The Syntax of Jamaican Creole

The Syntax of Jamaican Creole
Author: Stephanie Durrleman
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 207
Release: 2008
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9027255105

This book offers an in-depth study of the overall syntax of (basilectal) Jamaican Creole, the first since Bailey (1966). The author, a Jamaican linguist, meticulously examines distributional and interpretative properties of functional morphology in Jamaican Creole (JC) from a cartographic perspective (Cinque 1999, 2002; Rizzi 1997, 2004), thus exploring to what extent the grammar of JC provides morphological manifestations of an articulate IP, CP and DP. The data considered in this work offers new evidence in favour of these enriched structural analyses, and the instances where surface orders differ from the underlying functional skeleton are accounted for in terms of movement operations. This investigation of Jamaican syntax therefore allows us to conclude that the 'poor' inflectional morphology typical of Creole languages in general and of (basilectal) Jamaican Creole in particular does not correlate with poor structural architecture. Indeed the free morphemes discussed, as well as the word order considerations that indicate syntactic movement to designated projections, serve as arguments in favour of a rich underlying functional map.

Jamaican Creole Syntax

Jamaican Creole Syntax
Author: B. L. Bailey
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 186
Release: 1966-01-02
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0521040825

Beryl Loftman Bailey's book was one of the first published on the Jamaican Creole language.

The Americas and the Caribbean

The Americas and the Caribbean
Author: Edgar W. Schneider
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
Total Pages: 833
Release: 2008-12-10
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 3110208407

This volume gives a detailed overview of the varieties of English spoken in the Americas and the Caribbean, including regional, social and ethnic dialects (such as Southern US, Canadian or Chicano English) as well as Caribbean creoles from the Bahamas to Suriname. The chapters, written by widely acclaimed specialists, provide concise and comprehensive information on the phonological, morphological and syntactic characteristics of each variety discussed. The articles are followed by exercises and study questions. The exercises are geared towards students and can be used for classroom assignments as well as for self study in preparation for exams. Instructors can use the exercises, sound samples and interactive maps to enhance their classroom presentations and to highlight important language features.

An Introduction to Pidgins and Creoles

An Introduction to Pidgins and Creoles
Author: John Holm
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 308
Release: 2000
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9780521585811

A clear and concise introduction to the study of how new languages come into being.

The acrolect in Jamaica

The acrolect in Jamaica
Author: G. Alison Irvine-Sobers
Publisher: Language Science Press
Total Pages: 202
Release: 2018
Genre: English language
ISBN: 3961101140

An ability to speak Jamaican Standard English is the stated requirement for any managerial or frontline position in corporate Jamaica. This research looks at the phonological variation that occurs in the formal speech of this type of employee, and focuses on the specific cohort chosen to represent Jamaica in interactions with local and international clients. The variation that does emerge, shows both the presence of some features traditionally characterized as Creole and a clear avoidance of other features found in basilectal and mesolectal Jamaican. Some phonological items are prerequisites for “good English” - variables that define the user as someone who speaks English - even if other Creole variants are present. The ideologies of language and language use that Jamaican speakers hold about “good English” clearly reflect the centuries-old coexistence of English and Creole, and suggest local norms must be our starting point for discussing the acrolect.

Comparative Creole Syntax

Comparative Creole Syntax
Author: John A. Holm
Publisher: Westminster Creolistics
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2007
Genre: Creole dialects
ISBN: 9781903292013

This study seeks to answer some fundamental questions in Creole studies: which structural features are shared by all the world's Creoles, and to what extent are the traits typical of Atlantic Creoles also found elsewhere in the world?

Negation and Negative Concord

Negation and Negative Concord
Author: Viviane Déprez
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
Total Pages: 339
Release: 2018-12-15
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9027263159

While universally present in languages, negation is well-known to manifest a surprising cross-linguistic diversity of forms. In creole languages, however, negation and negative dependencies have been regarded as largely uniform. Creole languages as Bickerton claims in Roots of Language, generally exhibit negative concord, a construction popularly dubbed ‘double negation’, where several expressions, each negative on its own, come together with a logic-defying single negation interpretation. While this construction – problematic for compositionality if the meaning of sentences emerge from the meaning of their parts – has fostered much research, the fertile data terrain that creole languages offer for its understanding is rarely taken into account. Aiming at bridging this gap, this book offers a wealth of theoretically informed empirical investigations of negative relations in a wide variety of creole languages. Uncovering a far more complex negative landscape than previously assumed, the book reveals the challenging richness that a thorough comparative study of creoles delivers.

Noun Phrases in Creole Languages

Noun Phrases in Creole Languages
Author: Marlyse Baptista
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 520
Release: 2007
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9789027252531

This volume offers a thorough examination of the syntactic, semantic, pragmatic and discourse properties of noun phrases in a wide variety of creole (and non-creole) languages including Cape Verdean Creole, Santome, Papiamentu, Guinea-Bissau Creole, Mindanao Chabacano, Réunionnais Creole, Lesser Antillean, Haitian Creole, Mauritian Creole, Seychellois, Sranan, Jamaican Creole, Berbice Dutch Creole and African American English. Comparative studies also consider the determiner systems of Middle and Modern French, European Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, Spanish, Ewe, Fon and Gun. This compilation of 16 chapters brings together descriptive, theoretical, diachronic and synchronic studies that focus on the structure and interpretation of bare nouns in creoles. The contributions demonstrate the variety and complex nature of determiner systems in creoles and their widespread use of bare nouns in comparison to their source languages. This volume is evidence of the relevance of creole languages to theories of language creation, language change and linguistic theory in general.

Dictionary of Jamaican English

Dictionary of Jamaican English
Author: Frederic G. Cassidy
Publisher:
Total Pages: 578
Release: 2002
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 9789766401276

The method and plan of this dictionary of Jamaican English are basically the same as those of the Oxford English Dictionary, but oral sources have been extensively tapped in addition to detailed coverage of literature published in or about Jamaica since 1655. It contains information about the Caribbean and its dialects, and about Creole languages and general linguistic processes. Entries give the pronounciation, part-of-speach and usage of labels, spelling variants, etymologies and dated citations, as well as definitions. Systematic indexing indicates the extent to which the lexis is shared with other Caribbean countries.