I'm very happy to see the setting up of this new list. My post is Professor
of Phonetics at University College London, and my work does not mainly
relate specifically to Caribbean linguistics. My PhD, however, did, being
an investigation of the pronunciation of young adult Jamaican-born people
in London (some 30 years ago). It was published as "Jamaican Pronunciation
in London" (Oxford: Blackwell, 1973).
In my book Accents of English (CUP 1982), vol. 3, there is a chapter on the
Caribbean, with separate sections on the pronunciation of English in
Jamaica, Trinidad, Guyana, the Bahamas, the Leewards, and Barbados.
More recently I have been interested in Montserratian Creole. I know many
Montserratians in London, and travel to Montserrat frequently. Until it was
destroyed by the volcano, my Montserratian partner and I had a house on the
island (see http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/wells/villa.htm). I wrote an
article about Montserrat pronunciation that was published in JIPA. You can
see it on the web at http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/wells/brogue.htm .
We have a vigorous Montserrat e-mail list called mni-info, The Electronic
Evergreen (after the evergreen tree in Plymouth where people used to meet
to exchange gossip and information). I quite often contribute linguistic
postings to it. I'll copy to this list the most recent one I wrote.
My current research involves a survey of British pronunciation preferences,
part of the preparatory work for a planned new edition of my Longman
Pronunciation Dictionary. See
http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/wells/poll98.htm, where you can also read a
first report of the findings.
John Wells
Prof. J.C. Wells, Head of Dept.
Phonetics and Linguistics, UCL
0171-380 7175, fax 0171-383 4108
www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/wells/home.htm
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