Research Projects

African American English in Columbus: Language Change Across Three Generations (2006-Ongoing)

A sociolinguistic study investigating patterns of language variation and change among several African American English speaking families in Columbus. Patterns of change are investigated in apparent time via data elicted from three generations of speakers in each family.

Researchers Involved: Donald Winford (Principal Investigator); David Durian (Field Worker); Yolanda Holt (Field Worker)

The Central Ohio Dialect Survey (2004-Ongoing)

A dialect geography survey investigating patterns of phonetic and phonological variation and change in the Columbus metropolitan area, as well as the impact of urbanization as a change force in the community. A total of 64 speakers, stratified equally by age, sex, socioeconomic status, and residency, comprise this speech corpus.

The Influence of West African Languages on the Tense/Mood/Aspect (TMA) Systems of Two Surinamese Creoles [Funded by NSF Grant BCS-0113826]

The main objective of the proposed research is to investigate the role of influence from West African (specifically Gbe) languages in shaping the tense, mood and aspect (TMA) system of the early creole that emerged on the plantations of Suriname roughly between 1680 and 1720. For this we investigate and compare two modern conservative descendants of the plantation creole and several of the modern conservative descendants of the main West African inputs to its formation. With respect to the former we focus on the mother tongue of the coastal Afro-Surinamese population, Sranan (SN), and its more conservative sister language, the Eastern Maroon Creole (EMC) spoken by the Aluku-Boni, Ndjuka and Paamaka ethnic groups. With regard to the West African input, we focus primarily on the Gbe group of languages and secondarily also on Kikongo and Akan. The linguistic analysis will be primarily based on tape-recorded and elicited data collected in Suriname (SN and EMC) and Benin (Gbe). The data on the secondary input will come from the published literature and formal elicitations where possible. The study is intended as a contribution to a theory of creole formation, the principles and constraints which regulate it, and its relationship to other outcomes of language contact. Related Publications: “The influence of Gbe languages on the tense/aspect systems of the Surinamese creoles” Jointly authored with Bettina Migge. To appear in JPCL 2007.

Researchers Involved: Donald Winford (Co-Principal Investigator); Bettina Migge (Co-Principal Investigator)

Representative Publications

Dodsworth, Robin. 2004. Attribute networking: A technique for modeling social perceptions. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 9:225-253.

Durian, David. In press. File 11.3. Regional variation (Revised edition). In Anouschka Bergmann, Kathleen Currie Hall, and Sharron Ross (Eds.), Language Files (10th ed.). Columbus, OH: The Ohio State University Press.

Winford, Donald. 1997. "On the origins of African American Vernacular English - A creolist perspective. Part 1: Sociohistorical Background". Diachronica XIV:2, 305-344.

Winford, Donald. 1998. "On the origins of African American Vernacular English - A creolist perspective. Part 2: Linguistic Features." Diachronica XV:1.

Winford, Donald. 1999. “The other Englishes: A Contact Linguistics perspective” Anglistica, Vol. 3:1, 201-17. English and the Other, Ed. by: Marie-Hélène Laforest and Jocelyne Vincent.

Winford, Donald. 2002. Creoles in the context of Contact Linguistics. In Glenn Gilbert (ed.) Pidgin and Creole Linguistics in the twenty-first century, 287-354. New York: Peter Lang.

Winford, Donald. 2003. "Ideologies of language and socially-realistic linguistics" In S. Makoni, G. Smitherman, A. Ball & A. Spears (eds.) Black Linguistics: Language, society, and politics in Africa and the Americas, pp. 21-39. London & NY: Routledge.

Winford, Donald. 2005. “Contact-induced changes: classification and processes.” Diachronica XXII, no. 2, 373-427.

Winford, Donald. 2006. “Revisiting relexification in creole formation. In Janet Fuller & Linda Thornburg (eds.) Studies in Contact Linguistics: Essays in Honor of Glenn G. Gilbert, pp. 231-252. Peter Lang.