Table Of Content

TENSE-ASPECT IN AFRICAN-AMERICAN ENGLISH: A SOCIOLINGUISTIC PERSPECTIVE PATRICE DALE WILLIAMS A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 1991 Copyright 1991 Patrice Dale Williams ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to express my undying gratitude, first of all, to Dr. Haig Der-Houssikian, chair of my doctoral committee. His patience, support, and encouragement were in themselves a source of inspiration for me during the long hours spent working on this final project. Words alone cannot adequately express the sum total of what have learned from him. I I sincerely thank him for his time, his knowledge, both of which he so willingly shared, and, most of all, for the kindness he showed me, even when fell short of my I goals. Truly, he has been more than my committee chairperson; he has been my mentor. I also wish to thank the other members of my doctoral committee--Dr Allan Burns, Dr. Chauncey Chu, . Dr. Mildred Hill-Lubin, and Dr. Jerrie Cobb Scott--all of who not only encouraged me, but who also gave m e helpful suggestions to facilitate the completion of this dissertation. I express my sincere thanks to the faculty and students in linguistics at the University of Florida, who, through their openmindedness, created an 1• 1•1• atmosphere which was not only intellectual, but highly congenial as well. I thank the director of the linguistics program. Dr. Jean Casagrande, for his support, and Dr. David Byrdsong for his kind compassion. I also extend a special "thank-you" to Dr. Ann Jeffries, who, even with the busiest of schedules, found time to offer me words of encouragement and support. Finally, I thank the members of the Gainesville community who made me feel welcome in their churches and in their homes; thank my family and friends for I their encouragement; and, most of all, I thank God for allowing me to persevere until reached my goal. I iv 8 TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS iii ABSTRACT vii CHAPTER ONE: STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM 1 General Background to AAE Grammar 2 Specific Background To AAE Tense-Aspect 5 A Comparative Analysis of SAE and AAE 6 Tense 8 Aspect 11 The Present Study 23 Specific Problem Statement 25 Research Hypotheses 29 Null Hypotheses 29 TWO: REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE 31 The Appropriate Domain for AAE 33 Rural Versus Urban 34 Northern versus Southern 38 The Origin of AAE 41 Quantitative Differences 41 Qualitative Differences 43 The Religious Experience 49 The African-American Church 49 The African-American Preacher 51 African-American Sermons 52 THREE: METHODS AND PROCEDURES 60 Design of the Study 62 Instrument Development 63 The Biographical Data Form(BDF) 65 The Dialect Prompting Form(DPF) 66 The Dialect Response Evaluation Sheet DRES 6 ( ) . Sampling Technique 72 Data Collection 74 Statistical Analysis 81 v FOUR: RESULTS OF ANALYSES 89 Hypothesized Findings 90 Hypothesis I 90 Hypothesis II 93 Hypothesis III 97 Hypothesis IV 99 Unhypothesized Findings 99 FIVE: CONCLUSIONS 107 Conclusions from Hypothesized Findings Ill From Results of Hypothesis I Ill From Results of Hypothesis II 125 From Results of Hypothesis III 127 From Results of Hypothesis IV 128 Conclusions from Unhypothesized Findings 128 Limitations 132 Recommendations 132 Implications 133 APPENDICES A Excerpts from Sermons 136 B Interviews 146 REFERENCES 154 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 161 vi Abstract of Dissertation Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy TENSE-ASPECT IN AFRICAN-AMERICAN ENGLISH: A SOCIOLINGUISTIC PERSPECTIVE By Patrice Dale Williams August 1991 Chair: Dr. Haig Der-Houssikian Major Department: Linguistics This dissertation is concerned with those tenacious tense-aspect features of African-American English (AAE) that may well be vestiges of a West African prototype. The study focused on comparing those tense-aspect features in the discourse of AAE speakers. The five informants were relatively uneducated, elderly ministers who were lifelong residents of the rural South. Two sets of data were collected from each subject. The first, a prepared data sample, consisted of a sermon from each minister. The second, the prompted data sample, was obtained by having the subjects, during an interview, complete statements designed to elicit AAE features Vll• predicted by a hypothetical grammar. The subjects' responses were evaluated according to a Dialect Response Evaluation Sheet (DRES). It was hypothesized that there would be no statistically significant differences among the results 1) of the prepared data; 2) among the results of the prompted data; between the results of the prepared and prompted 3) data; and between the results of the combined data and 4) results predicted by hypothetical grammar of AAE tense- aspect . These hypotheses were tested via the t-test, chi square, Spearman rho, and Kendall's coefficient of concordance. Yates' correction was used to correct for bias. The results of these measures revealed statistically significant differences within the prepared results; between the prepared and prompted results; and between the combined data and the hypothetical grammar. The null hypothesis predicting no statistically significant differences among the prompted results, was, however, accepted. The investigator concluded that the statistically significant differences within the prepared data were indicative of the variable nature of performance and that the significant differences between the data samples, as well as between the combined samples and the hypothetical grammar, underscored the need for effective prompting, or Vlll elicitation techniques, in order to better tap into that elusive domain called competence. In light of the variable performance, the finding of no statistically significant differences for the prompted sample indicated how inexact a measure of competence performance is. The findings of this study are congruent with the literature on ’’performance versus competence." IX CHAPTER 1 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM For some time now, African-American English (AAE) has been a source of both frustration and fascination for many linguists. Not only has it withstood inspection both through the myopic lenses of a "deficit” theoretical model, and from the more focused perspective of a "different" model, but it has also survived such pejorative epithets as "deviant", "simplified", "illogical", and "erratic" (see critiques by Bailey, 1971; Labov, 1972a, 1981; Stewart, 1975.) Moreover, its origin has been ascribed to a number of language sources, from pidgins (Bolinger, 1980) and creoles (Bailey, 1971; Bickerton 1973, 1976; Rickford, 1977; Stewart, 1975) to West African languages (Asante, 1975; Burling, 1982; Dahl, 1984; Davis, 1983; Stewart, 1975; Twiggs, 1973) and even to corrupt dialects of American English (McDavid, 197 1 ; Williamson, 1971). The educational systems in this country have taken serious steps to deal with AAE, having decided at one point in time to approach it as a foreign language and, lastly, as a second dialect. Despite all these 1