title: Linguistic constraints on children's overt marking of BE by dialect and age.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Overt marking of BE in nonmainstream adult dialects of English is influenced by a number of linguistic constraints, including the structure's person, number, tense, contractibility, and grammatical function. In the current study, the authors examined the effects of these constraints on overt marking of BE in children as a function of their nonmainstream English dialect and age.
  
  
  METHODS
  The data were language samples from 62 children, ages 4-6 years; 24 children spoke African American English (AAE), and 38 spoke Southern White English (SWE). Analyses included analysis of variance and logistic regression.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Rates of overt marking varied by the children's dialect but not their age. Although the person, number, tense, and grammatical function of BE influenced the children's rates of marking, the nature and magnitude of the influence differed by the children's dialect. For AAE-speaking children, contractibility also influenced their marking of BE.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Consistent with the adult literature, the current study showed that AAE- and SWE-speaking children marked BE in ways that differed from each other and from what has been documented for child speakers of Mainstream American English. These findings show stability in the use of BE in AAE and SWE that spans different generations and different dialect communities.
authors.affiliation: University of Ottawa, Canada. jroy042@uottawa.ca
authors.forename: Joseph
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Roy
authors.forename: Janna B
authors.initials: JB
authors.lastname: Oetting
authors.forename: Christy Wynn
authors.initials: CW
authors.lastname: Moland
mesh_terms: D001741:Black or African American; D000367:Age Factors; D002648:Child; D002663:Child Language; D002675:Child, Preschool; D018864:Cultural Diversity; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D007804:Language Development; D008037:Linguistics; D008297:Male; D010700:Phonetics; D012660:Semantics; D014825:Vocabulary; D044465:White People