non-inverting wh-questions in New Orleans

[Daniel Ezra Johnson]

This was very prevalent in the speech of the high school students I taught
in Crowley, LA (in 1998-99). It was not limited to blacks nor to those of
Cajun ancestry. However, I did think of it as a substratum-type thing,
perhaps without justification.

But the lack of inversion was not limited to Wh-questions. Yes-no questions,
whether with auxiliary or regular verb, showed the same lack of inversion
(and therefore, with main verbs there was no do-support).

So when students would say, for example, "I can go to the restroom?" it was
hard for me to remember that this didn't have the same pragmatics as in my
dialect -- it was just how they formed the question.

DEJ


>From: Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
>Reply-To: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>Subject: non-inverting wh-questions in New Orleans
>Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2001 12:11:35 +0800
>
>Date:  Thu, 12 Apr 2001 15:08:41 -0400
>From:  Jennifer H Mittelstaedt <jhmittel at juno.com>
>Subject:  Wh-questions in New Orleans English
>
>
>I'm currently looking at the apparent lack of Subject-Aux Inversion (SAI)
>in (some) wh-questions for a variety of New Orleans English.  For
>example, the following sentences are perfectly acceptable for this
>variety:
>Who that is?  (cf. Who is that?)
>What time it is? (cf. What time is it?)
>
>I have two questions:
>a) Can anyone tell me anything about the geographic/demographic scope of
>this variety?  I have heard that this is largely an African American
>variety spoken in New Orleans and possibly Baton Rouge, but would be
>grateful for any further information.
>b) Is anyone aware of any work on this variety and/or other varieties of
>English which may lack SAI in certain constructions?  Any input or
>citations would be heartily appreciated!
>
>Thanks very much for your time,
>Jenny Mittelstaedt
>jhm3 at georgetown.edu

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