St. Lucia Creole English and Dominica Creole English

Abstract

This paper provides a comparative sketch of two emergent creoles: St. Lucia Creole English and Dominica Creole English. With very similar circumstances surrounding their formation and emergence, it is expected that they will have many features in common. While this is generally the case, however, this paper also outlines some areas in which their grammars diverge. This research represents original data for varieties that are somewhat under-documented and calls for further data collection and fieldwork to confirm the patterns found here. INTRODUCTIONIn the last 150 years, two new languages have emerged in the Caribbean under very similar circumstances: St. Lucia Creole English and Dominica Creole English. With such closely matched formation processes and varieties contributing to its emergence, it would be reasonable to assume that the language varieties share many of their features. Recent fieldwork in St. Lucia revealed a perception amongst some participants, however, that Dominica's 'dialect' is less 'Standard English-like' than that of St. Lucia. This paper aims to begin exploring whether there are any significant morphosyntactic differences between St. Lucia Creole English and Dominica Creole English. The description below therefore presents a number of features found in both Dominica Creole English and St. Lucia Creole English, followed by some features which appear to be in Dominica Creole English but are infrequent or unattested in St. Lucia Creole English. Due to current data availability, it would not be fruitful to present features that are present in St. Lucia Creole English but not (or not yet) attested in Dominica Creole English. This paper also represents one of very few descriptions available on Dominica Creole English (and St. Lucia Creole English to a lesser extent).The goals of the paper are as follows:a) to provide new data from two currently under-documented varieties, b) to establish the similarities and differences in some of their features, and c) to highlight the need for further documentation, particularly in Dominica.It is also hoped that this new data will eventually contribute to discussions on contact language formation processestheories of creole genesis have been plagued by a lack of evidence due to the scarcity of data from creoles in the early

Prosodic variation of English in Dominica, Grenada, and Trinidad

“…While in all three islands, a French‐lexicon Creole used to be spoken, today, in Trinidad and Grenada knowledge of these Creoles is confined to a very small number of older citizens (Ferreira & Holbrook, 2001). Only in Dominica is this French‐based Creole, also known as Kwéyòl, still spoken by a moderately large number of residents (the exact number of Kwéyòl speakers is difficult to determine; M. Irvine, 2020).…”