African American Vernacular English

African-American Vernacular English (AAVE, ), also referred to as Black (Vernacular) English, Black English Vernacular, or occasionally Ebonics (a colloquial, controversial term), is the variety of English natively spoken, particularly in urban communities, by most working- and middle-class African Americans and some Black Canadians.

Having its own unique grammatical, vocabulary, and accent features, AAVE is employed by middle-class Black Americans as the more informal and casual end of a sociolinguistic continuum. However, in formal speaking contexts, speakers tend to switch to more standard English grammar and vocabulary, usually while retaining elements of the nonstandard accent. Despite being widespread throughout the United States, AAVE should not be assumed to be the native dialect of all African Americans.

As with most African-American English, African-American Vernacular English shares a large portion of its grammar and phonology with the rural dialects of the Southern United States, and especially older Southern American English, due to historical connections of African Americans to the region.

Mainstream linguists maintain that the parallels between AAVE, West African languages, and English-based creole languages are real but minor, with African-American Vernacular English genealogically still falling under the English language, demonstrably tracing back to the diverse nonstandard dialects of early English settlers in the Southern United States. However, a minority of linguists argue that the vernacular shares so many characteristics with African creole languages spoken around the world that it could have originated as its own English-based creole or semi-creole language, distinct from the English language, before undergoing a process of decreolization.

Origins

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

The presiding theory among linguists is that AAVE has always been a dialect of English, meaning that it originated from earlier English dialects rather than from English-based creole languages that "decreolized" back into English. In the early 2000s, Shana Poplack provided corpus-based evidence—evidence from a body of writing—from isolated enclaves in Samaná and Nova Scotia peopled by descendants of migrations of early AAVE-speaking groups (see Samaná 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.

Linguist John McWhorter maintains that the contribution of West African languages to AAVE is minimal. In an interview on National Public Radio's ''Talk of the Nation'', McWhorter characterized AAVE as a "hybrid of regional dialects of Great Britain that slaves in America were exposed to because they often worked alongside the indentured servants who spoke those dialects..." According to McWhorter, virtually all linguists who have carefully studied the origins of AAVE "agree that the West African connection is quite minor."

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

Phonology

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

Vowels

*African American Vowel Shift: AAVE accents have traditionally resisted the cot-caught merger spreading nationwide, with pronounced and traditionally pronounced , though now often . Early 2000s research has shown that this resistance may continue to be reinforced by the fronting of , linked through a chain shift of vowels to the raising of the , , and perhaps vowels. This chain shift is called the "African American Shift". However, there is still evidence of AAVE speakers picking up the cot-caught merger in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in Charleston, South Carolina, Florida and Georgia, and in parts of California.

*Reduction of certain diphthong forms to monophthongs, in particular, the vowel is monophthongized to except before voiceless consonants (this is also found in most White Southern dialects). The vowel sound in ( in General American) is also monophthongized, especially before , making ''boil'' indistinguishable from ''ball''.
* Pin–pen merger: Before nasal consonants (, , and ), and are both pronounced like , making ''pen'' and ''pin'' homophones. This is also present 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.
* The distinction between the and vowels before liquid consonants is frequently reduced or absent, making ''feel'' and ''fill'' homophones ( ''fill''–''feel'' merger). and also merge, making ''poor'' and ''pour'' homophones ( ''cure''–''force'' merger).

Consonants

* Word-final devoicing of , , and , whereby, for example, ''cub'' sounds similar to ''cup'', 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)
* AAVE speakers may not use the fricatives (the ''th'' in "''th''in") and (the ''th'' of "''th''en") that are present in other varieties of English. The phoneme's position in a word determines its exact sound.
** Word-initially, is normally the same as in other English dialects (so ''thin'' is ); in other situations, it may move forward in the mouth to ( Th-fronting).
** Word-initially, is (so ''this'' may be ). In other situations, may move forward to .
* Realization of final ''ng'' , the velar nasal, as the alveolar nasal ( assibilation, alveolarization) in function morphemes and content morphemes with two or more syllables like ''-ing'', e.g. ''tripping'' is pronounced as (''trippin'') instead of the standard . This change does not occur in one-syllable content morphemes such as ''sing'', which is and not . However, ''singing'' is . Other examples include ''wedding'' → , ''morning'' → , ''nothing'' → . Realization of as in these contexts is commonly found in many other English dialects.
* A marked feature of AAVE is final consonant cluster reduction. 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. 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.
** Final consonant clusters that are homorganic (have the same place of articulation) and share the same voicing are reduced. E.g. ''test'' is pronounced since and are both voiceless; ''hand'' is pronounced (alternatively or ), since and are both voiced; but ''pant'' is unchanged, as it contains both a voiced and a voiceless consonant in the cluster. It is the plosive ( and ) 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. Speakers may carry this declustered pronunciation when pluralizing so that the plural of test is rather than . The clusters , are also affected.
** More often, word-final , , and are reduced, again with the final element being deleted rather than the former.
** For younger speakers, also occurs in words that other varieties of English have so that, for example, ''street'' is pronounced .
** Clusters ending in or exhibit variation in whether the first or second element is deleted.
* Similarly, final consonants may be deleted (although there is a great deal of variation between speakers in this regard). Most often, and are deleted. As with other dialects of English, final and may reduce to a glottal stop. Nasal consonants may be lost while nasalization of the vowel is retained (e.g., ''find'' may be pronounced ). More rarely, and may also be deleted.
* Use of metathesized forms like ''aks'' for "ask" or ''graps'' for "grasp".
* General non-rhotic behavior, in which the rhotic consonant is typically dropped when not followed by a vowel; it may also manifest as an unstressed or the lengthening of the preceding vowel. Intervocalic may also be dropped, e.g. General American ''story'' () can be pronounced , though this doesn't occur across morpheme boundaries. may also be deleted between a consonant and a back rounded vowel, especially in words like ''throw'', ''throat'', and ''through''.
**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.
* is often vocalized in patterns similar to that of (though never between vowels) and, in combination with cluster simplification (see above), can make homophones of ''toll'' and ''toe'', ''fault'' and ''fought'', and ''tool'' and ''too''. Homonymy may be reduced by vowel lengthening and by an off-glide .

"Deep" phonology

McWhorter discusses an accent continuum from "a 'deep' Black English through a 'light' Black English to standard English," saying the sounds on this continuum may vary from one African American speaker to the next or even in a single speaker from one situational context to the next. 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":
* Lowering of before , causing pronunciations such as for ''thing'' (sounding something like ''thang'').
* Word-medially and word-finally, pronouncing as (so for ''month'' and for ''mouth''), and as (so for ''smooth'' and for ''rather''. This is called ''th''-fronting. Word-initially, is (so ''those'' and ''doze'' sound nearly identical). This is called ''th''-stopping. In other words, the tongue fully touches the top teeth.
*Glide deletion ( monophthongization) of all instances of , universally, resulting in (so that, for example, even ''rice'' may sound like ''rahss''.)
*Full gliding ( diphthongization) of , resulting in (so that ''win'' may sound like ''wee-un'').
* Raising and fronting of the vowel of words like ''strut, mud, tough'', etc. to something like .

Grammar

Tense and aspect

Although AAVE does not necessarily have the simple past-tense marker of other English varieties (that is, the ''-ed'' of "work''ed''"), it does have an optional tense system with at least four aspects of the past tense and two aspects of the future tense. The term ''TMA marker'' is used for forms that are an integral part of the AAL predicate phrase. The markers ''gon'', ''done'', ''be'', and ''been'' were defined as markers of future tense, completive aspect, habitual aspect, and durative aspect.

Syntactically, ''I bought it'' is grammatical, but ''done'' (always unstressed, pronounced as /dən/) is used to emphasize the completed nature of the action.

As phase auxiliary verbs, ''been'' and ''done'' must occur as the first auxiliary; when they occur as the second, they carry additional aspects:
: ''He been done work'' means "he finished work a long time ago".
: ''He done been work'' means "until recently, he worked over a long period of time".

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

This aspect-marking form of ''been'' or BIN is stressed and semantically distinct from the unstressed form: ''She BIN running'' ('She has been running for a long time') and ''She been running'' ('She has been running'). This aspect has been given several names, including ''perfect phase'', ''remote past'', and ''remote phase'' (this article uses the third). As shown above, ''been'' places action in the distant past. 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. 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 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".

* ''Finna'' corresponds to "fixing to" in other varieties. it is also written ''fixina'', ''fixna'', ''fitna'', and ''finta''
In addition to these, ''come'' (which may or may not be an auxiliary) may be used to indicate speaker indignation, such as in ''Don't come acting like you don't know what happened and you started the whole thing'' ('Don't try to act as if you don't know what happened, because you started the whole thing').

Negation

Negatives are formed differently from most other varieties of English:

* Use of ''ain't'' as a general negative indicator. As in other dialects, it can be used where most other dialects would use ''am not'', ''isn't'', ''aren't'', ''haven't'', and ''hasn't.'' However, in marked contrast to other varieties of English in the US, some speakers of AAVE also use ''ain't'' instead of ''don't'', ''doesn't'', or ''didn't'' (''e.g.'', ''I ain't know that''). ''Ain't'' had its origins in common English but became increasingly stigmatized since the 19th century. See also ''amn't''.
* Negative concord, popularly called "double negation", as in ''I didn't go nowhere''; if the sentence is negative, all negatable forms are negated. This contrasts with standard written English conventions, which have traditionally prescribed that a double negative is considered incorrect to mean anything other than a positive (although this was not always so; see double negative).
* In a negative construction, an indefinite pronoun such as ''nobody'' or ''nothing'' can be inverted with the negative verb particle for emphasis (e.g., ''Don't nobody know the answer'', ''Ain't nothing going on''.)

While AAVE shares these with Creole languages, 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.

Other grammatical characteristics

* The copula ''be'' in the present tense is often dropped, as in Russian, Hebrew, Arabic and other languages. For example: ''You crazy'' ("You're crazy") or ''She my sister'' ("She's my sister"). The phenomenon is also observed in questions: ''Who you?'' ("Who're you?") and ''Where you at?'' ("Where are you (at)?"). This has been sometimes considered a Southern U.S. regionalism, though it is most frequent in Black speech. On the other hand, a stressed ''is'' cannot be dropped: ''Yes, she ''is'' my sister''. The general rules are:
** Only the forms ''is'' and ''are'' (of which the latter is anyway often replaced by ''is'') can be omitted; ''am'', ''was'', and ''were'' are not deleted.
** These forms cannot be omitted when they would be pronounced with stress in General American (whether or not the stress serves specifically to impart an emphatic sense to the verb's meaning).
** These forms cannot be omitted when the corresponding form in standard English cannot show contraction (and vice versa). For example, ''I don't know where he is'' cannot be reduced to *''I don't know where he'' just as in standard English forms the corresponding reduction *''I don't know where he's'' is likewise impossible. (''I don't know where he at'' is possible, paralleling ''I don't know where he's at'' in standard English.)
** Possibly some other minor conditions apply as well.
* Verbs are uninflected for number and person: there is no ''-s'' ending in the present-tense third-person singular. Example: ''She write poetry'' ("She writes poetry"). AAVE ''don't'' for standard English ''doesn't'' comes from this, unlike in some other dialects which use ''don't'' for standard English ''doesn't'' but ''does'' when not in the negative. Similarly, ''was'' is used for what in standard English are contexts for both ''was'' and ''were.''
* The genitive -'s ending may or may not be used. Genitive case is inferrable from adjacency. This is similar to many creoles throughout the Caribbean. Many language forms throughout the world use an unmarked possessive; it may here result from a simplification of grammatical structures. Example: ''my momma sister'' ("my mother's sister")
* The words ''it'' and ''they'' denote the existence of something, equivalent to standard English's ''there is'' or ''there are''.
* Word order in questions: ''Why they ain't growing?'' ("Why aren't they growing?") and ''Who the hell she think she is?'' ("Who the hell does she think she is?") lack the inversion of most other forms of English. Because of this, there is also no need for the " auxiliary ''do''".
* Relative clauses which modify a noun in the object or predicate nominative position are not obligatorily introduced by a relative pronoun.

Vocabulary

AAVE shares most of its lexicon with other varieties of English, particularly that of informal and Southern dialects; for example, the relatively recent use of '' y'all''. As statistically shown by Algeo (1991: 3-14), the main sources for new words are combining, shifting, shortening, blending, borrowing, and creating. 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. Early AAVE and Gullah contributed a number of words of African origin to the American English mainstream, including ''gumbo'', ''goober'', ''yam'', and ''banjo''.

Compounding in AAVE is a very common method in creating new vocabulary. The most common type of compounding is the noun-noun combination. There is also the adjective-noun combination which is the second most occurring combination found in AAE slang. AAE also combines adjectives with other adjectives, which are not as common, but are more common than in standard American English.

AAVE has also contributed slang expressions such as ''cool'' and ''hip''. In many cases, the postulated etymologies are not recognized by linguists or the Oxford English Dictionary, such as ''to dig'', ''jazz'', ''tote'', and ''bad-mouth'', a calque