Unpublished Manuscripts

Sabriya Fisher. (Forthcoming). Variation and Change in Past Tense Negation in AAE. PhD Dissertation. University of Pennsylvania.

My dissertation seeks to answer the following overarching questions: How are individual speaker’s grammars organized to allow for variation? How do we model this variation? How does this understanding of variation fit within current models of language change?

To answer these questions, the research takes observations of variation in negation in vernacular varieties of African American English (AAE) as a starting point. Specificially, I look at use of ain't in environments where it varies with copular & auxiliary be, auxiliary have, and auxiliary do and its interaction with tense and verbal morphology.

Consequently, the dissertation combines methods in variationist sociolinguistics and theoretical syntax, offering both a quantitative corpus study of morphosyntactic variables as well as syntactic analysis based on elicitation with native speaker informants.

Sabriya Fisher. 2011. La Prédication Nominale et la Copule du Créole Guyanais. Master's Thesis. Université Lyon 2.

Refereed Papers

William Labov, Anita Henderson, Sabriya Fisher, Guðrún Gylfadóttir, Hilary Prichard and Betsy Sneller. 2016. Competing Systems in Philadelphia Phonology. Language Variation and Change 28.3: 273-305.

Sabriya Fisher. 2015. Is French Guianese Creole sa a Pronoun or a Copula? In Katia Golovko and Maria Mazzoli, editors, Lingue e Linguaggio: Special Issue on Copulas, 271-286.

Book Chapters

William Labov and Sabriya Fisher. 2015. African American Phonology in a Philadelphia Community. In Sonja Lanehart, editor, The Oxford Handbook of African American Language, 256-279. Oxford University Press.

Proceedings & Edited Volumes

Sabriya Fisher, Hilary Prichard and Betsy Sneller. 2015. The Apple Doesn’t Fall Far from the Tree: Incremental Change in Philadelphia Families . In Sabriya Fisher, editor, Selected Papers from NWAV 43, University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 21.2.

Betsy Sneller and Sabriya Fisher. 2015. When Get Got Noticed: the Emerging Salience of Get-passives . In David Wilson, editor, Proceedings of the Penn Linguistics Conference 38, University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 21.1.

Volumes Edited

Selected Papers from NWAV 43 , Penn Working Papers in Linguistics 21.2.

Presentations & Posters

Sabriya Fisher. 2017. Ain't for didn't in AAE. Poster presented at NWAV 46, Madison, WI.

Sabriya Fisher. 2017. The Expansion of ain’t in AAE. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, Austin, TX.

Sabriya Fisher. 2017. Tense-Aspect Meaning and Main Verbs Following ain’t in AAE. Paper presented at the Winter Meeting of the Society of Pidgin and Creole Languages, Austin, TX.

Sabriya Fisher. 2016. What's ain’t Got to do with Tense in AAE? Paper presented at New Ways of Analyzing Variation 45, Vancouver.

Sabriya Fisher. 2016. Verbal Morphology and Tense-Aspect Meaning in AAVE: main verbs following ain’t. Poster presented at the Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, Washington, D.C.

Sabriya Fisher. 2015. The Emergence of Past-tense ain’t in AAVE: Support for the Divergence Hypothesis. Paper presented at New Ways of Analyzing Variation 44, Toronto.

William Labov, Sabriya Fisher, Guðrún Gylfadóttir, Anita Henderson, Hilary Prichard and Betsy Sneller. 2015. The Re-organization of Short-a Systems in Philadelphia. Paper presented at New Ways of Analyzing Variation 44, Toronto.

Sabriya Fisher. 2015. Innovation in the Tense-Aspect System of AAVE: the Emergence of Past-tense ain’t. Poster presented at UK Language Variation and Change 10, York.

Betsy Sneller and Sabriya Fisher. 2015. Syntax, Stigmatization, and the Sociolinguistic Monitor. Poster presented at UK Language Variation and Change 10, York.

Sabriya Fisher and Betsy Sneller. 2015. The Limits of the Sociolinguistic Monitor. Paper presented at Formal Ways of Analyzing Variation 2, Reykjavic.

Laura Walker, Sabriya Fisher and Betsy Sneller. 2015. Untangling Language Attitudes from Linguistic Knowledge in Self-reports of Stigmatized Speech. Poster presented at the 36th Penn Linguistics Conference, Philadelphia.

William Labov, Sabriya Fisher, Anita Henderson, Hilary Prichard, and Betsy Sneller. 2015. A Systematic Partition of the Speech Community: Short-a in Philadelphia. Poster presented at the Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, Portland.

Sabriya Fisher. 2015. Contact and Linguistic Behavior: African Americans in Philadelphia. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, Portland.

Sabriya Fisher, Hilary Prichard and Betsy Sneller. 2014. The Apple Doesn’t Fall Far from the Tree: Incremental Change in Philadelphia Families. Paper presented at New Ways of Analyzing Variation 43, Chicago.

Sabriya Fisher. 2014. Portuguese Influence on the French Guianese Creole Copula. Paper presented at the 20th Biennial Conference of the Society of Caribbean Linguistics, Aruba.

Sabriya Fisher. 2014. Evidence for a Copula Continuum: the Case of Pronominal Copulas. Paper presented at the 1st Workshop on Copulas, Bologna.

Betsy Sneller and Sabriya Fisher. 2014. When Get Got Noticed: the Emerging Salience of Get-passives. Paper presented at the 38th Penn Linguistics Conference, Philadelphia.

Sabriya Fisher and Betsy Sneller. 2013. Get vs. Be: Social Class Differences in Variable Passive Auxiliary Use. Paper presented at New Ways of Analyzing Variation 42, Pittsburgh.

Sabriya Fisher. 2013. Grammatical Factors Affecting Copula Use in French Guianese Creole. Paper presented at the Summer Meeting of the Society for Pidgin and Creole Linguistics, Lisbon.

Sabriya Fisher. 2012. On the Topic of Creole Copulas: the Case of French Guyanais Creole. Poster presented at the 19th Biennial Conference of the Society of Caribbean Linguistics, Bahamas.