BIO (David Sutcliffe):


David Sutcliffe has had a life-long involvement with communication, as well as a passion for linguistics, and an identification with Afro-American and Afro-Caribbean (and other Caribbean) cultures. In the late sixties he began teaching in a multiethnic school in Bedford, UK, soon becoming deeply involved in the educational situation faced by Afro-Caribbean students in British classrooms. This led to a series of studies on the then emerging British Jamaican variety. These included a research-based masters degree The Language of first and second generation West Indian children in British Schools (University of Leicester, 1978), followed by publication of British Black English (1982) and (with Ansel Wong) The Language of the Black Experience (1986) and culminating in a research project: on "Language use in a British Community". Since then he has shifted his interest to United States African American Vernacular English (AAVE) and its links with other African-American languages. In 1998 he completed a Ph D. on this theme, African American Vernacular English: Origins and Issues. Currently he is teaching creativity, translation and linguistics at Barcelona's Universitat Pompeu Fabra (which has greatly improved his Catalan!), and at the same time intensifying his research into earlier stages of AAVE and related varieties in the United States. He is also working on the possibly tonal or tonally-derived aspects of AAVE intonation.

Jamaican Creole (“patwa”) in the United Kingdom
After setting to work with his tape recorder first in Bedford and London, and then later, in the early eighties (working with Viv Edwards, and the University of Reading) in Dudley, near Birmingham, it became evident that there was a fascinating linguistic situation in the making. Over half of the younger generation speakers retained the "Patwa" (creole, usually Jamaican creole) even though they'd been born and raised in England. Often they used "Patwa" less than the local variety of English, but in some cases (almost 20% in the Dudley sample) they were dominant in Patwa and used it more than English. In either case the language was changing.
We now plan to go back to these British Black communities and look at developments. Four generations of people of Jamaican extraction in the UK will be recorded - the original Caribbean parental generation (mostly aged 70 or older), the Linton Kwesi Johnson generation, and 2 generations of British-born Black speakers. This time the work is to be coordinated from the University of Essex, in conjunction with creolist Peter Patrick. Research questions here include the variation and change issue: how has Britrish Black English evolved over three generations of language and cultural contact?

AAVE origins
This is not an area of peaceable inquiry, bur is certainly inspiring. There has been a notoriously long-standing debate in this field on the origins of African American English (AAE) and whether it had evolved from an earlier Plantation Creole. By 1990 William Labov and associates no longer thought the creole-origins explanation was right. Research showed AAE had been intensifying creole-like features for decades, and so by definition must be diverging from a more English stage.

Paradoxically, however, this position (for all the academic forces marshalled strongly in its favour) misses an important point about AAE.
Indignant "come", quotative "say", associative "dem" , perfective marker "done", continuative "steady" and even past marker "been" as in:

I been know that
("I know that know, and I've known that for some time)


-all show us that syncretism (dual derivation) and camouflage are an essential part of the language so that the notion that AAE derives solely from British English is almost a contradiction in terms.

What is more, we have extensive evidence that the old plantation creole actually existed, and was in widespread use in the mid-nineteenth century. Morph-by-morph combing through recordings made of former slaves, the well-known Ex-slave recordings (LINK)has brought to light previously unnoticed traces of an earlier, more creole-like layer to AAVE speech, evidently in use on plantations in different parts of the 19th century South.


These traces occur as isolated morphemes or brief "microswitches" intruding, more or less unintentionally, into the run of English used by the speakers: The existence of this deeper level of dialect, in Texan speakers like Laura Smalley, Charlie Smith and Billy McRea, as well as Louisianan Bob Ledbetter and Virginian Fountain Hughes, all argues for the existence of an earlier more overtly creole-like system that spread westward from the Atlantic seaboard.

If this evidence is accepted, widely held view on origins will (logically) have to be revised. To make the point once and for all, in collaboration with Lluis de Yzaguirre of the Universitat Pompeu Fabra's IULA (Institut Universitari de lingüística aplicada),we have used a programme (developed by deYzaguirre) to put these interviews on line, matched with with our Revised Transcript showing where the latter differs from the published transcript (in Bailey et al 1991).

Putting the recordings and transcripts on-line like this, places the evidence (and the issue) squarely in the public domain. Visitors to the site can get the feel of the issue, listen to the key examples, and decide for themselves. Elucidation here is clearly a key issue.

Apart from their linguistic value, these recordings are fascinating for their cultural and historical content. By clicking onto them, visitors will be hearing speakers describe events that happened more than 150 years ago.
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LINK to Elucidation: Elucidation and confirmation of each item is based on various factors at different levels which are interactive and both subjective and objective factors Scientific method increasingly takes into account the fact that the observer cannot be removed from the equation (the Observer's paradox in another guise) but interaction of subjective and objective factors has to be acknowledged and controlled.
LINK to History chapter: By clicking onto them, visitors will be hearing speakers describe events that happened more than 150 years ago LINK : A meteor shower that may have happened in 1838, slavers at work in the 1840s, roving bands of Plains Indians in the 1850's, General Lee's army passing by in April 1863, the Yankees marching home again in 1865, Juneteenth parties in 1866, and more.