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The article describes and analyses the linguistic situation and current status of Creole in the Cape Verde Islands. The focus is partly on the demography and the history, but mainly on the linguistic politics of this territory and the position of Creole in Cape Verdean society. Creole is the mother tongue of practically the entire Cape Verdean population and the language is used in all informal oral and written communication. The majority of the local population wish Creole to be used in schools and in formal written communication, desiring that the country will move definitively from diglossia to bilingualism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Haitian Creole (Kreyòl) spoken by bilingual speakers is a prestigious form of speech generally referred to as Kreyòl swa (KS), where Frenchified features (e.g. front rounded vowels) are often used. In contrast, monolingual speakers use Kreyòl rèk (KR), a variety in which Frenchified features do not generally occur (Fattier-Thomas 1984; Valdman 2015). In this article, I establish the nasalization of the definite determiner /la/ in non-nasal environments (LÃ), e.g. chat lan for chat la 'the cat', as a feature of KS. I show that while bilingual speakers do use both Frenchification and LÃ, monolingual speakers overuse nasalization as compared to bilingual speakers, but use Frenchification less than the bilingual group because it is harder to produce. Based in these findings, I suggest that the sociolinguistic situation of Haiti is more complex, i.e. it is extended beyond the relationship between French and Kreyòl. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Adeptus is the property of Polish Academy of Sciences, Institute of Slavic Studies and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper aims to give account of the distribution in Guadeloupean Creole of the form of the complementizer kè. It claims that it has a specific distribution, as it seems to appear in opposition to the zero form. Besides a sociolinguistic component, the presence of kè is associable with the fact type semantics of the completive event (Dixon 2006), and so do other grammatical functions and markers that are featured in the completive clauses when kè is present, such as independent TAM markers on the verb and the obligatory featuring of a subject form in case of subject coreference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Forma y Funcion is the property of Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Facultad de Ciencias Humanas, Departamento de Linguistica and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Although in recent years researchers have intensified focus on the communication of the pre-trial right to silence or police caution to native and non-native speakers of English, most of this research has been concerned with linguistic complexity, comprehension, and comprehensibility issues. Relatively few studies have focused attention on the role played by the deliverer of the caution in the communicative equation (Cotterill 2000), particularly in situations where the caution has to be interpreted or translated by its deliverer. Drawing on a sociolinguistic variation approach, this study investigates the communication of the police caution to creole speakers, who remain nearly invisible in the research to date. It uses the categories of literal and free translation as tools to analyze spontaneous translations of the caution from English to French lexicon Creole (Kwéyòl) produced by (n = 25) police officers in St. Lucia. The results show considerable variability in these translations, which may have negative consequences for the accused. This study seeks to draw attention to these consequences, by underscoring some of the inaccuracies that may occur in translating or interpreting a caution written in English to Kwéyòl, and make a case for policy that would use the language of the accused in situations of language variation. The study argues that such a policy, which standardizes the Kwéyòl version of the caution, would not only obviate the potential for variability, but would also minimize misunderstandings, which could compromise the legal rights of the suspect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pijin, the lingua franca of Solomon Islands, has acquired the functions of a creole in the capital city of Honiara. Yet, though Pijin is the common language of the urban culture of Honiara, it lacks linguistic legitimacy. Speakers of Pijin did not, until recently, consider it a true language in the same way that English and local vernaculars, with which it co-exists, are deemed to be. Specters of inauthenticity and illegitimacy were part of that assessment. In this paper, we consider that the nascent legitimacy ascribed to Pijin by some urban speakers is informed by the affirmation of their own legitimacy as a new socio-cultural group, that of the Pijin-speaking urbanite. This contributes to the complexification of the sociolinguistic scene. We show that while different ways of speaking Pijin are progressively becoming associated with various sociolinguistic groups and seem to constitute emergent social varieties, the question of a Pijin norm is also emerging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Baba Malay speakers perceive words ending with [al], [aɾ], and [as] as kasar 'coarse', and their counterparts ending with [ɛ] as halus 'refined'. The contrast is neither phonetic, phonological or morphological. Instead, it may be mitigated by sound symbolism operationalized by F2. The frontness of [ɛ] is associated with a smaller articulatory space in the oral cavity, and hence refinedness, as compared to the more backwards coarse forms. This study employs a matched-guise perceptual task. Refined forms are elicited from speakers. The F2 in the relevant endings is adjusted twice upwards and twice downwards in steps of 100Hz. Listeners rate these guises on a scale of 1 to 5, 5 being most associated with 'refined' values. Results show that the higher F2 is, the more likely listeners are to associate the guise with 'refined' values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociolinguistics and language documentation are both sub-fields of linguistics dealing with variation in natural language, but how they approach variation differs. This paper suggests that sociolinguistic studies of probabilistic variation can contribute not only to more thorough documentation of the structure of a lesser-known language, but also contribute to the advancement of linguistic theory and language change over time. Conversely, central concepts in sociolinguistics may need to be reconsidered when researchers begin to look beyond urban, monolingual communities of speakers. Two case studies are presented: the first case study of Bislama pronouns and subject agreement shows that documenting the structure of a lesser-studied language can help elucidate what might have happened in the past. It also shows how an analysis of variation can address outstanding questions about the fundamental linguistic structure of an under-documented language and the ways that variation feeds into grammaticalisation. The second case study presents an analysis of another variable in Bislama that problematises the alleged simplicity of creole languages, and proposes a general principle of transformation of constraints in situations of language contact. The paper suggests that, although the combination of sociolinguistics and language documentation may always be uneasy, they can make surprisingly congenial bedfellows. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study investigates the sociolinguistics of globalisation and performance, focusing on the linguistic appropriation of Jamaican Creole (JC) by white reggae artists in reggae performances and interviews.1 By adopting a multi‐faceted approach including a phonetic, morpho‐syntactic, and lexical analysis of the singing and speaking style of seven reggae artists and bands from the USA, Bermuda, and Europe, this study explores the similarities and differences between on‐ and offstage uses of Jamaican Creole, and whether the singers' access and exposure to this variety as well as the topic of the song has an effect on their language behaviour. The findings provide evidence for the claim that Jamaican Creole has developed into a prestigious linguistic resource in non‐Jamaican artists' performances of a global reggae persona, both on‐ and offstage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares data from a Singaporean chit chat forum to informal spoken data. We first perform a qualitative analysis of text samples in a framework of indexicality. Then we present quantitative findings for two (sets of) features each of the contact variety Singlish (particles, the kena-passive) and spoken English in general (discourse markers, contractions). For the former some similarities are observed but we also find that the forum contributors tend to be creative and innovative in their choice of particles. In this connection we argue that they index specific subgroup identities and further point out that Singlish is a rather flexible set of resources. Our findings differ from those of previous research on Jamaican Creole as used in an internet forum, thus showing that the use of contact varieties in computer-mediated communication can take different forms. The general features of spoken English are used comparatively less in the forum data, indicating that using Singlish features in writing is not tantamount to writing down spoken language. Moreover, we draw attention to features of computer-mediated communication in in the chit chat forum data. Finally we discuss implications in terms of the Dynamic Model of the evolution of Postcolonial Englishes (Schneider 2007). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Cahiers de Lexicologie is the property of Classiques Garnier and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In this paper I argue that Creoles are sociolinguistically some of the most complex language ecologies. Based on an analysis of sociolinguistic profiles as given in APiCs I illustrate the complex multilingual competencies typical of Creole speakers. As this thesis casts doubt on the assumed correlation between Creole grammars and simplicity, I revisit the notion of simplification in Creole genesis and offer a different perspective in which sociolinguistic complexity correlates with a grammatically complex ecology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mauritian Creole displays an alternation between a short and a long form of the verb, which is reminiscent of the conjoint-disjoint alternation found in some eastern Bantu languages. Based on comparison with other French-based creoles and socio-historical evidence, we conclude that the Bantu substrate must have had an impact on the grammatical system of Mauritian Creole. We compare the synchronic properties of the alternations in Mauritian Creole and the most likely substrate Bantu languages of northern Mozambique and examine two possible scenarios for the influence of Bantu on the Mauritian verbal alternation, concluding that probably only the (syntactic) basics of the Bantu alternation motivated the persistence of the alternation in Mauritian Creole. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

the use of /r/ for /l/ in initial consonant clusters, a feature found in some Atlantic english-based creoles, occurs sporadically in representations of African American english, in words such as bress 'bless', prease 'please', and grad 'glad', from the colonial period to the mid-twentieth century. this study documents and analyzes the history of these representations and compares the feature with similar occurrences in several Caribbean creoles, inding an ultimate source in the phonologies of several African languages whose speakers were enslaved and brought to North America. the history of the representation of bress in American literature shows it to have become an iconic stereotype, fueled in part by the minstrel show tradition. the occurrence and eventual disappearance of the pronunciation in African American english may be explained in terms of the "new dialect formation" model, with emphasis on the role of the individual in language acquisition and change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The language ecologies of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities in Queensland are characterised by widespread language shift to contact language varieties, yet they remain largely invisible in discourses involving Indigenous languages and education. This invisibility -- its various causes and its many implications -- are explored through a discussion of two creoles which developed in Queensland: Yumplatok (formerly Torres Strait Creole) and Yarrie Lingo. Although both are English- lexified and originate in Queensland, they represent different histories and different trajectories of awareness and recognition. The Yumplatok discussion emphasises issues arising from speakers' own attitudes, including Sellwood's own lived experiences. The Yarrie Lingo discussion highlights issues arising from its creole--lexifier relationship with (Standard Australian) English. Finally, this paper examines a recently published government language report, highlighting the ways that Indigenous creoles are marginalised: this marginalisation exacerbates their invisibility in mainstream discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In order to re-evaluate the ongoing debate about so-called creole exceptionalism, parallels and continuities from historical texts are shown in a line of argumentation that can be found both in works from the 19th century and from today. Mainly, the influential study of Mauritian Creole by Charles Baissac (1880) exhibits considerable similarities with today’s exceptionalist positions. Persisting arguments such as the idea of creoles as “simple”, “young” and “natural” languages are (and were) to show the difference of creoles from other languages. Creolists argue that evidence of creoles as a distinct class provides support for the relevance and independence of creolistics as a discipline. Comparing contemporary and historical sources can shed new light on the epistemological heritage of the field. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The article discusses the impact that the Dutch language had on the Eastern Maroon Creole language in the Netherlands' colony of Suriname from the mid 17th century through the 20th century. The article discusses and compares the lexicon of the Dutch and Eastern Maroon languages. An overview of the influence of Sranantongo (Sranan language) on the Ndyuka dialect is provided. The Surinamese Maroon radio station Koyeba, including the Maroon, English and Dutch languages used in its radio broadcasts, are also discussed.

Between 1860 and 1920, a creole language, Tayo, emerged as the community language of Saint-Louis a former Marist mission in southern New Caledonia. This article briefly introduces the demographic history of Saint-Louis and the arrival of Melanesian neophytes from different ethno-linguistic areas of the colony before discussing the influence of education on the development of Tayo, the Pacific's only French-lexified creole language. It closely examines the role played by the mission-educated Saint- Louis girls in the formation of this language of intra-village communication, exploring the teaching conditions at Saint-Louis at both the boys' and girls' schools and comparing these with other mission schools in New Caledonia. Highlighting the exceptional nature of the linguistic ecology of Saint-Louis, it considers the reasons why a French-based creole evolved in Saint-Louis as opposed to an indigenous language-based creole or the adoption of one of the Kanak languages spoken by the neophytes as a vehicular language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The study discusses and evaluates the pidginization theory and shows, through various standard and extensive references, how it relates to Second/Foreign language learning. In the introductory statements, the definition and sources of pidgin(ization) are illustrated. This is followed by background studies with special reference to the authors who have explored this sociolinguistic phenomena. In the discussion section, the linguistic characteristics of the pidginization theory are minutely examined in the context of Second and/or Foreign language learning. In this section, association between some variables such as linguistic universal and simplification, which dominate the structure of pidgin languages and their pedagogic significance, are examined. Finally, in the concluding remarks it is reasonably inferred that there is an analogy between pidginization theory and the early stages of Foreign/Second language acquisition, and Creolization (i.e. end result of pidginization) and the later stages of Foreign/Second language acquisition. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper is based on the most recent theories of scales of socialization and spatial analysis, both concepts focused within the framework of sociolinguistic ideology. According to these theories, space must not be conceived as neutral background, but as an active agent in the sociolinguistic processes. For a speaker the change of space results in a permutation of the connection between his/her linguistic repertoire and the linguistic competence required to act in that space. Speakers express themselves in and from a space which projects certain values, a certain social order, a certain authority, and affective attributes. I will present here the results of applying the socialization scales and spatial analysis in an empiric investigation on linguistic micro-variants in Limonese Creole, based on English in contact with Spanish in Costa Rica. I will explore the construction of individual identities, in the context of globalization and the Diaspora. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the development of linguistics in the West Indies. It says that the field of pidgin and creole language studies were prompted by the 1968 conference on "Pidginization and creolization of languages: their social aspects" and the publication of the proceedings of this conference. Furthermore, the University of West Indies (UWI) had established the Society for Caribbean Linguistics (SCL) in 1972, which consolidates creole studies in the Caribbean.

There has been a proposal to include language as a basis upon which discrimination should be proscribed in the Constitution of Jamaica. The proposal was considered in 2001 by a parliamentary committee which articulated certain concerns largely about the legal ramifications of a right not to be discriminated against on the ground of language. Central to the committee’s concerns are the nature and extent of the legal obligations that may arise for the state in a situation in which English is the de facto official language but in which Jamaican Creole, a largely oral, low status vernacular, not highly mutually intelligible with English, is the dominant language for a majority of Jamaicans. This article explores the concerns of the parliamentary committee. It draws upon legal decisions and principles from other jurisdictions in the area of discrimination involving language and attempts an assessment of the applicability of such principles to the Jamaican language situation and Creole language situations in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper renews the call for greater interest in applied work to deal with the obstacles faced in formal education by speakers of creoles (such as Hawai'i Creole and Jamaican Creole) and minority dialects (such as African American English). It starts off with an update on developments in the use of these vernacular languages in educational contexts since 1998, focusing on educational programmes, publications and research by linguists and educators. It goes on to discuss some of the research and public awareness efforts needed to help the speakers of these vernacular varieties, with examples given from Hawai'i. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This papers investigates the representation of the variability characteristics of the post-creole continuum of Jamaica in literature, and it discusses theoretical ramifications concerning the nature of an author's 'pan-lectal' competence. Based upon Thelwell's novel The Harder They Come and set against the background of theoretical statements on literary dialect, the origin of the novel, and the Jamaican culture which it represents, the variability of literary dialect is investigated by two complementary types of approaches: a quantitative sociolinguistic analysis of three phonological and 13 morphological variables of Jamaican Creole as represented in the speech of 14 fictive characters, and a qualitative documentation of the style-shifting employed by some of these characters. The results show that Thelwell's literary representation of the Jamaican speech continuum is remarkably accurate and in line with the findings of fieldwork-based sociolinguistic studies. A wide range of variation between basilect and acrolect is convincingly represented in the novel, with the characters' idiolects correlating with their socioeconomic status and with situational parameters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Twelve languages — including the two prestigious colonial languages, English and French, a French-based Creole and 'ancestral' languages, such as Hindi and Mandarin — are spoken on the multiethnic island Mauritius. Given the multilingual and multiethnic nature of the nation, linguistic practices are an important way for Mauritians to assert or construct their identities. The linguistic diversity of Mauritius has been considered in various censuses. The 2000 census questionnaire contained sections concerning 'linguistic group', 'language usually spoken in the home' and 'literacy'. In this paper, the 2000 census language tables related to 'linguistic group' and 'language usually spoken in the home' are discussed with reference to the current linguistic situation. The growing importance of Creole as both the language of the forefathers and the language usually spoken at home is discussed. The relatively important presence of English and French and the decreasing everyday use of Asian languages are highlighted. The final section of this paper suggests directions for further research on the language tables in the 2000 Population Census. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents information on the role of the author in the journal "The Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages" and the Society for Pidgin and Creole Linguistics (SPCL). The article comments on how both the journal and the society came into being, and how they have developed over the years. Special attention is paid to the role of Stanley Tsuzaki and John Reinecke as seminal figures who challenged the thinking of the author and prepared him mentally, so to speak, for a commitment to edit an international journal for an indefinite period. The author wants to focus on the genesis of SPCL during the Society for Caribbean Linguistics meeting in the Bahamas in 1988, along with the decision to meet in conjunction with the winter Linguistic Society of America, the search for a name for the Society, and the preparation of its constitution. Shortly before the Amsterdam Symposium of SPCL, in spring 1985, Pieter Muysken arranged a meeting with Claire and John Benjamins at their publishing headquarters in an 18th-century Dutch patroon house on a picturesque Amsterdam canal, replete with mahogany and rosewood bookcases filled with old leather-bound books lining the walls.

The author reflects on the comparison made by linguist Pieter Muysken between languages and topics from volume 1 to 7 of the "Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages," and languages and topics from volumes 8 to 17 of the journal. The author views that she saw a major change in the relationship between pidgin/creole studies and language contact studies. According to her, the main difference between the first seven years and past ten years has been in the sociolinguistic surge

The author reflects on the evolution of the creole and pidgin prototypes, the genetic creolistics and genetic linguistics in response to the article "Creoles and Genetic Relationships," by Sarah Grey Thomason. The author views that the co-evolution of languages and society can be learnt by genetic creolistics. He believes that the creoles have been considered as aberrations and irregular developments while the pidgins are thought to be arised abruptly and are based on restructuring.

Classic sociolinguistic approaches, which have primarily been concerned with analyzing the co-variation between linguistic and social features, have never been used to investigate the initial stages in the development of creole languages. Nevertheless, the study of creole languages, or "creolistics," constitutes an exceptionally interesting area for sociolinguistic analysis, diachronic as well as synchronic. The aim of my contribution is to explore this idea further by examining a number of French creoles, the development of which has been similar in nature to the development of most other creoles based on European languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author argues that a theory of diglossia should focus on writing and literacy and how oral and literate varieties affect each other. Diglossia, I think, is such a specifity within the general field of societal multilingualism. The origin of Haitian Creole can be traced to exogenous language contact and the reduction of a High variety that had a fullblown written standard when Low came into existence. Although Haitian Creole is spoken by the entire population of Haiti, the functional distribution of it and French has not lost its potential association with class distinctions and race. As a feature to be investigated, writing is more manageable than most other properties of languages and so is literacy with respect to speech communities. In India, diglossia is very common, not because of the Vedic tradition but because Sanskritization drove a wedge between the Sanskritized vernaculars and the real vernacular spoken by the man in the street. There can be little doubt that the basic idea that writing is nothing but a visual surrogate of speech cannot do justice to either the sociocultural or the linguistic consequences of the introduction of writing into human communication. But the spell of an old tradition is strong. If people choose to become literate and if they choose to speak as they write or to write as they speak, a realignment of codes will be brought about.

This article discusses that there may be a need to broaden the scope of the notion of ethnolinguistic vitality (EV) to take cognizance of languages, such as pidgins and creoles, that may not necessarily be categorizeable as ethnic languages or languages of any particular social grouping for that matter. The term, sociolinguistic vitality (SV), is also suggested as a more inclusive term, given the genesis and usual lack of a specific ethnic attribution of languages, such as pidgins and creoles. The article uses Anglo-Nigerian Pidgin (ANP) as an illustration. The notion of EV is built on two principal and independent theories: the theory of intergroup relations and social change, and the speech accommodation theory. The essence of the former is that, in intergroup relations, each group will seek to see itself in good light and distinguish itself favorably from other groups; its component notions relate to: social categorization; social identity; social comparison; and, psychological distinctiveness.

This article investigates the sociological correlates of speech behavior among bilingual speakers of French and Creole in Haiti. Comparisons are drawn with the diglossia situation in Paraguay. The factors influencing language loyalty and language maintenance, the social constraints of language choice, the social context of communicative development as well as the competence of Haitians in Creole and French, are discussed. However, one should take into account the fact that the sociolinguistic situation in Haiti is changing.

The article presents a review of the literature on pidgins and creole linguistics. The social contexts that fostered the linguistic genesis of pidgins and creoles is discussed. The overall sophistication of the linguistic analyses done on pidgins and creoles has sharply increased. One of the main issues in pidgin and creole studies is whether pidgins and creoles represent a special type of language. The genetic relationship between pidgins and their substrates or superstrates is a crucial one to sort out.

Krio, the English-based Creole of Sierra Leone, is often asserted to have been imported from America. Historical evidence, however, shows that speakers of an English-based contact variety were in the Freetown area before 1600. Much of the vocabulary of the surviving English-based Creole matches nautical vocabulary better than any other variety of English. Enclaves of British seamen who mixed with Africans on the Guinea coast facilitated the spread of this nautical variety and the mixing of elements from the African languages of the area. Considerable lexical and phonological evidence supports the view that the nautical variety is the significant dialect of English to be considered in this connection. There is much parallel evidence from places like St. Helena and Tristan da Cunha. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the bidialectal educational situations in the West Indies. The increase, since the 1950s, of Creole language studies has brought with it an improved understanding of the sociolinguistic factors that operate in Creole or non-Standard dialect situations. In the West Indies, situations are virtually bidialectal ones, as far as education is concerned, in the officially English-speaking territories. The situations bear some resemblance to the social-dialect or the lower-social-class ones in the U.S. or Great Britain, although social conditions and linguistic ones too are often substantially different. In the relevant territories, Standard English or a special variety of it is the language of education and although Creole or post-Creole speech is often regarded as closely identified with the national consciousness and identity and is preserved for close personal exchanges and the continued development of a vernacular culture, there does not seem to be any possibility, because of the dominant attitudes of the population, that such speech will be accepted as the official language or the language of education. In this context, schools are faced with the task of helping children to develop naturally and without inhibition in their home language, but at the same time to becomes fluent users of Standard speech.

This article discusses six principles that may be applied within the Caribbean region to determine whether a language other than the official language of a territory should be used, as a matter of educational policy, as a medium of instruction. The principles stand on the basis of the linguistic relationships and sociolinguistic interaction of the languages as well as on the social attitudes towards them. Haiti, the Caribbean's first republic, continues to recognize French as its official language but the language most widely used is French-lexicon Creole. Estimates of the extent of the use of Creole vary between 80 percent and 90 percent of the population. Throughout the region the use of the official language is prestigious, but this does not imply that the official language is always viewed as appropriate. The other languages in use begun by being private-informal situation languages and the extent to which they are used outside of this area varies from one territory or language to another. The interaction of Creoles with official languages is the phenomenon of code switching. Indeed this is a primary characteristic of the use of the languages. The movement towards independence of the territories in the region has been accompanied by rejection of external symbols of former colonial status.

Although modern urban Papiamento almost passes for a dialect of Spanish, older traditions and rural usage indicate originally great differences. Hyper corrections fre&qdot;uently carry Papiamento even further in the direction of Spanish. Minimal contrasts by tone are, however, characteristic of native speakers of Papiamento at all socio-cultural levels and do not disappear in hypercorrect speech. Penetration of Spanish and Dutch phonology into Papiamento is exemplified by such phonological factors as slight palatalization (rather than complete palatalization), use of a velar fricative rather than a glottal fricative, and the occurrence of a wide variety of consonants in final position. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This section introduces a series of articles on the sociology of creole languages.

The precontact island communities of Torres Strait, unlike those of mainland Australia, were monolingual, not multilingual, although a small number of apparently bilingual men had responsibility for trade with the northern and southern mainlands. However, there are few monolingual individuals or communities, and despite the imminent loss of one of the two regional indigenous languages, the sociolinguistic situation is considerably more complex than in precontact times. This complexity has arisen as a response to changes in the Islanders' social identity, themselves the results of postcontact social, cultural, religious and economic upheaval. Whereas many traditionally important structural oppositions continue to be mirrored through linguistic form, they are not necessarily expressed by means of the same language varieties as in the past: the two indigenous languages continue to index island origin and traditional knowledge: pan-Islander consciousness and Torres Strait Islander ethnicity, both of which emerged this century, are expressed through the use of an indigenized creole: and English signals formality of discourse, acquisition of prestige knowledge, and age stratification.

This article focuses on the pan-Creole idealism. The Creole language is the most salient mediating link between the colonial heritage and the African or Asian roots. Speaking of the Creole society and language in the singular is a convenient way of introducing Bannzil's perspective, which stresses the pan-Creole unity while recognizing the plural nature and distinctive features of the society and language. Unity and diversity form part of the dynamics of the Creole world, a fact recognized by the Bannzil Kréyól movement, later known simply as Bannzil. The objective of Bannzil, presented in the founding declaration of May 1982 in the Seychelles, defines the movement as an association of linguists, educators, researchers, artists and writers who consider themselves members of a great family scattered over the world, dedicated to the promotion of the Creole language, culture and society. The initial vision appears extremely ambitious for it embraced the whole Creole world of French-lexicon parentage, including the diasporas, irrespective of the political status of its member states. Perhaps the major lesson to be drawn from the Bannzil experience is the need for a more pragmatic approach to the problems of the Creole languages and societies seen from a local and regional standpoint rather than through a problematic global vision of créolophonie.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the roles of women and kinship in African and Afro-European communities along the Upper Guinea Coast and to consider the significance of this date for the domestic hypothesis of anglophone creole genesis developed by Hancock (1972,1986). Throughout the discussion, the focus will be on three different geographic areas of the Guinea Coast of West Africa. These areas are (1) the region of Senegambia, including the offshore islands, (2) the region of present-day Guinea-Bissau and Guinea, and (3) the coastal region of present day Sierra Leone, including the offshore islands near the Sherbro and Sierra Leone River estuaries. They were able to reconstruct the linguistic contact between English men, their African wives and their Afro-European children. Initially, the men and women would not have a shared common language, except in a minority of cases where some variety of Portuguese may have been common to both. It is assumes that, eventually, the women learned their husbands' language. However this process would take approximately two years, and during this time at least one child may have been born to the couple. During the child's socialization, the mother and the mother's kin group would have been the most influential linguistic models since the father are often away conducting trade. The children would have been bilingual, speaking their mothers' and fathers' languages but their proficiency in English would be difficult to assess from a historical standpoint.

This article discusses on creole languages. It is generally accepted that creole languages, consistent with the relatively small vocabularies they employ, and also with the fact that they are oral languages used mainly in face-to-face communication, are heavily dependent on the extralinguistic context. Creole sentences can be disambiguated only by contextual clues of some kind or other. Undoubtedly, ambiguity can be found in all languages. What distinguishes creole, however, is the dominance of ambiguity in the system of communication provided by the language. It is well understood that in a very general and universal way, the extralinguistic context defines the understanding of all forms of reference, putting emphasis on the referential aspects of situational context. It is also recognized that as far as human communication is concerned, sociocultural factors are inseparable from the physical world, or from reference in the most general sense. However, subsequent developments in the study of sociocultural contexts and their role in communication have thrown light upon such issues as the goals, purposes and attitudes of speakers, how speakers signal the latter in language, and how and why references achieve selection and relevance in discourse.

In light of the verbal war between the two languages of Haiti, creole and French, it is important to understand the complex relationship between these two languages and to analyze the country's communicative networks. The analysis that will be attempted in this paper will focus on the notion of diglossia and language conflict as they manifest themselves in language variation in Haiti and as they apply to current issues in the standardization of creole. The term bilingualism is inappropriate to refer to the linguistic situation of Haiti since the nation's population have effective competence in French. In addition, Haiti is not an officially bilingual state like Canada, for example. The 1926 Constitution proclaims that French as the sole official language in Haiti. That status is confirmed in the 1946 Constitution which, however adds that the law can determine cases and conditions where the use of creole is permitted and even recognized for the safeguard of the material and moral interest of those citizens who do not have sufficient knowledge in the French language. Meanwhile, the 1983 Constitution of Haiti declares both French and Creole to be national languages by stating that French serves as official language.

This paper attempts to explain and assess the connections which have existed between sociolinguistics and pidgin-creole studies to date and consider their future prospects. One reason for the interconnections between these areas is that many of the leading scholars working on pidgins and creoles have been sociolinguists or have focused at least part of their work on sociolinguistic issues, e.g., John Reinecke and his sociologically oriented theses in the 1930s. Equally important has been the influence of leading sociolinguists who, although not themselves creolists, turned to pidgins and creoles for examples of sociolinguistic processes and types, or cited them as challenges to dominant, nonsociolinguistic conceptions of language structure and change. Another reason for the affinity which was felt and continued to be felt among sociolinguists and creolists is the fact that the languages on which they work are often similar, in terms of their nonstandard character and low social status, in terms of the spontaneous-usage data which their description seems to require, in terms of the close correlations with the social status which their variant forms display, and in terms of the educational and practical problems which their speakers experience.

This article presents an overview of topics discussed in the May 1988 issue. The purpose of this issue is to highlight the interrelationships between sociolinguistics and pidgin-creole studies--past, present and potential--at a time when other legitimate interests in each subfield are attracting increasing attention. On the whole, the articles in this volume do not attempt general surveys of the links between these subfields but exemplify particular products or potentials of such links in relation to specific subtopics. Craig's article demonstrates the newer sociolinguistic foci like pragmatics and discourse analysis also have valuable contributions to make to pidgin-creole studies, and his interests in formalism, semantics, and cognition connect his work with current linguistic concerns as a whole. LePage develops in a more general and detailed way the kind of point that Alleyne touches on briefly: that there is a relation between linguistic theory and the linguist's cultural background that sociolinguists have a special privilege and duty to reveal. Muhlhausler discusses the problems and benefits involved in one of his most recent projects, the creation of an atlas of lingue franche in the Pacific.

It is taken for granted that speakers of different languages will employ different linguistic means to communicate the same given meanings. It is still not widely recognized, however, that speakers who share some aspects of a common language, and even sometimes speakers of the same language, often do likewise. The behavior of speakers in the latter respect needs further discussion, since it does not seem to be generally known, and since some conclusions derivable from it seem likely to provide a better understanding of how conceptualization is structured in the human mind. If the organization of conceptualization is to be described, it seems necessary to take the perception of meaning equivalence as a guide toward the kinds of conceptual elements and relationships whose existence necessarily has to be inferred. It would seem that the perception of a meaning equivalence requires a universal unanimity in the minds of speakers concerning what has to be conceptualized as entity among references. Creole speakers would have no problem concatenating primitive concepts. They do it all the time, nevertheless, the labelling processes of creole inevitably move away from one-to-one and direct relationships with the conceptual level.

Belize, the new Central American nation in the heart of the Caribbean Basin, between Mexico in the North, and Guatemala in the West and South, is a small, internally self-governed British colony of approximately twice the size of Jamaica. The complexity of the language situation in Belize has a considerable impact on all levels of Belizean society, and there is an urgent need for socio-linguistic investigations into problems of bilingualism and often multilingualism. Aspects of language choice and language status will have to play a complementary role in a presentation of the linguistic data. This article tackles on methodological problems that arise from the postulate of a relationship to the English base.