Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Development of Dialectal Variation in African American English

博士论文研究：非裔美国英语方言变异的发展

• 批准号: 0819081
• 负责人: Richard Meier
• 金额: $ 1.14万
• 依托单位: University of Texas at Austin
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2008
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2008-08-15 至 2010-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0819081&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Development; Dialectal

African American English (AAE) differs from mainstream American English (MAE) syntactically, semantically, and phonologically, but the development of these systems in AAE has received little attention in the literature. For example, both AAE- and MAE-speaking young children use question forms like (1) "What time it is?" and negative statement forms like (2) "I don't want no drink" alongside the MAE forms (1') "What time is it?" and (2') "I don't want a drink". However, whereas MAE-speaking children discontinue use of forms like (1) and (2) as they gain adult competence in MAE, AAE-speaking children continue using them after the MAE-speaking children have stopped doing so. Moreover, since adult AAE employs both (1) and (1') and (2) and (2'), at some point the continued use of the (1) and (2) by AAE-speaking children is not an acquisition error, but adult proficiency in their dialect. That is, child AAE speakers must be able to acquire variation between (1) and (1') and (2) and (2') as part of their linguistic repertoire.This Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement award supports comparative research on the development of questions and negations in the dialects of AAE and MAE spoken in New Orleans, Louisiana. Using spontaneous speech and data gathered through experimental task from 5, 6, and 7 year-old participants, this project will shed new light on appropriate developmental stages for AAE, and it will help distinguish variation in child AAE that is developmental from variation that signals successful acquisition of adult question formation and negation. More generally, this research will contribute to understanding the limits of variation across varieties of English at different stages of language development.

非裔美国英语在句法、语义和语音方面与主流美国英语不同，但这些系统在非裔美国英语中的发展很少受到文献的关注。例如，说AAE和MAE的幼儿都使用这样的问题形式：（1）“现在几点了？“和否定陈述形式，如（2）“我不想喝酒”旁边的MAE形式（1“）“现在几点了？（2）“我不想喝酒”。然而，尽管说MAE的儿童在他们获得成人MAE能力时停止使用（1）和（2）等形式，但说AAE的儿童在说MAE的儿童停止使用后继续使用它们。此外，由于成人AAE使用（1）和（1 '）和（2）和（2'），在某些时候，继续使用（1）和（2）的AAE说的儿童不是一个习得错误，但成人熟练的方言。也就是说，儿童AAE发言者必须能够获得（1）和（1 '）和（2）和（2'）之间的变化，作为他们的语言库的一部分。这个博士论文研究改进奖支持在新奥尔良，路易斯安那州的AAE和MAE方言的疑问句和否定句的发展的比较研究。本研究利用5、6、7岁儿童的自发言语和通过实验任务收集的数据，为AAE的发展阶段提供了新的线索，并有助于区分儿童AAE中的发展性变异和成功获得成人疑问句形成和否定的变异。更一般地说，这项研究将有助于理解在语言发展的不同阶段，英语变体之间的变化的限制。