Bickerton claims that his work is intended to provide at least a partial answer to three questions. These are, (1) How did Creole languages originate?, (2) How do children acquire language?, and (3) How did human language originate? He argues that these three questions are related one to the other, and that answers to these three questions are included within the theory which he is putting forward. The foundation of his theory rests on the answers which he puts forward in response to the first question.

Policies with regard to language in education in the Caribbean regionhave historically been formulated on the basis of considerations not necessarily related to the linguistic realities of the speech communities of the region. In the last two decades however political change and increased linguistic information have allowed adjustments to be made so that curricula might try to reflect to some extent goals that will satisfy the needs of the populations for which they were designed.

There has been an enormous increase in the power and influence of Creole speakers in those countries of the Caribbean where Creole languages are the major language of everyday communication. This increase in influence over the past two decades has been the result of the anti-colonial movement, political independence and efforts by the mass of the population and their organisations to exert more control over the political and economic systems within these societies. There has been, in the area of language use, a clear expression of the changes taking place elsewhere in the society.

Over the years, literacy education in Jamaica has been plagued by two closely related problems: (1) the absence of a consistent, officially accepted, socio-linguistically based language policy and teaching methodology for transmitting literacy to creole speakers; and (2) the resultant persistently low literacy levels across the population. Creole linguists have repeatedly expressed the view that the native English-based creoles of the English speaking Caribbean significantly affect the transmission/acquisition of Standard English literacy (see Bailey, Carrington, Craig, Stewart).

The title of a book is an extremely important detail that can be a deterrent or a compelling force as to whether a reader chooses a book or passes it by. As I laid hold of the text, the first aspect of it that drew my attention was the very title which I believe is most fitting, Between Two Grammars: Research and Practice for Language Learning and Teaching in a Creole-speaking Environment. The title sets the stage as I assumed that the central issue of the book had to do with two languages that have two distinct grammatical structures.

Several articles on the Caribbean language situation and its implications for Caribbean education in general, and the teaching of English in particular, have appeared in the Caribbean Journal of Education during the 35 years of its existence. They reflect recognition of Creoles as real languages and also increasing appreciation of them as symbols of culture and national identity. One manifestation of this is a relatively positive attitude to the use of these vernaculars in the classroom, in one way or another, alongside the co-existent European language.

The appearance of Lise Winer’s dictionary is the single most important event in the study of language in Trinidad and Tobago since 1869. In that year, John Jacob Thomas published his classic, The theory and practice of Creole grammar. That volume provided the first attempt at a comprehensive grammatical description of a French lexicon Creole anywhere in the world. It made the study of language behaviour in Trinidad and Tobago an area of referential attention for scholars in the field of Creole linguistics.

Cultural syncretisation and racial miscegenation have given birth to the Caribbean as a Creole space. The Creole dialect, a source of contention, has, for decades, remained basilectal while English preponderates in the classrooms. With this reality, several obstacles continue to surface, giving rise to the question of which language should be officialized in classrooms. Dennis Craig, Caribbean linguist, with decades of experience, pioneered work to institutionalize the vernacular in schools.

Part one of the present paper (presented in Vol. 3 No. 1 of this journal) discussed the need for a study of language aptitudes in the Jamaican context and the relevance of J.B. Carroll's theories in the latter respect. The performance of children in tests of language aptitudes and learning potential was studied, and it was suggested that differences in the social-class profiles of schools were related to differences in the average test-scores of those schools. 

Jamaica Creole has been more thoroughly analysed than any other Caribbean vernacular with the possible exception of Haitian Creole. The book under review is a worthy successor to Beryl Bailey's Jamaican Creole Syntax (1966) in that, at the very least, it may be considered to have accomplished for the sound structure of the Creole what that earlier book did for its sentence structure. Indeed, it might justifiably be said to have done far more.