Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-fbnjt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-02T20:42:59.825Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Counting and coding the past: Circumscribing the variable context in quantitative analyses of past inflection

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 April 2008

Stephanie Hackert
Affiliation:
Universität Regensburg

Abstract

Accurate circumscription of the variable context is crucial to any quantitative analysis of linguistic variation. Investigations of past inflection in African American Vernacular English and Caribbean English creoles thus generally include a more or less detailed section concerning the inclusion or exclusion of particular forms; the theoretical grounds on which these decisions are made, however, are not always spelled out. Consequently, there still does not seem to be agreement on what precisely constitutes the envelope of variation in such investigations—a fact that not only complicates data extraction and analysis but also hampers cross-variety comparisons. This article summarizes and evaluates previous definitions of the scope and relevant contexts of the variable (ed), providing internal (linguistic) argumentation supporting or contraindicating the inclusion or exclusion of particular tokens. My data stem from a larger study of past temporal reference in the urban variety of Bahamian Creole English (Hackert, Stephanie. [2004]. Urban Bahamian Creole: System and variation. Amsterdam: Benjamins), an intermediate creole with close historical links with Gullah as well as relations with African American Vernacular English, Trinidadian Creole, and Barbadian.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adamson, H. D., Fonseca-Greber, Bonnie, Kataoka, Kuniyoshi, Scardino, Vincent, & Takano, Shoji. (1996). Tense marking in the English of Spanish-speaking adolescents. In Robert Bayley and Dennis Preston (eds.), 121134.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bailey, Guy, Maynor, Natalie, & Cukor-Avila, Patricia. (1991). The emergence of Black English: Texts and commentary. Amsterdam: Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bayley, Robert. (1996). Competing constraints on variation in the speech of adult Chinese learners of English. In Robert Bayley and Dennis Preston (eds.), 97120.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Biber, Douglas, Johansson, Stig, Leech, Geoffrey, Conrad, Susan, & Finegan, Edward. (1999). Longman grammar of spoken and written English. Harlow, UK: Pearson Education.Google Scholar
Bickerton, Derek. (1975). Dynamics of a creole system. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bickerton, Derek. (1981). Roots of language. Ann Arbor, MI: Karoma.Google Scholar
Blake, Renée. (1997a). All o' we is one? Race, class, and language in a Barbados community. Ph.D. dissertation, Stanford University.Google Scholar
Blake, Renée. (1997b). Defining the envelope of linguistic variation: The case of “don't count” forms in the copula analysis of African American Vernacular English. Language Variation and Change 9:5779.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bollée, Annegret. (1977). Le créole français des Seychelles. Tübingen, Germany: Niemeyer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bybee, Joan, Perkins, Revere, & Pagliuca, William. (1994). The evolution of grammar: Tense, aspect, and modality in the languages of the world. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Christian, Donna, Wolfram, Walt, & Dube, Nanjo. (1988). Variation and change in geographically isolated communities: Appalachian English and Ozark English. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press.Google Scholar
Comrie, Bernard. (1976). Aspect: An introduction to the study of verbal aspect and related problems. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Corne, Chris. (1977). Seychelles Creole grammar: Elements for Indian Ocean Proto-Creole reconstruction. Tübingen, Germany: Narr.Google Scholar
Dahl, Östen. (1985). Tense and aspect systems. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Fasold, Ralph. (1972). Tense marking in Black English: A linguistic and social analysis. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics.Google Scholar
Glinton-Meicholas, Patricia. (1995). More talkin' Bahamian. Nassau: Guanima Press.Google Scholar
Hackert, Stephanie. (2004). Urban Bahamian Creole: System and variation. Amsterdam: Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hackert, Stephanie. (2006). Oral narrative and tense in urban Bahamian Creole English. In Deumert, Ana & Durrleman, Stephanie (eds.), Structure and variation in language contact. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 225242.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hackert, Stephanie, & Huber, Magnus. (2007). Gullah in the diaspora: Historical and linguistic evidence from the Bahamas. Diachronica 24–2, 279325.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Holm, John, & Shilling, Alison. (1982). Dictionary of Bahamian English. Cold Spring, NY: Lexik House.Google Scholar
Kang, Hyeon-Seok. (1994). Variation in past-marking and the question of the system in Trinidadian English. In Beals, Katherine, Denton, Jeannette, Knippen, Robert, Melnar, Lynette, Suzuki, Hisami, & Zeinfeld, Erica (eds.), CLS 30: Papers from the 30th regional meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society. Volume 2: The parasession on variation in linguistic theory. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society. 150164.Google Scholar
Kortmann, Bernd. (1991). The triad “tense-aspect-aktionsart”: Problems and possible solutions. Belgian Journal of Linguistics 6:930.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Labov, William. (1982). Building on empirical foundations. In Lehmann, Winfred P. & Malkiel, Yakov (eds.), Perspectives on historical linguistics. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 1792.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Labov, William, & Waletzky, Joshua. (1967). Narrative analysis: Oral versions of personal experience. In Helm, June (ed.), Essays on the verbal and visual arts: Proceedings of the 1966 annual spring meeting of the American Ethnological Society. Seattle: University of Washington Press. 1244.Google Scholar
Labov, William, Cohen, Paul, Robins, Clarence, & Lewis, John. (1968). A study of the Non-standard English of Negro and Puerto Rican speakers in New York City. New York: Columbia University.Google Scholar
Leech, Geoffrey. (1987). Meaning and the English verb. 2nd ed.London/New York: Longman.Google Scholar
Meyer, Paul Georg. (2002). Synchronic English linguistics: An introduction. Tübingen, Germany: Narr.Google Scholar
Milroy, Lesley. (1987). Observing and analysing natural language: A critical account of sociolinguistic method. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Mufwene, Salikoko S.. (1984). Observations on time reference in Jamaican and Guynese creoles. English World-Wide 4:199229.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Patrick, Peter L.. (1991). Creoles at the intersection of variable processes: -t, d deletion and past-marking in the Jamaican mesolect. Language Variation and Change. 3:171189.Google Scholar
Patrick, Peter L.. (1992). Linguistic variation in urban Jamaican Creole: A sociolinguistic study of Kingston, Jamaica. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania.Google Scholar
Patrick, Peter L.. (1999). Urban Jamaican Creole: Variation in the mesolect. Amsterdam: Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Poplack, Shana, & Tagliamonte, Sali. (2001). African American English in the diaspora. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Quirk, Randolph, Greenbaum, Sidney, Leech, Geoffrey, & Svartvik, Jan. (1985). A comprehensive grammar of the English language. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Reichenbach, Hans. (1947). Elements of symbolic logic. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Reinecke, John E., Tsuzaki, Stanley M., DeCamp, David, Hancock, Ian F., & Woods, Richard E.. (1975). A bibliography of pidgin and creole languages. Honolulu: University Press of Hawai'i.Google Scholar
Rickford, John. (1986a). Past marking in the Guyanese mesolect: A close look at Bonnette. In Denning, Keith M., Inkelas, Sharon, McNair-Knox, Faye C., & Rickford, John R. (eds.), Variation in language: NWAV-XV at Stanford. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Department of Linguistics. 379394.Google Scholar
Rickford, John. (1986b). The need for new approaches to social class analysis in sociolinguistics. Language and Communication 6:215221.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sankoff, Gillian. (1990). The grammaticalization of tense and aspect in Tok Pisin and Sranan. Language Variation and Change 2:295312.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schiffrin, D.. (1981). Tense variation in narrative. Language 57:4562.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schreier, Daniel. (2003). Isolation and language change: Sociohistorical and contemporary evidence from Tristan da Cunha English. Houndmills, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Singler, John. (1984). Variation in tense-aspect-modality in Liberian English. Ph.D. dissertation, University of California at Los Angeles.Google Scholar
Smith, Carlota S.. (1997). The Parameter of Aspect. 2nd ed.Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tagliamonte, Sali. (1991). A matter of time: Past temporal reference verbal structures in Samaná English and the ex-slave recordings. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Ottawa.Google Scholar
Tagliamonte, Sali. (1999). Modelling an emergent grammar: Past temporal reference in St. Kitts Creole in the 1780s. In Baker, Philip & Bruyn, Adrienne (eds.), St Kitts and the Atlantic creoles. London: University of Westminster Press. 201236.Google Scholar
Tagliamonte, Sali, & Poplack, Shana. (1988). How Black English past got to the present: Evidence from Samaná. Language in Society 17:513533.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tagliamonte, Sali, & Poplack, Shana. (1993). The zero-marked verb: Testing the creole hypothesis. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 8:171206.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Trask, Robert L.. (1993). A dictionary of grammatical terms in linguistics. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Velupillai, Viveka. (2003). Hawai'i Creole English: A typological analysis of the tense-mood-aspect system. Houndmills, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weldon, Tracey L.. (1996). Past marking in Gullah. In Meyerhoff, Miriam (ed.), University of Pennsylvania working papers in linguistics 3. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania. 6372.Google Scholar
Winford, Donald. (1992). Back to the past: The BEV/creole connection revisited. Language Variation and Change 4:311357.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Winford, Donald. (1993a). Variability in the use of perfect have in Trinidadian English: A problem of categorial and semantic mismatch. Language Variation and Change 5:141187.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Winford, Donald. (1993b). Predication in Caribbean English creoles. Amsterdam: Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wolfram, Walt. (1969). A sociolinguistic description of Detroit Negro speech. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics.Google Scholar
Wolfram, Walt, & Hatfield, Deborah. (1984). Tense marking in second language learning: Patterns of spoken and written English in a Vietnamese community. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics.Google Scholar
Young, Richard, & Bayley, Robert. (1996). VARBRUL analysis for second language acquisition research. In Robert Bayley and Dennis R. Preston (eds.), 253306.CrossRefGoogle Scholar