Rickford

Week 5: Rickford article about AAVE

Did AAVE arise from slaves trying to learn English, but not fully assimilating (dialectologist) or is it a creole (creolist)?

The Seven Types of Evidence: (The author leaves it open to the idea of there maybe being more.)

1) Sociohistorical Conditions: Time and location affect language, suitable for pidginization and/or creolization

2) Textual attestations of AAVE from earlier times / Historical Attestations: a) literary texts and b) interviews and narratives with former slaves and other African Americans

3) Modern-day recordings from the AA diaspora / Dispora Recordings: audio recordings with descendants of AA and who left the USA for toehr countries in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century Samana, Liberian Settler, African Nova Scotian English.

(Makes me wonder what African Nova Scotian English sounds like....)

4) Similarities between AAVE and established creoles / Creole Similarities: between AAVE and Caribbean creoles, Gullah, Hawaiian, etc

5) Similarities between AAVE and West African Languages / Creole Similarities: between AAVE and West African varieties grammar parallels both

6) Difference from other English dialects, especially those spoken by whites / English dialect differences: between AAVE and British/White American dialects

7) Comparisons across different age groups of AA speaker / Age group comparisons: across different generations of AAVE speakers (doesn't this happen with all language though? I speak a little different than my parents' generations. My parents' generation speaks a little different than my grand parents' generation, etc....)

7--> I agree, every generation develops, adds, drops, and modifies language meaning and even style. I do appreciate this summary of the reading, It really helps solidify my taking of the readings. I also really enjoyed the clear definitions of pidgins and creoles in the beginning.

Rickford then uses these 7 types of evidence to discuss the copula absence in AAVE.

Copula: A connecting word, in particular a form of the verb //be // connecting a subject and complement. (as noted in the slide show Ebonics excludes the word "be" and its varies forms)  (evidence 1 and 7 are were not discussed) 2) As early as the 18th century writings have depicted African Americans using on average zero copula

3) (This one I didn't follow as well so add on to it if you can) There seems to be evidence for each side here, but it's all very subjective and hard to follow.

4) This is a common trait in other creoles, particularly Mesolectal creoles.

5) Several west African languages have varying amounts and usage of copula, including zero.

6) Only the American South Dialect has a copula absence. When discussion this piece of evidence the debate usually deteriorates into who picked this up from who. Did the white or black population of the south stop using "be" first?   