British and American norms in the Trinidadian English lexicon

Abstract

Previous work on norm orientations in the Caribbean Englishes has focussed largely on phonological norms, such as accents, and, to a lesser extent, grammatical norm orientation. Outside of the publication of dictionaries, however, lexical norms and their spread have received little attention. This paper examines lexical norm orientations in Trinidadian English, presenting the results of a corpus‐based study and survey study of the lexical preferences of speakers of Trinidadian English. The findings suggest that while there is evidence of American influence on Trinidadian lexicon, British variants persist. Indeed, British and American variants often coexist, albeit with different connotations in Trinidadian English. From a methodological standpoint, this paper demonstrates the benefits of using a mixed‐methods approach in looking at norms, particularly with regard to lexicon.

The Trini Sing-Song: Sociophonetic variation in Trinidadian English prosody and differences to other varieties

“…Our findings on TrinE prosody are thus partially in line with anecdotal evidence claiming that TrinE (as well as other Caribbean varieties of English more generally) have a wider pitch range than other Englishes ( Winer, 1993 : 20; see also Wells, 1982 : 573–575). The results also confirm Wilson’s (2007) first observations of TrinE having a wider pitch range than BrE but show that this is not necessarily the case for Trinidadian speakers across the board.…”

“…1) Cross-varietal comparison of pitch variation H1) TrinE has a generally similar pitch level to that of other varieties of English ( Leung & Deuber, 2014 ). H2) TrinE has a wider pitch range than other varieties of English, as indicated by the popular stereotype, anecdotal evidence ( Wells, 1982 : 573–575; see also Winer, 1993 : 20), and a preliminary previous investigation ( Wilson, 2007 ). H3) TrinE has an overall more dynamic pitch than other varieties of English, possibly as a phonetic consequence of accentual phrasing and frequent alternation between low and high tonal targets at the phonological level ( Drayton, 2013 ; Ferreira & Drayton, 2017 ; Gooden & Drayton, 2017 ).…”

“…H2) TrinE has a wider pitch range than other varieties of English, as indicated by the popular stereotype, anecdotal evidence ( Wells, 1982 : 573–575; see also Winer, 1993 : 20), and a preliminary previous investigation ( Wilson, 2007 ).…”

“…On the phonetic level, the degree of variation in pitch might also contribute to TrinE “sing-song”. Variation in pitch in the local Trinidadian context seems to be perceptually salient and meaningful ( Drayton 2013 : 309; Leung & Deuber, 2014 ; Meer et al, 2019 : 110–111; see Section 3 for details) and there is preliminary evidence that pitch in TrinE has a wider range than in British English ( Wilson, 2007 ; see also observations reported in Winer, 1993 : 20). There is also tentative evidence that pitch variation is sociolinguistically conditioned and varies along ethnic (and gender) lines in TrinE ( Leung & Deuber, 2014 ).…”