Week 1 (January 16 & 18) Language contact and language history

1. What are the social contexts of language contact?
2. What is the impact of contact on languages?
3. How do languages emerge?

Hale, Mark (2005) Theory and Method: Five Lectures on Historical Linguistics. Handout
made available at LSA 2005. (Contact me for a copy).

Thomason, Sarah G. (2001) Language Contact: An Introduction. Edinburg: Edinburg UP.
[chapter 1, pp.1-10; chapter 9, pp. 222-238]

Thomason, Sarah & Terrence Kaufman (1988) Language Contact, Creolization and
Genetic Linguistics.  Berkley: University of California Press [chapter 1, pp. 1-12]

Winford, Donald (2003) An Introduction to Contact Linguistics. Oxford: Blackwell
Publishing. [chapter 1, pp. 1-25]

Week 2 (January 23 & 25) Indigenous Populations of the Caribbean.

1. What do we mean by “Caribbean”?
2. What was the pre-Columbian distribution of peoples and languages in the Caribbean?
3. What was the impact of the European encounter on that situation?

Alleyne, Mervyn C. (2004) Indigenous Languages of the Caribbean. (SCL Popular Series
Paper No. 3.) St. Augustine: UWI

Carlin, Eithne & Karin Boven (2002) ‘The Native Population: Migration and Identities’
in Atlas of the Languages of Suriname. Eithne B. Carlin & Jacques Arends (eds.) Kingston: Ian Randle Publishers, 11-45.

Kiple, Kenneth & Kriemhild Ornelas (1996) “After the Encounter: Disease and
Demographics in the Lesser Antilles’ in The Lesser Antilles in the Age of European Expansion. Robert Paquette& Stanley Engeman (eds.) Gainesville:UP of Florida, 50-67.

Rouse, Irving (1992) The Tainos: Rise and Decline of the People Who Greeted
Columbus. New Haven: Yale UP [look for chapters]

Taylor, Douglas M. (1977) Languages of the West Indies. Baltimore:John Hopkins UP.

Weeks 3-5 (January 30 & February 1,6,8,13,15) Slave Trade, Plantation Life and the Presence of African Languages in the Caribbean.

1. What are the principal regions of origin of Africans in the Caribbean?
2. What are the cultural and linguistic implications of the different regions of origin?
3. What are the social contexts of African language survival in the Caribbean?
4. What are the factors which contributed to the emergence of Creole languages in most, but not all Caribbean languages?

Arends, Jacques (2001) ‘ Social Stratification and Network Relations in the Formation of
Sranan’ in Creolization and Contact. Norval Smith & Tonjes Veenstra (eds.) Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing, 291-307 [1RBC Photocopy]

Aub-Buscher, Gertrud (1989) African Survivals in the Lexicon of Trinidad French Based
Creole. SCL Occasional Paper No. 23 1-14

Hall-Alleyne, Beverley (1990) ‘The Social Context of African Language Continuities in
Jamaica’ International Journal of the Sociology of Language 85, 31-40

Thornton, John (2000) ‘The Birth of an Atlantic World’ in Caribbean Slavery in the
Atlantic World: A Student Reade. Verene Shepherd and Hilary McD Beckles (eds.)Kingston: Ian Randall Publishers, 55-73. First published in Thornton, John (1992) Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic world 1400-1680 Cambridge: CUP, 13-42. [6 RBC]

Additional references will be given in the lectures.

Week 6 (February 20 & 22) Maroon Culture, Maroon Language

1. What is the impact of separation on culture and language
2. Why did maroon communities adopt Creole languages?

Agorsah, Kofi (ed.) (1994) ‘Background to Maroon Heritage’ in Maroon Heritage:
Archeological, Ethnographic and Historical Perspectives. Barbados: Canoe Press, 1-35 (4 RBC]

Bilby, Kenneth M. (1983) ‘How the “Older Heads” Talk: A Jamaican Maroon Spirit
Possession Language and Its Relationship to the Creoles of Suriname and Sierra Leone’ New West Indies Guide 57, 37-88

Smith, Norval (2000) ‘The Linguistic Effects of Early marronage’ in SCL Conference
Presentations. UWI (Mona), 288-300. [2 RBC photocopies]

SEMESTER BREAK February 26 – March 5

Weeks 7-8 (March 6, 8, 13 & 15) Asian Migration and Linguistic Presence
This section will look at the history of the migration of Asians to the Caribbean and their mark on the linguistic situation of particular countries such as Guyana, Jamaica, Suriname and Trinidad and Tobago.

1. How did migration impact on the vernacular diversity of the Indian contract labourers in the Caribbean?
2. What social factors conditioned the loss of Asian vernaculars in most Caribbean territories?
3. What is the social context of the survival of Asian vernaculars in Suriname?

Mohan, Peggy (1990) ‘The Rise and Fall of Trinidad Bhojpuri’ International Journal of
the Sociology of Language 85, 21-30 [6 RBC photocopies].

Siegel, Jeff (1990) ‘Language Maintenance of Overseas Hindi’ in Learning, Keeping and
Using Language. M. Halliday et. al. (eds.) Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing, 91-113 [2RBC photocopies]

Tjon Sie Fat, Paul (2002) “Keija: A Chinese Language in Suriname’ in Atlas of the
Languages of Suriname. Eithne B. Carlin & Jacques Arends (eds.) Kingston: Ian Randle Publishers, 265-281 [1 WIC]

IN-COURSE TEST: Monday March 20, 2006 [during the lecture hour]

Week 9-10 (March 20, 22, 27 & 29) Social stratification and language in modern Caribbean societies.

1. What linguistic reality is hidden behind labels such as “Spanish-/English-/French-/Dutch-speaking”?
2. Why do Creole languages continue to co-exist with standard languages?
3. What are the functional domains of languages in multilingual Caribbean societies?

Alleyne, Mervyn C. (1985) ‘A Linguistic Perspective on the Caribbean’ in Caribbean
Contours. Sidney Mintz & Sally Price (eds.) Baltimore: John Hopkins UP, 155-179. [8 RBC photocopies]

Devonish, Hubert (1986) ‘Popular Struggles and the Creole Langage Question: The
Contemporary Situation I’ in Language and Liberation: Creole Language Politics in the Caribbean. London: Karia Press, 52-86. [3 RBC, 1WIC]

Williams, Jeffery (1985) ‘Preliminaries to the Study of White West Indian English’ New
West Indian Guide 59, 1-2, 27-44. [2 RBC]

Weeks 11 & 12 (April 3, 5, 10, 12) Focus on Jamaica

1. How has Jamaica’s linguistic situation been characterized?
2. Which characterization best suits the contemporary linguistic situation?

Alleyne Mervyn C. (1988) Roots of Jamaican Culture. London: Pluto Press. (chapter on
language pp. 120-148) [4 RBC]

Bilby, Kenneth M. (1983) ‘How the “Older Heads” Talk: A Jamaican Maroon Spirit
Possession Language and Its Relationship to the Creoles of Suriname and Sierra Leone’ New West Indies Guide 57, 37-88 [2 RBC photocopies]

Hall-Alleyne, Beverley (1990) ‘The Social Context of African Language Continuities in
Jamaica’ International Journal of the Sociology of Language 85, 31-40[4 RBC photocopies]

Lalla, Barbara & Jean D’Costa (1990) ‘The Colonial Crucible’[Chapter 1 of Language in
Exile: Three Hundred years of Jamaican Creole. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 3-36. [1 RBC, 1WIC, 1SPC]

Pollard, Velma (1994/2000) Dread Talk: The Language of Rastafari. Kingston: Canoe
Press. [8 RBC, 3WIC]

Shields-Brodber, Kathryn (1997) ‘Requiem of English in an “English-speaking”
Community: The Case of Jamaica’ in Englishes Around the World 2. Edgar Schneider (ed.) Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing, 57-67. [2O/S, 1WIC]

Week 13 (April 17 & 19) Revision

*April 17 – Easter Monday (Holiday

Abbreviations
O/S      open shelf
RBC    Reserved Book Collection
SPC     Special Collection
WIC    West Indies Collection

 Notes: -

1.         Seminar Presentations

Students will be asked to do at least one seminar presentation during the semester.  This involves reading one of the materials designated as required reading and presenting it to the class in ten (10 minutes after which the other members of the class will engage the presenter(s) in a discussion on the presentation.

2.         Additional readings for each topic will be given during the lectures.