30.2607, Books: Ship English: Delgado

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-30-2607. Mon Jul 01 2019. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 30.2607, Books: Ship English: Delgado

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Date: Mon, 01 Jul 2019 17:49:55
From: Sebastian Nordhoff [Sebastian.Nordhoff at langsci-press.org]
Subject: Ship English: Delgado

 


Title: Ship English 
Subtitle: Sailors’ speech in the early colonial Caribbean 
Series Title: Studies in Caribbean Languages  

Publication Year: 2019 
Publisher: Language Science Press
	   http://langsci-press.org
	

Book URL: http://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/166 


Author: Sally Delgado

Electronic: ISBN:  9783961101511 Pages: 340 Price: Europe EURO 0 Comment: Open Access


Abstract:

This book presents evidence in support of the hypothesis that Ship English of
the early Atlantic colonial period was a distinct variety with characteristic
features. It is motivated by the recognition that late-seventeenth and
early-eighteenth century sailors’ speech was potentially an influential
variety in nascent creoles and English varieties of the Caribbean, yet few
academic studies have attempted to define the characteristics of this speech.
Therefore, the two principal aims of this study were, firstly, to outline the
socio-demographics of the maritime communities and examine how variant
linguistic features may have developed and spread among these communities,
and, secondly, to generate baseline data on the characteristic features of
Ship English. The methodology’s data collection strategy targeted written
representations of sailors’ speech prepared or published between the dates
1620 and 1750, and prioritized documents that were composed by working
mariners. These written representations were then analyzed following a mixed
methods triangulation design that converged the qualitative and quantitative
data to determine plausible interpretations of the most likely spoken forms.
Findings substantiate claims that there was a distinct dialect of English that
was spoken by sailors during the period of early English colonial expansion.
They also suggest that Ship English was a sociolect formed through the mixing,
leveling and simplification processes of koinization. Indicators suggest that
this occupation-specific variety stabilized and spread in maritime communities
through predominantly oral speech practices and strong affiliations among
groups of sailors. It was also transferred to port communities and sailors’
home regions through regular contact between sailors speaking this sociolect
and the land-based service-providers and communities that maintained and
supplied the fleets. Linguistic data show that morphological characteristics
of Ship English are evident at the word-level, and syntactic characteristics
are evident not only in phrase construction but also at the larger clause and
sentence levels, whilst discourse is marked by characteristic patterns of
subordination and culture-specific interjection patterns. The newly-identified
characteristics of Ship English detailed here provide baseline data that may
now serve as an entry point for scholars to integrate this language variety
into the discourse on dialect variation in Early Modern English period and the
theories on pidgin and creole genesis as a result of language contact in the
early colonial period.
 



Linguistic Field(s): Historical Linguistics

Subject Language(s): English (eng)


Written In: English  (eng)

See this book announcement on our website: 
http://linguistlist.org/pubs/books/get-book.cfm?BookID=136573




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