A Syntactic Analysis of Sea Island Creole

A Syntactic Analysis of Sea Island Creole
Author: Irma Aloyce Ewing Cunningham
Publisher: University of Alabama Press
Total Pages: 188
Release: 1992
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN:

A comprehensive account of the grammatical system of Sea Island Creole (Gullah), this work draws on extensive field research to present a systematic treatment of the syntactic and semantic structures of this English-based Creole language.

The Syntax of Jamaican Creole

The Syntax of Jamaican Creole
Author: Stephanie Durrleman-Tame
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 209
Release: 2008-08-28
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9027290695

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.

Creoles, Contact, and Language Change

Creoles, Contact, and Language Change
Author: Geneviève Escure
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 367
Release: 2004-10-13
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9027295085

This volume contains a selection of fifteen papers presented at three consecutive meetings of the Society for Pidgin and Creole Linguistics, held in Washington, D.C. (January 2001); Coimbra, Portugal (June 2001); and San Francisco (January 2002). The fifteen articles offer a balanced sampling of creolists’ current research interests. All of the contributions address questions directly relevant to pidgin/creole studies and other contact languages. The majority of papers address issues of morphology or syntax. Some of the contributions make use of phonological analysis while others study language development from the point of view of acquisition. A few papers examine discourse strategies and style, or broader issues of social and ethnic identity. While this array of topics and perspectives is reflective of the diversity of the field, there is also much common ground in that all of the papers adduce solid data corpora to support their analyses. The range of languages analyzed spans the planet, as approximately twenty contact varieties are studied in this volume.

Grammatical Relations in a Radical Creole

Grammatical Relations in a Radical Creole
Author: Francis Byrne
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 309
Release: 1987-01-01
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9027279012

With English and Portuguese as parent languages; the significant lexical retention of African languages; and the relative isolation of its speakers, Saramaccan has always stood out among Creole languages. Yet despite its obvious interest Saramaccan received little in the way of scholarly study. This groundbraking monograph dispels the mystery surrounding Saramaccan and provides strong evidence for a new approach to Creole origins. The study is carried out within the government-binding framework. The author shows how Saramaccan comes close to demonstrating what constitues the irreducible minimum of building blocks with which a language can be constructed, and the types of structure which must develop under such conditions. In this work Frank Byrne combines the outcome of patient and persevering fieldwork with a firm grasp of current theoretical issues and provides us with the insights into the nature of universal grammar of which a Creole like Saramaccan is potentially capable.