Exploring the connections between Pidgin and ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi

This dissertation examines the potential psycholinguistic connections between Pidgin (Hawaiʻi Creole) and ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi (Hawaiian), in contrast to English, addressing whether Pidgin offers an advantage in processing ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi. It considers community-driven questions about whether links between Pidgin and ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi support its use as a medium of instruction and whether Pidgin better facilitates ambient learning of ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi compared to English. The thesis begins with reflections on conducting this research in community contexts by use of moʻolelo (storytelling). Experiments 1 and 2 examine trilingual speakers of ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi, Pidgin, and English, assessing co-associations between Pidgin-ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi and English-ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi pairs. Prior work suggests that socially and structurally related codes can facilitate cross-language processing (e.g., Fricke et al [2016]; Szakay et al. [2016]). Experiment 1 tests whether language switching context modulates lexical activation in ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi. Results suggest lower processing costs for Pidgin-to-ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi switches. Experiment 2 uses auditory translation priming to test asymmetric cross-language associations; no overall priming effects were found. Experiment 3 examines the proto-lexical knowledge of ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi across three non-ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi speaking groups compared to ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi speakers: Pidgin speakers, English speakers from Hawaiʻi, and English speakers from Canada. Prior work shows that ambient exposure to Māori supports the development of proto-lexical knowledge (e.g., Johnson [2016]) in adults without formal instruction (e.g., Oh et al. [2020], Panther et al. [2023b]). Pidgin speakers show more developed knowledge of phonotactics and word form than English speakers from Hawaiʻi, and both groups outperform English speakers from Canada. Overall, evidence for Pidgin-related advantages in the scope of ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi processing are mixed: results suggest that switching costs may be reduced, but priming effects are absent. However, when examining non-ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi speakers' relative knowledge of ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi, Pidgin speakers show evidence of stronger proto-lexical knowledge than English speakers from Hawaiʻi, suggesting that gradient differences in exposure and/or structural overlap between Pidgin and ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi contribute to processing differences. Throughout this work, we conclude that Pidgin incurs no measurable disadvantage in any condition and yields measurable benefits in ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi proto-lexical knowledge relative to English speakers.