Introduction to African American Vernacular English AAVE John

Introduction to: “African American Vernacular English (AAVE)“ John Assenmacher Matthias Schütz

History and social context - Roots in trans-Atlantic African slave trade - Captives developed pidgins to communicate

History and social context - Roots in trans-Atlantic African slave trade - Captives developed pidgins to communicate - Over years those pidgins became creoles

Traits of AAVE seperating it from Standard American English - grammatical structures similar to West African languages - changes in pronunciation - distinctive vocabulary - differences in the use of tenses

Phonological and Grammatical Features in AAVE

Phonological Features

Phonological Features - reduction of certain diphthongs become monophthongs - [aɪ] to [a] and [ɔɪ] to [oː] - example: "boy" pronounced as [boː]

Dental Fricatives - voiceless dental fricative [θ] (thing) -> [t] (ting) - voiced dental fricative [ð] (then) -> [d] (den) - alveolar stops or labiodental fricatives: [f] and [v] - Examples: smooth [smuːð] -> smoov [smuːv] tooth [tuːθ] is pronounced toof [tuːf]

West African-based English creoles and pidgins: - always [d] for "th" regardless of placement - "brudda" for "brother. " AAVE is non-rhotic

AAVE is non-rhotic - alveolar approximant [ɹ] usually dropped - except: followed by a vowel, e. g. "strong“ - intervocalic [ɹ] may also be dropped e. g. "story" ->"sto'y" [stÉ”i] - But: rhotic AAVE speakers do exist

Final ng [Å‹] - velar nasal [Å‹] ->alveolar nasal [n] - two syllables, e. g. "tripping" -> "trippin“ - not in one-syllable content morphemes: sing is sing [sɪŋ] not: sin [sɪn] - But: singing is singin [sɪŋɪn] - Realization of /Å‹/ as [n] feature of many English dialects

Final consonant clusters - reduction of final consonant clusters - test becomes tes, hand becomes han - but pant is unchanged - contains a voiced and a voiceless consonant in the cluster

Metathesis - adjacent consonants are switched - particularly when the first is [s] - "ask" is realized as "aks"

Some other features - before nasal consonants /ɛ/ and /ɪ/ both /ɪ/ -> pen and pin (sound the same) - before 'l' /ɪ/ and /i� / both as /ɪ/ -> feel and fill (sound the same) - dropping of /t/ at the end of contractions: don't and ain't -> /doʊn/ and /eɪn/

Grammatical Features

Aspect marking - most distinguishing feature of AAVE is the use of forms of be - used to mark aspect in verb phrases - use or lack of a form of be can indicate whether habitual or not - in SAE: can only be expressed using adverbs, e. g. usually - disputed whether this feature in AAVE has its roots in various West African languages

Examples for Aspect marking - He workin'. - simple progressive - He is working [right now]. - He be workin'. - habitual/continuative aspect - He works frequently or habitually. - He be steady workin'. - intensified continuative - He is working staedily. - He been workin'. - perfect progressive - He has been working.

Negation - negatives are formed differently from SAE - use of ain't as a general negative indicator - used in place of "am not", "isn't", and "aren't" or even "didn't“ - negation agreement: if sentence is negative - all negatable forms are negated as - e. g. I didn't go nowhere. - SE: double negative -> positive (although this wasn't always so)

Literature used: • Mufwene, Salikoko S, 1998. African American English, Structure, history and use. London & New York: Routledge. • Green, Lisa J, 2002. African American English, A linguistic Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. • Mufwene, Salikoko S. Africanisms in Afro-American language varieties. Athens: University of Georgia Press. • Schneider, Edgar W, 1989. American earlier Black English. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press.