Preface<br >It is very difficult to begin acknowledging here all the people， places，<br >and things that are chiefly responsible for such an undertaking; but<br >the authors wish to thank some important people here without<br >whose help， inspiration， and dedication this book would have been<br >impossible. Thanks to Ron Hobbs， to whose urging to do the re-<br >search needed for such a work we finally succumbed. Thanks to<br >Lorenzo D. Turner， whose many years of study and many fine books<br >on black language made the research task easier. Thanks also to the<br >many p~ople who have done some initial work in the area of<br >black languages and black dialects. Especially inspiring were LeRoi<br >Jones s (Imamu Amiri Baraka s) Blues People， Lydia Parrish s<br >Slave Songs of the Georgia Sea Islands， Edward L. Tinker s Gombo<br >Comes to Philadelphia， Western Electric Company s audio presenta-<br >tion， "The Dialect of the Black American，" and William A. Stewart s<br >work at the Center for Applied Linguistics.<br > Thanks also to Barbara Schwartz， who typed the final draft and<br >to Amy Shelansky， Pat Bruce， and Bella Rosenberg， who gave of<br >their time and energy in research. And finally， to Kathy Benson， the<br >one person most responsible for pulling the manuscript together<br >into some literate， ~oherent form.<br > Hopefully， readers will not interpret the information presented<br >here as final authority; new discoveries are being made in this area<br >every day. Instead this should be viewed as an introductory work.<br >The authors take all responsibility for it.<br >