more anglicized urban areas of Papua New Guinea (Romaine, 2000, p. 187). Most of the words come from English, 11-20% come from indigenous languages, especially Tolai, 5% come from German, and some from Malay. German and other elements gradually give way to their English counterparts. In spite of European origins of the bulk of its vocabulary, the grammar and semantic orientation of the language are non-European (Romaine, 2000, pp. 187, 189).
Figurative aspects of Tok Pisin have received some attention of scholars. Nevermann (1929, pp. 253-254, 255) discusses the motivation for the concepts of meri = Mary, marry 'woman, female' and bel = belly 'belly, heart, mind, mood'. Aufinger (1948Aufinger ( /1949) takes a similar perspective. Wurm, Mühlhäusler and Laycock (1977) and McElhanon (1978) discuss culture-specific motivation for body part idioms in Tok Pisin. Todd and Mühlhäusler (1978) compare such idioms in Cameroon Pidgin English and Tok Pisin. Mühlhäusler (1984, pp. 334-342) provides numerous examples of metaphor-based expressions in two stylistic registers labelled by arbitrary metalinguistic terms: tok piksa 'talk picture', which involves numerous similes, and tok bokis 'talk box'. Metaphors are classified according to domains of use, for example alcohol and sexual adventure. Mühlhäusler (1985b, pp. 162-163, 262-269) points to the presence of metaphors in two further registers: tok pilai 'talk play' and tok hait 'talk hide'. The latter employs them as plays on words, usually in a light-hearted fashion and over extended stretches of discourse. Metaphors are described according to parts of speech being their locus, such as adjectives or verbs, or according to more complex syntactic patterns. A distinction between traditional and established metaphors is also introduced. Franklin and Thomas (2006) discuss numerous Tok Pisin idioms, but divide them according to underlying grammatical patterns rather than conceptual patterns in their semantics. They also explain culture-specific motivation for many expressions. Engelberg and Stolberg (2017, p. 43) describe etymological metaphors in Tok Pisin. For example siluk 'whirlpool, eddy' is motivated by the German word schluck 'gulp'. All those analyses pay little attention to the complexity of conceptual construal in Tok Pisin.
Cognitive linguistics, which focuses on patterns of conceptual construal, has not so far been systematically used in the study of contact languages. Romaine (1990, p. 202) mentions the use of the metaphor TIME IS MONEY in some Tok Pisin advertisements. Nordlander (2007) provides a description English "straight" and Tok Pisin "stret": A case study from the perspective... of metonymy-based sense extensions of the words bif 'beef' and bush 'bush' in Krio, an Atlantic creole. King (2014, pp. 143-146) discusses examples of ontological metaphors in Tok Pisin related to mobile phones and the Internet. King (2015) describes some synesthetic metaphors in this creole, arguing for their limited range. Most recently, Corum (2019) provides examples of synesthetic and primary metaphors present in Atlantic creoles and traces their sources to the substratum influence of various African languages.

The method
The present analysis extends the application of cognitive linguistic framework, especially the Conceptual Metaphor Theory/CMT (Lakoff, 1993;Kövecses, 2006) and the theory of image schemas (Johnson, 1987;Cienki, 1988), to the study of contact languages. As a systematic comparison of the usage of schema-based concepts of straight and stret in English and Tok Pisin, it aims to show how variation in the scope of metaphor underlying both concepts is conducive to conceptual differences between the two languages. The variation, which takes the form of a particular source domain being used to conceptualize more target domains in the creole than in the lexifier language, is not motivated by broad cultural context (Kövecses, 2002, pp. 186-187;2006, pp. 157, 169-170) -uncommon conceptual mappings serve as a compensation device for the reduced lexicon.
CMT sees metaphor as a conceptual cross-domain mapping of a concrete source onto an abstract target, which is reflected in conventional linguistic expressions (Kövecses, 2006, pp. 115-116). An image schema is a recurring, dynamic, and meaningful pattern of perceptual interactions and motor programs rooted in preconceptual bodily experience (Johnson, 1987, pp. 126-129;Evans & Green, 2006, pp. 177-191;Kövecses, 2006, p. 370). It can become a source domain that is mapped onto abstract concepts in "everyday social interactions" (Oakley, 2007, pp. 215-216, 220). STRAIGHT, which was shown by Cienki (1998) to be such a schema, represents a physical property of regularly-shaped entities. People perceive straight lines faster than curved lines because attention is distributed over fewer elements in the field. As a result, visual scanning frequently takes the values of straightness, verticality, and symmetry as points of reference. Asymmetry also originates from symmetry rather than the other way round, and a prototypical symmetric form is straight (Cienki, 1998, pp. 109, 113). The schema extends into concepts that are not inherently straight, thus motivating metaphorical uses of straight and stret.
In the analysis conducted below, I have retained most of Cienki's (1998) areas of experience conceptualized by means of metaphorical extensions of STRAIGHT, their concise descriptions, as well as some of the metaphors that he formulated. Before the analysis proceeds, the following methodological issues have to be considered: (i) the lexifier influence on Tok Pisin; (ii) the substratum influence on Tok Pisin; (iii) the diachronic-synchronic opposition in the structure of creole lexicon.

The lexifier influence on Tok Pisin
As Australia took over British New Guinea in 1906, its variety of English became a major lexifying influence on Melanesian Pidgin because New South Wales and Sydney recruited many labourers from Melanesia (Baker, 1987). This tendency increased after 1914, when Australia took control of German New Guinea and -with an interruption during World War II -governed Papua and New Guinea as one territory (Zimmermann, 2010, pp. 17-24). Communication on Australian copra plantations, as well as contacts between the English-speaking administrators of Papua New Guinea and the local population (Hudson, 2001, p. 61), were thus two major formative influences on Tok Pisin.
Both in its upper and lower versions, English spoken in Australia was very close to the variety spoken in south-east England. The influence continued well into the 1950s. Australian English, though a separate dialect today (Melchers & Shaw, 2000, p. 100), at least in grammar and vocabulary still has a strong affinity with the English variety of British English (Jenkins, 2003, pp. 72-75). That is why the analysed co-textual uses of straight were relatively simple expressions constructed on the basis of the Australian Macquarie Dictionary (2020) and three British English dictionaries: Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary of Current English (1988), Longman Dictionary of the English language (1994), and PWN Oxford English-Polish Dictionary (2012). Drawing on the data from language corpora, the dictionaries show a close overlapping between the meanings of straight in the two varieties of English. To further validate the findings, a questionnaire testing various uses of straight was created. Many of the expressions it contained were counterparts of Tok Pisin uses of stret. The questionnaire was distributed to five native speakers of British English, who were asked to evaluate each example of usage as correct (YES) or incorrect (NO). Because acceptability was a two-way categorial distinction, only the examples that received consistent evaluations by all informants were taken into account.
English "straight" and Tok Pisin "stret": A case study from the perspective...

The substratum influence on Tok Pisin
Substratum influence on Melanesian Pidgin is evident on various levels of the language. For example, dual and trial pronouns are a feature of Austronesian languages (Thomson & Kaufman, 1988, pp. 174-194;Rickford & McWhorter, 1998, p. 241); the predicate marker i is also a feature of Melanesian languages (Michalic, 1983, pp. 23-24). Mühlhäusler (1985a, p. 75;1995, p. 281) argues that the substratum influence is also present in semantics and affects the boundary between the literal and the metaphorical. For example, the semantic field of Tok Pisin gras (derived from English grass) involves the meanings of 'grass', 'hair', 'beard', 'moustache', 'bird's feather', 'dog's feather', and 'weed'. The referents are motivated by a similar iconic relationship: they cover some surfaces (Mühlhäusler, 1985a, p. 73;Romaine, 1992, pp. 155-156;2000, pp. 189-190). As a result, they are not regarded as metaphorical by speakers of Tok Pisin, but to a speaker of English any meaning of gras other than that of its etymological source is based on metaphor (Mühlhausler, 1985a, p. 73). However, potential validity of a similar qualification of metaphor-based interpretation of stret is weaker. Even if some Tok Pisin use of it incorporated elements of a semantic system of an indigenous language or even languages, they would still be metaphorical. The schema would be imposed on concepts less iconic and more abstract than the relation underlying the various senses of gras.
Examples of Tok Pisin expressions were drawn from Michalic's The Jacaranda Dictionary and Grammar of Melanesian Pidgin (1983), Mühlhäusler's monograph on the development of the lexicon of Tok Pisin (1984), Dutton and Thomas's (1995) Tok Pisin course-book, Mühlhäusler, Dutton and Romaine's (2003) anthology of Tok Pisin texts, and Walczyński's (2012) analysis of Tok Pisin in the newspaper Wantok. Two electronic sources were also used: Tok Pisin English Dictionary and Glosbe English-Tok Pisin-English Dictionary. For two senses of stret that were not illustrated with complete co-textual uses, the correctness of constructed expressions was verified by a speaker of Tok Pisin based in Papua New Guinea (S. K. Thomas, personal communication, 2019-2020). As the sense of stret 'correct, right' is broad enough to fit various contexts, the potentially ambiguous expressions were checked with respect to reference indicated in the sub-sections.

The synchronic-diachronic opposition
Following de Saussure's (1961, p. 91) view that language is a complete system at any point of its development, the analysis assumes a synchronic perspective. However, because any language is "an outcome of a particular prolonged process of accommodation to particular external circumstances" (Mühlhäusler, 2014, p. 11) and because contact languages usually evolve faster than fully-fledged languages, the diachronic element cannot be entirely dismissed. No major changes in the meanings of stret were found following the analysis of Tok Pisin texts dating back to the 1880s (Mühlhäusler, Dutton, & Romaine, 2003) except for a phonogram recording made in 1904 in the German-controlled part of New Guinea. Mühlhäusler, Dutton, and Romaine (2003, pp. 46-47) argue that the expression gutpela = good-fellow 'good' used in it could mean stret, or 'even, flat' in contemporary Tok Pisin. The relation between the two words does not, however, seem to involve any meaning extension, but only an evaluation of a property -what was even or flat was good within that context. The uses of stret in Wantok newspaper, some of which were retrieved by corpus methods (Zimmermann, 2010;Walczyński, 2012), largely conform to lexical meanings and grammatical functions discussed below.

Straight vs. stret: Literal concepts
The literal sense of English straight is unidirectional extension that lacks any curvature or angularity (Hornby, 1988, p. 853; Macquarie dictionary, 2020); the literal sense of Tok Pisin stret is "straight, even, smooth, flat, directly" (Michalic, 1983, p. 184). In spite of a similarity, stret is used in more contexts than straight. The differences can be illustrated by means of expressions related to three areas of experience: material form, movement, and orientation in space. They comprise more detailed concepts of shape, direction of motion, and position of body and objects.

Material form
Shape is an outer form or "a total effect produced by a thing's outlines" (Hornby, 1998, p. 915). (

1) English
There is a straight 'without bends' road between the two buildings. Tok Pisin (TokPisin.info [TPi], 2019) Ol i wokim wanpela stretpela rot. all PRED build one-fellow straight-fellow road 'They built a straight road.' (2) English I cannot straighten 'stretch out' my hand.
English "straight" and Tok Pisin "stret": A case study from the perspective...

Tok Pisin (TPi, 2019)
Inap yu stretim lek bilong yu? enough you straighten leg belong you 'Can you stretch out your leg?' (3) English The straight 'flat' field lay ahead of him.* 2 Tok Pisin (Mühlhäusler, Dutton, & Romaine, 2003, p. 46) Ples hia i no stret. place here PRED not straight 'The place is not flat.' (4) English They straightened 'levelled' the old part of the road.* Tok Pisin (TPi, 2019) Ol i yusim greda long stretim rot. all PRED use grader to straighten road 'They used a grader to level the road.'

(5) English
The lake is straight 'calm' tonight.* Tok Pisin (TPi, 2019) No gat win na solwara i stret olgeta. no got wind and salt water PRED straight absolutely 'The wind is down and the ocean is calm.' Straight and stret match with respect to oblong shape in examples (1)-(2), but differ with respect to flat surfaces in examples (3)-(5). The difference is noteworthy because the dictionaries of Australian and British English mention the property of being flat or horizontal as one of the chief meanings of straight.

Movement
Movement means a change of position of a person or an object in space. It always takes place in some direction.

(6) English
The train goes straight 'directly' to London. Tok Pisin (TPi, 2019) Balus i ran stret long Mosbi. plane PRED run straight to PortMoresby 'The plane flies directly to Port Moresby.' Straight and stret are used in the same way to refer to direction of motion in example (6).

Orientation in space
Orientation in space is a position of a body or an object with respect to some point of reference.

(7) English
The boy stood straight 'erect'. Straight and stret match with respect to body position in example (7), but differ in the sense of making an object assume an upward position in example (8).

Straight vs. stret: Metaphorical concepts
Metaphorical meanings of straight and stret can be compared with respect to eleven areas of experience: communication, thought processes, morality, social norms, law, order, entity structure, level of complexity, correctness, time, and health. In most cases, more specific concepts have been identified.

Communication
The cultural model of good communication in Anglo-Saxon and many other cultures involves a high level of informationality. This, in turn, implies truth, honesty, as well as direct and candid exchange of information (Cienki, 1998, pp. 116-117 (9) and (10) are based on the metaphors DIRECT SPEECH IS STRAIGHT and CANDID SPEECH IS STRAIGHT. A difference is seen with respect to solving verbal conflicts and the quality of handwriting -Tok Pisin expressions in examples (11) and (12) involve, respectively, the metaphors LACK OF VERBAL CONFLICT IS STRAIGHT and LEGIBLE IS STRAIGHT.

Thought processes
Correct thinking means exercising one's mind in a way that is logically consistent and involves "the sequential development of each idea based on immediately preceding ones" (Cienki, 1998, p. 121 The usage of straight and stret is the same with respect to decision-takingexpressions in example (13) are based on the metaphor ORDERLY THOUGHT IS STRAIGHT. Tok Pisin extends the concept of stret to sensible ideas and unbiased thinking. The creole expression in example (14) is based on the metaphor LOGICAL THOUGHT IS STRAIGHT; the expression in example (15) involves the metaphor OBJECTIVE THOUGHT IS STRAIGHT.

(16) English
He is perfectly straight 'honest' in his business dealings. Tok Pisin (TPi, 2019) Em i wanpela stretpela man. he PRED one-fellow straight-fellow man 'He is an honest man.' English "straight" and Tok Pisin "stret": A case study from the perspective...

(17) English
As a respected citizen, you should do your best to keep straight 'behave properly'. Tok Pisin (TPi, 2019) Ol yangpela i mas stretim pasin bilong ol. all young-fellow PRED must straighten manner belong all 'The youth must make their behaviour proper.' The usage of straight and stret fully overlaps in this case. The expressions are based on the metaphors HONEST BEHAVIOUR IS STRAIGHT and PROPER BEHAVIOUR IS STRAIGHT.

Social norms
Social norms typically define conventionally expected behaviour. Among other things, such behaviour includes the dominant sexual orientation and sobriety (Cienki, 1998, p. 126).

(18) English
He is a straight person. 'He is heterosexual.'

(19) English
She has long been straight as far as alcohol is concerned. 'She has long been without addiction to alcohol.' The English expressions are based on the metaphors HETEROSEXUAL IS STRAIGHT and LACK OF ADDICTION IS STRAIGHT. Tok Pisin does not use stret in these two senses: spak = sparks 'drunk' refers to alcoholic intoxication; gele gele or geli geli = girlie girlie 'gay men' refers to homosexuality. 3 As a speaker of Tok Pisin indicated (Steven K. Thomas, personal communication, 2019), it is possible to refer to drunkenness as no stret = not straight, but the expression evaluates moral aspects of the condition rather than being used to conceptualize the condition itself. Its sense is thus 'improper'.

Law
Law has the chief function of making people conform to most of the expected social norms (Cienki, 1998, p. 128). To be effective, it must not only encourage lawful action, but also itself be just.

(20) English
His family will keep him straight after he is released from prison. 'His family will see to it that he obeys the law after he is released from prison.' Tok Pisin (TPi, 2019) Yu mas bihainim stretpela pasin! you must behind straight-fellow manner 'You must behave in a lawful way!'

(21) English
The accused woman was given a straight trial.* 'The accused woman was given a just trial.' Tok Pisin (Glosbe, 2019) Yupela i mas mekim stretpela kot na skelim man you-fellow PRED must make straight-fellow court and scale man nogut. no-good 'With justice you should judge the criminal.' The metaphor underlying the expressions in example (20)

Order
Order in space, which entails an arrangement of people or objects regarded as correct in a given context, gives coherence to our experience (Cienki, 1998, p. 124 Except for the action of setting the table, English straight and Tok Pisin stret match when they refer to order in space. In all expressions, the underlying metaphor is SPATIAL ORDER IS STRAIGHT.

Entity structure
Lack of alteration means that some entity or substance is plain, solid, or continuous (Cienki, 1998, pp. 119-120).

(26) English
The actor repeated a dialogue straight out of the film. 'The actor repeated the film dialogue without alteration.' Tok Pisin (Mühlhäusler, 1984, p. 151) Long bus bai ol toktok long tok pisin stret (...) in bush by all talk with talk pidgin straight 'In the bush they will speak genuine Pidgin (...)'

Krzysztof Kosecki
The usage of straight and stret is the same. The underlying metaphor can be formulated as UNALTERED IS STRAIGHT.

Level of complexity
Lack of complexity means that a procedure consisting of many stages can be followed directly, that is, without stops or detours (Cienki, 1998, pp. 123-124).

(27) English
That was a straightforward application of the emergency procedure. 'That was a direct application of the emergency procedure.' Tok Pisin (Walczyński, 2012, p. 270) Kam na salim gol bilong yu stret opis bilong MRO. come and sell gold belong you straight office belong MRO 'Come and sell your gold directly at MRO office.' The usage of straight and stret is again the same. The underlying metaphor can be called UNCOMPLICATED ACTION IS STRAIGHT.

Correctness
Correctness is the broadest area of experience. Given its presupposition of control regarding various aspects of behaviour, it is conducive to coherence of everyday human functioning (Cienki, 1998, p. 124). Correctness involves the concepts of proper work, good management, proper use of tools, and good repair. The ideal character or condition of something represents the highest degree of its condition.

(28) English
He was doing straight work on the project.* 'He was doing proper work on the project.' Tok Pisin (Mühlhäusler, Dutton, & Romaine, 2003, p. 75) Ju wok stret long wok bilong ju. you work straight at work belong you 'You do proper work.'

(29) English
He ran the business straight.* 'He managed the business well.' Tok Pisin (TPi, 2019) Em i wokim stret liklik bisnis bilong em. he PRED work straight little business belong him 'He managed his small business well.' English "straight" and Tok Pisin "stret": A case study from the perspective...

(30) English
He didn't make a straight use of the tool.* 'He misused the tool.' Tok Pisin (Glosbe,

(35) English
They straightened the time of the meeting.* 'They settled on the time of the meeting.' Tok Pisin (TPI, 2019) Yumi mas stretim taim bilong statim bung. you-me must straighten time belong start meeting 'We must settle on a starting time for the meeting.'

(36) English
We will meet at 8 o'clock straight.* 'We will meet at 8 o'clock sharp.' Tok Pisin (Dutton & Thomas, 1995, p. 94) Yu kam long wok et klok stret. you come to work eight clock straight 'You came and work at eight o'clock sharp.' English "straight" and Tok Pisin "stret": A case study from the perspective...

(37) English
We phoned him straight away after the accident. 'We phoned him immediately after the accident.' Tok Pisin (Glosbe, 2019) Ol manmeri bilong bikpela lain ol i no inap lusim all man-woman belong big-fellow line all PRED not enough lose taun bilong hait bihain stret long "bikpela hevi tru". town belong hide behind immediately after "big-fellow heavy true" 'These members of the great crowd cannot come out of this refuge city immediately after the great tribulation.'

Health
Health means not only "the state of being well and free from illness" (Hornby, 1988, p. 396), but also the actions that are conducive to it. They involve methods of treatment of disease and objects of treatment, that is, people and pain.

(38) English
This is the way to straighten the disease.* 'This is the therapy.' Tok Pisin (Glosbe, (38)-(40) is based on the metaphor HEALTHY IS STRAIGHT.

Stret vs. straight: Grammatical concepts
Though most advanced in contexts which require metaphorical codeswitching, the process of extension is also present in grammar. Unlike English straight, Tok Pisin stret has at least two major adjunct functions of intensifier, that is, emphasizer and amplifier.

Summary and conclusions
In literally understood areas of experience, three English senses of straight -'oblong shaped', 'direction of motion', and 'position of body'have counterparts in Tok Pisin. The creole stret also refers to a flat/levelled shape and the position of objects. The ratio of the correspondence of expressions is 0.5 to 1 in favour of Tok Pisin. The literal senses of stret in Tok Pisin -more numerous than the senses of straight in English -may be motivated by substratum influence. Mian, a language spoken in Sandaun Province of north-western Papua New Guinea, has the word molot, which means 'straight' when speaking of arrows and has the literal senses of the Tok Pisin stret, but is not used metaphorically or as a grammatical category (Prof. S. Fedden, personal communication, 20 January 2020). However, considering the number of indigenous languages spoken in Papua New Guinea and the potential scope of their substratum influence on Tok Pisin, the possibility is only tentative.
Among eleven metaphorically understood areas of experience, straight and stret fully match in conceptualizations of morality, entity structure, and level of complexity. There is a partial match in conceptualizations of communication, thinking, law, order, and time. Straight and stret do not match at all in conceptualizations of correctness, social norms, and health. English employs straight in fourteen and Tok Pisin in thirty out of thirty-two metaphorical expressions. The ratio of correspondence is nearly 0.44 to 0.94 in favour of Tok Pisin. The formula of "maximum use of a minimum lexicon" (Mühlhäusler, 1986, p. 171) can now be given a cognitive interpretation of one source domain being used to conceptualize many target domains.
In grammar, English straight does not match with any of the two adjunct functions of stret identified in Tok Pisin. The ratio of correspondence of expressions is 0 to 1 in favour of Tok Pisin.
All in all, the ratio of correspondence of expressions between English straight and Tok Pisin stret is nearly 0.32 to 0.95. It should be emphasized that almost 68% of all Tok Pisin senses of stret involve conceptual metaphor. A more fine-grained analysis, including the examples with less consistent evaluations, would produce only slightly different results. Keesing's (1985as cited in Mallett, 2003 argument for the study of metaphors in non-Western languages in the manner advanced by Lakoff & Johnson (1980) was based on the belief that such study could contribute to understanding cultures different from Western. The above-conducted analysis does not focus on variation in the use of metaphor caused by such elements of the broad cultural context as natural and physical environment or shared history (Kövecses, 2002, pp. 186-188;Núńez, Cooperrider, Doan, & Wassman, 2012). However, "metaphors others live by" (Mühlhäusler, 2014) can also be an outcome of relative simplicity of the languages they speak. It is one of the factors that contribute to major differences between metaphorical systems of English and Tok Pisin. Largely motivated by the social status of colonial elites, which made English the major lexifier language in Papua New Guinea, the difference shows that power is one of the forms of motivation for culture-specific differences between conceptual systems of languages remaining in contact with each other. N O T E S 1 Lemmas are root words with all their inflections and some derivations. However, as Ogden's (1930) BASIC illustrates, efficient communication is also possible with 850-1,000 lexical items. 2 A following asterisk indicates an unacceptable expression.
3 The 1974 law act regards homosexuality as a crime. In Hanuabada village, one of the places in Papua New Guinea which tolerates homosexuality, gay men usually adopt female roles, such as cooking or washing. They also sit on the female side during various rituals (Ammon, 2014). The expression askan = arse-cunt 'gay' is a taboo term for the orientation. 4 The expression is the full title of a newspaper published in Tok Pisin. 5 'Exactly' does not mean the same price irrespective of the quantity bought. It refers to a rounded price, for example 1 pound, and not 1 pound and 17 pence.