Article published in:
Language Issues in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
Edited by Paula Prescod
[Varieties of English Around the World G51] 2015
► pp. 67–86

Subject and object pronoun use in Bequia (St Vincent and the Grenadines)

This chapter examines the use of pronouns in Bequia English, considering the quantitative distribution of subject and non-subject pronoun forms in subject and object position in the spontaneous speech of 18 speakers from three villages. We contrast the case-based Standard English pronominal system with a system in which pronoun forms are not distinguished in subject and object. While some dialects of British English exhibit “pronoun exchange” similar to the patterns found in Caribbean English, the distribution in Bequia more clearly reflects norms attested in the Caribbean since the late 18th century, rather than that of English dialects. Quantitative analysis shows that the distribution of nonstandard subject and non-subject pronouns is to a large extent correlated and that co-occurrence patterns, while largely idiosyncratic, show some tendency to differentiate villages on the island.* Keywords: variation; pronouns; Bequia; quantitative sociolinguistics
Published online: 12 February 2015
https://doi.org/10.1075/veaw.g51.03mey
References

References

Baker, Philip & Huber, Magnus
2000 Constructing new pronominal systems from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Linguistics 38(5): 833-866. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2001 Atlantic, Pacific, and world-wide features in English-lexicon contact languages. English World-Wide 22(2): 157–208. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Daleszynska, Agata
2012 Variation in Past Tense Marking in Bequia Creole: Apparent Time Change and Dialect Levelling. PhD dissertation, University of Edinburgh.
Farquharson, Joseph T.
2013 Jamaican structure dataset. In Atlas of Pidgin and Creole Language Structures Online, Ch. 8, Susanne Michaelis, Philippe Maurer, Martin Haspelmath & Magnus Huber (eds). Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. http://​apics​-online​.info​/apics​/contributions​/8Google Scholar
Holm, John A.
1988 Pidgins and Creoles, Vol. 1: Theory and Structure. Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar
Howe, Darin & Walker, James A.
2000 Negation and the creole-origins hypothesis: Evidence from early African American English. In The English History of African American English, Shana Poplack (ed.), 109-140. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Johnson, Daniel Ezra
2009 Getting off the GoldVarb Standard: Introducing Rbrul for mixed-effects variable rule analysis. Language and Linguistic Compass 3: 359-383. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Labov, William
2001 Principles of Linguistic Change, Vol. 1: Internal Factors. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
McConway, Naomi
2009 Some Aspects of Utillian English: With a Focus on Variable–s in Non-past Verbs. MA honours dissertation, University of Edinburgh.
Meyerhoff, Miriam & Walker, James A.
2007 The persistence of variation in individual grammars: Copula absence in ‘urban sojourners’ and their stay-at-home peers, Bequia (St Vincent and the Grenadines). Journal of Sociolinguistics 11(3): 346-366. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2013a Bequia Talk: Language in St Vincent and the Grenadines. London: Battlebridge Publications.Google Scholar
2013b An existential problem: The sociolinguistic monitor and variation in existential constructions on Bequia (St Vincent and the Grenadines). Language and Society 42(4): 407-428. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Ng, Zoë
2008 A Quantitative Study of TH-stopping on the Caribbean Island of Bequia. MA honours dissertation, University of Edinburgh.
Patrick, Peter L.
2007 Jamaican Patwa (Creole English). In Comparative Creole Syntax: Parallel Outlines of 18 Creole Grammars, John A. Holm & Peter L. Patrick (eds), 127-152. London: Battlebridge Publications.Google Scholar
Prescod, Paula
2013 Vincentian Creole structure dataset. In Atlas of Pidgin and Creole Language Structures Online, Ch. 7, Susanne Michaelis, Philippe Maurer, Martin Haspelmath & Magnus Huber (eds). Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. http://​apics​-online​.info​/apics​/contributions​/7Google Scholar
Roland, Douglas
2009 Relative clauses remodeled: The problem with mixed-effect models. Poster presented at the 22nd Annual Meeting of the CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, University of California, Davis, March 26-28.
Sampson, Geoffrey, Gil, David & Trudgill, Peter
(eds) 2009 Language Complexity as an Evolving Variable. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
Torres Cacoullos, Rena & Walker, James A.
2009 On the persistence of grammar in discourse formulas: A variationist study of that. Linguistics 47(1): 1-43. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Trudgill, Peter
2011 Sociolinguistic Typology: Social Determinants of Linguistic Complexity. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
Wagner, Susanne
2002 ‘We don’ say “she”, do us?’ Pronoun exchange—a feature of English dialects? Ms, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg. http://​www​.tu​-chemnitz​.de​/phil​/english​/ling​/staff​_wagner​.php (8 October 2012).
Walker, James A.
2000 Rephrasing the copula: Contraction and zero in early African American English. In The English History of African American English, Shana Poplack (ed.), 35-72. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Walker, James A. & Meyerhoff, Miriam
2006 Zero copula in the Eastern Caribbean: Evidence from Bequia. American Speech 81(2): 146-163. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Walker, James A. & Sidnell, Jack
2011 Inherent variability and coexistent systems: Negation on Bequia. In Variation in the Caribbean: From Creole Continua to Individual Agency [Creole Language Library 37], Lars Hinrichs & Joseph T. Farquharson (eds), 39-55. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Winford, Donald
1993 Predication in Caribbean English Creoles [Creole Language Library 10]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar