"The Black Men Has Wives and Sweet Harts and Third Person Plural -s Jest Like the White Men": Evidence for Verbal -s from Written Documents on 19th-Century African American Speech.

Montgomery, Michael; And Others

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Peer reviewed

ERIC Number: EJ494943

Record Type: Journal

Publication Date: 1993

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ISSN: ISSN-0954-3945

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"The Black Men Has Wives and Sweet Harts and Third Person Plural -s Jest Like the White Men": Evidence for Verbal -s from Written Documents on 19th-Century African American Speech.

Montgomery, Michael; And Others

Language Variation and Change, v5 n3 p335-57 1993

An analysis of letters written by 19th-century African Americans shows constraints on verbal "-s" marking that parallel those found in the writing of Scotch-Irish immigrants in the same time period and region, specifically a subject type constraint and a proximity to subject constraint. (MDM)

Descriptors: Black Dialects, Blacks, Comparative Analysis, Contrastive Linguistics, Immigrants, Language Usage, Language Variation, Letters (Correspondence), Linguistic Borrowing, Plurals, Written Language

Publication Type: Reports - Research; Journal Articles

Education Level: N/A

Audience: N/A

Language: English

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Authoring Institution: N/A

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