Simanique Moody
New York University

"Gõ tell me she ain gõ go: The multiple uses of 'gõ' in African American English"

Thursday, May 15th, 5:15pm Bldg. 460, Room 126 (with light refreshments) Abstract:

In this talk, I examine the semantic trajectory of the verb ?go? in African American English (AAE) from a verb of motion, to a marker of near future time, to a marker of disapproval for completed events (see examples (1)-(3) below).

(1) We goin to Brunswick [motion]
(2) I told her I'm gonna/gõ send it certified [near future]
(3) So she gõ call back and say you can just e-mail it to me [speaker disapproval]

The examples above illustrate a process known as grammaticalization, in which lexical items develop a more abstract grammatical function. Phonological reduction and fusion are characteristic of grammaticalization (Hopper and Traugott 1993, 2003). We see this from the examples above as ?goin to? fuses and reduces to ?gonna? and reduces further to ?gõ?. These examples also underscore the observation that once a particular form has become grammaticalized, it continues to develop new grammatical functions (Heine and Reh 1984; Hopper and Traugott 1993, 2003).

Spears (1990) highlights AAE verb forms, including the verb ?go,? that variably or invariably express disapproval and argues that they are part of an emerging disapproval paradigm in AAE. I examine the disapproval use of ?gõ? noted by Spears (1990; forthcoming), and I propose that forms like ?gõ? be included in the area of AAE grammar known as the Tense-Mood-Aspect system. This proposal has implications for the debate about the possible creole origins of AAE (cf. Rickford 1977, 1998; Singler 1990, 1991, 1998; Winford 1998) in which TMA marking has featured prominently. Additionally, I show the difference in syntactic and semantic distribution between negative evaluative ?gõ? and near future marker ?gõ,? and I highlight some of the similarities ?gõ? shares with creole auxiliaries based on work by Rickford (1977).

References:

Heine, Bernd, and Mechthild Reh. 1984. Grammaticalization and Reanalysis in African Languages Hamburg: Buske.
Hopper, Paul J., and Elizabeth Closs Traugott. 1993. Grammaticalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 32?62
Hopper, Paul, & Elizabeth Traugott. 2003. Grammaticalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rickford, John R. 1977. ?On the question of prior creolization in Black English,? in Pidgin and creole linguistics, ed. By A. Valdman, 199-221. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Rickford, John R. 1998. "The Creole Origins of African American Vernacular English: Evidence from Copula Absence." In African American English, ed. by Salikoko S. Mufwene, John R. Rickford, Guy Bailey and John Baugh, 154-200. London: Routledge.
Singler, John V. 1990. ?Introduction: Pidgins and creoles and tense-mood-aspect,? in Pidgin and creole tense-mood-aspect systems, ed. by John Victor Singler, vii-xvi. (Creole Language Library, 6.) Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Singler, John V. 1991a. Copula variation in Liberian Settler English and American Black English. in Verb phrase patterns in Black English and Creole, ed. by Walter F. Edwards and Donald Winford, 129-64. Detroit: Wayne State University Press.
Singler, John V. 1998. ?What's not new in AAVE.? American Speech 73.3: 227-256.
Spears, Arthur 1990. ?The grammaticization of disapproval in Black American English,? in CUNYForum: Papers in Linguistics, No. 15.1 &2, ed. by R. Rieber, 30-44. New York: Linguistics Department, The Graduate School, CUNY.
Spears, Arthur. (to appear). ?Pidgins/Creoles and African American English,? in The Handbook of Pidgins and Creole Studies, ed. By Silvia Kouwenberg and John Victor Singler. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Winford, Donald. 1998. ?On the origins of African American Vernacular English?a creolist perspective, Part II: Linguistic features.? Diachronica, 15, 99-154.