w— v — ' "' . . \ ‘ AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE INFLUENCE OF ORAL LANGUAGE UPON THE WRITTEN. EXPRESSION OF NEGRO STUDENTS AT GRAND RAPIDS JUNIOR COLLEGE Thesis for the Degree of M. A. MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY LUCILLE MILLER THOMAS 1969 . '0 _ .'---‘ "‘ '— 2-- -_ --—._—:-—~' “—fi I «7.) IS ILIIIIIIIZIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII :/ ‘ LIBRARY 93 10034 9251 L Michigan Sum University THESIE: BINDING IV A NOAH & SONS' I H.EL"'I.€I.I..'!E- : PLACE IN RETURN BOX to remove this checkout from your record. J TO AVOID FINES return on or before date due. DATE DUE DATE DUE DATE DUE 4 /,.\,H l . ’ I I f t 1' a f I —— T—.h SPE IA PERMISS'ON V . é _ I 3:]. .f‘ a m ' ' :=§11h " P I - “ 7’? ‘le 35: ‘ 1| 3“! ' ‘ 7 I ‘II‘I A306 0'7 ' MSU Is An Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity InetitutIon ,_———__ __ v ‘W ABSTRACT AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE INFLUENCE OF ORAL LANGUAGE UPON THE WRITTEN EXPRESSION OF NEGRO STUDENTS AT GRAND RAPIDS JUNIOR COLLEGE By Lucille Miller Thomas Because increasingly greater numbers of black stu- dents are being enrolled in community colleges and because these students have unique problems in written communication which traditional remedial English instruction does not remedy, this study was undertaken in the belief that it might provide some insight into both the nature of their problems and the kinds of remedial help that would yield more positive results. For this study, compositions of twenty-four ran- domly selected Negro students enrolled in remedial English classes at Grand Rapids Junior College in the fall of 1968 were examined for nonstandard forms not usually found in the compositions of white students. These deviant forms were then placed in categories corresponding to the non- standard oral forms documented by competent sociolinguists and dialectologists. Each category that exhibited gram- matical deviations was considered in terms of the system Lucille Miller Thomas of the nonstandard dialects: absence of certain tense markers on verbs, absence of the possessive morpheme on nouns, and so forth. In addition, the phonological envi- ronment in which each deviation occurred was examined. Lexical irregularities, some of which might be considered spelling errors, were compared with known pronunciation practices among Negro speakers. Nonstandard sentence structures were compared with patterns known to occur in the Negro dialects. The study revealed that the deviant written forms used by the students closely parallel the oral language habits of speakers of nonstandard urban Negro dialects. Because these students had been exposed to the standard forms through the schools, television, and radio, however, they were aware of the standard forms but they used them inconsistently, sometimes extending the use of a given form beyond the limits normally expected of it. Inasmuch as their deviant written forms reflect their oral practices which have been modified to some extent by imperfect perception of the standard forms, it is apparent that merely writing papers to be duly corrected by an instructor can do little to help them overcome their difficulty. It is equally apparent that since oral language habits are responsible for their written language habits, remedial work must begin with the oral language. It is, therefore, recommended that such students be instructed Lucille Miller Thomas with audiolingual drills, supplemented by written repre- sentation of the material which they hear and articulate. This instruction should be followed by exercises in writ- ing from dictation. Only when these students have been made consciously aware of the differences between their dialect and that of standard speakers and when they can produce the standard form automatically when it is needed, will they be able to write in the standard idiom with ease. And when they are able to do this, they will be able to compete for a measure of success in college, in business, and in the professions. Accepted by the faculty of the Department of IEnglish, College of Arts and Letters, Michigan State ‘University, in partial fulfillment of the reduirements for the Master of Arts Degree. :66 65% AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE INFLUENCE OF ORAL LANGUAGE UPON THE WRITTEN EXPRESSION OF NEGRO STUDENTS AT GRAND RAPIDS JUNIOR COLLEGE BY Lucille Miller Thomas A THESIS Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS Department of English 1969 Copyright by LUCILLE MILLER THOMAS 1969 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to express my appreciation to Professor James W. Ney, of the English Language Center at Michigan State University, for his willingness to supervise my thesis and for his cooperation and assistance throughout its preparation. I wish also to thank those faculty mem- bers at Grand Rapids Junior College who provided many of the student papers which were used in this study. Finally, I wish to thank my family without whose patience and help I could not have completed this work. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter I. INTRODUCTION. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Need for This Study . . . . . . . . . Related Studies . . . . Source of Materials Used in This Study. . II. CLASSIFICATION AND ANALYSIS OF DEVIATIONS FROM STANDARD WRITTEN ENGLISH . . . . . . . Verbs . . . -ed Morpheme Realized by /t/. and /d/ Irregular Preterite and Perfect Forms Will--Omission. . . . . . . . . . . Have--Omission. . . . . . . . . . Be--Omission. . . . . . . . . . . Have/has--Person-Number Concord . Was/were--Person-Number Concord . Other Verbs-~Person—Number Concord Nouns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . -s--Noun Plural Morpheme. . -'s--Noun Genitive Morpheme ModITiers . . . . . . . . . . Adverbs . . . . . Adjectives. . . . . a/gg_Alternation. . Pronouns. . . . . . . Prepositions. . . . Conjunctions. . . . . Lexical Items . . . . . . . . Errors due to Inappropriate Derivation of Morphological Forms. . . . . . . . Errors due to Phonological Interference and Merging Vowels. . . . . . . . . . Sentence Structure. . . . . . . . . . . . Summary of Frequency of Occurrence. . . . o o o O o O O O O O 0 O o O O O O o o 0 CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS. . . . . . . . . . BIBLIOGRAPHY O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 0 APPENDIX 0 O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O -qv1H as CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION .# The Need for this Study In response to recent demands that higher education be made available to increasingly greater numbers of people and to segments of our society which formerly have not enjoyed this benefit, community colleges are growing in unprecedented numbers. And because most of these two-year schools have adopted an open-door policy, offering post- high school education to all who seek it regardless of past academic performance, their student body includes, in addi- tion to able students and those who might be considered average, many whose prognosis in college is doubtful. Among the latter group are those who were underachievers in high school, those who have limited ability, and those who are culturally and economically disadvantaged. More- over, students enrolled in a community college seek dif- ferent goals: some plan to transfer to a four-year institu- tion to pursue a degree program; some plan to complete their education in a two-year technical program; still others-- often older members of the community who may or may not have graduated from high school--take courses for personal growth. Thus, the task of providing appropriate instruction for all students enrolled in a community college is unique to those institutions. And in no area is appropriate instruc— tion more difficult to provide than in that of the language arts, for in this area a wide disparity of competence is inevitably and glaringly apparent. In an effort more adequately to prepare less com- petent students for the kind of written communication which will be expected of them in college, most community col- leges have established pre-college or remedial English courses. Yet the remediation accomplished in such courses is frequently problematic. At the Tempe Conference in 1965, Earle G. Eley called attention to the doubtful quality of remediation then being offered: When we have introduced remedial courses at the col- lege level and have experienced only limited success in them, have we actually faced the task of remedia- tion, or have we often set up inadequate remedial programs which have acted merely as a screening device to get rid of students which the open door policy of the public junior college does not permit us to elim- inate in any other way? Another participant at the conference recommended that each program be "specifically designed for a group of students whose characteristics differ significantly from those in other programs," with "some variation in instruction."2 lEarle G. Eley, "English Programs for Terminal Stu- dents," Research and the Development of English Programs in theJunior Colle e, (Champaign, Illinois; National Council of Teachers of English, 1965), p. 100. 2Thomas B. Merson, "English in the Total Contest of American Junior College Instruction," Ibid., p. 13. Admittedly, there exists some variation in instruc- tion between the regular freshman composition course and the remedial English course. The former assumes a level of competence that will allow the student to progress into matters of organization and style as well as methods of exposition and argument; whereas the remedial course gener- ally reviews once again the mechanics of written English which the student has not mastered. If the student's ineptitude is the result of low motivation or inadequate instruction in high school, this review frequently is effec- tive. But for the Negro student who has spent the greater part of his life in the ghetto and who, therefore, uses a nonstandard dialect of English, the traditional review ses- sion is usually not the answer. Raven McDavid has pointed out that "specific atten- tion to the communication problems of the minorities must be a part of any curriculum that aims at providing equiva- lent educational and economic opportunities for all stu- dents."3 And because until very recently no specific atten- tion has been given to these problems, the Negro who comes to the community college often not only shares with the less able white students an impoverished vocabulary and an ignor- ance of sentence structure, but is additionally handicapped by dialect interference. Thus, before such a student is 3Raven I. McDavid, Jr., "American Social Dialects," College English XXVI (January, 1965), 257. LI ready for any kind of instruction in writing, he must first be helped to eliminate those usages in his writing which deviate from the standard. /It is not enough for an instruc- tor to point out that hg_hazg violates the concept of subject-verb agreement or that a terminal §_has been omitted in the phrase many Egy; such constructions are not errors in the dialect of many Negroes. Therefore, some other approach is mandatory if we are to give the user of this nonstandard dialect a command of the standard idiom which will enable him to compete with those who use standard. In short, we must deal with his language problem realistically, not as a remedial problem but as a dialect problem. To help in formulating a more effective approach, we can draw upon recent research of sociolinguists and dialectologists whose work has revealed much about the origin and structure of Negro speech, the social stigma that accompanies certain forms, and the psychological rami- fications inherent in any attempt to alter the native dia- lect. At this point, however, we shall consider another matter emphasized by linguists: that before any effective teaching can occur, an analysis must be made of the dialect of the students and that a comparable analysis must be made of the target dialect. In the case of oral English, the target dialect may vary from region to region, but standard written English is relatively stable throughout the United States. 3Therefore, to apply the findings of linguists to the problem of deviations from standard in written English, we must first determine in what ways the written expression of Negro students differs from standard written English and to what extent it reflects the speech patterns of that ethnic group. It will be the purpose of this study, therefore, 1‘. to examine samples of material written by Negro students, to compare the variant forms with the speech patterns found to be prevalent in Negro dialects, and to demonstrate the futility of traditional methods in a remedial program. In addition, recommendations will be made for more efficient instructional methods and materials. Related Studies Most studies dealing with social dialect have placed primary emphasis upon oral English; yet they are invaluable as a starting point for an investigation into the variations in the written language, for "emphasis must be placed on the spoken as well as the written language, and it would seem more logical and certainly more effective to build the pro- grams for written language directly around the systemic dif- ferences in the dialect as it is spoken."h This study will draw upon the research of such linguistic scholars as Raven uBeryl Loftman Bailey, "Some Aspects of the Impact of Linguistics on Language Teaching in Disadvantaged Com- munities," On the Dialects of Children, ed. A. L. Davis, (Champaign, Illinois: National Council of Teachers of English, 1968), p. 23. McDavid, William Labov, William A. Stewart, Roger Shuy, San-su C. Lin, Walter Loban, and others. Attempts to alter the dialect of nonstandard speak- ers have been limited largely to young children in such pro- grams as Head Start and Follow Through. A few isolated experiments have been conducted at the high school level, such as Ruth Golden's effort at Central High School in Detroit. After using aural-oral exercises in addition to regular classroom instruction for one semester, the experi- mental group did "almost twice as well overall as did the Control Group," but "there were no significant interrela- tionships among the findings when applied to the written tests, and we concluded one semester was too short a time for results to carry over significantly in writing."5 At the college level, Nick Aaron Ford and Waters E. Turpin conducted an experiment at Morgan State College in Baltimore in which they tried to improve reading and writing skills of college freshmen through specifically selected reading materials and special teaching methods. They con- cluded that the experimental group made significant gains in writing skills during the period of the experiment.6 5Ruth I. Golden, "Changing Dialects by Using Tapes," Social Dialects and Language Learning, ed. Roger W. Shuy, TChampaign, IllinoIs: National Council of Teachers of English), p. 65. 6Nick Aaron Ford and Waters E. Turpin, Improving the Readin and Writing Skills of Culturally Disadvantaged Col- Ie e Freshmen, U. S. Department ofTHeaIth, Education, and WeIPare, (Bethesda, Md: Educational Resources Information Center, 1967). p- 39. Another study of written English at the college level in which the Negro dialect was a factor was conducted at Claflin College. In this study, priority was given to oral practice which was later followed by practice in writ- ing. In addition to providing insights into the psycholog- ical and social implications inherent in efforts to change students' language habits, the project revealed that "pat- tern practice, used properly, can provide an answer to the dialect problem. It can be more effective, however, if the dialect problem is taken care of below the college level."7 Unfortunately for the students enrolling in col- leges today, and probably for the next decade, the ideal time for dialect change has passed; their problems will have to be solved at the college level. And although we can draw upon the studies made in New York, Detroit, and Chicago, linguists are unanimous in their opinion that each area must be studied if adequate understanding of the dia— lect patterns in that area is to be achieved. To date, no such study has been made in the Grand Rapids, Michigan, area. Source of Materials Used in this Study For this study papers written by twenty-four Negro students enrolled in remedial English classes at Grand Rapids Junior College in the fall of 1968 were examined. 7San-su C. Lin, "Pattern Practice in a Freshman English Program," Social Dialects, p. 61. The students were randomly selected and included twenty-one men and three women. All were between eighteen and twenty- four years of age, with the exception of one woman who was in her forties. The papers covered a variety of subjects and were assigned by and submitted to four different instructors. It should be noted that in addition to the variant forms revealed by this study, most of the papers also exhibited other technical errors--those associated with syntax, vocabulary, spelling, style, and so forth--which are usually found in the work of students in a remedial English class. Yet a few papers would have been quite acceptable had it not been for the presence of dialectal variations. Three papers have been included in the Appendix to show the range of abilities of these students. CHAPTER II CLASSIFICATION AND ANALYSIS OF DEVIATIONS FROM STANDARD WRITTEN ENGLISH Since one of the purposes of this study was to investigate the possible relationship between the non- standard oral English frequently used by Negroes and the deviations from standard written English found in their compositions, the examples are grouped according to the part of speech or grammatical structure involved and also according to the morphemic or phonological variant employed. 1222: -ed Morpheme Realized by/t/ and /d/ Among Negro student writers, probably one of the most frequently misused forms occurs in connection with the :2g morpheme, whether to form a past tense, a participle, or a derived adjective. This morpheme has three phonologi- cally conditioned allomorphs distributed as follows: /t/ after voiceless consonants except /t/ /d/ after voiced consonants except /d/ /id/ after either /t/ or /d/ A word which uses the /id/ pronunciation usually causes no difficulty in either speech or writing since the morpheme is pronounced as a distinct syllable. The present study 10 revealed no instance of the omission of -§d_in words which would require the /id/ pronunciation. On the other hand, when either of the stops /t/ or /d/ indicates the presence of the morpheme in speech, it forms a consonant cluster with the consonant which precedes it. In speech, even among speakers of standard English, these consonant clusters are frequently simplified, particularly in casual speech. For example, in phrases like W§_watched television or They walked tg_school, the /t/ past tense marker disappears; but in W2_watched g_movie or They walked a mile, the /t/ is both articulated and audible in standard English. Among Negroes, however, Labov has shown that, we have a truly continuous variable in the case of -gd_which is conditioned by both internal and external factors. The -gd has grammatical status for all of the speakers we have dealt with, at all age levels, but the effect of this conditioning factor is much smaller for the rules governing working class sgeakers than for those governing middle class speakers. Labov's continuous variable apparently operates in the writing of Grand Rapids Negro students, for although there was no consistency in either the use or omission of the terminal {ed in the papers examined, thirty-six occur- rences of -ed omissions were found, as well as three occur- rences of -ed misapplications. 8William Labov and Paul Cohen, Systematic Relations‘ of Standard and Non-Standardeules in the Grammars of Negro S eakers, U S. Department of‘Health, Education, and wei- Tare, IBethesda, Md: Educational Resources Information Cen- ter, 1967): P. 5- 11 Following is a list of the -pd_omissions, where the morpheme would have been realized by /t/, grouped according to the cluster in each would occur: .1321 1- 2. 3. u. 5. 6. /Xt/ 7. 8. 9. 10. /§t/ 11. /kt/ 12. 13. 1E. /pt/ 15. 16. There was the time when I plgpp a mud pie the wrong treatment may be plapp on their hair I notice the door was opening Basketball has advance so much The schedule of games has increase and Many are force to live in We both watch television (past tense) As I approach him (past tense) I reach my destination (past tense) I . . . approach a door (past tense) After you have wash and dry the car Man has work hard for A well like teacher She was shock to see The roman worship Birds, volcano, and I borrowed my sister's skates, went to the top of the hill, put the skates on, and step on the sidewalk. A survey of the above examples reveals that speakers of standard English would not articulate the terminal /t/ in examples 6, 7, l3, and 1H since the sound would be assimi- lated by the initial /t/ in the following word; and only in 12 careful speech would the terminal /t/ in example 3 be articulated, for it would be assimilated by the voiced /d/ which follows it. In example u, the relatively difficult /st/+/s/, which frequently becomes simply /s/ in casual speech, occurs. A careful rendering of the cluster in example 15 requires that the speaker articulate the voice- less alveolar stop /t/ between the voiceless and voiced bilabial stops /p/ and /b/; this combination is relatively difficult, and many speakers avoid it by substituting the glottal stop for the /t/, thus making it nearly inaudible. Examples 7, 8, 9, and 10 use verbs which end with the voice- less affricate, a phoneme which is articulated briefly with /t/ followed almost instantly by /§/. Thus, it is possible that for some speakers a terminal /t/ disappears when it clusters with /37. The deviations from standard found in examples 1 and 2 probably result from the writer's not hav- ing heard the accepted form also, for the vernacular would have p23 in these contexts. Thus, in an effort to sound literary, but having little experience with literary form and an inadequate understanding of grammatical structure, the writer omitted the fEQ' It is difficult to determine a phonological reason for the deviations from standard found in examples 5, 11, 12, and 16, particularly since the verb is followed by a vowel in three instances and /h/ in the other, where normally there would be a slightly greater tendency for the cluster to be pronounced. 13 In the foregoing list of examples, it is apparent that each of the uninflected verb forms used by the students is identical to other parts of speech where they could be used--and in many instances must be used--without inflection. For example, a_p1apg probably has greater frequency than I placed and gp_pp work than has worked; and certainly like as a conjunction or preposition occurs more often than the phrase well-liked in speech. Thus, the fact that these words are frequently heard without inflection in addition to the fact that the inflection 13d when used is nearly inaudible certainly must be contributing factors to the speech and writing habits of users of nonstandard English. 'This is not to suggest that they never use ~pg; it merely shows that their apparently erratic use of the inflection is not a grammatical problem for them, but rather a phonological one. They do not hear the sound; therefore, they do not speak it. But the schools have taught them that they should use it, and so they do sometimes. "Yet because they do not understand the grammatical need for -pg_and do not hear it with any regularity, they cannot use it with any degree of certainty when they write. This assumption is reinforced by the realization that the writer of example 16 above, which clearly exhibits her uncertainty, also wrote 923 papa Ed- Eep checkgd 323 stampfl w_1th an 2—K— sticker, in which /kt/ and /pt/ are represented by conventional spelling. In addition, the same writer used the -9d morpheme--in this in case the voiced /d/--in the following clauses where it nor- mally would not occur: The strip was opened 32 anyone and Fashion was borngd. Another student wrote The Incrowd lg, £22.222lH832229 phpy associated togather. It might be argued that this represents a passive with the auxiliary app deleted; however, this possibility seems remote in the context of the paper in which the sentence appeared. This phenomenon, extending the use of structures beyond the limits required of them, James Ney has referred to as the misapplication of analogical formations.9 Similar to the preceding list is that which follows-- the omission of -pg where the morpheme would normally be realized by /d/. Again, the examples are grouped according to the cluster in which /d/ would occur. /nd/ 1. I was angry and determine to 2. an untrain or careless cosmetologist 3. made of a chemically harden plastic H. I awaken early the next morning 5 . When she open the oven /zd/ 6. These rags will be 222 to rug (rub) 7. She was happy and surprise. 8. Grand Rapids was surpise with warm weather 9 . a bowl of punch that cause everyone to ask . 9James W. Ney, "Two Neglected Factors in Language Comparison," Modern Language Journal XLVIII, No. 3 (March, 15 V /jd/ 10. the way he said it change my mind 11. the way class hours are arrange 12. The game has change from /rd/ 13. They haven't mature enough /md/ 1U. a look which seem to say 15. Their cars seem to be floating 16. The strip seem to be quiet /ayd/ 17. The teenager of today is classify into 18. He try to get us a right direction 19. After you have wash and dry the car, /eyd/ 20. It is pay for The first five examples reveal an instance in which the deletion of /d/, even for speakers of standard, is sim- ply a matter of economy of effort. Both /n/ and /d/ share the same point of articulation and both are voiced; the only variable exists in the manner of articulation, one being a nasal continuant and the other a stop. Moreover, in example 1, if the /d/ were articulated, it would be assimilated by the /t/ in 22; similarly, in example 5, the /d/ would very likely be assimilated by the /d/ in 2E2! In example 3, devoicing in preparation for the voiceless /p/ in plastic which follows would make the /d/ inaudible. In example 6, one could again assume a case of assimilation with the following /t/. This assumption is 16 supported by the fact that in the phrase png 29, implying a former occurrence or practice, many white students also omit the terminal morpheme in writing although they rarely omit -pg_in other verbs. This practice indicates that white students also are likely to write what they hear when they do not understand the structure of the construction involved. If this assumption is valid, then we can go a step further and consider the possibility that nonstandard speakers do not hear the /d/ which normally follows such words as 323- ppipp_and pgppp in the contexts indicated in 7, 8, and 9. — That they may not hear the sound is not difficult to appre- ciate when one considers that the voiced palatal fricative /z/ is easily terminated by simply moving the apex of the tongue a fraction of an inch upward to form an unreleased /d/. Further, the words surprise and 33332 also occur as nouns without inflection; and pgppg in the context indicated is not likely to occur in speech, most speakers preferring mgép. In examples 10, 11, and 12, the voiced affricate with which the verbs is terminated probably affects the -pd_mor- pheme, since the affricate itself, consisting of a quickly articulated /d/ followed by /37, makes the ending difficult to pronounce and to hear when it is pronounced. No phono- logical interference appears to operate in example 13, but mature occurs frequently as an adjective--probab1y more frequently than it does as a verb--and the Student's famili- arity with the uninflected adjective may have a bearing on 17 his use of this form of the word in the given context. Examples 1h, 15, and 16 use pppm_pp_where standard written English would require seemed pp, Here one can postulate that voicing ceases at the conclusion of /m/ and that /d/ becomes voiceless and is assimilated with the following /t/. This phenomenon occurs in the speech of educated persons as well as in that of uneducated or poorly educated ones whether white or black. And again, if one does not hear the sound and does not understand the structural need for the morpheme, he is not likely to be aware of its pre- sence or the need to use it in writing. In example 18, one could conclude that the /d/ in Epipd pp is devoiced and assimilated with the /t/ which follows. And in example 19, one could conclude that the /d/ in gpipd_pp§ is not articulated since the following phoneme is /d/, yet in view of the absence of the past tense marker in pgph, this explanation is doubtful. It is more probable that the absence of tense markers in example 19, and others, is due to confusion resulting from the following factors: (1) The morpheme 13g is either non- existent or not important in the students' dialects; (2) the morpheme, when it is realized by either /t/ or /d/, is usually inaudible in certain environments; and (3) the stu- dents do not understand the grammatical structure of the standard written language. Hence, to many students the use of this morpheme must appear to be erratic at best, and for them the result is confusion. 18 Irregular preterite and_perfect forms In the papers examined for this study, there occurred three examples of errors which most English teachers would mark "tense shift" or simply "tense"; either comment would probably be meaningless to speakers of some dialects. l. I noticed that Vi's car ppgip_to slide. 2. When we arrived and pipg_the doorbell, 3. It was hard but I mgkg it. u. I hggp nothing. (past tense) Labov has pointed out that although many irregular forms are correctly used, many irregular Southern preterites and perfects occur. He suggests that the correct forms must be taught.10 That the writers of these examples were unaware of the approved preterite is supported by their use of the standard form of the verb in the first clause. Thus, these writers did not make a careless error; they used the pre- terite of their dialect. Closely allied to the examples above is I h2g2 nothing (past tense). This example pre- sents a problem: Is p323 a preterite form in this person's dialect? Or does he pronounce 22332 /hiyrd/, to rhyme with 22333? Perhaps a conference with the student would reveal the answer, but it is apparent that merely marking the error "tense" is insufficient for instruction. 10William A. Labov and Paul Cohen, Some Suggestions for Teaching Standard English to Speakers of_Non-Standard Urban Dialects, U. S. Department of Health, Education, and WelPare, (Bethesda, Md.: Educational Resources Information Center, 1967), pp. 5-6. l9 Participles ending in -pp in standard English appeared without inflection in: 5. The African peoples is kppp_for 6. Man has 22233 7. Ronald has phpw_me that And the following mistakes involving the participial 73p also appeared: 8. In the field that he chosen 9. Soccer has taking it's place In example 8, it is difficult to know whether the student intended hpLg chosen (although the /z/ would probably not be pronounced in his dialect) or whether the chosen is a misapplied analogical formation. The form taking in exam- ple 9 may stem from the fact that for this writer taking and 315313 are homonyms /teykin/; if they are, the form of pgkinn soccer lg pakip' and soccer ha§_pgkgp_would sound-- and possibly be written--the same way. In addition to the forms listed above, the papers also contained such constructions as l §_e_e_n and I E t_o_g_lg which are usually found in any remedial English class. Will--omission Labov has stated that the phonological process which eliminates final and preconsonantal l_is deeply involved 20 with the grammatical problems of the future.11 This study revealed one instance where this process was reflected in a student's writing. Hp_hgy§ g greater figpp_was used in a context which clearly indicated the need for H3 pill hgyg. It should be noted, however, that in speech the contracted form of pill is usually employed and that this form is not readily audible; for speakers of the nonstandard, the fill of the contracted form is usually eliminated. Another stu- dent, who was apparently more aware of the need for pill, "corrected" himself thus: This year sports will bring us The Summer Olympics that are will being play in Mexico. Apparently he started to write are being play(ed), then decided he needed will to indicate futurity and in his con- fusion neglected to change being to pg; whether he would have added -pd_to play under less stressful circumstances we cannot know. Have--omission McDavid has shown that "in standard oral English many educated speakers may omit the /-v/ reflex of have, though it would not be omitted in standard expository prose."12 llWilliam Labov, The Non-Standard Vernacular of the Ne ro Community: Some Practical Spggestions, U. S. Depart— ment 0? Health, Education, and Welfare, (Bethesda, Md.: Educational Resources Information Center, 1967), p. 2. 12Raven I. McDavid, Jr., "A Checklist of Significant Features for Discriminating Social Dialects," in Dimensions of Dialecp, ed. Eldonna L. Evertts, (Champaign, IIlinois: National Council of Teachers of English, 1967), p. 9. 21 fflhe following example of nonstandard expository prose was Iflyund in this study: They been going there. If, in this srtudent's dialect, been serves as a past tense marker, as it: sometimes does, and if /v/ is either omitted or inaudible it) standard speech, it is not difficult to understand Why trio student wrote the sentence as he did. Nor is it dif- :fj.cult to understand why the traditional methods of correct- ing papers is so ineffective. Equally ineffective would be tklea workbook exercises in which the student must choose hraxre or has in a sentence like this; the student feels no need for either auxiliary since it is not in his dialect. Bee--omission Perhaps no item in nonstandard oral English has been nmezutioned more by linguists than the omission of 22 EB: vdleether as an auxiliary or a copula. The following examples reflecting this oral practice were found in this study: 1. He_willing to bring important matter to class 2. He_proud his determination (pf also omitted) 3. it_all the same belief or practice Ed the same with a black cat crouseing in front of you it bad luck, if you broke a lookeing glass glass It_bad luck. .5. There_nothing more for Bailey suggests that inasmuch as pp is primarily a tense carrier in English and in the nonstandard dialects thf’ IDresent is an unmarked form, pp_in the nonstandard 22 can be dispensed with for that purpose.13 In speech, the contracted form is generally used; that is, /s/ or /z/ is added to the preceding word in standard English. It might be thought that having heard these sibilants throughout their school days, college students would be aware of their presence, but our senses are selective; we hear and see only what is meaningful to us. Therefore, if i3 does not exist in a student's dialect he is not likely to be aware of the /s/ or /z/ which signals the presence of $2.1“ the standard. The omission of i§_may be relatively easy to over- come with oral practice, however, for Labov found that in an oral repetition test the subjects (boys, aged 11 to la years) were able to repeat standard sentences containing lg much more readily than sentences containing other constructions.lu Have/has-:person-number concord Of the three verbs which are irregular in the pre- sent tense--dp, pay, and paypf-only hayp presented problems in the corpus examined. Because of its irregularity and because of its frequent occurrence both as an auxiliary and as a finite verb, it will be considered separately. In the following list, those examples with a singular subject appear first; those with a plural subject follow. lBBailey, p. 19. l"I'Labov and Cohen, Systematic Relations..., p. 12. 23 1. hp have study the lesson and have to take a poor mar 2. the amound of money man have spent on a dog (amount) 3. the modern refrigerator have many accessories u. Today's player have to be specialist at their positions. . these people has not found . people has some . Sports such as Baseball, Basketball, and football has been a favorite to many on television. 5 6. people Egg some type of thing they belief in 7 8 9. There hg§_been numerous changes Apparently subscribing to the theory that there is a substratum of Creole in some nonstandard Negro dialects, Bailey accounts for the vacillation between hgyp and gap by comparing it with the speech of Creole children in whose language the perfective aspect is expressed by some particle which is invariable and who, consequently, have no feeling for the plural.15 If students have no feeling for the plural, then the sounds which signal the plural have no meaning for them; and since we discriminate only those sounds which have meaning for us, it is easy to understand why nonstandard speakers and writers find this distinction difficult. In the case of example A, above, it would appear that the error might be due to failure to pluralize the nouns; however, the paper clearly indicated that the writer 15Bailey, p. 19; 2U intended the singular form, g_p1ayer. It is possible that the confusion results from the writer's having used the term in its generic sense to include all players, in which case semantics may have interfered with syntax. Was/were--person-number concord Again referring to the possibility of a Creole base underlying Negro dialects, Bailey believes that pg§_may be merely a tense marker, the notion of singular vs. plural being missing.16 This belief may be valid for young chil- dren or for entirely uneducated speakers; yet among high school graduates living in the North the misuse of wag and EEEE.d°eS not occur with enough frequency to permit this explanation. If the notion of singular vs. plural is mis- sing, then through hearing the appropriate forms used by standard speakers and in this case being able to discriminate the difference, northern Negroes seem to have acquired the habit of using these forms appropriately most of the time. This study revealed only six instances of confusion with 322 and 3332, and these may be explained by examining the constructions in which they occurred. For example, three sentences begin with phgpg: 1. There was foods of all sorts 2. There was no lighting fixtures inside the icebox 3. There was a high chair, baby tub, sanitizer, etc. 16Ibid. 25 In such sentences, of course, the subject follows the verb; thus it is possible that if one does not understand the kernel sentence underlying the there-transformation, he would be unaware of the need for pppp in his sentence. It is interesting to note that when there is an error in a sentence beginning with phgpg, the verb is always 3233 we never find a sentence beginning There were a boye-a "plural" verb with a singular subject. Two other examples reveal another possible clue: 4. Vi, my friend, and I was racing one day. 5. The last day that Sandy and Mike was on the strip, Both of these examples were taken from the same paper. In them, because a singular word immediately precedes HES, selection of the verb form was probably determined by the immediately preceding form; this suspicion is reinforced by the fact that in the same paper the student wrote pp 3233. Another student wrote, I g pf‘p 9 most conclusive ESEEE.$E describing "Black Power" i§_pride and unity. Here, although the present tense is used, linguistic habit may dictate that in most instances singular nouns require singular verbs; hence, when a singular noun is contiguous to a verb, it influences the number of that verb even though it is a mem- ber of a compound construction which requires a plural verb. One other example found in the corpus cannot be explained by either of the patterns above: 6. Such drugs as bismuth, mercury, and arsenical drugs was used. 26 It should be noted, however, that like misuse of parti- ciples (I_ppgp and; hgg_pppk), unorthodox person-number agreement of the past of pg_is not exclusively a Negro dialect problem, for it also appears frequently in the writing of white students as a nonstandard usage, particu- larly with compound subjects or with intervening preposi- tional phrases. Other Verbs--person-number concord Included in McDavid's checklist of diagnostic fea- tures of the nonstandard dialect is the failure to maintain person-number concord of the present indicative of verbs other than pp, which he considers "perhaps the most clearly diagnostic feature."17 Of this phenomenon Labov says, "The third-person singular fig and regular possessive -§_are mis— sing entirely from the dialect in any systematic sense."18 Oral language habits, therefore, are undoubtedly responsible for the following examples: 1. waxing the car 3253 a long time 2. a rich man mgkg things the easy way 3. he work hard . he take pride in u . 5. your car start to spot up 6 . he put him to bead (bed) l7McDavid, "A Checklist...," p. 9. 18Labov and Cohen, Systematic Relations..., p. 12. 7. 8. 9. 10. ll. l2. 13. 1h. 15. l6. l7. l8. 19. 20. 21. and: 22. 23. 27 he kppp_his fight if a student pppm_to be today's game pgll_for speed he even $3113 a difference car unless his life depend on it he 1213 to be very active he ppapd_about 5'6" learning ppgip in the kindergarten before a child really understand when the time pppg’ what ever he pwp' man only lpgpp_by Nada is quiet but welcome the company of adults she mixes well with other children, 1213 to play He give him a bave (bath) Half of the people that gos to J.C. Man has created situations that causes him to To try to explain these verb forms phonologically would be futile, for no pattern exists. The fact that this -§_morpheme does not exist in the nonstandard dialect (because present tense is unmarked) undoubtedly leads to the marker's being used some of the time and being omitted at other times. And occasionally, as in examples 22 and 23, the marker is included where it should be omitted. It is interesting to note that in the latter two examples the -§_marker is added 28 to verbs in phgp clauses. Unfortunately, the corpus was too small to reveal whether or not this fact has a bearing upon the misapplication of -§_to the verb. The corpus did reveal, however, that the nonstandard form of the verb in the pre- sent tense was used with much greater frequency than was the standard form. 121% Both of the inflectional morphemes for nouns, jg plural and -lp_genitive, are realized in speech by three allomorphs which, like those of 13g, are phonologically con- ditioned and have the following distribution: 'v . v /s/ after v01celess consonants except /s s c 3 ’ e V V /z/ after vo1ced consonants except /z,z,j/ and vowels v z, '/ \/ /iz/ after /s,§;5,z, 3 In the papers examined for this study, no examples of the omission of either marker was found when the /iz/ pronun- ciation would be required. -s Noun Plural Morpheme Lack of the noun plural is included in McDavid's checklist of diagnostic features of the nonstandard dialect. Of this phenomenon, Labov writes, "Plurals are intact and are affected only by stylistic phonological simplification."19 He indicates also that the -p is used regularly by most young lglbid. 29 children in Harlem and that it is sometimes extended to form a double plural in teeths, mppp, and so forth. He feels that the standard rule is known and that the teacher need only correct "a few irregularities."20 An analysis of the evidence in this study coincides closely with Labov's observation that plurals are affected by phonological sim- plification, for most of the omissions can be accounted for in this way. Yet the thirteen occurrences of the omission of -§ plural in the corpus examined casts some doubt upon the assumption that the rule is known and that the teacher need only correct a few irregularities-~in the Grand Rapids area, at least. In the first three examples, jg plural would have been realized by /s/: l. we took pictures of the gppgp 2. make huge profits from Saturday afternoon contest 3. the game has change from kids bouncing a ball to giant moving with grace Adding -§_to gpg§p_and contest yields the relatively dif- fiCU1t §£§_cluster, which is often simplified to /s/ in speech, /ges/ and /kantes/. Example 3 is a clear case of ‘ consonant cluster reduction. That these writers knew the rule for -p plural is indicated by the presence of a plural form in each sentence: pictures, profits, and kigp, respectively. 20Labov and Cohen, Some Suggestions ..., p. 7. 30 In those examples where the -p would have been realized by /z/, the omission occurred most frequently after /r/, which is often not articulated in the nonstan- dard dialect: u. A poor man will work hard and longhour just to 5. The basketball player today are 6. they been going there over two semester 7. in the early'ypap of the game 8. to talk with my children and ppppp that I 9. bring important matter to class The omission also occurred in the following: 10. This and a few more detail make a 11. On weekend, they 12. The roman worship Birds, volcano and 13. with more and unusual formation on offense In English, less precision is required at the ends of words generally. And according to Labov, this principle is car- ried much further in nonstandard English than in standard in the simplification of final consonant clusters, the loss of final 3, l, and of other tongue-tip consonants: g, Q, g, .5, and to a lesser extentp?l All of the above examples, of course, would have /z/ as the plural marker in speech; in addition,\all except one of the sounds with which the singu- lar forms end are included in Labov's list. The one 21Ibid., p. 17. 31 exception is example 11, in which we find 21292 following the rule for the standard form and.pp§gp and volcano deviat- ing from it; but in view of the orthographic irregularities in the example--the lower case letter on ppmgp_and the capital letter on EiEEEf'it is relatively safe to conclude that many of the standard rules for writing and speaking are unknown to him. The extension of the -§_plural to form double plurals was not found in the material examined for this study; however, one instance of the plural marker added to a noncount or mass noun was found: 14. These rags will be use to rug the $1523 off and to dry. -'s Noun Genitive Morpheme Labov states that the possessive -p which is added to nouns in standard English has no representation in the nonstandard grammar discussed here;22 it is also one of McDavid's diagnostic items. In this study, three examples of the omission were found: 1. some people handwriting is illegible 2. Ronald kindness 3. paying his 32p way in college Although some students did use the genitive inflection in their work, it seems fair to conclude that where the inflec- tion is omitted, the omission is due to the absence of the 221bid., p. 7. 32 inflection in that student's dialect. If the student has been unaware of the /s/ or /z/ to indicate possession (as well as other relationships signified by this marker) in speech and has been equally unaware of the 'p_in his read- ing, marking a paper in the usual way is futile. Probably equally futile are those exercises which stress placement of the apostrophe since the student does not understand the need for the apostrophe to begin with. Modifiers Adverbs The students in this study also used adverbs with- out the termination TEX in environments where the standard dialect would normally use the 11y termination. This study revealed the following examples of -l non-use: l. performing as beautiful and masterful as ever . each was driving beautiful . treatments may be given improper pronounce her words different . the mistakes he has ppevious experienced O‘W-F'UJN . a man could still possible succeed "The -ly_inflection, turning adjectives into adverbs, is rarely used among nonstandard speakers."23 When one realizes that the omission of -ly_in written work stems from the ¥ 23Labov and Cohen, Some Suggestions..., p. 8. 33 student's oral language habits, it becomes obvious that the teacher's adding 1y to his paper will do little to establish the habitual use of -l in written work. In addition to the non-use of the termination -ly, the following form was used for always: 1. both girls piggy were presentable 2. She was piggy talking Both of these examples were written by the same student and may present a special case; however, the -§_omission is undoubtedly due to the loss of the tongue-tip consonant and could be remedied by oral drill. Adjectives In this study only one double comparative appeared: mppp_stronger. In addition, the following examples, which undoubtedly have their roots in the students' speech habits, were found: . it is the lonelyess is the olds belief only make it worst #7 x» n) +4 . which makes the situation 32333 The first two examples indicate the loss of terminal /t/; the second two indicate a failure to discriminate Ep£§2_and wpppp, with the latter form prevailing over the first in writing. 3h a/an alternation Although many instances were found where the deter-. miner g_and its allomorph gp_were appropriately used, the following examples were also found: 1. a easy class 8. an lower animal 2. a asking of questions 9. an "0" 3. a education 10. an college education u. a outsider (twice) 11. an race 5. a illusion 12. come up with ang ' unwanted shade 6. a enjoyable tone 7. a informative manner The nonstandard dialect lacks the English morpho- phonemic rule which transforms the article p_to pp_in the context of a following vowel.‘2LL Thus, the misuse of the articles as above can be considered another instance of misapplication of analogical formations. The student's dialect uses 2.1n all environments; through contact with the standard dialect in school and elsewhere he learns there is an alternate form 3p, but he does not learn where it is appropriately used. Thus, his writing exhibits the result of his incomplete learning. Here, again, oral drill cer- tainly should produce more positive results than mere marks on paper have been able to do. 2”Bailey, p. 21. 35 Example 12 seems to indicate another instance of consonant cluster reduction--/nd/ to /n/; for this student 3p and and are probably homonyms /aen/. Pronouns In connection with undifferentiated pronouns, William Stewart indicates that "undifferentiated pronouns for subject and object . . . became quite rare in even the more nonstandard speech of Negroes born after the Emancipa- tion."25 And "the undifferentiated form of the pronoun as possessive (he brother, she book) apparently disappears "26 accord- somewhere between the ages of nine and fourteen, ing to J. L. Dillard. Yet undifferentiated forms occurred as both a possessive and an object in this study, in addi- tion to a misapplied analogical formation: 1. to settle pim_mind 2. he treag (treat) pp as a human (referring to a dog) 3. the student themself These examples represent what Stewart has called basilect27 which, Dillard has said, certain Negroes who 25William A. Stewart, "Continuity and Change in American Negro Dialects," in The Florida FL Reporter (Spring, 1968), Reprint, p. l. 26J. L. Dillard, "Negro Children's Dialect in the Inner City," in The Florida FL Repprter (Fall, 1967), Reprint, p. 2. 27Basilect may be defined as that variety of a par- ticular dialect which is structurally the most deviant from standard English. See William A. Stewart, "Urban Negro Speech: Socio-linguistic Factors Affecting English Teaching," in Social Dialects, p. 15. 36 remain low on the social scale actually retain in a rela- 28 tively pure form. Since such students do not have the pattern of pronoun distribution in their dialect, oral pat- tern drill might help to fix the paradigm in their minds; certainly it would be more effective than correction of isolated errors has been. Prepositions Although recent studies have revealed many important differences between standard and nonstandard dialects, rela- tively little has apparently been done regarding the use of prepositions. The following poor choices made by students suggest that an analysis of the oral use of this part of speech might be profitable: 1. has a concern p£_a student (for) 2. ip_result (as a) 3. I reached my destination piph_l3 hours (within) H. what pppyg the next one (about) 5. divorce between the black family has (in) 6. how small man is toward something as (compared to) Perhaps the best way to overcome these deviations from standard is to include the most frequently used prepo- sitions in oral drill until correct usages have become auto- matic for the students. Ney has shown that in studies with Japanese students "the frequency of occurrence of these 28Dillard, The Florida FL Reporter, (Fall, 1967). Reprint, p. 2. I 37 prepositions in the target language corresponds to their frequency of involvement in incorrect patterns."29 Conjunctions One student from Louisiana used until where stand- ard English would use that: 1. Many cases of syphilis are so well hidden until Wasserman's method of taking blood has not aIways shown the presence of the disease. 2. The girls are so different in looks and actions until most people think that Bailey cites this construction, pp...until, as appearing in the speech and writing of students with whom she worked at Tougaloo College.3O Lexical Items Errors in lexical items in addition to those men- tioned earlier in specific categories occur primarily for two reasons: (1) The students are unaware of the deriva- tional processes through which words can be altered, usually by morphemic change, to allow them to shift from one form class to another; and (2) phonological interference. Errors due to inappropriate derivation 3T morphological orms 1. will have very few absent or tardiness 2. for instant, parties are 3. a difference car 29Ney, p. 133. 30Bailey, p. 21. 38 u. studing is one of the importance things 5. for their Superstition ways 6. a drug that can immune people 7. that they belief in 8. you put the waxing on by ruging it (rubbing) The first two examples indicate either the substi- tution of the cluster /nt/ for /ns/ or a simplification of the cluster /nts/ which may occur because of an intrusive /t/ in speech. Examples 3 and u are related to the first two cited; in these, /ns/ has been substituted for /nt/. Quite possibly the pairs absent and absence, and others like them, merge for some students; that is, they do not discrim- inate the difference in pronunciation when they hear the words correctly used because the slight difference in sound has no real meaning for them. Thus, drill in using the con- trasting pairs, with special emphasis on pronunciation, would be helpful. For example, such frames as the following might be used: A different car makes a difference. He was absent; his absence was noticed. To explain example 5, one would have to assume that /n/ was replaced by /s/; this assumption appears to be of doubt- ful validity inasmuch as these phonemes differ so markedly both in manner and in point of articulation as well as voicing. Yet because speakers of nonstandard English are likely to use less precision at the ends of words (see p. 30), 39 the possibility cannot be ruled out. At any rate, oral drill would emphasize the difference between these two words also. In addition to oral drill using contrastive pairs, practice in deriving words would also help this student as well as the one who is responsible for example 6. That is, he could start with immune, add.-igg, then add -§£ipp, and practice using each form in sentences. Continued practice of this kind would not only help to assure his using cor- rect forms but also help him appreciate the flexibility of his language. Example 7 reveals both phonological inter- ference and an unawareness of the need for internal change when this word and others like it move from the noun class to the verb class. The phonological interference is readily apparent, for the only difference between /f/ and /v/ is voicing. Again, drill which emphasizes pronunciation is suggested: They believe it; it is their belief. It will relieve him; he will get relief. Example 8 is unusual and cannot be readily explained. The paper in which this example appeared contained so many irregular usages, however, that one would have to conclude that this student was in fact functioning at or very near the basilect level. (See Appendix B) Errors due to phonological interference and mergingfivowels la. just rug lightly (rub) lb. will be use to rug the dirts off U0 2a. 3223 your car start to spot up (when) 2b. do just as you did.Eppp you were 3a. how can one fipp_anywere to go (find) 3b. fining out about 3c. trying to flpp_out why 3d. trying to fipg there way ha. prglyou can reach it (where) Nb. how can one fine anypere to go (anywhere) 5. he is thriving toward perfection (striving) 6. for the week-inns (weekends) 7. a poor man has more will power EEEE.3 rich man (than) 8. another pplp_that this picture shows (thing) 9. if you walk under a letter, you have bad luck (ladder) lO. ppppp I have been here (since) 11. give him a pgyg, (bath) l2. put him to ppgg (bed) Examples 1 and 2 were written by the student men— tioned above as probably functioning at the basilect level; they may not, therefore, be typical. Nevertheless, the phonological interference is apparent in both examples, although the substitution of the velar stop /g/ for the bilabial stop /b/ in example 1 is unusual. In example 2, evidence indicates that the student, who certainly hears EEEE and.Ehpp in verbal discourse, either does not discrim- inate the difference in sound between the two or does not 1.1 understand their use. It is likely that for him both words sound like /wen/ and that he is more familiar with the written pppp_than with EQEER The use of flpp_instead of EEEQ in example 3 clearly results from a tongue—tip consonant deletion. An error of this kind might be considered simply a spelling error; how- ever a spelling error which produces another actual word can easily interfere with communication. And in view of the rather chaotic state of English spelling, those errors which can be eliminated through pronunciation drill cer- tainly should be given that kind of attention. Some stu- dents are apparently inconsistent in their use of fipp, for the writer of example 3b also used £129 and finding in the same paper. Example N indicates that for some students ppppg and Eppp_merge, both having the pronunciation of the latter, and that the students do not discriminate the semantic and grammatical difference between the two. In example 5, where the student used thriving rather than striving, the cluster of /str/ has been replaced by /9r/. This substitution is unusual, the more prevalent one being /skr/. However, the student may have been familiar with the word he used and may not have known striving; hence, he used thriving in an inappropriate context. Example 6, week-inns instead of weekends, illus- trates two phonological phenomena: the deletion of terminal 1.2 /d/ and the lack of a distinction between /i/ and /e/ before nasal consonants. Labov suggests that to correct the latter confusion the teacher should think in terms of "same" and "different" and not try to deal with each "mis- take" directly. He recommends a perception test, ear- training exercises, and finally training in the actual production of the sounds.31 Example 7 appears to be a more radical departure from standard English than it really is, for the only real phonological problem (and spelling problem) centers on the vowel. The digraph ph_represents both the voiced and the voiceless dental fricative; hence, it is the spelling of the remainder of the word which controls its voiceless quality here. Because £233 is nearly always unstressed in speech, it rarely is articulated with the low-front vowel; thus, the student's use of i_reflects his pronunciation, /din/. Interestingly, in example 8, the same spelling, pplp, is used to represent a different word, Epipg, In this case, the student's dialect apparently has the alveolar nasal /n/ where standard English uses the velar nasal /9/. Although in casual speech, those who use standard English frequently make this substitution in the fiipg morpheme, they do not usually do so when /n/ terminates a word without the morpheme. 31Labov and Cohen, Some Suggestions..., pp. 26-27. U3 Example 9, ladder for letter, reveals the fact that most speakers use a voiced consonant for the double p_in letter. In addition, the vowel in the first syllable reflects the frequent interchange of /e/ for /&¥ in stand- ard English in such words as cabbage, carrot, and radish. Example 10, like example 6, reveals the student's lack of distinction between /i/ and /e/ before nasal conso- nants. In addition, he seems to have confused the §_spel- ling for the /s/ of 22222 with the pp spelling for that sound in ppppp, His choice of p_as the vowel grapheme may have had some bearing upon his representation of the first phoneme. Example 11 exhibits two problems, one grammatical and the other phonological. First, the student apparently uses pgppp as both noun and verb; and second, he has /v/ where standard English has /d/, a phonological phenomenon not unusual in nonstandard Negro dialects. Sentence Structure In addition to the "run-on" sentences, "comma faults," and fragments frequently found in pre-college English papers, the corpus included other structural irregu- larities typical of nonstandard written English. Closely resembling the iffclauses and embedded questions discussed by Labov32 are the following examples: 32Labov, Non-Standard Vernacular..., p. 5, and Labov and Cohen, Some Suggestions..., pp. 12-13. Mk 1. At first he talked to me about how my hand was doing and how soon will I be able to play again. 2. He mentioned the future. What were my ambitions, what college I wanted to go to. 3. Such things as fining out about your weak points and why are you weak in certain areas. Examples 1 and 2 are especially interesting because they use standard transformation rules to produce one clause and a different set of rules to produce the other. For example, in sentence 1, consistency in standard English would produce: . . . how my hand was doing and how soon I would be able to play again Consistency in nonstandard: . . . how was my hand doing and how soon will (would) I be able to play again. Consistency in example 2 would produce, in standard: . . . What my ambitions were, what college I wanted to go to. Consistency in nonstandard: . . . What were my ambitions, what college did I want to go to. Thus, a kind of transformational misapplication of analogical formation seems to be operating in these examples: the rules which underlie the native or habitual dialect and the rules which underlie standard English. As Labov has demonstrated, in standard English when questions are embedded in state- ments, the question clause reverts to the word order of a statement; in non-standard English, the question clause fol— lows the word order of the question even though it is US embedded. As a matter of rhetorical style, however, the word order of the nonstandard clauses in example 2 might be preferred by some writers of standard prose, with suit- able punctuation, of course. Example 3 reveals no confusion of grammatical rules; it simply follows the word order of the nonstandard dialect. Another structural irregularity occurred in a ques- tion: Don't you suppose 22 pg slepping? The question was derived from a nonstandard statement: You suppose to be sleeping. (with be omitted) You not suppose to be sleeping. (T-negTT *Not you suppose to be sleeping. (T-yes/no) Do not you suppose to be sleeping. (T-do) Don't you suppose to be sleeping? A standard statement would have produced a standard question: You are supposed to be sleeping. You are not supposed to be sleeping. Are not you supposed to be sleeping? Aren't you supposed to be sleeping? Thus, we can conclude that the nonstandard question results from the deletion of are in the statement. The omission of g_on suppose is, of course, another instance of phonological interference on grammatical form, for the /d/ in this phrase, supposed pg, is inevitably assimilated with the /t/ of £2, Summary of Frequenpy of Occurrence If the frequency with which a given nonstandard form appears in student writing is to be considered a cri- terion for determining the relative need for corrective I16 measures, certainly the verb forms demand priority. The following tabulation lists the deviations from standard written English found in this study according to frequency of occurrence. Verb -ed morpheme. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 -_' -ed realized by /t/--l6 -3_spot up all you have to do just rug across lighly and the spot will come write off. 62 PAPER III. Superstitions is the olds belief in the world. Sense the Birth of Christ and even befor the Birth of Christ. The roman worship Birds, volcano and many other different things that they belief in. The african peoples is know for their Superstition ways. All over the world people has some type of thing they belief in, from north to South East, and West in different language is other words it all the same belief or practice resuliting from ignorance. Superstitions in the Mardern days if you walk under a letter you have bad luck, the same with a black cat crouseing in front of you it bad luck, if you broke a lookeing glass it bad luck. yes super- stitions is still here because I belief in it. Superstitions is a fune thing people will kill for it, and have kill for it. Goes ploses for it like to I belief that superstitions can rule the world. do you belief in this? MICHIGAN STATE UNIV. LIBRARIES III IIIIIII 312931003 9251