Varieties of English Around the World, No. G-17

Amsterdam & Philadelphia

Overview and plan of the work

The historical context of urban creole studies

The creole continuum model: Discreteness

Inherent variation and the mesolect

The creole continuum model: Unidimensionality

Decreolization, the mesolect, and the creole continuum

The use of quantitative analytical methods

Terminology and orthography

Physical and historical sketch of Kingston

Social geography of Kingston and the Veeton district

Description of Veeton

The urban/rural dimension

Social class, status and occupation

Education

The investigator as near-native speaker

Selecting the community

Entering the community: Elderly residents

Expanding networks: The Youth Club and the ‘ghetto’

The sample and the sub-sample

Data collection techniques and instruments: The sociolinguistic interview

The language attitude questionnaire and tests

Quantitative analysis techniques

Description of the variable

Mergers, word-classes, and phonolexical variation

History of (KYA)

The African substrate

Previous studies of (KYA)

A sociolinguistic description of two speakers

Examples of (KYA)

Acoustic analysis of low-vowel space

Two patterns of variation

Variation of (KYA) across the community

Pathway of a change in progress

Evidence from loanwords

Change and evaluation in the Veeton speech community

Diachronic issues

(TD): A showcase variable

Defining the variable: Examples and exclusions

Factors affecting (TD)-deletion

Previous studies of (TD)-deletion: Phonological constraints

Previous studies of (TD)-deletion: Grammatical constraints

Types of consonant clusters in JC

Difficulties in ‘explaining away’ (TD) variation in JC

Principal questions and procedures for the Veeton study

Preceding segment effects in the Veeton data

Following segment effects in the Veeton data

Insertion or deletion?

Grammatical category effects in the Veeton data

Intersecting variable processes

Estimating the rate of (TD)-deletion

Conclusions: Constraint order and "creole-ness" in (TD)-deletion

Comparison with another Creole: Deletion revisited

Unity versus lectal variety across the creole continuum

Introduction

Tense, aspect and past-marking in creoles

TMA markers in Jamaican Creole

Stativity and punctuality

Anteriority: the classic syntactic account

Narrative clauses and anteriority: A discourse account

Temporal clauses

Irrealis clauses

Summary of coding and exclusions

Infrequency of preverbal tense markers

The use of ‘ben’ in Veeton

Tense and negation marking with ‘neva’

Description and distribution of pre-verbal ‘did’

Quantitative analysis of a three-way (Past) variable

Social distribution of pre-verbal ‘did/neva’

Linguistic variation of pre-verbal ‘did/neva’

Stativity and ‘did/neva’ marking

Anteriority, clause-type and ‘did/neva’ marking

Conclusions: Variable marking as a creole feature

Introduction: Verb inflection and non-marking

Morphological categories of the verb

Other constraints: Stativity and anteriority revisited

Other constraints: Phonological environment revisited

Overview of inflection by morphological category

Exceptional and irregular verbs

Major morphological categories

Semi-weak verbs

Nonsyllabic verbs

Inflection across the mesolect

Variable inflection in other English Creoles

Variable inflection in African American diaspora varieties

Variable inflection in second-language acquisition studies

Stativity, punctuality, inflection, and the verb ‘have’

Clause-type, anteriority and verb inflection

Conclusion: Past-marking patterns in the Veeton mesolect

Nature of a creole speech community

Testing the polar stereotypes: Creole and English translation tasks

Evaluative norms in a creole speech community: Concord and contrast

Speaky-spoky: Consensus on conflicting norms

Discreteness revisited: Findings for the four variables summarized

Social dimensions of variation in a creole continuum

Correlating linguistic and social variation

Conclusions: Rethinking the creole continuum and the mesolect