AAVE stressed BEEN interpretation

P2052 at AOL.COM P2052 at AOL.COM
Sun Mar 5 09:56:32 UTC 2000


AAVE speakers also express action with GOT, as in GOT MARRIED, but I don't
think that the sole purpose of GOT is just to express the initiation of an
action (Cf. He GOT killed).  GOT appears to add the passive (The agent is not
named), yet not only does it elevate the logical object to the status of
subject, but it also adds a degree of agency to that receiver of the action
(Cf. He went and got himself killed.)  In both cases the speaker/writer
appears to make the victim responsible for his own fate, albeit to varying
degrees.  The same is true of "GOT married."  GOT bestows both passive voice
(Someone else performed the ceremony) and agency (The logical object is
partly responsible for the resulting state:  being married. )  Compare "GOT
married" [passive voice/action verb/a degree of agency to the logical object]
to "WAS married"   [passive voice/either action or state/no focus on active
role of logical object].

Anyway, the reason I postulate that the ambiguity is in the lexical verb,
"marry," rather than in the stressed auxiliary, BEEN, is that in citation
form, marry is an action verb (Cf. with kill, as in "He married/killed her."
)   Both also indicate actions when preceded by the GOT auxiliary (He got
married/killed.)  Likewise, the two verbs behave similarly when preceded by
unstressed bin (Cf. "He been killed" [=He has been killed] and "He been
married" [He has been married.]   However, the similarity ends when stressed
been [BEEN] is the auxiliary.    In the AAVE expression, "She BIN
married/killed (him),"  the verb phrase, "BIN married/killed (him)," can mean
either, "She married /killed him a long time ago" (Cf. with "She BIN
married/killed him.") or  "She has been married/*killed/dead for a long time"
(Cf. with "She BIN married/*killed/dead (to him).")   While both marry and
kill indicate actions which initiate the onset of a state (A person who
marries initiates the transition from unmarried to marreid; a person who
kills initiates the transition from alive to NOT ALIVE, or dead)

Just as "was married," is ambiguous in Standard American English (Cf. "She
was married yesterday" ["was married" = past action] to "She was married for
years ["was married = past state],  BEEN married is ambiguous in AAVE  (See
the above comparison of  "She BEEN married him"  [past action] and "She BEEN
married (to him"  [present perfect state]).  In the latter case, failure to
stress, or hear the stress on, been could result in a completely different
interpretation (at least in AAVE):"She been married to him," meaning "At some
period in the past, she was married to him, but not any longer."

I realize that on a transitivity continuum, the verb, "kill," is closer to
the ideal, or prototypical transitive verb, than is "marry"; however, I posit
that it is this "distance" from that ideal that makes the lexical verb a
candidate for, rather than eliminates it as a possible source of, ambiguity.
                                        PAT



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