African-American English

African American Vernacular English (AAVE), also called Black English, Black Vernacular, or Black English Vernacular (BEV), is a type of Southern American English lect (dialect, ethnolect and sociolect) of the American English language. It is known colloquially as Ebonics or Jive. With pronunciation that in some respects is common to that of southern U.S. English, the lect is spoken by many blacks in the United States. AAVE shares many characteristics with various Creole English dialects spoken by blacks in much of the world. AAVE also has grammatical origins in, and pronunciation characteristics in common with, various West African languages.

History and social context

AAVE has its deepest roots in the trans-Atlantic African slave trade, but also has features of English spoken in the British Isles during the 16th and 17th centuries. Distinctive patterns of language usage among African slaves and, later, blacks arose out of the need for multilingual populations of African captives to communicate among themselves and with their captors. During the Middle Passage, these captives (many already multi-lingual speakers of dialects of Wolof, Twi, Hausa, Yoruba, Dogon, Akan, Kimbundu, Bambara and other languages) developed pidgins (simplified mixtures of two or more languages). Over time in the Americas, some of these pidgins became fully developed creoles. Significant numbers of blacks still speak some of these creoles, notably Gullah on the Sea Islands of South Carolina and Georgia.

Any language used by isolated groups of people is likely to split into various dialects. The pronunciation of AAVE is based in large part on Southern American English, an influence that no doubt was reciprocal in many ways. The traits of AAVE that separate it from Standard American English (SAE) include:

• grammatical structures traceable to West African languages;
• changes in pronunciation along definable patterns, many of which are found in creoles and dialects of other populations of West African descent (but which also emerge in English dialects uninfluenced by West African languages, such as Newfoundland English);
• distinctive slang; and
• differences in the use of tenses.
  AAVE also has contributed to Standard American English words of African origin ("gumbo", "goober", "yam", "banjo", "bogus") and slang expressions ("cool," "hip," "hep cat"). In areas of close socialization between speakers of AAVE and other groups of people, many speakers of AAVE are not black.

AAVE's departure from Southern American English was a natural consequence of cultural differences between blacks and whites. Language becomes a means of self-differentiation that helps forge group identity, solidarity and pride. AAVE has survived and thrived through the centuries also as a result of various degrees of isolation from Southern American English and Standard American English—through both self-segregation from and marginalization by mainstream society.

Most speakers of AAVE are bilectal, since they use Standard American English to varying degrees as well as AAVE. Generally speaking, the degree of exclusive use of AAVE decreases with the rise in socioeconomic status, although almost all speakers of AAVE at all socioeconomic levels readily understand Standard American English. Most blacks, regardless of socioeconomic status, educational background, or geographic region, use some form of AAVE to various degrees in informal and intra-ethnic communication. (This selection of lect according to social context is called code switching.)

AAVE is often erroneously perceived by members of mainstream American society as indicating low intelligence or educational attainment. Furthermore, as with many other creole dialects, AAVE sometimes has been called "lazy" or "bad" English by those who do not understand Creolization or the role of null phonemes. Such appraisals also may be due in part to AAVE's substitution of aspect for tense in some cases. Some challenge whether AAVE should be considered a valid form of English at all. However, among linguists there is no such controversy, since AAVE, like all lects, shows consistent internal logic and structure.

In the late 1990s, the formal recognition of AAVE ("Ebonics") as a distinct lect and its proposed use as an educational tool to help black students become more fluent in SAE became a controversial subject in the United States.

AAVE as a Creole

When European slavers arrived in Africa to buy slaves, they found that many had no common language. Dillard (1972) quotes slave ship Captain William Smith:

As for the languages of Gambia, they are so many and so different, that the Natives, on either Side of the River, cannot understand each other.… [T]he safest Way is to trade with the different Nations, on either Side of the River, and having some of every Sort on board, there will be no more Likelihood of their succeeding in a Plot, than of finishing the Tower of Babel.

Some slave owners preferred slaves from a particular tribe. For consigned cargoes, language mixing aboard ship was sometimes minimal. There is evidence that many enslaved Africans continued to use fairly intact native languages until almost 1700, when Wolof became the basis of a sort of intermediary pidgin among Africans. It is Wolof that comes to the fore in tracing the African roots of AAVE.

By 1715, the African pidgin was widely enough known to make its way into novels by Daniel Defoe, in particular, The Life of Colonel Jacque. Cotton Mather claimed to have been very familiar with his slaves' speech, knowing enough to affirm that one of his slaves was from the Coromantee tribe. Mather's imitative writing shows features present in many creoles and even in modern day AAVE.

By the time of the American Revolution, black creoles had not quite established themselves to the point of mutual intelligibility among varieties. Dillard (1972) quotes a recollection of "slave language" toward the latter part of the 18th century:

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…

It was not until the time of the Civil War that the language of the slaves became familiar to a large number of educated whites. The abolitionist papers before the war form a rich corpus of examples of plantation creole. In Army Life in a Black Regiment (1870), Thomas Wentworth Higginson detailed many features of his soldiers' language. In particular, this book contains the first reference to the distinction within AAVE "been" between stressed BÍN and unstressed bin.

After emancipation, some freed slaves traveled to West Africa, taking their creole with them. In certain African tribal groups, such as those in east Cameroon, there are varieties of Black English that show strong resemblances to the creole dialects in the U.S. documented during this period. The languages have remained similar due to the homogeneity within tribal groups, and so can act as windows into a past state of Creole English.

Educational issues

Proponents of various bills across the U.S., notably a resolution from the Oakland, California school board on December 18, 1996, wanted Ebonics officially declared a language or dialect. At its last meeting, the lame duck Oakland school board unanimously passed the resolution before stepping down from their positions to the newly elected board, who held different political views. The new board modified the resolution and then effectively dropped it. Had the measure remained in force, it would have affected funding and education-related issues.

The Oakland resolution declared that Ebonics was not English, and was not an Indo-European language at all, asserting that the speech of black children belonged to "West and Niger-Congo African Language Systems". This claim was quickly ruled inconsistent with current linguistic theory, whereby AAVE is a dialect of English and thus of Indo-European origin. Further, the differences between modern AAVE and Standard English are nowhere near as great as those between the French language and the Haitian Creole language, that can rightly be called a separate language in its own right. The statement that "African Language Systems are genetically based" also contributed to widespread incredulity and hostility. (Supporters of the resolution later stated that "genetically" was not a racist term but a linguistic one.)

Proponents of Ebonics instruction in public education believe that their proposals have been distorted by political debate and misunderstood by the general public. The belief underlying it is that black students would perform better in school and more easily learn standard American English if textbooks and teachers acknowledged that AAVE was not a substandard version of standard American English but a legitimate speech variety with its own grammatical rules and pronunciational norms.

For black students whose primary dialect was Ebonics, the Oakland resolution mandated some instruction in that dialect, both for "maintaining the legitimacy and richness of such language [sic]... and to facilitate their acquisition and mastery of English language skills." Teachers were encouraged to recognize that the "errors" in standard American English that their students made were not the result of lack of intelligence or effort, and indeed were not errors at all but instead features of a grammatically distinct form of English. Rather than teaching standard English by proscribing non-standard usage, the idea was to teach standard English to Ebonics-speaking students by showing them how to translate expressions from AAVE to standard American English.

Framers of the Oakland resolution recognized that, when teaching anyone a language or lect with which they are unfamiliar, it is important to differentiate between understanding and pronunciation. (This consideration appears in later discussion, not in the resolution itself.) For instance, if a child reads "He passed by both of them" as "he pass by bowf uh dem", a teacher must determine whether the child is saying passed or pass, since they are identical in AAVE phonology. Appropriate remedial strategies here would be different from effective strategies for an SAE speaker who read "passed" as "pass".

Pedagogical techniques similar to those used to teach English to speakers of foreign languages appear to hold promise for speakers of AAVE. Baratz and Stewart (1969) introduced AAVE speakers to reading using "dialect readers"—sets of text nearer to the child's dialect than SAE text. This helps the child focus on translating symbols on paper into words without worrying about learning a new language at the same time. Simpkins, Holt, and Simpkins (1977) developed a comprehensive set of dialect readers, called bridge readers, which included the same content in three different dialects: AAVE, a bridge version, which was closer to SAE without being prohibitively formal, and a Standard English version. The results were very promising, but in the end the program was not widely adopted for various political and social reasons which impacted the refusal of school systems to recognize AAVE as a dialect of English. Opinions on Ebonics still run the gamut from advocacy of official language status in the United States to denigration as "poor English".

Teaching children whose first language is AAVE poses problems beyond simply that of which pedagogic techniques to add, and the Oakland approach has support among some educational theorists. However, such pedagogical approaches give rise to educational and political disputes that often show strong racial and cultural biases. Despite the clear linguistic evidence, the American public and policymakers remain divided over whether to even recognize AAVE as a legitimate lect of English.

In July 2005, Mary Texeira, a sociology professor at Cal State San Bernardino, suggested that Ebonics be included in the San Bernardino City Unified School District. Though she had no standing in the school district, the recommendation was met with a backlash similar to that in Oakland nine years before.

Grammatical features

Phonological features

• Reduction of certain diphthong forms to monophthongs, in particular, [ɑɪ] to [ɑ] and [ɔɪ] to [o]. For example, "boy" pronounced as "boh".
• Pronunciation of the dental fricatives voiceless dental fricative [θ] (as in SE thing) and voiced dental fricative [ð] (as in SE then) changes depending on position in a word. Word-initially, they become the alveolar stops [t] and [d] and elsewhere they become the labiodental fricatives [f] and [v]. Examples: then [ðɛn] is pronounced den [dɛn], smooth [smuð] is pronounced smoov [smuv], thin [θɪn] is pronounced tin [tɪn], and tooth [tuθ] is pronounced toof [tuf]. This contrasts with West African-based English creoles and pidgins where [d] instead of the SE "th" occurs regardless of placement, e.g., "brudda" for "brother." The rule for AAVE can be expressed in standard phonological rule notation:

1. ${\begin{bmatrix}-&{\mbox{sonorant}}\\+&{\mbox{consonantal}}\\+&{\mbox{continuant}}\\+&{\mbox{dental}}\\\end{bmatrix}}\to {\begin{bmatrix}-&{\mbox{continuant}}\\-&{\mbox{dental}}\\+&{\mbox{alveolar}}\\\end{bmatrix}}\quad /\quad \#\_\_\_$
2. ${\begin{bmatrix}-&{\mbox{sonorant}}\\+&{\mbox{consonantal}}\\+&{\mbox{continuant}}\\+&{\mbox{dental}}\\\end{bmatrix}}\to {\begin{bmatrix}-&{\mbox{dental}}\\+&{\mbox{labiodental}}\\\end{bmatrix}}\quad /\quad \_\_\_$

• AAVE is non-rhotic, so the alveolar approximant [ɹ] is usually dropped if not followed by a vowel. However, intervocalic [ɹ] may also be dropped e.g. "story" realized as "sto'y" i.e. [stɔʔi]. A number of rhotic AAVE speakers do appear to exist, however.
• Realization of final ng [ŋ], the velar nasal, as the alveolar nasal [n] in function morphemes and content morphemes with two syllables like -ing, e.g. "tripping" as "trippin". This change does not occur in one-syllable content morphemes, that is sing is sing [sɪŋ] and not sin [sɪn], but singing is singin [sɪŋɪn] wedding can be weddin [wɛdɪn], morning is often mornin [mɔɹnɪn], something is somethin [sʌmθɪn], nothing is nuthin [nʌθɪn].
• More generally, reduction of vocally homogeneous final consonant clusters. That is, test becomes tes (they are both voiceless), hand becomes han (they are both voiced), but pant is unchanged, as it contains both a voiced and an voiceless consonant in the cluster (Rickford, 1997).
• In certain cases, transposition of adjacent consonants, particularly when the first is [s]. For instance "ask" realized as "aks" or "gasp" as "gaps".
• Pronunciation of /ɛ/ and /ɪ/ both as /ɪ/ before nasal consonants, making pen and pin homonyms.
• Pronunciation of /ɪ/ and /iː/ both as /ɪ/ before 'l', making feel and fill homonyms.
• Dropping of /t/ at the end of contractions i.e. the pronunciation of don't and ain't as /doʊn/ and /eɪn/.
• Dropping of word initial /d/, /b/, and /g/ in tense-aspect markers i.e. the pronunciation of don't like own.
• Lowering of /ɪ/ to /ɛ/ or /æ/ before /ŋ/ causing pronunciations such as theng/thang for thing, thenk/thank for think, reng/rang for ring etc.

Aspect marking

The most distinguishing feature of AAVE is the use of forms of be to mark aspect in verb phrases. The use or lack of a form of be can indicate whether the performance of the verb is of a habitual nature. In SAE, this can be expressed only using adverbs such as usually. It is disputed whether the use of the verb "to be" to indicate a habitual status or action in AAVE has its roots in various West African languages.

Example	Name	SE Meaning / Notes
He workin'.	Simple progressive	He is working [right now].
He be workin'.	Habitual/continuative aspect	He works frequently or habitually. Better illustrated with "He be workin' Tuesdays all month."
Rik be steady workin'.	Intensified continuative	Rik is working in an intensive/sustained manner.
He been (unstressed) workin'.	Perfect progressive	He has been working.
He been had that job.	Remote phase (see below)	He has had that job for a long time, and still has it.
He done worked.	Emphasized perfective	He already worked. Syntactically, "He worked" is valid, but "done" is used to emphasize the completed nature of the action.
He finna [or "fittin' (fi-t&n) nuh"] go to work.	Immediate future	He's about to go to work. Finna is a contraction of "fixin' to"; though is also believed to show residual influence of late 16th century archaism "would fain (to)", that persisted until later in some rural dialects spoken in the Carolinas (near the Gullah region).
I was walkin' home, and I had worked all day.	Preterite narration.	"Had" is used to begin a preterite narration. Usually it occurs in the first clause of the narration, and nowhere else.

Remote Phase Marker

The aspect marked by stressed 'been' has been given many names, including Perfect Phase, Remote Past, Remote Phase (Fickett 1970, Fasold and Wolfram 1970, Rickford 1999, respectively). This article uses the third.

With non-stative verbs, the role of been is simple: it places the action in the distant past, or represents total completion of the action. A Standard English equivalent is to add "a long time ago". For example, She been tell me that translates as, "She told me that a long time ago".

However, when been is used with stative verbs or gerund forms, been shows that the action began in the distant past and that it is continuing now. 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 hear Oh, I been had this dress, meaning that the speaker has had the dress for a long time and that it isn't new.

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

I been bought her clothes means "I bought her clothes a long time ago".

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

Negation

In addition, negatives are formed differently from standard American English:

• Use of ain't as a general negative indicator. It is used in place of SE "am not", "isn't", and "aren't".
• Negation agreement, as in I didn't go nowhere, such that if the sentence is negative, all negatable forms are negated. This can be traced to West African languages, but is usually stigmatized in Standard English (although this wasn't always so; see double negative).
• If the subject is indefinite (e.g. nobody instead of Sally or he), it can be inverted with the negative qualifier (turning Nobody knows the answer to Don't nobody know the answer, also adding multiple negation). This emphasizes the negative, and is not interrogative, as it would be in SAE.

Lexical features

For the most part, AAVE uses the lexicon of SAE, particularly informal and southern dialects. There are some notable differences, however. It has been suggested that some of this vocabulary 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. In fact, several have other more widely accepted etymologies.

• bogus from Hausa boko, meaning deceit or fraud.
• cat from the Wolof suffix -kat, which denotes a person.
• dig from Wolof dëgg or dëgga, meaning "to understand/appreciate".
• hip from Wolof hipi, meaning "to be aware of what is going on".
• honky, a derogatory term for a white person, may come from Wolof xonq, meaning red or pink.

AAVE also has a separate vocabulary of words that have no Standard English-language equivalent, or with strikingly different meanings from their common usage in SAE. For example, there are several words in AAVE referring to white people which are not part of mainstream SAE and may be little known outside the black community. A "gray dude" is a white male, as is a "paddy boy", the latter likely derived from "paddyroller", a corruption of "patroller", who were vigilantes who caught runaway slaves and kidnapped free blacks and made a living collecting bounties or selling them into bondage. "Ofay" is another general term for a white. "Kitchen" refers to the particularly curly or kinky hair at the nape of the neck, "siditty" means snobbish or bourgeois, and "roach-in-the-corner killers" are pointy-toed shoes.

Other grammatical characteristics

Some of these characteristics, notably double negatives and the use of been for "has been", are also characteristic of general colloquial American English.

Linguist William Labov carried out and published the first thorough grammatical study of African American Vernacular English in 1965.

• Perhaps most strikingly, the copula is often dropped, as in Russian, Hungarian, Hebrew, and Arabic. For example: You crazy! ("You are crazy") or She my sister ("She is my sister"). The phenomenon is also observed in questions: Who you? ("Who are you?") and Where you at? ("Where are you?"). As in Russian and Arabic, the copula is omitted only in the present tense, and must be specified in the past tense.
• Present-tense verbs are uninflected for person: there is no -s ending in the present tense third person singular. Example: She write poetry (="She writes poetry")
• There is no -s ending indicating possession—the genitive relies on adjacency. This is similar to many creoles throughout the Caribbean. Many languages forms through the world use an unmarked possessive; it may, here, result from a simplification of grammatical structures and tendency to eschew particle usage. Example: my mama sister (="my mama's sister")
• The word it denotes the existence of something, equivalent to Standard English there in "there is", or "there are". This usage is also found in the English of the US South. Examples It's a doughnut in the cabinet (="There's a doughnut in the cabinet") and It ain't no spoon (="There is no spoon").
• Altered syntax in questions: She signifyin' all hankty (snobbish). Who duh hell she think she is? (="She's acting like a snob. Who the hell does she think she is?") Note also the use of "all" as an adverb of manner or degree, as well as the omission of the dummy verb "do" (does). How you tole him I'm try'na see her? (="Why did you tell him I want to see her?") Normal clause inversion of the past tense verb in forming questions is not practised.
• Use of say to introduce quotations, actual or otherwise. For example, "I thought, say, 'Why don't he just rap wit' her?'"

References

• Dillard, J. L. (1972). Black English: Its History and Usage in the United States. Random House. ISBN 0-394-71872-0.
• Mufwene, Salikoko et al. (1998). African-American English: Structure, history and use. Routledge. ISBN 0-415-11732-1.
• Rickford, John (December 1997). Suite for Ebony and Phonics. Discover magazine Vol. 18 No. 12.
• Rickford, John (1999). African American Vernacular English. Blackwell Publishers. ISBN 0-631-21245-0.
• Rickford, John and Rickford, Russell (2000). Spoken Soul: The Story of Black English. John Wiley. ISBN 0-471-39957-4.

See also

• American slavery
• Languages in the United States

External links

• Large inventory of AAVE phonological features
• AAVE page from UNE's Language Varieties site
• Dialect Readers Revisited
• Find the Experts, the Linguists who know the most about this topic.
• full text of the Oakland resolution
• a later, revised resolution from Oakland clarifying the school board's position
• a resolution from the Linguistic Society of America in support of the Oakland school board's decision
• Opening Pandora's Box—Toni Cook interview that clarifies the intent of the Oakland resolution
• 1999 essay in The African-Americanist University of Missouri
• The Ebonics resolution Critique of the Oakland resolution (with annotated text) and of most of its critics
• Ebonics Notes and Discussion History and coinage of "Ebonics".
• African American Vernacular English Wordlist from Webster's Online Dictionary - the Rosetta Edition
• The Cab Calloway Orchestra Jive Dictionary