week 8

Question 1

pidgin language

Answer 1

• simplified language used to communicate by adults who speak very diff languages
• no structure more complex than a simple clause, no consistent word order, no tense, no way to indicate who did what to whom
• pidgins emerge in colonial and trade situations

Question 2

how are pidgins and creoles created

Answer 2

• contact languages between people who speak structurally very diff languages
• mutually unintelligible languages
• borrowing and mixing languages arises from contact
• defining and giving ‘a language’ a name is a social, historical, political process

Question 3

creole language

Answer 3

• fully grammatical language developed from a pidgin by children using it as a native language
• consistent word order, tense marking, prepositions, case marking, etc

Question 4

lexifier language

Answer 4

• provides most vocabulary, tends to be the most prestigious of the contact languages

Question 5

basilect, acrolect

Answer 5

• basilect: most diff from lexifier language - provides more grammatical structure
• acrolect: variety closest to standard lexifier language, more prestigious
• range of variation: people who have learned the acrolect will tend to use words closer to that standard
• not trying to impress anybody, may use more forms from the basilect

Question 6

pidgin = folk name for Hawaiian creole with English as main lexifier language

Answer 6

• in linguistic terms, is a creole language
• 600,000 sp
  eak as first language
• 400,000 speak as second language
• parent languages: Hawaiian, English, Japanese, Portuguese, Chinese, Korean, Tagalog
• English is the official/prestige language; getting educated has involved “correcting” Pidgin
• systematic phonology, morphology, grammar
• HC has systematic rules that are diff from standard English, often traceable to contributing languages

Question 7

Hawaiian language indigenous to Hawaii

Answer 7

• 1 of the influences on Hawaiian creole
• Polynesian language with austronesian language family

Question 8

hawaii’s 2 state languages

Answer 8

• Hawaii state quarter features the Hawaiian monarch

Question 9

hawaiian history

Answer 9

• king Kamehameha I united Hawaiian islands
• monarchy overthrown
• English made main language of education; Hawaiian language suppressed
• US illegally annexed Hawaii
• Hawaii became 50th state
• Hawaiian language made official alongside English
• start of immersion Hawaiian language nest schools, Hawaii considered critically endangered
• less than 0.1% of population fluent in native Hawaiian

Question 10

Distinction between “lack of grammar/ungrammaticality” and “non-standard grammar”

Answer 10

• people in power define what is standard
• nonstandard dialects are spoken more often by lower classes and non-dominant ethnic/racial groups - but they have grammatical rules
• say non standard has no grammar/bad grammar = some equate it with low intelligence, inarticulateness, lack of education
• AAE does not lack grammar, pronunciation is not due to laziness, it is not just slang, it is not standardized - there is not one single form of AAE

Question 11

phonology and grammar

Answer 11

pronunciation, rules for verb endings and tenses
- included with style, symbolize an identity: here is where language ideology and politics come in

Question 12

AAE speech style

Answer 12

• intonation
• play with words
• discursive structure
• kinesics (body language)
• culturally specific themes, topics

Question 13

problems of naming AAE

Answer 13

• historically: AAE spoken by people of African descent, standard spoken by upper-class whites
• less social segregation leads to less linguistic segregation
• now: people of various races speak AAE (if living in AAE environment)
• many African Americans do not speak AAE
• like Hawaiian Pidgin (creole), AAE rules and forms overlap with Std. US English
• nonstandard language formed during slavery and segregation
• strong pressures to assimilate to prestige language English

Question 14

Theories of origins of AAE (Afrocentric, Eurocentric (dialect), and Creolist)

Answer 14

• afrocentric, Eurocentric, creolist
• afrocentric: African language, spoken by slaves and deliberately mixed together to disrupt ability to communicate and unite
• Eurocentric: some of the features of AAE are same as nonstandard dialects brought from britain (ain’t)
• creolist: intersection of languages with pidginization and creolization

Question 15

education of word-final consonant clusters

Answer 15

reduction:
- told = ‘tole’ last = ‘las’ kind = ‘kin’

Question 16

AAE

Answer 16

• non standard language formed during slavery and segregation
• first: pidgin (contact language between English dialects and various African languages)
• then creolization
• strong pressures to assimilate to the acrolect (English)
• AAE not standardized, but does have phonological and grammatical rules

Question 17

double negatives/negative concord

Answer 17

• “we can’t go nowhere. I ain’t got no money”
• used in nonstandard English’s like Cockney and AAEVE (hence the stigma)
• not standard in English, but double (multiple) negatives are a normal linguistic option, not an issue of logic
• widely used in Elizabethan English 16th century
• now used in contemporary standard languages such as: Spanish, French, Ukrainian
• it is just as logical to have negativity marked throughout the phrase as it is to mark it once

Question 18

habitual verb aspect (‘be’)

Answer 18

standard English:
- simple action or progressive (I run vs. I am running)
- In AAE: habitual “be”
- “we be here every day”
- be as a marker of habitual aspect (recurrence)
- in AAVE: something one uses regularly, and ongoing activity/state (absent in standard English)

Question 19

AAE systems of verb tenses

Answer 19

• pre-recent past, longer ago: I been seen him
• recent past: I done seen him
• prepresent: I did see him
• past inceptive: I do see him
• present: I see him
• immediate future: I’m a do it
• soon-post-immediate future: I’m a gonna do it
• indefinite future: I gonna do it

Question 20

copula deletion

Answer 20

• “they crazy”
• “where she at”
• Japanese, Turkish, Ukrainian, Hebrew, arabic, russian, Bengali, ASL

Question 21

aspect (of verbs); habitual aspect

Answer 21

• grammatical category that marks duration or type of temporal activity
• may contrast between completed and not yet completed action

Question 22

etymology

Answer 22

• history of forms and meanings of a word
• ex: “hazard” comes from Arabic az-zahr; meaning: dice used in games of chance, associated with gambling risk
• now generalized meaning of risk, danger

Question 23

the etymology of “ain’t”

Answer 23

• contraction of forms of “to be not” and “to have not” (starting in 1600s)

to be not
- am not - amn’t - an’t
- are not - aren’t - an’t
- is not - isn’t - in’t or en’t - an’t

• ain’t was considered proper contraction for “am not” until it began to be used as a generic contraction for are not, is not, etc., in early 19c.
• cockney dialect of London; popularized by representations of this in dickens, which led to the word being banished from correct English

to have not
- has not, have not - hasn’t, haven’t - Han’t or ha’n’t
- sometimes pronounced with long a, so hasn’t - ain’t

Question 24

etymology of ask vs. aks

Answer 24

• etymology from the Oxford English Dictionary
• old English áscian
• csian, axian, survived in ax, down to nearly 1600 the
  regular literary form, and still used everywhere in midl. and
  southern dialects, though supplanted in standard English by ask,
  originally the northern form. Already in 15th cent. the latter was
  reduced dialectally to asse, past tense ast, still current dialectally.

Question 25

Cases regarding use of AAE/Ebonics in education (1979 Ann Arbor, Michigan;
)

Answer 25

• school district violated federal law because it failed to take into account the home language of the children in the provision of education instruction
• the judge ordered the school district to find a way to identify black English speakers and to use that knowledge to teach standard English

Question 26

1996 Oakland School district

Answer 26

• school district wanted to treat ebonic as a diff language
• definition as distinct language brings special funds for limlited English proficiency or bilingual education
• treat ebonics not as wrong, but diff, to boost self-esteem while more effectively teaching standard language
• initially, people said: “ebonics will hold blacks back, just plain wrong, not a language”
• as long as social differences, there will be linguistic differences

Question 27

Covert prestige and motivation for non-standard language use

Answer 27

• AAE criticized for not pronouncing things as spelled
• but in English: gh=f in tough
• o =I as in women
• ti = ʃ as in nation
• AAE phonology is systematic, not random breaking of rules, rooted in historical forms of English
• overt: seek higher social status by assimilating to the mainstream standard
• covert: choose to differ from the mainstream standard to identify with particular group (solidarity)

Question 28

Non-standard language, slang, & incorrect grammatical forms in popular music, and racism in how these are often perceived

Answer 28

• Timbaland: the way I are
• Stefani: I’m restless, can’t you see I try my bestest
• when

Question 29

pronouncing “th”

Answer 29

1. voiceless th (θ) pronounced as such at the beginnings of words
   - think = θıŋk
2. voiceless th (θ) pronounced t or f at middle or end of word
   - bath=bæf; with=wıt/wıf
3. voiced th (ð) pronounced as d at beginning of words
   - these=di:z; that=dæt
4. voiced th pronounced as v at end of word
   - bathe=beiv; smooth=smuv