Grammatical Variation in Caribbean English Creoles and African-American Vernacular English

加勒比英语克里奥尔语和非裔美国人白话英语的语法变异

• 批准号: 0545424
• 负责人: John Rickford
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Stanford University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2006
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2006-04-15 至 2010-03-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0545424&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Grammatical; Variation; Caribbean; English; Creoles

Some of the most markedly different varieties of English in the world are found in the Caribbean. Understanding these features in Caribbean English creoles is not only relevant to charting universals of English and universals of language, but also to resolving one of the most heated controversies in the study of American dialects over the past half century: the origin of African American Vernacular English [AAVE], the most markedly different variety of English in the US. "Anglicists" on the one hand believe that virtually all of AAVE's features come from English dialect speakers whom African slaves encountered when they first came to North America; "creolists" on the other hand believe that AAVE's distinctive features come from creoles similar to those currently spoken in the Caribbean, in part because such creoles might have been brought to North America by slaves who were brought up from the Caribbean in the 17th-19th centuries, and in part because similar creoles might have developed independently but similarly in South Carolina and elsewhere. Quantitative analyses of relative pronoun absence, plural -s absence and question inversion will allow scholars to address the question of the origins of AAVE by comparing variation in these key features across different varieties. Although quantitative analysis has been a major source of insights into the nature and origins of social dialect variation in the US over the past four decades, little or no quantitative analysis exists for key grammatical features in Caribbean English Creoles. The goal of this project is to provide quantitative analyses of three grammatical features (question formation, the absence of relative pronouns, and the absence of plural markers) in three Creole English varieties in the Caribbean (Jamaican, Barbadian and Guyanese), and also in two non-standard English varieties in the US, African American Vernacular English in California, and Appalachian English in Kentucky and West Virginia. The analyses will be based on data from recordings of natural speech in each region. The research team will then be able to compare the regularities observed in North American varieties of English to those that hold in Caribbean varieties.

世界上一些最不同的英语变体出现在加勒比海地区。了解加勒比海英语克里奥尔语中的这些特征不仅关系到绘制英语的共性和语言的共性，而且还关系到解决过去半个世纪美国方言研究中最激烈的争议之一：非裔美国人白话英语的起源，这是美国英语中最显著的不同变种。一方面，“英国国教派”认为，AAVE的几乎所有特征都来自非洲奴隶第一次来到北美时遇到的说英语方言的人；另一方面，“克里奥尔派”认为，AAVE的独特特征来自与加勒比地区目前所说的克里奥尔语相似的克里奥尔语，部分原因是这种克里奥尔语可能是由17-19世纪从加勒比海长大的奴隶带到北美的，部分原因是类似的克里奥尔语可能是独立发展出来的，但在南卡罗来纳州和其他地方类似。对相对代词缺位、复数-S缺位和疑问句倒装的量化分析将使学者们能够通过比较这些关键特征在不同语种中的差异来解决AAVE的起源问题。在过去的四十年里，定量分析一直是洞察美国社会方言变异的本质和起源的主要来源，但对加勒比海英语克里奥尔语中的关键语法特征的定量分析很少或根本没有。这个项目的目标是对加勒比海地区的三种克里奥尔英语变体(牙买加语、巴巴迪亚语和圭亚那语)以及美国两种非标准英语变体--加利福尼亚州的非洲裔美国白话英语和肯塔基州和西弗吉尼亚州的阿巴拉契亚英语--的三个语法特征(疑问句、关系代词的缺失和复数标记的缺失)进行量化分析。分析将基于每个地区自然语音录音的数据。然后，研究小组将能够将在北美英语变体中观察到的规律与在加勒比海变体中观察到的规律进行比较。