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African American Vernacular English ('''AAVE''') – also called '''African American English''', '''Black English''', '''Black Vernacular''', '''Black English Vernacular''' ('''BEV''') and '''Black Vernacular English''' ('''BVE''') – is a Variety ( Dialect , Ethnolect and Sociolect ) of English, particularly American English ; it is known colloquially as ''' Ebonics '''. Its pronunciation is in some respects common to Southern American English , which is spoken by many African Americans in the United States and by many non-African Americans. There is little regional variation among speakers of AAVELabov, ''Principles of Linguistic Change'', 506–08 Several creolists, including William Stewart, John L. Dillard, and John Rickford argue that AAVE shares so many characteristics with Creole dialects spoken by black people in much of the world that AAVE itself is a creoleWardhaugh ''An Introduction to Sociolinguistics'', 341. It has been suggested that AAVE has grammatical structures in common with West African Languages , but this is disputed.. Speakers of AAVE are typically bidialectal. As with all linguistic forms, age, status, topic and setting influence its usage. There are many literary uses of this variety of English, particularly in African-American Literature . OVERVIEW AAVE shares many characteristics with Creole English dialects spoken by people throughout much of the world. AAVE has pronunciation, grammatical structures, and vocabulary in common with various West African languages (Trudgill). The pronunciation of AAVE is based in large part on Southern American English, an influence that was reciprocal in many ways. The traits of AAVE that separate it from Standard American English (SAE) include:
Early AAVE contributed a number of words of African origin to Standard American English, including "gumbo"Shorter OED, Fifth Edition, cf Bantu ''kingumbo'', "goober"Shorter OED, Fifth Edition, Kikongo ''nguba'', "yam", "banjo". AAVE has contributed slang expressions such as ''cool'', ''hip'', ''hep cat'' and ''bling''. In areas of close social intercourse between speakers of AAVE and other groups of people, a greater number of non-black speakers exist. GRAMMATICAL FEATURES Phonology The near uniformity of AAVE pronunciation, despite vast geographic area, may be due in part to relatively recent migrations of African Americans out of the south as well as to long-term racial segregation. Phonological features that set AAVE apart from forms of " Standard English " (such as General American ) include:
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''.Aspectual ''be'': Green, ''African American English,'' 47–54. 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. 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). This article uses the third. ''Been'' here is stressed; in order to distinguish it from unstressed ''been'' (used as in standard English), linguists often write it as BIN. Thus the distinction between ''She BIN running'' ("She has been running for a long time") and ''She been running'' ("She has been running").Green, ''African American English,'' 54. With non- Stative Verb s, 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 told 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. Linguist John R. 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:
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.
The general rules are
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, and in many cases are not recognised by linguists or the OED .eg: OED, "dig", from ME vt ''diggen''
AAVE also has words that either are not part of Standard American English, or have 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; these include the use of ''gray'' as an adjective for whites (as in "gray dude"), possibly from the color of ," which is pejorative, is another general term for a white; it might derive from the Ibibio word ''afia,'' which means "light-colored," and may have referred to European traders; or from the Yoruba word ''ofe,'' spoken in hopes of disappearing from danger such as that posed by European traders. However, most dictionaries simply refer to this word as having an unknown etymology.Smitherman suggests either a general West African or the Pig Latin origin. ''Black Talk, s.v.'' "Ofay". ''Kitchen'' refers to the particularly curly or kinky hair at the nape of the neck, and ''siditty'' means snobbish or bourgeois.''Kitchen'': Smitherman, ''Black Talk, s.v.'' "Kitchen". ''Kitchen, siditty'': ''Dictionary of American Regional English, s.vv.'' "Kitchen", "Siditty". "The Man" and "Miss Ann" are words used generally to refer to the white authority and white women, respectively. AAVE has also contributed various words and phrases to other varieties of English; these include ''chill out, main squeeze, soulmate'' and ''threads''Margaret Lee, "Out of the Hood and into the News: Borrowed Black Verbal Expressions in a Mainstream Newspaper" (conference paper, University of Georgia, October 1998); cited in Rickford and Rickford, ''Spoken Soul,'' 98. SOCIAL CONTEXT AAVE's resistance to assimilation into Standard American English or other more standard dialects is a consequence of cultural and historical differences between blacks and whites (Romaine 109). Any language used by isolated groups of people is likely to split into various dialects. Thus, language becomes a means of self-differentiation that helps forge group identity, solidarity and pride. It is "intricately bound up with his or her sense of identity and group consciousness".Smitherman, ''Talkin and Testifyin,'' 171. AAVE has survived and thrived through the centuries also as a result of varying degrees of isolation from Southern American English and Standard American English — through both "self-segregation from and marginalization by mainstream society" (Trudgill 108). Still, most speakers of AAVE are bidialectal, since they use Standard American English to varying degrees as well as AAVE. This method of linguistic adaptation in different environments is called Code Switching . Each dialect, or code, is applied in different settings. Speakers of both dialects acknowledge when to use which dialect in what environment (Romaine 109). 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" (Coulmas 41). Many blacks, regardless of socioeconomic status, educational background, or geographic region, use some form of AAVE to varying degrees in informal and intra-ethnic communication (Romaine 111). Thus use of AAVE, as with the use of SAE, can be a conscious choice. The level of usage of any dialect is subject to the speaker’s volition. In certain situations, speakers of AAVE may deem it more appropriate to use SAE, and in other instances (most likely among other African Americans) use AAVE. The preponderance of code switching indicates that AAVE and SAE are met with different reactions or discernments. AAVE is often perceived by members of mainstream American society as indicative of low intelligence or limited education. Furthermore, as with many other non-standard dialects and especially creoles, AAVE sometimes has been called "lazy" or "bad" English, although among linguists there is no such controversy, since AAVE, like all dialects, shows consistent internal logic and structure.William Labov, ''Language in the Inner City: Studies in Black English Vernacular'' (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1972).Particularly stigmatized forms include metathesis of ''ask'' to ''aks'' and use of ''ain't''. Origins It is unclear exactly how AAVE relates to other varieties of English. One argument, put forth by Kurath, Labov, and McDavid, is that AAVE is essentially identical to nonstandard varieties of Southern American English . A similar claim is that the speech of blacks in the American South has had a great deal of influence in the speech of non-blacks living there. Another argument is that AAVE has its deepest roots in the trans-Atlantic African slave trade. Unique patterns of language usage among African slaves arose from the need for 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 what are called Pidgin s, simplified mixtures of two or more languages. As pidgins form from close contact between members of different language communities, the slave trade would have been exactly such a situation. 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.… {Link without Title} 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 the Wolof language became one of the bases 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, this African pidgin had made 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 a ''Coromantee'', a general term applied during slavery to the Akan , Ashanti and Fanti peoples of the Gold Coast , whom slaveholders commonly regarded as particularly rebellious in nature. Mather's imitative writing shows features present in many Creole Language s and even in modern day AAVE. By the time of the American Revolution , slave 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 west 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. AAVE in education |
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