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Presentations
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with
Jack Sidnell (University
of Toronto) and Miriam Meyerhoff
(University of Edinburgh)
The
island of Bequia is located in St. Vincent and the Grenadines. The majority
of its roughly 5,000 inhabitants descend from
Africans brought to the Caribbean during the 17th and 18th centuries,
while a small minority trace their ancestry to British indentured laborers
relocated from Barbados in the mid-19th century. Despite the small
size of the island (7 square miles), people tend to live in
geographically and socially distinct communities, resulting in a surprising
degree of dialectal diversity. This project combines sociolinguistic
interviews and recordings of daily and group interaction with more in-depth
ethnographic observation, to examine the role of ethnic boundaries in
maintaining separate grammatical systems. We are providing a detailed
analysis of an array of interrelated grammatical features which have been
implicated in studies of English-based creoles, nonstandard varieties
of English and African American Vernacular English. The coexistence of
different linguistic varieties in the same communities offers a valuable
opportunity to investigate the interaction of different underlying grammatical
systems.
funded
by the United States National Science Foundation
and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research
Council of Canada
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