Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-r5fsc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T01:20:35.006Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Relativization strategies in Earlier African American Vernacular English

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 June 2009

Gunnel Tottie
Affiliation:
University of Zurich
Michel Rey
Affiliation:
University of Zurich

Abstract

This article, which examines the system of relative markers in Early African American English as documented in the Ex-Slave Recordings (Bailey et al., 1991), is intended as a contribution to two areas of research: African American Vernacular English and the system of relativization in English. We found a significantly higher incidence of zero marking in adverbial relatives than in non-adverbial relatives. Among non-adverbial relatives, a variable rule analysis showed that non-humanness of the head as well as the function of the head as subject complement or subject in an existential sentence strongly favored zero relatives, and that prepositional complement heads disfavored zeroes. The lack of wh-relatives aswell as the frequency of zero subject relatives is interpreted as evidence that African American Vernacular English is a dialect of English.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1997

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

REFERENCES

Adamson, H. D. (1992). Social and processing constraints on relative clauses. American Speech 67:123133.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Aitchison, Jean. (1992). Relative clauses in Tok Pisin: Is there a natural pathway? In Gerritsen, Marinel & Stein, Dieter (Eds.), Internal and external factors in syntactic change. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 295316.Google Scholar
Bever, T., & Langendoen, T. (1971). A dynamic model of evolution of language. Linguistic Inquiry 2:433465.Google Scholar
Bever, T., & Langendoen, T. (1972). The interaction of speech perception and grammatical structure in the evolution of language. In Stockwell, R. P. & Macaulay, R. K. S. (Eds.), Linguistic change and generative theory. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 3295.Google Scholar
Bailey, Guy, Maynor, Natalie, & Cukor-Avila, Patricia. (1991). The emergence of Black English. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Ball, Catherine. (1994). Relative pronouns in it-clefts: The last seven centuries. Language Variation and Change 6:179200.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ball, Catherine. (1996). A diachronic study of relative markers in spoken and written English. Language Variation and Change 8:227258.Google Scholar
Cheshire, Jenny. (1982). Variation in an English dialect. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Dekeyser, Xavier. (1984). Relativizers in Early Modern English. A dynamic quantitative study. In Fisiak, Jacek (Ed.), Historical syntax. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 6187.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dekeyser, Xavier. (1986). English contact clauses revisited: A diachronic approach. Folia Linguistica Historica 7:107120.Google Scholar
Dillard, J. L. (1972). Black English: Its history and usage in the United States. New York: Vintage Books.Google Scholar
Fischer, Olga. (1992). Syntax. In Blake, Norman (Ed.), The Cambridge history of the English language, vol. 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 207408.Google Scholar
Fox, Barbara A., & Thompson, Sandra A. (1990). A discourse explanation of the grammar of relative clauses in English conversation. Language 66:297316.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fox, Barbara. (1987). The noun phrase accessibility hierarchy revisited. Language 63:856870.Google Scholar
Guy, Gregory R., & Bayley, Robert. (1995). On the choice of relative pronouns in English. American Speech 70:148162.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hackenberg, Robert. (1972). Appalachian English: a sociolinguistic study. Doctoral dissertation, Georgetown University.Google Scholar
Jespersen, Otto. (1927). A modern English grammar on historical principles. Part III. Heidelberg: Carl Winter.Google Scholar
Keenan, Edward, & Comrie, Bernard. (1977). Noun phrase accessibility and universal grammar. Linguistic Inquiry 8:6399.Google Scholar
Labov, William, & Cohen, Paul. (1973). Some suggestions for teaching standard English to speakers of nonstandard urban dialects. In DeStefano, Johanna S. (Ed.), Language, society and education: A profile of Black English. Worthington, OH: Charles A. Jones. 218237.Google Scholar
Light, Richard. (1969). Syntactic structures in a corpus of non-standard English. Doctoral dissertation, Georgetown University.Google Scholar
Macaulay, Ronald. (1991). Locating dialect in discourse: The language of honest men and bonnie lassies in Ayr. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Martin, Stefan, & Wolfram, Walt, (in press). The sentence in African American Vernacular English. In John Rickford, Salikoko Mufwene, Guy Bailey, & John Baugh (Eds.), The structure of African American Vernacular English. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
McKay, June Rumery. (1969). A partial analysis of a variety of Nonstandard Negro English. Doctoral dissertation, University of California, Berkeley.Google Scholar
Montgomery, Michael. (1991). The linguistic value of the Ex-Slave Recordings. In Bailey, Guy et al. (Eds.), The emergence of Black English. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 173189.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Montgomery, Michael, & Chapman, Curtis. (1992). The pace of change in Appalachian English. In Rissanen, Matti, Ihalainen, Ossi, Nevalainen, Terttu, & Taavitsainen, Irma (Eds.), History of Englishes. New methods and interpretations in historical linguistics. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 624639.Google Scholar
Mufwene, Salikoko. (1986). Restrictive relativization in Gullah. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 1:131.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mustanoja, Tauno. (1960). A Middle English syntax. Part 1: Parts of speech. Mémoires de la Soclété Néophilologique de Helsinki 23.Google Scholar
Myhill, John. (1995). The use of features of present-day AAVE in the Ex-Slave Recordings. American Speech 70:115147.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Olofsson, Arne. (1981). Relative Junctions in written American English. Gothenburg Studies in English 50.Google Scholar
Orton, Harold, Sanderson, Stewart, & Widdowson, John (Eds.). (1978). The linguistic atlas of England. London: Croom Helm.Google Scholar
Quirk, Randolph, Greenbaum, Sidney, Leech, Geoffrey, & Svartvik, Jan. (1985). A comprehensive grammar of the English language. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Quirk, Randolph. (1957). Relative clauses in educated spoken English. English Studies 38:97109.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rand, David, & Sankoff, David. (1990). Goldvarb. Version 2. A variable rule application for the Macintosh. Centre de recherches mathématiques, Université de Montréal.Google Scholar
Rawick, George P. (Ed.). (1972). The American slave: A composite autobiography. Contributions in Afro-American and African studies. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.Google Scholar
Rickford, John R. (1991). Representativeness and reliability of the Ex-Slave narrative materials, with special reference to Wallace Quarterman's recording and transcript. In Bailey, et al. (Eds.), The emergence of Black English. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 192212.Google Scholar
Romaine, Suzanne. (1982). Socio-historical linguistics. Its status and methodology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rydén, Mats. (1966). Relative constructions in early sixteenth century English. With special reference to Sir Thomas Elyot. Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis.Google Scholar
Schneider, Edgar W. (1981). Morphologische und syntaktische Variabeln im amerikanischen Early Black English. Bamberger Beiträge zur englischen Sprachwissenschaft 10. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Schneider, Edgar W. (1982). On the history of Black English in the USA: Some new evidence. English World-Wide 3:1846.Google Scholar
Schneider, Edgar W. (1989). American Earlier Black English. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press.Google Scholar
Smith, Riley B. (1969). Interrelatedness of certain deviant grammatical structures in Negro nonstandard dialects. Journal of English Linguistics 3:8288.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tottie, Gunnel. (1995). The man Ø I love: An analysis of factors favouring zero relatives in written British and American English. In Melchers, Gunnel & Warren, Beatrice (Eds.), Studies in Anglistics. Stockholm Studies in English. Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell. 201215.Google Scholar
Van den Eynden, Nadine. (1993). Syntactic variation and unconscious linguistic change. A study of adjectival relative clauses in the dialect of Dorset. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Wolfram, Walt, & Christian, Donna. (1976). Appalachian speech. Arlington, VA: Center for Applied Linguistics.Google Scholar