Non native speaker?

[Lesa Dill]

The debate about the identity  of the sniper is being debated currently on the
Forensic Linguistics listserv.  There's quite an argument about whether the
person is native or non-native.  I'd have to agree with you and say native.  I
agree with your comments about the phrasing of the statement about our
children being in danger.  It is stylistically well formed.  I also think it's
easy, intentionally or not, to sound garbled, illiterate and/or non-native.

Isn't the sound subsitution regular in Black English/Ebonics/African American
English?  What's PC in linguistics for that these days?  Certainly not the
latter.

Lesa

Duane Campbell wrote:

> According to published reports, the notes left by the sniper are in an
> imperfect English indicating perhaps a non-native speaker. Yet the one
> sentence they have released -- "Your children are not safe at any time or
> in any place." (from memory) -- strikes me as a very well crafted
> sentence. Not just lucid and free from error, but stylish.
>
> Any forensic linguists on the list? Is there such a thing as a forensic
> linguist?
>
> While I'm asking questions, Chief Moose (who is, incidentally, Dr. Moose)
> replaces all of his "th" sounds with either a hard "D" (initial) or "F".
> I have heard this from time to time, though usually not so pronounced,
> including a classmate in 1950s rural Pennsylvania with a 100 percent
> white school population. I had always assumed it was a minor speech
> impediment (is there a new PC word for this?) or an ideomorph. Are there
> dialects that include this shift?
>
> D