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“The black men has wives and Sweet harts [and third person plural -s] Jest like the white men”: Evidence for verbal -s from written documents on 19th-century African American speech

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Michael Montgomery ,
Janet M. Fuller  and
Sharon DeMarse
Michael Montgomery
Affiliation:
University of South Carolina
Janet M. Fuller
Affiliation:
University of South Carolina
Sharon DeMarse
Affiliation:
University of South Carolina
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Abstract

The analysis of letters written by 19th-century African Americans shows constraints on verbal -s marking which parallel those found in the writing of Scotch-Irish immigrants in the same time period and region, specifically a subject type constraint and a proximity to subject constraint. This correlation is highly suggestive for the study of the development of African American Vernacular English (AAVE). This study finds no support for a basis from a creole or from Standard English for AAVE in verbal concord and concludes that some, perhaps many, African Americans used varieties of English with little or no creole influence. Earlier studies have assumed that standard dialects of English constituted the superstrate in colonial and antebellum America; this analysis makes it clear that we must examine the features of the local varieties, black and white, before making any claims about the influences of language contact on a given variety. Further, the consistent patterns of inflections found in this study show that written documents, in particular letters written by semiliterate African Americans, are a good source for further linguistic study of 19th-century language.

Type
Research Article
Information
Language Variation and Change , Volume 5 , Issue 3 , October 1993 , pp. 335 - 357
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

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