Schneider’s Dynamic Model (2003, 2007) provides a useful framework for examining the evolution of Postcolonial Englishes. The model recognizes the fundamentally similar ways these Englishes evolved, identifying phases in their evolution and the historical, sociolinguistic/linguistic and identity conditions for each. While the model has been used primarily to explain Postcolonial Englishes, it can also be applied to contact varieties like African American English (AAE) that arose in situations where populations were brought to the language rather than the language being brought to them. This paper shows how the Dynamic Model can provide a more satisfying history of AAE than other models do because it requires an examination of its entire history rather than just its origins. As the paper shows, many of the most iconic features of AAE arose during Nativization (pen/pin merger, yall, fixin’ to) and Endonormative Stabilization stages (durative/habitual be). It was during this latter stage that AAE truly became a national variety and a treasured cultural resource.

Abstract African American English (AAE) originated from contact between Africans and Whites during slavery. The trajectory of slavery in the United States was different from that in the Caribbean, but in areas where population ratios and time frames were most like those in the Caribbean, a creole language, Gullah, emerged. In other areas, various degrees of creolization may have taken place. As a result, early AAE was not monolithic and included some regional variation. In recordings with former slaves and African Americans born during the last half of the 19th century, the reflexes of AAE’s origins appear in features that have strong parallels with Gullah and Caribbean creoles, including zero copula/auxiliary, monophthongal /e/ and /o/, fully back vowels, and non-front onsets of /au/. As African Americans moved from slavery into farm tenancy, features emerged in AAE that were shared with Southern White vernaculars. These include grammatical forms such as yall and fixin’ to and phonological features like monophthongal /ai/ and the pin/pen merger. However, even as shared features emerged, AAE maintained its distinctiveness by typically not participating in the Southern Shift that affected vowels in Southern White vernaculars. Developments during the Great Migration in the 20th century enhanced AAE’s distinctiveness. During the Great Migration such well-known features as durative/habitual be, ain’t for didn’t, and had + past as a simple past became widespread. AAE, then, is a product both of its unique heritage and the historical and demographic processes that promoted its independent development and also of people who valued (and still value) it as a mode of communication and as an instrument for identity and solidarity.

This Element uses data from the Springville Project to explore how the functions of the inherited forms invariant be (from English sources) and zero (from creolization) have transformed during the twentieth century. Originally just alternative present tense copula/auxiliary forms, both features developed into aspectual markers – invariant be to mark durativity/habituality and zero to mark nonstativity. The motivation for these innovations were both socio-cultural and linguistic. The Great Migration and its consequences provided a demographic and socio-cultural context within which linguistic innovations could develop and spread. The mismatch between form and function within the present tense copula/auxiliary system and the grammatical ambiguities that affected both invariant be and zero provided linguistic triggers for this reanalysis. When taken together, the evolution of these forms illustrates how restructured linguistic subsystems (and eventually new varieties) emerge out of the interplay between inheritance and innovation.

This chapter reviews some of the results from the panel survey portion of the Springville Project. In social science research, panel surveys typically comprise cross-sectional samples of informants who are re-interviewed for the same variables at different points in time. Using data from the Springville panel survey, the chapter demonstrates the impact of both the Small N Effect and the Gap Effect on results from panel surveys in sociolinguistics. The chapter suggests that researchers should use extreme caution in reaching conclusions from data with small Ns. The Springville panel study data provides further confirmation that low-token interviews are unreliable measures of an individual's use of a linguistic feature, which is refered to as the Small N Effect. Linguists who are actively planning a panel survey should consider the quantity of data and the frequency of its collection very carefully in the study design.

Top linguists from diverse fields address language varieties in the South. Language Variety in the South Revisited is a comprehensive collection of new research on southern United States English by foremost scholars of regional language variation. Like its predecessor, Language Variety in the South: Perspectives in Black and White (The University of Alabama Press, 1986), this book includes current research into African American vernacular English, but it greatly expands the scope of investigation and offers an extensive assessment of the field. The volume encompasses studies of contact involving African and European languages; analysis of discourse, pragmatic, lexical, phonological, and syntactic features; and evaluations of methods of collecting and examining data. The 38 essays not only offer a wealth of information about southern language varieties but also serve as models for regional linguistic investigation.

Chapter 11 Real Time and Apparent Time Patricia Cukor-Avila, Patricia Cukor-AvilaSearch for more papers by this authorGuy Bailey, Guy BaileySearch for more papers by this author Patricia Cukor-Avila, Patricia Cukor-AvilaSearch for more papers by this authorGuy Bailey, Guy BaileySearch for more papers by this author Book Editor(s):J.K. Chambers, J.K. ChambersSearch for more papers by this authorNatalie Schilling, Natalie SchillingSearch for more papers by this author First published: 12 July 2013 https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118335598.ch11Citations: 21 AboutPDFPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShareShare a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Summary In work on Martha's Vineyard, William Labov developed methodological innovations that allowed linguists to track the progress of linguistic changes and established the basis for a synchronic approach to language change. Perhaps the most important innovation was the apparent-time construct, a surrogate for the real-time examination of data at different points in history. Over the last 30 years linguists have used the apparent-time construct in many situations to make inferences about ongoing changes. Researchers desiring to use real-time evidence for studying language change have two options: (i) comparison of evidence from a new study to some pre-existing data, or (ii) re-survey of a community or a group of informants after a time-lapse. Researchers should be careful when making assumptions based on apparent-time data from adolescents and teenagers, and they must be alert both to the possible effects of sociolectal adjustments and to age-grading with adult cohorts. Citing Literature The Handbook of Language Variation and Change, Second Edition RelatedInformation

The transcription of speech into a graphic code is a basic procedure in both dialectology and sociolinguistics, and typically, it is this graphic analog of speech that forms the data for analysis in both disciplines. The act of transcription, however, affects linguistic data in subtle,difficult-to-detect ways. This paper demonstrates some of those effects by examining impressionistic phonetic data in American linguistic atlases. The paper identifies three sources of transcriber effects in the data: (1)conceptual differences regarding the phonetic status of particular sounds(e.g., offglides of diphthongs) and how they should be transcribed, (2)normative differences regarding the phonetic values of particular symbols, and(3) changing scribal practices as transcribers discover the importance of phonetic details that they had previously overlooked. When transcriber effects such as these are not identified and accounted for in the analysis of the data, they can create misleading results.