Works on African American Diasporic
varieties
by
researchers from the
(esp. Shana Poplack & Sali Tagliamonte)
Compiled and comments by Peter L. Patrick, U. of Essex
A research team led by Prof. Shana
Poplack, based at University of Ottawa, has focused attention on African
American Diaspora varieties - dialects of English spoken by American slave
descendants who traveled from the USA generations ago to Eastern Canada, or the
Dominican Republic, or by the Ex-Slaves from the US South recorded for the
Library of Congress. Study of these dispersed and often isolated varieties, and
on the oldest records of US speakers, can help to shed light on the nature of
AAE at a crucial earlier period, and on the key question of whether it has
creole ancestry. This data is often referred to by the authors as “Early African
American English” (though other linguists point out that it was all recorded in
the 20th century).
Below are references to work published by
Poplack and Dr. Sali Tagliamonte, the two most prominent members of the team
(Tagliamonte is now at the
The historical argument arose by comparing
aspects of the structure of African American Diaspora varieties to “creole
prototype” structures, i.e. features characteristic of classic creolization
(and, earlier, pidginization?) processes, as observed principally in Atlantic
creole languages. Their earlier work on the past temporal reference system
rests on the validity of Derek Bickerton’s prototypical portrayal posited for
all “true creoles”. P&T generally found that the Diaspora varieties do not
closely resemble Bickerton’s model of creole grammar. (Later analyses of plural-, perfect-, future- and
present-marking do not follow Bickerton, says Tagliamonte, p.c.)
They conclude that older varieties of Early African American English, from
which the Diaspora varieties and contemporary AAVE are presumably all
descended, must not have been a creole.
(Note that such arguments
generally depend on the belief that creoles have a unified, proto-typical
structure. This is a point on which many creolists -- whether or not they
believe AAVE has creole ancestry -- have differed; belief in Creole prototypes
is currently becoming a minority view. If the right prototypical features are
not selected for comparison, the argument does not go through, in any case.)
The following list of references is
organized chronologically to reflect the development of the evidence and
arguments. Papers on Nigerian Pidgin English are also included due to
comparisons that are, or may be, drawn with AAE diaspora varieties. See the U
Ottawa Sociolinguistics Lab’s publications page for this thread (http://www.sociolinguistics.uottawa.ca/publications/african-eng.html),
Tagliamonte’s own summary of this research on her old U York homepage (http://www-users.york.ac.uk/~st17/) and her description of the 2001 volume (http://www-users.york.ac.uk/~st17/tandp.html).
Research on African American diaspora by Shana Poplack, Sali
Tagliamonte, et al.
Poplack, Shana and David Sankoff. 1987. The
Tagliamonte, Sali and Shana Poplack. 1988. How Black English past got to the present: Evidence from
Samana. Language in Society 17(4): 513-534.
Tagliamonte, Sali. 1990. Review of E.W. Schneider, American
Earlier Black English. Canadian Journal of Linguistics 35(2):
206-11.
Tagliamonte, Sali. 1991. A matter of time: Past temporal
reference verbal structures in Samana English and the Ex-Slave recordings. Ph.D. dissertation,
Poplack, Shana and Sali Tagliamonte. 1991. There’s no tense like the present: Verbal -s inflection in
early Black English. In G. Bailey, N. Maynor and P. Cukor-Avila (eds.), The emergence of Black English: Text and
commentary: 275-324. [Extended version in Language
Variation and Change 1: 47-84.]
Poplack, Shana and Sali Tagliamonte. 1991. African-American English in the Diaspora: Evidence from
Old-Line Nova Scotians. Language Variation and Change 3(3): 301-339.
Tagliamonte, Sali and Shana Poplack. 1993. The zero-marked verb: Testing the creole hypothesis. Journal
of Pidgin and Creole Linguistics 8(2): 171-206.
Poplack, Shana and Sali Tagliamonte. 1994. -S or nothing: Marking the plural in the African-American
diaspora. American Speech 69: 227-259.
Tagliamonte, Sali. 1996. Has it ever been 'perfect'? Uncovering the grammar of early Black English.
Tagliamonte, Sali and Shana Poplack. 1996. Nothing in context: Variation, grammaticization and past
time marking in Nigerian Pidgin English. In Philip Baker and Anand Syea (eds.),
Changing meanings, changing functions:
Papers relating to grammaticalization in creole languages.
Tagliamonte, Sali, Shana Poplack, and Ejike
Eze. 1997. Plural marking patterns in Nigerian Pidgin English. Journal
of Pidgin and Creole Linguistics 12(1): 103-29.
Tagliamonte, Sali. 1997. Obsolescence in the English Perfect? Evidence from Samaná English. American
Speech. 72(1):33-68.
Tagliamonte, Sali, and Jennifer Smith. 1998. Roots of English in the African American diaspora? Links
& Letters 5: Englishes. 5:147-65.
Godfrey, Elizabeth & Sali Tagliamonte. 1999. Another piece for the verbal –s story: Evidence from
Poplack, Shana & Sali Tagliamonte. 1999. The grammaticization of going to in (African
American) English. Language Variation and Change 11(3):315-342.
Tagliamonte, Sali, and Jennifer Smith. 1999. Analogical levelling in Samaná English: The case of ‘was’
and ‘were’. Journal of English Linguistics.
27:1.8-26.
Poplack, Shana, ed. 2000. The English
history of African American English.
Poplack, Shana, Sali Tagliamonte, &
Ejike Eze. 2000. Reconstructing the source of Early
African American English plural marking: A comparative study of English and
creole. In S. Poplack, ed: 73-105.
Tagliamonte, Sali & Jennifer Smith. 2000. Old was; new ecology: viewing English through
the sociolingusitic filter. The English history of African American English.
In S. Poplack, ed: 141-171.
Poplack, Shana & Sali Tagliamonte. 2001. African American English in the Diaspora.
Poplack, Shana & Sali Tagliamonte. In press. Back to the present: Verbal -s
in the (African American) English diaspora. In Ray Hickey (ed.), The Legacy
of Colonial English: The Study of Transported Dialects.
Poplack,
Shana. Fc 2006. How English became
African American English. In Ans van Kemenade and Bettelou Los, (eds), The Handbook of the History of English.
(Another
touchstone for this discussion is the volume transcribing and analyzing the
Ex-Slave Recordings: Bailey, Guy, Natalie Maynor, and Patricia Cukor-Avila,
eds. 1991 The emergence of Black English:
Texts and commentary.
Back to AAE Bibliography
African
American English homepage
Count 22
Last updated 24 February
2006