Some general phonological features of Eastern Caribbean Englishderived languages

It is worth remembering that the varieties of English that Africans in the Western Hemisphere originally heard were regional, social, and ethnic (e.g. Irish and Scottish) dialects of British English as spoken in the 17-19^th centuries. As Africans and African-descended peoples began to acquire English forms, initially as a second language, they would have heard varieties of English spoken by Europeans and whatever earlier restructured forms they might have heard on the West African coast or perhaps at slave entrepots in the Caribbean such as St. Eustatius or St. Kitts. Later, as local varieties began to emerge in the decades to follow, slaves would have acquired local varieties as first-languages or as native speaker varieties as spoken in the relevant communities by peoples of both African and European descent. Thus, from a diachronic perspective, English-derived Caribbean varieties in general are more British-oriented in their phonology, though in the last century American and Canadian influence can be expected and documented.

There appear to be some satisfactory reasons for linguistically dividing the region of the Caribbean into geographical-designated Western and Eastern varieties on the basis of comparative phonology and syntax. However, the grounds for this division are largely abstract and impressionistic since it is my experience, having done fieldwork in both general locations, that there are few specific features that one may absolutely find in one region that cannot be found in the other. In general, creolists are often comfortable with the highly questionable assumption that earlier varieties of creole languages were monolithic and contemporary synchronic variation is a more recent (i.e. post-emancipation) phenomenon. Whether these overlapping patterns represent parallel historical developments or are due to intra-Caribbean migration, especially in the post-emancipation period, is open to debate. Aceto and Williams (2003) focused on the Eastern Caribbean simply because the locations that comprise this chain of islands have rarely if ever been documented via fieldwork. However, as has been made clear in dialect studies over the last 50 years, it is not any specific feature that is diagnostic of a dialect (whether it be a regional, ethnic, or social one), but the bundle of features that is associated with a particular designation. And it is on these grounds that one may find some validity in the motivation for separating Caribbean Englishes into Western and Eastern varieties. However, due to the lack of research in the Eastern Caribbean, no table of “typical” Anglophone Eastern Caribbean speakers and their sound segments can be considered to be accurate and inclusive at this point in time. Many of the islands of the region have never been documented via linguistic fieldwork.

I discuss some phonetic/phonological features found in the general Eastern Caribbean (while making reference to features believed to be representative of the Western Caribbean as well), and then discuss specific islands and their English-derived varieties. It should be acknowledged that we do not have much research on many of these varieties, at least when compared to the impressive amount of research carried out on, say, Jamaica and the Surinamese Creole languages. The Surinamese Creoles are ignored in this discussion. However, though not specifically considered, the geographically proximate English-derived languages spoken in the Bahamas (which is often geographically linked with North American varieties of English such as Turks and Caicos and Gullah rather than the Eastern Caribbean, though included in Aceto and Williams (2003) because of its general proximity), Trinidad, Barbados, and Guyana are referenced occasionally for comparative purposes since their creole language varieties manifest some phonological similarities with the Anglophone Eastern Caribbean chain in general.