Table of contents
Acknowledgments
ix
Chapter 1.
Introduction
1
Chapter 2.
West Indians in urban Panama
6
2.1
Historical background
7
2.1.1
The construction era
7
2.1.2
In the Canal Zone and Panama, 1914-1999
16
2.1.3
Present-day West Indian Panamanian identities
20
2.2
Sociolinguistic situation
23
2.2.1
Demographics, race and language
23
2.2.2
Recent language policies
30
2.2.3
The French Antillean legacy
31
2.3
Previous research on Panamanian varieties
33
2.3.1
Bocas del Toro and Puerto Armuelles
34
2.3.2
Panama City and Colón
40
2.4
Towards a description of urban Panamanian English
50
Chapter 3.
Language choices
54
3.1
Language shift: Theoretical considerations
55
3.2
Questionnaire design
62
3.3
Data collection and demographics
65
3.4
Language selection among bilinguals
68
3.4.1
Dominant language and daily use
68
3.4.2
Language habits in the intimate circle
70
3.4.3
Religion
75
3.4.4
School, work, neighbors, entertainment and shopping
78
3.4.5
Two case studies
80
3.4.6
Language choices in the United States
86
3.5
Conclusion: A portrait of transitional bilingualism
87
Chapter 4.
Interview data
89
4.1
Defining the speech community
89
4.2
Participants
91
4.3
Researcher position
101
4.4
Interview structure and settings
104
4.5
Linguistic makeup
110
4.6
Transcription and corpus
113
Chapter 5.
The Panamanian English verb phrase
115
5.1
be
116
5.1.1
Zero copula be
116
5.1.2
Present tense be leveling
119
5.1.3
Was/were variation
120
5.2
do
121
5.2.1
Preverbal marker did
122
5.2.2
Habitual does
123
5.3
have
123
5.3.1
Existential they have
124
5.3.2
have and time elapsed
125
5.4
Modal expressions
126
5.4.1
was to
126
5.4.2
able to
128
5.5
The expression of time reference
130
5.5.3
Past time reference
130
5.5.2
Present-tense agreement marking
132
5.6
Summary: The kinships of Panamanian English
134
Chapter 6.
Verbal -s and verbal zero
137
6.1
The stories of verbal -s
138
6.1.1
Historical, sociolinguistic and pragmatic accounts
138
6.1.2
Non-past contexts in the Panamanian data
141
6.2
Coding
146
6.2.1
External factors
147
6.2.2
Language-internal factors
149
6.2.3
A note on Spanish [s]
155
6.3
Overview of the data and statistical tools
156
6.3.1
Frequencies for verbal -s
157
6.3.2
Frequencies for verbal zero
160
6.3.3
Random Forests
164
6.4
Results: -s with all persons and numbers
165
6.4.1
The 3rd singular
166
6.4.2
The 3rd plural
171
6.4.3
Other persons/numbers
178
6.4.4
Summary
181
6.5
Results: Zero in 3rd singular contexts
182
6.6
Discussion and conclusion: More than agreement
188
Chapter 7.
Conclusion
193
References
195
Appendix
209
Language choice questionnaire
209
English version
209
Spanish version
215
Consent form
221
Index
223