Chapter 6 presents a more recent quantitative diachronic study looking for historical evidence for the grammaticalization path presented in Chapter 5. Using data from COHA and COCA, the study examines the development of the first nouns nub, breeze, husk, snake, bitch, and whale. The chapter begins with a discussion of bridging contexts as evidence for the constructional changes. The methodology section provides an explanation for both the choice of first nouns and the choice of corpora. The analysis is broken down into different paths: those first nouns that developed a pseudo-partitive use before the EBNP (nub, breeze, husk, and snake), the pseudo-partitive path, and those first nouns not used in the pseudo-partitive and which developed an evaluative meaning after the EBNP, the evaluative path (bitch and whale). The evidence supports the grammaticalization path proposed in Chapter 5 and indicates that the pseudo-partitive plays only a subsidiary role in this grammaticalization process; it does not appear to be directly linked to the EBNP. The more plausible historical link is between the head-classifier and the EBNP.

This chapter explores how an epistemology of sound has contributed to the rebellious and coalitional genre of dub poetry in 1970s and 1980s Britain. The development of black British dub in the 1970s is both timely in its ability to articulate a demotic poetics accessible to the communities from which it speaks and untimely in its politically impertinent capabilities. While Afro-Caribbean poets dominate the genre, the writing often remains committed to questioning the boundaries of race and nation. The form itself is constituted by a variety of mediums which shape an inherently hybrid poetic expression. Through an interrogation of the work of three influential black British dub poets – Linton Kwesi Johnson, Jean ‘Binta’ Breeze, and Benjamin Zephaniah – this chapter traces the means by which these poets cultivate manifold insurgent sonic solidarities. While firmly located within the frame of the written word and the materiality of the printed page, their poetry is impelled by the sonic and at times performative qualities of the poet. The writing of Johnson, Breeze, and Zephaniah achieves its lyrical alliances through the ineffable and kinaesthetic entanglement between the text and the sound.