Walt Wolfram

Sociolinguistic aspects of assimilation : Puerto Rican English in New York City

This book looks at the essential dynamics of language contact and linguistic assimilation from a current sociolinguistic perspective by focusing on the English of second generation Puerto Rican teen-agers in New York City. General sociolinguistic principles are extrapolated from the authors detailed investigation of several linguistic variables (th, syllable-final alveolar stops, negation) within the context of three competing influences on the subjects, speech: the standard English of mainstream society, the Puerto Rican Spanish ,.,,poken at home, and the vernacular Black English of the surrounding indigenous community. (AG) -SOCIOLINGUISTIC ASPECTS OF ASSIMILATION PUERTO RICAN ENGLISH IN NEW YORK CITY

Sociolinguistic Folklore in the Study of African American English

Although sociolinguists have performed a valuable service in challenging folk theories about African American English (AAE), they also have unwittingly participated in the construction of sociolinguistic folklore about variation and change in AAE. Several examples of sociolinguistic myths are presented, including the supraregional myth, the change myth, and the social stratification myth. Data used to challenge the canon of AAE description include empirical studies of different types of rural Southern African American communities as well as ethnographic observation. Historical circumstance, social and professional enculturation, and academic exclusivity are considered in explaining the construction of these questionable axioms about AAE. The examination indicates that unchallenged assumptions, unilateral explanations, and imagined dichotomies need to be scrutinized more critically with regard to the canon of AAE description.

Alternative Models of Dialect Death: Dissipation vs. Concentration.

The comparison of the moribund dialects of Ocracoke Island, North Carolina, and Smith Island, Maryland, demonstrates that valuable insight into the patterning of variation and change in language death can be obtained by investigating moribund varieties of healthy languages. In addition, it is crucial to investigate not only cases of death by linguistic decay (DISSIPATION), but also cases of death by population attrition in which linguistic distinctiveness is maintained or heightened among fewer speakers (CONCENTRATION). The comparative investigation of both types of language death lends insight into the macrolevel socioeconomic and microlevel sociopsychological factors that lead to the maintenance or demise of moribund languages and language varieties, as well as the nature of change in language death. It is demonstrated that change in both concentrating and dissipating varieties is rapid but otherwise indistinct from change in healthy varieties and that unusual patterns of variation and change can be explained by appealing to the social significance of language features.

Dialect accommodation in a bi-ethnic mountain enclave community: More evidence on the development of African American English

The investigation of isolated African American enclave communities has been instrumental in reformulating the historical reconstruction of earlier African American English and the current trajectory of language change in African American Vernacular English (AAVE). This case study examines a unique enclave sociolinguistic situation - a small, long-term, isolated bi-ethnic enclave community in the mountains of western North Carolina - to further understanding of the role of localized dialect accommodation and ethnolinguistic distinctiveness in the historical development of African American English. The examination of a set of diagnostic phonological and morphosyntactic variables for several of the remaining African Americans in this community supports the conclusion that earlier African American English largely accommodated local dialects while maintaining a subtle, distinctive ethnolinguistic divide. However, unlike the situation in some other African American communities, there is no current movement toward an AAVE external norm for the lone isolated African American teenager; rather, there is increasing accommodation to the local dialect. Contact-based, identity-based, and ideologically based explanations are appealed to in describing the past and present direction of change for the African Americans in this receding community. (African American Vernacular English, Appalachian English, dialect, language change, lan

Isolation Within Isolation: A Solitary Century of African‐American Vernacular English

The nature of language diversity in small, isolated communities is considered by examining a unique sociolingustic situation in which a one African-American family has resided for over 130 years on a small island community located off the Southeastern coast of the United States. The Anglo-American community maintained a distinctive dialect due to their isolation from the mainland United States, while the sole African-American family maintained a variety heavily influenced by African-American Vernacular English. Although some assimilation to the surrounding Anglo-American variety has taken place, a number of salient African-American Vernacular English features are still used by the single African-American resident of the island. At the same time, the most marked items of the Anglo-American Outer Banks variety have not been assimilated, thus demonstrating the symbolic exclusion of the African-American speaker from the Anglo community despite her life-long residency.

Operationalizing Linguistic Gratuity: From Principle to Practice

Although there is a well-established tradition of social engagement in sociolinguistics, there is little explicit discussion of the rationale, methods, and procedures for implementing the principle of linguistic gratuity. What approaches to the dissemination of sociolinguistic information must be adopted with communities and with the general public when language diversity is interpreted in terms of a prescriptive, correctionist model? What venues, activities, and products are the most effective in dialect awareness programs? And how does linguist– community collaboration work on a practical level? We consider theoretical, methodological, and practical issues in sociolinguistic engagement and dialect awareness outreach programs based on a range of experience in a variety of local and general public venues. The approach is based on the principle that the public is inherently curious about language differences and that this intrigue can be transformed into informal and formal public education. It is further premised on evidence that language differences can be linked to legitimate historical and cultural legacies, and that positively framed presentations of language differences in sociocultural and sociohistorical contexts can effectively counter dominant, seemingly unassailable ideologies in non-confrontational ways. A variety of venues are considered in collaborative engagement, including video documentaries, oral history CDs, museum exhibits, formal curricular programs, and popular trade books on language differences. Challenges in operationalizing linguistic gratuity include working with the community; balancing community linguistic expertise and community perspectives; design and audience, and practical logistical issues.

The regional context of earlier African American speech: Evidence for reconstructing the development of AAVE

Despite extensive research over the past four decades, a number of issues concerning the historical and current development of African American Vernacular English (AAVE) remain unresolved. This study utilizes a unique sociolinguistic situation - a long-standing, isolated, biracial community situated in a distinctive dialect region of coastal North Carolina - to address questions of localized dialect accommodation and ethnolinguistic distinctiveness in earlier African American English. A comparison of diagnostic phonological and morphosyntactic variables for a sample of four different generations of African Americans and a baseline European American group shows that considerable accommodation of the localized dialect occurred in earlier African American speech. Nonetheless, certain dialect features e.g., copula absence and 3rd person verbal s marking - were distinctively maintained by African Americans in the face of localized dialect accommodation; and this suggests long-term ethnolinguistic distinctiveness. Crossgenerational change among African Americans indicates that younger speakers are moving away from the localized Pamlico Sound dialect toward a more generalized AAVE norm. Contact-based and identity-based explanations are offered for the current trend of localized dialect displacement. (African American Vernacular English, dialect, language change, identity, language contact)*

Unmarked Tense in American Indian English

A MONG THE FEATURES characterizing varieties identified as AMERICAN INDIAN ENGLISH (AIE), none has received more attention than unmarked tense. Forms such as Last year we go to the fiesta corresponding to standard English Last year we went to the fiesta are often cited as one of the recurring grammatical patterns highlighting these varieties (Drechsel 1976, p. 77). The pattern demonstrates considerable historical continuity, with attestations recorded for earlier as well as present-day versions of AIE. Thus, Leechman and Hall (1955) and Dillard (1975) give a number of attestations of unmarked past tense forms dating back to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and Malancon and Malancon (1977, p. 147) extend such examples by documenting unmarked past tense forms of different language groups present at the Haskell Institute at the beginning of this century. Cook (1973) updates this documentation by citing examples from representative groups in the Southwest, including Apache, Pima, Mohave, Paiute, Papago, Shoshone, and Hualapai. Despite the fact that unmarked past forms have been noted quite frequently in varieties of AIE, observations have typically been restricted to the citation of particular examples, and there exists no detailed descriptive investigation of this phenomenon. Admittedly, any serious descriptive investigation of unmarked past tense is immediately confronted with the complexities involved in the English tense-aspect system, particularly as compared with the potential source-language systems. As Silverstein observes (1973, p. 84):

LANGUAGE CHANGE IN "CONSERVATIVE" DIALECTS: THE CASE OF PAST TENSE BE IN SOUTHERN ENCLAVE COMMUNITIES

�� edge the potential for independent, internal linguistic change in such language varieties, the role of innovation tends to be overlooked in favor of the relic assumption, namely, that dialect forms in peripheral dialects will remain relatively static and resistant to language innovation. Indeed, Andersen (1988) maintains that this assumption has led researchers to slight the role of system-internal innovations in language in peripheral communities in favor of explanations grounded in hypothetical (and often unlikely or even impossible) contact situations resulting in the diffusion of change from outside areas. Andersen notes, there are internally motivated innovations which arise independently of any external stimulus. These too have an areal dimension and may appear to spread merely because they arise in different places at different times. [54] Andersen not only admits the potential of internally motivated change but asserts that peripheral varieties existing in closed, concentrated communities actually may show more dramatic changes than those occurring in more mainstream varieties, including “exorbitant phonetic developments” (70). In this study, we compare the trajectory of language change for a single morphosyntactic feature—past tense be leveling—in a set of representative enclave communities in the mid-Atlantic South to examine its path of change over the past century and the general role of innovation in peripheral dialect communities. Though enclave dialect situations have always

Issues in Reconstructing Earlier African-American English.

Despite intense scrutiny over the past several decades, there remain a number of unresolved issues in the reconstruction of the historical development of African-American Vernacular English (AAVE). These issues concern the reliability of written texts representing earlier AAVE, the representativeness of the spoken data from ex-slave recordings and remnant transplant communities, the delimitation of the sociohistorical context of earlier AAVE development, the nature of inter- and intra-community variation in earlier AAVE, and the principles for identifying donor sources for AAVE structures. Evidence from representative written sources is compared, along with spoken language data from a long-term, bi-racial remnant community in coastal North Carolina. The spoken language data demonstrate that earlier AAVE was affected both by its original contact history and the localized varieties spoken by European American cohort communities. Furthermore, data indicate that there was considerable intra-community as well as inter-community language variation among earlier African Americans. The analysis shows that sociolinguists need to reconstruct the historical development of AAVE in a way that is consistent with the sociohistorical and demographic circumstances of early African Americans; faithful to an understanding of contact linguistics, independent language development, and dialect diffusion; and sensitive to the local sociolinguistic situations that have contextualized different groups of individual African Americans within these communities.