This dissertation examines the Imperfective aspectual system of urban Bahamian Creole English (BahE), a mesolectal creole spoken in The Bahamas. Specifically, following Comrie (1976) I examine three Imperfective aspectual categories in the creole--continuous progressiveness (variable auxiliary "be" use with V- "ing" verbs and…

Four hypotheses explaining the origin of Berbice Dutch, a Dutch-based Creole language spoken in the county of Berbice in Guyana, are explored. The most likely explanation is that the language was first spoken by Berbice slaves as a means of expressing the identity of a newly created "ethnic" group. (Author/CB)

Summarizes contact-linguistic research on the Samis and Finns, the northernmost minorities in Scandinavia. The monolingual view of northern Scandinavian languages in the past is complemented with a multilingual perspective of the interaction between minority and larger languages. Among contact patterns discussed are North Germanic-Sami,…

Current patterns of Patois (introduced by West Indian Creoles) as used by young Jamaicans in England is presented. Forty-five British-born individuals, aged 16 to 23, whose parents were Jamaican immigrants, participated in a study structured to elicit a wide range of speech patterns. Subjects differed greatly in educational background and in…

This volume is devoted to papers of an empirical or theoretical nature contributing to the study of language and communicative bahavior in the Philippines. Articles included are: (1) "Three Criteria for Establishing Dialect Boundries," by Michael Ross Walrod; (2) "Topic in Tagalog Revisited," by Teresita C. Rafael; (3)…