Martin Vokoun
[1] Caribbean Area
 Number of former colonies – Spanish, French,
Dutch, English.
 From the early 1700s, thousands of people were
transported as slaves to the Caribbean,
particularly from West Africa.
 Pidgin languages evolved into creoles (e.g.
Jamaican Patois /Patwa/ and Barbadian Creole
/Bajan/)
 Throughout the Caribbean, English is the
language of education, although Jamaicans,
Barbadians and others are rightly proud of their
local patois as an important expression of their
cultural identity.
 Antigua and Barbuda
 The Bahamas
 Barbados
 Dominica
 Grenada
 Jamaica
 Saint Kitts and Nevis
 Saint Lucia
 Saint Vincent and the
Grenadines
 Trinidad and Tobago
/æn'ti:g(w)ə -- bɑ:r'bu:də/
/bə'hɑ:məz/
/bɑ:r'beɪ.doʊs/
/ˌdɑ:mɪ'ni:kə/
/grə'neɪdə/, /gri-/, /gren'eɪ-/
/ʤə'meɪkə/
/seɪnt'kits-ə-ni:vis/
/seɪnt'lu:siə/
/seɪnt'vɪntsənt -- ˌgren.ə'di:nz/
/ˌtrɪn.ɪdæd-ə-toʊ'beɪgoʊ/
Feature Explanation
TH-stopping <th> in words such as think and three is pronounced
using a <t> sound and in words such
as this and that using a <d> sound
H-dropping
/inconsistent/
initial <h> is deleted in words such as happy
and house
Consonant cluster
reduction
complex strings of consonants are often simplified by
deleting the final sound, so that best becomes
‘bes’, respect becomes ‘respeck’ and land becomes
‘lan’
Rhoticity
/inconsistent/
the <r> sound is pronounced after a vowel in words
like hard, corn and nurse
Feature Explanation
Unreduced vowel
in weak syllables
vowels in unstressed syllables are not reduced, so that
speakers use a comparatively strong vowel on words
such as about, bacon or arrival and on grammatical
function words, such as in the phrases lot of work,
in a few
FACE vowel >
/e:/
a similar vowel sound as that used by speakers in
Scotland, Wales and the North East of England on words
such as game, tray, plain, reign, they and great
GOAT vowel >
/o:/
a similar vowel sound as that used by speakers in
Scotland, Wales and the North East of England on words
such as home, show, boat and toe
Final /Ə/ open Sounds like /a/ in words such as owner .
Feature Explanation
Zero indefinite
article
the indefinite article, a or an, is occasionally omitted
Zero past tense
marker
verbs are left unmarked for tense, although other
signals (adverbs of time, such asyesterday, last
week etc.) often give linguistic clues about the
timing of an event
Zero plural
marker
nouns are left unmarked for plurality
 Born in Jamaica
 Remark:
Stolen
Arrival,
Buffalo
Heart of Africa
+ h-dropping?
rhotic?
 https://is.muni.cz/auth/of/1421/AJ22093/p
odzim2012/36115213/
 Sounds Familiar? Consulted Octobre 21,
2012. Web.
http://www.bl.uk/learning/langlit/sounds/ca
se-studies/minority-ethnic/caribbean/
 About.com. Consulted Octobre 20, 2012.
Web.
http://grammar.about.com/od/pq/g/pidgint
erm.htm and
http://grammar.about.com/od/c/g/creole.ht
m
 "At first a pidgin language has no native
speakers, and is used just for doing business
with others with whom one shares the pidgin
language and no other. In time, most pidgin
languages disappear, as the pidgin-speaking
community develops, and one of its established
languages becomes widely known and takes over
the role of the pidgin as the lingua franca, or
language of choice of those who do not share a
native language."
(Grover Hudson, Essential Introductory
Linguistics. Blackwell, 2000)
BACK CREOLE
 Sometimes the pidgin becomes stable and
established and comes to be spoken as
a mother-tongue by children: the language
has then become a creole, which quickly
develops in complexity and is used in all
functional settings. The process of turning a
pidgin into a creole is called creolization."
(Robert Lawrence Trask and Peter
Stockwell, Language and Linguistics: The Key
Concepts. Routledge, 2007)
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