Some African American English dialects have sentences like: He come. She see. At which level of linguistic structure does this dialectal variation exist?

Question

BlackTom AI · Accepted Answer

The question asks where the observed variation in He come. She see. resides in the linguistic structure.
Option 1: Morphological. This is the best fit because the variation involves the form of the verb itself, namely the absence of the present tense, third-person singular suffix -s in English. In Standard English, verbs add -s (he comes, she sees); the dialectal forms omit that morphology, so the inflectional morphology is at issue.
Option 2: Syntactic. While the sentences do involve subject–verb placement, the core issue here is not the arrangement of words or phrase structure, but the verb form itself. The syntax (subject-verb order) remains effectively the same as in standard English, with only the verb morphology altered.
Option 3: Semantic or lexical. The meanings of the sentences are not the primary problem; the words used are the same, and the question is about the grammatical form of the verb, not about meaning or vocabulary choices. This makes semantics/lexical level an unlikely locus for this variation.
Option 4: Phonetic or Phonological. The difference described is not about pronunciation or sound patterns; it concerns the written or underlying morphological form. Phonology would address how the word is pronounced, which could accompany dialectal speech, but the core structural change here is morphological inflection, not a phonological substitution.
In summary, the dialectal feature shown—omitting the standard verb inflection in present-tense forms—primarily reflects alterations at the morphological level rather than syntactic structure, semantics/lexicon, or sound systems.

LING 200 A Homework 6 (Socioling)

Some African American English dialects have sentences like: He come. She see. At which level of linguistic structure does this dialectal variation exist?

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