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.

This work is a very important contribution to the understanding of the language and linguistic heritage of Afro-Americans, this last term being used by Alleyne to refer to all people of African descent in the Western Hemisphere. In relation to those Afro-American language varieties spoken in the Caribbean, on which this book has tended to focus, this is one of only a very small number of book-length works produced so far. The bulk of the work on Afro-Caribbean language varieties is dispersed all over the place, usually in the form of articles in academic journals.

This paper takes up the Jamaican Creole/Standard English (JC/SE) debates and argues that they often reproduce false binaries between Creole and English and the oral and written. I map out some of their terrain by sampling editorials and letters from local newspapers, the Gleaner and the Observer, and offer up a brief history of the various positions of linguists and educators on the SE/JC question.

Jamaican Creole (JC) and Standard Jamaican English (SJE) are the two dominant languages in Jamaica but they do not function equally in certain contexts. In public formal domains, the use of JC is limited since most information from the state is disseminated to the public in English. When JC is used in such contexts traditionally reserved for English, linguistic gatekeepers such as teachers and service representatives (SRs), use corrective gate-keeping practices to repair the speech of their interlocutors.

In Trinidad and Tobago, exposure to the structure of English through written materials has been of special significance, for this has been the chief means by which the language has been learnt. Opportunities for speaking Internationally Acceptable English (I.A.E.) have always been few, and the barriers to successful English language learning have been formidable. In fact, one must accept as true the statement that a high percentage of our language learners hear and attempt to speak I.A.E. in the classroom only, and even then, not during every class.

The importance to educational practice of linguistic research in the Caribbean has never been underplayed. Although linguistic descriptions have a validity all their own, it is in their application to educational practice that they can best serve our societies.

Well? When is a bluggo not a bluggo? When it's a buffer or a moko. The unselfconscious use of Caribbean terms without quotation marks in written English may be significant for the presuppositions a writer holds regarding normal language use. In this analysis, which is intended to be suggestive only, examples are taken from short essays written by final-year trainee teachers from Barbados and Grenada.