Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Department of Anthropology, June 2001. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

Research in the Caribbean often links global phenomena (e.g. increased tourism) to changes in lifestyles and mindsets taking place in this part of the world (Curtis, 2009). I examine the direction, intensity, and motivations of language changes among adolescents in three communities in Bequia (St. Vincent and the Grenadines) considering the socio-economic transformations affecting the island. Data for this study was obtained using a combination of sociolinguistic interviews and conversations between Bequia adolescents and their grandparents recorded in the course of several fieldwork trips. Three villages in Bequia were considered, Hamilton, Paget Farm and Mount Pleasant, characterised by different patterns of settlement and socioeconomic development. I investigate variation between: (i) creole verb stems vs. Standard English verb inflections (e.g. I go yesterday vs. I went yesterday), and (ii) verb stems and verb inflections vs. creole preverbal markers (e.g. I bin play yesterday). A variety of grammatical, discoursespecific, functional, and cognitive constraints are tested to determine which factors condition the variable patterns across different communities and age groups, and how linguistically similar/different these communities are. Results of the quantitative multivariate analysis of variation between bare verbs and inflected verbs show dialect levelling (Kerswill, 2003) among adolescents in Hamilton and Paget Farm and a transmission of the system (Labov, 2007) from the older generation to the younger in Mount Pleasant. In addition, adolescents in Paget Farm have recycled (Dubois and Horvath, 1999) a stigmatised creole form, preverbal bin, and are using it significantly more than any other group on the island. The study points to several important conclusions. Firstly, it emphasises the necessity for a multidisciplinary perspective in accounting for the factors which condition language change, especially in such a diverse and fast developing setting as the present-day Caribbean. Secondly, it supports the research on language and globalisation emphasising the relationship between the local and the global (e.g. Meyerhoff and Niedzielski, 2003). Finally, the study attempts to determine the nature of variation in creole languages as e.g. a creole continuum or co-existing systems, and establish replicable methods for measuring linguistic similarities/differences between communities.

No description available.

Cette thèse s'inscrit dans le champ de la linguistique classique. Elle aborde l'étude du fonctionnement syntaxique du préverbe i en créole réunionnais. Un inventaire précis de ses emplois d'un point de vue descriptif est fait afin de déterminer ses conditions d'apparition et les conditions où il n'apparaît pas. Deux grandes catégories d'hypothèses sont confrontées : les hypothèses à base sémantique et les hypothèses à base purement syntaxique. Il s'agit de démontrer le bien-fondé de la seconde approche et les point faibles de la première. Les théories déjà publiées sur le problème du i sont examinées. Pour mieux saisir la valeur du i réunionnais, une comparaison des structures des créoles à base lexicale française est réalisée : le créole réunionnais qui est au premier plan de notre recherche ; les créoles mauricien et seychellois de la région de l'océan Indien et les créoles martiniquais, guadeloupéen et haïtien de la région de l'océan Atlantique. / This thesis is part of the field of classical linguistics. It deals with the study of the syntactic functioning of the preverb i in Reunion creole. A precise inventory of its uses from a descriptive point of view is made in order to determine its conditions of appearance and the conditions in which it does not appear. Two major categories of hypotheses are confronted: seamantic-based hypotheses and purely syntactical hypotheses. This is to demonstrate the merits of the second approach and the weak points of the first. Already published theories on the problem of i are examined. To better understand the value of Reunionese i, a comparaison of the structures of French-based creole languages is carried out: Reunion creole which is at the forefront of our reseach; Mauritian and Seychellois Creoles in Indian ocean region and Martinican, Guadeloupe and Haitian creoles of the Atlantic ocean region

Orientador: Tânia Maria Alkmim / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-20T05:10:09Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Caisse_PeterThomas_M.pdf: 1522538 bytes, checksum: e32efcde7b77ebf5203db6f4485d6d66 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012 / Resumo: O Haiti e a Luisiana são ligados por vários paralelos sociohistóricos. Ambos sofreram colonização francesa e espanhola, sendo mais marcados pela primeira. Nos dois lugares foi implantada a economia plantation na qual a mão-de-obra era de escravos do oeste da África. A organização social e demográfica resultante - isto é, uma população majoritariamente escrava e linguisticamente diversa que tinha contato limitado com os senhores franceses - levou à formação de dois crioulos franceses distintos e estruturalmente parecidos. Contudo, apesar dessas semelhanças do período colonial, atualmente, o crioulo haitiano é o crioulo mais falado do mundo e o crioulo da Luisiana está moribundo. Neste trabalho, examinam-se quais foram os motivos sociohistóricos do período pós-colonial que resultaram nessas duas realidades contrastantes, tratando da política linguística, especificamente a legislação linguística, a padronização e a educação, e de questões acerca de atitudes linguísticas, além de considerações mais práticas - geográficas e socioeconômicas - envolvidas na formação da vitalidade de uma língua / Abstract: Haiti and Louisiana are connected via a number of sociohistorical parallels. Both were colonized by the French and the Spanish, but were much more culturally and linguistically influenced by the French presence. In both places, the plantation economy system took hold with a labor force comprised of West African slaves. The resulting social organization and demography - i.e. a linguistically diverse slave majority with limited contact with their French masters - lead to the formation of two distinct but structurally similar French creoles. However, despite these similarities between Haiti and Louisiana during the colonial period, Haitian Creole is currently the most spoken creole language in the world while Louisiana Creole is moribund. In this thesis, the sociohistorical factors of the post-colonial period that resulted in these two contrasting linguistic realities are examined, with an analysis of the language policy - specifically language legislation, standardization, and education - and its impact, as well as that of language attitudes and of more practical issues such as geography and economics, in shaping the vitality of these two languages / Mestrado / Linguistica / Mestre em Linguística

Many researchers of gender studies and colonial history ignore the lives of European women in the British West Indies. The scarcity of written information combined with preconceived notions about the character of the women inhabiting the islands make this the "final frontier" in colonial studies on women. Over the long eighteenth century, travel literature by men reduced creole white women to a stereotype that endured in literature and visual representations. The writings of female authors, who also visited the plantation islands, display their opinions on the creole white women through their letters, diaries and journals. Male authors were preoccupied with the sexual morality of the women, whereas the female authors focus on the temperate lifestyles of the local females. The popular perceptions of the creole white women seen in periodicals, literature, and caricatures in Britain seem to follow this trend, taking for their sources the travel histories.

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This thesis is a biography of Henry Louis Rey (1831-1894), a member of one of New Orleans' most prominent Creole of Color families. During the Civil War, Rey was a captain in both the Confederate and Union Native Guards. In postbellum years, he served as a member of the Louisiana House of Representative and in appointed city offices. Rey became heavily involved with spiritualism in the 1850s and established séance circles in New Orleans during the early 1870s. The voluminous transcripts of these séance circles have survived into the twenty-first century; however, scholarly use of these sources has been limited because most of the transcripts and all marginal annotations later written by René Grandjean are in French. The author's translations of the spirit communications through their entire run reveal insight into the spiritual and material realms negotiated by New Orleans Black Creoles as they weathered declining political and economic fortunes.

O objetivo desta dissertação é apresentar e discutir alguns processos fonológicos de adição e subtração de elementos (metaplasmos) na língua sãotomense. Neste trabalho, faremos uma comparação entre as contribuições das línguas portuguesa, quicongo e bini. Entre os séculos XV e XVI, diversas línguas nasceram do contato entre europeus e povos da África, Ásia e América. Chamadas de pidgins e crioulos, essas línguas contam com contribuições linguísticas da língua do povo dominador (língua de superstrato) e com contribuições da(s) língua(s) do(s) povo(s) dominado(s) (língua(s) de substrato). O sãotomense, língua falada atualmente na República de São Tomé e Príncipe, é uma dessas línguas, classificada como crioulo de base portuguesa, e conta com o português seiscentista como língua de superstrato e com línguas africanas, dentre elas o quicongo e o bini como línguas de substrato. Ao longo deste trabalho, analisaremos algumas das influências das línguas de substrato e superstrato na constituição do sãotomense. As contribuições das línguas de superstrato estão, majoritariamente, relacionadas à composição do léxico e as das línguas de substrato na fonologia, morfologia e sintaxe, embora também haja traços inovadores. No caso do sãotomense, as palavras portuguesas, ao entrarem no léxico do sãotomense, sofreram metaplasmos para se adequar à estrutura das línguas africanas dos primeiros falantes, sem, contudo, evitar que a língua portuguesa também contribuísse para a constituição da fonologia do sãotomense. Uma das contribuições do quicongo na fonologia do sãotomense é o lambdacismo transformação de [r] em [l] durante o processo de empréstimos, enquanto a língua portuguesa contribuiu com a eliminação do sistema tonal, presente em quicongo e bini, mas não em português. / The goal of this dissertation is to describe and analyse some phonological aspects of Sãotomense. In this word, we compare a number of linguistics contributions from the Portuguese, Kongo and Bini languages to Sãotomense, a Portuguese-based Creole spoken in the Democratic Republic of São Tomé and Príncipe. A Creole language displays linguistic characteristic both from its superstratum and its substratum languages. Sãotomense has the seventeenth centurys Portuguese as its superstratum language and many African languages, among them Kongo and Bini, as its substrata languages. In this work, I intend to analyze some of the influences of these strata languages in the formation of Sãotomense phonology. In general terms, most of the contributions from the superstratum languages are related to the Lexicon. Substratum languages, by its turn, heavily contribute to the phonology, morphology and syntax, although there are in the Creoles languages innovative linguistics aspects as well. In the specific case of Sãotomense, Portuguese words undergone many linguistics processes, some of them called metaplasms, in order to be adapted by the structure of African languages speakers, but this fact did not avoid that Portuguese language also contributed to the phonology constitution of Sãotomense. A possible African contribution to the phonology of Sãotomense is the so-called lambdacism the transformation of a [r] into a [l] during the process of loanword adaptation from the Kongo language. Portuguese, for example, probably, contributed with the elimination of tones, present in Kongo and Bini and in many others African languages, but not in Portuguese.

Avery Island, Louisiana and McIlhenny Company provide a lens through which to understand how performances of masculinity and paternalism operated in the New South and were deployed for U. S. empire-building projects. Focusing on the tenure of Edward Avery McIlhenny as President of McIlhenny Company, this paper utilizes primary documents from the McIlhenny Company & Avery Island, Inc. Archives to construct a narrative based on correspondence between E. A. and his Wall Street investment banker, Ernest B. Tracy, revealing how E.A. confronted disaster capitalism and influenced the production of cultural tourism amidst environmental and economic crises in the 1920s and 1930s. / text