Jason F Siegel | University of the West Indies- Cave Hill (Barbados) (original) (raw)

Papers by Jason F Siegel

While lexicography in the Hispanophone Caribbean has flourished, and to a lesser extent in the te... more While lexicography in the Hispanophone Caribbean has flourished, and to a lesser extent in the territories of the Caribbean whose official language is English, dictionaries of the French-official Caribbean (except Haiti) have been quite limited. But for the rest of the French-official Caribbean, there remains much work to do. In this paper, I assess the state of lexicography in the French-official Caribbean, as well as the possibilities for future work. There are six principal areas of lexicographic documentation to be developed. The first, most urgent task is the documentation of the endangered St Barth French. The next priority is multilingual lexicography for the Caribbean region. The third priority is multilingual lexicography of French Guiana, home to endangered Amerindian, Creole and immigrant languages. Fourth, there is a largely pristine area of lexicographic work for the English varieties of the French Caribbean. The fifth area of work to be developed is monolingual lexicog...

In resources as varied as an introductory textbook on French phonology and morphology, dictionari... more In resources as varied as an introductory textbook on French phonology and morphology, dictionaries, language planning articles, and computational linguistics talks, it is frequently mentioned that the word enceinte (pregnant) is rare among adjectives for having gender specified in the lexicon. I argue that this specification is unnecessary. First, there is no morphological evidence showing how enceinte behaves differently from any other invariable adjective in French. For many speakers, the incongruity of a sentence like Le capitaine Prieur est enceinte (Captain Prieur is pregnant) would therefore be principally a semantic or sociolinguistic issue. Conversely, many speakers do object to the above sentence, saying that the use of the feminine is improper, which would suggest that the adjective has no underlying gender for these speakers. By ruling out the notion that enceinte is an exceptional adjective, we can avoid unnecessary complications of the French gender system.

Dictionaries: Journal of the Dictionary Society of North America, 2019

Sociolinguistic Studies, 2019

Inheritance and innovation in a colonial language: Towards a usage-based account of French Guiane... more Inheritance and innovation in a colonial language: Towards a usage-based account of French Guianese Creole William Jennings and Stefan Pfänder (2018) London: Palgrave Macmillan. Pp. 240 ISBN: 978-3-319-61951-4

Among French-based creole languages, Haitian Creole is the one with the highest degree of standar... more Among French-based creole languages, Haitian Creole is the one with the highest degree of standardization. The written norm, Standard Haitian Creole (SHC), is based on the speech of monolinguals of the capital area, Port-au-Prince, rather than on the variety (kreyòl swa) of the politically and economically powerful Creole-French bilingual minority. For instance, the front rounded vowels and postvocalic /r/ of the latter are absent from SHC, which is spreading to the rest of the country through the media and the educational system. In order to evaluate the diffusion of SHC, a sociolinguistic study of Northern Haitian Creole (Capois) was conducted in and around Cape Haitian, whose spoken variety diverges most from SHC. In addition to stereotypical features such as the possessive kin a + pronoun (vs. SHC pa + pronoun), we uncovered several Capois features-some of which were first described in Étienne (1974)-still in widespread use in Northern Haiti. In this article, we focus on the most frequently occurring variable, the third person singular pronoun (3SG), which alternates between SHC li/l, and Capois i/y. Using a corpus of 24 speakers, we show that SHC li has yet to replace Capois i, which is preferred by a large proportion of community members (90%; N=2,823) and used categorically in the existential context i gen 'there is/are'. For both the rural and urban populations, this variable is conditioned by syntactic and phonological factors. In subject position, the Capois or the full SHC variants are favored before a consonant, while the reduced SHC form l is the only variant favored before a vowel. In object position, Capois and SHC variants are in near perfect complementary distribution: the Capois variant occurs (near-)categorically after a vowel, and SHC variants occur (near-)categorically after a consonant. Despite these shared tendencies, we found a lower rate of Capois variant use in urban speakers, which may be due to their greater exposure to speakers from other areas of Haiti, to the media (especially television), and closer contact with middle class bilingual speakers who are more influencedby the standard emanating from Port-au-Prince.

Káñina, 2017

Esta presentación describe el trabajo del Centro de Lexicografía Caribeña durante los pasados ... more Esta presentación describe el trabajo del Centro de Lexicografía Caribeña durante los pasados cuarenta y dos años, desde su establecimiento como un solo proyecto lexicográfico del inglés caribeño, a través del establecimiento del proyecto lexicográfico multilingüe caribeño hasta la combinación de los dos proyectos en un solo Centro de Lexicografía Caribeña. Demuestra el trabajo del pasado por Richard Allsopp, quien fundó el primer proyecto y, y su esposa Jeannette Allsopp, quien le acompañó en producir el Diccionario del uso del inglés caribeño (1996) y más tarde, los esfuerzos de ésta de extender el trabajo a las otras lenguas mayores oficiales del Caribe, y hacerlo multilingüe, redactando primero el Suplemento al Diccionario del uso del inglés caribeño y más tarde el Diccionario multilingüe del Caribe en inglés, francés, criollo francés y español (2003). También explica que este trabajo no se limita sólo a la producción lexicográfica, sino a progr...

Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages, 2015

ABSTRACT Among French-based creoles, Haitian Creole has the highest degree of standardization, wi... more ABSTRACT Among French-based creoles, Haitian Creole has the highest degree of standardization, with a written norm, Standard Haitian Creole (SHC), based on Port-au-Prince monolinguals’ speech. To evaluate the influence of SHC on regional varieties, we conducted, in and around Cap Haïtien, a sociolinguistic study of Northern Haitian Creole (Capois). In addition to stereotypical features such as the possessive kin a + pronoun (vs. SHC pa + pronoun), we uncovered several Capois features still in widespread use in Northern Haiti. In this article, we focus on the most frequently occurring variable, the third person singular pronoun (3sg), which alternates between SHC li/l, and Capois i/y. We show that SHC li has yet to replace Capois i, which is preferred by a large proportion of community members. For both the rural and urban populations, this variable is conditioned by syntactic and phonological factors. Despite shared tendencies, urban speakers’ lower rate of Capois variant use and stronger phonological conditioning may be due to their greater exposure to speakers from other areas of Haiti, and to closer contact with the standard. Although most speakers, especially older ones, recognized SHC’s higher prestige, they evidenced more positive attitudes toward their own speech.

resources.oncourse.iu.edu

Gender in language: classic questions, new contexts, Jan 1, 2008

This study looks at the often invoked but frequently vague notion of decreolization in studies of... more This study looks at the often invoked but frequently vague notion of decreolization in studies of creole languages and language contact. Departing from the notion that scientific terms should have clearly bounded definitions and unique denotata, the notion of decreoliza-tion is examined in terms of its target, internal coherence, and difference with other linguistic processes. I conclude with a proposal to abandon the term decreolization in favor of terms applicable to all languages such as debasilectalization.

Talks by Jason F Siegel