Variability of the Copula in Black English and Its Creole Kin

THE STATUS OF THE COPULA' in United States black English vernacular (BEV) has received considerable attention from American linguists over past decade, and rightly so: its subtleties lead us right to heart of question of BEV's identity and its relationship to standard American English. Labov (1972a, p. 227) points out that the question arises whether or not a copula is present in deep structure or higher-level structure of BEV; and if so, whether it is then deleted as a whole on morphological level or by lower-level phonological rules. These are important questions for both theoretical and applied linguistics, for they bear on issue of how dialects of a language differ, and how they are to be taught. This paper will examine syntactic constraints on Labov's variable rule for deletion of BEV copula (1969) to exclusion of phonological considerations, justification for this approach being evidence in Bickerton (1975, p. 154) that in related question of acquisition of past tense (part of same chain linking basilect to acrolect), it is clear that constraints outweigh phonological ones. Rules relating behavior of BEV copula to that of standard English (e.g., wherever SE can contract, BEV can delete) will be re-examined in light of evidence relating BEV copula to those of other Afro-European languages. The operation of Labov's variable rule for contraction and deletion of BEV copula is affected by the following grammatical environment, which constrains rule in order (from least favorable to most favorable to deletion) predicate noun phrases; adjectives and locatives; verbs; and auxiliary gonna before a verb(1972a, p. 228). Bickerton (1971, p. 491) found a similar hierarchy of following syntactic environments favorable to deletion of copula in Guyanese mesolect.2 To see if this pattern could be found in other creoles, I examined two varieties: transcribed recordings of Jamaican (JC) in Le Page and De Camp (1960, pp. 143-79); and Gullah in Turner (1949; pp. 260-88). The pattern which emerged can be seen in table 1.3 In both creoles syntactic environment most favorable to zero copula was a following adjective (sixty-