Cover not available

Article published In: Child Language Variation: Sociolinguistic and formal approaches
Edited by Véronique Lacoste and Lisa Green
[Linguistic Variation 16:1] 2016
► pp. 103–130

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF
authorization required

Third person singular -s and event marking in child African American English

Published online: 13 October 2016
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/lv.16.1.05new
This paper discusses 3rd person singular -s in the language of three- to six-year-old developing AAE speakers, in relation to early stages of zero 3rd person singular -s (Øs) and overt s marking. Data include a sentence repetition task and a story retell task. The speakers’ 3rd person singular -s and Øs marking are examined as a function of age, verb type, allomorph, and verb coordination. Analyses are presented to support the claim that the 3rd person singular marker -s is not part of the AAE grammar although children produce the marker in certain contexts. The speakers’ 3rd person singular -s and Øs marking are also discussed in relation to the optional root infinitive stage and the Multiple Grammars approach.
References (51)
Adger, David & Jennifer Smith. 2005. Variation and the minimalist program. In Leonie Cornips & Karen Corrigan (eds.), Syntax and variation: Reconciling the biological and social, 149–178. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2010. Variation in agreement: A lexical feature-based approach. Lingua 1201. 1109–1134. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Amaral, Lulz & Tom Roeper. 2014. Why minimal multiple rules provide a unique window into UG and L2. Second Language Research 301. 97–107. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Baugh, John. 1983. Black street speech. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Brown, Roger. 1973. A first language: The early stages. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Charity, Anne H. 2007. Regional differences in low SES African-American children’s speech in the school setting. Language Variation and Change. 191, 281–293. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cleveland, Lesli H. 2009. Children’s production of verbal -s by dialect type and clinical status. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cleveland, Lesli H. & Janna B. Oetting 2013. Children’s marking of verbal -s by nonmainstream English dialect and clinical status. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology 221. 604–614. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cole, Lorraine T. 1980. A developmental analysis of social dialect features in the spontaneous language of preschool black children. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. Northwestern University, Evanston.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Craig, Holly K & Julie A. Washington 2006. Recent research on the language and literacy skills of African American students in the early years. Handbook of Early Literacy Research 21. 163–172.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
dePaola, Tomie. 1978. Pancakes for breakfast. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Publishing Company.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
de Villiers, Jill & Peter de Villiers 1973. A cross-sectional study of the acquisition of grammatical morphemes in child speech. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 21. 267–278. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
de Villiers, Jill & Valerie E. Johnson 2007. The information in third person /s/: Acquisition across dialects of American English. Journal of Child Language 341. 133–158. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dillard, Joey L. 1985. Toward a social history of American English. Berlin: Moutin. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Green, Lisa J. 2002. African American English: A linguistic introduction. Cambridge, NY: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2011. Language and the African American child. Cambridge, NY: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Guy, Gregory & Sally Boyd. 1990. The development of a morphological class. Language Variation and Change 21. 1–18. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Henry, Allison. 1995. Belfast English and Standard English: Dialect variation and parameter setting. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hoekstra, Teun & Nina Hyams. 1998. Aspects of root infinitives. Lingua 106(1). 81–112. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hudson Kam, Carla L. & Elissa Newport. 2005. Regularizing unpredictable variation: The roles of adult and child learners in language formation and change. Language Learning an Development 11. 151–195. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
José, Brian. 2007. Appalachian English in southern Indiana: The evidence from verbal -s. Language Variation and Change 191. 249–280. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kovac, Ceil & H. Douglas Adamson. 1981. Variation theory and first language acquisition. In David Sankoff & Henrietta Cedergren (eds.), Variation Omnibus: Current Inquiry into Language and Linguistics, 403–410. Edmonton, Canada: Linguistics Research, Inc.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Labov, William 1969. Contraction deletion, and inherent variability in the English copula. Language 451. 715–762. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1972. Language in the inner city: Studies in the Black English vernacular, Vol. 31. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Labov, William, Paul Cohen, Clarence Robins & John Lewis. 1968. A Study of non-standard English of Negro and Puerto speakers in New York City 2. Philadelphia: US Regional Survey.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Labov, William & Wendell A. Harris. 1986. De facto segregation of black and white vernaculars. In David Sankoff (ed.), Diversity and Diachrony, 1–24. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lahey, Margaret, Jacqueline J. Liebergott, Marie Chesnick, Paula Menyuk & Janet Adams. 1992. Variability in children’s use of grammatical morphemes. Applied Psycholinguistics 131. 373–398. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Loeb, Diane F. & Laurence B. Leonard. 1991. Subject case marking and verb morphology in normally developing and specifically language-impaired children. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 341. 340–346. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lust, Barbara, Suzanne Flynn & Claire Foley. 1996. What children know about what they say: Elicited imitation as a research method for assessing children’s syntax. In Dana McDaniel & Cecile McKee (eds.), Methods for Assessing Children’s Syntax 55–76. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Miller, Karen. L. & Christina Schmitt. 2012. Variable input and the acquisition of plural morphology. Language Acquisition 191. 223–261. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Miller, Karen. 2013. What Sarah reveals about non-agreeing don’t and theories of root infinitives. Language Acquisition 201. 305–324. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Miller, Jon F. & Robin S. Chapman. 1981. The relation between age and MLU in morphemes. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 241. 154–161. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Radford, A. 1997. Syntactic theory and the structure of English: A minimalist approach. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rescorla, Leslie & Julie Roberts. 2002. Nominal vs. verbal morpheme use in late talkers at ages 3 and 4. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 451. 1219–1231. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Reveron, Wilhelminia W. 1979. The acquisition of four black English morphological rules by black preschool children. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. The Ohio State University, Columbus.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Roberts, Julia. 1994. Acquisition of variable rules: (-t, -d) deletion and (ing) production in preschool children. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Roberts, Julie. 1997. Acquisition of variable rules: A study of (-t/-d) deletion in preschool children. Journal of Child Language 241. 351–372. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Roeper, Tom. 1999. Universal bilingualism. Bilingualism Language and Cognition 21. 169–186. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2006. Nodes and features: How the multiple grammar perspective predicts stable and unstable dialects and the order of acquisition. Retrieved from: [URL].
Schütze, Carson & Kenneth Wexler. 1996. Subject case licensing and English root infinitives. In Proceedings of the 20th annual Boston University conference on language development 21. 670–681. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.
Singleton, Jenny & Elissa L. Newport. 2004. When learners surpass their models: The acquisition of American Sign Language from inconsistent input. Cognitive Psychology 491. 370–407. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Smith, Jennifer. 2000. Synchrony and diachrony in the evolution of English: Evidence from Scotland. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Smith, Jennifer, Mercedes Durham & Liane Fortune. 2007. “Mam ma troosers is fa ‘in doon!”: Community, caregiver, and child in the acquisition of variation in a Scottish dialect. Language Variation and Change 191. 63–99. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2009. Universal and dialect-specific pathways of acquisition: Caregivers, children, and t/d deletion. Language Variation and Change 211. 69–95. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Steffensen, Margaret S. 1974. The acquisition of Black English. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. University of Illinois, Urbana.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tortura, Christina & Marcel den Dikken. 2010. Subject agreement variation: Support for configurational approach. Lingua 1201. 1098–1108. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ud Deen, Kamil. 1997. The interpretation of root infinitives in English: Is eventivity a factor. Unpublished manuscript. University of California, Los Angeles.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Van Hofwegen, Janneke & Walt Wolfram. 2010. Coming of age in African American English: A longitudinal study. Journal of Sociolinguistics 141. 427–455. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wexler, Kenneth & Mabel L. Rice. 1996. Toward tense as a clinical marker of specific language impairment in English-speaking children. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 391. 1239–1257. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wolfram, Walter. 1969. A linguistic description of Detroit Negro Speech. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wolfram, Walt. 1974. The relationship of southern speech to vernacular black English. Language 501. 498–527. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (20)

Cited by 20 other publications

Barrière, Isabelle, Blandine Joseph, Katsiaryna Aharodnik, Sarah Kresh, Guetjens Prince Fleurio, Géraldine Legendre & Thierry Nazzi
2025. A multidimensional perspective on the acquisition of subject-verb dependencies by Haitian-Creole speaking children. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 40:1 ► pp. 35 ff. DOI logo
Buson, Laurence, Jean-Pierre Chevrot, Aurélie Nardy & Isabelle Rousset
2025. Acquisition of syntactic variation. In Variation in Language Acquisition [Trends in Language Acquisition Research, 34], ► pp. 125 ff. DOI logo
Chen, Yiran & Kathryn Schuler
2025. Acquisition of a rare variant: ne-realization in the negative utterances of French children and their caregivers. Language Learning and Development 21:2 ► pp. 173 ff. DOI logo
De Timmerman, Romeo & Stef Slembrouck
2024. Covering Blue Voices: African American English and Authenticity in Blues Covers. Languages 9:7 ► pp. 229 ff. DOI logo
Shin, Naomi & Karen Lynn Miller
2024. Children’s Acquisition of Morphosyntactic Variation: A Reply to Commentaries. Language Learning and Development 20:1 ► pp. 83 ff. DOI logo
Washington, Adrienne Ronee
2024. Book Review: Language in African American Communities. Journal of English Linguistics 52:2 ► pp. 174 ff. DOI logo
Byrd, Arynn S., Yi Ting Huang & Jan Edwards
2023. The impact of dialect differences on spoken language comprehension. Applied Psycholinguistics 44:4 ► pp. 610 ff. DOI logo
Hendricks, Alison Eisel, Jillian Jerard & Ling-Yu Guo
2023. Evaluating Different Scoring Systems for a Picture Description Task Among Preschool Children Who Speak African American English. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools 54:1 ► pp. 198 ff. DOI logo
Oetting, Janna B., Janet L. McDonald & Lori E. Vaughn
2023. Grammaticality Judgments of Tense and Agreement by Children With and Without Developmental Language Disorder Across Dialects of English. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 66:12 ► pp. 4996 ff. DOI logo
Vaughn, Lori E., Janna B. Oetting & Janet L. McDonald
2023. Grammaticality Judgments of Tense and Agreement by Child Speakers of African American English: Effects of Clinical Status, Surface Form, and Grammatical Structure. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 66:5 ► pp. 1755 ff. DOI logo
Shin, Naomi & Karen Miller
2022. Children’s Acquisition of Morphosyntactic Variation. Language Learning and Development 18:2 ► pp. 125 ff. DOI logo
Byrd, Arynn S. & Jennifer A. Brown
2021. An Interprofessional Approach to Dialect-Shifting Instruction for Early Elementary School Students. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools 52:1 ► pp. 139 ff. DOI logo
Maher, Zachary K., Michelle E. Erskine, Arynn S. Byrd, Jeffrey R. Harring & Jan R. Edwards
2021. African American English and Early Literacy: A Comparison of Approaches to Quantifying Nonmainstream Dialect Use. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools 52:1 ► pp. 118 ff. DOI logo
Mills, Monique T.
2021. Forum: Serving African American English Speakers in Schools Through Interprofessional Education & Practice. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools 52:1 ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Newkirk-Turner, Brandi L. & Lisa Green
2021. Language Use and Development in Third-Person Singular Contexts: Assessment Implications. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools 52:1 ► pp. 16 ff. DOI logo
Oetting, Janna B., Andrew M. Rivière, Jessica R. Berry, Kyomi D. Gregory, Tina M. Villa & Janet McDonald
2021. Marking of Tense and Agreement in Language Samples by Children With and Without Specific Language Impairment in African American English and Southern White English: Evaluation of Scoring Approaches and Cut Scores Across Structures. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 64:2 ► pp. 491 ff. DOI logo
Barrière, Isabelle, Sarah Kresh, Katsiaryna Aharodnik, Géraldine Legendre & Thierry Nazzi
2019. The comprehension of 3rd person singular -s by NYC English-speaking preschoolers. In Three Streams of Generative Language Acquisition Research [Language Acquisition and Language Disorders, 63], ► pp. 7 ff. DOI logo
Oetting, Janna B., Jessica R. Berry, Kyomi D. Gregory, Andrew M. Rivière & Janet McDonald
2019. Specific Language Impairment in African American English and Southern White English: Measures of Tense and Agreement With Dialect-Informed Probes and Strategic Scoring. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 62:9 ► pp. 3443 ff. DOI logo
Labov, William
2018. A materialist response. Language in Society 47:3 ► pp. 347 ff. DOI logo
Newkirk-Turner, Brandi L. & Valerie E. Johnson
2018. Curriculum-Based Language Assessment With Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students in the Context of Mathematics. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools 49:2 ► pp. 189 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 27 november 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.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue