Course Outline:
1) Social significance of Jamaican (Attitude to its use);
2) Introduction to the consonants and vowels of Jamaican and to the Cassidy Writing System and problems of orthography;
3) The phonological/sound system;
4) Basic elements of grammatical structure, i.e. predicator types, noun phrases, negation, question formation, cleft sentences, serial verb construction;
5) The vocabulary, inclusive of reduplication, compounding, multi-functionality, aftixation, coining, techniques available for lexical expansion and standardisation;
6) Discourse types, rhetorical devices inclusive of politeness marking, segmenting of discourse, topticalisation;
7) The notion of the Creole-to-English continuum, and code switching; jamaican in Literature;
9) Using Jamaican in non-traditional circumstances, as a language of academic and educated intellectual discourse, of formality, of administration;
10) Practicum.