10 Years After

Dark Center Of The Universe

I missed Intro to Linguistics this morning. Not good. I crammed prior to my Dialectology class to finish reading the chapter sections I was suppose to present today. i saw was because I ended up not doing it today. The professor had wanted to finish up two sections from the previous chapter at the start of class. Instead we ended up discussing one chart for nearly the entire class session.

Table 9.4 Implication array for different types of multiple negation in some selected varieties of English.

	Multiple negation type
English variety	c	b	a
Standard English	0	0	0
Some North American  Anglo American Vernacular varieties	0	0	X
Other Northern Anglo American Vernacular varieties	0	X	X
Some Vernacular Southern Anglo and African American English Varieties	X	X	X
Other varieties of African American Vernacular English	X	X	1
	Implication ------->

. . . [T]hree types of multiple negation: (a) the use of
negative indefinites following a negativized verb phrase (e.g. They didn't do nothing because they were too tired); (b) the use of negative indefinites before a negativized verb phrase (e.g.  Nobody can't do it 'cause it's too hard); (c) the 'inversion' of negativized verb phrase  and a negativitzed subject (e.g. Can't nobody do it 'cause it's too hard).

    In table 9.4, three values are given with respect to the use of multiple negation: 1 indicates the categorical presence of multiple negation (that is, the multiple negative is used whenever it can be used), 0 indicates the categorical absence of multiple negation, and X indicates fluctuation between presence and absence. X's may also have an implicational relationship with other X's in that an X in a given column may be used to imply that a higher frequency level of the variant will be indicated in those X's to the right of the column. Various dialects of American English are delimited in terms of the types of multiple negation they contain, as indicated in the rows in table 9.4.

    This implicational array indicates that if a variety has type c multiple negations (e.g. Can't nobody do it), then it will have type b (e.g. Nobody can't do it), and if a variety has type b, it will also have a type a (e.g. She didn't do nothing). However, the converse does not hold, so that a does not imply the existence of b, nor does b imply c.

What was funny was the professor stated that the implication ran the other way, from right to left. The visiting dialectologist commented that she felt that it ran the opposite, or I should say correct way. At the same time I was puzzled by the types being in reverse alphabetical order. It was then that I notived the last paragraph of page (the last paragraph above) which coroborated the visiting professor's view. From there it was 45 minutes of commenting on how much could be read into the diagram, how poorly constructed it was, and what effect the 1 had on the Xs in the same row. Personally, I think the diagram made sense only when the text was read and the diagram was compared to easier to understand diagrams in the same section. As a stand alone item it was horrible.