ABSTRACT
I have known and interacted frequently with John R. Rickford since the early stages of my career in the USA in the 1980s. We have disagreed on a number of issues, such as whether Caribbean English Creoles (CEC) have been decreolizing owing to their continued coexistence with their lexifier and acrolect, whether AAVE has Creole origins with an erstwhile basilect genealogically related to those of CECs, and whether the variable behavior of the copula in AAVE reflects constrained insertion or deletion. In the process I would be insincere and remiss not to acknowledge the extent to which he has stimulated my thinking and enriched my knowledge, thanks to the empirical foundation of his arguments, his impressive flair for historical documentation, and his commitment to accountability in one’s analyses. Had he and Thomas S. Kuhn met, I bet they would have connected very well on matters of verifiability of hypotheses. I have seldom seen scholars so meticulous in their analyses.
