Leading specialists on Cajun French and Louisiana Creole examine dialectology and sociolinguistics in this volume, the first comprehensive treatment of the linguistic situation of francophone Louisiana and its relation to the current development of French in North America outside of Quebec. Topics discussed include: language shift and code mixing speaker attitudes the role of schools and media in the maintenance of these languages and such language planning initiatives as the CODOFIL program to revive the sue of French in Louisiana. £/LIST£
The Dictionary of Louisiana French (DLF) provides the richest inventory of French vocabulary in Louisiana and reflects precisely the speech of the period from 1930 to the present. This dictionary describes the current usage of French-speaking peoples in the five broad regions of South Louisiana: the coastal marshes, the banks of the Mississippi River, the central area, the north, and the western prairie. Data were collected during interviews from at least five persons in each of twenty-four areas in these regions. In addition to the data collected from fieldwork, the dictionary contains material compiled from existing lexical inventories, from texts published after 1930, and from archival recordings. The new authoritative resource, the DLF not only contains the largest number of words and expressions but also provides the most complete information available for each entry. Entries include the word in the conventional French spelling, the pronunciation (including attested variants), the part of speech classification, the English equivalent, and the word's use in common phrases. The DLF features a wealth of illustrative examples derived from fieldwork and textual sources and identification of the parish where the entry was collected or the source from which it was compiled. An English-to-Louisiana French index enables readers to find out how particular notions would be expressed in la Louisiane .
A conventional wisdom among creolists is that creole is a sociohistorical term only: that creole languages share a particular history entailing adults rapidly acquiring a language usually under conditions of subordination, but that structurally they are indistinguishable from other languages. The articles by John H. McWhorter collected in this volume demonstrate that this is in fact untrue. Creole languages, while complex and nuanced as all human languages are, are delineable from older languages as the result of their having come into existence only a few centuries ago. Then adults learn a language under untutored conditions, they abbreviate its structure, focusing upon features vital to communication and shaving away most of the features useless to communication that bedevil those acquiring the language non-natively. When they utilize their rendition of the language consistently enough to create a brand-new one, this new creation naturally evinces evidence of its youth: specifically, a much lower degree of the random accretions typical in older languages, which only develop over vast periods of time. The articles constitute a case for this thesis based on both broad, cross-creole ranges of data and focused expositions referring to single creole languages. The book presents a general case for a theory of language contact and creolization in which not only transfer from source languages but also structural reduction plays a central role, based on facts whose marginality of address in creole studies has arisen from issues sociopolitical as well as scientific. For several decades the very definition of the term creole has been elusive even among creole specialists. This book attempts to forge a path beyond the inter- and intra-disciplinary misunderstandings and stalemates that have resulted from this, and to demonstrate the place that creoles might occupy in other linguistic subfields, including typology, language contact, and syntactic theory.
A compelling argument for why creoles are their own unique entity, which have developed independently of other processes of language development and change.
The most authoritative guide ever published to the world's pidgin and creole languages. The 3-volume Survey describes their histories and linguistic characteristics. The Atlas of Pidgins and Creoles, published at the same time, shows how 130 linguistic features are distributed among the world's languages.
The Atlas presents commentaries and colour maps showing how 130 linguistic features - phonological, syntactic, morphological, and lexical - are distributed among the world's pidgins and creoles. Designed and written by the world's leading experts, it is a unique resource of outstanding value for linguists of all persuasions throughout the world.
This accessible textbook offers students the opportunity to explore for themselves a wide range of sociolinguistic issues relating to the French language and its role in societies around the world. It is written for undergraduate students who have a sound practical knowledge of French but who has little or no knowledge of linguistics or sociolinguistics. It combines text with practical exercises and discussion questions to stimulate readers to think for themselves and to tackle specific problems. In Part One Rodney Ball looks at the diversity of the French-speaking world and the function of French in particular countries and regions, including Switzerland, Belgium and Canada. He explores its status in relation to other languages and its role in intercommunity relations. In Part Two the focus shifts to individual language features and among topics explored are regional speech forms, the differences between written and spoken French, the `social meaning' of different styles and levels of language, and French used by immigrants. Part Three looks at recent developments in the French language particularly in France itself. Key features of this book: * Informative and comprehensive: covers a wide range of current issues * Practical: contains a variety of graded exercises and tasks plus an index of terms * Topical and contemporary: deals with current situations and provides up-to-date illustrative material * Thought-provoking: encourages students to reflect and research for themselves Rodney Ball is a lecturer in French in the School of Modern Languages, Southampton University. He teaches General Linguistics and French Sociolinguistics, on which he has published a number of articles, and is involved in designing practical courses.