Introduction

In present-day US southern basilectal speech, the third-person-singular present tense is marked with both -s and zero. African American Vernacular English speakers and Southern White Vernacular English speakers both use the zero morpheme to mark this slot, but in differing amounts, with some AAVE speakers presently using it more frequently than SWVE speakers. This chapter will discuss some historical data which contain both -s and zero, namely, the speech of prisoners transported from London in order to populate the Virginia settlement of Jamestown, from 1607 onwards. The data, taken from the manuscript Minutes of the Court of Governors of Bridewell and Bethlem for the years 1559–1624, are viewable on microfilm in the Guildhall Library, London.

Third-person-singular present-tense zero: previous studies

For a discussion of the third-person-singular -s and zero in AAVE and SWVE, see, for example, Fasold (1981), Sommer (1986), Poplack and Tagliamonte (1989, 1991, 1994), Baugh (1990), Ellis (1994), Montgomery, Fuller and DeMarse (1993), Montgomery and Fuller (1996), Wolfram, Hazen and Tamburro (1997), Winford (1998: 106), Montgomery (1999). Much of this work is devoted to analysing usage of -s vs. zero in various speech communities, black and white, past and present; considering whether third-person-singular zero was present in earlier states of English; and to debating whether the presence of zero supports the hypothesis of a creole origin for AAVE.