Mervyn Coleridge Alleyne (Trinidad and Tobago, 13 June 1933 - 23 November 2016) was a sociolinguist, creolist and dialectologist whose work focused on the creole languages of the Caribbean. He attended Queen's Royal College in Port-of-Spain and later won a scholarship to the fledgling University College of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica which he entered in 1953. After graduating from Mona, Alleyne obtained a PhD from the University of Strasbourg, France. He returned to the University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona as a lecturer in 1959, and was made Professor of Sociolinguistics in 1982. He returned to his homeland for a brief spell and lectured at the St Augustine campus of the UWI. He was a Visiting Professor at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras.