Phonology also provides a useful guide to the complex evolution of black-white speech relationships.
The primary source of data for the presentation comes from mechanically recorded interviews with African Americans and whites from the Brazos Valley area of Texas, but this data will also be compared to other parts of the South. The dates of birth of both the African American and the white informants range from the mid 1840s to the early 1980s. This data suggests a complex history that reflects the unique origins, the shared history, and the continuing independent development of these two varieties. The social and economic history of contact in the South between African Americans and European Americans provides a unique opportunity for studying the evolution of grammatical features in each of these varieties of English. The main source of data for this analysis will come from recorded interviews with African Americans and whites, born between 1907 and 1982 from neighboring rural Texas communities, who were recorded as part of an on-going longitudinal ethnolinguistic study of rural Texas speech.