Peter L. Patrick

Urban Jamaican Creole: Variation in the Mesolect

A synchronic sociolinguistic study of Jamaican Creole (JC) as spoken in urban Kingston, this work uses variationist methods to closely investigate two key concepts of Atlantic Creole studies: the mesolect, and the creole continuum. One major concern is to describe how linguistic variation patterns with social influences. Is there a linguistic continuum? How does it correlate with social factors? The complex organization of an urbanizing Caribbean society and the highly variable nature of mesolectal speech norms and behavior present a challenge to sociolinguistic variation theory. The second chief aim is to elucidate the nature of mesolectal grammar. Creole studies have emphasized the structural integrity of basilectal varieties, leaving the status of intermediate mesolectal speech in doubt. How systematic is urban JC grammar? What patterns occur when basilectal creole constructions alternate with acrolectal English elements? Contextual constraints on choice of forms support a picture of the mesolect as a single grammar, variable yet internally-ordered, which has evolved a fine capacity to serve social functions. Drawing on a year’s fieldwork in a mixed-class neighborhood of the capital city, the author (a speaker of JC) describes the speech community’s history, demographics, and social geography, locating speakers in terms of their social class, occupation, education, age, sex, residence, and urban orientation. The later chapters examine a recorded corpus for linguistic variables that are phono-lexical (palatal glides), phonological (consonant cluster simplification), morphological (past-tense inflection), and syntactic (pre-verbal tense and aspect marking), using quantitative methods of analysis (including Varbrul). The Jamaican urban mesolect is portrayed as a coherent system showing stratified yet regular linguistic behavior, embedded in a well-defined speech community; despite the incorporation of forms and constraints from English, it is quintessentially creole in character.

Creoles at the intersection of variable processes: - t,d deletion and past-marking in the Jamaican mesolect

ABSTRACT -t,d deletion is a well-known variable phonological process subject to the influence of both external social factors and internal structural constraints, including phonetic environmental and morphosyntactic effects. Its profile of variation has been widely investigated in American English dialects. However, it interacts with another grammatical process – the regular affixation of final /-t, -d/ as a past-tense marker – that strongly distinguishes these dialects from English-related creoles, where past-marking by this mechanism is infrequent or non-occurrent. Investigation of -t,d deletion in mesolectal Jamaican Creole (JC) thus raises important questions about the intersection of variable processes, the generality of phonetic environmental constraints, and the degree of difference between English-related creoles and metropolitan standard and non-standard Englishes.

Do too many cooks spoil the broth? The effect of observers on doctor–patient interaction

Medical Education 2012: 46: 785–794

Jamaica: Language Situation

Jamaicas main vernacular language is the English-lexified Jamaican Creole called Patwa, a language of ethnic/national identification, largely unintelligible to non-Jamaicans. Patwa, which comprises the basilect and mesolect of a Creole continuum, is not genetically descended from its English or African input languages. The acrolect, Standard Jamaican English, is used in literacy, education, and print media; it is a regional standard dialect of English. Patwa has made significant inroads into broadcast media. Patwas long subordination to Standard English resulted in the Creole continuum and the demographic dominance of the mesolect, a systematic but variable Creole grammar incorporating elements of English structure.