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Shivana Mohammed
2010
Ling
Abstract
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The creoles of the Caribbean may be said to resemble themselves, more than they resemble their
main lexifying languages; so belonging to a family of languages different from that of their
Superstrate lexifier. This premise is that which the comparisons of Guyanese and Jamaican
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“The Jamaican Language situation ...consists of two varieties, One is Jamaican Creole(JamC)
popularly labelled ‘patwa’ and the other Jamaican English (JamE)...with JamC being the Low
variety and JamC being the high variety.” (Hubert Devonish, 2008) They further define the
Jamaican Creole variety as that which is greatly influenced by the ‘output of speakers of West
African languages modifying the phonological shape of words coming into their speech varieties
of 17th Century British English.” (Hubert Devonish, 2008) Allsopp sheds light however on the
term Creolese, used in Guyana to represent the Guyanese English Creole. Allsopp notes that the
Frederick Cassidy declares the Creoles spoken in Jamaican and Guyana, the offspring of
“one or more European languages coming in contact with one or more African Languages. The
Creoles of Guyana and Jamaica are blends of an English Superstrate language and many African
Jamaican Creole (JamC) or Jamaican Patwa is an English lexified creole, is the result of
a language contact situation which forced the interaction between the speakers of West African
Languages and the speakers of a socially superior European Language, namely English. Alleyne
declares JamC to be “the result of language contact between the Africans and the English
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The formation of Jamaican polyglossia began in 1509 when the Spanish first settled
Jamaica bringing approximately 1000 African slaves to the island by the year 1601. Peter L.
Patrick notes that “these slaves were brought from both Africa and other Caribbean colonies,
chiefly Suriname and Barbados....” (Holm & Patrick, Comparative Creole Syntax, 2001) The
close proximity of Suriname to Guyana allows room for one to speculate the possibility of slaves
One major discrepancy arises when Holm notes that the country was first colonised
between 1600 and 1625 by the Spanish, whose rule was then confined to the Greater Antilles.
However, in 1655 the British decided to launch an attack on the Spanish colony, there “the 1500
Spaniards could mount little resistance...” (Holm) Patrick notes that by this time there were
approximately 1500 Africans on the island. Outnumbered by some 9000 British troops, the
Spanish fled the island leaving a mere 300 Africans who retreated into the mountains.
In 1656 settlers came from Nevis and under the protection of British troops began
farming, thus by 1658 further immigration of Irish, Scottish and British whites to the now sugar
producing territory brought the Jamaican English speaking population up to over 4,500. (Holm)
However by 1703 the European population on the islanded numbered well over 8,000 speakers
and 10,000 speakers by 1739. In this year, those Africans which fled to the mountains when the
British had arrived “became the core of the Jamaica maroons, who eventually defeated the
By 1755 there was the emergence of a Jamaican Creole which stood alongside a “Maroon
Sprit Language” what Bilby refers to as Chromanti; the result of “maintained knowledge of the
Twi, an ancestral Akan Language.” (Holm & Patrick, Comparative Creole Syntax, 2001)
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The table below formulated by Peter L. Patrick is used to show the ratio of African Speakers to
English Speakers
For Guyana the shift to the Guyanese Creole began in 1581 when it was settled by the
Dutch using African Slave Labour until finally taken by the English in 1803. There was hardly
any antagonism from the Dutch whom realised the English to be particularly productive in the
way of agriculture,
from Barbados in 1743, his terms were good and those who
Allsopp further notes that British control of the area was the marked factor in the abolition of
slavery in that territory in 1834, “this was followed by the refusal of the Africans to return to
work, even though work was now paid, on the sugar plantations. The authorities therefore
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resorted to organised immigration of East Indian Labor to facilitate their labour shortage.”
(Allsopp, 1975) He comments that the influx of East Indians was regular and steady between the
years 1845 and 1917, “in such large numbers that they formed their own communities”, yet like
the Africans they suffered the attrition of their Hindustani dialect. English by 1875 was the
The emphasis on instruction in English in the 19th century makes it apparent why one
would find a Creolese sample of the Hans Christian Anderson European Tale- Hansel and Grettel
The indefinite article in the Jamaican English Creole and the Guyanese English Creole
are both identified as ‘wan’ or ‘a”. Patrick states “the basilectal indefinite article is wan. It also
refers to the numeral ‘one’, but its article function is distinct from its numeral function.” (Holm
& Patrick, Comparative Creole Syntax, 2001) He further notes that generic nouns albeit singular
or plural cannot be preceded by the article ‘wan’. Allsopp adds to this however suggesting that
the Jamaican Creole possesses also the indefinite articles /a/, /sʌm/ and /eni/.
Allsopp (1975) states “the definite article in Jamaican Creole English is /dɪ/, it “generally
appears with semantically definite nouns...” (Holm & Patrick, Comparative Creole Syntax, 2001)
Some instances of this are seen below. Devonish highlights the Guyanese pre-nominal marker
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‘di’ which acts in the same way the Jamaican Creole ‘di’ does, it functions as the definite article
before specific nouns. See items# However it must be added that “a” is also found to act as a
definite article in Guyanese creole,# though Kline refers to it as an equative linking non
The there are also instances in the Creole where the definite article remains unmarked, as seen in
The Jamaican Creole noun is often unmarked for the plural; rather it is preceded by a
quantifier. Beryl Bailey lists the possible quantifiers that may be found in Jamaican Creole
Discourse. These she categorises as the definite “indicating how many by count” e.g. “wan”,
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“tuu”, “trii”, “iet”. The indefinite quantifiers “indicating amount” (Bailey, 1966) are “somoch’.
‘tumoch’, ‘haaf’, ‘nof’, ‘aal’ and ‘kwaata’. These quantifiers all fall in a pre-nominal position.
Holm and Patrick add to this discussion that “the basilectal plural marker in JamC is post-
nominal dem “they, them, their” ... this form tends to strongly occur in the phrase containing the
definite article di” (Holm & Patrick, Comparative Creole Syntax, 2001) One may note that in
the Guyanese Creole there is limited co-occurrence of the definite article with the plural
marker ‘dem’.
The same form also serves as the plural demonstrative. This is seen below,
Like its Jamaican counterpart the Guyanese Creole also includes pre-nominal and post-nominal
markers to indicate the plural of the noun. Devonish lists the pre-nominal markers found in
Bailey describes the pro-nominal system in Jamaican Creole; its constitutes the following
elements,
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• Unu, ‘you’ (pl.) (the speaker refers to group which includes interlocutor (s) and excludes
speaker
• Im, ‘he’, ‘she’, ‘it’ (speaker refers to single person or thing other than the interlocutors);
im nyam it out
• dem, ‘they’ (speaker refers to a 3rd group excluding himself and the interlocutor)
Allsopp quotes the pro-nominal system of Guyanese English as cited by a previous study as
comprising the following elements; these will be represented in the same form that Bailey uses;
• i, shi ‘he, she’ (speaker refers to single person or thing other than the interlocutors);
an i lεf dεm
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an wε:n i ta:k se
an i dʌn
The Indefinite Pronouns according to Bailey are found in three distinct categories, these are
the human, the non-human, and their negatives. The animate-human Jamaican indefinite being
smadi ‘someone’; the non-human inanimate pronoun somting ‘something’; the negative nobadi
Bailey further describes the interrogative pronouns of Jamaican Creole, these she states are
“pronouns which substitute for noun phrases in questions.” She categorises these as the human
animate (who and whom); the non-human inanimate (what) and the neutral (which). These
pronouns are both found in Jamaican and Guyanese Creoles, despite different orthographic
representations.
• huufa ‘whose’;
• wa, we ‘what’;
we yu a go out de go du?
We yu a gwaan wid
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So wa diffrense it mek...
It should also be noted that we, wa are used to represent ‘why’ as well; however wai is also
We yua laaf fa
All languages across the world represent Tense, Mood and Aspect in one way or the
other. He lauds Bickerton who described the Creole TMA system as “marking three main
categories – anterior tense, Irrealis mood, and non-punctual aspect- each having a principal
preverbal marker, which must combine in the order T-M-A.” (Patrick, 2008) With respect to the
Jamaican TMA system Peter L. Patrick states “Jam C combines invariant pre-verbal particles
with unmarked verb stems to express these grammatical categories...” (Patrick, 2008)
Peter A. Roberts discusses the meaning of Tense as used by most creolists, his definition
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This explanation by Roberts is perhaps one of the simplest to be found in any exploration of
Creole Syntax.
Roberts states “Aspect as a specific linguistic term, refers to the nature of the action of
the verb.” (Roberts, 2007) There are three aspects which will be discussed with reference to the
Guyanese Creole and the Jamaican Creole seen here, these are the Continuous, also known as the
durative or progressive, and then there is the Perfect, Perfective or Completive aspect and finally
Bickerton argues, “States, habitual situations and progressive events can all be described
as having non-punctual aspect.” (Bickerton, 1975 qtd Patrick, 2008) Furthermore, he views the
Guyanese aspectual system as being dependent on the division of predicates into two systems;
Stative and Non-Stative. He states “verb stativity is said to crucially affect the occurrence and
reference reading, while stative are non-past unless preceded by a tense-marker. As a result of
these features Bickerton states that these grammars “bear no relation to English.” (Bickerton,
Gibson explores the nature of the Stative and non-Stative verb, he says “Stative verbs refer to
states; non-stative verbs refer to 'events' or 'dynamic situations'. Examples of stative verbs [ in
Guyanese English Creole] are noo 'know', waant 'want', gat 'have'. Examples of non-stative verbs
[in GEC] are waak 'walk', get 'get', guh ‘go’, chro ‘throw’, mek 'make'. Adjectives are also
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Bickerton proposes that the habitual and progressive meanings are held semantically by one
aspect marker ‘a’; a form which Bickerton declares only occurs before non-stative verbs and in
those instances represents both the continuative and iterative. He says “One of the strongest rules
in basilectal Guyanese Creole is that which restricts the use of ‘a’ to non-stative verbs. .... One
seldom if ever encounters sentences such as *mi a no, *dem a waan, 'I am knowing', 'they are
3. an waɪʟs dɛm a gʌ
6. an dɛm a gʌ nau
In glosses 1-7, from Guyanese Creole English, the ‘a’ marks the past continuative of the non-
stative verbs ‘gʌ’, ‘tʃro’ , ‘faʟa’ and ‘wa:k’ respectively, in accordance with Bickertons’
arguments the continuative marker for the non-punctual aspect appears before the non-stative
Gibson, however, suggests that these are represented by separate morphemes, he includes that
the Guyanese English Creole generally uses temporal adverbs to distinguish the continuative
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from the iterative form. Such as ‘de’ which is generally manifested as ‘a de’ however this is not
Gibson quotes Bailey (1966) who posits “only a progressive category for Jamaican Creole
realised in the forms a/da/de”, while according to Patrick the habitual aspect remains unmarked.
Alleyne adds to this, however, adding a habitual category which he agrees is unmarked “but is
recognised by its accompanied adverbials such as ‘always’, ‘usually; and ‘sometime’.” Gibson
however notes that “unlike Guyanese where the habitual is referred to with present or past
One may observe that in the Jamaican Creole the preverbal aspect marker also occurs before the
non-stative verb; its also almost always marks the past progressive from. Even when the sense is
habitual, such as #1 and #11 this remains un-marked. What both systems definitely share is the
use of the aspect marker ‘a’ to denote the iterative function for non-stative verbs.
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Both the Jamaican and the Guyanese Creoles express the Irrealis mood; Subjunctive,
Imperative and Conditional. Peter L. Patrick declares “JamC lacks the primary auxiliary verbs
present in most English dialects: forms of be, do, have (though it possesses main-verb
declares “in Jamaican Creole the Irrealis mood markers [wi, mos(-a/-i), mait(-a), mie, kya(a)n,
kud(-a), wud(-a), shud(-a), hafi, fi] may well be interpreted as future tense markers” (Unknown)
He also comments that “These particles may only be treated as a class for two reasons. First, the
markers do not generally occur as main verbs but as auxiliary verbs...” (Unknown) These
The shared Tense Mood and Aspectual features of Creole languages such as Jamaican Creole
and Guyanese Creole have been used to fuel arguments for mono-genetic and Universalist
theories.
“The simplest and most common structure in JamC sees a single, invariant negator no
(reducible to /na/) before the verb.” The reduced form is also present as /na:/. The tense neutral
“duont” is also present, this is more stative occurring in the aspectual sentence, as seen in #
an notn naa gwaan *the negative marker no is here reduced to na: before the verb
an non no de pon it fi mi
yu no lef no
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bot a no mi faalt
bot yu no IIZI
Comparisons of Guaynese and Jamaican Creole reveal the syntactic and lexical similarities of the
two Creole languages, with respect to their Noun Phrases and Verb Phrase formations.
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Bibliography
Allsopp, S. R. (1975). Expression of State and Action in the Dialect of English used in
teh Georgetown Are of British Guiana. Phd Thesis, The University of the West Indies,
Linguistics.
Cassidy, F., & Page, R. L. (1967). Dictionary of Jamaican English. New York:
Cambridge University Press.
Devonish, H. (2000, August 5). Jamaica Gleaner. Retrieved March 30, 2009, from
http://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20000805/Lead/Lead4.html
Holm, J. (1986). The spread of English in the Caribbean Area. In Varieties of English
Around the World: Focus on the Caribbean.
Holm, J., & Patrick, P. L. (2001). Comparative Creole Syntax. Sri Lanka: Battlebridge
Publications.
Kahn, M. C. (1931). Djuka, the bush Negros of Dutch Guiana. New York: Viking Press
.
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Wikipedia. (n.d.). Rhotic and Non- Rhotic Varieties of English. Retrieved 4 3, 2010,
from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhotic_and_non-rhotic_accents
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