THE ENGLISH CREOLE OF ARUBA: A COMMUNITY-BASED DESCRIPTION OF THE SAN NICOLAS VARIETY

International Journal of Arts and Social Science (India), 2020

The development of the sugar industry in the town Violeta (located in the central region of Cuba), at the end of the second decade of the 20th century, caused the external and internal migration of Haitians to this territory of Ciego de Ávila; whose presence has been notable not only in economic terms, but also culturally, especially in the contact between Creole and the Spanish language. However, today it is evident that the linguistic identity brought from Haiti has been weakened by a group of descendants who deny its Antillean roots; while others advocate its maintenance. In this sense, a sociolinguistic study was carried out to determine what level of conservation is manifested in Haitian creol and what are the causes or reasons that contribute to the existence of diverse linguistic realities. For this, we worked with a group of 28 informants —without distinction of sex— that correspond to Haitian emigrants and their descendants born in Cuba; those who kept the Creole language in a diglossic state, but gradually replaced it with other modes of speech. The present study focused on the phonetic and syntactic level, which shows how, from the contact between languages —and the need for the Haitian to try to learn Spanish as a second language—, a mixture of linguistic codes was produced without that a Creolization of Spanish was produced. In addition to understanding how three evolutionary trends have manifested in creol: maintenance, weakening and cancellation.

Journal of English Linguistics, 2018

The issue of linguistic distinctions in creole continua has been extensively debated. Are creole continua comprised of just an "acrolect" and a "basilect," or do they also comprise additional varieties? Studies of variation in creole continua have been typically based on directly observed linguistic data. This study argues that perceived sociolinguistic distinctions can offer one point of departure for establishing what linguistic components constitute creole continua. Following a protocol developed within "Perceptual Dialectology" (see, e.g., Preston 1999) this study describes perceived sociolinguistic distinctions via folk linguistic descriptors elicited by means of linguistic map-drawing and labeling tasks. The aim of this study is to investigate perceived language variation in the Caribbean island of Trinidad, where Standard English historically co-exists as an official language with creolized varieties of English, which the literature generally refers to as "Trinidadian Creole English." " The main finding of this study is that Standard English has a strong perceptual association with Trinidad's historic urban centers, while nonstandard varieties collectively referred to as "dialect" or "creole" are associated with the rest of the island. The study discusses indications that linguistic boundaries-largely parallel to ethnoracial boundaries-are perceived within the standard and non-standard part of the Trinidadian continuum. One major perceived linguistic criterion for differentiation within the non-standard part of the continuum is the presence or absence of Standard English elements. The saliency of "mixed" varieties suggests that a variety located halfway between Standard English and Trinidadian Creole English could be emerging. The study concludes that the urban-rural divide and ethnoracial distinctions constitute two salient social fault lines that future studies of language variation in Trinidad should take account of while searching the Trinidadian continuum for objectively verifiable linguistic boundaries.

2008

In this paper we critically examine colonial and post-colonial language policies with a special focus on Creole communities in the Caribbean and South America. The paper suggests that while faced with similar issues these communities do not constitute a homogeneous group and consequently blanket solutions are not available to change the asymmetrical social and linguistics system inherited from the colonisers. The paper argues that (new) educational policies need to be squarely based on a careful sociolinguistic analysis of each situation and must take a multi-model approach in order to effectively address existing language-based social inequalities. Section 2 briefly introduces the field of language and colonialism, discussing the main research issues and colonial language practices. Section 3 deals with educational practices in colonial and in post-colonial societies, especially in Africa. Section 4 surveys the research on Creoles focusing on its contribution towards improving lang...

New West Indian Guide, 2016

Dennis R. Craig, a prolific writer and highly acclaimed researcher in applied linguistics and sociolinguistics, was born in Guyana but "owed many of his accomplishments to his adopted country-Jamaica-where he lived for most of his life" (Allsopp & Jennings, p. viii). He taught at the University of the West Indies, Mona, and served as dean of its faculty of Education. In Guyana he was the first director of the National Centre for Education Research and Development, and in 1991 he became vice chancellor of the University of Guyana. Throughout his career he tirelessly advocated for the improvement of the educational and social conditions of Creole speakers in the Caribbean. His writings inspired many of his contemporaries and continue to resonate with researchers and educators in the Caribbean and more widely. It is therefore only fitting that two volumes have been published in his honor. Language Education in the Caribbean opens with a preface highlighting Craig's proactive social engagement through a discussion of his popular Viewpoint columns written for the Guyana Broadcasting Company and an introduction outlining the main concerns of his academic publications. It then reprints four of his articles dealing with the sociolinguistic context of the English-official Caribbean and four focusing on effective teaching and learning policies and approaches for this context. With respect to the first issue, Craig echoes the creole continuum perspective and argues that the Englishofficial Caribbean is characterized by variation between Standard English and local creoles resulting from Creole speakers' "striving for social status through English" (p. 17) and inappropriate teaching methods. This has given rise to a third system, the "interaction area" (p. 17) or the mesolect(s); children from Creole dominant homes mistakenly equate it with English and thus face problems in school where Standard English norms are enforced. Craig argues that all three varieties share the same conceptual base but make use of different grammatical principles and lexical forms to express it. The Creole and Creole-influenced varieties (or mesolects) mostly share the same grammar and mainly differ on the lexical level. Thus shifting simply entails substituting English-like lexical forms for creole ones. However, since there are significant structural differences between the Creole and English forms, acquisi-

2014

This article describes a research project aimed at filling the gap in syntactic research on language acquisition, in the area of creole languages. For too long acquisitionists have ignored the domain of creole languages, and as such the time is ripe for the present research. The purpose of this paper is to present an outline of the research project entitled 'The Acquisition of Jamaican Creole Syntax: A corpus-based study of early parameter setting', funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation grant 100015_131793/1. The goal of this project is to provide an extensive descriptive analysis of early production in the development of grammatical representations of children acquiring Jamaican Creole (JC). In addition, not only will this project contribute to scientific knowledge, but it may be applicable to well needed developments in early childhood education and language remediation in Jamaica and its diaspora. Additionally, the present project will provide an accessible database for further study of the Jamaican language.