Challenges in detecting null relativizers in african american language for sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic applications

Introduction. African American Language (AAL) is a variety of English spoken primarily, but not exclusively, by African Americans. AAL and Mainstream American English (MAE) overlap, but there are notable differences between the two varieties [1]. One difference is in subject-extracted relative clauses (SRCs), where the subject has been extracted from a subject position inside the embedded clause. An overt relativizer (e.g., “that,” “which,” “who”) is optional in AAL but obligatory in MAE. Null relativizers are grammatical in both varieties for object-extracted relative clauses (ORCs), where an object has been extracted from inside the embedded clause.