Steady: Progressive Aspect in Black Vernacular English

John Baugh

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Linguistic Variation and Morphology Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation Linguistic and Sociocultural Studies

Abstract

of steady has been observed not only throughout the United States, but in Caribbean varieties of English as well. These attestations, by leading Creole scholars, lend support to the viability of the Creole origin hypothesis for BVE, although the precise history of steady reflects several stages of development. Steady represents an excellent example of how some BVE lexicon preserves unique qualities in the face of overwhelming similarities between BVE and SE. One of the primary reasons that steady has not appeared in the existing BVE literature presumably is due to its shared characteristics with standard English (SE) steadily. Steady is what Spears (1982, p. 850) calls a form, and is in this way similar to BVE modal come. A CAMOUFLAGED FORM is one that is shared by more than one dialect of a language; however, the form maintains unique grammatical and/or semantic qualities. There may be some overlap with respect to shared functions for these forms, but they must maintain unique characteristics in ways that are not common to all speakers of the same language. In this case there are shared surface distributional similarities with SE, at the same time that steady functions as a different aspectual marker in BVE. Interestingly, users of the camouflaged form do not necessarily realize that their usage differs from the usage of speakers of other dialects. Some of my informants expressed surprise, and on occasion, disbelief, when they were told that their use of steady was unique to BVE speakers. In fact, one of the gentlemen compared steady usage to that of ain't, claiming that both blacks and whites used these nonstandard forms, though neither group would use such language in school, or on other formal occasions.

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References

1969Contraction, Deletion, and Inherent Variability of the English Copula 1970A sociolinguistic description of Detroit Negro speech. By Walter A. Wolfram. (Urban language series, 5.) Washington, D.C.: Center for Applied Linguistics, 1969. Pp. xviii, 237. $5.00.1975African Language Structures 1982The Black English Semi-Auxiliary Come

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