Present accounted for: Prosody and aspect in early African American English.

Abstract

This study reconstructs the present temporal reference system of Early African American English (AAE) by investigating the linguistic factors conditioning several variables within the domain of present temporal reference in three varieties argued to be representative of Early AAE. The first half concerns the variable contraction and deletion of the copula, studies of which have used the following grammatical category to ascribe a creole origin to AAE, while downplaying the equally significant subject-type constraint. Arguing that both effects are epiphenomena of constraints dictated by prosodic structure, I show that the complexity of the phonological phrase constrains both contraction and deletion across all three varieties. Thus, the early African Americans exploited a possibility inherent in the English language once contraction developed. The second half concerns verbal predication in the present temporal reference domain, previous studies of which have focussed only on the opposition between bare verbs and verbs marked with --s, ignoring other morphosyntactic constructions. Expanding the analysis to the entire present temporal reference system, I demonstrate that different expressions of the present themselves convey different aspects: the previously-noted finding that --s marks habitual aspect is confirmed, but zero also marks aspect, that of duration. The progressive is used most often with nonstative verbs, to denote durative aspect, while its much rarer use with statives appears to reflect an older stage in its "grammaticization". Thus, these findings largely comply with the literature on the history and use of the progressive in English. This reconstruction not only serves as further evidence in the history of the development of AAVE, it also demonstrates the utility of variationist analysis in resolving issues of system membership and genetic affiliation. Combining variationist analysis with current advances in linguistic theory, it provides linguistically meaningful explanations of the observed variability and places it within the context of the development of the English language.