Language Revival

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Language Revival
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Language Planning
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Languages of North China

• Minority Language Reports

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Languages of South China

• Minority Language Reports

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Development of AAEIntroduction
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Divergence Hypothesis What is it?
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Divergence Hypothesis What is it?

• Hypothesis that AAVE may be becoming more
  distinct from other vernacular varieties of
  English.
• Why is there controversy?

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Divergence Hypothesis What is it?

• Hypothesis that AAVE may be becoming more
  distinct from other vernacular varieties of
  English.
• Why is there controversy?
• Despite quantity of publication on AAVE, there
  are persistent problems with the reliability of
  sources and analysis, and previous publications
  have not been able to establish direction of
  change

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What is Linguistic Reconstruction?
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What is Linguistic Reconstruction?

• The postulation of a version of a language that
  existed before any reliable records were made to
  document its features.
• Two methods Internal Reconstruction and
  Comparative Method
• What issues are important in reconstructing AAVE?

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What is Linguistic Reconstruction?

• The postulation of a version of a language that
  existed before any reliable records were made to
  document its features.
• Two methods Internal Reconstruction and
  Comparative Method
• What issues are important in reconstructing AAVE?
• Effect of regional dialects
• Role of substratal influence from earlier
  language contact situations
• Nature of intracommunity variation in earlier
  AAVE
• Trajectory of change

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What data do we have on earlier AAVE?
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What data do we have on earlier AAVE?

• Newly found audio recordings and written
  documentation of earlier AAVE indicate that AAVE
  was not as distinct from Eur-Am English as
  previously thought
• BUT these materials are sparse, of poor quality,
  and sometimes questionable authorship
• Af-Am emigres to Dominican Republic and Nova
  Scotia live in isolated enclaves and their speech
  is very similar to realier Eur-Am English
• BUT these emigrees were not representative

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What will this book contribute to this discussion?
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What will this book contribute to this discussion?

• Detailed analysis of a biracial enclave
  linguistic community in a remote location Hyde
  County, North Carolina

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What are advantages of Hyde Co?
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What are advantages of Hyde Co?

• Age and continuity
• Isolation
• Biracial demographics

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What are advantages of Hyde Co?

• Age and continuity
• Almost 300 yr-old community, among oldest
  biracial communities in NC.
• Europeans arrived around 1700, Africans in early
  1700s.
• Many current residents are descendants of
  original settlers.

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What are advantages of Hyde Co?

• Isolation
• Remote location
• 85 marshland, previously navigable only by boat
• Limited in-migration into Hyde Co

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What are advantages of Hyde Co?

• Biracial demographics
• Continuously biracial with stable percentages of
  Eur-Am Af-Am
• Neither race heavily predominates
• Participants from a range of age groups represent
  persons born before WWII and attended segregated
  schools, as well as persons born later who
  attended integrated schools

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What is a corpus?

• A body of linguistic data that was spontaneously
  produced by native speakers for purposes of
  communication, which has been gathered and made
  available for linguistic analysis
• Does not elicit specific linguistic features
• May be written or spoken
• Example British National Corpus

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What is the Hyde Co corpus?
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What is the Hyde Co corpus?

• Since 1997 144 lifetime residents (92 Af-Ams 52
  Eur-Ams) with birthdates ranging from 1890s to
  1990s were interviewed 60-90mins each, mostly in
  3-way conversations
• Interviewees selected according to social
  networks family trees
• Contents of interviews are casual conversations
  and genealogical inquiries

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What types of linguistic features were analyzed?
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What types of linguistic features were analyzed?

• Morphosyntax Whats this?
• Vowels
• Consonants
• Intonation (Prosody)

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What types of linguistic features were analyzed?

• Morphosyntax forms of words and how they are
  combined
• Was/werent leveling
• Copula is/are absence
• Third person s marking
• Vowels
• Consonants
• Intonation (Prosody)

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Is AAVE diverging from Eur-Am vernaculars?
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Is AAVE diverging from Eur-Am vernaculars?

• YES NO recent studies have suggested that
  AAVE distinctiveness is a 20th century
  phenomenon, but Wolfram Thomas find these
  claims exaggerated.
• More significant There is the development of a
  supraregional AAVE norm that entails the
  abandonment of or resistance to regional norms.