Publication:
Acquisition of a late-developing syntactic structure by African-American-English-speaking learners of the mainstream dialect.

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dc.contributor.authorPearson, Barbara Zurer
dc.contributor.authorJackson, Janice E.
dc.contributor.departmentUniversity of Massachusetts Amherst
dc.contributor.departmentDeKalb County Public Schools
dc.date2023-09-24T00:58:49.000
dc.date.accessioned2024-04-26T08:09:14Z
dc.date.available2024-04-26T08:09:14Z
dc.date.issued2018-01-01
dc.description<p>Poster presented at the Boston University Conference on Child Language Development, Boston MA.</p>
dc.description.abstractAnalyses for the current paper explored the emergence of alternative syntactic formulations for reporting a question, using indirect questions ([asking] if he can go outside, or [asking] can he go outside) as opposed to direct questions (Can I go outside?). First, we establish which children in our sample may be considered AAE-speakers. Then we present the analogous AAE and MAE forms used by African-American (AA) and European-American (EurA) children with differing diagnostic and language-variation status at different ages. We observed a transition around age 8 toward greater convergence in contrastive-morphosyntax which coincided with greater divergence in the syntax for question reports. The proportion of children of both language groups who opted for Indirect questions increased from 4 to 10-12yrs. Among EurA-participants, the if-complementizer without inversion predominated, whereas among AA-children, third-person subjects with auxiliary-inversion predominated. A few AA-children with various AAE-density levels used if; but there was a clear divide by language variety between the alternative formulations. There was no statistical difference in DELV-NR standardized scores for perspective-shifters, regardless of the form used. These findings attest to the pragmatic appropriateness of these AAE-forms in a formal environment.
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14394/545
dc.relation.urlhttps://scholarworks.umass.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1010&amp;context=aae_delv&amp;unstamped=1
dc.source.statuspublished
dc.subjectlanguage acquisition
dc.subjectsyntax
dc.subjectAAE
dc.titleAcquisition of a late-developing syntactic structure by African-American-English-speaking learners of the mainstream dialect.
dc.typearticle
dc.typearticle
digcom.contributor.authorisAuthorOfPublication|email:zpearson@umass.edu|institution:University of Massachusetts Amherst|Pearson, Barbara Zurer
digcom.contributor.authorJackson, Janice E.
digcom.identifieraae_delv/11
digcom.identifier.contextkey15295606
digcom.identifier.submissionpathaae_delv/11
dspace.entity.typePublication
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