Repair-by-deletion/insertion and the distribution of the copula in African American English

Abstract

The copula in African American English (AAE) has the characteristic that it is optionally present but there are some contexts in which its presence is obligatory. This paper provides a repair-by-deletion/insertion account of the distribution of the copula in AAE, while assuming that T can take a non-verbal predicate phrase as its complement. T, being an affix, must be attached to a verbal host, and so it is stranded when its complement is not a bare VP. This problem is shown to be resolved in two different ways: either T is deleted as an instance of repair-by-deletion, or be is inserted as an instance of repair-by-insertion, but the option of T-deletion is not available if T is semantically, syntactically, or morphologically marked. After showing that the repair approach can provide a principled account of the distribution of the copula, this paper extends it to the distribution of perfective have and dummy do in AAE.