On the history of Black English in the USA

Schneider, Edgar W.

doi:10.1075/eww.3.1.03sch

Cited by 54 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…The last decade has also seen an independent rise 0 f interest in analyzing the few historical representations of AAVE available: in particular, the "WPA Ex-slave Narratives" (e.g., Brewer, 1974Brewer, , 1979Brewer, , 1986Pitts, 1981Pitts, , 1986Schneider, 1982Schneider, , 1983aSchneider, , 1989, a massive compendium of interviews conducted with elderly former slaves in the 1930s. Based on the assumption that informants did not make major adjustments to their vernacular over their lifetime, these materials arc taken to reflect the BE spoken in the mid-19th century.…”

Section: Real-time Evidence On Aavementioning

confidence: 99%

African American English in the diaspora: Evidence from old-line Nova Scotians

1991

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In this article, we describe a new research project on African Nova Scotian English (ANSE), a variety spoken by descendants of African American slaves who immigrated to Nova Scotia in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Subsequent segregation from surrounding populations has created a situation favoring retention of the vernacular, in conjunction with Standard English. In addition to providing the first systematic linguistic documentation of ANSE, we detail the characteristics of the Canadian scenario that make it an ideal test of the creole-origins and divergence hypotheses: in particular, that, more clearly than other African American English varieties that evolved independently in the diaspora, the Canadian situation has featured no creole influence. This fact can effectively date the occurrence of any creole-like features in contemporary ANSE (and, by extension, other varieties of African American Vernacular English [AAVE]) to (at least) the late 18th century, an important time-depth characterization. We then present the results of a series of quantitative analyses of linguistically diagnostic features and compare them to those obtained for (1) another transplanted variety of African American English (Samaná English) and (2) a prototype variety (the Ex-slave Recordings), and note the striking similarities among them. The results militate in favor of a genetic relationship among ANSE and its counterparts as a common precursor of contemporary varieties, thereby providing the first methodologically consistent cross-linguistic comparison of three distinct vestiges of “early” African American English, and contributing missing links in the history and development of AAVE.

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Section: Real-time Evidence On Aavementioning

confidence: 99%

African American English in the diaspora: Evidence from old-line Nova Scotians

1991

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“…While it is useful to assume basilectal and acrolectal idealizations for analytical purposes, there must also be plenty of room left for variation, which has probably always been typical of such speech communities (Herskovits 1941, Schneider 1982. The important thing is to tell whether the pattern is more like that of the acrolect or that of the basilect.…”

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confidence: 99%

Number Delimitation in Gullah

Mufwene¹

1986

American Speech

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JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. . ONEOF THE MOST ELUSIVE and challenging aspects of studying (contemporary) Gullah is the amount of both inter-and intra-individual variation in spontaneous speech even at the level of what may be considered its basilect.' The investigator is very likely to hear in the same discourse (though not with equal frequency) alternations such as [bil bin/woz horn] 'Bill was home' (where [bin] and [waz] are synonymous), or [A SAm]/[A si It]/[A S3: It] 'I saw it' (where the unmarked [si] alternates almost freely with [s::] and the phonologically conditioned allomorph [']); or [a:1 A wi]/[a:l AV As] 'all of us;'or [hiI kAm wI hi, SAn]/[Si, kAm wI hi, sAn]/[Si, kAm wI hal sAn] 'she came with her son'(with reference to the same individual). Such alternations are attested in the domain of number delimitation too: [dem baj] 'the/those boys' appears to be as good as [dem bajz], [tu: baj] 'two boys'as acceptable as [tu: bajz], [hi sAnz] 'his/her sons'as grammatical as [hi sAn dem] (even though the latter is ambiguous between 'his/her sons' and 'his/her son and company').Those who do not realize how different from English the underlying principles of number delimitation in English-related creoles are, or even how complex the underlying system of English itself is in this domain, are likely to assume too hastily that the two systems are fundamentally the same and that mostly a simple morpheme substitution or addition is involved in the above cases. Not surprisingly, interpretations holding that Gullah nouns have no plural forms or inflections, unlike their English counterparts, have occurred in the literature (see, for example, Johnson 1930, 35-36; Turner 1949, 223; Jones-Jackson 1983, 300-01). As will become more obvious below, underlying this partial misinterpretation are (1) the unclear stands of some analysts on the delimitational status of [dem] as plural marker (e.g., Cunningham 1970, 30-31) and on the redundancy of the English {-Z} plural when it cooccurs with a quantifier, and (2) the misidentification of the at times absolutely undelimited use of a bare noun/ nominal (henceforth NONINDIVIDUATED USE) with the English morphological indefinite plural. Thus, Rickford (1986) even attempts to account for the putative absence of the English plural {-Z} on some nouns by a Labovian {-Z} deletion rule. (This particular approach is disputed in part 4 below.) The purpose of this paper is to show that number delimitation in Gul-33 This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Fri, 26 Dec 2014 13:53:16 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 34 AMERICAN SPEECH 61.1(1986) lah is governed by a body of principles which are somewhat different from those governing the corresponding distinctions in ...

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“…As suggested in Mufwene (1984b), the solution out of this apparent impasse in studies of AAE (and New World PCs) may lie in assuming the following. During the colonial settlements in the New World, new language varieties developed based in part on "colonial English," hence many a feature shared by these varieties that have caught the attention of numerous opponents of the creolist/substratist position as the exclusive account (more recently, Schneider 1982Schneider , 1983Schneider , 1989. These new language varieties need not have developed sequentially, one based on another; in fact they must have developed concomitantly, and contacts among the colonies must have provided opportunities for them to influence one another too.…”

Section: In Conclusionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…4 There is an alternative creolist interpretation of the presence of the mpula in such constructions, viz., given the continuum which characterizes creole speech communities, more than one particular construction or grammar have been used by AAE speakers. These constructions have always varied from creole-like to WANSEor standard English-like, and the greater frequency of one or the other type need not correspond to decreolization (see Schneider 1982and Mufivene 1984b. In fact, according to G. Bailey (1987), Bailey and Maynor (1987), and labov (1987), AAE has been diverging from, rather than mnverging with, English grammar.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ideology and facts on African American English

Mufwene¹

2022

PRAG

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On the history of Black English in the USA

Cited by 54 publications

References 8 publications

African American English in the diaspora: Evidence from old-line Nova Scotians

African American English in the diaspora: Evidence from old-line Nova Scotians

Number Delimitation in Gullah

Ideology and facts on African American English

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