Doctoral Dissertation Research: Variation and Change in Past Tense Negation in AAVE

博士论文研究：AAVE过去时否定的变异与变化

基本信息

批准号：
1658547
负责人：
Meredith Tamminga
金额：
$ 1.28万
依托单位：
University of Pennsylvania
依托单位国家：
美国
项目类别：
Standard Grant
财政年份：
2017
资助国家：
美国
起止时间：
2017-05-01 至 2018-10-31
项目状态：
已结题

来源：
https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1658547&HistoricalAwards=false
关键词：
Doctoral Dissertation Research Variation Change

项目摘要

The emerging field of socio-syntax seeks to uncover how a speaker's mental grammar is organized to allow for variability in language as well as what the relationship between structural and social knowledge about language is. This research project will probe the relationship between grammar and variation through observations of morphosyntactic variation in African American English [AAE] as spoken in Philadelphia. Specifically, the project looks at the increase of a unique feature of AAE, the use of 'ain't' in the simple past (where speakers would otherwise use 'didn't') and its consequences for other aspects of the grammar, including its effect on the use of verbal morphology as a way of communicating tense-aspect meaning. In pursuing this study, the following questions will be answered: What are the social and linguistic constraints on the use of 'ain't' within the speech community? What linguistic knowledge about 'ain't' do individual speakers at different points in the change have? How does the morphological form of verbs following 'ain't' interact with tense-aspect meaning for different speakers and at different times during the change?Data for the project comes from two sources: (1) A corpus of casual conversations with more than 60 African American speakers collected in Philadelphia in the early 1980s by a community insider; and (2) Contemporary elicitation with native speakers of Philadelphia AAE to understand the interaction between tense-aspect meaning and verbal morphology. The results will demonstrate the social and linguistic profile of the change as well as provide a syntactic analysis of 'ain't' in AAE and an account of both variation with 'ain't' and variation in verbal morphology following 'ain't'. This research not only contributes to our understanding of morphosyntactic variation and how it interacts with speakers, mental representations of grammar, it also provides insight into the underlying structure of AAE, how it is similar to and different from other varieties of English, and how speakers of AAE navigate such differences.

新兴的社会传说领域试图揭示说话者的精神语法是如何组织的，以允许语言变异以及关于语言的结构和社会知识之间的关系。该研究项目将通过在费城所说的非裔美国人英语[AAE]中的形态句法变化观察到语法与变异之间的关系。具体而言，该项目着眼于AAE的独特功能的增加，在简单的过去（否则说话者将使用“不”）及其对语法其他方面的后果，包括其对使用言语形态作为一种交流紧张含义的方式的影响。在追求这项研究时，将回答以下问题：在语音社区中使用“非”的社会和语言限制是什么？关于变化的不同时刻，个人演讲者的语言知识是什么？ “ ain't”之后动词的形态形式如何与时态的含义对不同的说话者和变化期间的不同时间相互作用？该项目的数据来自两个来源：（1）1980年代初期由社区内部人士在1980年代初在费城收集的60多位非裔美国人说话的随意对话；（2）与费城AAE的母语人士的当代启发，以了解紧张的意义与言语形态之间的相互作用。结果将证明变化的社会和语言概况，并提供对AAE中“ ain't”的句法分析，并说明了“ Ain't”的变化以及“ Ain't”之后的言语形态的变化。这项研究不仅有助于我们对形态句法变化及其与说话者的相互作用，语法的心理表示，还提供了对AAE的潜在结构的洞察力，它与英语的其他品种相似和不同，以及AAE的扬声器如何导致此类差异。