John Victor Singler

Ph.D. 1984 (linguistics), M.A. 1979 (linguistics), California (Los Angeles); M.A. 1976 (African studies), London; B.A. 1969 (history), Dartmouth College.

Sociolinguistics; pidgins and creoles; African American English; phonology.

Past President, Society of Pidgin and Creole Linguistics; Associate Editor, Studies in African Linguistics.

National Science Foundation Grant, An African-American Linguistic Enclave: The Settler English of Sinoe County, Liberia; NYU Research Challenge Fund Grant, with Renée Blake and Gregory Guy, New York City English: A sociolinguistic study; Fulbright U.S. Senior Research Scholar, African Region, Syntactic Innovation in the Liberian English of Monrovia.

Selected Publications

[with Silvia Kouwenberg] The Handbook of Pidgin and Creole Studies. Chichester, West Sussex, and Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. 2008.

Samaná and Sinoe, I and II. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages, 22. 2007. Nos. 1,2.

Yes, but not in the Caribbean. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages, 21. 2006. 337-358.

[with Gareth Griffiths] Guanya Pau, a Story of an African Princess, by Joseph Jeffrey Walters. An annotated edition with an introductory essay. Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press. 2004.

Liberian Settler English—Phonology, and The Morphology and Syntax of Liberian Settler English. In A Handbook of Varieties of English, Vols. 1 and 2, respectively. ed. Bernd Kortmann, Edgar W Schneider, Clive Upton, Rajend Mesthrie & Kate Burridge. Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter. 2004.  Vol. 1, 65-75; Vol. 2, 879-897.

The “Linguistic” Asylum Interview and the Linguist’s Evaluation of it, with Special Reference to Applicants for Liberian Political Asylum in Switzerland.  The International Journal of Speech, Language and the Law: Forensic Linguistics, 11.2004. 222-39.

[with Philipp Angermeyer] The Case for Politeness: Pronoun variation in Co-Ordinate NP’s in Object Position in English. Language Variation and Change, 15. 2003. 169-207.