Research

Thus far, the bulk of my research has been carried out within the theoretical framework known as Formal Semantics, a framework that attempts to capture the logical aspects of meaning and conceives of meanings themselves as logical structures. Formal semanticists are primarily interested in how the meanings of the parts of words, words, and phrases combine to produce the meanings of full sentences. The translation of these natural language expressions into a mathematically precise formal language – a symbolic logic – allows precise claims to be made about how this composition takes place. My own research in this area has largely focused on the meanings of structures that are a part of African American English (AAE), a dialect of English spoken by many, but not all or only, people of African descent throughout the United States. Currently, I am investigating the expression of habituality in AAE. Increasingly, however, my work has expanded in scope to include not only the semantic analysis of AAE structures and their comparison to those of more mainstream varieties of English, but also an investigation into how those structures – both those in and outside of the dialect – are understood by African American English speakers in real time. This growth in focus area has required complementing the tools of semantic theory with EEG (brainwave) measuring methods and other techniques borrowed from the field of psycholinguistics. This newer line of my research stems from and finds particular focus in the application of the two branches of linguistic theory to a very practical problem: understanding the effect of speaking a nonmainstream dialect like AAE on school children’s test performance and educational achievement in general. My most recent publication on this topic — an EEG study conducted with Dr. Masako Hirotani and other colleagues — can be downloaded here. The following selection of publications represent this and my other research interests.

Books chapters

Terry, J. Michael (2015). Chapter 34: Dialect switching and African American English: implications for early educational achievement. In Sonja L. Lanehart (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of African American English, 637 -658. Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press.

Terry, J. Michael (2005). The past perfective and present perfect in African-American English. In Henk Verkuyl, Henriette de Swart & Angeliek van Hout (eds.), Perspectives on Aspect, 217-232. Dordrecht: Springer.

Refereed papers/articles

Terry JM, Thomas ER, Jackson SC, Hirotani M (2022) African American English speaking 2nd graders, verbal–s, and educational achievement: Event related potential and math study findings. PLoS ONE 17(10): e0273926. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0273926. (Available for download here)

Hirotani, M, Terry, J.M., & Sadato N. (2016). Processing Load Imposed by Line Breaks in English Temporal Wh-Questions. Frontiers in Psychology, 7, 1–10.

Terry, J. M. (2013). Linguistics. In Encyclopedia of Race and Racism, 2e, vol 3, 72-74. Detroit, MI: Macmillan Reference.

Terry, J. M., Jackson S.C., Evangelou, E., Smith, R.L. (2010) Expressive and Receptive Language Effects of African American English on a Sentence Imitation Task. Topics in Language Disorders 30(2), 119-134. Philadelphia, PA: Wolters Kluwer Lippioncott Williams & Wilkins.

Terry, J.M., Hendrick, R. Evangelou, E. Smith, R.L. (2010) Variable dialect switching among African American children: inferences about working memory. Lingua 120(10), 2464-2475. New York, NY: Elsevier.

Terry, J.M. (2010) Variation in the interpretation and use of the African American English preverbal ‘done’ construction. American Speech 85(1), 3-32. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Renn, J. and Terry, J.M. (2009) Operationalizing style: quantiying style shift in the speech of African American adolescents. American Speech 84(4), 367-390. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.