Taylor Jones
Biographic Data
| ID | 3842732 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Taylor Jones |
| GIVEN NAMES | Taylor |
| FAMILY NAME | Jones |
| SIGNATURE | JONES T |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Pennsylvania |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2077-6757 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 6 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 42 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 6 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2015 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Variation across Regions and Demographics in African American Language Morphosyntax: Evidence from Large-Scale Twitter Data
Social media data and computational tools have become increasingly powerful alternatives to traditional methods of data collection and annotation for sociolinguistic research. While not without their own drawbacks, these resources can help address critical problems faced by researchers, such as sparse data, the observer's paradox, and annotating corpora at scale. This article presents a Twitter dataset of 227 million conversational messages acros…
“You don’t know nothin’ bout no Earth, Wind, and Fire”: Reexamining negative concord and definiteness in African American English
AAE is described as exhibiting negative concord, similar to other varieties of English, in which negation licenses c-commanded n-words as well as Negative Polarity Items (NPIs). Crucially, these are thought to be licensed only when the noun phrase they modify is indefinite. Here, our object of study is an under-described phenomenon in AAE: under certain discourse conditions, AAE licenses no before a definite noun phrase (as in “You don't know not…
Corpus-Based Sociophonetic Approaches to Postvocalic R-Lessness in African American Language
Over the last 50 years, a great deal of sociolinguistic research has focused on phonetic/phonological variables in African American Language (AAL), with postvocalic r-lessness often treated as one of the canonical features of AAL. Using data from the Corpus of Regional African American Language (CORAAL), Support Vector Machines (SVMs) were used to assess how vowel-like or/r/-like postvocalic/r/tokens are in CORAAL. The decision value, an output f…
Grammatical Reanalysis and the Multiple N-Words in African American English
African American Vernacular English (AAVE) is developing a class of previously undescribed function words, facilitated by the semantic generalization of the word nigga. The authors demonstrate that nigga is unspecified for race, gender, or humanness. They argue that there are multiple n-words, fulfilling different grammatical and social functions. Using a variety of sources, they show that there are new pronouns in AAVE based on nigga—moreover, t…
Testifying while black: An experimental study of court reporter accuracy in transcription of African American English
Court reporters are certified at either 95% or 98% accuracy, depending on their certifying organization; however, the measure of accuracy is not one that evaluates their ability to transcribe nonstandard dialects. Here, we demonstrate that Philadelphia court reporters consistently fail to meet this level of transcription accuracy when confronted with mundane examples of spoken African American English (AAE). Furthermore, we show that they often c…
Toward a Description of African American Vernacular English Dialect Regions Using “Black Twitter
Recent research has established that African American Vernacular English (AAVE) is not monolithic. However, variation in AAVE has not been systematically described and mapped. This article uses new computational methods and social media to describe AAVE variation and to show AAVE dialect regions distinct from—and perpendicular to—the regions of other dialects of North American English. This study maps the geographic patterns of 30+ common nonstan…
Toward a Description of African American Vernacular English Dialect Regions Using “Black Twitter
Recent research has established that African American Vernacular English (AAVE) is not monolithic. However, variation in AAVE has not been systematically described and mapped. This article uses new computational methods and social media to describe AAVE variation and to show AAVE dialect regions distinct from—and perpendicular to—the regions of other dialects of North American English. This study maps the geographic patterns of 30+ common nonstan…
Testifying while black: An experimental study of court reporter accuracy in transcription of African American English
Court reporters are certified at either 95% or 98% accuracy, depending on their certifying organization; however, the measure of accuracy is not one that evaluates their ability to transcribe nonstandard dialects. Here, we demonstrate that Philadelphia court reporters consistently fail to meet this level of transcription accuracy when confronted with mundane examples of spoken African American English (AAE). Furthermore, we show that they often c…
Corpus-Based Sociophonetic Approaches to Postvocalic R-Lessness in African American Language
Over the last 50 years, a great deal of sociolinguistic research has focused on phonetic/phonological variables in African American Language (AAL), with postvocalic r-lessness often treated as one of the canonical features of AAL. Using data from the Corpus of Regional African American Language (CORAAL), Support Vector Machines (SVMs) were used to assess how vowel-like or/r/-like postvocalic/r/tokens are in CORAAL. The decision value, an output f…
Grammatical Reanalysis and the Multiple N-Words in African American English
African American Vernacular English (AAVE) is developing a class of previously undescribed function words, facilitated by the semantic generalization of the word nigga. The authors demonstrate that nigga is unspecified for race, gender, or humanness. They argue that there are multiple n-words, fulfilling different grammatical and social functions. Using a variety of sources, they show that there are new pronouns in AAVE based on nigga—moreover, t…
Toward a Description of African American Vernacular English Dialect Regions Using “Black Twitter
Recent research has established that African American Vernacular English (AAVE) is not monolithic. However, variation in AAVE has not been systematically described and mapped. This article uses new computational methods and social media to describe AAVE variation and to show AAVE dialect regions distinct from—and perpendicular to—the regions of other dialects of North American English. This study maps the geographic patterns of 30+ common nonstan…
Corpus-Based Sociophonetic Approaches to Postvocalic R-Lessness in African American Language
Over the last 50 years, a great deal of sociolinguistic research has focused on phonetic/phonological variables in African American Language (AAL), with postvocalic r-lessness often treated as one of the canonical features of AAL. Using data from the Corpus of Regional African American Language (CORAAL), Support Vector Machines (SVMs) were used to assess how vowel-like or/r/-like postvocalic/r/tokens are in CORAAL. The decision value, an output f…
Grammatical Reanalysis and the Multiple N-Words in African American English
African American Vernacular English (AAVE) is developing a class of previously undescribed function words, facilitated by the semantic generalization of the word nigga. The authors demonstrate that nigga is unspecified for race, gender, or humanness. They argue that there are multiple n-words, fulfilling different grammatical and social functions. Using a variety of sources, they show that there are new pronouns in AAVE based on nigga—moreover, t…
Testifying while black: An experimental study of court reporter accuracy in transcription of African American English
Court reporters are certified at either 95% or 98% accuracy, depending on their certifying organization; however, the measure of accuracy is not one that evaluates their ability to transcribe nonstandard dialects. Here, we demonstrate that Philadelphia court reporters consistently fail to meet this level of transcription accuracy when confronted with mundane examples of spoken African American English (AAE). Furthermore, we show that they often c…
“You don’t know nothin’ bout no Earth, Wind, and Fire”: Reexamining negative concord and definiteness in African American English
AAE is described as exhibiting negative concord, similar to other varieties of English, in which negation licenses c-commanded n-words as well as Negative Polarity Items (NPIs). Crucially, these are thought to be licensed only when the noun phrase they modify is indefinite. Here, our object of study is an under-described phenomenon in AAE: under certain discourse conditions, AAE licenses no before a definite noun phrase (as in “You don't know not…
Variation across Regions and Demographics in African American Language Morphosyntax: Evidence from Large-Scale Twitter Data
Social media data and computational tools have become increasingly powerful alternatives to traditional methods of data collection and annotation for sociolinguistic research. While not without their own drawbacks, these resources can help address critical problems faced by researchers, such as sparse data, the observer's paradox, and annotating corpora at scale. This article presents a Twitter dataset of 227 million conversational messages acros…
Linguistic Variation and Morphology (5 works) · Linguistics (5 works) · Multilingual Education and Policy (5 works) · Philosophy (5 works) · History (3 works) · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies (3 works) · Philosophy (3 works) · Psychology (3 works) · African american (2 works) · American English (2 works)