In order to evaluate the amount of vernacular use among the study participants it was necessary to create an inventory of features that would quantify their AAE use. As mentioned previously, however, determining a list of characteristic AAE features is a difficult and
controversial task. I began this task by evaluating Craig and Washington’s (2006) DDM. Their measure is divided into two lists: morphosyntactic features and phonological features.20 For reasons that will be discussed below, the entire list of morphosyntactic features was retained, but only three of the phonological features were included. The selected phonological features were nasal fronting, in which /n/ is substituted for /ŋ/ (e.g,. swimmin’ for swimming); prevocalic
cluster reduction, where a word-final consonant cluster is reduced when followed by a vowel (e.g., bes’ apple for best apple); and labialization, where /f/ is substituted for /θ/ (e.g., /maʊf/ for mouth) or /v/ is substituted for /ð/ (e.g., /ʌvɹ̩/ for other). These particular phonological features
were chosen because they have been shown in various studies, including the literature mentioned
20 All of the features listed in Craig and Washington’s 2006 DDM are listed in Appendix III. 37
in Chapter 2, to be particularly prevalent in style shifting (Labov, 2001; Rickford & McNair- Knox, 1994).
The list of morphosyntactic features includes all of those listed in Craig and Washington’s DDM as well as six additional morphosyntactic features. These features are those that vary from SAE with regard to word order or involve free and bound morphemes (Craig & Washington, 2006). The additional morphosyntactic features were selected through consultation with various literary sources, including Rickford (1999), Green (2002), and Wolfram’s Dialect Profile Form (1993) from the Baltimore city school district.21 The inclusion of all of the Craig and
Washington morphosyntactic features facilitated more direct comparison between their original DDM and other alternative measures proposed in this dissertation.
As mentioned previously, there was a strong emphasis on morphosyntactic features. Several theoretical considerations influenced this decision. First, morphosyntactic features generally are considered to have some kind of social salience; since people are more aware of them than phonological features, they may consciously manipulate them more frequently than phonological features, making them a better indicator of style use (Wolfram & Schilling-Estes, 1997:155– 157).22 As Craig and Washington (2006) point out, younger speakers often do not possess the oral-motor skills necessary to reliably make use of phonological features like cluster reduction. Thus, it is unclear whether such speakers are using a phonological AAE feature or are simply exhibiting a delay in motor skills. Such problems are generally found in preschool and
elementary grade students, and were therefore a cause for concern in evaluating the speakers in
21 The added morphosyntactic features were: past form for participle, regularization of irregular past tense form, zero relative pronoun, uninverted direct question, inverted question without if/whether, and regularized mines.
22 The idea of “salience” is an elusive construct for linguists. Different fields of linguistics (e.g., sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology) view saliency differently. Additionally, what is “salient” to speakers is not equivalent to what is “salient” to those who study language. This project may contribute to the discussion of saliency by drawing attention to those linguistic structures people pay attention to, both consciously and subconsciously.
Grades 1 and 2, though they would not be an issue in Grade 6 and Grade 8. Additionally, phonological features may be more difficult to manipulate not only due to the lack of
prominence to the speaker, but also because it is more difficult to consciously reproduce correct phonological patterns. Morphosyntactic features may also be more significant because they may relate to other parts of the syntax and play a larger role in the developing literacy skills of older speakers.
In addition to these theoretical concerns, there is the practical issue of the reliability of phonological features. Even under the best of circumstances, it can be difficult for a transcriber to hear a distinction between similar sounds and sound patterns. This problem was compounded by the fact that many of the earlier recordings used audio cassettes and therefore had somewhat mediocre sound quality. Thus, I was concerned that focusing on more than a few phonological features would result in inconsistent coding.
Additionally, I found it important to separate some features that are conflated in the Craig and Washington DDM. For example, while the Craig and Washington measure combines all forms of subject-verb agreement, this study separated this feature into four specific categories: addition of inflectional –s on non-third person singular subjects, absence of non-third person
singular –s, generalization of is and was, and difference in number between the subject and the
modal auxiliaries do and have. Separating certain features into more specific classes allows one
to better ascertain the specific details of variable manipulation during style shifting.23
Additionally, some of the features that are conflated by Craig and Washington may be different
23 Other features that are divided in my proposed measure are the use of
ain’t (into ain’t meaning did+not versus are+not, is+not, or have+not); undifferentiated pronoun case (into the use of nominative and objective pronouns
used interchangeably versus the use of the objective form for the demonstrative); double marking (into multiple agreement on irregular plural nouns versus pronouns versus irregular verbs); zero possessive (into deletion of the possessive -‘s marker versus the use of the nominative or objective pronominal form rather than the possessive
pronoun); double copula/auxiliary/modal (into double copula or auxiliary versus double modal).
enough to show very dissimilar behaviors. For example, the absence of the possessive marker - ‘s on a noun is a very different process from substituting a nominative or objective case pronoun
for a possessive pronoun. By separating such features it is possible to not only consider them individually, but also retain the option of conflating them if desired. The complete list of coded AAE features is found in Appendix I.