- The Oxford Handbook of African American Language
- List of Figures
- List of Tables
- Acknowledgments
- About the Editor
- List of Contributors
- Language Use in African American Communities: An Introduction
- The English Origins Hypothesis
- The Creole Origins Hypothesis
- The Emergence of African American English: Monogenetic or Polygenetic? With or Without “Decreolization”? Under How Much Substrate Influence?
- The Origins of African American Vernacular English: Beginnings
- African American English over Yonder: The Language of the Liberian Settler Community
- Documenting the History of African American Vernacular English: A Survey and Assessment of Sources and Results
- Regionality in the Development of African American English
- The Place of Gullah in the African American Linguistic Continuum
- Rural Texas African American Vernacular English
- African American English in the Mississippi Delta: A Case Study of Copula Absence and r-Lessness in the Speech of African American Women in Coahoma County
- African American Voices in Atlanta
- African American Language in Pittsburgh and the Lower Susquehanna Valley
- African American Phonology in a Philadelphia Community
- African American Language in New York City
- African American Vernacular English in California: Over Four Decades of Vibrant Variationist Research
- The Black ASL (American Sign Language) Project: An Overview
- The Sociolinguistic Construction of African American Language
- Syntax and Semantics in African American English
- The Systematic Marking of Tense, Modality, and Aspect in African American Language
- On the Syntax-Prosody Interface in African American English
- Segmental Phonology of African American English
- Prosodic Features of African American English
- Language Acquisition in the African American Child: Prior to Age Four
- The Development of African American English through Childhood and Adolescence
- Development of Variation in Child African American English
- Narrative Structures of African American Children: Commonalities and Differences
- Some Similarities and Differences Between African American English and Southern White English in Children
- Assessing the Language Skills of African American English Child Speakers: Current Approaches and Perspectives
- African American Language and Education: History and Controversy in the Twentieth Century
- Managing Two Varieties: Code-Switching in the Educational Context
- Balancing Pedagogy with Theory: The Infusion of African American Language Research into Everyday Pre-K‒12 Teaching Practices
- History of Research on Multiliteracies and Hip Hop Pedagogy: A Critical Review
- African American Vernacular English and Reading
- Dialect Switching and Mathematical Reasoning Tests: Implications for Early Educational Achievement
- Beyond Bidialectalism: Language Planning and Policies for African American Students
- African American Church Language
- The (Re)turn to Remus Orthography: The Voices of African American Language in American Literature
- African American Language and Black Poetry
- African American Divas of Comedy: Staking a Claim in Public Space
- The Construction of Ethnicity via voicing: African American English in Children’s Animated Film
- SWB (Speaking while Black): Linguistic Profiling and Discrimination Based on Speech as a Surrogate for Race against Speakers of African American Vernacular English
- Racializing Language: Unpacking Linguistic Approaches to Attitudes about Race and Speech
- African American Standard English
- African American English in the Middle Class
- African American Women’s Language: Mother Tongues Untied
- Black Masculine Language
- Hip Hop Nation Language: Localization and Globalization
- African American Language and Identity: Contradictions and Conundrums
- Author Index
- Subject Index
Abstract and Keywords
An analysis of the vowel systems of 36 African American speakers in the Philadelphia Neighborhood Corpus compares their development over the 20th century with that of the larger community. For vowels involved in changes in the White community, African Americans show very different patterns, often moving in opposite directions. The traditional split of short-a words into tense and lax categories is a more fine-grained measure of dialect relations. The degree of participation by African Americans is described by measures of bimodality, which is applied as well to the innovative nasal short-a system. The prototypical African American speakers show no bimodality in either measure, recombining the traditional tense and lax categories into a single short-a in lower mid non-peripheral position. The lack of relation between the two short-a systems is related to the high level of residential segregation.
Keywords: short-a, residential segregation, bimodality, African Americans, Philadelphia Neighborhood Corpus
William Labov is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania. He has carried out research on African American English in New York City and Philadelphia, With Bettina Baker, he has developed and tested programs for raising literacy levels in low income schools in Philadelphia, Atlanta and Southern California. He is a senior author of Portals to Reading, an Intervention Program for Grades 3-8 (Houghton-Mifflin-Harcourt).
Sabriya Fisher is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Pennsylvania, advised by Gillian Sankoff and William Labov. Her master’s thesis (Université de Lyon, 2011) focused on copula variation in Guyanais French Creole. Her research interests include variation in Creoles and African American English, syntactic change, language contact, and fieldwork.
Access to the complete content on Oxford Handbooks Online requires a subscription or purchase. Public users are able to search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter without a subscription.
Please subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you have purchased a print title that contains an access token, please see the token for information about how to register your code.
For questions on access or troubleshooting, please check our FAQs, and if you can''t find the answer there, please contact us.
- The Oxford Handbook of African American Language
- List of Figures
- List of Tables
- Acknowledgments
- About the Editor
- List of Contributors
- Language Use in African American Communities: An Introduction
- The English Origins Hypothesis
- The Creole Origins Hypothesis
- The Emergence of African American English: Monogenetic or Polygenetic? With or Without “Decreolization”? Under How Much Substrate Influence?
- The Origins of African American Vernacular English: Beginnings
- African American English over Yonder: The Language of the Liberian Settler Community
- Documenting the History of African American Vernacular English: A Survey and Assessment of Sources and Results
- Regionality in the Development of African American English
- The Place of Gullah in the African American Linguistic Continuum
- Rural Texas African American Vernacular English
- African American English in the Mississippi Delta: A Case Study of Copula Absence and r-Lessness in the Speech of African American Women in Coahoma County
- African American Voices in Atlanta
- African American Language in Pittsburgh and the Lower Susquehanna Valley
- African American Phonology in a Philadelphia Community
- African American Language in New York City
- African American Vernacular English in California: Over Four Decades of Vibrant Variationist Research
- The Black ASL (American Sign Language) Project: An Overview
- The Sociolinguistic Construction of African American Language
- Syntax and Semantics in African American English
- The Systematic Marking of Tense, Modality, and Aspect in African American Language
- On the Syntax-Prosody Interface in African American English
- Segmental Phonology of African American English
- Prosodic Features of African American English
- Language Acquisition in the African American Child: Prior to Age Four
- The Development of African American English through Childhood and Adolescence
- Development of Variation in Child African American English
- Narrative Structures of African American Children: Commonalities and Differences
- Some Similarities and Differences Between African American English and Southern White English in Children
- Assessing the Language Skills of African American English Child Speakers: Current Approaches and Perspectives
- African American Language and Education: History and Controversy in the Twentieth Century
- Managing Two Varieties: Code-Switching in the Educational Context
- Balancing Pedagogy with Theory: The Infusion of African American Language Research into Everyday Pre-K‒12 Teaching Practices
- History of Research on Multiliteracies and Hip Hop Pedagogy: A Critical Review
- African American Vernacular English and Reading
- Dialect Switching and Mathematical Reasoning Tests: Implications for Early Educational Achievement
- Beyond Bidialectalism: Language Planning and Policies for African American Students
- African American Church Language
- The (Re)turn to Remus Orthography: The Voices of African American Language in American Literature
- African American Language and Black Poetry
- African American Divas of Comedy: Staking a Claim in Public Space
- The Construction of Ethnicity via voicing: African American English in Children’s Animated Film
- SWB (Speaking while Black): Linguistic Profiling and Discrimination Based on Speech as a Surrogate for Race against Speakers of African American Vernacular English
- Racializing Language: Unpacking Linguistic Approaches to Attitudes about Race and Speech
- African American Standard English
- African American English in the Middle Class
- African American Women’s Language: Mother Tongues Untied
- Black Masculine Language
- Hip Hop Nation Language: Localization and Globalization
- African American Language and Identity: Contradictions and Conundrums
- Author Index
- Subject Index
