History of the language varieties

Historically, JamC phonology represents the output of speakers of West African languages modifying the phonological shape of words coming into their speech from varieties of 17^th century British English (Cassidy and Le Page [1967] 1980: xxxvii–lxiv). Items of English origin make up the vast majority of the lexicon of JamC. Whatever the historical origins of JamC, however, its phonological system is now the native phonological system of the vast majority of language users in Jamaica. Shared lexical cognates, coupled with the historical dominance of English, produces a linguistic ideology which considers JamC to be a form, albeit deviant, of English. JamE in contemporary Jamaica bears the main characteristics of standard varieties of English such as Standard British English, standard varieties used in the USA, Canada, etc. It, however, has features, particularly in its phonology, which mark it as peculiarly Jamaican. For us, JamE is the idealised form of English usage targeted by the educated population of Jamaica.

We propose that nearly all speakers of JamE, as the H language in the Jamaican diglossic situation, are native speakers of the L language, JamC. For them, JamE is a second language acquired mainly through formal education and writing, and is used for purposes of public and formal communication. JamC and JamE are, however, idealized forms of speech. Most actually occurring speech shows varying levels of interaction between each of these idealised systems. This interaction is systematic and rule governed. Against this background, speakers consider that the phonological relationship between the two varieties consists of correction rules applied to the phonological forms of JamC lexical items to produce their JamE equivalents.

Against this background, what we shall attempt here is to describe the phonology of the linguistic abstraction that is JamC and of the other that is JamE. We shall, in addition, attempt to provide evidence for the existence of JamC to JamE conversion rules and identify and describe how these operate. By way of evidence from the intermediate varieties, we shall seek to prove that JamC to JamE conversion rules lie at the core of the relationship between the phonologies of the two idealized language varieties. These rules operate, we shall demonstrate, within a context of the need to achieve a balance. This involves on one side the drive for the systematic convergence between the varieties to facilitate speakers shifting between them. On the other side is the need to maintain the separation between the two language varieties since, by remaining distinct, the varieties could carry out complementary social functions. We shall refer to this process as differential convergence.