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African-American Vernacular English

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Template:Short description Template:Pp-semi-indef Template:Use American English Template:Use mdy dates {{#invoke:Infobox|infobox}}Template:Template otherTemplate:Main other Template:African American topics sidebar

African-American Vernacular EnglishTemplate:Efn (AAVE)Template:Efn is the variety of English natively spoken, particularly in urban communities, by most working- and middle-class African Americans and some Black Canadians.Template:Sfnp Having its own unique grammatical, vocabulary, and accent features, AAVE is employed by middle-class Black Americans as the more informal and casual end of a sociolinguistic continuum. However, in formal speaking contexts, speakers tend to switch to more standard English grammar and vocabulary, usually while retaining elements of the vernacular (non-standard) accent.Template:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp AAVE is widespread throughout the United States, but is not the native dialect of all African Americans, nor are all of its speakers African American.Template:Sfnp<ref name="pbs.org">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

Like most varieties of African-American English, African-American Vernacular English shares a large portion of its grammar and phonology with the regional dialects of the Southern United States,Template:Sfnp and especially older Southern American English,Template:Sfnp due to the historical enslavement of African Americans primarily in that region.

Mainstream linguists see only minor parallels between AAVE, West African languages, and English-based creole languages,Template:SfnpTemplate:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp<ref>See Template:Harvcoltxt for more information</ref> instead most directly tracing back AAVE to diverse non-standard dialects of English<ref>The Oakland school board's resolution "was about a perfectly ordinary variety of English spoken by a large and diverse population of Americans of African descent. . . . [E]ssentially all linguists agree that what the Oakland board was dealing with is a dialect of English."Template:Harvcoltxt</ref>Template:Sfnp as spoken by the English-speaking settlers in the Southern Colonies and later the Southern United States.Template:Sfnp However, a minority of linguists argue that the vernacular shares so many characteristics with African creole languages spoken around the world that it could have originated as a creole or semi-creole language, distinct from the English language, before undergoing decreolization.<ref>Template:Harvcoltxt and Template:Harvcoltxt, both citing Template:Harvcoltxt, Template:Harvcoltxt, Template:Harvcoltxt, and Template:Harvcoltxt.</ref>Template:SfnpTemplate:Efn

OriginsEdit

African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) may be considered a dialect, ethnolect, and sociolect.Template:Sfnp While it is clear that there is a strong historical relationship between AAVE and earlier Southern U.S. dialects, the origins of AAVE are still a matter of debate.

The presiding theory among linguists is that AAVE has always been a dialect of English, meaning that it originated from earlier English dialects rather than from English-based creole languages that "decreolized" back into English. In the early 2000s, Shana Poplack provided corpus-based evidenceTemplate:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp (evidence from a body of writing) from isolated enclaves in Samaná and Nova Scotia peopled by descendants of migrations of early AAVE-speaking groups Template:Xref that suggests that the grammar of early AAVE was closer to that of contemporary British dialects than modern urban AAVE is to other current American dialects, suggesting that the modern language is a result of divergence from mainstream varieties, rather than the result of decreolization from a widespread American creole.<ref>William Labov, in the Foreword to Template:Harvcoltxt, says "I would like to think that this clear demonstration of the similarities among the three diaspora dialects and the White benchmark dialects, combined with their differences from creole grammars, would close at least one chapter in the history of the creole controversies."</ref>

Linguist John McWhorter maintains that the contribution of West African languages to AAVE is minimal. In an interview on National Public Radio's Talk of the Nation, McWhorter characterized AAVE as a "hybrid of regional dialects of Great Britain that slaves in America were exposed to because they often worked alongside the indentured servants who spoke those dialects..." According to McWhorter, virtually all linguists who have carefully studied the origins of AAVE "agree that the West African connection is quite minor."<ref>Ludden, Jennifer (September 6, 2010). "Op-Ed: DEA Call For Ebonics Experts Smart Move" Template:Webarchive. NPR.</ref>

However, a creole theory, less accepted among linguists, posits that AAVE arose from one or more creole languages used by African captives of the Atlantic slave trade, due to the captives speaking many different native languages and therefore needing a new way to communicate among themselves and with their captors.Template:Sfnp According to this theory, these captives first developed what are called pidgins: simplified mixtures of languages.Template:Sfnp Since pidgins form from close contact between speakers of different languages, the slave trade would have been exactly such a situation.Template:Sfnp Creolist John Dillard quotes, for example, slave ship captain William Smith describing the sheer diversity of mutually unintelligible languages just in The Gambia.Template:Sfnp By 1715, an African pidgin was reproduced in novels by Daniel Defoe, in particular, The Life of Colonel Jacque. In 1721, Cotton Mather conducted the first attempt at recording the speech of slaves in his interviews regarding the practice of smallpox inoculation.Template:Sfnp By the time of the American Revolution, varieties among slave creoles were not quite mutually intelligible. Dillard quotes a recollection of "slave language" toward the latter part of the 18th century:Template:Sfnp "Kay, massa, you just leave me, me sit here, great fish jump up into da canoe, here he be, massa, fine fish, massa; me den very grad; den me sit very still, until another great fish jump into de canoe; but me fall asleep, massa, and no wake 'til you come...." Not until the time of the American Civil War did the language of the slaves become familiar to a large number of educated Whites. The abolitionist papers before the war form a rich corpus of examples of plantation creole. In Army Life in a Black Regiment (1870), Thomas Wentworth Higginson detailed many features of his Black soldiers' language. Opponents of the creole theory suggest that such pidgins or creoles existed but simply died out without directly contributing to modern AAVE.

PhonologyEdit

{{#invoke:Listen|main}} {{#invoke:Listen|main}} {{#invoke:Listen|main}} Many pronunciation features distinctly set AAVE apart from other forms of American English (particularly, General American). McWhorter argues that what truly unites all AAVE accents is a uniquely wide-ranging intonation pattern or "melody", which characterizes even the most "neutral" or light African-American accent.Template:Sfnp A handful of multisyllabic words in AAVE differ from General American in their stress placement so that, for example, police, guitar, and Detroit are pronounced with initial stress instead of ultimate stress.Template:Sfnp The following are phonological differences in AAVE vowel and consonant sounds.

Final consonant groups or clusters in AAVE have been examined as evidence of the systematic nature of this language variety, governed by specific rules. Additionally, such analyses have been utilized to bolster arguments concerning the historical origins of AAVE.Template:Citation needed Consonant cluster reduction is a phonological process where a final consonant group or cluster, consisting of two consonant sounds, is simplified or reduced to a single consonant sound. The analysis of consonant cluster reduction in AAVE assumes that, initially, final clusters are present and intact in the language. For example, the word "tes" in AAVE originates from "test", with the final "t" of the "st" consonant cluster being deleted in word-final position.

VowelsEdit

All AAVE vowels
Pure vowels (monophthongs)
English diaphoneme AAVE phoneme<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation CitationClass=web

}} See pronunciation for "Chicago AAVE" and "N.Carolina AAVE."</ref>

Example words
Template:IPAc-en main}} act, pal, trap
main}} (/æ/ raising) ham, land, yeah
Template:IPAc-en {{#invoke:IPA|main}} blah, bother, father,
lot, top, wasp
Template:IPAc-en
{{#invoke:IPA|main}} all, dog, bought,
loss, saw, taught
Template:IPAc-en
Template:IPAc-en main}} dress, met, bread
Template:IPAc-en main}} about, syrup, arena
Template:IPAc-en main}} hit, skim, tip
Template:IPAc-en main}} beam, chic, fleet
Template:IPAc-en main}} bus, flood, what
Template:IPAc-en main}} book, put, should
Template:IPAc-en main}} food, glue, new
Diphthongs
Template:IPAc-en main}} prize, slide, tie
main}} (Canadian raising{{ safesubst:#invoke:Unsubst $B=

Template:Fix }})

price, slice, tyke
Template:IPAc-en main}} now, ouch, scout
Template:IPAc-en main}} lake, paid, rein
Template:IPAc-en main}} boy, choice, moist
Template:IPAc-en main}} goat, oh, show
R-colored vowels
Template:IPAc-en main}}
rhotic: {{#invoke:IPA|main}} 		barn, car, heart
Template:IPAc-en main}}
rhotic: {{#invoke:IPA|main}} 		bare, bear, there
Template:IPAc-en main}} burn, first, herd
Template:IPAc-en main}}
rhotic: {{#invoke:IPA|main}} 		better, martyr, doctor
Template:IPAc-en main}}
rhotic: {{#invoke:IPA|main}} 		fear, peer, tier
Template:IPAc-en non-rhotic: {{#invoke:IPA|main}}
rhotic: {{#invoke:IPA|main}} 		hoarse, horse, poor
score, tour, war
Template:IPAc-en
Template:IPAc-en main}}
rhotic: {{#invoke:IPA|main}} 		cure, Europe, pure

ConsonantsEdit

  • Word-final devoicing of {{#invoke:IPA|main}}, {{#invoke:IPA|main}}, and {{#invoke:IPA|main}}, whereby, for example, cub sounds similar to cup,Template:Sfnp though these words may retain the longer vowel pronunciations that typically precede voiced consonants, and devoicing may be realized with debuccalization (where {{#invoke:IPA|main}} is realized as {{#invoke:IPA|main}}, for instance)<ref>Template:Harvcoltxt, citing Template:Harvcoltxt</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
  • AAVE speakers may not use the fricatives Template:IPAblink (the th in "thin") and Template:IPAblink (the th of "then") that are present in other varieties of English. The phoneme's position in a word determines its exact sound.Template:Sfnp
  • Realization of final ng {{#invoke:IPA|main}}, the velar nasal, as the alveolar nasal {{#invoke:IPA|main}} (assibilation, alveolarization) in function morphemes and content morphemes with two or more syllables like -ing, e.g. tripping {{#invoke:IPA|main}} is pronounced as {{#invoke:IPA|main}} (trippin) instead of the standard {{#invoke:IPA|main}}. This change does not occur in one-syllable content morphemes such as sing, which is {{#invoke:IPA|main}} and not {{#invoke:IPA|main}}. However, singing is {{#invoke:IPA|main}}. Other examples include wedding → {{#invoke:IPA|main}}, morning → {{#invoke:IPA|main}}, nothing → {{#invoke:IPA|main}}. Realization of {{#invoke:IPA|main}} as {{#invoke:IPA|main}} in these contexts is commonly found in many other English dialects.<ref>Template:Harvcoltxt although her examples are different.</ref>
  • A marked feature of AAVE is final consonant cluster reduction.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> This is a process by which the pronunciations of consonant clusters at the end of certain words are reduced to pronouncing only the first consonant of that cluster.Template:Sfnp There are several phenomena that are similar but are governed by different grammatical rules. This tendency has been used by creolists to compare AAVE to West African languages since such languages do not have final clusters.<ref name="SegmentalPhonology">Template:Citation</ref>Template:Sfnp
    • Final consonant clusters that are homorganic (have the same place of articulation) and share the same voicing are reduced.<ref name="SegmentalPhonology"/><ref>Template:Citation</ref> For instance, test is pronounced {{#invoke:IPA|main}} since {{#invoke:IPA|main}} and {{#invoke:IPA|main}} are both voiceless; hand is pronounced {{#invoke:IPA|main}} (alternatively {{#invoke:IPA|main}} or {{#invoke:IPA|main}}), since {{#invoke:IPA|main}} and {{#invoke:IPA|main}} are both voiced; but pant is unchanged, as it contains both a voiced and a voiceless consonant in the cluster.Template:Sfnp It is the plosive ({{#invoke:IPA|main}} and {{#invoke:IPA|main}}) in these examples that is lost rather than the fricative; the nasal is also either preserved completely or lost with preservation of nasality on the preceding consonant.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}</ref> Speakers may carry this declustered pronunciation when pluralizing so that the plural of test is {{#invoke:IPA|main}} rather than {{#invoke:IPA|main}}.Template:Sfnp The clusters {{#invoke:IPA|main}}, {{#invoke:IPA|main}} are also affected.Template:Sfnp

    • More often, word-final {{#invoke:IPA|main}}, {{#invoke:IPA|main}}, and {{#invoke:IPA|main}} are reduced, again with the final element being deleted rather than the former.Template:Sfnp
    • For younger speakers, {{#invoke:IPA|main}} also occurs in words that other varieties of English have {{#invoke:IPA|main}} so that, for example, street is pronounced {{#invoke:IPA|main}}.Template:Sfnp
    • Clusters ending in {{#invoke:IPA|main}} or {{#invoke:IPA|main}} exhibit variation in whether the first or second element is deleted.Template:Sfnp
  • Similarly, final consonants may be deleted (although there is a great deal of variation between speakers in this regard). Most often, {{#invoke:IPA|main}} and {{#invoke:IPA|main}} are deleted. As with other dialects of English, final {{#invoke:IPA|main}} and {{#invoke:IPA|main}} may reduce to a glottal stop. Nasal consonants may be lost while nasalization of the vowel is retained (e.g., find may be pronounced {{#invoke:IPA|main}}). More rarely, {{#invoke:IPA|main}} and {{#invoke:IPA|main}} may also be deleted.Template:Sfnp
  • Use of metathesized forms like aks for "ask"<ref>See Template:Harvcoltxt on "aks" and metathesis, on the frequency with which "aks" is brought up by those who ridicule AAVE (e.g. Template:Harvcoltxt), and on the linguistic or cognitive abilities of a speaker of another variety of English who would take "aks" to mean "axe" in a context that in another variety would probably call for "ask".</ref> or graps for "grasp".
  • General non-rhotic behavior, in which the rhotic consonant {{#invoke:IPA|main}} is typically dropped when not followed by a vowel; it may also manifest as an unstressed Template:IPAblink or the lengthening of the preceding vowel.Template:Sfnp Intervocalic {{#invoke:IPA|main}} may also be dropped, e.g. General American story ({{#invoke:IPA|main}}) can be pronounced {{#invoke:IPA|main}}, though this doesn't occur across morpheme boundaries.<ref>Template:Harvcoltxt, citing Template:Harvcoltxt</ref> {{#invoke:IPA|main}} may also be deleted between a consonant and a back rounded vowel, especially in words like throw, throat, and through.Template:Sfnp
    • The level of AAVE rhoticity is likely somewhat correlated with the rhoticity of White speakers in a given region; in 1960s research, AAVE accents tended to be mostly non-rhotic in Detroit, whose White speakers are rhotic, but completely non-rhotic in New York City, whose White speakers are also often non-rhotic.<ref>Wolfram, Walt; Kohn, Mary E. (forthcoming). "The regional development of African American Language Template:Webarchive". In Sonja Lanehart, Lisa Green, and Jennifer Bloomquist (eds.), The Oxford Handbook on African American Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 147.</ref>
  • {{#invoke:IPA|main}} is often vocalized in patterns similar to that of {{#invoke:IPA|main}} (though never between vowels)Template:Sfnp and, in combination with cluster simplification (see above), can make homophones of toll and toe, fault and fought, and tool and too. Homonymy may be reduced by vowel lengthening and by an off-glide Template:IPAblink.Template:Sfnp

"Deep" phonologyEdit

McWhorter discusses an accent continuum from "a 'deep' Black English through a 'light' Black English to standard English," saying the sounds on this continuum may vary from one African American speaker to the next or even in a single speaker from one situational context to the next.Template:Sfnp McWhorter regards the following as rarer features, characteristic only of a deep Black English but which speakers of light Black English may occasionally "dip into for humorous or emotive effect":Template:Sfnp

  • Lowering of {{#invoke:IPA|main}} before {{#invoke:IPA|main}}, causing pronunciations such as {{#invoke:IPA|main}} for thing (sounding something like thang).Template:Sfnp
  • Word-medially and word-finally, pronouncing {{#invoke:IPA|main}} as Template:IPAblink (so {{#invoke:IPA|main}} for month and {{#invoke:IPA|main}} for mouth), and {{#invoke:IPA|main}} as Template:IPAblink (so {{#invoke:IPA|main}} for smooth and {{#invoke:IPA|main}} for rather.Template:Sfnp This is called th-fronting. Word-initially, Template:IPAc-en is Template:IPAblink (so those and doze sound nearly identical). This is called th-stopping. In other words, the tongue fully touches the top teeth.
  • Glide deletion (monophthongization) of all instances of Template:IPAc-en, universally, resulting in {{#invoke:IPA|main}} (so that, for example, even rice may sound like rahss.)
  • Full gliding (diphthongization) of Template:IPAc-en, resulting in {{#invoke:IPA|main}} (so that win may sound like wee-un).
  • Raising and fronting of the vowel Template:IPAc-en of words like strut, mud, tough, etc. to something like {{#invoke:IPA|main}}.

GrammarEdit

Tense and aspectEdit

Although AAVE does not necessarily have the simple past-tense marker of other English varieties (that is, the -ed of "worked"), it does have an optional tense system with at least four aspects of the past tense and two aspects of the future tense.Template:Sfnp The dialect uses several tense–aspect–mood markers integrated into the predicate phrase,<ref name="DeBose">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> including gon or gonna (future tense), done (completive aspect), be (habitual aspect, state of being), and been (durative aspect). These can function separately or in conjunction.<ref name="DeBose"/>

Phases/tenses of AAVETemplate:Sfnp
Phase Example
Past Pre-recent I been bought it
Recent a|[1]}}
Pre-present I did buy it
Past inceptive I do buy it
Present I be buying it
Future Immediate b|[2]}}
Post-immediate b|[3]}}
Indefinite future I gonna buy it

<templatestyles src="Citation/styles.css"/>^a{{#if:| }} Syntactically, I bought it is grammatical, but done (always unstressed, pronounced as Template:IPAc-en) is used to emphasize the completed nature of the action.Template:Sfnp

<templatestyles src="Citation/styles.css"/>^b{{#if:| }} I'ma, also commonly spelled Imma, is pronounced as Template:IPAc-en.<ref>Scott, Candice L. (2016). "Tense & Aspect Markers in African American English". University of Michigan Dissertation Papers. p. 94.</ref> Harvard professor Sunn m'Cheaux claims I'ma originated in the Gullah language (an English creole), which uses "a-" instead of "-ing" for this type of verb inflection.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Alternatively, other sources suggest it is a further shortening of I'm gonna.<ref>Scott, 2016, pp. 86, 94.</ref>

As phase auxiliary verbs, been and done must occur as the first auxiliary; when they occur as the second, they carry additional aspects:Template:Sfnp

He been done working means "he finished work a long time ago".
He done been working means "until recently, he worked over a long period of time".

The latter example shows one of the most distinctive features of AAVE: the use of be to indicate that performance of the verb is of a habitual nature. In most other American English dialects, this can only be expressed unambiguously by using adverbs such as usually.<ref>Aspectual be: Template:Harvcoltxt</ref>

This aspect-marking form of been or BIN<ref>In order to distinguish the stressed and unstressed forms, which carry different meaning, linguists often write the stressed version as BIN</ref> is stressed and semantically distinct from the unstressed form: She BIN running ('She has been running for a long time') and She been running ('She has been running').Template:Sfnp<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> This aspect has been given several names, including perfect phase, remote past, and remote phase (this article uses the third).Template:Sfnp As shown above, been places action in the distant past.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> However, when been is used with stative verbs or gerund forms, been shows that the action began in the distant past and that it is continuing now. Template:Harvcoltxt suggests that a better translation when used with stative verbs is "for a long time". For instance, in response to "I like your new dress", one might hear Oh, I been had this dress, meaning that the speaker has had the dress for a long time and that it isn't new.Template:Sfnp

To see the difference between the simple past and the gerund when used with been, consider the following expressions:

I been bought her clothes means "I bought her clothes a long time ago".
I been buying her clothes means "I've been buying her clothes for a long time".

Auxiliaries in African American Vernacular English are related in a typical pattern. They can be grouped into negative forms and affirmative forms for each of the words. For example, "had" is an affirmative form, while "hatn" is the corresponding negative form. These same auxiliaries can be used to mark sentences for the anterior aspect. As another example, was marks type 1 sentences, which by default are present tense, and transforms them to a time before the present. Take, for instance, "She at home": the word was can be inserted to mark this sentence, making the marked equivalent "She was at home". Auxiliaries such as these also have opposing negative and affirmative forms. In its negative form the auxiliary verb "wadn" is used to convey the opposing affirmative form.<ref name="DeBose" />

AAVE grammatical aspects
Aspect Example Standard English meaning
Habitual/continuative aspect<ref>Template:Harvcoltxt refers to this as a combination of "punctuative" and "imperfect" aspects.</ref> He be working Tuesdays. He frequently (or habitually) works on Tuesdays.
Intensified continuative (habitual) He stay working. He is always working.
Intensified continuative (not habitual)Template:Sfnp He steady working. He keeps on working.
Perfect progressive He been working. He has been working.
Irrealis (Mood) He finna go to work. a|[4]}}

In addition to these, come (which may or may not be an auxiliary<ref>See Template:Harvcoltxt</ref>) may be used to indicate speaker indignation, such as in Don't come acting like you don't know what happened and you started the whole thing ("Don't try to act as if you don't know what happened, because you started the whole thing").Template:Sfnp

The irrealis<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> mood marker be, having no intrinsic tense refers to a current or future event that may be less than real.

Modals

The dialect uses double modals, such as might could, which can function in various ways, including as adverbs.<ref>Coats, S. (2024). Naturalistic double modals in North America. American Speech: A Quarterly of Linguistic Usage, 99(1), 47–77. https://doi.org/10.1215/00031283-9766889</ref>

NegationEdit

Negatives are formed differently from most other varieties of English:Template:Sfnp

  • Use of ain't as a general negative marker. As in other English dialects, it can be used instead of am not, isn't, aren't, haven't, and hasn't. However, some speakers of AAVE distinctively use ain't instead of don't, doesn't, or didn't (e.g., I ain't know that).Template:Sfnp Ain't had its origins in common English but became increasingly stigmatized since the 19th century Template:Xref.
  • Negative concord, also called "double negation", as in I didn't go nowhere; if the sentence is negative, all negatable forms are negated. This contrasts with standard written English convention, which interprets a double negative to mean a positive (although this was not always so; see double negative).Template:Sfn
  • In a negative construction, an indefinite pronoun such as nobody or nothing can be inverted with the negative verb particle for emphasis (e.g., Don't nobody know the answer, Ain't nothing going on.)

While AAVE shares these with Creole languages,Template:Sfnp Template:Harvcoltxt use data from early recordings of African Nova Scotian English, Samaná English, and the recordings of former slaves to demonstrate that negation was inherited from nonstandard colonial English.Template:Sfnp

Other grammatical characteristicsEdit

  • The copula be in the present tense is often dropped, as in Russian, Hungarian, Arabic, and other languages. For example: You crazy ("You're crazy") or She my sister ("She's my sister"). This extends to questions: Who you? ("Who're you?") and Where you at? ("Where are you (at)?"). This has been sometimes considered a Southern U.S. regionalism, though it is most frequent in Black speech.Template:Sfnp On the other hand, is can be included for emphasis: Yes, she is my sister. The general rules are:
    • Only the forms is and are (of which the latter is often replaced by is) can be omitted; am, was, and were are not deleted.
    • These forms cannot be omitted when they would be pronounced with stress in Standard American (whether or not the stress serves specifically to impart an emphatic sense to the verb's meaning).
    • These forms can be omitted only when the corresponding form in standard English can be contracted. For example, I don't know where he is cannot be reduced to *I don't know where he, and correspondingly Standard English forbids the contraction *I don't know where he's. Compare the acceptable forms I don't know where he at in AAVE, paralleling I don't know where he's at in Standard English.
    • Other minor conditions also apply.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

  • Verbs are uninflected for number and person: there is no -s ending in the present-tense third-person singular. Example: She write poetry ("She writes poetry"). AAVE don't for standard English doesn't comes from this, unlike in some other dialects which use don't for standard English doesn't but does when not in the negative. Similarly, AAVE was is used for standard English was and were.Template:Sfnp
  • The genitive -'s ending may or may not be used.Template:Sfnp Genitive case is inferrable from adjacency. This is similar to many creoles throughout the Caribbean. Many language forms throughout the world use an unmarked possessive; it may here result from a simplification of grammatical structures. Example: my momma sister ("my mother's sister").
  • The words it and they denote existence of something, equivalent to standard English's there is or there are.Template:Sfnp
  • Word order in questions: Why they ain't growing? ("Why aren't they growing?") and Who the hell she think she is? ("Who the hell does she think she is?") lack the inversion of most other forms of English. Because of this, there is also no need for the "auxiliary do".Template:Sfnp
  • Relative clauses which modify a noun in the object or predicate nominative position are not obligatorily introduced by a relative pronoun.Template:Sfnp

VocabularyEdit

AAVE shares most of its lexicon with other varieties of English, particularly that of informal and Southern dialects; for example, the relatively recent use of y'all. As statistically shown by Algeo (1991: 3–14),<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> the main sources for new words are combining, shifting, shortening, blending, borrowing, and creating.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> However, it has also been suggested that some of the vocabulary unique to AAVE has its origin in West African languages, but etymology is often difficult to trace, and without a trail of recorded usage, the suggestions below cannot be considered proven.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Early AAVE and Gullah contributed a number of words of African origin to the American English mainstream, including gumbo,<ref>Shorter OED, 5th edition, cf Bantu kingumbo</ref> goober,<ref>Shorter OED, 5th edition, Kikongo nguba</ref> yam, and banjo.<ref>Nagle, S., & Sanders, S. (Eds.). (2003). English in the Southern United States (Studies in English Language). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 12.</ref>

Compounding in AAVE is a very common method in creating new vocabulary. The most common type of compounding is the noun–noun combination.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> There is also the adjective–noun combination, which is the second most commonly occurring type of combination found in AAVE slang.<ref name="Widawski">Template:Cite book</ref> AAVE also combines adjectives with other adjectives, less frequently, but more so than in standard American English.<ref name="Widawski ix–xii">Template:Citation</ref>

AAVE has also contributed slang expressions such as cool and hip.Template:Sfnp In many cases, the postulated etymologies are not recognized by linguists or the Oxford English Dictionary, such as to dig,<ref>This is from Wolof dëgg or dëgga, meaning "to understand/appreciate" according to Smitherman 2000 s.v. "Dig"; or, it may instead come from Irish tuig, according to Random House Unabridged, 2001</ref> jazz,Template:Sfnp tote,Template:Sfnp and bad-mouth, a calque from Mandinka.<ref>Template:Harvcoltxt cited in Template:Harvcoltxt.</ref> African American slang is formed by words and phrases that are regarded as informal. It involves combining, shifting, shortening, blending, borrowing, and creating new words. African American slang possess all of the same lexical qualities and linguistic mechanisms as any other language. AAVE slang is more common in speech than it is in writing.<ref name="Widawski ix–xii"/>

AAVE also has words that either are not part of most other American English dialects or have strikingly different meanings. For example, there are several words in AAVE referring to White people that are not part of mainstream American English; these include gray as an adjective for Whites (as in gray dude),<ref name="Widawski"/> possibly from the color of Confederate uniforms; and paddy, an extension of the slang use for "Irish".<ref>Gray: Smitherman, Black Talk, s.v. "Gray". Paddy: Dictionary of American Regional English, s.v. "Paddy".</ref> "Red bone" is another example of this, usually referring to light skinned African Americans.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

"Ofay", which is pejorative, is another general term for a White person; it might derive from the Ibibio word afia, which means "light-colored", from the Yoruba word ofe, spoken in hopes of disappearing from danger. However, most dictionaries simply say its etymology is unknown.<ref>Template:Harvcoltxt suggests either a general West African or the Pig Latin origin. Black Talk, s.v. "Ofay".</ref>

Kitchen refers to the particularly curly or kinky hair at the nape of the neck, and siditty or seddity means "snobbish" or "bourgeois".<ref>Template:Harvcoltxt, s.v. "Kitchen". Kitchen, siditty: Dictionary of American Regional English, s.vv. "Kitchen", "Siditty".</ref>

AAVE has also contributed many words and phrases to other varieties of English, including chill out, main squeeze, soul, funky, and threads.Template:Sfnp

Influence on other dialectsEdit

African-American Vernacular English has influenced the development of other dialects of English. The AAVE accent, New York accent, and Spanish-language accents have together yielded the sound of New York Latino English, some of whose speakers use an accent indistinguishable from an AAVE one.Template:Sfnp AAVE has also influenced certain Chicano accents and Liberian Settler English, directly derived from the AAVE of the original 16,000 African Americans who migrated to Liberia in the 1800s.<ref>Singler, John Victor (2004). Liberian Settler English: phonology. In Edgar W. Schneider, Kate Burridge, Bernd Kortmann, Rajend Mesthrie & Clive Upton (eds.), A Handbook of Varieties of English: Phonology. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. pp. 875-876.</ref> In the United States, urban youth participating in hip-hop culture or marginalized as ethnic minorities are also well-studied in adopting African-American Vernacular English, or prominent elements of it: for example, Southeast-Asian Americans embracing hip-hop identities.<ref>Reyes, Angela (2007). Language, Identity, and Stereotype Among Southeast Asian American Youth: The Other Asian. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

VariationEdit

Urban versus rural variationsEdit

The first studies on the African-American Vernacular English took place in cities such as New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, to name a few.Template:Sfnp These studies concluded that the AAVE was homogeneous, which means that it was spoken roughly the same way everywhere around the country.Template:Sfnp Later, sociolinguists would realize that these cities lacked the influence of the rural south; the early studies had not considered the representation of the Southern United States, which caused AAVE studies to change.Template:Sfnp To make those changes, newer studies took into consideration new areas of the country, including the rural South.Template:Sfnp

AAVE began as mostly rural and Southern, yet today is mostly urban and nationally widespread, and its more recent urban features are now even diffusing into rural areas.<ref>Wolfram, Walt (2004). "The Grammar of Urban African American Vernacular English". In Handbook of Varieties of English, edited by Bernd Kortmann and Edgar Schneider. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. p. 334.</ref> Urban AAVE alone is intensifying with the grammatical features exemplified in these sentences: "He be the best" (intensified equative be), "She be done had her baby" (resultative be done), and "They come hollerin" (indignant come). On the other hand, rural AAVE alone shows certain features too, such as: "I was a-huntin" (a-prefixing); "It riz above us" (different irregular forms); and "I want for to eat it" (for to complement).<ref>Wolfram, Walt (2004). "Urban African American Vernacular English: morphology and syntax". In Handbook of Varieties of English, edited by Bernd Kortmann and Edgar Schneider. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. p. 335-336.</ref> Using the word bees even in place of be to mean is or are in standard English, as in the sentence "That's the way it bees" is also one of the rarest of all deep AAVE features today, and most middle-class AAVE speakers would recognize the verb bees as part of only a deep "Southern" or "country" speaker's vocabulary.Template:Sfnp

Local variationsEdit

There are at least 10 distinct regional accents in AAVE,Template:Sfnp and regional patterns of pronunciation and word choice appear on social media.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

Regional variation in AAVE does not pattern with other regional variation in North American English,Template:Sfnp which broadly follows East-to-West migration patterns,Template:Sfnp but instead patterns with the population movements during the Great Migration,Template:Sfnp resulting in a broadly South-to-North pattern, albeit with founder effects in cities that already had existing African American populations at the beginning of the Great Migration.Template:Sfnp<ref>Template:Cite thesis</ref> There is no vowel for which the geographic variation in AAVE patterns with that of White American English.Template:Sfnp

New York City AAVE incorporates some local features of the New York accent, including its high Template:Sc vowel; meanwhile, conversely, Pittsburgh AAVE may merge this same vowel with the Template:Sc vowel, matching the cot-caught merger of White Pittsburgh accents, though AAVE accents traditionally do not have the cot-caught merger. Memphis, Atlanta, and Research Triangle AAVE incorporates the Template:Sc vowel raising and Template:Sc vowel lowering associated with White Southern accents. Memphis and St. Louis AAVE are developing, since the mid-twentieth century, an iconic [[Square-nurse merger|merger of the vowels in Template:Sc and Template:Sc]], making there sound like thurr.<ref>Wolfram, Walt; Kohn, Mary E. (forthcoming). "The regional development of African American Language Template:Webarchive". In Sonja Lanehart, Lisa Green, and Jennifer Bloomquist (eds.), The Oxford Handbook on African American Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 149-151.</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> Californian AAVE often lacks a cot-caught merger, especially before nasals.Template:Sfnp

Social perception and contextEdit

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African-American Vernacular suffers from persistent stigma and negative social evaluation in American culture. By definition, as a vernacular dialect of English, AAVE has not received the social prestige of a standard dialect, leading to widespread and long-standing misconceptions that it is a grammatically inferior form of English, which linguistics research of the twentieth century has debunked. However, educators and social commentators traditionally have advocated for eliminating AAVE usage through the public-education system for a variety of reasons, ranging from a continued belief that AAVE is intrinsically deficient to arguments that its use, by being stigmatized in certain social contexts, is socially limiting.Template:Sfnp Some of the harshest criticism of AAVE or its use has come from African Americans themselves.Template:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp<ref>"Black critics [of Black English] use all the different arguments of the White critics, and spare us the more or less open embarrassment that all White Americans feel when publicly criticizing anything or anyone Black. So, of course, they can be even more wrong-headed and self-righteously wrong-headed than anyone else ..." Template:Harvcoltxt.</ref> A conspicuous example was the "Pound Cake speech", in which Bill Cosby criticized some African Americans for various social behaviors, including the way they talked.

Educators traditionally have attempted to eliminate AAVE usage through the public education system, perceiving the dialect as grammatically defective.Template:Sfnp In 1974, the teacher-led Conference on College Composition and Communication issued a position statement affirming students' rights to their own dialects and the validity of all dialects.Template:Sfnp Mainstream linguistics has long agreed with this view about dialects.Template:Sfnp In 1979, a judge ordered the Ann Arbor School District to find a way to identify AAVE speakers in the schools and to "use that knowledge in teaching such students how to read standard English."<ref>Flood, J., Jensen, J., Lapp, D., Squire, J. (1991). Handbook of research on teaching the English language arts. New York, NY: Macmillan Publishing Company.</ref> In 1996, Oakland Unified School District made a controversial resolution for AAVE, which was later called "Ebonics". The Oakland School board approved that Ebonics be recognized as a language independent from English (though this particular view is not endorsed by linguists), that teachers would participate in recognizing this language, and that it would be used in theory to support the transition from Ebonics to Standard American English in schools. This program lasted three years and then died off.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Although the distinction between AAVE and General American dialects is clear to most English speakers, some characteristics, notably double negatives and the omission of certain auxiliaries (see below) such as the has in has been are also characteristic of many colloquial dialects of American English. There is general uniformity of AAVE grammar, despite its vast geographic spread across the whole country.Template:Sfnp This may be due in part to relatively recent migrations of some African Americans out of the American South (see Great Migration and Second Great Migration) as well as to long-term racial segregation that kept these speakers living together in largely homogeneous communities.Template:Sfnp

See alsoEdit

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NotesEdit

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ReferencesEdit

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Further readingEdit

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