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Verbal Morphology in Cajun Vernacular English

A Comparison with Other Varieties of Southern English

Louisiana State University

Barbara M. Horvath

University of Sydney

Cajun English is spoken in French-dominant rural areas of south Louisiana. The authors present morphosyntactic evidence to show that Cajun English is a vernacular originating in the Louisiana Cajun speech communities and is not the result of dialect spread or faulty language learning. The features of Cajun English reported on are (1) -S Absence, (2) -ED Absence, (3) IS Absence, (4) ARE Absence, and (4) WAS Leveling (was in Standard English were contexts). A comparison of the results of this study with a large number of similar sociolinguistic studies reveals that Cajun English differs both quantitatively and qualitatively from other varieties of Southern English. In many cases, the amount of deletion, especially for the older speakers who learned French as their first language, is well above any other reported results; the qualitative difference is revealed when the authors examine the widespread deletion of final consonants in general.

Key Words: Louisiana • English • Cajun • French • sociolinguistics

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