Re: THEORY: free variation [was: Re: [OT] Re: Conlangea Dreaming]

Huh.  In Louisiana, white people talk like black people.

--- jesse stephen bangs <jaspax@...> wrote:
> > Oh, that reminds me!  I was listening to some people speaking
> ebonics
> > yesterday.  How amazing!  I think I actually detected variation in
> vowel
> > length.  For example:
> >
> > dOr --> do: (or maybe dau)
I think it's more like [d@u], but sorta half-long.  Here in Lufkin, TX
you got a highly diverse population with a particularly high percentage
African-Americans and a rapidly growing Latino base.  So I outta do
some listening to people speak and make notes of pronunciations,
grammatical innovations etc.  Could write a book on it, of course only
linguists would give a damn about it...

But no matter what race the person is, one's speech in Georgia is NOT
the same as New Jersey.  There may be some difference in Hispanic
speech (both Spanish and their localized form of English, or
"Spanglish" perhaps) between San Antonio and San Diego.

> As I remember from a short scholarly description of Black Vernacular
> English (aka Ebonics, or are they different?), the use of "be"
> indicates
> simple present action, whereas the lack of "be" indicates repetitive,
> habitual action.  For example, "She be knocking on my door" means
> that she
> actually is knocking on my door right now, while "She knocking on my
> door
> every day" indicates the habitual aspect.
The "verbless" construction.  Also found in Russian and Arabic.  But I
don't know of a "X be Y" subject-predicate construction in either.
Maybe in Farsi, but I don't quite remember too well.

> BTW, this description was what inspired me to bring a habituality
> distinction into Yivríndil.
Tech will have this distinction too, but it'll be a language with weird
verbal syntax, using copius verbal nouns, verbal prepositions, infixed
object pronouns and whatever else, so I have no idea what it'll look
like.  I still lack a workable vocabulary.

=====
Daniel A. Wier
Computer Geek Extraordinaire
Lufkin, Texas USA
ICQ#: 1651462
IRC Nick: LudwigVan on EFNet

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