Article published In: English World-Wide
Vol. 29:1 (2008) ► pp.45–69
Letter Perfect
The Present Perfect in early African American correspondence
Published online: 25 January 2008
https://doi.org/10.1075/eww.29.1.04van
https://doi.org/10.1075/eww.29.1.04van
This paper uses a multivariate analysis of 19th-century letters by semi-literate African American settlers in Liberia to investigate the frequency and distribution of the present perfect (PP) in earlier African American English (AAE). Despite descriptions elsewhere of the PP as marginal to AAE, it occurs here with great frequency, a finding attributed to the sensitivity of the form to genre differences. The linguistic factors conditioning choice between the PP and the preterite match those described for other varieties of English of that time period. This suggests that an English-like PP was part of the core grammar of the writers of these letters.
Keywords: Liberia, letters, variation, present perfect, Early African American English
Cited by (7)
Cited by seven other publications
Davydova, Julia
FRANCO, KARLIEN & SALI A. TAGLIAMONTE
SUÁREZ-GÓMEZ, CRISTINA
Werner, Valentin
2016. Overlap and divergence – aspects of the present perfect in World Englishes. In World Englishes [Varieties of English Around the World, G57], ► pp. 113 ff.
Yao, Xinyue
2015. The present perfect and the preterite in Australian English. In Grammatical Change in English World-Wide [Studies in Corpus Linguistics, 67], ► pp. 247 ff.
Davydova, Julia, Michaela Hilbert, Lukas Pietsch & Peter Siemund
[no author supplied]
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 9 december 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.