#zero copula

Valise is the solo work of Providence, Rhode Island based multi-dimensional maker and arts practitioner Maralie (also one half of longstanding collaborative duo Humanbeast). "Zero Copula" is 64 minutes of expansive sonic collage sourced from the self and the found. Calling her process "Browser" music, Maralie employs a methodology of field recording and mixing process through a duplicity of browser tabs resulting in a skillful and intuitive layering and field creation of carefully sought information. "Zero Copula" is a C-64, for the listener with a taste for atmosphere, expanse, and mood.

This limited edition c64 cassette, is available now from Primitive Languages. Order and preview here: http://primitivelanguages.bandcamp.com/album/valise-zero-copula

excerpts of this cassette have been included in

Via App’s Fact Mix 540:

https://www.mixcloud.com/FACTMixArchive/fact-mix-540-via-app-mar-16/

Drew McDowall and Hiro Kone’s The Lot Radio session:

https://www.mixcloud.com/thelotradio/hiro-kone-drew-mcdowall-the-lot-radio-06212016/

and Nick Klein’s Noisey Italia Mix:

Have been watching “The People vs. OJ Simpson” on FX and it’s so good! Really entertaining television.

Tonight’s installment (episode 2: “The Run of His Life”) was all about the white Ford Bronco chase. What struck me was the conversation prosecutor Christopher Darden has with some of his neighbors. Darden is claiming that OJ never gave back to the black community, and that once he made his money, “he became white.”

And one of the neighbors replies “Well, he got the cops chasing him. He’s black now!”

It’s a great line, but it seemed a little off to me that “he’s black now” is said with an overt copula (’is’). I know that all the characters in this scene are comfortable using SAE and wouldn’t necessarily use AAVE in any given situation. It’s just that the particular sentiment expressed - that OJ may have felt himself ‘above’ race before, but now he’s just like everyone else - would seem to my mind to be more powerfully expressed in AAVE (i.e. “He black now”)

An Introduction to Sociolinguistics

This generalization doesn’t fully hold - there are counter-examples like: 

How old you think his baby is? *How old you think his baby’s? How old you think his baby?

But it’s still worth pointing out that use of zero copula in AAE is systematic and not random omission.

Wyatt (1991) found that AAE preschoolers were more likely to use zero copula: after pronoun subjects (56%) rather than noun subjects (21%); before locative predicates (35%) and adjective predicates (27%) rather than noun predicates (18%); and in second person singular and plural predicates (45%) rather than third person singular predicates (19%). In addition, the zero copula occurred less than 1% of the time in past tense, first person singular, and final clause contexts. This suggests that as early as three years of age, AAE child speakers not only acquire the basic grammatical features of AAE but also the language-specific variable rules that govern their use.

-Toya E. Wyatt, "Children's Acquisition and Maintenance of AAE."

Zero copula is also found in many other languages:

  Arabic:     "hadha r-rajul tawiil"      that    man     tall

  Russian:     "etot chelovek vysockij"      that man        tall