Acquiring language in a Creole setting: Theoretical and methodological issues

Abstract

The study of language acquisition requires that the analyst identify the learner's target and have available a grammatical description of the target. In the case of the Caribbean Creole environment, special caution is required in identifying the learner's target because substantial variation is intrinsic to the input and ambient language. Existing studies of language varieties in the region must not be assumed to provide appropriate descriptions of the input or ambient language for a particular learner. Both the description of the language to be acquired and the account of the process of acquisition must be based on the same corpus produced in the same learning environment by the learner and the participants in his language socialization. The corpus can be enhanced by eliciting from the participants their notion of what the learner is attempting to say and ought to be saying. This procedure is important for providing access, not only to notions of grammaticality, but also notions of appropriateness. Given the interlock between speech behaviour and identity in these settings, attention must be devoted to the acquisition of the ability to manipulate socially linked variants of a variable