International Linguistic Association

The Second 2011 Fall semester presentation will be on Saturday, Nov. 12, 2011 at 11 am at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Conference Room, Department of English (7th Floor) 619 West 54th Street (between 11th and 12th Avenues) New York, NY 10019

November 12, 2011

Judy B. Bernstein, William Paterson University
Expletives and other Displaced Pronouns in Appalachian English

Appalachian English allows subjects to be split between two positions to a greater extent than standard American English:

(1) a. There can’t nobody ride him. (Appalachian English; Montgomery & Hall 2004)
b. They can’t many people say that. (Montgomery & Hall 2004)
c. They didn’t nobody live up there. (our fieldwork)
d. We don’t nobody know how long we have. (Montgomery & Hall 2004)

The sentences in (1a,b) involve expletive pronouns (there and they) and transitive verbs, so-called transitive expletive constructions; that in (1c) an expletive (they) and an unaccusative verb; the one in (1d) a referential pronoun (we) and a transitive verb. For all these examples, the initial piece of the subject is a pronominal element and the second a quantificational noun phrase (usually negative). What explains this pattern in Appalachian English? Zanuttini and Bernstein (2011) argue that the pronoun (e.g. there) starts out as a unit with the quantificational subject (e.g. there-nobody) and raises to a position higher than the canonical position for lexical subjects. This is facilitated by movement of the modal or auxiliary. Other varieties displaying the pattern in (1) are Belfast English, Late Middle/Early Modern English, and Older Scots, an ancestor of Appalachian English (Montgomery 1989, 1997). Resembling (1) but not identical to it is so-called negative inversion, which is displayed in both Appalachian English and African American English:

(2) Didn’t nobody get hurt or nothin’. (Appalachian English; Wolfram & Christian 1976)
(3) Ain’t nothin’ went down. (African American English; Labov et al. 1968)

But unlike Appalachian English, African American English apparently does not display the pattern in (1) with overt pronouns.

Please print the PDF of this announcement and post it.  Contact Dr. Effie Cochran, ecochran@jjay.cuny.edu, for more information.

UPCOMING PRESENTATION
Dec 10: Kate Menken, Queens College, CUNY

Q & A to follow talks. All are welcome

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Saturday, October 22, 2011
Miguel A. Jiménez-Crespo, Rutgers University
Title: “The ‘Language of Translation’ in an Internet Era“

Saturday, May 14, 2011
Kristine Billmyer, Dean, School of Continuing Education, Columbia University
Title: “Sociolinguistics and Second Language Acquisition: Issues and Opportunities in Instructed Pragmatics”

Saturday, March 12, 2011
Miriam Eisenstein Ebsworth, NYU Steinhardt; Scott GoldbergAzrieli, School of Jewish Education, Yeshiva University; Tristin Klein, NYU Steinhardt.
Title: “Becoming Biliterate in a Heritage Language: Addressing the Challenges”

Saturday, February 12, 2011
John L. Locke, Lehman College, City University of New York
Title: “Walls and Whispers: Eavesdropping, Gossip, and Other Liminal Pursuits”

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Saturday, December 11, 2010
Alice Deakins, William Paterson University
Title: “The Writers’ Sentence: Editing for Grammar and Style”

Saturday,  November 13, 2010
Kamal K. Sridhar and S.N. Sridhar, Stony Brook University
Title:  “Ethnicity and Language Maintenance: Marathi in Thanjavur”

Saturday, October 9, 2010
Lawrence M. Solan, Brooklyn Law School
Don Forchelli Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs
Title: “Construing Laws: Language or Intent?”

Saturday, May 8, 2010
Kathryn English, Université de Paris II Panthéon-Assas, Ecole Polytechnique
Title: “What They Mean by What They Don’t Say. Managing Assumptive Frameworks Across Continents”

Saturday, March 13, 2010
Clifford A. Hill, Arthur I. Gates Professor of Language and Education Emeritus,
Teachers College, Columbia University
Title: “Thinking Back on the Deixis Research: What Does it All Mean?”

Saturday, February 13, 2010
Michael Newman, Associate Professor of Linguistics, Queens College
Title: “How can you sound Asian in American English?: A dialect recognition and sociophonetic study of Korean and Chinese Americans native English”

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Saturday, December 12, 2009
Martin R. Gitterman, Lehman College and The Graduate Center, CUNY
Title: “Teaching Pronunciation: Age-Related Considerations”

Saturday, November 14, 2009
Haralambos Symeonidis, University of Kentucky
Title: “ALGR (Átlas Lingüístico Guaraní-Románico)”

Saturday, October 10, 2009
Charlotte Linde, NASA Ames Research Center
Title: “Working the Past: Narrative and Institutional Memory”

Saturday, May 9, 2009
Nancy Stern, City College of New York
Title: “Behave or Behave Yourself: Grammar, Meaning, and Communication”

Saturday, March 14 2009
Kathleen O’Connor-Bater, SUNY College at Old Westbury
Title: “A Cognitive Explanation of Ruben Dario’s Idealist Liberal Poems”

Saturday, February 14, 2009
Maria Kasparova and Mary Yepez,  Bergen Community College
Title: “Which Writing Texts Work for ESL Students?”

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Saturday, December 13, 2008
Celeste Sullivan, Southern Connecticut State University
Title: “Variation in Intonation Patterns According to Language and Social Context in Lahore”

Saturday, November 8, 2008
Clyde Coreil, New Jersey City University
Title: “The Duality of Language”

Saturday, October 11, 2008
Yolanda Chavez-Cappellini, Assistant Professor at SUNY New Paltz
Title: “Suffixation and Compounding in Andean Toponyms”

Saturday, May 10, 2008
Joseph L. Malone,  Professor Emeritus of Barnard College and Columbia University
Title:   “Transdialectal Patterns of Mutation in Aramaic as Evidence for Special Origins: Isogloss Pockets, Anachronic” Dialects, and More,”

Saturday, March 8, 2008
Prof. Cecilia Robustelli, Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia, Italy,  Associate Professor of Italian Linguistics at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia.
Title: “The Role of the Italian Language in the New European Landscape.”

Saturday, February 9, 2008
George L. Greaney, Director of the Hofstra University English Language Program for international students and adjunct assistant professor of Comparative Literature and Languages at Hofstra
Title: “What Makes a Good Translation? How to Render ‘Live’ Speech in a ‘Dead’ Language. The Case of Attic Oratory”

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Saturday, December 8, 2007
Kate Parry, Professor in the Department of English, Hunter College, City University of New York and Chair, Uganda Community Libraries Association.
Title: “Languages in Africa”

Saturday, November 10, 2007
Peter T. Daniels (noted scholar and author).
Title: “Smudges, cuneiforms, moon-spun vowels:  A Unified View of the Diverse Origins of Writing.”

Saturday, October 13, 2007
David K. Barnhart (Editor, Lexik House Publishers)
Title: “The Sieve Syndrome: What happens to new words”

Saturday May 12, 2007
Ann Delilkan, New York City College of Technology
Title: “Codas and Head Feet in Malay”

Saturday, Feb. 17, 2007
Christa de leine, College of Notre Dame, Maryland
Title: “Students from Anglophone West Africa in US Classrooms”

Saturday, March 3, 2007
Arthur K. Spears, The City College and The Graduate Center, CUNY
Title: “African American English: Recent Advances in Understanding the Grammar-Use Interface”

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