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Theme and Variation in Jamaican Vowels.
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Wassink, Alicia Beckford – Language Variation and Change, 2001
Reports results of an instrumental acoustic examination of the vowel systems of ten Jamaican Creole (or Basilect-) dominant and nine Jamaican English (or Acrolect-) dominant speakers, and links phonetic features with sociolinguistic factors. Nature and relative role of vowel quantity and quality differences in phonemic contrast are considered.…
Descriptors: Acoustic Phonetics, Creoles, English, Foreign Countries
The Emergence of Creole Subject-Verb Agreement and the Licensing of Null Subjects.
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Meyerhoff, Miriam – Language Variation and Change, 2000
Attempts to resolve an outstanding question as to the most appropriate structural description of the relationship between subject and verb in Bislama (a Melanesian creole spoken in Vanuatu), discusses what the implications of this analysis might be for a Creole ontogeny, and attempts to unify this analysis to the verb system with the distribution…
Descriptors: Creoles, Foreign Countries, Grammar, Language Variation
A Peak at Death: Assessing Continuity and Change in an Underdocumented Language.
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Sabino, Robin – Language Variation and Change, 1996
Assesses phonological continuity and change in the last stage of the moribund dialect called "Negerhollands" in the Danish West Indies (DWI). The article contrasts earlier and current views of this dialect, sketches language contact in the DWI, examines the last speaker's language history and vowel systems, and assesses variation in a…
Descriptors: Black Dialects, Creoles, Diachronic Linguistics, Dialect Studies
Back to the Past: The BEV/Creole Connection Revisited.
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Winford, Donald – Language Variation and Change, 1992
The marking of past temporal reference in Black English Vernacular (BEV) and Trinidadian English is compared. Similarities in the patterns of variation according to verb type and phonological conditioning suggest that past marking in contemporary BEV preserves traces of an earlier shift from a creole pattern to one approximating the Standard…
Descriptors: Black Dialects, Contrastive Linguistics, Creoles, English
Variability in the Use of Perfect "Have" in Trinidadian English: A Problem of Categorical and Semantic Mismatch.
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Winford, Donald – Language Variation and Change, 1993
Variations in the use of perfect "have" and its alternatives in the Trinidadian creole continuum are examined, based on data from a sample of speakers from different social backgrounds. The findings have implications for the study of morphosyntactic variation in other divergent dialect situations. (Contains 56 references.) (Author/LB)
Descriptors: Creoles, Dialects, Distinctive Features (Language), English
Anaphoric Reference in Creoles and Noncreoles.
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Escure, Genevieve – Language Variation and Change, 1993
Three categories of topic referents (nominal, pronominal, and periphrastic) are identified in 27 Belizean texts and 12 American texts, and the effects of referent choice of two variables (topic number and stylistic/lectal context) are investigated. One finding is that Belizean lects are strikingly similar to spontaneous styles of American English.…
Descriptors: Contrastive Linguistics, Creoles, English, Foreign Countries