The Regional Development of African American Vernacular English

在美国国家科学基金会的支持下，沃尔特·沃尔夫勒姆博士将对非洲裔美国人方言英语（AAVE）的区域发展进行为期三年的研究。本研究通过比较北卡罗来纳州三个偏远地区的非洲裔美国人社区的语言变化来解决早期和现代AAVE中持续的基底影响，区域适应和语言变化的问题：罗阿诺克岛，位于大陆和外滩之间的沿海社区;德克萨斯，位于阿巴拉契亚南部的山区社区;和普林斯维尔，一个沿海平原社区，位于该州东部三分之一的农村地区。每个社区一直是一个稳定和持续的非裔美国人的网站，从南北战争前的南部，虽然三个社区代表不同的区域设置，不同的社会历史情况，以及不同的社会文化和社会语言接触的情况。社会语言学访谈将与每个社区至少三代的发言者进行。定性和定量分析将被用来描述语音，形态句法和句法变量，代表区域特征以及结构更普遍地与AAVE。该项目是在描述，理论和实践层面上的重要。描述性地，该项目提供了一个社会语言学帐户的非洲裔美国人在农村南部不同社区的讲话，以确定区域和超区域动态之间的平衡。从理论上讲，本研究加深了对语言接触、语言创新和语言时空变异的基本规律的理解。实践上，这项研究有助于公众理解语言多样性，并提供了一个新的视角与AAVE相关的国家辩论。该项目还为教育工作者提供了关于在不同环境中使用非洲志愿教育的重要数据。

With National Science Foundation support, Dr. Walt Wolfram will conduct three years of research on the regional development of African American Vernacular English (AAVE). This research addresses the issues of persistent substrate influence, regional accommodation, and language change in earlier and present-day AAVE by comparing language variation in three remote African American communities in regionally distinct areas of North Carolina: Roanoke Island, a coastal community located between the mainland and the Outer Banks; Texana, a mountain community located in Southern Appalachia; and Princeville, a Coastal Plain community located in the rural region of the eastern third of the state. Each community has been the site of a stable and continuous African American population dating from the antebellum South, though the three communities represent different regional settings, disparate sociohistorical circumstances, and varied sociocultural and sociolinguistic contact situations. Sociolinguistic interviews will be conducted with at least three generations of speakers in each community. Both qualitative and quantitative analyses will be used to describe phonological, morphosyntactic, and syntactic variables that represent regional features as well as structures associated more generally with AAVE.The project is significant on descriptive, theoretical, and practical levels. Descriptively, the project provides a sociolinguistic account of African American speech in different communities in the rural South to determine the balance between the regional and the supra-regional dynamics. Theoretically, the research furthers the understanding of the fundamental principles that underlie language contact, language innovation, and language variation in time and space. Practically, the study contributes to public understanding of language diversity and offers a new perspective on national debate associated with AAVE. The project also provides educators with important data on the use of AAVE in different settings.