African American Women's Language ... - Linguistics Department

African American Women’s Language:
Discourse, Education and Identity
Edited by
Sonja L. Lanehart

African American Women’s Language: Discourse, Education and Identity,
Edited by Sonja L. Lanehart
This book first published 2009
Cambridge Scholars Publishing
12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Copyright © 2009 by Sonja L. Lanehart and contributors
All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or
otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.
ISBN (10): 1-4438-1359-1, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-1359-4

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgements .................................................................................... xi
Contributors.............................................................................................. xiii
Introduction ................................................................................................. 1
African American Women’s Language
Sonja L. Lanehart
Part One: Language and Identity
Chapter One............................................................................................... 18
From Jezebels to Nappy Headed Hos: African American Adolescent
Girls’ Language and Identity
Adrienne D. Dixson and Jessica T. DeCuir-Gunby
Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 35
My Mother Tongue: A Linguistic Autoethnography
Peggy Jones
Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 51
“We Just Sound So Nice”: Language and Identity among Black
Bermudian Women
Iyabo F. Osiapem
Part Two: Discourse, Grammar, and Variation
Chapter Four.............................................................................................. 76
Theorizing African American Women’s Language:
GIRL as a Discourse Marker
Arthur K. Spears
Chapter Five .............................................................................................. 91
Rhetorical Markers in Girls’ Developing African American
Language Use
Lisa Green and Tracy Conner

CHAPTER FIVE
RHETORICAL MARKERS IN SPEECH
OF GIRLS DEVELOPING AFRICAN
AMERICAN LANGUAGE
LISA GREEN AND TRACY CONNER
Introduction
Early work on African American Language (AAL), especially research
with a focus on language use in society, has reported on rhetorical
strategies used by speakers of this linguistic variety. For instance,
Abrahams (1972) and Smitherman (1977) discussed verbal strategies such
as signifying. Other strategies or speech events, such as marking and loudtalking,
are addressed in Mitchell-Kernan (1972). While there was
considerable discussion about rhetorical strategies and speech events
associated with AAL, the research focused primarily on adolescents and
adults, and often leaned toward the language use of males in those groups.
Research on child AAL also began in the 1970s, a few years after the
first wave of work on speech events and rhetorical strategies. The
questions that were asked in the child development literature were geared
toward traditional areas of acquisition, such as phonological,
morphological, and syntactic patterns, and not toward early pragmatic
meaning and rhetorical strategies in child language. Children have to learn
the phonology, morphology, and syntax of their native languages, but they
also have to learn pragmatic and rhetorical uses of the words and phrases.
In the following example, N441, a 5;9 year-old female, uses all as a
modifier of cute:
(1) …like they was playing dress up. Looking all cute.
Given the context, all is used in (1) to underscore the very “cute”
appearance of the characters. N441 understands this pragmatic use of all.

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While it is true that all is a quantifier, in this context, the word does not
just have the meaning of ‘totally.’ This chapter will be limited to rhetorical
uses of preverbal markers although pragmatic and rhetorical uses of
modifiers such as all should be considered in further research.
The goal of this chapter is to address rhetorical uses of past time
preverbal markers in data from developing AAL-speaking girls’ language.
This chapter hones in on grammatical usage of preverbal markers in girls’
language, especially given the common opinion that young girls develop
language earlier and are able to adopt the linguistic complexities of their
language at younger ages than boys. Data in Geake (2005) empirically
support this general observation as his findings suggest greater brain
connectivity in young females than in males. Not only is the corpus
callosum (i.e., the brain structure that allows communication between
brain hemispheres) thicker in girls, but also MRI results show more
bihemispheric language use in young female brains as compared to their
more lateralized age-matched male peers. Reporting on the use of these
preverbal discourse markers in the speech of girls acquiring AAL is a start
in providing information about how these markers can be used among
young language learners.
The first section of the chapter gives a broad sketch of previous
research on child AAL from the 1970s to the present. In focusing on the
way young girls talk about events in the past in Section 2, we present a
brief overview of research on past time marking and meanings in AAL. In
Section 3, we go on to give a description of the participants and data upon
which the analysis in this chapter is based. In Section 4 of the chapter, we
consider spontaneous as well as elicited speech samples from child
speakers and discuss the types of bound and free morphological forms
they use in combination with main verbs to talk about events in the past. In
addition, we address the rhetorical and pragmatic meaning that children
also mark in the constructions that refer to events that took place in the
past. For instance, we show that female AAL-speaking children use
grammaticalized markers to talk about the past, but they also encode
additional information, such as aggrandizement and notions of the
accomplishment of events.
Research on the Development of Child AAL
Research on child AAL can be divided into five general categories.
One area is research on morphological forms. These studies focus on the
presence or absence of morphemes such as third person singular –s (She
eats all the time.) and possessive –s (Hadiya’s dress is purple.), especially

Markers in Girls’ Developing African American Language Use
relating to the question about the extent to which child AAL speakers
actually produce these morphemes in different linguistic contexts. Studies
of auxiliary be and the copula fall into this category as well. Child data
have been analyzed to determine whether auxiliary be and copula
production parallels that of adult AAL. The following sources, among
others, provide background on studies of morphological forms in child
AAL: Cole (1980), Kovak (1980), Oetting & McDonald (2001), and
Wyatt (1991, 1996).
A second area of research is on meaning and use of lexical items, in
which researchers raise questions about how children indicate concepts
like existence (e.g., Stockman & Vaughn-Cooke, 1982, 1992). Research
on comprehension development, a third area of research, has shown the
extent to which children understand and produce different markers. For
example, Jackson & Green’s (2005) work on aspectual be shows that
children acquiring AAL as early as four years old understand the habitual
nature of the marker, and distinguish it from auxiliary be and the copula.
The syntactic and semantic systems of child AAL have been explored
from a linguistic theory perspective. For instance, a syntactic analysis of
negative concord in child AAL is addressed in Coles-White (2004).
Benedicto, Abdulkarim, Garrett, Johnson, & Seymour (1998) address the
use of auxiliary be and the copula in terms of semantic notions such as
presentational and predicational contexts. Along similar lines, Green &
Roeper (2007) discuss formal syntactic and semantic properties of tenseaspect
marking in child AAL.
Early education is the fifth area of research on child AAL. More recent
research in the area raises questions about the effect of children’s use AAL
as their native dialect on literacy and success in academics from preschool
to elementary school (e.g., Charity, Scarborough, & Griffin, 2004; Connor
& Craig, 2006; Craig & Washington, 2006). Such research places
emphasis on code-switching abilities and notes that children who are
competent code-switchers between AAL and mainstream US English are
more successful in school in the early years. In effect, the claim is that
children who have access to mainstream US English are more likely to
perform better in academic settings, and, as a result, it is beneficial for
students to have more opportunities to get exposure to mainstream US
English or classroom language in the early years.
Past Marking in Developing AAL: A Brief Overview
Variation in past marking in AAL was noted in early descriptions of
the language variety, especially in features lists that identified common
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patterns associated with AAL. In addition, in research such as Wolfram &
Fasold (1974), it was noted that variation in past marking could be
accounted for along the lines of the presence and absence of final –t/–d in
words such as jumped [d ∧mpt] →[d ∧mp] and bugged [b∧gd] →[b∧g].
–t, –d deletion is a phonological rule; however, a number of factors may
conspire in the process. For example, verbs such as jump and bug can
occur without overt past marking (e.g., –ed), and other information in the
context or sentence may convey past meaning. For instance, jump is not
overtly marked for past tense in the following sentence although it is
interpreted as such:
(2) She jump real high at the track meet (yesterday).
‘She jumped really high at the track meet (yesterday)’
Yesterday is in parenthesis to indicate that the sentence can occur with
or without it. If yesterday is not included, the sentence can convey the
reading that the event was in the past. As such, the –ed on jumped can be
omitted; it does not have to be redundantly stated because information
about the past is already conveyed by yesterday. Along similar lines, –ed
can also be omitted even if ‘yesterday’ does not occur in the sentence
because other contextual information in the conversation can be used as
reference to the past.
While traditional analyses of AAL have not included a discussion of
the remote past marker BIN as part of the system of past marking, the
marker has certainly been addressed in the literature. In their early work,
Labov (1972) and Rickford (1973, 1975) gave general descriptions of BIN
as a remote past perfect marker. Green (1998) characterized the
interpretation of BIN in three readings that all had in common the property
that some part or all of the eventuality was situated in the distant past. For
instance, in the sentences in (3a, b), some part or all of the eventuality is,
respectively, expressed by the verbs (jumping, jumped) in the remote past:
(3) a. She BIN jumping that fence.
For a long time, she has been jumping that fence.
b. She BIN jumped that fence.
She jumped that fence a long time ago.
In (3a), the jumping the fence event started in the distant past, and it
continues from time to time, such that the sentence communicates that she
started the activity of jumping that fence some time ago, and she still
jumps the fence periodically. In (3b), the jumped that fence eventuality

Markers in Girls’ Developing African American Language Use
occurred in the distant past and is literally over. In the sentence in (3a), the
event started in the distant past and has continued to take place since then.
On the other hand, the entire event in (3a) is in the distant past. Green,
Quigley, & Seifert (2005) and Green & Roeper (2007) observe that
developing AAL-speaking children in the four- to five-year-old age range
are proficient in associating BIN with the distant past, which strongly
suggests that they are making the distinction between events that happened
in the far past and those that happened in the simple past. In effect, their
knowledge of BIN is part of their developing knowledge of the system of
past marking in AAL.
Simple past tense marking and remote past marking have been
discussed from a number of different angles in the literature on adult AAL
and to some extent in the child AAL literature. Preverbal had has been
more closely associated with adolescent AAL, but it has also been
described in child AAL. The most extensive study of preverbal had in the
language of AAL-speaking adolescents is in Rickford & Théberge-Rafal
(1996); however, the marker was noted some years earlier in Labov,
Cohen, Robbins, & Lewis (1968) and then later in Cukor-Avila & Bailey
(1995). The marker is commonly referred to as preterite had in the
literature and has been argued to have the narrative function of marking
complicating action as well as signaling dramatic developments (Rickford
& Théberge-Rafal, 1996). Consider the example in (4) below:
(4) Well, one day I was like, I was riding my [bike]
over…Dumbarton [bridge].
This was a scary dream.
…
And I was, I was like,
the water had like,
it was sort of hard a little bit.
…
And I was trying to ride on my bike under water,
but I wasn’t going nowhere
so I tried to start swimming.
And then the shark had bit me, had got my leg.
(Rickford &Théberge-Rafal, 1996, p. 47)
This excerpt from a narrative features had preceding verbs marked for
the past. According to Rickford & Théberge-Rafal (1996), this had is
likely to occur in contexts in which it marks 1) narrative reorientation or
peak or foreshadowing of narrative peak or evaluative point and 2)
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complicating action. In the example, it is used in the part of the narrative
that can be taken as complicating action. It is important to note that
Rickford & Théberge-Rafal (1996) also provided evidence to support the
claim that had was not used as a compensatory mechanism for zero
marking of simple past. That is, had was not simply used as a past marker
in the absence of past morphology on the verb.
Ross, Oetting, & Stapleton (2004) replicated the general findings in
Rickford & Théberge-Rafal (1996) with four- and six-year-old developing
AAL-speaking children in Southeast Louisiana. In sum, they found that
the children also used had as a narrative device to highlight complicating
actions or to foreground salient information in stories. In addition, they
noted that there was no evidence to suggest that had was used in the
children’s data as an overt past marker when –ed was missing. They also
noted that the children’s use of had increased as narrative skill developed.
In what follows, we give an overview of the demographics of speakers
who participated in studies on which the data discussed in this chapter are
based.
Participants and Data
In describing the strategies children use in talking about eventualities
in the past, we consider spontaneous and elicited speech samples from
four- to five-year-old developing AAL-speaking children who were
enrolled in an early childhood development program in Southwest
Louisiana. Overall, there are over 150 children in the database who were
identified as either developing AAL-speaking children or developing
Southwest Louisiana Vernacular English (SwLVE)-speaking children (i.e.,
SwLVE-speaking children were those who were growing up in non-AALspeaking
communities and who were not identified as developing AAL
speakers). The major criterion for classifying a child as a developing
AAL-speaking child was community. That is to say that children growing
up in AAL-speaking communities in Southwest Louisiana were taken to
be developing AAL speakers. Children from three neighboring towns
attend the child development program, and the towns have been
historically segregated by race. For the most part, African American
children live in specified areas. It is the case that these children produced
some patterns typically associated with adult AAL; however, because the
data on developmental AAL is still limited, there were no preconceived
notions about patterns and features in the children’s language. For this
reason, we did not isolate a list of commonly accepted AAL features and
classify children according to their production of them. In reality, the four-

Markers in Girls’ Developing African American Language Use
to five-year olds are still developing AAL, so it is not clear what should be
taken as appropriate use for the developmental stages. However, work
such as the type of data and analysis in this chapter will help to answer
related questions about the type of developmental AAL features that
should be expected in child AAL.
Talking about Events in the Past
The child AAL data presented in this section of the paper focuses on
ways children talk about the past. We consider specific forms that are used
to indicate that an event or activity is in the past, such as –ed on verbs as
well as preverbal markers that refer to the past. In addition, we also raise
questions about other meanings, in addition to past tense, that may be
associated with markers that are used in past contexts.
Simplex Past Marking
The first data set that will be considered is an excerpt from a narrative
by D072, a female who was 4;11 years when she produced the narrative.
The focus here is on what we will refer to as simplex past marking. By
simplex past marking, we mean marking on the verb itself, including overt
marking, such as the –ed on jumped, as well as non-overt marking, in
contexts in which past meaning is conveyed or set up in the context.
Pertinent examples are evident in the passage below:
(5) D072: He just climbed up.
LG: Uhmm. Hmm.
D072: A_ my cousin, A_, she say uh, they had a lady and she had,
they had a lady and the lady had a bulldog and it was uh trying to
chase her and she jumped on the tree, climbed the tree and the
bulldog bit the tree and she fell…the bulldog, the bulldog…
…
She uh ran home. The lady say, “What happened?”
“Your bulldog bit me.”
The lady say, “Come here, Bulldog! I’m bout to put you back on
your chain.”
And she did. A_ came back and looked.
A_ say, “Oh, I’m glad he not here…”
In the excerpt above from the narrative about the bulldog, D072 uses
simplex marking to refer to the past. For the most part, the verbs used to
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express past events from D072’s perspective are in the past. The three
regular verbs climbed, jumped and looked, which refer to events that
happened before D072 presented the narrative, are marked with –ed. Past
forms of the irregular verbs that are used to refer to events that occurred
before the time of the story also appear in the story (e.g., had, was, bit, did,
fell, and came). The only verb that is not overtly marked for past is say.
Because D072 established early on that she was telling a story, it is easy to
interpret say as referring to the past although the verb is not overtly
marked for past (cf. said). Another possible account of say is that D072 is
using the verb as if she is telling the story in the historical present. Such an
account would be in line with AAL, given the variation in verbal –s.
Speakers may produce “She say uh…” instead of “She says uh…” More
investigation would be necessary to determine whether say is used in the
historical present (in which it would be translated as ‘say’) or whether it
really is a form of non-overt simplex past marking of the verb said. Two
strong reasons suggest the latter, non-overt past marking. The first is that
all of the other verbs are marked for past, and the second is that say is
commonly unmarked for past in AAL, even when it is used to refer to
events in the past. It is quite likely that in some contexts, D072 might very
well use said as the past form, but a broader range of data is needed to
determine whether this is the case or not.
As we see from the following passage, child AAL speakers may
exhibit more variation in past time marking with simplex forms than
exemplified in D072’s speech. The following passage is from K403, a
5;11-year-old developing AAL speaker:
(6) …The baby went in the bed a bedroom.
And then it bounce, bounce, bounce.
And then the baby had put some makeup on the dog.
And they look in the mirror.
And then he was right there sayin “help” and then the dog had took
him.
And then they had um slide on the rug.
And then they was lookin at the fish tank.
…
And they opened the icebox and they had food in there.
The focus here is on simplex past forms; however, it should be noted
that K403 uses different verb forms to refer to the past. For instance, he
also uses past progressives (e.g., was lookin) and a combination of had and
a following verb (e.g., had took) in his story. The latter two examples can

Markers in Girls’ Developing African American Language Use
be referred to as complex forms in that they consist of two parts, an
auxiliary element (e.g., was, had) followed by a main verb (e.g., lookin,
took). In comparing K403’s excerpt (6) to that produced by D072 (5), we
see that D072 basically situates her entire story in the past and uses
simplex past forms to do so. Another difference between the two can also
be noted with respect to the simplex forms. That is, for the most part,
D072 used overt –ed marking in all cases except say, which may represent
a special case (e.g., as has been argued for creoles, such as Gullah, the
form say is used to introduce speech). Note, however, that while K403
uses overt past marking with regular and irregular verbs (e.g., opened,
went, had), he also uses non-overt past marking (e.g., bounce, look). It is
clear that developing AAL-speaking children are also developing variation
in past marking as well as different strategies for referring to the past. The
verb forms in (5) and (6) produced by a female and male, respectively,
also shine the light on questions about differences between the rate of
overt past marking by developing female and male AAL speakers, an issue
that is not explored here.
Complex Past Marking
A number of questions arise in the discussion of complex forms that
developing AAL speakers use to talk about events in the past. Several
issues are at the forefront:
1. Which preverbal markers are used along with the main verb in
complex forms?
2. What is the morphological form of the main verb that occurs
with the preverbal marker?
3. What type of meaning is associated with the preverbal
marker?
4. To what extent are preverbal markers associated with
rhetorical or pragmatic meaning?
The two complex forms that we will consider in developing child AAL
are BIN + Verb and had + Verb.
BIN in Child AAL
BIN constructions in adult AAL have been described from a number of
angles. In early work on the marker, Rickford (1975) noted that speakers
who were not members of the AAL-speaking community were not aware
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of the subtle meaning that BIN contributed to some verbal constructions.
BIN, which is stressed, situates an eventuality or some part of it in the
remote past. It has been shown that developing AAL-speaking children
also produce BIN in spontaneous speech and interpret it as a marker that
refers to the distant past. Green, Quigley, & Seifert (2005) noted that 4- to
5-year-old developing AAL-speaking children were more proficient in
interpreting some BIN + predicate sequences than others. For instance,
they were likely to interpret BIN + prepositional phrases (e.g., BIN under
the bed ‘has been under the bed for long time’) with a distant past reading
but not as likely to comprehend BIN + past verb constructions (BIN went
to the store ‘went to the store a long time ago’) as being associated with
the distant past. The claim then is that developing AAL-speaking children
acquire BIN, along with its distinct prosodic properties and reference to the
distant past, relatively early; however, its use with specific predicate types
may develop at different times.
The type of construction in which BIN appears is indeed important,
especially in relation to when children acquire it. However, it is also clear
that other properties of BIN are noteworthy, and it makes sense to
determine how children handle them in their early use of the marker. For
instance, one of the hallmarks of BIN is its stress, and it is clear that
developing AAL-speaking children produce the marker in a way that it is
stressed relative to other words in the sentence, and they also seem to
associate the stress on the marker with a distant past reading. Of course, it
is necessary to conduct experiments that are designed to manipulate the
stress on BIN and surrounding words in a sentence to determine the extent
to which developing AAL-speaking children can discriminate stress on the
marker and associate it with the far past meaning. Developing AALspeaking
children’s spontaneous production and elaboration on the
interpretation of BIN constructions strongly suggest that the children
understand BIN as being stressed and associated with the distant past. The
following example is from a 4;9-year-old developing AAL-speaking male.
(7) LG: You said that was the wrong way. How did you know that
was the wrong way?
J040: I BIN knowing.
The BIN in J040’s response was stressed relative to the other words in
the sentence, but the context of the sentence tells much more than the fact
that children use stress in the production of the marker. At first glance, one
might entertain the claim that the child did not answer the question that
was posed to him: How did he actually know that that was the wrong way?

Markers in Girls’ Developing African American Language Use
Given the context, however, it is clear that J040 does address the question.
The response seems to convey the message that his knowledge of the
wrong way is certain, such that the implication is that he has had that
knowledge for so long that it is second nature. As such, it is not possible
for him to remember how long he has had the information, or the
information is so common to him that it makes no sense to talk about
having such knowledge. If this is the message that J040 is intending to
convey, then he knows far more about BIN than its role as a distant past
marker and that it can indeed occur before stative verbs ending in –ing
(e.g., knowing); he knows something about the pragmatic contexts in
which BIN can be used. In this case, the marker has the kind of
aggrandizement pragmatic force that Rickford (1975) talks about, so
studying BIN in developing child AAL will provide an opportunity to
consider the types of pragmatic and rhetorical strategies that children use
when they begin to use tense-aspect markers such as BIN.
The example in (8) below from J008, a 4;4-year-old developing AALspeaking
female, suggests that J008 associates BIN with the remote past,
but it may also have a reading of aggrandizement linked to it given the
emphasis placed on ‘a long time.’
(8) LG: Ooh, J__, I love those pants. Ooh they’re so nice. Did you
just get em or you BIN having em?
J008: I BIN having em.
LG: Ooh, well when did you get em?
J008: My mama bought em.
LG: When?
J008: Umm.
LG: A long time ago or yesterday?
J008: A long time, a long time ago.
J008’s restatement about the time period to which BIN refers raises a
number of questions about the way children view time in relation to
contexts in which BIN is used as well as questions about the nature of the
acquisition of pragmatics and rhetorical strategies in relation to these
markers. Keeping the physical growth patterns of preschool-age children
in mind, we know how often four-year-olds’ wardrobe changes, so the
amount of time that J008 had actually had the pants when she chose to
answer “a long time, a long time ago,” had to have been very limited
indeed. Whatever the length of the time period, J008 associated it with
BIN.
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If we consider the use of BIN in a statement by a 5;9-year-old
developing AAL speaking female, we see that the time period associated
with BIN must be considerably longer than the period referenced in (8):
(9) LG: I love these barrettes. You just started wearing these
barrettes?
N441: I BIN wearing barrettes.
It is quite common for girls in this community to wear barrettes and
other age appropriate hair adornments beginning at very young ages before
four or five years, so the period to which BIN refers in the context in (9)
could technically refer to at least four years although it is not clear when
N441’s earliest memory of her wearing barrettes is or when she actually
started wearing barrettes. Examples such as those in (8) and (9) underscore
some of the questions that come up in discussions about the way children
view time. The examples also provide indirect evidence that children must
also learn that the far past can be relative, so some events that are
described by BIN may be farther in the past than others; there is no
standard measure of time that must be met for the event to qualify as one
that can be described by BIN. It would be interesting to determine the
developmental path or at least stages during which these different pieces
of information about BIN are acquired. It may be that in older children, we
will see broader rhetorical uses of BIN—beyond aggrandizement.
Elaboration on comprehension tasks also revealed that developing
AAL speakers understand the marker BIN. The scenario in Figure 1, along
with others, was presented and read to children to determine the extent to
which they associated BIN with the far past.

Markers in Girls’ Developing African American Language Use
Figure 1. Who BIN knowing how to climb trees?
In elaborating on the question posed in connection with the story (Who
BIN knowing how to climb trees?), J011 (4;5, female) makes the following
observations:
(10) LG: But J__, who BIN knowing how to climb trees?
J011: I think he KNEW how to climb trees. (points to John)
LG: Who BIN, which one BIN knowing how to climb trees?
J011: I know who.
LG: Which one? Tell me, come on. Tell me which one BIN
knowing how to climb trees.
J011: I’ma pick one.
LG: Well pick one. Who BIN knowing how to climb trees? You
picking John?
J011: Yeah.
LG: Why you think John BIN knowing how to climb trees?
J011: Cause. I think he is a boy.
As is evident by J011’s overall score on the BIN scenarios, she
certainly construes the stressed marker as relating to the distant past.
However, in the scenario above, she did not give an answer that was in
line with the character who was portrayed as having had tree-climbing
knowledge for a long time. We would like to suggest that her response
(‘John’ instead of the target answer ‘Jenny’) was not due to J011’s
confusion about what BIN meant. In fact, that she has a clear sense of BIN
as a remote past marker is completely obvious from her response to the
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question and from her composite score on all of the scenarios. What seems
to be in question for J011 is the possibility that someone other than John
could be a candidate for having already known how to climb trees. Two
strong pieces of evidence from J011’s response supports this view. After
considering the scenario and then pointing to John’s character, she says, “I
think he KNEW how to climb trees.” The stress on knew seems to have a
similar function to that of the stress on BIN, in that it indicates J011’s view
that it is John who already knows how to climb trees and has known how
to climb trees for quite some time. The second piece of evidence that
points to the view that J011 suspects that John is the veteran tree-climber
is her reasoning: “Cause. I think he is a boy.” The elaboration of the
scenario response provides two types of information that would be
difficult to extract from a one-word response of just a name, such as ‘John’
or ‘Jenny.’ From J011’s elaboration, we learn that she does have a strong
sense of BIN as a remote past marker although her answer differs from the
target response, and she also clearly communicates that the picture
presented in the scenario is not quite how she sees the world. That is, in
her mind, it makes sense that boys would have more experience climbing
trees than girls. In effect, the elaboration provides a good bit of insight into
J011’s developing language and the way her views are reflected through it.
BIN is not simply a marker that indicates past states or action; it does have
some pragmatic meaning associated with it. In essence, BIN can be used to
describe any activity or state that has held for a long time, as long as it is
logical to view an event as having been going on or having held for a long
time. In J011’s view, it was more logical to describe John’s knowledge of
climbing trees with BIN than it was to apply the marker to Jenny’s
knowledge.
Children must also acquire pragmatic and rhetorical uses of language,
as has been shown with the marker BIN. The pragmatic meanings can be
linked to elements of time as well as notions of aggrandizement, as in the
case of BIN.
Preverbal had in Child AAL
The final complex past construction that will be addressed in this
chapter is had + Verb. The term that will be used here for this use of had
is ‘preverbal had.’ Representative examples of the preverbal had
construction are underlined in (11):

Markers in Girls’ Developing African American Language Use
(11) He locked him up. And I had the key in my hand, then umm I
unlocked the door. Then I had saved my brother. I had unlocked it,
then I had saved him. (J008)
Notice that past time in the first sentence is expressed in simple past
tense with overt –ed (locked, unlocked), but preverbal had is used
consistently in the second and third sentences. It is obvious that had +
saved and had + locked are not past perfect. In other words, had saved and
had unlocked do not refer to having saved/having unlocked occurring at
some time in the past before the past. Logically, the unlocking event must
come before the saving event, so “I unlocked the door. Then I had saved
my brother” does not mean that the saving event occurred farther in the
past than the unlocking event or occurred first. The other piece of evidence
that the past perfect is not intended comes from the use of then, which
suggests that the events are listed in order, such as I unlocked the
door…then I saved him. In conclusion, although had + unlocked and had
+ saved look like past perfects, they are actually used in simple past
contexts. The evidence leads to the conclusion that preverbal had
constructions are used in simple past contexts.
One question to raise here is about whether the use of had adds any
meaning to the past tense verb, which indicates that the event has taken
place already or is in the past. That is, what is the nature and meaning of
preverbal had? As discussed in Green (2009), preverbal had is used in
developing child AAL to mark the achievement or accomplishment of
events. The data suggest that developing AAL speakers not only mark past
actions, but they are also developing ways to talk about, mark, or focus
other properties of past events, such as the achievement or accomplishment
of the event. To express this point in other terms, we can say that the
simple past (e.g., unlocked) and the preverbal had (had unlocked)
constructions have the same general meaning in that they refer to events in
the past; however, the preverbal had constructions have the added function
of focusing on the accomplishment of the event.
Rickford & Théberge-Rafal (1996) and Ross et al. (2004) specifically
associate preverbal had with narratives; however, the marker does not
appear to be used solely as a narrative marker in the data that we are
considering. The marker may ultimately have a particular narrative
function, but the children do not begin to use it in that way. Examples such
as the following show that the marker in used in contexts other than
narratives:
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Chapter Five
(12) J094: I know how to play pinball.
LG: Wow!
J094: I had start the pinball before.
The response from J094 (5;7-year-old female) is not part of a larger
narrative about pinball playing; her preverbal had construction is part of a
statement about playing pinball. Preverbal had is not used to indicate the
past perfect or past before the past such that the having started the pinball
occurs in the past before some subsequent event, as in ‘I had started the
pinball before they came to my machine.’ Also, note that the adverbial
before indicates that the having started the pinball event is set within some
time frame before the speech time. Had serves to focus on the
‘accomplishment’ or ‘achievement’ of the pinball event; it does not mark
complicating action in a narrative. The marker is compatible with narratives,
especially because stories are generally related from the past tense
perspective, but it does not appear that the narrative function is its major
function in developing AAL.
One finding that is reported in Rickford & Théberge-Rafal (1996) and
Ross et al. (2004), and that is also obvious from the data that we are
reporting here, is that there is no correlation between the use of preverbal
had and overt past marking (e.g., -ed) on verbs. In other words, as
previous research has shown, the presence or absence of –ed on verb
forms following preterite had does not affect the occurrence of had. That
is, had is not used as a past marker in the absence of overt marking on the
verb. As exemplified in the examples in (11) and (12), preverbal had can
be used with verbs that are or are not overtly marked for past.
In considering developing AAL, we find that while preverbal had is
used in past contexts, it is not just a marker that indicates that an event
took place in the past. It contributes meaning that underscores the
accomplishment or achievement of an event.
Summary
This chapter considers simplex forms and complex sequences in the
language of developing AAL-speaking girls and shows that in addition to
using these forms to indicate events in past contexts, they also use them as
rhetorical markers in oral discourse. By four years, some AAL-speaking
children talk about and/or comprehend past events in at least three
contexts: simple past, remote past, and preverbal had event marking. In
using BIN to mark the far past, children also simultaneously use it in
aggrandizement contexts, so the marker takes on meaning beyond that of a

Markers in Girls’ Developing African American Language Use
tense-aspect marker. Developing AAL-speaking children use the had +
Verb sequence in past contexts, but it is not used as an alternate form of
simple past tense marking, nor is it used to mark the past perfect. Instead
the complex sequence (had + Verb) is used to mark the accomplishment or
achievement of events. We have focused on data from girls as a beginning
point to explore preverbal markers. Further research will be useful in
determining marked differences between developing girls’ and boys’
language.
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