Black English (UNCLASSIFIED)

Paul Johnston paul.johnston at WMICH.EDU
Wed Oct 14 22:57:11 UTC 2009


I agree with you totally, Wilson.  There's always variation, and even
the notion of what such-and-such dialect contains (or is) is an
idealization.  I've never come across a monostylistic speaker, and I
doubt if they *ever* existed, really.  Even the most localized
vernacular speakers of AAVE or whatever other vernacular I came
across, even in their most casual speech, always included *some*
"Standard" forms.  The other way around, Standard speakers using
vernacular forms--certainly many do, at least facetiously or in some
marked context, and sometimes well beyond that.  And when
comprehension--passive command--enters into things, well, put it this
way: even the most incomprehensible NE Scots speaker I ever heard (I
had to turn over one interview to my ex-wife, from Blackburn, W.
Lothian, because I couldn't help saying "What?" and defeating the
purpose, and even *she* misunderstood a few things) could understand
me just fine, after 40+ years of American TV, radio, etc. saturating
the British airwaves.  So one can comprehend all kinds of lects that
one never actively uses.
I think you can say certain individual forms that are in some English
variety someplace never occur in certain lects, even a wide variety
of them.  I doubt if many people on this list know what "ploating" a
chicken is, or what a "twitchibell" is, and I sure know that no one
in New Jersey or Michigan does if they've lived there all their
lives.  Hearing those terms in context of a sentence might help
though: "Afore oo pit 'at wee hen i' the pot tae cook it, oo need tae
ploat it an tek aa the feathers oot ae't."  Believe it or not, I
understood that when my informant said it, particularly because it
was accompanied with plenty of gestures.  ("oo" = "we", by the way)
So you can talk about linguistic differences, but you do have to
realize that, generally, no dialect is ever "pure" .

Paul Johnston

On Oct 14, 2009, at 6:14 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Black English (UNCLASSIFIED)
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> ---------
>
> There's another problem to be considered, here. Is it possible for
> "grammatical difference" to be other than ill-defined, when
> distinctions between and among lects of what everyone considers
> intuitively, instinctively to be the "same" language?
>
> It is extremely difficult to show that it is generally the case that
> *no* WPEg speaker would *ever*, in his normal, unmonitored speech,
> say, "He crazy" or fail to comprehend its meaning, if he heard it in
> the speech of another.
>
> In like manner, it is extremely difficult - indeed, in IMO and in IME,
> *impossible* - to show that it is generally the case that *no* BPEg
> speaker would *ever*, in his normal, unmonitored speech, say, "He's
> crazy" or fail to comprehend its meaning, if he heard it in the speech
> of another.
>
> Can a difference that makes no difference be defined as a "difference"
> that carries theoretical implications for the description of language?
>
> To quote Chomsky:
>
> "I think not."
>
> Of course, in contradistinction to Chomsky, *I* may be wrong. ;-)
>
> -Winston
>
> On Wed, Oct 14, 2009 at 1:53 PM, Mullins, Bill AMRDEC
> <Bill.Mullins at us.army.mil> wrote:
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> -----------------------
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       "Mullins, Bill AMRDEC" <Bill.Mullins at US.ARMY.MIL>
>> Subject:      Re: Black English (UNCLASSIFIED)
>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
>> ----------
>>
>> Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
>> Caveats: NONE
>>
>>>
>>> What, then, is Plebian?  Let us define it by examples of its
>>> grammar.
>>>   -   The conjugation of "to be"† is complicated, and I am not
>>> sure I
>>> have it entirely correct.  Let me try: Certain ombinations such
>>> as "I
>>> are" and "he am" are not allowed.  Allowable combinations are (I
>>> think):
>>>
>>>      o I am/is            We is/are
>>>      o You is/are         You/y’all is/are
>>>      o He/she/it is       They is/are
>>>
>>>      o I was              We was/were
>>>      o You was/were       You/y’all was/were
>>>      o He/she/it was      They was/were
>>>
>>>   -   for the negative, "ain’t" can be used in all persons and
>>> numbers
>>>   -   Some intermingling of the past tense and the present perfect,
>>> e.g. "He’s got" does not mean "he has had" but rather "he had"
>>>   -   Double negatives are used freely, and have the negative rather
>>> than the positive sense: "ain’t no such thing as…".  Triple
>>> negatives can also occur, e.g. "We don’t take nothing from
>>> nobody."
>>>   -   "he does not" is contracted to "he don’t"
>>>
>>> Observe that the above is NOT "bad grammar" but rather a DIFFERENT
>>> grammar than that of Patrician.
>>>
>>> If Plebian were merely a "substandard" form of "correct" English,
>>> then
>>> one would expect that the growth in compulsory education over the
>>> last
>>> two centuries would have wiped it out, or at least forced it into
>>> decline.  But no, Plebian is alive and flourishing, is quite
>>> persistent, and shows no signs of decline.  Hence we have no
>>> choice but
>>> to rank it as a dialect equal with and competitive to Patrician.
>>>
>>> Philologists should be looking into the differences between
>>> Patrician
>>> and Plebian and the question of why, after several centuries,
>>> neither
>>> dialect has managed to dominate the other.
>>>
>>> +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>>>
>>> Now to contradict my own title.  Black English does exist.  What
>>> is it?
>>>
>>> It is nothing more than a phonetic variation of Plebian English,
>>> with a
>>> notable amount of vocabulary not shared with other variations of
>>> either
>>> Patrician or Plebian English.
>>>
>>> A way to demonstrate:  transcribe a sample of BE, keeping the
>>> original
>>> grammar but using standard rather than eye-dialect spelling.
>>> Compare
>>> it with a similar transcription of speech from a white speaker of
>>> Plebian.  Can you tell the difference?
>>>
>>>     - James A. Landau
>>
>>
>>
>> I think there are more grammatical differences in Black Plebian
>> English grammar vs. White Plebian English grammar than James
>> allows for.  For example
>>
>> BPEg:  "He crazy."
>> WPEg:  "He's crazy."
>>
>> This is a different conjugation of "to be".
>> Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
>> Caveats: NONE
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>
>
>
>
> --
> -Wilson
> –––
> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"––a strange complaint to
> come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> –Mark Twain
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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