ABSTRACT
This paper discusses how Spanish spoken by Dominicans on St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands, shows evidence of influence from English-language features that are consistent with Dominican Spanish in other contact environments and some new features that are emerging as the result of uniquely St. Thomas English Creole (STTEC) influences. The most notable feature is the appearance of the mid low front vowel /ɛ/ in Dominican Spanish, which in STTEC is highly indexical of St. Thomian identity.
St. Thomians, who speak a dialect of Carribean English on St. Thomas, pronounce a vowel that they know consciously or unconsciously to be St. Thomian. It indicates not socioeconomic class, but knowing when and how to use it can prove or disprove the authenticity of the speaker’s claim to St. Thomian identity. If you can use it convincingly, you are one of us, say the St. Thomians; you belong here, or as they would say, you belong [hɛ]. Fieldwork revealed that St. Thomian speakers held strongly to this vowel and its associated speech act of claiming “I am St. Thomian” when speaking to a person perceived to be a visitor; to accommodate foreign listeners, St. Thomian speakers were more likely to vary other elements in the same syllable where /ɛ/ is pronounced, such as vowel length and R-fullness before leveling this vowel. So in just one same syllable, St. Thomians may be finding ways to do different social acts: claim their identity and accommodate the listener.
The presence or absence of the STTEC mid low front vowel (ɛ) in Dominican Spanish on St. Thomas can be predicted by the following phonological segment, the stress on the syllable in which the vowel occurs and whether the language of the word or phrase it appears in was Spanish or English. The appearance of this vowel can also be predicted by the answers the speakers provided regarding the relative strength of their social network ties to the Dominican community and their answer to the question of self-ascribed identity.
