The Comparative Morpho-Syntax of Appalachian English (2006-2008) 

Visit the project website here.

Funded by the National Science Foundation, this project was a collaborative effort carried out by Raffaella Zanuttini (then at Georgetown), Judy Bernstein (William Paterson University), Marcel den Dikken (City University of New York) and Christina Tortora (College of Staten Island).  In 2006, we received funding from NSF in the form of a two-year collaborative research grant with the four of us as co-principal investigators. The project, entitled "Collaborative Research: The Comparative Morpho-Syntax of Appalachian English", studied morphosyntactic variation both within Appalachian English and between Appalachian English and other varieties of English, such as Belfast English.  We focused in particular on subject-verb agreement, using both data from published sources and data collected through our own fieldwork.  We worked closely with three graduate students,  Goldie Ann Dooley, Erin Quirk, and Corinne Hutchinson. 

Some publications resulting from this project: 

Zanuttini, R. and J. B. Bernstein. (2014) “Transitive Expletives in Appalachian English.” In Zanuttini, R. and L. Horn (eds.) Micro-syntactic variation in North American English, Oxford University Press, pp. 143-177. View pdf.

Bernstein, J. B. and R. Zanuttini. (2012) “A diachronic shift in the expression of person.” In C. Galves, S. Cyrino, R. Lopes, F. Sandalo and J. Avelar (eds.) Parameter Theory and Linguistic Change, Oxford University Press, pp. 157-175. View pdf.

Zanuttini, R. and J. B. Bernstein. (2011) “Micro-comparative syntax in English verbal agreement.” In Lima, S., K. Mullin and B. Smith (eds.) Proceedings of NELS 39, GLSA, Univ. of Massachusetts. Vol. 2, pp. 839-854. View pdf.

Tortora, C. and M. den Dikken. (2010) “Subject agreement variation: Support for the configurational approach.” Lingua, 120.5, pp. 1089-1108.

den Dikken, M., J.B. Bernstein, C. Tortora and R. Zanuttini. (2007) “Data and Grammar: Means and Individuals.” Theoretical Linguistics, 33.3, pp.335-352.