Pivots of the Caribbean? Low-back vowels in eastern Caribbean English
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3989857 |
|---|---|
| Authors | J A Walker (0000-0003-1262-8850, La Trobe University, corresponding author), Miriam Meyerhoff (0000-0002-2599-1870, Victoria University of Wellington) |
| Year | 2020 |
| Volume | 58 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 109-130 |
| Publication date | 2020-02-25 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Linguistics (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0024-3949 • E-ISSN: 1613-396X |
| Publisher | Walter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE) |
| DOI | 10.1515/ling-2019-0037 |
| OpenAlex | W3000255243 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
| References cited | 12 |
Resolving the convergence of low-back vowels in English constitutes a pivot with repercussions for the rest of the vowel system. We consider how speakers on an eastern Caribbean island co-opt the inherent variability of vowel systems to differentiate themselves. Examining the vowels of Bequia English (St. Vincent and the Grenadines) shows the main source of variation to lie in the position and duration of four low back vowels (cloth, lot, palm, thought), which do not act as the same pivot point for realignment of the vowel space as in North American English. The crucial distinction between transmission and diffusion lies at the heart of our findings: principles of language change derived from varieties characterized by transmission may differ from principles associated with histories of diffusion central to many contact and creole varieties
Acoustics · American English · Caribbean island · Creole language · English-based creole languages · Geography · Language education · Linguistics · Point (geometry) · Rest (music) · Space (punctuation) · Variation (astronomy) · Vowel · History · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Mathematics · Philosophy · Phonetics and Phonology Research · Spanish Linguistics and Language Studies
A comparison of vowel normalization procedures for language variation research
Grammatical variation in Bequia (St Vincent and the Grenadines)
The third dialect of English
A comparison of three speaker-intrinsic vowel formant frequency normalization algorithms for sociophonetics
Putting Saban English on the map
An existential problem
Getting off the GoldVarb Standard
Patterns of linguistic variation among Glaswegian adolescent males 1
The persistence of variation in individual grammars
Zero Copula in the Eastern Caribbean
Transmission and Diffusion
| Citations per year | 0.5 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2020 - 2024 (5) |
| Highly cited | No |