AAVE_Notes

 

 

November 19, 2008

 

 

Questions for chapters 17-19

 

1. In what ways is the OED a product of Victorian reading and writing habits?

2. When did the NED become the OED?

3. What was the Scriptorium?

4. In what OED entry is Murray and the OED reflected?

5.What is the connection between the OED and Middlemarch?

6. What is the problem with quiz and protocol?

7. In what ways is the casualty of war language?

8. What are the origins of jeep, G.I., and gremlin?

9. What is the Hobson-Jobson?

10. What is World English?

 

 

Homework

 

Questions for chapter 16:


1. Lerer’s passage from Douglass represents two modes of African American literary modes.  What are they?

 

p. 220-221: oral and written; literate and illiterate; dialectal, folk, vernacular, unofficial versus standard, academic, official.

 

2. What are Labov’s four points about AAVE?

 

p. 223:

 

AAEV subsystem of English – distinct set of phonological, morphological, and syntactic rules.

 

AAEV incorporates many features of Southern American English and Black English has exerted an influence on Southern English.

 

It shows evidence of derivation from Creoles.

 

It has a highly developed aspect system.

 

3. What is the creole hypothesis?

 

p. 224: Slave trade brought together English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese along with West African languages Wolof, Mandingo, Housa, Western Bantu.  Such blendings created the need for pidgins and such pidgins resulted in creolization.  Gullah is perhaps a creole from slave times.

 

 

4. List the phonological features of AAVE in the text.

 

p. 223-224: initial th- leads to d- : this -->  dis

 

medial and final th- leads to f or v: mouth --> mouf; with --> wiv but also wid.

 

Final –or to o: door --> do

 

Final –st to –ss; last – lass

 

Collapsing of e and I to I – get becomes git

 

Lost of possession or plural marker may be a sound rather than grammar issue.

 

5. What is the idea of verb aspect in AAVE?

 

p. 225: said to be a marker of creole origins; aspect indicates some element of duration rather than past or present.  The progressive form in PDE is an example.  It is raining.

She sick vs she be sick vs she done been sick

She go vs she be going vs she done gone

 

I done talking.

 

6. In what ways might the poem “Hog Meat” be offensive?

 

p. 226:  Daniel Webster Davis’s poem may be seen as stereotyped in language and in attitude.

“uncomfortably sentimental or stereotypical.”

 

7. What does food and identity have to do with anything in language?

 

p. 228-229: Food, language – tongue, identify.  The praise of hog meat and the connection with down home cooking or soul food as it has been called has been something to shun, be ashamed of, or something to celebrate as part of one’s past and identity. 

 

Ralph Ellison’s “I yam what I am” from Invisible Man.

 

With Cab Calloway and Bessie Smith’s Kitchen Man – food, language (tongue) worked together for sexual appetite as well.

 

8. Describe Lerer’s treatment of the “I Have a Dream” speech?

 

p. 231-232: Well, he pretty well gushes over it; certainly claims it properly as a rhetorical tour de force, a now essential part of American history, memory, oratory and letters, and of course an articulation of the highest form of the public or official literary side of AAVE.

 

And what Lerer could not know – it is echoed in many of Barak Obama’s speeches but particularly in his speech on election night.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eLI-oeC7xw&feature=related

 

 

 

9. What is “signifyin’”?

 

p. 232-233:  Signifying Monkey – best articulated by Henry Louis Gates from Harvard University.

 

Black traditions in the past have suffered from both the lack of sophisticated scholarly attention and a Eurocentric bias in the critical discourses. In The Signifying Monkey, Mr. Gates explores the relationship between black vernacular tradition and African American literary tradition. He seeks to find a system of rhetoric for interpreting black literature -- our texts. The collection of essays is separated into two parts. The first part deals with the theory of African and African American traditions and the importance of "Signifyin(g)," a theory that arises from the black tradition itself. In the second part Mr. Gates applies theories to interpret African American literature tradition from Slave narratives to Zora Neale Hurston to Alice Walker. This volume is closely intertwined with Figures in Black which left off where The Signifying Monkey begins.


EXCERPTS:

On Signifyin(g) and Talking Books
"The black tradition is double-voiced. The trope of the Talking Book, of double-voiced texts that talk to other texts, is the unifying metaphor within this book. Signifyin(g) is the figure of the double-voiced, epitomized by Esu's [divine trickster figure in black culture] depictions in sculpture as possessing two mouths." (Signifying Monkey, xxv)

Signification is a process in "how to employ tropes that have been memorized in an act of communication and its interpretation. (....) The language of Signifyin(g), in other words, is a strategy of black figurative language use." (Signifying Monkey, 84)

"The Monkey tales inscribe a dictum about interpretation, whereas the language of Signifyin(g) address the nature and application of rhetoric." (Signifying Monkey, 85)

 

 

10. What is the American legacy of certain Wolof words?

 

p. 234:

 

Hep, hip  from Wolof hepi, hipi (to open one’s eyes, become aware)

 

-kat from Wolof meaning person

 

Cool from Mandingo suma, literally cool but figuratively calm or slow.

 

Dig from Wolof deg, meaning to understand.

 

Others at this web site:

 

http://www.une.edu.au/langnet/definitions/aave.html

 

 

 

 

 

 

From HEL Site:

Black English

The origins of Black English (referred to variously as Black Vernacular English, African-American English, and Ebonics) are disputed. One theory holds that this variety of English developed from a pidgin that resulted from the conditions of the slave trade, during which speakers of different African languages were thrown together and forced to communicate through a pidgin language. This pidgin was used by slave traders and slave owners to communicate with blacks, and by blacks of different linguistic backgrounds to communicate with each other. Out of this developed a Black English creole spoken by the first generations of slaves born in North America.This creole can be heard today spoken by the Gullah and Geechee inhabitants of the Carolina Sea Islands. Another view holds that Black English results from the retention of British English features that have not been retained in other varieties of American English. Also controversial is the question of whether Black English and Standard English are on the path to convergence or increasing divergence.

Black English is characterized by pronunciations (phonology), syntactic patterns (grammar), and morphological features (inflections) that in many instances also occur in other varieties of English. Many features are shared by Southern white speakers and by Appalachian speakers. The features below represent tendencies toward speech patterns that occur some of the time in speakers of Black English but that are certainly not to be regarded as universal, or universally-occurring features.

Phonology

r-deletion:

door> [do:] ("doah")

sister>"sistah"

l-deletion:

help>"hep"

steal>"steah"

ball>"bah"

you'll >"youah"*

they'll>"deyah"/"dey"*

*Results in appearance of failure to inflect for the future tense

final consonant cluster reduction:

passed>"pass"

This gives the appearance of a morphological gap in the grammar (i.e., no past tense marker). Note that even in Standard English speakers simplify final clusters in casual speech if the following word in the phrase begins with a consonant: cold cuts>"col´ cuts"

loss of final dental [alveolar] stop:

good man>"goo´ man"

monophthongization:

like>[lak]

time>[tam]

why>[wha]

interdental fricatives become alveolar stops:

initially:

they>"dey"

them>"dem"

think>"tink"

thin>"tin"

But, if the following cononant is an r:

three>"free"

throat>"froat"

medially:

nothing>"nuffin'"

brother>"bruvvah"

finally:

tenth>"tenf"/"tent"

mouth>"mouf"/"mout"

Grammar

AUX-deletion (i.e., deletion of the auxilliary verb):

 

Where Standard English can contract, Black English can delete:

Standard English (informal)

Black English

He's going

He going

I've got it

I got it

He'd be happy

he be happy

Note that where Standard English cannot contract, Black English cannot delete:

Standard English (informal)

Black English

*What a fool you're.

*What a fool you.

Iterative/habitual be:

He be coming home at six. (means: "He usually comes home at six.")

Double (or multiple) negation:

"Neither one of us ain't got nuthin' ta lose." (Eddie Murphy, 48 Hours)

"Can't no one tell you you ain't somebody." (Jessie Jackson)


cf. "Nor is this not my nose neither." (Shakespeare)

Morphology and Syntax:

With a numerical quantifier such as two, seven, fifty, etc., Black English speakers may not add the obligatory in Standard English (and redundant) morphemes for the plural: e.g., fifty cent, two foot

 

The use of the possessive marker:

Where the Standard English speaker says "John's cousin"; the Black English speaker might say "John cousin." The possessive is marked in Black English by the "genitival" position of the noun and its possessor

 

The third-person singular has no obligatory morphological ending in Black English, so that "she works here" is expressed as "she work here."

 

Black English sometimes uses ain't as a past-tense marker:

Black English present tense: "He don't go."

Black English past tense: "He ain't go."

 

Future-tense:

Standard English: "I will go home"

Black English: "I'ma go home"

 

Conditional subordination:

Standard English: "I asked if he did it."; BVE
Black English: "I ask did he do it."

 

Pronoun case

Standard English: "We have to do it." BVE "
Black English: "Us got to do it."

 

Preposition:

Standard English: " He is over at his friend's house."
Black English: "He over to his friend house."