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African-American Vernacular English

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Not to be confused withAfrican-American English.

African-American Vernacular English
Black Vernacular English
RegionUnited States
EthnicityAfrican Americans
Early forms
Latin(English alphabet)
American Braille
Language codes
ISO 639-3–
Glottologafri1276
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African-American Vernacular English[a](AAVE)[b]is thevarietyof English natively spoken, particularly in urban communities, by mostworking- andmiddle-classAfrican Americansand someBlack Canadians.[4]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 asociolinguisticcontinuum. However, in formal speaking contexts, speakers tend toswitchto morestandard Englishgrammar and vocabulary, usually while retaining elements of thenon-standardaccent.[5][6]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.[7][8][9]

As with mostEnglish varieties spoken by African Americans,African-American Vernacular English shares a large portion of itsgrammarandphonologywith theregional dialects of the Southern United States,[10]and especiallyolder Southern American English,[11]due to thehistorical enslavementof African Americans primarily in that region.

Mainstream linguists see only minor parallels between AAVE,West African languages,andEnglish-based creole languages,[12][13][14][15]instead most directlytracing backAAVE to diverse non-standard dialects of English[16][17]as spoken by the English-speaking settlers in theSouthern Coloniesand later theSouthern United States.[18]However, a minority of linguists argue that the vernacular shares so many characteristics with Africancreole languagesspoken around the world that it could have originated in anEnglish-based creoleor semi-creole language, distinct from the English language, before undergoingdecreolization.[19][20][21]

Origins

African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) may be considered adialect,ethnolectorsociolect.[22]While it is clear that there is a strong historical relationship between AAVE andearlier 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 fromEnglish-based creole languagesthat "decreolized" back into English. In the early 2000s,Shana Poplackprovidedcorpus-based evidence[13][14](evidence from a body of writing) from isolated enclaves inSamanáandNova Scotiapeopled by descendants of migrations of early AAVE-speaking groups (seeSamaná English) 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.[23]

LinguistJohn McWhortermaintains that the contribution of West African languages to AAVE is minimal. In an interview onNational Public Radio'sTalk 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."[24]

However, a creole theory, less accepted among linguists, posits that AAVE arose from one or morecreole languagesused by African captives of theAtlantic 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.[25]According to this theory, these captives first developed what are calledpidgins:simplified mixtures of languages.[26]Since pidgins form from close contact between speakers of different languages, the slave trade would have been exactly such a situation.[26]Creolist John Dillard quotes, for example,slave shipcaptain William Smith describing the sheer diversity of mutually unintelligible languages just inThe Gambia.[27]By 1715, an African pidgin was reproduced in novels byDaniel Defoe,in particular,The Life of Colonel Jacque.In 1721,Cotton Matherconducted the first attempt at recording the speech of slaves in his interviews regarding the practice of smallpox inoculation.[28]By the time of the American Revolution, varieties among slave creoles were not quitemutually intelligible.Dillard quotes a recollection of "slave language" toward the latter part of the 18th century:[27]"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 theAmerican Civil Wardid the language of the slaves become familiar to a large number of educated Whites. The abolitionist papers before the war form a richcorpusof examples of plantation creole. InArmy Life in a Black Regiment(1870),Thomas Wentworth Higginsondetailed 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.

Phonology

Speech example
An example of a man from northernOhiowith an AAVE accent (Bobby Womack).
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Speech example
An example of a man from New York City with an AAVE accent (Eric Adams).
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Speech example
An example of two men with AAVE accents, the interviewer fromGeorgia(D. J. Shockley) and the interviewee fromLouisiana(Russell Gage).
Problems playing this file? Seemedia help.

Many pronunciation features distinctly set AAVE apart from other forms ofAmerican 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.[29]A handful of multisyllabic words in AAVE differ from General American in their stress placement so that, for example,police,guitar,andDetroitare pronounced with initial stress instead of ultimate stress.[30]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.[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.

Vowels

All AAVE vowels
Pure vowels (monophthongs)
English diaphoneme AAVEphoneme[31] Example words
/æ/ [æ~ɛː~ɛə] act, pal, trap
[ɛː~ɛə~eə](/æ/ raising) ham, land, yeah
/ɑː/ [a~ɑ̈~ɑ] blah,bother, father,
lot, top, wasp
/ɒ/
[ɒ(ɔ)~ɔ(ʊ)] all, dog, bought,
loss, saw,taught
/ɔː/
/ɛ/ [ɛ~eə] dress, met, bread
/ə/ [ə] about, syrup,arena
/ɪ/ [ɪ~iə] hit, skim, tip
/iː/ [i] beam, chic, fleet
/ʌ/ [ʌ~ɜ] bus, flood, what
/ʊ/ [ʊ~ɵ~ø̞] book, put, should
/uː/ [ʊu~u] food, glue,new
Diphthongs
/aɪ/ [äe~äː~aː] prize, slide, tie
[äɪ](Canadian raising[dubious–discuss]) price, slice, tyke
/aʊ/ [æɔ~æə] now,ouch, scout
/eɪ/ [eɪ~ɛɪ] lake, paid, rein
/ɔɪ/ [oɪ] boy,choice, moist
/oʊ/ [ʌʊ~ɔʊ] goat,oh,show
R-colored vowels
/ɑːr/ non-rhotic:[ɑ~ɒ]
rhotic:[ɑɹ~ɒɹ] 		barn, car,heart
/ɛər/ non-rhotic:[ɛə]
rhotic:[ɛɹ] 		bare,bear,there
/ɜːr/ [ɚ] burn, first, herd
/ər/ non-rhotic:[ə]
rhotic:[ɚ] 		better,martyr,doctor
/ɪər/ non-rhotic:[iə~iɤ]
rhotic:[iɹ] 		fear,peer,tier
/ɔːr/ non-rhotic:[oə~ɔə~ɔo]
rhotic:[oɹ] 		hoarse, horse, poor
score,tour,war
/ʊər/
/jʊər/ non-rhotic:[juə~jʊə]
rhotic:[juɹ~jʊɹ] 		cure,Europe, pure
  • African American Vowel Shift: AAVE accents have traditionally resisted thecot-caught mergerspreading nationwide, withLOTpronounced[ɑ̈]andTHOUGHTtraditionally pronounced[ɒɔ],though now often[ɒ~ɔə].Early 2000s research has shown that this resistance may continue to be reinforced by the fronting ofLOT,linked through achain shiftof vowels to the raising of theTRAP,DRESS,and perhapsKITvowels. This chain shift is called the "African American Shift".[32]However, there is still evidence of AAVE speakers picking up the cot-caught merger inPittsburgh,Pennsylvania,[33]inCharleston,South Carolina,[34]Florida and Georgia,[35]and in parts of California.[35]
  • Reduction of certaindiphthong[36]forms tomonophthongs,in particular, thePRICEvowel/aɪ/ismonophthongizedto[aː]except beforevoiceless consonants(this is also found in mostWhite Southern dialects). The vowel sound inCHOICE(/ɔɪ/in General American) is also monophthongized, especially before/l/,makingboilindistinguishable fromball.[37]
  • Pin–pen merger:Before nasal consonants (/m/,/n/,and/ŋ/),DRESS/ɛ/andKIT/ɪ/are both pronounced like[ɪ~ɪə],makingpenandpinhomophones.[37]This is alsopresent in other dialects,particularly of the South. The pin-pen merger is not universal in AAVE, and there is evidence for unmerged speakers in California, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.[38][39][40]
  • The distinction between theKIT/ɪ/andFLEECE/i/vowels beforeliquid consonantsis frequently reduced or absent, makingfeelandfillhomophones (fill–feelmerger)./ʊər/and/ɔːr/also merge, makingpoorandpourhomophones (cure–forcemerger).[37]

Consonants

  • Word-final devoicing of/b/,/d/,and/ɡ/,whereby, for example,cubsounds similar tocup,[41]though these words may retain the longer vowel pronunciations that typically precede voiced consonants, and devoicing may be realized with debuccalization (where/d/is realized as[.],for instance)[42][43]
  • AAVE speakers may not use thefricatives[θ](thethin "thin ") and[ð](thethof "then ") that are present in other varieties of English. The phoneme's position in a word determines its exact sound.[44]
    • Word-initially,/θ/is normally the same as in other English dialects (sothinis[θɪn]); in other situations, it maymove forward in the mouthto/f/(Th-fronting).
    • Word-initially,/ð/is[ð~d](sothismay be[dɪs]). In other situations,/ð/may move forward to/v/.
  • Realization of finalng/ŋ/,thevelar nasal,as thealveolar nasal[n](assibilation,alveolarization) infunctionmorphemesand content morphemes with two or more syllables like-ing,e.g.tripping/ˈtrɪpɪŋ/is pronounced as[ˈtɹɪpɨn](trippin) instead of the standard[ˈtɹɪpɪŋ].This change does not occur in one-syllablecontentmorphemes such assing,which is[sɪŋ]and not*[sɪn].However,singingis[ˈsɪŋɨn].Other examples includewedding→[ˈwɛɾɨn],morning→[ˈmo(ɹ)nɨn],nothing→[ˈnʌfɨn].Realization of/ŋ/as[n]in these contexts is commonly found in many other English dialects.[45]
  • A marked feature of AAVE is final consonant cluster reduction.[46]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.[47]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.[48][47]
    • Final consonant clusters that arehomorganic(have the sameplace of articulation) and share the samevoicingare reduced.[48][49]For instance,testis pronounced[tɛs]since/t/and/s/are both voiceless;handis pronounced[hæn](alternatively[hæ̃]or[hɛən]), since/n/and/d/are both voiced; butpantis unchanged, as it contains both a voiced and a voiceless consonant in the cluster.[50]It is the plosive (/t/and/d/) 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.[51]Speakers may carry this declustered pronunciation when pluralizing so that the plural of test is[ˈtɛsɨs]rather than[tɛsts].[52]The clusters/ft/,/md/are also affected.[53]
    • More often, word-final/sp/,/st/,and/sk/are reduced, again with the final element being deleted rather than the former.[54]
    • For younger speakers,/skr/also occurs in words that other varieties of English have/str/so that, for example,streetis pronounced[skɹit].[36]
    • Clusters ending in/s/or/z/exhibit variation in whether the first or second element is deleted.[55]
  • Similarly, final consonants may be deleted (although there is a great deal of variation between speakers in this regard). Most often,/t/and/d/are deleted. As with other dialects of English, final/t/and/k/may reduce to aglottal stop.Nasal consonants may be lost while nasalization of the vowel is retained (e.g.,findmay be pronounced[fãː]). More rarely,/s/and/z/may also be deleted.[56]
  • Use ofmetathesizedforms likeaksfor "ask"[57]orgrapsfor "grasp".
  • Generalnon-rhoticbehavior, in which therhotic consonant/r/is typically dropped when not followed by a vowel; it may also manifest as an unstressed[ə]or the lengthening of the preceding vowel.[58]Intervocalic/r/may also be dropped, e.g. General Americanstory([ˈstɔɹi]) can be pronounced[ˈstɔ.i],though this doesn't occur across morpheme boundaries.[59]/r/may also be deleted between a consonant and a back rounded vowel, especially in words likethrow,throat,andthrough.[60]
    • 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.[61]
  • /l/is often vocalized in patterns similar to that of/r/(though never between vowels)[62]and, in combination with cluster simplification (see above), can make homophones oftollandtoe,faultandfought,andtoolandtoo.Homonymy may be reduced by vowel lengthening and by an off-glide[ɤ].[63]

"Deep" phonology

McWhorter discusses an accentcontinuumfrom "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.[64]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":[29]

  • Loweringof/ɪ/before/ŋ/,causing pronunciations such as[θɛŋ~θæŋ]forthing(sounding something likethang).[36]
  • Word-medially and word-finally, pronouncing/θ/as[f](so[mʌmf]formonthand[mæɔf]formouth), and/ð/as[v](so[smuv]forsmoothand[ˈɹævə(ɹ)]forrather.[65]This is calledth-fronting.Word-initially,/ð/is[d](sothoseanddozesound nearly identical). This is calledth-stopping.In other words, the tongue fully touches the top teeth.
  • Glide deletion (monophthongization) of all instances of/aɪ/,universally, resulting in[aː~äː](so that, for example, evenricemay sound likerahss.)
  • Full gliding (diphthongization) of/ɪ/,resulting in[iə](so thatwinmay sound likewee-un).
  • Raisingand fronting of the vowel/ʌ/of words likestrut, mud, tough,etc. to something like[ɜ~ə].

Grammar

Tense and aspect

Although AAVE does not necessarily have thesimple past-tensemarker of other English varieties (that is, the-edof "worked"), it does have an optional tense system with at least four aspects of the past tense and two aspects of the future tense.[66]The dialect uses severalTense-Aspect-Mood markersintegrated into the predicate phrase,[67]includinggonorgonna(future tense),done(completive aspect),be(habitual aspect, state of being), andbeen(durative aspect). These can function separately or in conjunction.[67]

Phases/tenses of AAVE[68]
Phase Example
Past Pre-recent I been bought it
Recent I done bought ita
Pre-present I did buy it
Past inceptive I do buy it
Present I be buying it
Future Immediate I'ma buy it
Post-immediate I'ma gonna buy it
Indefinite future I gonna buy it

^aSyntactically,I bought itis grammatical, butdone(always unstressed, pronounced as /dən/) is used to emphasize the completed nature of the action.[69]

Harvard professor Sunn m'Cheaux says the immediate future tense (for example "I'ma" ) originated in theGullahlanguage (an English creole), which uses "a-" instead of "-ing" for this type of verb inflection.[70]

As phase auxiliary verbs,beenanddonemust occur as the first auxiliary; when they occur as the second, they carry additionalaspects:[68]

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

The latter example shows one of the most distinctive features of AAVE: the use ofbeto 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 asusually.[71]

This aspect-marking form ofbeenor BIN[72]is stressed and semantically distinct from the unstressed form:She BIN running('She has been running for a long time') andShe been running('She has been running').[73][74]This aspect has been given several names, includingperfect phase,remote past,andremote phase(this article uses the third).[75]As shown above,beenplaces action in the distant past.[76]However, whenbeenis used withstative verbsorgerundforms,beenshows that the action began in the distant past and that it is continuing now.Rickford (1999)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 hearOh, I been had this dress,meaning that the speaker has had the dress for a long time and that it isn't new.[75]

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

I been bought her clothesmeans "I bought her clothes a long time ago".
I been buying her clothesmeans "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,wasmarks 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 wordwascan 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.[67]

AAVE grammatical aspects
Aspect Example Standard Englishmeaning
Habitual/continuative aspect[77] 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)[78] He steady working. He keeps on working.
Perfect progressive He been working. He has been working.
Irrealis(Mood)[clarification needed] He finna go to work. He is about to go to work.a
  • ^aFinnacorresponds to "fixing to" in other varieties.[79]It is also writtenfixina,fixna,fitna,andfinta.[80]

In addition to these,come(which may or may not be an auxiliary[81]) may be used to indicate speaker indignation, such as inDon'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" ).[82]

The irrealis[83]mood markerbe,having no intrinsic tense refers to a current or future event that may be less than real.

Modals

The dialect uses double modals, such asmight could,which can function in various ways, including as adverbs.[84]

Negation

Negatives are formed differently from most other varieties of English:[85]

  • Use ofain'tas a general negative marker. As in other English dialects, it can be used instead ofam not,isn't,aren't,haven't,andhasn't.However, some speakers of AAVE distinctively useain'tinstead ofdon't,doesn't,ordidn't(e.g.,I ain't know that).[86]Ain'thad its origins in common English but became increasingly stigmatized since the 19th century. See alsoamn't.
  • Negative concord, also called "double negation", as inI didn't go nowhere;if the sentence is negative, all negatable forms are negated. This contrasts withstandard written Englishconvention, which interprets a double negative to mean a positive (although this was not always so; seedouble negative).[87]
  • In a negative construction, an indefinite pronoun such asnobodyornothingcan 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,[88]Howe & Walker (2000)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.[85]

Other grammatical characteristics

  • Thecopulabein the present tense is oftendropped,as inRussian,Hungarian,Arabic,and other languages. For example:You crazy( "You're crazy" ) orShe my sister( "She's my sister" ). This extends to questions:Who you?( "Who're you?" ) andWhere you at?( "Where are you (at)?" ). This has been sometimes considered a Southern U.S. regionalism, though it is most frequent in Black speech.[89]On the other hand,iscan be included for emphasis:Yes, sheismy sister.The general rules are:
    • Only the formsisandare(of which the latter is often replaced byis) can be omitted;am,was,andwereare 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 iscannot 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 formsI don't know where he atin AAVE, parallelingI don't know where he's atin Standard English.
    • Other minor conditions also apply.[90]
  • Verbs are uninflected for number and person: there is no-sending in the present-tense third-person singular. Example:She write poetry( "She writes poetry" ). AAVEdon'tfor standard Englishdoesn'tcomes from this, unlike in some other dialects which usedon'tfor standard Englishdoesn'tbutdoeswhen not in the negative. Similarly, AAVEwasis used for standard Englishwasandwere.[91]
  • The genitive -'s ending may or may not be used.[92]Genitive case is inferrable from adjacency. This is similar to many creoles throughout theCaribbean.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 wordsitandtheydenote existence of something, equivalent to standard English'sthere isorthere are.[93]
  • Word order in questions:Why they ain't growing?( "Why aren't they growing?" ) andWho 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 "auxiliarydo".[94]
  • Relative clauseswhich modify a noun in the object or predicate nominative position are not obligatorily introduced by a relative pronoun.[95]

Vocabulary

AAVE shares most of its lexicon with other varieties of English, particularly that of informal andSoutherndialects; for example, the relatively recent use ofy'all.As statistically shown by Algeo (1991: 3–14),[96]the main sources for new words are combining, shifting, shortening, blending, borrowing, and creating.[97]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.[98]

Early AAVE and Gullah contributed a number of words of African origin to the American English mainstream, includinggumbo,[99]goober,[100]yam,andbanjo.[101]

Compounding in AAVE is a very common method in creating new vocabulary. The most common type of compounding is the noun–noun combination.[102]There is also the adjective–noun combination, which is the second most commonly occurring type of combination found in AAE slang.[103]AAE also combines adjectives with other adjectives, less frequently, but more so than in standard American English.[104]

AAVE has also contributed slang expressions such ascoolandhip.[105]In many cases, the postulated etymologies are not recognized by linguists or theOxford English Dictionary,such asto dig,[106]jazz,[107]tote,[107]andbad-mouth,acalquefromMandinka.[108]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.[104]

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 includegrayas an adjective for Whites (as ingray dude),[103]possibly from the color ofConfederateuniforms; andpaddy,an extension of the slang use for "Irish".[109]"Red bone" is another example of this, usually referring to light skinned African Americans.[110]

"Ofay",which ispejorative,is another general term for aWhite person;it might derive from theIbibiowordafia,which means "light-colored", from theYorubawordofe,spoken in hopes of disappearing from danger. However, most dictionaries simply say its etymology is unknown.[111]

Kitchenrefers to the particularly curly or kinky hair at the nape of the neck, andsidittyorsedditymeans "snobbish" or "bourgeois".[112]

AAVE has also contributed many words and phrases to other varieties of English, includingchill out,main squeeze,soul,funky,andthreads.[113]

Influence on other dialects

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 ofNew York Latino English,some of whose speakers use an accent indistinguishable from an AAVE one.[114]AAVE has also influenced certainChicano accentsandLiberian Settler English,directly derived from the AAVE of the original 16,000 African Americans who migrated toLiberiain the 1800s.[115]In the United States, urban youth participating inhip-hop cultureor 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.[116][117]

Variation

Urban versus rural variations

The first studies on the African American English (AAE) took place in cities such as New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, to name a few.[118]These studies concluded that the African American Language (AAL) was homogeneous, which means that AAE was spoken the same way everywhere around the country.[118]Later, sociolinguists would realize that these cities lacked the influence of the rural south; the early studies had not considered the representation of the south of America, which caused the AAE studies to change.[118]To make those changes, the newer studies used the diversity of the country and took into consideration the rural south.[118]

African-American Vernacular English 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.[119]Urban AAVE alone is intensifying with the grammatical features exemplified in these sentences: "He be the best" (intensified equativebe), "She be done had her baby" (resultativebe done), and "They come hollerin" (indignantcome). 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 tocomplement).[120]Using the wordbeeseven in place ofbeto meanisorarein 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 verbbeesas part of only a deep "Southern" or "country" speaker's vocabulary.[121]

Local variations

There are at least 10 distinct regional accents in AAVE,[122]and regional patterns of pronunciation and word choice appear on social media.[123][124][125]

Regional variation in AAVE does not pattern with other regional variation in North American English,[126]which broadly follows East-to-West migration patterns,[127]but instead patterns with the population movements during the Great Migration,[128]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.[129][130] There is no vowel for which the geographic variation in AAVE patterns with that of White American English.[131]

New York City AAVE incorporates some local features of theNew York accent,including its highTHOUGHTvowel; meanwhile, conversely, Pittsburgh AAVE may merge this same vowel with theLOTvowel, matching thecot-caught mergerofWhite Pittsburgh accents,though AAVE accents traditionally do not have the cot-caught merger.Memphis,Atlanta,andResearch TriangleAAVE incorporates theDRESSvowel raising andFACEvowel lowering associated withWhite Southern accents.Memphis and St. Louis AAVE are developing, since the mid-twentieth century, an iconicmerger of the vowels inSQUAREandNURSE,makingtheresound likethurr.[132][133][134] Californian AAVE often lacks acot-caught merger,especially before nasals.[126]

Social perception and context

Main article:African-American Vernacular English and social context

African-American Vernacular suffers from persistent stigma and negative social evaluation in American culture. By definition, as avernacular dialectof English, AAVE has not received the social prestige of astandard 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.[135]Some of the harshest criticism of AAVE or its use has come from African Americans themselves.[136][137][138]A conspicuous example was the "Pound Cake speech",in whichBill Cosbycriticized 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.[135]In 1974, the teacher-ledConference on College Composition and Communicationissued a position statement affirming students' rights to their own dialects and the validity of all dialects.[139]Mainstream linguistics has long agreed with this view about dialects.[140]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."[141]In 1996,Oakland Unified School Districtmade acontroversial resolutionfor 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.[142]

Although the distinction between AAVE andGeneral Americandialects is clear to most English speakers, some characteristics, notably double negatives and the omission of certainauxiliaries(see below) such as thehasinhas beenare 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.[143]This may be due in part to relatively recent migrations of some African Americans out of theAmerican South(seeGreat MigrationandSecond Great Migration) as well as to long-term racial segregation that kept these speakers living together in largely homogeneous communities.[144]

See also

Notes

  1. ^Also known asBlack English,Black Vernacular English,Black English Vernacular,African-American English,or occasionallyEbonics(a colloquial,controversialterm).[1]
  2. ^AAVEis pronounced as an initialism,/ˈɑːveɪ/,or/æv/.[2][3]

References

  1. ^For the reasons that linguists avoid using the termEbonics,see for exampleGreen (2002:7–8).
  2. ^Tamasi, Susan; Antieau, Lamont (2015).Language and Linguistic Diversity in the US: An Introduction.Routledge. p. 146.ISBN978-0-415-80667-1.
  3. ^Gordon, Matthew J. (2013).Labov: A Guide for the Perplexed.Bloomsbury. p. 215.ISBN978-1-4411-5852-9.
  4. ^Edwards (2004),p. 383.
  5. ^Rickford (2015),pp. 302, 310.
  6. ^Spears (2015).
  7. ^Wheeler (1999),p. 55.
  8. ^"Do you speak American?: African American English".PBS.
  9. ^Benor, Sarah Bunin (April 19, 2010)."Ethnolinguistic repertoire: Shifting the analytic focus in language and ethnicity".Journal of Sociolinguistics.14(2): 159–183.doi:10.1111/j.1467-9841.2010.00440.x.
  10. ^McWhorter (2001),p. 179.
  11. ^Thomas (2006),pp. 16, 19–20.
  12. ^Wardhaugh (2002),p. 341.
  13. ^abPoplack (2000),p.?.
  14. ^abPoplack & Tagliamonte (2001),p.?.
  15. ^SeeHowe & Walker (2000)for more information
  16. ^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."Pullum (1997)
  17. ^McWhorter (2001),pp. 162, 185.
  18. ^McWhorter (2001),pp. 162, 182.
  19. ^Mufwene (2001:29) andBailey (2001:55), both citingStewart (1964),Stewart (1969),Dillard (1972),andRickford (1997a).
  20. ^Smith & Crozier (1998),pp. 113–114.
  21. ^Those in favor of the "creole hypothesis" of African-American Vernacular English includecreolistsWilliam Stewart,John Dillard andJohn Rickford.
  22. ^Green (2002),pp. 1–11, 'Introduction'.
  23. ^William Labov, in the Foreword toPoplack & Tagliamonte (2001),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."
  24. ^Ludden, Jennifer (September 6, 2010)."Op-Ed: DEA Call For Ebonics Experts Smart Move"Archived2018-01-08 at theWayback Machine.NPR.
  25. ^Wolfram (1998),p. 112.
  26. ^abBloomquist, Green & Lanehart (2015).
  27. ^abDillard (1972),p.??.
  28. ^Read (1939),p. 247.
  29. ^abMcWhorter (2001),pp. 146–7.
  30. ^Green (2002),p. 131.
  31. ^Heggarty, Paul; et al., eds. (2013)."Accents of English from Around the World".University of Edinburgh.Archivedfrom the original on April 26, 2016.RetrievedJanuary 7,2018.See pronunciation for "Chicago AAVE" and "N.Carolina AAVE."
  32. ^Thomas, Erik R. (September 2007). "Phonological and Phonetic Characteristics of African American Vernacular English: Phonological and Phonetic Characteristics of AAVE".Language and Linguistics Compass.1(5): 450–475.doi:10.1111/j.1749-818X.2007.00029.x.
  33. ^Eberhardt (2008).
  34. ^Baranowski (2013).
  35. ^abJones (2020),p. 165.
  36. ^abcGreen (2002),p. 123.
  37. ^abcLabov (1972),p. 19.
  38. ^King, Sharese (December 1, 2016)."On Negotiating Racial and Regional Identities: Vocalic Variation Among African Americans in Bakersfield, California".University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics.22(2).
  39. ^Jones, Taylor; Kalbfeld, Jessica Rose; Hancock, Ryan; Clark, Robin (2019). "Testifying while black: An experimental study of court reporter accuracy in transcription of African American English".Language.95(2): e216–e252.doi:10.1353/lan.2019.0042.S2CID198787228.Project MUSE727848.
  40. ^Jones (2020).
  41. ^Green (2002),p. 116.
  42. ^Bailey & Thomas (1998:89), citingWolfram (1994)
  43. ^Farrington, Charlie (October 2018). "Incomplete neutralization in African American English: The case of final consonant voicing".Language Variation and Change.30(3): 361–383.doi:10.1017/S0954394518000145.S2CID149592143.
  44. ^Green (2002),pp. 117–119.
  45. ^Green (2002:121–122) although her examples are different.
  46. ^Green, Lisa J. (2012).African American English: a linguistic introduction.Cambridge Univ. Press.ISBN978-0-521-81449-2.OCLC900606048.
  47. ^abGreen (2002),p. 107.
  48. ^abBloomquist, Jennifer; Green, Lisa J.; Lanehart, Sonja L.; Thomas, Erik R.; Bailey, Guy (July 1, 2015), "Segmental Phonology of African American English",The Oxford Handbook of African American Language,Oxford University Press,doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199795390.013.13,ISBN978-0-19-979539-0
  49. ^Green, Lisa (September 23, 2021), "Aspect and predicate phrases in African-American vernacular English",African-American English,London: Routledge, p. 109,doi:10.4324/9781003165330-3,ISBN978-1-003-16533-0,S2CID244227668
  50. ^Rickford (1997b),p.??.
  51. ^"Phonological Features of African American Vernacular English".www.rehabmed.ualberta.ca.RetrievedAugust 30,2020.
  52. ^Green (2002),pp. 107–116.
  53. ^Labov (1972),p. 15.
  54. ^Labov (1972),pp. 15–16.
  55. ^Labov (1972),pp. 17–18.
  56. ^Labov (1972),pp. 18–19.
  57. ^SeeBaugh (2000:92–94) on "aks" and metathesis, on the frequency with which "aks" is brought up by those who ridicule AAVE (e.g.Cosby (1997)), 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".
  58. ^Green (2002),pp. 119–121.
  59. ^Green (2002:121), citingWolfram & Fasold (1974:140)
  60. ^Labov (1972),p. 14.
  61. ^Wolfram, Walt; Kohn, Mary E. (forthcoming). "The regional development of African American LanguageArchived2018-11-06 at theWayback Machine".InSonja Lanehart,Lisa Green, and Jennifer Bloomquist (eds.),The Oxford Handbook on African American Language.Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 147.
  62. ^Green (2002),p. 121.
  63. ^Labov (1972),pp. 14–15.
  64. ^McWhorter (2001),pp. 146.
  65. ^McWhorter (2001),pp. 148.
  66. ^Fickett (1972),pp. 17–18.
  67. ^abcDeBose, Charles E. (July 1, 2015)."The Systematic Marking of Tense, Modality, and Aspect in African American Language".The Oxford Handbook of African American Language.doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199795390.013.18.ISBN978-0-19-979539-0.RetrievedJune 17,2022.
  68. ^abFickett (1972),p. 19.
  69. ^Green (2002),pp. 60–62.
  70. ^Ciku Theuri (February 17, 2023)."The evolution of Black American English".WBUR.
  71. ^Aspectualbe:Green (2002:47–54)
  72. ^In order to distinguish the stressed and unstressed forms, which carry different meaning, linguists often write the stressed version as BIN
  73. ^Green (2002),pp. 54–55.
  74. ^"Stressed BIN (been) | Yale Grammatical Diversity Project: English in North America".ygdp.yale.edu.RetrievedJune 14,2022.
  75. ^abRickford (1999),p.??.
  76. ^Debose, Charles (2015).Oxford Handbook of African American Language(1st ed.). Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. pp. 371–386.ISBN978-0-19-979539-0.
  77. ^Fickett (1972:17) refers to this as a combination of "punctuative" and "imperfect" aspects.
  78. ^Green (2002),pp. 71–72.
  79. ^Green (2002),p. 71.
  80. ^Green (2002:70–71), citingDeBose & Faraclas (1993).
  81. ^SeeSpears (1982:850)
  82. ^Green (2002),pp. 73–74.
  83. ^Labov, William (2013). "Co-existent Systems In African-American English".The Structure of African American English:110–153 – via Research Gate.
  84. ^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
  85. ^abHowe & Walker (2000),p. 110.
  86. ^Labov (1972),p. 284.
  87. ^Green 2002.
  88. ^Winford (1992),p. 350.
  89. ^Labov (1972),p. 8.
  90. ^Geoff Pullum(October 17, 1998)."Why Ebonics Is No Joke".Lingua Franca(transcript). Australian Broadcasting Corporation.Archivedfrom the original on February 9, 2010.RetrievedMay 1,2014.
  91. ^Green (2002),p. 38.
  92. ^Green (2002),pp. 102–103.
  93. ^Green (2002),p. 80.
  94. ^Green (2002),pp. 84–89.
  95. ^Green (2002),pp. 89–91.
  96. ^Cassidy, Frederic G.; Algeo, John (June 1993). "Fifty Years among the New Words: A Dictionary of Neologisms, 1941-1991".Language.69(2): 397.doi:10.2307/416548.ISSN0097-8507.JSTOR416548.
  97. ^Widawski, Maciej (2019).African American slang: a linguistic description.Cambridge University Press.ISBN978-1-107-42440-1.OCLC1090422253.
  98. ^Widawski, Maciej (2016).African American Slang: A Linguistic Description(1st ed.). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. pp. 19–64.ISBN978-1-107-07417-0.
  99. ^Shorter OED,5th edition, cfBantukingumbo
  100. ^Shorter OED,5th edition,Kikongonguba
  101. ^Nagle, S., & Sanders, S. (Eds.). (2003). English in the Southern United States (Studies in English Language). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 12.
  102. ^Widawski, Maciej (2015).African American Slang - A Linguistic Description.Cambridge University Press. p. 20.ISBN978-1-316-24061-8.
  103. ^abWidawski, Maciej (March 5, 2015).African American Slang: A Linguistic Description.Cambridge University Press.ISBN978-1-316-24061-8.
  104. ^abWidawski, Maciej (2015), "Introduction",African American Slang,Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. ix–xii,doi:10.1017/cbo9781139696562.001(inactive April 1, 2024),ISBN978-1-139-69656-2{{citation}}:CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of April 2024 (link)
  105. ^Guralnik (1984),p.?.
  106. ^This is fromWolofdëggordëgga,meaning "to understand/appreciate" according to Smitherman 2000 s.v. "Dig"; or, it may instead come fromIrishtuig,according to Random House Unabridged, 2001
  107. ^abRickford & Rickford (2000),p. 146.
  108. ^Smitherman (1977)cited inRickford & Rickford (2000:240).
  109. ^Gray:Smitherman,Black Talk, s.v."Gray".Paddy:Dictionary of American Regional English, s.v."Paddy".
  110. ^Widawski, Maciej (2015).African American slang: a linguistic description.Cambridge, United Kingdom.ISBN978-1-107-07417-0.OCLC885547585.{{cite book}}:CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  111. ^Smitherman (2000)suggests either a general West African or the Pig Latin origin.Black Talk,s.v. "Ofay".
  112. ^Smitherman (2000),s.v."Kitchen".Kitchen, siditty:Dictionary of American Regional English,s.vv. "Kitchen", "Siditty".
  113. ^Lee (1999),pp. 381–386.
  114. ^Blake, Shousterman & Newlin-Łukowicz (2015),pp. 284–285.
  115. ^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.
  116. ^Reyes, Angela (2007).Language, Identity, and Stereotype Among Southeast Asian American Youth: The Other Asian.Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
  117. ^Reyes, Angela (November 2005). "Appropriation of African American slang by Asian American youth".Journal of Sociolinguistics.9(4): 509–532.doi:10.1111/j.1360-6441.2005.00304.x.
  118. ^abcdBloomquist, Green & Lanehart (2015),pp. 140–159.
  119. ^Wolfram, Walt (2004). "The Grammar of Urban African American Vernacular English". InHandbook of Varieties of English,edited by Bernd Kortmann and Edgar Schneider. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. p. 334.
  120. ^Wolfram, Walt (2004). "Urban African American Vernacular English: morphology and syntax". InHandbook of Varieties of English,edited by Bernd Kortmann and Edgar Schneider. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. p. 335-336.
  121. ^McWhorter (2001),pp. 146–147.
  122. ^Jones (2020),p. 263.
  123. ^Jones, Taylor (November 2015). "Toward a Description of African American Vernacular English Dialect Regions Using 'Black Twitter'".American Speech.90(4): 403–440.doi:10.1215/00031283-3442117.
  124. ^Jones, Taylor (2016). "Tweets as graffiti: What the reconstruction of Vulgar Latin can tell us about Black Twitter". In Squires, Lauren (ed.).English in Computer-Mediated Communication.pp. 43–68.doi:10.1515/9783110490817-004.ISBN978-3-11-049081-7.
  125. ^Austen, Martha (August 1, 2017). "Put the Groceries Up".American Speech.92(3): 298–320.doi:10.1215/00031283-4312064.
  126. ^abJones (2020),p. 225.
  127. ^Jones (2020),p. 35.
  128. ^Jones (2020),p. 253.
  129. ^Jones (2020),p. 264.
  130. ^Farrington, Charles (September 18, 2019).Language Variation and the Great Migration: Regionality and African American Language(Thesis).hdl:1794/24866.
  131. ^Jones (2020),p. 226.
  132. ^Wolfram, Walt; Kohn, Mary E. (forthcoming). "The regional development of African American LanguageArchived2018-11-06 at theWayback Machine".InSonja Lanehart,Lisa Green,and Jennifer Bloomquist (eds.),The Oxford Handbook on African American Language.Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 149-151.
  133. ^Hinton, Linette N.; Pollock, Karen E. (2003)."Regional Variations in the Phonological Characteristics of African American Vernacular English".World Englishes.19(1): 59–71.doi:10.1111/1467-971X.00155.ISSN0883-2919.
  134. ^Thomas, Erik R. (2007)."Phonological and Phonetic Characteristics of African American Vernacular English: Phonological and Phonetic Characteristics of AAVE".Language and Linguistics Compass.1(5): 450–475.doi:10.1111/j.1749-818X.2007.00029.x.
  135. ^abWardhaugh (2002),pp. 343–348.
  136. ^Lippi-Green (1997),p. 200.
  137. ^Lanehart (2001),p. 6.
  138. ^"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..."Quinn (1982:150–51).
  139. ^Smitherman (1999),p. 357.
  140. ^McWhorter (2001).
  141. ^Flood, J., Jensen, J., Lapp, D., Squire, J. (1991).Handbook of research on teaching the English language arts.New York, NY: Macmillan Publishing Company.
  142. ^Lippi-Green, Rosina.English with an Accent(Second ed.).Routledge.pp. 304–321.
  143. ^Labov (2001),pp. 506–508.
  144. ^Wardhaugh (2002),p. 339.

Bibliography

Further reading

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