Lexical variation in Caribbean English
Allonymy from cognitive-onomasiological and ecolinguistic perspectives
Keywords:
Caribbean English, conceptual structure, language contact, language ecology, operational frameAbstract
The present paper seeks to further develop an interdisciplinary research into language variation and contact studies. Integrating cognitive-onomasiological and ecolinguistic approaches, it addresses lexical diversity in the Caribbean English. The permanent contacts between English and other local and transported languages have caused a wide range of modifications in the Caribbean English lexicon, including allonymy. Allonymy is treated as a contact-induced type of lexical variation leading to the formation of alternative names for the same referents. By tracing the sources of allonyms and disclosing cognitive mechanisms involved in their formation, this study explains the vitality of allonymic lexical items in the complex language ecology of the Caribbean region. It is argued that variation in naming processes is determined by speakers’ cognitive preferences as well as their cultural vigour that manifest in multilingual and multicultural ecology.
Downloads
References
Aceto, M. (2009). Caribbean Englishes. Handbook of World Englishes. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 203–222.
Alleyne, M. C. (1980). Comparative Afro-American: An historical-comparative study of English-based Afro-American dialects of the new world (Vol. 11). Karoma Publishers, Incorporated.
Allsopp, J. (2004). The Caribbean Multilingual Lexicography Project. English Today, 20(1), 11-18.
Allsopp, R., & Allsopp, J. (Eds.). (2003). Dictionary of Caribbean English usage. University of West Indies Press.
Ansaldo, U. (2009). Contact languages: Ecology and evolution in Asia. Cambridge University Press.
Anwar, M., Murtadho, F., Boeriswati, E., Yarmi, G., & Rosa, H. T. (2021). The analysis model of impolite Indonesian language use. Linguistics and Culture Review, 5(S3), 1426-1441. https://doi.org/10.21744/lingcure.v5nS3.1840
Avramenko, O. M. (2020). Ecological Conditions of Modern South African English Development and Functioning. Science and Education a New Dimension. Philology. VIII(66), 218, 7-12.
Bao, Z. (2010). Must in Singapore English. Lingua, 120(7), 1727-1737. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2010.01.001
Bespala, L. V. (2010). Alonimiia yak vidbyttia linhvokulturnoii dyferentsiastiii i intehratsiii anhlomovnykh kraiin Karybskoho rehionu [Allonymy as representation of linguistic and cultural differentiation and integration of the English Speaking Caribbean]. Nova Filolohiia, 40,135-143.
Bespala, L. V., & Kozlova, T. O. (2018). Formuvannia karybskoii anhliiskomovnoii kartyny svitu v umovakh linhvokulturnykh kontaktiv [The Formation of the English-speaking Caribbean Worldview in the language and culture contacts]. Zaporizhzhia: Status.
Camp, H. (2020). Morphology in English. Macrolinguistics and Microlinguistics, 1(2), 78–84. Retrieved from https://mami.nyc/index.php/journal/article/view/7
Cassidy, F. G., & Le Page, R. B. (Eds.). (2002). Dictionary of Jamaican English. University of West Indies Press.
Chen, S. (2016). Language and ecology: A content analysis of ecolinguistics as an emerging research field. Ampersand, 3(1), 108-116.
Cheshire, J., Kerswill, P., Fox, S., & Torgersen, E. (2011). Contact, the feature pool and the speech community: The emergence of Multicultural London English. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 15(2), 151-196.
Clément, R. (1980). Ethnicity, contact and communicative competence in a second language. In Language (pp. 147-154). Pergamon. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-024696-3.50027-2
Damousi, J. (2010). Colonial voices: A cultural history of English in Australia, 1840-1940 (Vol. 15). Cambridge University Press.
Devonish, H., & Carpenter, K. (2020). The Languages in Conflict. In Language, Race and the Global Jamaican (pp. 49-76). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.
Döring, M., & Zunino, F. (2013). NatureCultures in old and new worlds: a diachronic and eco-critical perspective on metaphors and lexical items. Language Sciences, 41(PA), 34-40.
Fox, S., & Torgersen, E. (2018). Language change and innovation in London: Multicultural London English. In Sociolinguistics in England (pp. 189-213). Palgrave Macmillan, London.
Garner, M. (2014). Language rules and language ecology. Language Sciences, 41, 111-121. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2013.08.012
Gates, S. M. (2018). Why the long FACE?: Ethnic stratification and variation in the London diphthong system. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics, 24(2), 6.
Grondelaers, S., & Geeraerts, D. (2009). Towards a pragmatic model of cognitive onomasiology. In Cognitive approaches to lexical semantics (pp. 67-92). De Gruyter Mouton.
Hall, D. (2020). The impersonal gets personal. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory, 38(1), 117-150.
Hiltunen, T., & Loureiro-Porto, L. (2020). Democratization of Englishes: Synchronic and diachronic approaches. Language Sciences, 79, 101275.
Hinrichs, L. (2006). Codeswitching on the Web. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Hinrichs, L., & Farquharson, J. T. (Eds.). (2011). Variation in the Caribbean: From creole continua to individual agency (Vol. 37). John Benjamins Publishing.
Kachru, B. B. (1986). The alchemy of English: The spread, functions, and models of non-native Englishes. University of Illinois Press.
Karamoy, O., Imbang, D., & Palit, A. (2021). Inventory of tontemboan vocabulary as a regional language protection. Linguistics and Culture Review, 5(S4), 808-818. https://doi.org/10.21744/lingcure.v5nS4.1725
Kerswill, P. (2014). The objectification of ‘Jafaican’. The discoursal embedding of Multicultural London English in the British media. In Mediatization and sociolinguistic change (pp. 427-456). de Gruyter.
Koch, P. (2008). Cognitive onomasiology and lexical change: Around the eye. From polysemy to semantic change, 107-137.
Kozlova, T., & Bednarczuk, L. (2018). Cognitive Approach to Lexical Variation in Overseas Englishes. Scientific Journal of Polonia University, 29(4), 135-143. https://doi.org/10.23856/2903
Kozlova, T., & Rudnicki, M. (2021). Maori Loans in New Zealand English form a Language Ecology Perspective. Scientific Journal of Polonia University, 39(2), 67-73. https://doi.org/10.23856/3908
Kravchenko, A. V. (2016). Two views on language ecology and ecolinguistics. Language Sciences, 54, 102-113. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2015.12.002
Li, J., Steffensen, S. V., & Huang, G. (2020). Rethinking ecolinguistics from a distributed language perspective. Language Sciences, 80, 101277.
Luardini, M. A., Asi, N., & Garner, M. (2019). Ecolinguistics of ethno-medicinal plants of the Dayak Ngaju community. Language Sciences, 74, 77-84.
Mair, C. (2012). English in North America and the Caribbean. In Amerika und die Norm (pp. 3-24). Max Niemeyer Verlag.
Masiola, R., & Tomei, R. (2016). Descriptions, Translations and the Caribbean: From Fruits to Rastafarians. Springer.
McArthur, T. (1998). The English Languages. Cambridge University Press.
Mufwene, S. S. (2002). Competition and selection in language evolution. Selection, 3(1), 45-56.
Mühleisen, S. (2011). Forms of address and ambiguity in Caribbean English-lexicon Creoles: Strategic interactions in a postcolonial language setting. Journal of pragmatics, 43(6), 1460-1471. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2010.10.017
Munnich, E., Landau, B., & Dosher, B. A. (2001). Spatial language and spatial representation: A cross-linguistic comparison. Cognition, 81(3), 171-208. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0010-0277(01)00127-5
Myrick, C., Eberle, N., Schneier, J., & Reaser, J. (2020). Mapping Linguistic Diversity in the English-Speaking Caribbean. Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, 1469-1487.
Putrayasa, I. B. (2017). The semantic study of languages politics. International Journal of Linguistics, Literature and Culture, 3(2), 7-13. Retrieved from https://sloap.org/journals/index.php/ijllc/article/view/199
Revis, M. (2021). Exploring the ‘languaging habitus’ of a diasporic community: Colombians in New Zealand. Lingua, 263. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2020.102941
Sidnell, J. (2001). Conversational turn-taking in a Caribbean English Creole. Journal of Pragmatics, 33(8), 1263-1290. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0378-2166(00)00062-X
Smith, L. B., & Heise, D. (1992). Perceptual similarity and conceptual structure. In Advances in psychology (Vol. 93, pp. 233-272). North-Holland. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0166-4115(08)61009-2
Smith, P., Warrican, S. J., Kumi-Yeboah, A. & Richards, J. (2018). Understanding Afro-Caribbean educators’ experiences with Englishes across Caribbean and U.S. contexts and classrooms: Recursivity, (re)positionality, bidirectionality. Teaching and Teacher Education: An International Journal of Research and Studies, 69(1), 210-222. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2017.10.009
Steffensen, S. V., & Fill, A. (2014). Ecolinguistics: the state of the art and future horizons. Language sciences, 41, 6-25.
Tomei, R. (2008). Forbidden Fruits: The Secret Names of Plants in Caribbean Culture (Vol. 1). Morlacchi Editore.
Unuabonah, F. O., & Daniel, F. O. (2020). Haba! Bilingual interjections in Nigerian English: A corpus-based study. Journal of Pragmatics, 163, 66-77.
Youssef, V. (2005). Varilingualism: A discrete sub-type of language competence. Journal of Multilingual Communication Disorders, 3(3), 216-226.
Zhabotynska, S. A. (2010). Principles of building conceptual models for thesaurus dictionaries. Cognition, communication, discourse, (1), 75-92.
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
Copyright (c) 2022 Linguistics and Culture Review
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
