African American English in the Diaspora

by Poplack, Shana; Tagliamonte, Sali A.

• ISBN13: 9780631212669
• ISBN10: 0631212663
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-10-08
• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Summary

This provocative volume investigates the origins of contemporary African American Vernacular English (AAVE), one of the oldest, yet unsolved, questions in sociolinguistics. Exploring the hypothesis that contemporary AAVE is a direct descendant of colonial British English rather than of a widespread Creole precursor, this volume presents a comprehensive analysis of tense and aspect as manifested in recorded conversations with 101 former slaves and their descendants. The study is staged in three distinct diaspora enclaves in Canada and the Caribbean, whose language has evolved independently of AAVE, modern Creoles and neighboring speech varieties. Advanced quantitative methodology, combined with linguistically precise analyses of English dialects in historical context, make this an essential text for researchers and students of linguistics, the history of English and African American Studies.

Author Biography

Shana Poplack is Professor and Canada Research Chair in Linguistics and Director of the Sociolinguistics Laboratory at the University of Ottawa. An expert in linguistic variation theory and its application to diverse areas of language contact, she has published widely on code-switching, Hispanic linguistics, Canadian French, and numerous aspects of African American English. She is editor of The English History of African American English (Blackwell 1999).

Sali Tagliamonte is based at the University of Toronto. Her research focuses on morph-syntactic variation and change in the evolution of English. Currently she is investigating British dialects and conducting cross-variety comparisons amongst British and North American dialects.

Table of Contents

List of Figures	x
List of Tables	xi
Foreword	xiv
William Labov
Series Editor's Preface	xviii
Preface	xix
Acknowledgments	xxi
Introduction	1	(9)
Preamble	1	(1)
From Synchrony to Diachrony	2	(1)
The African American Diaspora	3	(1)
The Tense/Aspect System	4	(1)
Form/Function Asymmetry	4	(2)
Underlying Structure from Synchronic Variability: A Working Hypothesis	6	(1)
Variation Theory	7	(1)
Comparative Reconstruction	8	(2)
African Americans in the Samana Peninsula	10	(29)
Samana: A Philadelphia Story?	10	(2)
The Role of Pre-revolutionary Philadelphia	12	(3)
The Colonization of Haiti	15	(3)
The ``Americans'' of Samana	18	(2)
Post-settlement Contacts	20	(1)
The Role of the Church	20	(2)
Samana in the Early 1980s	22	(1)
Sample Constitution	23	(10)
Nature of the Data	33	(4)
Summary	37	(2)
African Americans in Nova Scotia: Settlement and Data	39	(30)
African American Immigration to Nova Scotia	39	(1)
Diaspora Settlements	40	(1)
Guysborough	41	(6)
North Preston	47	(5)
African American Enclaves in Nova Scotia	52	(13)
Summary	65	(4)
External Controls	69	(19)
Introduction	69	(1)
The Ex-Slave Recordings	69	(9)
Guysborough ``Village''	78	(3)
Nature of the Data	81	(2)
Mainstream Standard English	83	(1)
Devon	84	(2)
The Ottawa Grammar Resource on Early Variability in English	86	(1)
Summary	86	(2)
Method	88	(15)
The Variationist Approach	88	(7)
The Comparative Method	95	(5)
The Principle of Diagnosticity	100	(1)
Summary	101	(2)
The Past Tense	103	(57)
Introduction	103	(2)
Characterizing the Expression of Past Temporal Reference in AAVE and Creoles	105	(5)
The Enallage of Preterite and Unmarked Pasts in English	110	(4)
Method	114	(3)
The Distribution of Zero Across Morphological Subclasses	117	(6)
Weak Verbs	123	(7)
Strong Verbs	130	(20)
Discussion	150	(10)
Appendix: Non-standard Strong Verb Morphology	152	(8)
The Present Tense	160	(47)
Introduction	160	(1)
A Legacy of Competing Characterizations	161	(4)
Expressing the Present in English-based Creoles	165	(1)
Historical Precursors of -s Variability: The English Connection	166	(2)
Explaining Variability in English: Verbal -s and the Prescriptive Tradition	168	(8)
Non-concord -s Variability in Contemporary Varieties of English	176	(1)
Data and Method	177	(9)
Results	186	(15)
Discussion	201	(6)
The Future Tense	207	(29)
Introduction	207	(1)
Assessing Post-settlement Contact	208	(1)
The Development of Future Marking in English	209	(4)
The Future in Contemporary English	213	(2)
Future Temporal Reference in AAVE and English-based Creoles	215	(2)
Method	217	(1)
Results	218	(14)
Summary and Discussion	232	(4)
Conclusions: An Essay on the Origins and Development of African American English	236	(17)
The Sociodemographic Profile of the Diaspora Communities	236	(2)
Analytical Method	238	(4)
The Structure of the Early AAE Tense/Aspect System	242	(3)
Relationship of Early AAE and Other Varieties of English	245	(5)
The Validity of Early AAE as an Analytical Construct	250	(1)
Epilogue	250	(3)
References	253	(30)
Index	283