Jill Paterson has won a prestigious award for her work on documenting Grenadian English Creole.
A Gates Cambridge Scholar has become the first Grenadian to win an award for outstanding achievement from the Society for Caribbean Linguistics.
Jill Paterson, who is also the first Gates Cambridge Scholar from Grenada, won the John Reinecke Prize for her undergraduate work at the University of the West Indies, Trinidad and Tobago, where she did a BA in English Language and Literature with Education.
The prize is awarded annually to the most outstanding student on each University of West Indies and University of Guyana campus in Linguistics. It is in honour of the linguistic pioneer in Caribbean Linguistics John E Reinecke, who was a pioneer in the scientific study of contact languages such as pidgins and creoles.
A former teacher, Jill [2012] is doing an MPhil in Theoretical and Applied Linguistics focusing on a detailed phonological analysis of the main vernacular in Grenada – Grenadian English Creole.
She said: “The joy that comes from dissecting a Creole language is unmatchable. This award is a blessing and I take from it the noble responsibility of contributing to Reinecke’s vision for contact languages through my documentation of Grenadian English Creole.”
Picture credit: Robin Denton and Creative Commons.
