New Publication by Professor Slade

The Department on Linguistics congratulates Professor Benjamin Slade on his new publication in the Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages. Below you can find a short description on his publication as well as a link to view more. Congratulations Professor Slade!

Overstanding Idren: Special features of Rasta Talk morphology 

This study examines two distinctive neologistic processes within Rasta Talk, a speech variety found primarily in Jamaica and other parts of the Caribbean. (1) *Overstanding* is morphological refashioning of a word that replaces morphemes (actual or perceived) which are misaligned with respect to the connotations of the word itself. Thus the word "understanding", bearing positive connotations, is repaired by transforming the negatively mis-connotating sub-component "under-" into "over-". (2) *Iformation* is the targeting of (depending on a word’s structure) either the first syllable or the first segment for replacement by /ai/ or /j/; e.g. "ancient" and "food" become "I-cient" and "yood", respectively. These two processes contribute greatly to the salient properties of Rasta Talk, and involve a large degree of complexity which merits detailed scrutiny.

 https://benjamins.com/catalog/jpcl.00017.sla

 Slade, Benjamin. 2018. Overstanding Idren: Special features of Rasta Talk morphology. _Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages_ 33.2: 280–306.