ASA Annual Conference

Participation Type

Panel

Session Title

Appalachian Linguistic Potpourri 1: Syntax Across the Region

Session Abstract or Summary

This panel will explore various aspects of Appalachian language varieties. Given that language is one of the principal components of culture, these papers engage with the impact that culture and identity have on variation across the region and across the different aspects of language. These language topics have received much recent academic attention, as demonstrated by Clark and Heyward (2013) and the forthcoming Appalachian Englishes volume edited by Hazen. At the same time, these topics also have much popular attention in various media sources including Twitter, YouTube, and other social media platforms as well as blogs, articles, and other journalistic sources. The papers in this panel discuss the varieties of Appalachian English from the perspective of syntax (word order). The first paper explores how Appalachian speakers can prepose a negative auxiliary (e.g., didn't everybody eat) with the meaning that no one performed an action. The second paper investigates how certain Appalachian speakers variably produce have in modal or infinitival clause (e.g., could heared/could have heared), reflecting a cross-linguistic and historic variability. The final paper evaluates whether and how certain syntactic usages could be used to distinguish and identify Appalachian English speakers. The goal is to show the breadth and depth of the diversity among Appalachian language varieties via the different perspectives, methodologies, and analyses of the panelists.

About the Presenter

Frances Blanchette, The Pennsylvania State UniversityFollow
Erin Flannery, The Pennsylvania State UniversityFollow
Carrie Jackson, The Pennsylvania State UniversityFollow
Christina Tortora, CUNY College of Staten IslandFollow
Beatrice Santorini, University of PennsylvaniaFollow
Greg Johnson, Louisiana State University at Baton RougeFollow
Michael Montgomery, University of South Carolina - ColumbiaFollow
Paul E. Reed E. Reed, University of Alabama - TuscaloosaFollow
Jennifer Cramer, University of Kentucky

Presentation #1 Title

Language Variation in Appalachia: A Special Case of Sentence Meaning

Presentation #1 Abstract or Summary

“Yeah, but didn’t many die like they is now seem like.”

(from Tortora et al. 2017)

This paper provides experimental evidence for a unique sentence meaning property observed in Appalachian and other Englishes. In the quote above, a speaker laments that while previously not many people died, now it seems like many do. This construction has been dubbed Negative Auxiliary Inversion (NAI), because the negated auxiliary verb (didn’t) appears before the subject (many).

We focus on NAI sentences whose subject contains the word every, because these illustrate a unique meaning property of this construction. Consider the following:

1. (1a) The food was terrible at that restaurant, so everybody didn’t eat. We all ate dinner when we got home.

2. (1b) All the dishes had meat at that restaurant, so everybody didn’t eat. The vegetarians ate dinner when they got home.

The underlined sentence in (1a/b) can mean either (a) that no one ate, or (b) that not everyone ate (though some may have). Foreman (1999) notes that in West Texas, this ambiguity disappears in NAI, and only the (b) reading exists:

(2) Didn’t everybody eat. (The vegetarians ate at home.)

Our experiment compared Appalachian and non-Appalachian speakers’ performance on a task in which they chose between (a) and (b) readings of NAI sentences with every. Appalachian speakers reliably chose the (b) reading, while non-Appalachian speakers did not. Though both groups displayed individual variation, the overall results suggest that knowledge of this meaning property of NAI is an inherent part of speaking Appalachian.

At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #1

Frances Blanchette is the Assistant Director, Center for Language Science, Assistant Research Professor, Department of Psychology, and Branch Coordinator, Bilingualism Matters at Penn State. Her core linguistics research applies theoretical and experimental methods to explore structure, meaning, and sound in natural language.

Erin Flannery is a student at Penn State.

Carrie Jackson directs the SLA lab at Penn State, where she is currently a professor of German and Linguistics. Her main interests include psycholinguistics, language acquisition, and foreign language pedagogy.

Presentation #2 Title

The haves and have nots of have and no have: how Appalachian language fits into the cross-linguistic picture

Presentation #2 Abstract or Summary

In this talk we discuss variation in a little-studied phenomenon found with some Appalachian speakers in Eastern Kentucky, which was first described by Montgomery & Hall (2004), namely, the variable appearance of infinitival have after a modal or infinitival to:

modal

(1) a. You could ___ heared a pin drop.

b. You could have heared a pin drop.

infinitival to

(2) a. They should’ve refused to ___ went in.

b. He accomplished a whole lot to have had a...

Without a systematic study of this variable appearance of have (which when pronounced, sounds like “of” or “a”), one might conjecture that its absence is simply a random function of fast speech. Our purpose is to explore data from the Audio-Aligned and Parsed Corpus of Appalachian English (Tortora et al. 2017), from which the data in (1) and (2) were taken, to show that the variation is not a function of fast speech, it is not random, and it is not the result of the researcher’s failure to hear something in the speech signal. Rather, the variation is systematically governed by clearly identifiable grammatical factors, both semantic and syntactic. Furthermore, through the examination of written corpora, we provide evidence that the phenomenon of variable have was in existence in earlier forms of English (Fryd 2017; Jespersen 1912; Moore Smith 1910; Hall 1882). Additionally, we show that this variable phenomenon in Appalachian English is found in the Scandinavian languages (Eide 2018), confirming that it reflects a deeper grammatical phenomenon.

At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #2

Christina Tortora is a Professor of Linguistics at the City University of New York (CUNY). Her home campus is the College of Staten Island. Her research focuses on the syntactic structure of Italian, Italian dialects, the Romance languages, and non-standard varieties of English (such as Appalachian English). She is interested in linguistic description, which is both informed by and informs current syntactic theory.

Beatrice Santorini is a Senior Fellow in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research focuses on syntax, Germanic linguistics, and language change.

Greg Johnson is a Visiting Lecturer in Linguistics at Louisiana State University. His interests lie in Syntax, Morphosyntax, and Syntactic Variation in his native dialect of Appalachian English as well as in other dialects and languages.

Presentation #3 Title

Clauses and Conjunctions: Do They Reveal a Speaker of Appalachian English?

Presentation #3 Abstract or Summary

Literature on Appalachian English is replete with language features proposed to be diagnostic of speakers in the region. Some (Williams and Wolfram decades ago) have taken broader views, either that a combination of features or that greater relative frequency of occurrence distinguishes speakers. Such latter views often better capture the gradient realities of variation locally, socially, or stylistically. One linguist (Reed) is investigating whether intonation (pitch and rhythm) is distinguishable. To date, rarely has anyone proposed that clausal syntax (i.e. word order) is key. This paper argues such an idea utilizing three patterns: two “tense-less” clause types and clauses that begin with variant-time reference whenever. “Tense-less” clauses occur in complex sentences where the second verb is not marked for tense but implied, based on the main verb. Sentences 1-3, from the Corpus of Early Smoky Mountain English, are illustrative.

1) That’s how come me to get back from the hospital. (Cades Cove TN, 1939). “that’s how come I got back from the hospital,”

2) That woman is doing too much work, and her i in a family way. (Sylva NC, 1939). "That woman is doing too much work, and she is in a family way"

3) What did they do with you whenever you killed that man two or three year ago? (Smokemont NC) (whenever refers to a single event)

Research shows that these patterns continue to flourish in Appalachia. This paper examines whether familiarity with them can distinguish speakers of Appalachian English from non-speakers.

At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #3

Michael Montgomery is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of English and Linguistics at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, where he taught English linguistics. A native of Knoxville, Tennessee, he is a 1973 graduate of Maryville (TN) College and completed his Ph.D. in Linguistics at the University of Florida in 1979, writing a dissertation based on fieldwork in White Pine, Tennessee, in the foothills of the Smoky Mountains.