Presentation Type
Oral Presentation
Category
Social Sciences/Humanities
Abstract/Artist Statement
African American English (Or AAE, a variant of Standard American English(SAE)) has several features that allow for a diverse array of temporal information to be encoded not found in SAE. Here I touch on two such methods, both regarding past events: Been and Done. Both been and done are employed by speakers to provide additional context and I posit that they appear in various constructions providing specific pragmatic information. My analysis has been grounded in previous investigations and supported by data collected colloquially.
Been is the word commonly used to indicate distant past events. When used in a verb phrase it implies that the action took place long before the utterance. The information being reported is generally interpreted as well established to the speaker such as in We been knew she was married (in SAE ‘we have known for a long time that she was married’).
Done indicates events that recently transpired and has been described by some as a ‘present perfect’ construction (Scott 2016). I argue that the constructions need not imply completion and can simply convey recentness as in He done left (in SAE ‘he just/recently left’).
While similar phenomena have been attested in AAE both been and done still represent areas of debate in the literature about their categorization (Scott 2016, Edwards 2001, Terry 2004). The structural makeup of AAE has long been ignored by many outside of linguistics (despite continuous research on the subject), and one of the goals of this investigation is to apply linguistic theories to the phenomena attested in AAE to better describe the systematicity of the dialect(s) as a whole. Through descriptive analysis of the systematic structure of AAE the field of linguistics can make important contributions to the acceptance of language diversity in all disciplines, and the information gleaned by examining these structures will enrich the field as a whole.
Mentor Name
Leora Bar-el
Personal Statement
As a linguist I have always felt that the most important aspect of my field is to document, preserve and celebrate the diversity of language. Through my studies I have been exposed to the myriad of issues that different speech communities face. From forced language assimilation to widespread denigration of entire dialects, language has long been a tool for social stratification, manipulation and suppression. Many times the field of linguistics itself has been used in this manner as a means to separate and negatively codify specific populations through the misapplication of linguistic knowledge. A very salient example in this country is the usage of boarding schools to force indigenous children to abandon their languages (and cultures as a whole) in favor of western practices including the use of English as their own languages were thought of as “savage”. Linguistics is still a relatively new field of research and as a result a long period of its development has been dominated by schools of thought that centered Indo-European languages as the standard when it came to linguistic structure. This ideology has nice shifted somewhat but there is still more to be done. My specific interests as a linguist are to take the skills that I have acquired in my studies and turn them towards communities that deserve the same care and attention to detail that European languages have enjoyed. This includes emphasizing African American English (AAE) as a structured rule governed dialect with its own identity and properties separate from Mainstream American English. As a bi-dialectal African American man I have experienced the negativity associated with AAE and the societal rejection of it as anything more than “slang” which has in part driven my ambitions in linguistics. Through my studies and research I aim to provide necessary support to all language and dialect communities.
Aspectual Markers in African American English(es)
UC 326
African American English (Or AAE, a variant of Standard American English(SAE)) has several features that allow for a diverse array of temporal information to be encoded not found in SAE. Here I touch on two such methods, both regarding past events: Been and Done. Both been and done are employed by speakers to provide additional context and I posit that they appear in various constructions providing specific pragmatic information. My analysis has been grounded in previous investigations and supported by data collected colloquially.
Been is the word commonly used to indicate distant past events. When used in a verb phrase it implies that the action took place long before the utterance. The information being reported is generally interpreted as well established to the speaker such as in We been knew she was married (in SAE ‘we have known for a long time that she was married’).
Done indicates events that recently transpired and has been described by some as a ‘present perfect’ construction (Scott 2016). I argue that the constructions need not imply completion and can simply convey recentness as in He done left (in SAE ‘he just/recently left’).
While similar phenomena have been attested in AAE both been and done still represent areas of debate in the literature about their categorization (Scott 2016, Edwards 2001, Terry 2004). The structural makeup of AAE has long been ignored by many outside of linguistics (despite continuous research on the subject), and one of the goals of this investigation is to apply linguistic theories to the phenomena attested in AAE to better describe the systematicity of the dialect(s) as a whole. Through descriptive analysis of the systematic structure of AAE the field of linguistics can make important contributions to the acceptance of language diversity in all disciplines, and the information gleaned by examining these structures will enrich the field as a whole.