This research attempts to investigate to what extent the claim that the strategies resorted to by second/foreign language learners are, more or less, the same as those used by speakers of pidgin/creole languages. To this end, the speech of two speakers of the well-known Broad Jamaican Creole is compared with the performance of Saudi learners of English, with respect to the pronunciation of the voiced labio-dental fricative /v/. It is found that the above claim is valid, in that before the fricative in question is acquired the speakers make use of another fricative as a transitory step. This behaviour is found to corroborate that of the child, which is recorded as external evidence that adds to existent literature of the logical problem of language learning. Furthermore, this strategy goes hand in hand with the norms of historical change, in that the substitute sounds are not marked. That is, although the pronunciation of [b] instead of /v/ is characteristic of the Broad Jamaican Creole, our Jamaican speakers prefer to use the bilabial fricative [β], which is exactly used by the child. Likewise, our Arab learners make use of voiceless [f] for the voiced /v/ which is more marked.

This study investigates the claim that the strategies employed by second/foreign language learners are the same as those used by speakers of Creole languages. The speech of two speakers of the well-known Broad Jamaican Creole is checked against the performance of Saudi learners of English, focusing on the production of the voiced alveo-palatal fricative/ʒ/. The findings suggest that the speakers in the two groups produce the voiced affricate/dʒ/ instead, suggesting perhaps that the above claim is valid. This study provides external evidence to the validity of such theories as sound substitution, markedness, and historical sound change which are said to shape early language acquisition, including child language.

This study investigates the claim that the strategies used by second/foreign language learners are, more or less, the same as those used by speakers of pidgin/creole languages. To this end, the speech of two speakers of the well-known Broad Jamaican Creole is compared with the performance of Saudi learners of English, with respect to the pronunciation of the closing diphthongs /əʊ/ and /eɪ/. The results show that the above claim is valid. Also, the behavior of the two groups corroborates that of child language, which will be taken as external evidence that adds to the existent literature of the logical problem of language learning. The behavior of the speakers in the three domains (i.e., L1, L2, and pidgin/creole languages) goes hand in hand with norms of historical change. That is, the two diphthongs have historically developed from the monophthongs used as substitutes. In addition, the centrality component in these diphthongs is a marked parameter, which is yet to be set before they could be mastered. The substitutes made by the speakers of Jamaican Creole and by Arab learners are the same chosen by the child.

This study investigates the production of English initial consonant clusters by Arabic L1 learners of English and speakers of the Broad Jamaican Creole. The clusters Stop + /r/, /S/ + nasal, /S/ + stop, in addition to the production of vowel-initial words are focused on. It was found out that whereas Arab learners produced initial Stop + /r/ and /S/ + nasal words with epenthesis and /S/ + stop words with prosthesis as well as epenthesis, speakers of the Broad Jamaican Creole produced Stop + /r/ and /S/ + stop clusters according to the RP norm and /S/ + nasal with epenthesis. As for vowel-initial words, both groups resorted to the strategy of onset filling (Itô, 1989). Specifically, Arab learners produced these words with glottal stop /ʔ/ before the initial vowel, whereas the Jamaican informants inserted glottal fricative /h/ in the same position. Furthermore, the performance of the two groups was additionally analyzed in light of Optimality Theory.

This study aims at investigating to what extent the linguistic processes exhibited in creolization parallel those manifested by Arab learners of English in particular and those of child language and second/foreign language in general. Another aim of the study is to highlight the link between second/foreign language learning and historical change. To this end, the speech of two speakers of the Broad Jamaican Creole was compared with the performance of Saudi school and university learners of English as a foreign language and data from child language, with respect to the pronunciation of English inter-dental fricatives /θ/ and /ð/. The results show that learning in the above three situations takes place according to the same principles. Furthermore, the sound substitutions made in the three situations (i.e. [t], [d] respectively) are the same as those witnessed in historical sound change.