Caribbean Creoles and Englishes: Sociophonetic and morphosyntactic variation

Meer, Philipp; Durgasingh, Ryan

Abstract

This entry offers a state-of-the-art overview of sociolinguistic variation in the Anglophone Caribbean with a focus on sociophonetic and morphosyntactic aspects. It draws on the creole continuum model and uses it as a basis to describe variation in the region overall and individual Caribbean territories more specifically. Following a recent upsurge of research on acrolectal or standardized language use in the Caribbean, the entry outlines sociolinguistic variation at the acrolectal end of the continuum, while taking into consideration (indirect) influences from Caribbean creoles and variation along the continuum. Varying influences from British and American English are also considered. While the overview of sociophonetic variation draws primarily on recent acoustic research of vocalic, consonantal, and prosodic phenomena, the morphosyntactic descriptions rely heavily on current corpus-linguistic evidence.