Students' Production of Narrative and AAE Features During an Emergent Literacy Task

2013 ◽  
Vol 44 (3) ◽  
pp. 227-238 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel E. Schachter ◽  
Holly K. Craig
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Emergent Literacy ◽  
American English ◽  
Oral Narrative ◽  
Past Tense ◽  
Main Theme ◽  
Narrative Development ◽  
Story Grammar ◽  
Narrative Functions ◽  
The Individual

Purpose This study examined child production of narrative features and of African American English (AAE) during a wordless storybook oral narrative task. Method Participants were 30 AAE-speaking African American kindergarten and 1st grade students from low- and mid-socioeconomic status homes. Story grammar (SG), story literary technique (SLT), and AAE features were examined. Results Young AAE-speaking students used a variety of SG narrative features to develop the plot in their oral stories. Students also used multiple SLT elaborative features, though some techniques were used more frequently than others. The total SLT score positively predicted the total SG score, and the individual SLTs of adverbs or adjectives, references to the main theme, and character interactions were positively correlated with the total SG score. AAE-feature production rates did not predict the total SG score. However, several individual AAE features served specific narrative functions, with the preterite had, zero past tense, zero preposition, fitna/sposeta/bouta, and double marking features often being used to relay complicating actions within the narratives. Conclusion Young children used both AAE and elaborative features in their narratives. Particular AAE features facilitated plot development, and the use of more elaborative features positively predicted higher narrative development scores.

Zero Marking of Past Tense in Child African American English

2014 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 173-181 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ryan Lee ◽  
Janna B. Oetting
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
American English ◽  
African American English ◽  
Current Paper ◽  
Past Tense ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Grammatical Function

Zero marking of the simple past is often listed as a common feature of child African American English (AAE). In the current paper, we review the literature and present new data to help clinicians better understand zero marking of the simple past in child AAE. Specifically, we provide information to support the following statements: (a) By six years of age, the simple past is infrequently zero marked by typically developing AAE-speaking children; (b) There are important differences between the simple past and participle morphemes that affect AAE-speaking children's marking options; and (c) In addition to a verb's grammatical function, its phonetic properties help determine whether an AAE-speaking child will produce a zero marked form.

scholarly journals Indirectness in the Age of Globalization: A Social Network Analysis

2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 930-949
Author(s):  
Marina Terkourafi
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
American English ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Theory Building ◽  
Network Ties ◽  
British English ◽  
Theoretical Predictions ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Individual Self

Indirectness has traditionally been viewed as commensurate with politeness and attributed to the speaker’s wish to avoid imposition and/or otherwise strategically manipulate the addressee. Despite these theoretical predictions, a number of studies have documented the solidarity-building and identity-constituting functions of indirectness. Bringing these studies together, Terkourafi 2014 proposed an expanded view of the functions of indirect speech, which crucially emphasizes the role of the addressee and the importance of network ties. This article focuses on what happens when such network ties become loosened, as a result of processes of urbanization and globalization. Drawing on examples from African American English and Chinese, it is argued that these processes produce a need for increased explicitness, which drives speakers (and listeners) away from indirectness. This claim is further supported diachronically, by changes in British English politeness that coincide with the rise of the individual Self. These empirical findings have implications for im/politeness theorizing and theory-building more generally, calling attention to how the socio-historical context of our research necessarily influences the theories we end up building.

Oral Narrative Performance of African American Prekindergartners Who Speak Nonmainstream American English

2013 ◽  
Vol 44 (3) ◽  
pp. 291-305 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicole Patton Terry ◽  
Monique T. Mills ◽  
Gary E. Bingham ◽  
Souraya Mansour ◽  
Nancy Marencin
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
American English ◽  
Oral Narrative ◽  
Narrative Performance

scholarly journals Does Speaker Race Affect the Assessment of Children's Speech Accuracy? A Comparison of Speech-Language Pathologists and Clinically Untrained Listeners

2018 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 906-921 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen E. Evans ◽  
Benjamin Munson ◽  
Jan Edwards
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
American English ◽  
European American ◽  
Speech Language Pathologists ◽  
Knowledge And Attitudes ◽  
Knowledge And Beliefs ◽  
Multiple Groups ◽  
Speech Accuracy ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Children's Speech

PurposeSome pronunciation patterns that are normal in 1 dialect might represent an error in another dialect (i.e., [koʊl] forcold,which is typical in African American English [AAE] but an error in many other dialects of English). This study examined whether trained speech-language pathologists and untrained listeners accommodate for presumed speaker dialect when rating children's productions of words. This study also explored whether effects of presumed race on perceived speech accuracy are mediated by individuals' knowledge and beliefs about AAE and their implicit attitudes about race.MethodMultiple groups of listeners rated the accuracy of a set of children's productions of words that have a distinct pronunciation in AAE. These were presented in 1 of 3 conditions: paired with no visual stimulus (to assess baseline accuracy) or paired with either African American children's faces (to suggest that the speaker uses AAE) or European American children's faces (to suggest that the speaker does not use AAE). Listeners also completed a set of measures of knowledge and attitudes about AAE and race, taken from previous studies.ResultsIndividuals in both groups rated children's productions more accurately when they were presented with African American children's faces than when paired with European American faces. The magnitude of this effect was generally similar across the 2 groups and was generally strongest for words that had been judged in the baseline condition to contain an error. None of the individual-differences measures predicted ratings.ConclusionsAssumptions about speaker attributes affect individuals' assessment of children's production accuracy. These effects are robust across trained and untrained listeners and cannot be predicted by existing measures of knowledge and attitudes about AAE and race.

Difference Versus Deficit in Child African American English

1998 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 96-108 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harry N. Seymour ◽  
Linda Bland-Stewart ◽  
Lisa J. Green
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
American English ◽  
Language Disorders ◽  
African American English ◽  
Group Differences ◽  
Past Tense ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
Standard American English ◽  
The Past ◽  
Conversational Language

We propose that shared features (noncontrastive) between African American English (AAE) and Standard American English (SAE) may be more diagnostically salient than features not shared (contrastive) when identifying children of AAE language backgrounds with language disorders. The syntax of child speakers of AAE with language disorders (LD) and child speakers of AAE without language disorders (NLD) were compared. Syntactic features were transcribed from conversational language samples of seven LD and seven NLD children, and these features were classified according to their overlapping relationship with SAE. Shared features between AAE and SAE were designated as "noncontrastive" and features not shared as "contrastive". The production of several noncontrastive linguistic features were significantly different between groups, whereas group differences were nonsignificant for all contrastive features, with the exception of the past tense /ed/ morpheme.

scholarly journals Marking of Tense and Agreement in Language Samples by Children With and Without Specific Language Impairment in African American English and Southern White English: Evaluation of Scoring Approaches and Cut Scores Across Structures

2021 ◽  
Vol 64 (2) ◽  
pp. 491-509
Author(s):  
Janna B. Oetting ◽  
Andrew M. Rivière ◽  
Jessica R. Berry ◽  
Kyomi D. Gregory ◽  
Tina M. Villa ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Language Impairment ◽  
Specific Language Impairment ◽  
American English ◽  
African American English ◽  
Past Tense ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Cut Scores ◽  
Specific Language

Purpose As follow-up to a previous study of probes, we evaluated the marking of tense and agreement (T/A) in language samples by children with specific language impairment (SLI) and typically developing controls in African American English (AAE) and Southern White English (SWE) while also examining the clinical utility of different scoring approaches and cut scores across structures. Method The samples came from 70 AAE- and 36 SWE-speaking kindergartners, evenly divided between the SLI and typically developing groups. The structures were past tense, verbal – s, auxiliary BE present, and auxiliary BE past. The scoring approaches were unmodified, modified, and strategic; these approaches varied in the scoring of forms classified as nonmainstream and other. The cut scores were dialect-universal and dialect-specific. Results Although low numbers of some forms limited the analyses, the results generally supported those previously found for the probes. The children produced a large and diverse inventory of mainstream and nonmainstream T/A forms within the samples; strategic scoring led to the greatest differences between the clinical groups while reducing effects of the children's dialects; and dialect-specific cut scores resulted in better clinical classification accuracies, with measures of past tense leading to the highest levels of classification accuracy. Conclusions For children with SLI, the findings contribute to studies that call for a paradigm shift in how children's T/A deficits are assessed and treated across dialects. A comparison of findings from the samples and probes indicates that probes may be the better task for identifying T/A deficits in children with SLI in AAE and SWE. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.13564709

The information in third-person /s/: acquisition across dialects of American English

2007 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 133-158 ◽  
Author(s):  
JILL G. DE VILLIERS ◽  
VALERIE E. JOHNSON
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
American English ◽  
African American English ◽  
Past Tense ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Mainstream American English ◽  
Age Range

The production of third-person /s/ on English verbs seems to be ahead of comprehension. Mainstream American English (MAE) is contrasted with African American English (AAE), in which /s/ is rarely supplied. Two studies explored what information children get solely from /s/ on the end of a verb. Sixty-five MAE- and 65 AAE-speaking four- to seven-year-olds participated in one of two experimental picture-choice comprehension studies. Neither group of four-year-olds could use the /s/ to determine if the event was generic rather than past tense on a verb (e.g. cuts/cut), or whether it was a verb or a noun compound as in The penguin dresses/The penguin dress. MAE-speakers do not use the information in third-person /s/ alone until age five, and not reliably until age six years. In keeping with AAE production, AAE-speaking children do not use the information in /s/ at all in this age range.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document