African-American English

Please do LX Problem 7 and save the file created by the program on a floppy—then bring the floppy to class or to the Linguistics Lab by Friday 26^th at the latest.

The following text spoken by Tony B. is taken from LX Problem 7:

I never wanna hurt nobody, kill nobody, but you know what?

They ain’t nobody gonna push me for nuttin’.

These two boys, they in jail.

They went to jail for killin’ this guy down in North Philly.

He gon’ deal with me when he come out.

His lady was around the crib.

He was sayin’ we was disrespectin’ her.

“I don’ think y’all should be sayin’—“

“Hey, you get back in your room, ain’t nobody talkin’ to you.”

See my wife seen all this jealousy in them.

I regrets that a lot of time I don’t listen to my wife.

Do you know what she say?

Tony, they jealous of you.

Write the letters indicated in the following list of grammatical features above each place in the text that they apply to; some letters may have no application.

A. Instances of lack of subject-verb agreement

B. The zero use of the copula

C. Subject-aux inversion

D. Negative concord

E. Clear case of AAVE habitual be

F. Instance which may be either general English be or AAVE habitual be

G. General non-standard verb forms

H. Slang expression originating in the African American community

I. New verb derived from a noun in AAVE

J. Deletion of the subject relative pronoun