Pitcairn

Creole languages and island vernacular architectures

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Palmerston Island church and other buildings

It is my belief that analogies between Creole linguistic patterns and West Indian vernacular architecture are valid and important. When well constructed, they should open up many important avenues for further research in Caribbean architectural ethnography. They must not be drawn too specifically, however, or they will remain unproductive. Similarities between these two institutions of West Indian culture relate more directly to sociocultural processes than to specific forms. One should begin not only with the forms of the Creole language, but with the dynamic interrelationships between all levels of the post-creole speech continuum. Both architecture and language are forms of social symbolic communication. In both, the adoption of specific forms from a scale of possible alternatives symbolizes one’s identity, values

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Island languages

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Unknown 21 1

Why do so many linguists undertake research on islands and study the languages of islands? For some researchers, it is appealing from a common sense perspective: Islands are often socially and geographically isolated, the cultural traditions that thrive on such islands are often unique due to the relative isolation of the community, and researchers make the logical leap that this uniqueness could also characterize the island community’s speech. Despite these facts, islands as specific research sites in their own right have been given little direct attention by linguists. The physical segregation, distinctness, and isolation of islands from mainland and continental environments may provide scholars of language with distinct and robust sets of singular and combined case studies for examining the … ↪