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Article published In:
Asia-Pacific Language Variation
Vol. 5:2 (2019) ► pp.171–207

Variation in the reflexive in Australian Kriol

| Australian National University | Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language (CoEDL)
| University of Queensland | Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language (CoEDL)

With 20,000 speakers across Northern Australia, Australian Kriol is well known to exhibit geographic variation but this has never been systematically studied. This article stems from the first dialectological study of Kriol, focusing on the eastern portion of the Kriol-speaking area. It analyses variation in forms of the Kriol reflexive, which is derived from the English form ‘myself/meself’ but is invariant for person and number. The analysis utilises random forests modelling to analyse the importance of factors, a new method available to variation studies that is particularly useful when applied to small languages with small datasets. With geography confirmed as the major factor accounting for variation, areal patterns showing variation in lexical form of the reflexive, the medial consonant, the final vowel and the final consonant are considered. This study also documents new variants of the Kriol reflexive and incorporates perceptual dialectology, combining to better inform classifications of Kriol dialects.

Keywords: Kriol, dialectology, reflexives, classification trees, random forests, Boruta, variation in contact languages, geographic variation, pidgin and creole languages, perceptual dialectology
Article outline
  • 1.Kriol and variation in Kriol
    • 1.1Introduction
    • 1.2Kriol
    • 1.3Previous characterisations of geographic variation in Kriol
  • 2.Modelling variation using a classification approach
  • 3.The reflexive in Kriol
    • 3.1Introducing the variable
  • 4.Capturing variation in Kriol: A first dialectology
  • 5.Summary of the data
  • 6.Analysis
    • 6.1Overall frequencies
    • 6.2Social and linguistic factors considered
    • 6.3Analysis of importance of factors
    • 6.4Geography and variation
      • 6.4.1Geographic variation in the final vowel: [a]~[e]
      • 6.4.2Geographic variation in the final consonant: [l]~[n]
      • 6.4.3Geographic variation in the medial consonant: ‘j’ ~ ’y’/0
    • 6.5Other factors correlating with variation
  • 7.Discussion
    • 7.1Using classification trees to assess factor influence
    • 7.2Attributing variation to substrate influence
    • 7.3Rethinking dialectal classifications
    • 7.4Final consonant variation [l]~[n]
    • 7.5Phonological variation as a broader pattern
  • 8.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 2 March 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/aplv.00005.dic
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