THE EMERGENCE OF BLACK ENGLISH -- Editorial page -- Title page -- Copyright page -- Table of contents -- PREFACE -- INTRODUCTION -- The Contents of the Collection -- The Reliability and Validity of the Collection as Linguistic Data -- Conduct of the Fieldwork -- Composition of the Transcripts -- The Interpretation of the Recordings and Transcripts -- NOTES -- TEXTS -- Wallace Quarterman -- Fountain Hughes -- Uncle Billy McCrea -- Uncle Bob Ledbetter -- Joe McDonald and Woman -- Isom Moseley -- Alice Gaston -- Laura Smalley -- Harriet Smith -- Celia Black -- Charlie Smith -- COMMENTARY -- Speaking of Slavery: The Historical Value Of the Recordings With Former Slaves -- The Tapes as History -- The Tapes and the Interview Process -- Slave Narratives, Slave Culture, and the Slave Experience -- Slaves As Chattel -- Slave Attitudes Toward Masters -- Slave Duties and Occupations -- Folk Material Culture and Crafts -- Folk Narratives -- The Religious Experience -- Recreation -- The YankeeSoldiersRemembered -- The Post-Slavery Experience -- Summary and Conclusions -- Songs, Sermons, and Life-Stories: The Legacy of the Ex-Slave Narratives -- Introduction -- Interviewing the Interviewer -- Social Situation in the 1930s -- Conclusion -- The Linguistic Value of the Ex-Slave Recordings -- Problems With Conduct of the Interviews -- Problems With Reliability of the Data -- Problems with Quality of the Data -- Left Dislocation -- Relative Pronouns -- Comparison To Gullah -- Summary -- NOTES -- Representativeness and Reliability of the Ex-Slave Narrative Materials, With Special Reference to Wallace Quarterman's Recording and Transcript -- Introduction -- Representativeness -- Reliability -- The Quarterman Tanscript -- Changes That Make a Qualitative Difference -- Changes That Make a Quantitative Difference -- Summary and Conclusion -- NOTES -- Appendix.

Is Gullah Decreolizing? A Comparison of a Speech Sample of the 1930s With a Sample of the 1980s -- 1. Introduction -- 2. The Data -- 3. The Morphosyntax of Quarterman's Gullah -- 3.1 Quarterman's Speech is Just Mesolectal -- 3.2 Gullah Is Not Decreolizing -- 4. Conclusion and Some Reflections -- NOTES -- The Atlantic Creoles and the Language of the Ex-Slave Recordings -- 1. The Verb Phrase -- 1.1 Creole Unmarked/Anterior versus English Present/Past -- 1.2 Progressive and Habitual Aspect -- 1.3 Completive Aspect -- 2. Forms of be -- 3. The Noun Phrase -- 4. Pronouns -- 5. Prepositions -- 6. Word Order -- 7. Lexical Items -- 8. Conclusion -- NOTES -- Liberian Settler English and the Ex-Slave Recordings: A Comparative Study -- 1.1 The Liberian Settlers' New World Roots -- 1.2 Three LSE Speakers -- 2.1 The Verb System: Aspect -- 2.2 The Verb System: The Copula -- 2.3 The Verb System: done and ain't -- 3.1 Variation in Plural Marking -- 3.2 Plural Marking in the Ex-Slave Recordings and LSE -- 4. Conclusion -- NOTES -- Appendix A -- Appendix B -- There's No Tense Like the Present: Verbal -s Inflection in Early Black English -- 1.0. Introduction -- 2.0. Previous analyses of black English -s -- 2.1. Hypercorrection -- 2.2. Aspectual marker -- 2.3. Verbal agreement marker -- 2.4. Synchronic dialectal remnant -- 2.5. Narrative present marker -- 3.0. Conflicting Analyses -- 4.0. Historical precursors of -s variability -- 5.0. -S variability in Modern English -- 6.0. Data and methods -- 6.1. Circumscribing the variable context -- 6.1.1. Neutralization contexts -- 6.1.2. Exceptional distributions -- 6.2. Coding and analysis -- 7.0. Results -- 7.1. Distribution of -s across the verbal paradigm -- 7.2. Phonological effects on -s usage -- 7.2.1. Underlying Phonetic Form -- 7.2.2. Environmental factors -- 7.3. Syntactic effects on -s usage.

7.3.1. Features of the subject -- 7.3.1.1. Type of subject -- 7.3.1.2. Definiteness of the subject -- 7.3.1.3. Collective vs. noncollective subject -- 7.3.2. Features of the verb -- 7.3.2.1. Verbal aspect -- 7.3.2.2. Verb type -- 7.4. Discourse factors -- 7.4.1. The sequence constraint -- 7.4.2. "Narrative" -s -- 7.4.3. Summary of individual effects -- 7.5. Multivariate analysis of the contribution of factors to verbal -s usage -- 8.0 Discussion -- NOTES -- APPENDIX -- BIBLIOGRAPHY -- LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS.