Barbudan Creole English

Abstract

This article presents some of the core grammatical features of Barbudan Creole English, an Anglophone language that has never been described in the linguistics or creolistics literature. It begins with a historical presentation of Barbuda within the British colonial world, discussing the island's unusual social configuration regarding the use of African slaves and its role in producing goods for plantations in nearby Antigua. The grammatical presentation focuses on the preverbal markers as well as other features and provides some comparative data mostly between Antiguan Creole English and Barbudan.

Statian Creole English: an English‐derived language emerges in the Dutch Antilles1

“…That is, the vowel of the verb go seems to have affected the vowel of the pronoun mi . I have documented a similar pattern in Barbuda (Aceto, 2002b: 233–4).…”

“…Statians have several options for indicating plurality in their language. The common Anglophone Eastern Caribbean plural marker [an dɛm] (see Aceto, 2002b) is heard in St Eustatius but it is less common than simple post‐nominal [dɛm]. In at least one instance in (10) below, the data reveal a common dialect construction with prenominal [dɛm] that indicates not only possession but plurality as well.…”

“…28 28 The potential future tense marker gwain , which is so common in the western Caribbean, was also rejected in other Anglophone Eastern Caribbean research locations such as Barbuda (see Aceto, 2002b) and Dominica (Aceto, forthcoming). …”