Bilingual Preschoolers' Spontaneous Productions: Considering Jamaican Creole and English

In this paper I argue that there is no true number morphology in Jamaican Creole (JC). Instead, I show that dem, traditionally taken to be a plural marker, is more properly analyzed as a marker of inclusiveness, a defining characteristic of definiteness. These are expected outcomes of JC being in the class of languages which are claimed to have set nouns, i.e. nouns which, when combined with a numeral X, refer to an X-numbered set of individuals rather than to X number of individuals (Rijkhoff 2004). Since JC does not mark plurality in the same way as its lexifier English, individuation and number in JC cannot be analysed in the same way as is done for English. The proposal for a syntactic analysis of number in JC, given the above, is that functional structure above the NP provides for optional individuation via Cl(assifier)Phrase, and additionally for optional number specification, via Num(ber)Phrase.

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Dynamics of orthographic standardization in Jamaican Creole and Nigerian Pidgin

World Englishes ◽

10.1111/j.1467-971x.2007.00486.x ◽

2007 ◽

Vol 26 (1) ◽

pp. 22-47 ◽

Cited By ~ 19

Author(s):

DAGMAR DEUBER ◽

LARS HINRICHS

Keyword(s):

Jamaican Creole

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Focus on the Outcomes of Communication Under Six: Validation of Language Skills in the Jamaican Context

Communication Disorders Quarterly ◽

10.1177/15257401211068126 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 152574012110681

Author(s):

Leslie E. Kokotek ◽

Karla N. Washington ◽

Barbara Jane Cunningham ◽

Rachel Wright Karem ◽

Brittany Fletcher

Keyword(s):

Outcome Measures ◽

Representative Sample ◽

Language Skills ◽

Preschool Age ◽

Focus Measure ◽

Preschool Age Children ◽

English Speaking ◽

Psychometric Evidence ◽

Creole English ◽

Jamaican Creole

The Focus on the Outcomes of Communication Under Six (FOCUS) is one of a few validated outcome measures related to children’s communicative participation. Additional validation of the FOCUS measure could address the paucity of validated outcomes-based measures available for assessing preschool-age children, particularly for those who are multilingual. The data collected for this study, with a representative sample of Jamaican Creole-English speaking children, extend the applicability of the FOCUS to a broader range of preschoolers and expand psychometric evidence for the FOCUS to a multilingual and understudied context.

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English /r/ in L2 and Pidgin/Creole Languages

International Journal of English Linguistics ◽

10.5539/ijel.v10n2p367 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 10 (2) ◽

pp. 367

Author(s):

Ahmed Mousa

Keyword(s):

The Other ◽

Phonological Acquisition ◽

Motor Patterns ◽

Other Hand ◽

Creole Languages ◽

Jamaican Creole

This study aims to investigate how Arab L1 learners of English and speakers of the Broad Jamaican Creole cope with the production of the approximant /r/ preconsonantly, post vocalically and in Stop+/r/ clusters, according to the RP norm. To this end, a list of words containing the approximant in the above three environments was given to the two groups, to read. Their production was tape recorded and transcribed. The approximant was nearly totally produced as trill in the three environments by the Arab learners, though one learner managed to produce an American-like /r/ in addition to the trill. On the other hand, the Jamaican informants produced the approximant according to the RP norm and as an American-like /r/. Whereas Lass’s (1984) assumption regarding the preference for trills proved to be true for the Arab learners, it was not the case with the Jamaican informants, in whose production trill was entirely absent. The study also provided further support to the view that phonological acquisition is achieved by gradual reinforcement of motor patterns.

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Focus and wh in Jamaican Creole: Movement and Exhaustiveness

Beyond Functional Sequence ◽

10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190210588.003.0006 ◽

2015 ◽

pp. 91-106

Author(s):

Stephanie Durrleman ◽

Ur Shlonsky

Keyword(s):

Jamaican Creole

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