Copula variability in Gullah

Abstract

Many researchers have investigated the copula for possible links between African American Vernacular English (aave) and Atlantic Creoles, a connection that has served as the foundation of the Creolist Hypothesis in the ongoing debate over the origins of aave. One variety that has been of particular interest in this debate is Gullah, which has been hypothetically linked to aave since some of the earliest statements of the Creolist Hypothesis. To date, however, very little research has been done on copula variability in Gullah itself. This study, therefore, provides an analysis of copula variability in present affirmative contexts in Gullah. Variation is found among full, contracted, and zero forms in 1st person singular, plural02nd person singular, and 3rd person singular environments. The analysis also reveals some parallels between Gullah and aave that offer support for the theory of an aave0creole connection.

Stereotypes, variation and change: Understanding the change of coronal sonorants in a rural variety of Modern Greek

“…A fair assessment of the data, then, would be that the language of the interviews may not truly represent the vernacular of young speakers. In more intimate settings, their speech may include more palatalized tokens of /li/ and /ni/ than what is reported in this study, as is the case with the stigmatized variants in the studies of Weldon (2003:41) on Gullah and Hazen (2004:251) on the Warren county variety. One has to wonder, however, which of the two patterns is more representative of a participant's linguistic behavior, especially when we take into consideration that he or she may have aspirations that transcend their locally defined identity and may be searching for roles and identities (Le Page & Tabouret-Keller, 1985) that are more in step with supralocal standards.…”

“…Studies of variation and change in rural communities, where the overall population is smaller and tends to be less heterogeneous than that of urban centers, have been able to integrate the two approaches. This is true not only in recent publications (e.g., Hazen, 2004; Labov, 2001; Weldon, 2003) but is also the case in Labov (1963), one of the inaugural publications of sociolinguistics, as Eckert (2000) pointed out. Such studies have been able to present both the general pattern of variation in the community and the way in which more compact groups (e.g., social networks or communities of practice), or even individuals participate in the overall pattern.…”

“…This is true not only in recent publications (e.g., Hazen, 2004;Labov, 2001;Weldon, 2003) but is also the case in Labov (1963), one of the inaugural publications of sociolinguistics, as Eckert (2000) pointed out. This is true not only in recent publications (e.g., Hazen, 2004;Labov, 2001;Weldon, 2003) but is also the case in Labov (1963), one of the inaugural publications of sociolinguistics, as Eckert (2000) pointed out.…”

“…The degree to which the data depart from this ideal depends on many factors, key among them being how both the interviewer and the interview process are perceived by the participants (especially as it relates to the power relationship between interviewer and interviewee), the topic of discussion, the presence of others (active or passive) during the interviews, as well as the identity and worldview of the participants themselves. The normalizing effect that the sociolinguistic interview has on speakers seems to be especially significant in the case of stigmatized variants as observed by Weldon (2003) and Hazen (2004).…”

New Perspectives on African American English: The Role of Black-to-Black Contact

“…Little research exists on the nature and linguistic outcomes of past and present-day contact between AAE and Geechee and its effects on the African American language varieties spoken in Georgia (but see Stewart, 1968; Weldon, 1998, 2003a, 2003b; and Kautzsch & Schneider, 2000 for South Carolina). In South Carolina, for example, Kautzsch and Schneider (2000) provide evidence to suggest that AAE varieties spoken in the coastal mainland were once more similar to Gullah/Geechee than they are today, particularly in areas where African Americans outnumbered whites.…”