DOCSLIB.ORG

Hawai'i Creole English: the Path to Understanding

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Hawai'i Creole English: the Path to Understanding ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; Linguistics 432 than 600,000 people, including 100,000 or more who do not speak standard English, it Hawai‘i Creole is largely seen as inferior to English; many believe it is a form of incorrect, or, even, English: The Path to “broken English” (Campbell, 2006, p. 2063; Understanding Siegel, 2008, p. 56). It is no wonder then, that standard English, in some form or another, is By Britney Carey the instructional language used in Hawai‘i’s I. Introduction schools (Lewis, 2009, para. 7). The use of For many people who live in the standard English, and only standard English, Hawaiian Islands, Hawai‘i Creole English in the classroom, may not be the optimal (HCE) is a native or, at the very least, a second educational strategy for Hawai‘i. Research language learned early on. Known more suggests that HCE could be effectively utilized commonly as Pidgin, HCE reflects Hawai‘i’s in educational settings. Currently, however, rich heritage and culture as it is a “mixed- misinformation and a lack of awareness plate” of linguistic and social structures. about HCE among Hawai‘i’s schoolteachers, In the late 19th century, Hawai‘i’s sugar administrators, parents, and even students, plantations employed laborers from around is preventing such integration, and may be the world and as it was necessary for the hurting, rather than helping, our Islands’ keiki. laborers to communicate on the plantations, a This paper will address this problem and “makeshift” language began to form (Sakoda its possible resolutions, including programs & Siegel, 2003, p. 2; Crystal, 2008, p. 451). which call for the integration of HCE in the Hawaiian, Cantonese, and Portuguese classroom. influenced the development of this pidgin, II. Survey known as Hawai‘i Pidgin English (HPE) In November 2010, I attended and (Sakoda & Tamura, 2008, p. 41). HPE was even presented a “rough draft” of this paper at used for communications outside the plantation a conference held by the North Hawai‘i (Furukawa, 2007, p. 374). Speakers, using it at Community Children’s Council. Among the home, introduced HPE to their children, who attendees were teachers, English Language would teach it to the next generation (Sakoda Learner Program teachers, speech language & Siegel, 2003, p. 2). By the early 1900s, HPE pathologists, educational assistants, and had become “the primary language of many” state workers. As part of my presentation, living in Hawai‘i (Furukawa, 2007, p. 374). I administered a brief and optional Eventually, HPE began to replace other questionnaire about HCE; seventeen1 were languages as the native tongue of plantation returned. This survey was comprised of five children (Yokota, 2008, p. 22). This occurrence statements which participants were to rate, on marked the change from HPE to HCE, or, what a scale from one to five, to what extent they we in Hawai‘i call, Pidgin (Yokota, 2008, p. agreed with each statement (see Appendix A 22). When HPE underwent creolization, like for the complete survey). many pidgins, it developed an expanded and An analysis of survey responses showed more complex language structure (Sankoff & several interesting outcomes. For instance, Laberge, 1984, p. 306). the nine participants indicated that they Today, the linguistic situation disagreed with Statement 1 (Pidgin is not a surrounding HCE is one marked by language) while seven2 agreed with Statement controversy, misinformation, and outdated 2 (Pidgin is a dialect of English). The fact that attitudes. Although HCE is spoken by more 1 a majority believe HCE is both a language or modal (p. 56). Each marker has a specific and a dialect suggests that there is confusion function and rules which dictate how it may among participants about what constitutes be used (Siegel, 2008, p. 56). For example, the a language and a dialect. If the nature of marker nat may be used in three situations: (1) HCE is not understood by or known to the preceding the predicate in sentences which community, how can we expect this linguistic lack a verb, (2) preceding an –ing form of a situation to be addressed properly? verb (unless verb is preceded by ste), and (3) Statements 4 and 5 also elicited preceding sapostu (Siegel, 2008, p. 56). For interesting, and to some extent, surprising a more complete list of negative markers in responses. Before tallying up participant HCE, see Appendix B. answers, I fully expected that a majority Another misconception about HCE would agree with Statement 4 (Students who is that it is somehow inferior to standard speak Pidgin should have no trouble learning English (Da Pidgin Coup, 2008, p. 33). This in a classroom where standard English is the assumption is false. No one language variety only language used). However, this was not has ever been shown to be intrinsically the case: the majority of participants actually superior to any other, and no one variety has disagreed with Statement 4. Similarly, while I been shown to be significantly more complex expected participants to agree with Statement than any other in grammatical terms (Da 5 (Pidgin has no place in the classroom), the Pidgin Coup, 2008, p. 33; Baugh, 1999, p. majority disagreed here. These results suggest 9-10). that there is hope for successful classroom A statement made by State Board of integration of HCE. Education Chairman Mitsugi Nakashima Although this survey was done purely demonstrates that even those in the education for illustrative purposes, and is in no way sector are not immune to misconceptions bred definitive, it is worth considering. If nothing of bias. To Nakashima, “if you speak pidgin, else, the results of this survey indicate that you think pidgin, you write pidgin” (Da Pidgin there does appear to be a lack of awareness Coup, 2008, p. 35). Nakashima’s statement about HCE present in the community. intended to imply that the use of HCE was to blame for poor student scores on national III. Discrediting Myths and standardized writing tests (Eades, 1999, p. Misrepresentations in HCE 6). Such a claim is, of course, unfounded for Perhaps one of the most common a number of reasons. For example, there are misconceptions about HCE is that it is simply substantial differences between writing and a decrepit variety of English (Siegel, 2008, speech, including the neurological processes p. 56). This, of course, is not true. For almost involved in the facilitation of each act (Da half a century now, “sociolinguists have Pidgin Coup, 2008, p. 35-36; Baugh, 1999, p. been showing that creoles such as [HCE] are 12). legitimate, rule-governed languages that differ According to Fromkin, Rodman, & in systematic ways from the language from Hyams (2008), because “children learn to which most of their vocabulary is derived” speak instinctively without being taught,” (Siegel, 2008, p.56). For instance, HCE has a learning to read and write may not be equated unique set of grammatical rules which sets it with learning to speak (p. 791). In other apart from its lexifier language, English (Siegel, words, the acquisition of human language is 2008, p. 56; Burridge & Kortmann, 2004, p. innate; the mastering of reading and writing, 573). One such set of rules may be observed however, is not (Fromkin, Rodman, & Hyams, in the formation of negatives in HCE (Siegel, p. 791). If the only way a child acquires the 2008, p. 56). According to Siegel (2008), HCE necessary skills for reading and writing is has at least four markers for negation, any one through study, then it is not the students who of which may occur before a verb, auxiliary, 2 have failed the educational system, but rather, and shortcomings within the institution of the other way around. education and the community (Siegel, 2008, A fourth misconception is one which p. 61). directly addresses HCE in the classroom. It has Educational programs advocated for been shown that the concern that the use of Hawai‘i which would integrate HCE into non-standard language varieties, such as HCE, the classroom have been shown to aid in in schools will hinder students’ acquisition acquisition of the standard, therefore giving of the standard has kept such languages from students a chance to get ahead (Siegel, 2008, being used in educational settings (Siegel, p. 61). HCE-speaking students would not 2008, p. 59). The fear is that features of the be isolated in these programs as all students non-standard variety will be inappropriately would participate in the same classroom transferred when speaking or writing in the activities and be encouraged to use the variety standard language, effectively interfering with of language they are most comfortable with a student’s acquisition of the standard (Siegel, (Siegel, 2008, p. 61), which will be discussed 2008, p. 59). There is, however, no evidence further in section IV. that using HCE in the classroom would increase the likelihood of such interference, IV. Discussion: HCE and Education and, subsequently, would not affect a student’s IV.i. How can HCE be used in education? ability to acquire standard English (Siegel, There are several types of educational 2008, p. 59-60). In fact, studies of programs programs which integrate and utilize creoles which incorporate non-standard varieties into and other non-standard varieties into the the classroom actually show the opposite classroom. Siegel (2008) discusses three (Siegel, 2008, p. 60). Successful programs specific types of programs: instrumental have been carried out in the US Virgin Islands, programs, accommodation programs, and Belize, the United States, and even Hawai‘i awareness programs (p. 57-59). (Siegel, 2008, p. 60). Instrumental programs use the local There is further trepidation within non-standard language variety as a medium the community based on the concept of of instruction (Siegel, 2008, p.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Transfer Learning for Singlish Universal Dependencies Parsing and POS Tagging
    From Genesis to Creole language: Transfer Learning for Singlish Universal Dependencies Parsing and POS Tagging HONGMIN WANG, University of California Santa Barbara, USA JIE YANG, Singapore University of Technology and Design, Singapore YUE ZHANG, West Lake University, Institute for Advanced Study, China Singlish can be interesting to the computational linguistics community both linguistically as a major low- resource creole based on English, and computationally for information extraction and sentiment analysis of regional social media. In our conference paper, Wang et al. [2017], we investigated part-of-speech (POS) tagging and dependency parsing for Singlish by constructing a treebank under the Universal Dependencies scheme, and successfully used neural stacking models to integrate English syntactic knowledge for boosting Singlish POS tagging and dependency parsing, achieving the state-of-the-art accuracies of 89.50% and 84.47% for Singlish POS tagging and dependency respectively. In this work, we substantially extend Wang et al. [2017] by enlarging the Singlish treebank to more than triple the size and with much more diversity in topics, as well as further exploring neural multi-task models for integrating English syntactic knowledge. Results show that the enlarged treebank has achieved significant relative error reduction of 45.8% and 15.5% on the base model, 27% and 10% on the neural multi-task model, and 21% and 15% on the neural stacking model for POS tagging and dependency parsing respectively. Moreover, the state-of-the-art Singlish POS tagging and dependency parsing accuracies have been improved to 91.16% and 85.57% respectively. We make our treebanks and models available for further research.
    [Show full text]
  • Portuguese Language in Angola: Luso-Creoles' Missing Link? John M
    Portuguese language in Angola: luso-creoles' missing link? John M. Lipski {presented at annual meeting of the AATSP, San Diego, August 9, 1995} 0. Introduction Portuguese explorers first reached the Congo Basin in the late 15th century, beginning a linguistic and cultural presence that in some regions was to last for 500 years. In other areas of Africa, Portuguese-based creoles rapidly developed, while for several centuries pidginized Portuguese was a major lingua franca for the Atlantic slave trade, and has been implicated in the formation of many Afro- American creoles. The original Portuguese presence in southwestern Africa was confined to limited missionary activity, and to slave trading in coastal depots, but in the late 19th century, Portugal reentered the Congo-Angola region as a colonial power, committed to establishing permanent European settlements in Africa, and to Europeanizing the native African population. In the intervening centuries, Angola and the Portuguese Congo were the source of thousands of slaves sent to the Americas, whose language and culture profoundly influenced Latin American varieties of Portuguese and Spanish. Despite the key position of the Congo-Angola region for Ibero-American linguistic development, little is known of the continuing use of the Portuguese language by Africans in Congo-Angola during most of the five centuries in question. Only in recent years has some attention been directed to the Portuguese language spoken non-natively but extensively in Angola and Mozambique (Gonçalves 1983). In Angola, the urban second-language varieties of Portuguese, especially as spoken in the squatter communities of Luanda, have been referred to as Musseque Portuguese, a name derived from the KiMbundu term used to designate the shantytowns themselves.
    [Show full text]
  • Capeverdean Words Derived from Portuguese Non-Infinitive Verbal Forms: a Descriptive and Comparative Study Nicolas Quint
    Capeverdean words derived from Portuguese non-infinitive verbal forms: a descriptive and comparative study Nicolas Quint To cite this version: Nicolas Quint. Capeverdean words derived from Portuguese non-infinitive verbal forms: a descriptive and comparative study. Papia, 2015, 2 (25), pp.189 - 215. halshs-01482124 HAL Id: halshs-01482124 https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-01482124 Submitted on 8 Mar 2017 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. PAPIA, São Paulo, 25(2), p. 189-215, Jul/Dez 2015. Capeverdean words derived from Portuguese non-infinitive verbal forms: a descriptive and comparative study Palavras do cabo-verdiano derivadas de formas verbais não-infinitivas: um estudo descritivo e comparativo Nicolas Quint1 llacan, Villejuif, France [email protected] Abstract: This article focuses on Santiaguense Capeverdean words derived from Portuguese non-infinitive verbal forms and among these, more specifically on those elements which were not recently borrowed from modern Portuguese and do not compete with Capeverdean more basilectal items. In section 1, the category of Capeverdean words under scrutiny is defined contrastively with other similar types of words. In section 2, all known members of this category are examined in turn and according to the characteristics of their respective Portuguese sources.
    [Show full text]
  • Spanish-Based Creoles in the Caribbean
    Spanish-based creoles in the Caribbean John M. Lipski The Pennsylvania State University Introduction The Caribbean Basin is home to many creole languages, lexically related to French, English, and—now only vestigially—Dutch. Surrounded by Spanish-speaking nations, and with Portuguese-speaking Brazil not far to the south, the Caribbean contains only a single creole language derived from a (highly debated) combination of Spanish and Portuguese, namely Papiamentu, spoken on the Netherlands Antilles islands of Curaçao and Aruba. If the geographical confines of the designation `Caribbean’ are pushed a bit, the creole language Palenquero, spoken in the Afro-Colombian village Palenque de San Basilio, near the port of Cartagena de Indias, also qualifies as a Spanish-related creole, again with a hotly contested Portuguese component. There are also a number of small Afro-Hispanic enclaves scattered throughout the Caribbean where ritual language, songs, and oral traditions suggest at least some partial restructuring of Spanish in small areas. Finally, there exists a controversial but compelling research paradigm which asserts that Spanish as spoken by African slaves and their immediate descendents may have creolized in the 19th century Spanish Caribbean—particularly in Cuba—and that this putative creole language may have subsequently merged with local varieties of Spanish, leaving a faint but detectable imprint on general Caribbean Spanish. A key component of the inquiry into Spanish-related contact varieties is the recurring claim that all such languages derive from earlier Portuguese-based pidgins and creoles, formed somewhere in West Africa1 and carried to the Americas by slaves transshipped from African holding stations, and by ships’ crews and slave traders.
    [Show full text]
  • The Study of Pidgin and Creole Languages
    r The study of pidgin and creole lenguages PiererMuysken and Norval Smith r.r Introduction This book is concernedwith pidgin and creolelanguages. This statementmight well give the impressionthat we know preciselywhat is meant by theseterms. In fact they arethe subjectofmuch debate.Creolists agree neither about the precisedefinition ofthe terms pidgin and creole,nor abour the statuso[a number oflanguagesthat havebeen claimed to be pidginsor creoles,Mixed languages,introduced in chapter4, havegenerally not been mentionedat all. To turn first to pidgin languages,it is generallyagreed that in essencethese represent speech-formswhichdo nothavenative speakers, and are therefore primarily usedas a means of communication among pcoplewho do not sharea common language.The degreeof developmentand sophisticationattained by sucha pidgin dependson the qpe and intensiry of communicativeinteraction among the i$ users.Miihlhiusler (r986) makesthree basic distinctionsamongst speech-forms that crcolistshave referred to aspidgins - (ratherun- stable)jargons, stablepidgins, and expandedpidgins (seefurther chapter3). To turn to creolelalguages (or just creoles),one vital differencefrom pidgins is that pidginsdo not havenativespeakers, while creolesdo. This is not alwaysan easydistinction to make,as one aspectof theworldwideincrease in linguisticconformiry and the concomi- tanrreducdon in linguisticdiversity, is that extendedpidgins are beginning to acquirenative speakers.This has happenedfor instancewith Tok Pisin, Nigerian Pidgin English, and Sango(Central
    [Show full text]
  • Against Creole Exceptionalism*
    DISCUSSION NOTE Against Creole exceptionalism* MICHEL DEGRAFF Massachusetts Institute of Technology 1. A POSTCOLONIAL AGENDA FOR CREOLISTS. 1.1. THE MOTIVATION.Ferdinand de Saussure (1916 [1986:7]) warned us that ‘no other subject [outside of language] has fostered more absurd notions, more prejudices, more illusions and more fantasies . [I]t is the primary task of the linguist to denounce them, and to eradicate them as completely as possible’. But, what if ‘prejudices’, ‘illu- sions’, and ‘fantasies’ underlie some of the foundations of Creole studies? Many creolists throughout the history of Creole languages have relied on a variety of dualist assumptions whereby Creole languages constitute a special class of languages apart from ‘normal’/‘regular’ languages (see critiques in DeGraff 2001a,b, 2003a). Some of these assumptions were implicitly handed down to us from (neo)colonial history without any ‘break in transmission’, so to speak. In the colonial era, these anti- egalitarian assumptions were part and parcel of the imperialist construction of political, cultural, and racial hegemony and the concomitant discursive elaboration of scientific authority through scholarly(-looking) texts (this tradition can be compared with Edward Said’s (1979) concept ORIENTALISM). These ‘power/knowledge’ systems of hegemony would have made it impossible to conceive of any analytical framework whereby Carib- bean Creole languages are on a genealogical or structural par with European languages. In this vein, uniformitarian creolistics would have been ‘un-thinkable’, in Foucault’s (1980) sense (see Prudent 1980 and Mu¨hleisen 2002 for related arguments). 1.2. THE SOCIOHISTORICAL AND EPISTEMOLOGICAL BACKGROUND.Asdocumented below, the terms CREOLE and CREOLIZATION have long been taken to involve sui generis linguistic-structural and cognitive-developmental properties that have no equivalent in the synchrony and diachrony of so-called normal languages.
    [Show full text]
  • European Language Or Is a Language in and of Itself Is Examined Creoles
    DOCUMENT RESUME ED 367 179 FL 021 906 AUTHOR Previllon, Jean TITLE What's In a Name: An Awakening of the Haitian Linguistic Consciousness (An Argument for Haitian as the Native Language of Haitians). PUB DATE Apr 93 NOTE 18p. PUB TYPE Reports Evaluative/Feasibility (142) Viewpoints (Opinion/Position Papers, Essays, etc.)(120) EDRS PRICE MF01/PC01 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS Foreign Countries; *Haitian Creole; *Haitians; *Language Attitudes; *Language Classification; Language Research; *Language Role; Research Needs; *Stereotypes IDENTIFIERS Connotations ABSTRACT The use of the term "Creole" to refer to the Haitian language is discussed, and it is argued that "Haitian" is a more appropriate term. Psycholinguistic ane sociolinguistic functions of the term are examined, including its etymological and usage history and images associated with its application in a variety of locations and culturai contexts around the world. The debate over whether Creole is a non-standard dialect of another, usually dominant European language or is a language in and of itself is examined briefly, and further formal analysis of the non-European origins of Creoles is recommended. Haitian Creole is seen as belonging to a family of Afro-centric Creole languages deserving of further study, rather than as a "poor relative" of French. It is proposed that linguistically, the most consistent approach is to view the modern indigenous language of Haiti as Haitian, having a status as a language equal to that of common European languages. Official acceptance of this status and terminology, including an amendment to the constitution, and its incorporation into the educational system are urged. (MSE) ****************************.r****************************************** * Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made * * from the original document.
    [Show full text]
  • The Origin and Diffusion of World Languages
    Name: ___________________________________________ Period: ________ Date: _________ Unit The Origin and Diffusion Cultural Geography 3 of World Languages A Geography of Language Language is at the heart of culture, and culture is the glue of society; without language, culture could not be transmitted from one generation to the next. Just as language can unite a nation, it can also act as a divider – when a people’s language is threatened, the response is often passionate and protective. For instance, many revolts broke out in the decades after the Congress of Vienna due to new political borders drawn up with security as the main concern, not national unity. Many people who had different languages, religions, and economic interests found themselves thrown together under the same government. To understand the significance of this, we must first understand the seemingly simple concept of language. To define language, it is a systematic means of communicating ideas or feelings by the use of conventionalized signs, gestures, marks, or especially articulate vocal sounds. Vocalization is the crucial part of the definition. Animals use symbolic calls, but only humans have developed complex vocal communication systems. It is estimated that there are between 5,000-6,000 languages spoken in the world today. A majority come from preliterate societies, with no actual written language. On the broadest scale, all languages belong to a language family. A language family is a collection of many languages, all of which came from the same original tongue long ago. Since languages are not static, but change continuously, two members of the same family may sound very different depending on how long ago they branched off.
    [Show full text]
  • THE LANGUAGE DEBATE in CAPE VERDE a Thesis Presented to The
    THE LANGUAGE DEBATE IN CAPE VERDE A thesis presented to the faculty of the Center for International Studies of Ohio University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Master of Arts Patrick J. Coonan June 2007 This thesis entitled THE LANGUAGE DEBATE IN CAPE VERDE by PATRICK J. COONAN has been approved for the Center for International Studies by __________________________________________________ Ann R. Tickamyer Professor of Sociology and Anthropology __________________________________________________ Drew McDaniel Interim Director, Center for International Studies Abstract COONAN, PATRICK J., M.A., June 2007, International Development Studies THE LANGUAGE DEBATE IN CAPE VERDE (138 pp.) Director of Thesis: Ann R. Tickamyer In many countries around the world, controversy surrounds state policy on language. The West African archipelago of Cape Verde is no exception. Ever since the country’s independence from Portugal in 1975, a movement of bilingual Cape Verdeans has spearheaded planning efforts for the national language (Cape Verdean Creole) in an attempt to build the case for making that language the country’s co-official language. Nevertheless, these individuals face resistance from other Cape Verdeans who view the project as an attempt to marginalize the current official language (Portuguese) and/or certain regional dialects of Cape Verdean Creole. This study looks at texts taken from the discourse of language policy in Cape Verde in order to identify the language ideologies, i.e. “sets of beliefs about language articulated by users as a rationalization or justification of perceived language structure or use” (Silverstein, 1979, p.497), that Cape Verdeans use to support or to resist certain language policy and planning options.
    [Show full text]
  • Assisting Creole-English and Non-Standard Dialect Speaking Students in Learning Standard English
    ASSISTING CREOLE-ENGLISH AND NON-STANDARD DIALECT SPEAKING STUDENTS IN LEARNING STANDARD ENGLISH A Plan B Paper Presented to the University of Wisconsin-River Falls In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Masters of TESOL by Sara A. Allsop February, 2010 2 Students in Hawaii often find themselves in baffling situations at school. They are constantly corrected in their speech, and often stereotyped as apathetic or unintelligent. Their contributions to class are disregarded because of the way they phrase their comments. Newspapers publish letters to the editor deriding their language, saying it “should become a thing of the past….There are some things that deserve to die” (Honolulu Advertiser 9/4/02, qtd. in Siegel Creoles and Minority Dialects in Education: An Update 66). The public disdains these students’ languages because they don’t understand them. These students, like their families, speak Hawaii Creole English (HCE). People all over the world speak Creole Languages similar to HCE, not only linguistically, but also in terms of negative public perception. English Creole Languages are derived from English and share a majority of their vocabulary with English. However, the grammar and pronunciation can be very different and can make Standard English and Creole Englishes mutually unintelligible. English Creoles are widely spoken throughout the world, including Central America (Belize), the Caribbean (Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago and more), Africa (Sierra Leone and Liberia), and Australia. English Creoles are also spoken in the United States, for example: Village English, spoken by Native communities in Alaska (Wong), the Gullah language spoken in South Carolina and Georgia, and Hawaii Creole English.
    [Show full text]
  • The Sociolinguistic Situation and National Identity of Cape Verde
    Undergraduate Review Volume 10 Article 24 2014 The oS ciolinguistic Situation and National Identity of Cape Verde Melissa Oquendo Follow this and additional works at: http://vc.bridgew.edu/undergrad_rev Part of the Anthropological Linguistics and Sociolinguistics Commons Recommended Citation Oquendo, Melissa (2014). The ocS iolinguistic Situation and National Identity of Cape Verde. Undergraduate Review, 10, 116-119. Available at: http://vc.bridgew.edu/undergrad_rev/vol10/iss1/24 This item is available as part of Virtual Commons, the open-access institutional repository of Bridgewater State University, Bridgewater, Massachusetts. Copyright © 2014 Melissa Oquendo The Sociolinguistic Situation and National Identity of Cape Verde MELISSA OQUENDO Melissa Oquendo is ape Verde is a West African country located in the Atlantic Ocean, a senior majoring in off the coast of Senegal. The archipelago is composed of 10 islands, 9 of which are populated (Santo Antão, São Vicente, São Nicolau, Sal, Sociology. Her research Boa Vista, Maio, Santiago, Fogo, and Brava). Santa Luzia is the only on the languages of Cuninhabited island. Cape Verde was colonized by the Portuguese and therefore Cape Verde began includes a rich mix of Portuguese and African cultures. during the winter of her junior year Because today’s Cape Verdeans are descendants of both the Portuguese and when she traveled to Cape Verde West Africans, there are elements of both in their languages, traditions, his- as a part of the Language Study tory, and development as a nation. These Portuguese and West African influ- ences are seen on a daily basis in Cape Verdeans’ choice of languages. This Tour with Dr.
    [Show full text]
  • Creole Formation As Language Contact: the Case of the Suriname
    Creole formation as language contact : The case of the Suriname Creoles Bettina Migge To cite this version: Bettina Migge. Creole formation as language contact : The case of the Suriname Creoles. John Benjamins, 2003. hal-01494340 HAL Id: hal-01494340 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01494340 Submitted on 23 Mar 2017 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Copyright Migge, B.; (2003) Creole formation as language contact : The case of the Suriname Creoles . Amsterdam : John Benjamins. Chapter 1 Introduction 1. Introduction One of the oldest and most vigorously discussed questions in the research on creoles is the origin of these languages. According to McWhorter (1997a:1), “this question can be said to be one of the prime motivations for the conception of creole studies as a distinct subdiscipline.” Despite continuous heated discussions on this topic and the accumulation of a great deal of linguistic and sociohistorical data that bear on the genesis question, disagreement still exists about several pertinent issues: 1. the main linguistic inputs to creole formation, 2. the linguistic processes and mechanisms involved in creole formation, 3. the nature of the linguistic outcome of creole formation.
    [Show full text]