Negative auxiliaries and absent expletives in Texas vernacular English

Salmon, William

doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2018.04.003

Cited by 5 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…Our experiment limited the contexts to a single sentence, whereas Salmon's contexts are more detailed. Further experimental work is needed to see whether the effects observed in our study extend to the contexts like those in Salmon (2017).…”

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confidence: 87%

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On the Subject of Negative Auxiliary Inversion

Blanchette

Collins

2018

Can. J. Linguist.

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This article presents a novel analysis ofNegative Auxiliary Inversion(NAI) constructions such asdidn't many people eat, in which a negated auxiliary appears in pre-subject position. NAI, found in varieties including Appalachian, African American, and West Texas English, has a word order identical to a yes/no question, but is pronounced and interpreted as a declarative. We propose that NAI subjects are negative DPs, and that the negation raises from the subject DP to adjoin to Fin (a functional head in the left periphery). Three properties of NAI motivate this analysis: (i) scope freezing effects, (ii) the various possible and impossible NAI subject types, and (iii) the incompatibility of NAI constructions with true Double-Negation interpretations. Implications for theories of Negative Concord, Negative Polarity Items, and the representation of negation are discussed.

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confidence: 87%

“… 8 Recent work by Salmon (2017) suggests that for some speakers of Texas English (including Salmon himself), positive polarity some and definite DPs like the teachers are acceptable as NAI subjects, contrary to previous reports. Our experiment limited the contexts to a single sentence, whereas Salmon's contexts are more detailed.…”

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confidence: 93%

On the Subject of Negative Auxiliary Inversion

Blanchette

Collins

2018

Can. J. Linguist.

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“…At its core is the relationship between the subject and the auxiliary, which occur in an order that is non-canonical in both standardized and vernacular Englishes. Two further descriptive characteristics of NAI are that the auxiliary must be negated (e.g., Parrott, 2000;White-Sustaíta, 2010), and the negation appears as the clitic n't as opposed to the marker not (Blanchette, 2015;Matyiku, 2017;Parrott, 2000;Salmon, 2018). Labov et al (1968) and Labov (1972) observed NAI use by vernacular African American and Latinx speakers in New York, and it has also been observed in White Alabama English (Feagin, 1979), West Texas English (Foreman, 1999(Foreman, , 2001Matyiku, 2017), Vernacular Texas English (Salmon, 2018), African American English (Green, 2002(Green, , 2014Parrott, 2000;Sells et al, 1996;Weldon, 1994), and Appalachian English (Montgomery, 2004;Montgomery & Hall, 2004;Tortora & den Dikken, 2010;Wolfram & Christian, 1976).…”

Section: General Usage and Interpretationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Labov et al (1968 ) and Labov (1972) observed NAI use by vernacular African American and Latinx speakers in New York, and it has also been observed in White Alabama English ( Feagin, 1979 ), West Texas English ( Foreman, 1999 , 2001; Matyiku, 2017 ), Vernacular Texas English ( Salmon, 2018 ), African American English ( Green, 2002 , 2014 ; Parrott, 2000 ; Sells et al, 1996 ; Weldon, 1994 ), and Appalachian English ( Montgomery, 2004 ; Montgomery & Hall, 2004 ; Tortora & den Dikken, 2010 ; Wolfram & Christian, 1976 ). An overview of the literature on NAI can be found in Matyiku (2011) .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Adaptation at the Syntax–Semantics Interface: Evidence From a Vernacular Structure

Blanchette¹,

Flannery²,

Jackson

et al. 2023

Lang Speech

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Expanding on psycholinguistic research on linguistic adaptation, the phenomenon whereby speakers change how they comprehend or produce structures as a result of cumulative exposure to less frequent or unfamiliar linguistic structures, this study asked whether speakers can learn semantic and syntactic properties of the American English vernacular negative auxiliary inversion (NAI) structure (e.g., didn’t everybody eat, meaning “not everybody ate”) during the course of an experiment. Formal theoretical analyses of NAI informed the design of a task in which American English-speaking participants unfamiliar with this structure were exposed to NAI sentences in either semantically ambiguous or unambiguous contexts. Participants rapidly adapted to the interpretive properties of NAI, selecting responses similar to what would be expected of a native speaker after only limited exposure to semantically ambiguous input. On a separate ratings task, participants displayed knowledge of syntactic restrictions on NAI subject type, despite having no previous exposure. We discuss the results in the context of other experimental studies of adaptation and suggest the implementation of top-down strategies via analogy to other familiar structure types as possible explanations for the behaviors observed in this study. The study illustrates the value of integrating insights from formal theoretical research and psycholinguistic methods in research on adaptation and highlights the need for more interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary work in both experimental and naturalistic contexts to understand this phenomenon.

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Social markers and dimensions of meaning

Salmon

2022

Journal of Pragmatics

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Negative auxiliaries and absent expletives in Texas vernacular English

Cited by 5 publications

References 8 publications

On the Subject of Negative Auxiliary Inversion

On the Subject of Negative Auxiliary Inversion

Adaptation at the Syntax–Semantics Interface: Evidence From a Vernacular Structure

Social markers and dimensions of meaning

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