AAVE stressed BEEN interpretation

[Mai Kuha]

Thanks to all for the helpful comments. The potential ambiguity of "marry"
hadn't occurred  to me. However, my feeling is that the actual wording of
Rickford's survey item makes it far less ambiguous:

"Someone asked, 'Is she married?' and someone else answered, 'She BIN
married.' Do you get the idea that she is married now? Yes___  No___"

(This is the question to which most of my students answered "no".) The
question 'Is she married?' pretty clearly refers to a state (right?)  so
the 'exchanged vows a long time ago' interpretation isn't entirely
relevant.

Also, my sense is that GET passives are somewhat informal, so, in
conversation, and all other things being equal, I would interpret "be
married" as a stative, because I'd expect the speaker to observe the
Cooperative Principle by specifically saying "get married" if that's what
was meant. (If I'm way off on this, I'd be glad if native speakers of
English could comment.)

In any case, I still question whether "She BEEN married" can mean that she
no longer is, even under the non-stative interpretation. As I understand
it, the interpretation that goes with the stative is "She has been in the
state of being married for a long time, and still is", and the
interpretation that goes with the non-stative is "She exchanged marriage
vows with someone a long time ago, and the marriage ceremony is totally
completed." Why would it mean "She exchanged vows a long time ago, and
the marriage is over"? Am I missing something?

Whether this ambiguity was the crucial problem or not, I certainly
recognize that my students may have run into all kinds of complications
that haven't occurred to me. One reason I brought up this topic is that it
occurs to me that we all have an interesting research opportunity in our
classes, since not very much is known about the process of learning a
second dialect.

There are also pedagogical reasons to find out more about it: if it's
unreasonable to expect students to be able to apply the rules of a dialect
not their own, possibly I should take the AAVE questions out of my final
exams, and re-think why the AAVE section is in the course and what
students are supposed to get out of it. I'm laughing as I realize that I'd
had visions of the education majors in my classes going forth to teaching
careers in which they interact with AAVE-speaking children in their
classes with never a mental speedbump. What was I thinking!

-Mai
_____________________________________________
Mai Kuha                  mkuha at bsuvc.bsu.edu
Department of English     (765) 285-8410
Ball State University