The Development of African American English
1st Edition
Published on 8. May 2008
256 pages
978-0-470-77990-3 (ISBN)
Description
This book focuses on one of the most persistent and controversial questions in modern sociolinguistics: the past and present development of African American Vernacular English (AAVE).
Reviews / Votes
"The Development of African American English is a masterpiece. Theauthors systematically examine linguistic and historical evidencefrom an area (Hyde County, North Carolina ) that has not figured inearlier discussions of African American Vernacular English . Theresult is a more complex and intricate picture of Black/Whitesociolinguistic relations,both now and in the past, than we havehad to this point, with rich implications for how research onlanguage variation and change should be conducted more generally."John R. Rickford, Stanford University "Wolfram and Thomas's investigation of language in a biracialSouthern enclave has much to tell us. Their attention to key issuesof theory and methodology informs their research and bolsters a setof carefully argued conclusions about the history of AfricanAmerican English. The authors' work takes on a broader significanceby their willingness to tackle vexing questions, whether the issueis how to assess differences in intonation patterns between AfricanAmericans and European Americans or how to relate individualdifferences to community variation." John Singler, New YorkUniversity "Specialized but of the utmost importance to dialectologists andsociologists, this volume is exhaustive, accurate, provocative, andcompelling. Recommended enthusiastically for graduate students,researchers, and faculty." Choice, December 2002, Vol 40 No.04More details
Other editions
Additional editions
W. Wolfram
Development of African American English
Software
02/2008
Wiley
€79.30
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Walt Wolfram | Erik R. Thomas
The Development of African American English
Book
04/2002
Blackwell Publishers
€88.20
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Walt Wolfram | Erik Thomas
The Development of African American English
Book
04/2002
Wiley
€84.50
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Persons
Walt Wolfram is William C. Friday Distinguished Professorat North Carolina State University. He has pioneered research on awide range of American vernacular dialects and authored orco-authored 15 books, including American English (Blackwell1998, with Natalie Schilling-Estes) and over 200 articles.
Erik R. Thomas is Associate Professor of Linguistics atNorth Carolina State University. He is author of An AcousticAnalysis of Vowel Variation in New World English (2001), andhas published widely in journals such as Language Variation andChange, Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages, andJournal of Phonetics.
Content
Series Editor's Preface.
List of Figures.
List of Tables.
Preface.
1. Introduction:.
The Status of African American English.
A Unique Data Base.
The Hyde County Corpus.
Data Analysis.
Beyond Hyde County.
2. Issue in the Development of African AmericanEnglish:.
Hypotheses on Earlier African American English.
Issues in Reconstructing Earlier AAVE.
The Nature of Earlier Written Texts.
Spoken Language Data Representing Earlier AAVE.
The Sociohistorical Context of Earlier African Americans.
Variation in Earlier AAVE.
Donor Source Attribution.
African American English in the Twentieth Century.
3. Defining the Enclave Dialect Community:.
Introduction.
Historically Isolated Speech Communities.
Geography.
Economy.
Historical Continuity.
Social Relations.
Group Identity.
The Social Construction of Enclave Status.
Language Change in Enclave Communities.
Sociolinguistic Principles in the Configuration of IsolatedDialects.
4. The Social History of Mainland Hyde County: .
Chesapeake Bay Origins.
The Settlement of Hyde County.
Hyde County from the Revolutionary War to the Civil War.
Reconstruction to the Great Depression.
Hyde County since 1940.
Sociohistorical Effects on Language.
5. Morphosyntactic Alignment in Hyde County English:.
Issues in Attribution.
Past Tense be Regularization.
The Historical Development of Leveling to Weren't.
Was/Weren't Leveling in Hyde County.
Copula/Auxiliary Is and Are Absence.
The Historical Development of Copula Absence. |.
Copula Absence in Hyde County.
Third Person -S Marking.
The Historical Development of Verbal -S Marking.
Verbal -S Marking in Hyde County.
Conclusion.
6. Vocalic Alignment in Hyde County:.
An Overview of Hyde County Vowels.
The Historical Background of Hyde County Vowels.
Quantitative Analysis of Hyde County Vowels.
Conclusions.
7. Consonantal Alignment in Hyde County: .
Earlier Hyde County Consonants.
The Case of Consonant Cluster Reduction.
The Patterning of Cluster Reduction.
The Case of Postvocalic r Vocalization.
The Patterning of Postvocalic r-lessness.
Post-/?/ r Vocalization.
Conclusion.
8. Intonational Alignment in Hyde County English: .
African American and European American Intonation.
Analytical Methods.
Results and Implications.
Conclusions.
9. The Individual and Group in Earlier African AmericanEnglish: .
The Individual and Group in Variation Studies.
The Sample of Elderly African American Speakers.
Some Diagnostic Variables.
Rhoticity.
Syllable-Coda Consonant Cluster Reduction.
The Vowel System.
Verbal -s Concord.
Copula Absence.
Past Tense be Leveling.
Patterns of Correlation and Individuation.
Variation in Earlier AAVE.
10. Beyond Hyde County: Te Past and Present Development ofAAVE: .
The Origin of African American English.
The Regional Context of Earlier African American English.
Levels of Linguistic Alignment.
The Trajectory of Language Change.
The Norming of AAVE.
Issues in Vernacular Dialect Norming.
Vernacular Language Norming in Hyde County.
Explaining the Supraregional Norms of Contemporary AAVE.
Conclusion.
References.
Index.
