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The fate of the local in light of the global

Analysis of variation in the use of preverbal markers in Bequia Creole

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This paper investigates variation in the use of past tense preverbal markers bin and did by two generations of speakers in Bequia. Preverbal markers have been characterised as socially stigmatised indexing rural dialects, speakers’ lower socioeconomic status, or older age. Results of the quantitative multivariate analysis in two of the Bequia communities, Hamilton and Paget Farm, point to differences in the use of bin between older and younger speakers showing that adolescents in Paget Farm have recycled the form and are using it significantly more than their grandparents, as well as their peers in Hamilton. I suggest that the increase of preverbal bin in Paget Farm can be considered as a response of adolescents in this community to the recent socio-economic transformations on the island. I argue that the new socio-economic landscape has led to a change in the social meaning of bin from a stigmatised rural form to a marker of local authenticity. This is important considering the social and linguistic judgements surrounding this community which is assigned little symbolic power according to the socio-economic criteria which usually constitute the linguistic marketplace. The study demonstrates that to interpret the patterns of variation between creole and standard variants the effects of globalising processes need to be considered next to local ideologies. Keywords: social meaning of variation; tense marking; language and identity; globalisation

References

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  13. Dubois, Sylvie & Horvath, Barbara
    1999 When the music changes, you change too: Gender and language change in Cajun English. Language Variation and Change11(3): 287-313. doi: 10.1017/S0954394599113036
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    2003 Dialect levelling and geographical diffusion in British English. InSocial Dialectology: In Honour of Peter Trudgill, David Britain & Jenny Cheshire (eds), 223-243. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi: 10.1075/impact.16.16ker
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  27. Meyerhoff, Miriam & Walker, James A
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     https://doi.org/10.1075/jpcl.27.2.01mey [Google Scholar]
  29. Ochs, Elinor
    1992 Indexing gender. InRethinking Context: Language as an Interactive Phenomenon, Allesandro Duranti & Charles Goodwin (eds), 335-358. Cambridge: CUP.
     [Google Scholar]
  30. Patrick, Peter L
    1999 Urban Jamaican Creole: Variation in the Mesolect [Varieties of English around the World G17]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi: 10.1075/veaw.g17
     https://doi.org/10.1075/veaw.g17 [Google Scholar]
  31. Pollard, Velma
    1989 The particle en in Jamaican Creole: A discourse-related account. English World-Wide10(1): 55-68. doi: 10.1075/eww.10.1.04pol
     https://doi.org/10.1075/eww.10.1.04pol [Google Scholar]
  32. Poplack, Shana & Tagliamonte, Sali
    1996 Nothing in context: Variation, grammaticization and past time marking in Nigerian Pidgin English. InChanging Meanings, Changing Functions: Papers relating to Grammaticalization in Contact Languages, Philip Baker & Anand Syea (eds), 71-94. Westminster: Westminster University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  33. Price, Neil
    1988 Behind the Planter’s Back: Lower Class Responses to Marginality in Bequia Island, St Vincent. London: Macmillan.
     [Google Scholar]
  34. Reichenbach, Hans
    1947 Elements of Symbolic Logic. London: Macmillan.
     [Google Scholar]
  35. Rickford, John R
    1986 The need for new approaches to social class analysis in sociolinguistics. Language and Communication6(3): 215-221. doi: 10.1016/0271‑5309(86)90024‑8
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    1978 The linguistic market and the statistical explanation of variability. InLinguistic Variation: Models and Methods, David Sankoff (ed.), 239-250. New York NY: Academic Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  37. Sankoff, Gillian
    1990 The grammaticalization of tense and aspect in Tok Pisin and Sranan. Language Variation and Change2(3): 295-312. doi: 10.1017/S0954394500000387
     https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954394500000387 [Google Scholar]
  38. Tagliamonte, Sali
    1999 Modelling an emergent grammar. Past temporal reference in St Kitts Creole in the 1780s. InSt Kitts and the Atlantic Creoles: The Texts of Samuel Augustus Mathews in Perspective, Philip Baker & Adrienne Bruyn (eds), 201-236. London: University of Westminster Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  39. Vendler, Zeno
    1957 Verbs and times. Philosophical Review66: 143-160. Reprinted in Vendler, Zeno (ed.). 1967. Linguistics in Philosophy, 97-121. Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press. doi: 10.2307/2182371
     https://doi.org/10.2307/2182371 [Google Scholar]
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    1992 Back to the past: The BEV/creole connection revisited. Language Variation and Change4(3): 311-357. doi: 10.1017/S0954394500000831
     https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954394500000831 [Google Scholar]
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     https://doi.org/10.1075/cll.10 [Google Scholar]
  42. Wittenburg, Peter , Brugman, Hennie , Russel, Albert , Klassmann, Alex & Sloetjes, Han
    2006 ELAN: A professional framework for multimodality research. In Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation , 1556-1559.
     [Google Scholar]
  43. Youssef, Valerie
    2001 Age-grading in the Anglophone Creole of Tobago. World Englishes20(1): 29-46. doi: 10.1111/1467‑971X.00194
     https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-971X.00194 [Google Scholar]
  44. Youssef, Valerie & James, Winford
    1999 Grounding via tense-aspect in Tobagonian Creole: discourse strategies across a creole continuum. Linguistics37(4): 597-624. doi: 10.1515/ling.37.4.597
     https://doi.org/10.1515/ling.37.4.597 [Google Scholar]

References

  1. Baayen, Harald R
    2008 Analyzing Linguistic Data: A Practical Introduction to Statistics Using R. Cambridge: CUP. doi: 10.1017/CBO9780511801686
     https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511801686 [Google Scholar]
  2. Bakker, Peter , Daval-Markussen, Aymeric , Parkvall, Mikael & Plag, Ingo
    2011 Creoles are typologically distinct from non-creoles. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages26(1): 5-42. doi: 10.1075/jpcl.26.1.02bak
     https://doi.org/10.1075/jpcl.26.1.02bak [Google Scholar]
  3. Bickerton, Derek
    1975 Dynamics of a Creole System. Cambridge: CUP.
     [Google Scholar]
  4. 1979 The status of bin in the Atlantic Creoles. InReadings in Creole Studies, Ian F. Hancock (ed.), 309-314. Ghent: E. Story-Scientia. doi: 10.1075/ssls.2.24bic
     https://doi.org/10.1075/ssls.2.24bic [Google Scholar]
  5. 1999 Past versus anterior in Matthews' texts. InSt Kitts and the Atlantic Creoles: The Texts of Samuel Augustus Mathews in Perspective, Philip Baker & Adrienne Bruyn (eds), 193-200. London: University of Westminster Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  6. Bourdieu, Pierre
    1977 The economics of linguistic exchanges. Social Science Information16(6): 635-668. doi: 10.1177/053901847701600601
     https://doi.org/10.1177/053901847701600601 [Google Scholar]
  7. 1991 Language and Symbolic Power. Cambridge: Polity Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  8. Comrie, Bernard
    1976 Tense. Cambridge: CUP.
     [Google Scholar]
  9. Curtis, Debra
    2009 Pleasures and Perils: Girls’ Sexuality in a Caribbean Consumer Culture. New Brunswick NJ: Rutgers University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  10. Dahl, Östen
    1985 Tense and Aspect Systems. Oxford: Blackwell.
     [Google Scholar]
  11. Daleszynska, Agata
    2011 Variation in Past Tense Marking in Bequia Creole: Apparent Time Change and Dialect Levelling. PhD dissertation, The University of Edinburgh.
     [Google Scholar]
  12. Dinkin, Aaron
    2008 The real effect of word frequency on phonetic variation. Penn Working Papers in Linguistics14: 97-106.
     [Google Scholar]
  13. Dubois, Sylvie & Horvath, Barbara
    1999 When the music changes, you change too: Gender and language change in Cajun English. Language Variation and Change11(3): 287-313. doi: 10.1017/S0954394599113036
     https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954394599113036 [Google Scholar]
  14. Eckert, Penelope
    2000 Linguistic Variation as Social Practice. Oxford: Blackwell.
     [Google Scholar]
  15. 2008 Where do ethnolects stop?. International Journal of Bilingualism12(1–2): 25–42. doi: 10.1177/13670069080120010301
     https://doi.org/10.1177/13670069080120010301 [Google Scholar]
  16. Givón, Talmy
    1984 Syntax: A Functional-typological Introduction, Vol. 1. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi: 10.1017/s0022226700010434
     https://doi.org/10.1017/s0022226700010434 [Google Scholar]
  17. Hackert, Stephanie
    2004 Urban Bahamian Creole: System and Variation. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi: 10.1075/veaw.g32
     https://doi.org/10.1075/veaw.g32 [Google Scholar]
  18. Hopper, Paul J
    1979 Aspect and foregrounding in discourse. InSyntax and semantics 12: Discourse and syntax, Talmy Givón (ed.), 213-241. New York NY: Academic Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  19. Hopper, Paul J. & Thompson, Sandra A
    1980 Transitivity in grammar and discourse. Language56(2): 281-299. doi: 10.1353/lan.1980.0017
     https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.1980.0017 [Google Scholar]
  20. Jaganauth, Dhanaiswary
    1988 Relative time reference in Guyanese Creole: Some problems for sentence-level analyses. Paper presented at the7th Biennial Conference of the Society for Caribbean Linguistics, Nassau, College of the Bahamas.
     [Google Scholar]
  21. Johnson, Daniel Ezra
    2009 Getting off the GoldVarb standard: Introducing Rbrul for mixed-effects variable rule analysis. Language and Linguistic Compass3(1): 359-383. doi: 10.1111/j.1749‑818X.2008.00108.x
     https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-818X.2008.00108.x [Google Scholar]
  22. Johnstone, Barbara
    2010 Indexing the local. InHandbook of Language and Globalization, Nikolas Coupland (ed.), 386-405. Oxford: OUP. doi: 10.1002/9781444324068.ch17
     https://doi.org/10.1002/9781444324068.ch17 [Google Scholar]
  23. Kerswill, Paul
    2003 Dialect levelling and geographical diffusion in British English. InSocial Dialectology: In Honour of Peter Trudgill, David Britain & Jenny Cheshire (eds), 223-243. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi: 10.1075/impact.16.16ker
     https://doi.org/10.1075/impact.16.16ker [Google Scholar]
  24. Labov, William
    1966 The Social Stratification of English in New York City. Washington DC: Center for Applied Linguistics.
     [Google Scholar]
  25. 1972 Language in the Inner City. Philadelphia PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  26. 1994 Principles of Linguistic Change, Vol. 1: Internal Factors.Oxford: Blackwell.
     [Google Scholar]
  27. Meyerhoff, Miriam & Walker, James A
    2007 The persistence of variation in individual grammars: Copula absence in ‘urban sojourners’ and their stay-at-home peers, Bequia (St Vincent and the Grenadines). Journal of Sociolinguistics11(3): 346-366. doi: 10.1111/j.1467‑9841.2007.00327.x
     https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9841.2007.00327.x [Google Scholar]
  28. 2012 Grammatical variation in Bequia (St Vincent and the Grenadines). Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages27(2): 209-234. doi: 10.1075/jpcl.27.2.01mey
     https://doi.org/10.1075/jpcl.27.2.01mey [Google Scholar]
  29. Ochs, Elinor
    1992 Indexing gender. InRethinking Context: Language as an Interactive Phenomenon, Allesandro Duranti & Charles Goodwin (eds), 335-358. Cambridge: CUP.
     [Google Scholar]
  30. Patrick, Peter L
    1999 Urban Jamaican Creole: Variation in the Mesolect [Varieties of English around the World G17]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi: 10.1075/veaw.g17
     https://doi.org/10.1075/veaw.g17 [Google Scholar]
  31. Pollard, Velma
    1989 The particle en in Jamaican Creole: A discourse-related account. English World-Wide10(1): 55-68. doi: 10.1075/eww.10.1.04pol
     https://doi.org/10.1075/eww.10.1.04pol [Google Scholar]
  32. Poplack, Shana & Tagliamonte, Sali
    1996 Nothing in context: Variation, grammaticization and past time marking in Nigerian Pidgin English. InChanging Meanings, Changing Functions: Papers relating to Grammaticalization in Contact Languages, Philip Baker & Anand Syea (eds), 71-94. Westminster: Westminster University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  33. Price, Neil
    1988 Behind the Planter’s Back: Lower Class Responses to Marginality in Bequia Island, St Vincent. London: Macmillan.
     [Google Scholar]
  34. Reichenbach, Hans
    1947 Elements of Symbolic Logic. London: Macmillan.
     [Google Scholar]
  35. Rickford, John R
    1986 The need for new approaches to social class analysis in sociolinguistics. Language and Communication6(3): 215-221. doi: 10.1016/0271‑5309(86)90024‑8
     https://doi.org/10.1016/0271-5309(86)90024-8 [Google Scholar]
  36. Sankoff, David & Laberge, Suzanne
    1978 The linguistic market and the statistical explanation of variability. InLinguistic Variation: Models and Methods, David Sankoff (ed.), 239-250. New York NY: Academic Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  37. Sankoff, Gillian
    1990 The grammaticalization of tense and aspect in Tok Pisin and Sranan. Language Variation and Change2(3): 295-312. doi: 10.1017/S0954394500000387
     https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954394500000387 [Google Scholar]
  38. Tagliamonte, Sali
    1999 Modelling an emergent grammar. Past temporal reference in St Kitts Creole in the 1780s. InSt Kitts and the Atlantic Creoles: The Texts of Samuel Augustus Mathews in Perspective, Philip Baker & Adrienne Bruyn (eds), 201-236. London: University of Westminster Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  39. Vendler, Zeno
    1957 Verbs and times. Philosophical Review66: 143-160. Reprinted in Vendler, Zeno (ed.). 1967. Linguistics in Philosophy, 97-121. Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press. doi: 10.2307/2182371
     https://doi.org/10.2307/2182371 [Google Scholar]
  40. Winford, Donald
    1992 Back to the past: The BEV/creole connection revisited. Language Variation and Change4(3): 311-357. doi: 10.1017/S0954394500000831
     https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954394500000831 [Google Scholar]
  41. 1993 Predication in Caribbean English Creoles [Creole Language Library 10]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi: 10.1075/cll.10
     https://doi.org/10.1075/cll.10 [Google Scholar]
  42. Wittenburg, Peter , Brugman, Hennie , Russel, Albert , Klassmann, Alex & Sloetjes, Han
    2006 ELAN: A professional framework for multimodality research. In Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation , 1556-1559.
     [Google Scholar]
  43. Youssef, Valerie
    2001 Age-grading in the Anglophone Creole of Tobago. World Englishes20(1): 29-46. doi: 10.1111/1467‑971X.00194
     https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-971X.00194 [Google Scholar]
  44. Youssef, Valerie & James, Winford
    1999 Grounding via tense-aspect in Tobagonian Creole: discourse strategies across a creole continuum. Linguistics37(4): 597-624. doi: 10.1515/ling.37.4.597
     https://doi.org/10.1515/ling.37.4.597 [Google Scholar]

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