On the influence of the standard norm of Haïtian Creole on the Cap Haïtien dialect / Albert Valdman, Anne-José Villeneuve and Jason F. Siegel

Albert Valdman

Amsterdam/ Philadelphia : John Benjamins Publishing Company,

"Among French-based creoles, Haitian Creole has the highest degree of standardization, with a written norm, Standard Haitian Creole (SHC), based on Port- au-Prince monolinguals'speech. To evaluate the influence of SHC on regional varieties, we conducted, in and around Cap Haitien, a sociolinguistic study of Northern Haitian Creole (Capois). In addition to stereotypical features such as the possessive kin a + pronoun (vs. SHC pa + pronoun), we uncovered several features still in widespread use in Northern Haiti. In this article, we focus most frequently occurring variable, the third person singular pronoun (3sg) wich alternates between SHC li/l, and Capois i/y. We show that SHC li has yet to replace Capois i, which is preferred by a large proportion of community members. For both the rural and urban populations, this variable is conditioned by syntactic and phonological factors. Despite shared tendencies, urban speakers' lower rate of Capois variant use and stronger phonological conditioning may be due to their greater exposure to speakers» from other areas of Haïti, and to closer contact with the standard. Although most speakers, especially older ones, recognized SHC's higher prestige, they evidenced more positive attitudes."

Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages

0920-9034