Recutting and the BEV copula

David Sutcliffe

Sat. 11-12:40 B

This paper looks at the widespread phenomenon of recutting in Afro-American languages. Such recutting occurs where word chunks or "clichés" from one system are reinterpreted (and assigned new morpheme divisions or "recut") by speakers from other systems. The mapping of French Creole nouns onto French art + NP "phonic substance" provides a well-known Afro-American example, but similar recutting has been attested in the Liberian settler English copula, and in the BEV pronoun where whas, iss, thas prove to be monomorphemic particles. Similarly BEV I'm, or rather Am, typically shows no -m "deletion" and is arguably monomorphemic. Furthermore, the vowel of Am is different from I and I'm.

However, the closer these varieties are to the superstrate language the less obvious the recutting becomes, so that in United States data such forms are only rarely stranded to produce infringements of the standard order. The historical implications of this phenomenon are looked at briefly, drawing on mechanically recorded data from nineteenth-century born BEV speakers. Interestingly, such sources provide other examples of recutting of mainstream English subject pronoun and copula.

There are synchronic implications here, too. Most studies of copula use in 2othe these special pronouns from their computations, for obvious reasons of little ol patterns of BEV copula use still has to be addressed. If Am is monomorphemic, this means that where basilectal vernacular Am is used the copula, as we normally understand it, is categorically absent (and similarly with whas, iss,t these special pronoun forms persist well into near standard English. Do these findings, together with the historical evidence, show that BEV diachronically and synchronically exhibits a very strong (if camouflaged) tendency to zero copula, even beyond the core vernacular, and in what way can these findings be reconciled with the existing body of research on the BEV copula?