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The Black English Semi-Auxiliary Come

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 March 2026

Arthur K. Spears
Arthur K. Spears*
Affiliation:
University of California, Santa Cruz
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Abstract

Black English has, in addition to the motion verb come, a come which expresses only speaker indignation. To some extent it shares grammatical properties with auxiliary verbs. Typically, it occurs in utterances that can be taken as identical to ones occurring in non-Black dialects; and it is apparently for this reason that it has remained undetected. The existence of this come indicates that an even greater difference exists between Black and White speech than previously thought. It is also of interest that the semi-auxiliary come occurs even in acrolectal varieties of Black English. This reveals that the postcreole continuum in the United States differs from that in Guyana as described by Bickerton 1975, who states that forms which are identical to ones in the base language, but functionally distinct, are not part of the acrolect.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 58 , Issue 4 , December 1982, pp. 850 - 872
Copyright
Copyright © 1982 by Linguistic Society of America

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