Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-qxdb6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-25T18:07:51.361Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Decreolization?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2008

Guy Bailey  and
Natalie Maynor
Guy Bailey
Affiliation:
Department of EnglishTexas A&M University
Natalie Maynor
Affiliation:
Department of EnglishMississippi State University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

As scholars have begun to reach a consensus on the Black English Vernacular (BEV) over the last decade, three important assumptions about that variety have emerged: (a) the grammars of children and adults are essentially alike, (b) BEV is decreolizing, and (c) most differences between BEV and white speech are the result of the persistence of creole features. However, these assumptions are largely based on comparisons of the speech of North American black children to that of Caribbean creole speakers, with no real attempt to establish the direction of grammatical change in BEV. Our work with black children and elderly adults in Texas tries to determine the direction of grammatical change in black English. This work suggests that all three of the assumptions listed above are unwarranted. The grammars of elderly adults and children are structurally, not just quantitatively different. The differences between the two varieties indicate that BEV is not decreolizing but is actually diverging from white speech. Finally, the differences suggest that differences between black and white speech are sometimes the result of contemporary developments rather than of the persistence of creole features. (Black English, decreolization, divergence, language change, reanalysis, sociolinguistics)

Type
Articles
Information
Language in Society , Volume 16 , Issue 4 , December 1987 , pp. 449 - 473
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1987

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Ash, S., & Myhill, J. (1986). Linguistic correlates of inner ethnic contact. In Sankoff, D. (ed.), Diachrony and diversity. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 33–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bailey, G. (1985). A social history of the Gulf states. LAGS Working Papers (2nd Series) No. 1. Ann Arbor: University Microfilms.Google Scholar
Bailey, G., & Bassett, M. (1986). Invariant be in the lower South. In Montgomery, M. & Bailey, G. (eds.), Language variety in the South: Perspectives in black and white. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press. 158–79.Google Scholar
Bailey, G., & Maynor, N. (1985a). The present tense of be in southern black folk speech. American Speech 60:195–213.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bailey, G., (1985b). The present tense of be in white folk speech of the southern United States. English World-Wide 6:199–216.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baugh, J. (1980). A re-examination of the black English copula. In Labov, W. (ed.), Locating language in time and space. New York: Academic. 83–106.Google Scholar
Baugh, J. (1983). Black street speech: Its history, structure, and survival. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Bickerton, D. (1980). Decreolization and the creole continuum. In Valdman, A. & Highfield, A. (eds.), Theoretical orientations in creole studies. New York: Academic. 109–29.Google Scholar
Brewer, J. (1979). Nonagreeing am and invariant be in early black English. The SECOL Bulletin 3:81–100.Google Scholar
Comrie, B. (1976). Aspect. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Davis, G. A., & Donaldson, F. C. (1975). Blacks in the United States: A geographic perspective. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.Google Scholar
Dillard, J. L. (1972). Black English: Its history and usage in the United States. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Dunlap, H. G. (1974). Social aspects of a verb form: Native Atlanta fifth-grade speech – The present tense of be. PADS 61–62.Google Scholar
Fasold, R. W. (1969). Tense and the form be in black English. Language 45:763–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fasold, R. W. (1972). Tense marking in black English: A linguistic and social analysis. Washington, D.C.: Center for Applied Linguistics.Google Scholar
Glaab, C. N., & Brown, A. T. (1967). A history of urban America. New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Graff, D., Labov, W., & Harris, W. (1986). Testing listeners' reactions to phonological markers of ethnic identity: A new method for sociolinguistic research. In Sankoff, D. (ed.), Diachrony and diversity. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 46–58.Google Scholar
Groh, G. (1972). The black migration: The journey to urban America. New York: Weybright and Talley.Google Scholar
Hamilton, H. (1972). The Negro leaves the South. In Hughes, H. M. (ed.), Population growth and the complex society. Boston: Allyn and Bacon. 79–90.Google Scholar
Hancock, I. (1985). The domestic hypothesis, diffusion, and componentiality: An account of Atlantic anglophone creole origins. Paper presented at the Workshop on Universals vs. Substrata in Creole Genesis, University of Amsterdam.Google Scholar
Hancock, I. (1986). A preliminary classification of the anglophone Atlantic creoles. In Gilbert, G. (ed.), Pidgin and creole languages: Essays in memory of John E. Reinecke. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. 264–333.Google Scholar
Holm, J. (1980). The creole “copula” that highlighted the world. In Dillard, J. L. (ed.), Perspectives on American English. The Hague: Mouton. 367–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Holm, J. (1984). Variability of the copula in black English and its creole kin. American Speech 59:291–309.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jones, M. E. (1980). Black migration in the United States with emphasis on selected central cities. Saratoga, Calif.: Century Twenty One.Google Scholar
Kochman, T. (1970). Towards an ethnography of black speech behavior. In Whitten, N. E. Jr., & Szwed, J. F. (eds.), Afro-American anthropology. New York: Free Press. 145–62Google Scholar
Labov, W. (1972). Language in the inner city: Studies in the black English vernacular. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Labov, W. (1980). The social origins of sound change. In Locating Language in Time and Space. New York: Academic. 251–65.Google Scholar
Labov, W. (1982). Objectivity and commitment in linguistic science: The case of the black English trial in Ann Arbor. Language in Society 11:165–202.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Labov, W. (1985). The increasing divergence of black and white vernaculars. Manuscript.Google Scholar
Labov, W. et al. , (1968). A study of the non-standard English of Negro and Puerto Rican speakers in New York City. USOE Final Report, Research Project 3288.Google Scholar
Labov, W., & Harris, W. A. (1986). De Facto segregation of black and white vernaculars. In Sankoff, D. (ed.), Diachrony and diversity. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 1–24.Google Scholar
Lambert, W. E. (1979). Language as a factor in inter-group relations. In Giles, H. & St. Clair, R. N. (eds.), Language and social psychology. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. 186–92.Google Scholar
Langacker, R. W. (1977). Syntactic reanalysis. In Li, C. N. (ed.), Mechanisms of syntactic change. Austin: University of Texas Press. 57–139.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lee, E. S. (1972). People on the move. In Hughes, H. M. (ed.), Population growth and the complex society. Boston: Allyn and Bacon. 61–78.Google Scholar
Leech, G. N. (1971). Meaning and the English verb. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Loman, B. (1967). Conversations in a Negro American dialect. Washington, D.C.: Center for Applied Linguistics.Google Scholar
Meier, A., & Rudwick, E. (1966). From plantation to ghetto. New York: Hill & Wang.Google Scholar
Milroy, L. (1980). Language and social networks. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Montgomery, M., & Bailey, G. (1986). Introduction. In Montgomery, M. & Bailey, G. (eds.), Language variety in the South: Perspectives in black and white. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press. 1–29.Google Scholar
Mufwene, S. S. (1984). Gullah and Jamaican creole: An issue on decreolization. Paper presented at the Fifth Biennial Meeting of the Society for Caribbean Linguistics, University of the West Indies at Mona, Kingston, Jamaica.Google Scholar
Mufwene, S. S. (1985). Misinterpreting linguistic continuity charitability. Paper presented at the Ninth Annual Language and Culture in South Carolina Symposium, University of South Carolina.Google Scholar
Myhill, J., & Harris, W. A. (1986). The use of the verbal -s inflection in BEV. In Sankoff, D. (ed.), Diachrony and diversity. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 25–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Palmer, F. R. (1974). The English verb. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Pederson, L. et al. , (1981). LAGS: The basic materials. 4 Parts. Ann Arbor: University Microfilms.Google Scholar
Rickford, J. R. (1975). Carrying the new wave into syntax: The case of black English BIN. In Fasold, R. W. & Shuy, R. W. (eds.), Analyzing variation in language. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press. 162–83.Google Scholar
Rickford, J. R. (1977). The question of prior creolization in black English. In Valdman, A. (ed.), Pidgin and creole linguistics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 190–221.Google Scholar
Rickford, J. R. (1983). What happens in decreolization. In Andersen, R. (ed.), Pidginization and creolization as language acquisition. Rowley, Mass.: Newbury House. 248–319.Google Scholar
Rose, H. (1969). Social processes in the city: Race and urban residential choice. Commission on College Geography (Resource Paper No. 6). Washington, D.C.: Association of American Geographers.Google Scholar
Rose, H. (1971). The black ghetto: A spatial behavioral perspective. New York: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Smith, L. T. (1966). The redistribution of the Negro population of the United States, 1910–1960. Journal of Negro History 51:155–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sommer, E. (1986). Variation in southern urban English. In Montgomery, M. & Bailey, G. (eds.), Language variety in the South: Perspectives in black and white. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press. 180–201.Google Scholar
Stewart, W. (1967). Sociolinguistic factors in the history of American Negro dialects. Florida FL Reporter 5(2):1–4.Google Scholar
Stewart, W. (1968). Continuity and change in American Negro dialects. Florida FL Reporter 6(1):3–4, 14–16, 18.Google Scholar
Taeuber, K. E., & Taueber, A. F. (1969). Negroes in cities: Residential and neighborhood change. New York: Atheneum.Google Scholar
Wolfram, W. (1974). The relationship of white southern speech to vernacular black English. Language 50:498–527.CrossRefGoogle Scholar