Transcript slide on Gullah and Black English

Black English
AAE, African American English
AAVE, African American Vernacular English
BVE, Black English Vernacular
Ebonics (a popular term)
A dialect of English, or a decreolised language?
Black English
http://privatewww.essex.ac.uk/~patrickp/AAVE.html
(See also:
http://privatewww.essex.ac.uk/~patrickp/lhr/ling
uistichumanrights.htm )
J.L Dillard:
Black English
Black English
Wells III p.553 Black English
• Contradictory tests as to whether blacks
can be identified by their speech at all.
• P.55 Chicagoans consistently identified
voices of white southern college
professors as uneducated rural blacks.
Black English
• Is it possible to identify race by speech?
– only insofar as race can be identified by
culture ….
• Wells 6.6.6 p.556: “Almost all of the
following points were mentioned above in
6.5, the south. It may well be that any that
were not should have been" - i.e. there is
no racially defined Black pronunciation.
Black English
• Where there are geographically
concentrated populations of blacks/whites,
or socially stratified populations, the
speech between the groups will vary.
• Impossible however to tell the difference
between educated black/white doctors
from the same area, or rural blac/white
workers from the same area. .
Black English
• HOWEVER there are linguistic survivals
throughout the USA –
– Scandinavian linguistic traits in
Minesota/Dakota
– German in Pennsylvania
– Dutch in Hudson Valley
– Remains of the ‘Irish accent’
• Why then not Black?
– “Culturally transmitted rather than racial"
p555.
Black English
• Gullah is an English-based creole still
spoken by a small black population on
coastal and offshore South Carolina.
– Thus the question arises of whether Black
English can be the result of decreolisation of a
creole continuum.
Gullah
• Gullah is an English-based creole still
spoken by a small black population on
coastal and offshore South Carolina.
• http://www.coastalguide.com/gullah/
• http://www.knowitall.org/gullahnet/ (tales)
• http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.p
hp?storyId=5283230
Gullah verbs (from Wikipedia)
The following sentences illustrate the basic verb tense and
aspect system in Gullah:
Uh he'p dem -- "I help them/I helped them"
(Present/Past Tense)
Uh bin he'p dem -- "I helped them" (Past Tense)
Uh gwine he'p dem -- "I will help them" (Future Tense)
Uh done he'p dem -- "I have helped them" (Perfect
Tense)
Uh duh he'p dem -- "I am helping them" (Present
Progressive)
Uh binnuh he'p dem -- "I was helping them" (Past
Progressive)
These sentences illustrate African grammatical and
syntactical influences in 19th century Gullah speech.
Note the literal, word-for-word translations into English
used here in order to show the influence of African
sentence structure:
Da' big dog, 'e bite'um -- "That big dog, it bit him"
(Topicalization)
Duh him cry out so -- "It is him cried out that way"
(Front Focusing)
Uh tell'um say da' dog fuh bite'um -- "I told him said
that dog would bite him" (Dependent Clauses with
"Say")
De dog run, gone, bite'um -- "The dog ran, went, bit
him" (Serial Verb Construction)
Da' duh big big dog -- "That is big big dog"
(Reduplication)
These sentences are examples of how Gullah was spoken in
the 19th century:
Uh gwine gone dey tomorruh."I will go there tomorrow.“
We blan ketch 'nuf cootuh dey."We always catch a lot of turtles
there.“
Dem yent yeddy wuh oonuh say."They did not hear what you
said.“
Dem chillun binnuh nyam all we rice."Those children were
eating all our rice.“
'E tell'um say 'e haffuh do'um."He told him that he had to do it.“
Duh him tell we say dem duh faa'muh."He's the one who told
us that they are farmers.“
Alltwo dem 'ooman done fuh smaa't."Both those women are
really smart.“
Enty duh dem shum dey?"Aren't they the ones who saw him
there?"
Black English
Similarities with creoles:
• Copular deletion (verb-adjective identity?)
– John sick
– John run
– cf Tok Pisin em i sik, em i lap
Black English
Similarities with creoles:
• Tense-marking optional; may be on only
one verb in the sentence, or none (tense
shown by context):
The boy carried the dog dish to the
house and put some dog food in it and
put some water in it and bring it out
and called his dog Dillard 41
Black English
When the day begin to crack, the whole
plantation break out with all kinds of
noise, and you could tell what was
going on by the kind of noise you hear.
• Dillard 41. The idea that this is historic
present is disproved by "could" and "was".
Black English
On the other hand aspect-marking is
compulsory, while not in SE.
ASPECT
AFFIRMATIVE
NEGATIVE
Point-of-time:
(incidentally 90% past
actions) + adverb of
time: yesterday,
last week, etc.
He go
He ain go
He goin
He ain goin
progressive action:
(incidentally 90%
prsent action)
NB This complexity is not the same as in creoles
Black English
-in used the same in present or past:
• He stood there and he thinkin
• He got a glass of water in his hands
and he drinkin some of it
• My teacher she said I passed on the
skin of my teeth. My sisters and them
up there talkin bout I should have
stayed back
Black English
She real skinny, and every time you see
her she eatin Cheerios.
- Loss of copula or no underlying copula?
Black English
• When speakers “fancify” their language
and add a copula the 'wrong' standard
copular is often used in BE:
• He am sleepin.
Black English
Single time progressive:
He waitin for me right now
He waitin for me right then
NB not: *He waitin for me every night
*He be waitin for me right now
Black English
• Negative:
• He ain waitin for me right now
• He don be waitin for me every night
Black English
He workin when de boss come in
‘He started working when the boss came
in’
He be workin when de boss come in
‘He was working when the boss came in’
(he was not expecting the boss).
You makin sense, but you don be makin
sense
Black English
• So there is syntactic evidence for a
creole origin
BUT
• not confined to Black Englsih
• in some ways unlike other creoles