African-American Vernacular English[a] (AAVE)[b] is thevariety of English natively spoken, particularly in urban communities, by mostworking- andmiddle-classAfrican Americans and 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 asociolinguistic continuum. However, in formal speaking contexts, speakers tend toswitch to morestandard English grammar and vocabulary, usually while retaining elements of thevernacular (non-standard)accent.[5][6] AAVE is widespread throughout the United States, but it is not the native dialect of all African Americans, nor are all of its speakers African American.[7][8][9]
African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) may be considered adialect,ethnolect, andsociolect.[21] 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 languages that "decreolized" back into English. In the early 2000s,Shana Poplack providedcorpus-based evidence[13][14] (evidence from a body of writing) from isolated enclaves inSamaná andNova Scotia populated 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.[22]
LinguistJohn McWhorter maintains that the contribution of West African languages to AAVE is minimal. McWhorter has 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."[23]
However, a creole theory, less accepted among linguists, posits that AAVE arose from one or morecreole languages used 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.[24] According to this theory, these captives first developedpidgins or simplified mixtures of languages.[25] Because pidgins form from close contact between speakers of different languages, the slave trade would have been exactly such a situation.[25] Creolist John Dillard quotes, for example,slave ship captain William Smith describing the sheer diversity of mutually unintelligible languages just inThe Gambia.[26] By 1715, an African pidgin was reproduced in novels byDaniel 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.[27] 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:[26] "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 War did the language of the slaves become familiar to a large number of educated Whites. The abolitionist papers before the war form a richcorpus of examples of plantation creole. InArmy 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.[citation needed]
Many pronunciation features 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.[28] A handful of multisyllabic words in AAVE differ from General American in their stress placement so that, for example,police,guitar, andDetroit are pronounced with initial stress instead of ultimate stress.[29] 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. These analyses have been utilized to bolster arguments concerning the historical origins of AAVE.[30]Consonant cluster reduction is a phonological process where a final consonant group or cluster, consisting of two adjacent 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.
Cot-caught merger: AAVE accents have traditionally resisted the cot-caught merger spreading nationwide, withLOT pronounced[ɑ̈] andTHOUGHT traditionally pronounced[ɒɔ], though now often[ɒ] or[ɔə], with the latter pronunciation most prominent in the Northeastern U.S.[32] However, there is evidence of AAVE speakers exhibiting the cot-caught merger inPittsburgh, Pennsylvania;[33]Charleston, South Carolina;[34] Florida and Georgia;[35] and in parts of California.[35]
African American Vowel Shift: Early 2000s research has shown that the resistance to the cot-caught merger may continue to be reinforced by the fronting ofLOT, linked through achain shift of vowels to the raising of theTRAP,DRESS, and perhapsKIT vowels. This chain shift of vowels is called the "African American Shift".[36] However, this shift is not universal to all AAVE speakers; it is mostly exhibited by speakers who live in all the states along theMississippi River and inNorth Carolina.[32]
Pin–pen merger: Before nasal consonants (/m/,/n/, and/ŋ/),DRESS/ɛ/ andKIT/ɪ/ are both pronounced like[ɪ~ɪə], makingpen andpinhomophones.[38] 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.[39][40][41]
Word-final devoicing of/b/,/d/, and/ɡ/, whereby, for example,cub sounds similar tocup,[42] though these words may retain the longer vowel pronunciations that typically precede voiced consonants, and devoicing may be realized withdebuccalization (where/d/ is realized as[.], for instance).[43][44]
AAVE speakers may not use thefricatives[θ] (theth in "thin") and[ð] (theth of "then") that are present in other varieties of English. The phoneme's position in a word determines its exact sound.[45]
Word-initially,/ð/ is[ð~d] (sothis may be[dɪs]). In other situations,/ð/ may move forward to/v/.
Realization of finalng/ŋ/, thevelar nasal, as thealveolar nasal[n] (assibilation, alveolarization) infunctionmorphemes and 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-syllablecontent morphemes such assing, which is[sɪŋ] and not*[sɪn]. However,singing is[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.[46]
A marked feature of AAVE is final consonant cluster reduction.[30] 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 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 samevoicing are reduced.[48][49] For instance,test is pronounced[tɛs] since/t/ and/s/ are both voiceless;hand is pronounced[hæn] (alternatively[hæ̃] or[hɛən]), since/n/ and/d/ are both voiced; butpant is unchanged, as it contains both a voiced and a voiceless consonant in the cluster.[30][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 where other varieties of English would have/str/ instead. As a result, for example,street is pronounced[skɹit].[37]
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.,find may be pronounced[fãː]). More rarely,/s/ and/z/ may also be deleted.[56]
Use ofmetathesized forms likeaks for "ask"[57] orgraps for "grasp".
Generalnon-rhotic behavior, 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 oftoll andtoe,fault andfought, andtool andtoo.Homonymy may be reduced by vowel lengthening and by an off-glide[ɤ].[63]
"Deep" phonology
McWhorter discusses an accentcontinuum 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.[64] McWhorter regards the following features as rarer and characteristic of only deep Black English, though speakers of light Black English may occasionally "dip into for humorous or emotive effect":[28]
Word-medially and word-finally, pronouncing/θ/ as[f] (so[mʌmf] formonth and[mæɔf] formouth), and/ð/ as[v] (so[smuv] forsmooth and[ˈɹævə(ɹ)] forrather.[65] This is calledth-fronting. Word-initially,/ð/ is[d] (sothose anddoze sound 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, evenrice may sound likerahss).
Full gliding (diphthongization) of/ɪ/, resulting in[iə] (so thatwin may sound likewee-un).
Raising and 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-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.[66] The dialect uses severaltense–aspect–mood markers integrated into the predicate phrase,[67] includinggon orgonna (future tense),done (completive aspect),be (habitual aspect, state of being), andbeen (durative aspect). These can function separately or in conjunction.[67]
Linguist Charles E. DeBose notes that these markers form part of a broader and systematic tense, modality, and aspect (TMA) grammar in AAVE, in which native speakers distinguish between nuanced temporal categories—such as remote versus recent past—through constructions like BIN (e.g., "He BIN left") to indicate a long-completed action that remains relevant.[68]
^a Syntactically,I bought it is grammatical, butdone (always unstressed, pronounced as/dən/) is used to emphasize the completed nature of the action.[70]
^bI'ma, also commonly spelledImma, is pronounced as/ˈaɪmə/.[71] Harvard professor Sunn m'Cheaux claimsI'ma originated in theGullah language (an English creole), which uses "a-" instead of "-ing" for this type of verb inflection.[72] Alternatively, other sources suggest it is a further shortening ofI'm gonna.[73]
As phase auxiliary verbs,been anddone must occur as the first auxiliary; when they occur as the second, they carry additionalaspects:[69]
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 ofbe 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 asusually.[74]
This aspect-marking form ofbeen or BIN[75] 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').[76][77] This aspect has been given several names, includingperfect phase,remote past, andremote phase (this article uses the third).[78] As shown above,been places action in the distant past.[79] However, whenbeen is used withstative verbs orgerund forms,been shows 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.[78]
To see the difference between the simple past and the gerund when used withbeen, 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 wordwas 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.[67]
^aFinna corresponds to "fixing to" in other varieties.[82] It is also writtenfixina,fixna,fitna, andfinta.[83]
In addition to these,come (which may or may not be an auxiliary[84]) 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").[85]
The irrealis[86] 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.[87][88]
Negation
Negatives are formed differently from most other varieties of English:[89]
Use ofain't as 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't instead ofdon't,doesn't, ordidn't (e.g.,I ain't know that).[90]Ain't had its origins in common English but became increasingly stigmatized since the 19th century(see also:English auxiliary verbs § Amn't).
Double negation, as inI didn't go nowhere. If the sentence is negative, all negatable forms are negated. This contrasts withstandard written English convention, which interprets a double negative to mean a positive (although this was not always so; seedouble negative).[91] There is no limit to how many negators can be used.[30]
In a negative construction, an indefinite pronoun such asnobody ornothing 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,[92] early recordings of African Nova Scotian English, Samaná English, and recordings of former slaves indicate that negation was likely inherited from nonstandard colonial English.[89]
Other grammatical characteristics
Thecopulabe in 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.[93] On the other hand,is can be included for emphasis:Yes, sheis my sister. The general rules are:
Only the formsis andare (often replaced byis) can be omitted;am,was, andwere 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 formsI don't know where he at in AAVE, parallelingI don't know where he's at in Standard English.[94]
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"). AAVEdon't for standard Englishdoesn't comes from this, unlike in some other dialects which usedon't for standard Englishdoesn't butdoes when not in the negative. Similarly, AAVEwas is used for standard Englishwas andwere.[95]
The genitive -'s ending indicating possession may or may not be used.[96] Instead, genitive case is inferrable from adjacency. This feature is similar to manyCaribbean creoles. 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 wordsit andthey denote existence of something, equivalent to standard English'sthere is orthere are.[97]
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 theauxiliarydo.[98]
AAVE shares most of itslexicon with other varieties of English, particularly that of informal andSouthern dialects, such as, the relatively recent use ofy'all. The main sources for new words are combining, shifting, shortening, blending, borrowing, and creating.[100][101] It has also been suggested that some of the vocabulary unique to AAVE has its origin in West African languages. However, etymology is often difficult to trace and, without a trail of recorded usage, these proposed origins cannot be considered proven.[102]
Early AAVE and Gullah contributed a number of words of African origin to the American English mainstream, includinggumbo,[103]goober,[104]yam, andbanjo.[105]
Compounding in AAVE is a very common method in creating new vocabulary. The most common type of compounding is the noun–noun combination,[106] followed by adjective–noun combination.[107] AAVE also combines adjectives with other adjectives less frequently, but more often than in standard American English.[108]
AAVE has also contributed slang expressions such ascool andhip.[109] In many cases, the proposed etymologies are not recognized by linguists or theOxford English Dictionary, such asto dig,[110]jazz,[111]tote,[111] andbad-mouth, acalque fromMandinka.[112] African American slang is formed by combining, shifting, shortening, blending, borrowing words and phrases that are regarded as informal.[108]
AAVE also has words that either are not found in other American English dialects or that 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 includegray as an adjective for Whites (as ingray dude),[107] possibly from the color ofConfederate uniforms; andpaddy, an extension of the slang use for "Irish".[113] "Red bone" is another example of this, usually referring to light-skinned African Americans.[114]
"Ofay", which ispejorative, is another general term for aWhite person; it might derive from theIbibio wordafia, which means "light-colored", from theYoruba wordofe, spoken in hopes of disappearing from danger. However, most dictionaries simply say its etymology is unknown.[115]
Kitchen refers to the particularly curly or kinky hair at the nape of the neck, andsiditty orseddity means "snobbish" or "bourgeois".[116]
AAVE has also contributed many words and phrases to other varieties of English, includingchill out,main squeeze,soul,funky, andthreads.[117]
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.[118] AAVE has also influenced certainChicano accents andLiberian Settler English, directly derived from the AAVE of the original 16,000 African Americans who migrated toLiberia in the 1800s.[119] In the United States, urban youth participating inhip-hop culture or marginalized as ethnic minorities may also adopt AAVE, or prominent elements of it: for example, Southeast-Asian Americans embracing hip-hop identities.[120][121]
Internet slang has borrowed heavily from AAVE, which has often been characterized ascultural appropriation.[122][123][124] The termblaccent broadly refers to the accent associated with AAVE, but more often refers to the use of AAVE by non-black speakers.[125]
Variation
Urban versus rural variations
Early research on African-American Vernacular English took place in cities such as New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago.[126] These studies concluded that AAVE was linguistically homogenous, or spoken roughly the same way everywhere around the country.[126] Later sociolinguists found that these cities lacked the influence of the rural South and that earlier studies had not considered the representation of the Southern United States.[126]
While AAVE began as mostly rural and Southern, today it is mostly urban and nationally widespread. Its more recent urban features are now diffusing back into rural areas.[87] 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 to complement).[127] Use of the wordbees in place ofbe to meanis orare in standard English, as in the sentence "That's the way it bees", is one of the rarest of all deep AAVE features today. Most middle-class AAVE speakers would recognize the verbbees as part of only a deep "Southern" or "country" speaker's vocabulary.[128]
Local variations
There are at least 10 distinct regional accents in AAVE.[129] Regional variation in AAVE does not pattern with other regional variation in North American English,[130] which broadly follows East-to-West migration patterns,[131] but instead patterns with the population movements during the Great Migration,[132] resulting in a broadly South-to-North pattern, albeit withfounder effects in cities that already had existing African American populations at the beginning of the Great Migration.[133][134]
New York City AAVE incorporates some local features of theNew York accent, including its highTHOUGHT vowel; meanwhile, conversely, Pittsburgh AAVE may merge this same vowel with theLOT vowel, matching thecot-caught merger ofWhite Pittsburgh accents, though AAVE accents traditionally do not have the cot-caught merger.Memphis,Atlanta, andResearch Triangle AAVE incorporates theDRESS vowel raising andFACE vowel lowering associated withWhite Southern accents. Memphis and St. Louis AAVE are developing, since the mid-twentieth century, an iconicmerger of the vowels inSQUARE andNURSE, makingthere sound likethurr.[135][136][137]Californian AAVE often lacks acot-caught merger, especially before nasals.[130] Regional patterns of pronunciation and word choice are also apparent on social media.[138][139][140]
There is general uniformity of AAVE grammar, despite its vast geographic spread across the whole country.[141] This may be due in part to relatively recent migrations of some African Americans out of theAmerican South (seeGreat Migration andSecond Great Migration) as well as to long-term racial segregation that kept these speakers living together in largely homogeneous communities.[142]
African-American Vernacular suffers from persistent stigma and negative social evaluation in American culture. By definition, as avernacular dialect of 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.[143] Some of the harshest criticism of AAVE or its use has come from African Americans themselves.[144][145][146] A conspicuous example was the "Pound Cake speech", in whichBill 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.[143] In 1974, the teacher-ledConference on College Composition and Communication issued a position statement affirming students' rights to their own dialects and the validity of all dialects.[147] Mainstream linguistics has long agreed with this view about dialects.[148] 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."[149] In 1996,Oakland Unified School District made acontroversial 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.[150]
^Also known asBlack English,Black Vernacular English,Black English Vernacular,African-American English, or occasionallyEbonics (a colloquial,controversial term).[1]
^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)
^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."
^Heggarty, Paul; et al., eds. (2013)."Accents of English from Around the World". University of Edinburgh.Archived from the original on April 26, 2016. RetrievedJanuary 7, 2018. See pronunciation for "Chicago AAVE" and "N.Carolina AAVE."
^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.
^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.
^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.
^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
^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".
^DeBose, Charles E. (2015). "The Systematic Marking of Tense, Modality, and Aspect in African American Language." In Lanehart, Sonja L. (ed.).The Oxford Handbook of African American Language. Oxford University Press. pp. 371–373. ISBN 978-0199795390.
^Debose, Charles (2015).Oxford Handbook of African American Language (1st ed.). Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. pp. 371–386.ISBN978-0-19-979539-0.
^Fickett (1972:17) refers to this as a combination of "punctuative" and "imperfect" aspects.
^Labov, William (2013). "Co-existent Systems In African-American English".The Structure of African American English:110–153 – via Research Gate.
^abWolfram, 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.
^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
^Geoff Pullum (October 17, 1998)."Why Ebonics Is No Joke".Lingua Franca (transcript). Australian Broadcasting Corporation.Archived from the original on February 9, 2010. RetrievedMay 1, 2014.
^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.
^Widawski, Maciej (2016).African American Slang: A Linguistic Description (1st ed.). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. pp. 19–64.ISBN978-1-107-07417-0.
^Nagle, S., & Sanders, S. (Eds.). (2003). English in the Southern United States (Studies in English Language). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 12.
^Widawski, Maciej (2015).African American Slang - A Linguistic Description. Cambridge University Press. p. 20.ISBN978-1-316-24061-8.
^This is fromWolofdëgg ordëgga, meaning "to understand/appreciate" according to Smitherman 2000 s.v. "Dig"; or, it may instead come fromIrishtuig, according to Random House Unabridged, 2001
^Gray: Smitherman,Black Talk, s.v. "Gray".Paddy:Dictionary of American Regional English, s.v. "Paddy".
^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)
^Smitherman (2000) suggests either a general West African or the Pig Latin origin.Black Talk, s.v. "Ofay".
^Smitherman (2000), s.v. "Kitchen".Kitchen, siditty:Dictionary of American Regional English, s.vv. "Kitchen", "Siditty".
^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.
^Reyes, Angela (2007).Language, Identity, and Stereotype Among Southeast Asian American Youth: The Other Asian. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
^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.
^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.
^Farrington, Charles (September 18, 2019).Language Variation and the Great Migration: Regionality and African American Language (Thesis).hdl:1794/24866.
^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.
^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.
^"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).
^Flood, J., Jensen, J., Lapp, D., Squire, J. (1991).Handbook of research on teaching the English language arts. New York, NY: Macmillan Publishing Company.
^Lippi-Green, Rosina.English with an Accent (Second ed.).Routledge. pp. 304–321.
Bibliography
Artiles, Alfredo J.; Trent, Stanley C. (1994), "Overrepresentation of minority students in special education: a continuing debate",The Journal of Special Education,24:410–437,doi:10.1177/002246699402700404,S2CID146535428
Bailey, Guy (2001), "The relationship between African American Vernacular English and White Vernaculars in the American South: A sociocultural history and some phonological evidence", in Lanehart, Sonja (ed.),Sociocultural and Historical Contexts of African American English, Varieties of English Around the World, Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, pp. 53–92,doi:10.1075/veaw.g27.08bai,ISBN978-90-272-4885-5
Bailey, Guy; Thomas, Erik (1998), "Some aspects of African-American Vernacular English phonology", in Mufwene, Salikoko; Rickford, John R.; Bailey, Guy; Baugh, John (eds.),African-American English: Structure, History, and Use, London: Routledge, pp. 85–109,doi:10.4324/9780203355596-13,ISBN978-0-203-35559-6
Baranowski, Maciej (2013), "Ethnicity and Sound Change: African American English in Charleston, SC",University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics,19 (2):1–10,S2CID2034660
Baratz, Joan C.; Shuy, Roger, eds. (1969),Teaching Black Children to Read, Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics
Baugh, John (2000),Beyond Ebonics: Linguistic Pride and Racial Prejudice, New York: Oxford University Press,ISBN0-19-515289-1
Blake, René; Shousterman, Cara; Newlin-Łukowicz, Luiza (2015), "African American Language in New York City", in Lanehart, Sonja (ed.),The Oxford Handbook of African American Language, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 280–298
DeBose, Charles (1992). Eastman, Carol M. (ed.). "Codeswitching: Black English and Standard English in the African-American linguistic repertoire".Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development.13 (1–2). Multilingual Matters LTD:157–167.doi:10.1080/01434632.1992.9994489.ISBN978-1-85359-167-9.
DeBose, Charles; Faraclas, Nicholas (1993), "An Africanist approach to the linguistic study of black English: getting to the roots of tense-aspect-modality and copula systems in Afro-American", inMufwene, Salikoko S. (ed.),Africanisms in Afro-American Language Varieties, Athens, GA: University of Georgia press, pp. 364–387
Dictionary of American Regional English. 5 vols. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985–.
Dillard, John L. (1972),Black English: Its History and Usage in the United States, Random House,ISBN0-394-71872-0
Dillard, J.L (1992),A History of American English, New York: Longman
Eberhardt, Maeve (2008), "The Low-Back Merger in the Steel City: African American English in Pittsburgh",American Speech,83 (3):284–311,doi:10.1215/00031283-2008-021
Florini, Sarah (2014), "Tweets, Tweeps, and Signifyin': Communication and Cultural Performance on "Black Twitter"",Television & New Media,15 (3):223–237,doi:10.1177/1527476413480247,S2CID145278111
Gates, Henry Louis Jr. (1988),The Signifying Monkey: a Theory of Afro-American literary Criticism, New York: Oxford University Press
Golden, Tim (January 14, 1997), "Oakland Scratches plan to teach black English.",New York Times, pp. A10
Guralnik, David Bernard (1984),Webster's New World Dictionary of the American Language, Simon and Schuster,ISBN0-671-41814-9
Harry, Beth; Anderson, Mary G. (1995), "The disproportionate placement of African-American males in special education programs: a critique of the process",Journal of Negro Education,63 (4):602–619,doi:10.2307/2967298,JSTOR2967298
Holloway, Karla (1978).A critical investigation of literary and linguistic structures in the fiction of Zora Neale Hurston (Thesis).ProQuest302879378.
Holloway, Karla (1987),The Character of the Word: The Texts of Zora Neale Hurston, West Port, CT: Greenwood Press
Holton, Sylvia Wallace (1984),Down Home and Up Town: the Representation of Black Speech in American Fiction, London: Associated University Press
Howe, Darin M.; Walker, James A. (2000), "Negation and the Creole-Origins Hypothesis: Evidence from Early African American English", in Poplack, Shana (ed.),The English History of African American English, pp. 109–139
Kendall, Tyler; Wolfram, Walt (2009), "Local and external language standards in African American English",Journal of English Linguistics,37 (4):305–330,doi:10.1177/0075424209339281,S2CID145527700
van Keulen, Jean E.; Weddington, Gloria Toliver; DeBose, Charles E. (1998),Speech, Language, Learning, and the African American Child, Boston: Allyn and Bacon
Labov, William (1969), "The logic of non-standard English", in Alatis, J. (ed.),Georgetown Monograph on Language and Linguistics, vol. 22, pp. 1–44
Labov, William (1972),Language in the Inner City: Studies in Black English Vernacular, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press
Labov, William (2001),Principles of Linguistic Change, II: Social factors, Oxford: Blackwell,ISBN0-631-17915-1
Lanehart, Sonja, ed. (2001), "State of the art in African American English research: Multi-disciplinary perspectives and directions",Sociocultural and Historical Contexts of African American English, Varieties of English Around the World, Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, pp. 1–20,doi:10.1075/veaw.g27.05lan,ISBN978-90-272-4885-5
Lee, Margaret (1999), "Out of the Hood and into the News: Borrowed Black Verbal Expressions in a Mainstream Newspaper",American Speech,74 (4):369–388,JSTOR455663
Morgan, Marcyliena (1999), "US Language Planning and Policies for Social Dialect Speakers", in Davis, Kathryn Anne; Huebner, Thom (eds.),Sociopolitical perspectives on language policy and planning in the USA., John Benjamins,ISBN1-55619-735-7
Mufwene, Salikoko (2001), "What is African American English?", in Lanehart, Sonja (ed.),Sociocultural and Historical Contexts of African American English, Varieties of English Around the World, Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, pp. 21–52,doi:10.1075/veaw.g27.06muf,ISBN978-90-272-4885-5
Radford, Andrew; Atkinson, Martin; Britain, David; Clahsen, Harald (1999),Linguistics: An Introduction, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,ISBN0-521-47854-5
Rickford, John (1997a), "Prior Creolization of African-American Vernacular English? Sociohistorical and Textual Evidence from the 17th and 18th Centuries",Journal of Sociolinguistics,1 (3):315–336,doi:10.1111/1467-9481.00019
Rickford, John (1997b), "Suite for Ebony and Phonics",Discover Magazine,18 (2)
Rickford, John (1999),African American Vernacular English, Blackwell,ISBN0-631-21245-0
Rickford, John R.; King, Sharese (2016). "Language and linguistics on trial: Hearing Rachel Jeantel (and other vernacular speakers) in the courtroom and beyond".Language.92 (4):948–988.doi:10.1353/lan.2016.0078.S2CID152062713.
Schilling-Estes, Natalie (2006), "Dialect Variation", in Fasold, Ralph; Connor-Linton, Jeff (eds.),An Introduction to Language and Linguistics ed, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 311–42,ISBN0-521-84768-0
Simpkins, Gary A.; Holt, Grace; Simpkins, Charlesetta (1977),Bridge: A Cross-Cultural Reading Program, Houghton-Mifflin
Smith, Ernie; Crozier, Karen (1998), "Ebonics Is Not Black English",The Western Journal of Black Studies,22:109–116
Smitherman, Geneva (1977),Talkin and Testifyin: The Language of Black America, Boston: Houghton Mifflin
Smitherman, Geneva (1999), "CCCC's Role in the Struggle for Language Rights",College Composition and Communication,50 (3):349–376,doi:10.2307/358856,JSTOR358856
Spears, Arthur K. (1982), "The black English semi-auxiliarycome",Language,58 (4):850–872,doi:10.2307/413960,JSTOR413960
Spears, Arthur K. (2015), "African American Standard English", in Lanehart, Sonja (ed.),The Oxford Handbook of African American Language, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 786–799
Stewart, William A. (1964),Non-standard Speech and the Teaching of English, Washington, D.C.: Center for Applied Linguistics
Stewart, William A. (1969), "On the use of Negro dialect in the teaching of reading", in Baratz, Joan; Shuy, Roger (eds.),Teaching Black Children to Read, Washington, D.C.: Center for Applied Linguistics, pp. 156–219
Stewart, William (1975), "Teaching Blacks to Read Against Their Will", in Luelsdorff, P.A. (ed.),Linguistic Perspectives on Black English., Regensburg, Germany: Hans Carl
Sweetland, Julie (2002), "Unexpected but Authentic Use of an Ethnically-Marked Dialect",Journal of Sociolinguistics,6 (4):514–536,doi:10.1111/1467-9481.00199
Wheeler, Rebecca; Swords, Rachel (2006),Code-switching: Teaching Standard English in Urban Classrooms, Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English
Williamson, Juanita (1970), "Selected features of speech: black and white",CLA Journal,13:420–433
Winford, Donald (1992), "Back to the past: The BEV/creole connection revisited",Language Variation and Change,4 (3):311–357,doi:10.1017/S0954394500000831,S2CID143664421
Wolfram, Walter A. (1994), "The phonology of a sociocultural variety: The case of African American Vernacular English", in Bernthal, John E.; Bankson, Nicholas W. (eds.),Child Phonology: Characteristics, Assessment, and Intervention with Special Populations, New York: Thieme
Wolfram, Walter A. (1998), "Language ideology and dialect: understanding the Oakland Ebonics controversy",Journal of English Linguistics,26 (2):108–121,doi:10.1177/007542429802600203,S2CID144554543
Wolfram, Walter A.; Fasold, Ralph W. (1974),Social Dialects in American English, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall
Delpit, Lisa; Dowdy, Joanne Kilgour (2002),The Skin that We Speak: Thoughts on Language and Culture in the Classroom., New York: New Press,ISBN1-56584-544-7
.svg)
