Date:  Mon, 17 Jul 1995 20:05:09 -0400

From:  TERRY IRONS <t.irons[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]MSUACAD.MOREHEAD-ST.EDU>

Subject: Re: oj trial



On Mon, 17 Jul 1995, Ditra Henry wrote:



> Is Black English Another Language?

>

>

>

> Ditra

>





I cannot, nor would I dare, claim expertise in Black English. For what I

have observed and have read cannot get at competence. Yet what I have

observed leads me to the conclusion that Black English is a distinct

language, although (perhaps influenced by the ideas of John Rickford and

Michael Montgomery) I once fancifully termed it in a public lecture to be

New World Afro-Hibernian English. Certainly, black english or aave or

whatever shares vocabulary with american english. But vocabulary are

only signs, and language as a computational capacity and system of mental

representations is much more than signs and vocabulary.



Within the principles and parameters framework (which minimalist theory

threatens to economize), a CP rewrites as a spec C' which rewrites as a

C IP, with IP becoming the functional category governing VP and so on

down the line until we get to some real words. At a high level, IP, or

infl, represents various tense-modal-aspect features of a language. In

my lecture, drawing upon various sources, including Baugh, I tried to

show that at the IP level the parameters for TMA (tense/modal/aspect) are

set differently for BE than for AE. This parametric difference leads to

the conclusion that BE is not simply a variety of AE but is a distinct

language competence. This conclusion is supported by understandings of

be/been/done constructions provided by African Americans that are not

accessible by honkies.



The Great White American Un-PC Honkie,



Terry





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Terry Lynn Irons    t.irons[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]msuacad.morehead-st.edu

Voice Mail:       (606) 783-5164

Snail Mail:       UPO 604 Morehead, KY 40351

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