Intonation and Prosody in Creole Languages: An Evolving Ecology

Research on the prosody and intonation of creole languages has largely remained an untapped resource, yet it is important for enriching our understanding of how or if their phonological systems changed or developed under contact. Further, their hybrid histories and current linguistic ecologies present descriptive and analytical treasure troves. This has the potential to inform many areas of linguistic inquiry including contact effects on the typological classification of prosodic systems, socioprosodic variation (individual and community level), and the scope of diversity in prosodic systems among creole languages and across a variety of languages similarly influenced by language contact. Thus, this review highlights the importance of pushing beyond questions of creole language typology and genetic affiliation. I review the existing research on creole language prosody and intonation, provide some details on a few studies, and highlight some key challenges and opportunities for the subfield and for linguistics in general.

Prospects of botanical pesticides in management of Iroko gall bug, Phytolyma fusca (Hemiptera, Psylloidea) under laboratory and field conditions

Background Iroko gall bug, Phytolyma fusca Walker, is a major insect pest of Milicia excelsa (Iroko) seedling hampering its propagation in West Africa. Milicia excelsa is an indigenous forest timber tree in the tropical rain forest of West Africa with a very high value in international trade due to its wood quality. Sustainable management of P. fusca infestations on Iroko seedlings have not been achieved due to their cryptic nature and multivoltine generations. This study evaluated the residual and contact effects of crude ethanol and aqueous extracts of four plants (Azadirachta indica, Jatropha curcas, Piper guineense, and Aframomum melegueta) on adult P. fusca in the laboratory and field. Results All the extracts had residual effects and contact effects on adult insects in the laboratory at 75% and 100% concentrations of applications. Azadirachta indica, P. guineense, and A. melegueta gave 80–100% adult mortality at both concentrations in the laboratory; their efficacies were comparable to cypermethrin. The ethanol extracts of P. guineense and A. indica were more effective than other extracts in protecting the seedlings against Phytolyma infestations in the field. They significantly (p < 0.01) reduced infestation compared to other extracts and control. Ethanol extracts of the tested plant materials were more effective than their aqueous extracts both in the laboratory and field. Conclusion The results proved that P. guineense and A. indica extracts were very potent and promising in protecting Milicia excelsa seedlings against Phytolyma fusca infestations and they can be used in the early management of Phytolyma infestations in the field.

Grammaticalization and language contact in a discourse-pragmatic change in progress: The spread of innit in London English

This variationist analysis investigates the development and spread of innit as an invariant tag in London English. The sociolinguistic distribution of innit in a socially stratified corpus of vernacular speech suggests that the form's emergence and spread were initiated and propelled system-internally through changes associated with grammaticalization. Frequency triggered phonetic reduction of isn't it to innit; loss of syntactic-semantic usage constraints and growing functional versatility enabled innit to seize the range of contexts and functions of grammatically-dependent tags (e.g. didn't you, weren't we), virtually ousting these from the system of negative-polarity interrogative tags. Examination of cross-linguistic data and comparisons with relevant pre- and non-contact varieties indicate multiple language contact and grammatical replication may have played an ancillary role. I flag some challenges of establishing contact effects in discourse-pragmatic change, and propose that the promotion of innit for invariant use was governed by its low salience and social indexicality of localness. (Innit, question tags, (Multicultural) London English, grammaticalization, language contact, grammatical replication)*

Bidirectionality of language contact: Spanish and Catalan vowels

The disproportionate number of studies in Barcelona and the Balearic Islands observing Spanish contact effects in Catalan production, rather than Catalan contact effects in Spanish production, is an oversight of bidirectionality and the probabilistic nature of social factors in situations of language contact. Accordingly, the present study analyzes both Catalan and Spanish mid front vowel production data from Barcelona to investigate whether Catalan contact effects occur in Spanish via a process of dissimilation, and whether such effects are strengthened in younger speakers due to the relatively recent implementation of Catalan linguistic policy in the educational and public spheres. The results are suggestive of dissimilation, where phonetic distinctions are maintained between Spanish /e/ and the two Catalan mid front vowels across both F1 and F2. Additionally, analyses of variance across F1 and F2 reveal that Spanish /e/ productions across F1 are more diffuse in younger speakers and Catalan mid front vowels across F2 are less diffuse, providing evidence of reciprocity in contact effects. These results underscore the bidirectional nature of language contact and advocate for the use of variance of F1 and F2 as a metric of phonological contact effects.

Intonation Systems Across Varieties of English

This chapter focuses on the structure and systematicity underlying the expression of intonation in varieties of English. Phonologically, this involves tones and clusters of tones with associations to heads and edges of prosodic domains, functionally highlighting and delimiting units within these domains. Phonetically, it involves pitch and its acoustic correlate, in addition to other phonetic parameters that contribute towards structuring speech, such as duration and spectral quality. Both mainstream and non-mainstream varieties are considered, the latter often showing contact effects determining the presence or absence of lexical tone and lexical stress, as well as post-lexical structures that do not fit neatly into Jun’s (2006) head/edge-prominence dichotomy. The survey shows that an account of the intonation of ‘Englishes’ has to cover a broad range of typological phenomena and be flexible enough to capture properties of emerging varieties, some of which will be briefly discussed.