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Termpaper, 2009, 16 Pages
Author: Ismail Durgut
Subject: American Studies - Linguistics
Details
Institution/College: University of Duisburg-Essen
Tags: African, American, Vernacular, English, Language, Linguistik, Linguistics, Sociolinguistics, Black, Slang
Year: 2009
Pages: 16
Grade: 1.0
Bibliography: ~ 6 Entries
Language: English
ISBN (E-book): 978-3-640-29097-0
ISBN (Book): 978-3-640-29120-5
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Abstract
The majority of the US-citizens of African ancestry speak a characteristic variety of English that has been referred to by several names. It has variously been called Non-Standard Negro English, Negro Dialect , Black English Vernacular, Black English, African American English, African American Vernacular English, Ebonics, etc. In this paper, I will use the term African American Vernacular English, abbreviated AAVE, because it is the term most current among linguists today. The term “vernacular” refers to the everyday language spoken by a speech community, often a non-standard variety. No other variety inside the United States has been studied as much as AAVE. During the last fourty years, many works have been released concerning this topic. This paper is an overview of AAVE. It starts with the historical backgrounds of the variety by discussing the major theories concerning its origin. The main part of this paper deals with AAVE’s linguistic features in comparison to Standard American English. The features are subdivided into the sub-chapters phonology, grammar and vocabulary. A summary forms the final chapter of this paper.
Excerpt (computer-generated)
University of Duisburg-Essen (Campus Essen)
Term: Summer 2008
African American Vernacular
English
Author: Durgut, Ismail
1
Table of Content
1. Introduction 3
2. History 3
3. Features 6
3.1 Phonology 6
3.1.1 Vowel system 6
3.1.2 Consonant system 7
3.1.3 Stress 9
3.2 Grammar 9
3.2.1 Time reference 9
3.2.2 Negation 11
3.2.3 Other grammatical features 11
3.3 Vocabulary 12
4. Summary 13
5. Sources 14
Literature: 14
Internet: 15
6. Abbreviations 15
2
1. Introduction
The majority of the UScitizens of African ancestry speak a
characteristic variety of English that has been referred to by several names.
It has variously been called NonStandard Negro English, Negro Dialect1,
Black English Vernacular, Black English, African American English, African
American Vernacular English, Ebonics, etc. In this paper, I will use the term
African American Vernacular English, abbreviated AAVE, because it is the
term most current among linguists today. The term "vernacular"
refers to
the everyday language spoken by a speech community, often a non
standard variety. 2
No other variety inside the United States has been studied as much
as AAVE. During the last fourty years, many works have been released
concerning this topic. This paper is an overview of AAVE. It starts with the
historical backgrounds of the variety by discussing the major theories
concerning its origin. The main part of this paper deals with AAVE′s
linguistic features in comparison to Standard American English. The
features are subdivided into the subchapters phonology, grammar and
vocabulary. A summary forms the final chapter of this paper.
2. History
There are three major theories about the origin of African American
Vernacular English and the reasons why it differs from Standard American
English as well as other varieties of English. The first theory is that AAVE is
1 Ralph W. Fasold / Walt Wolfram: "Some Linguistic Features of Negro Dialect", in:
Paul Stoller [editor], Black American English. Its Background and Its Usage in the
Schools and in Literature, Dell, New York 1975, pp. 4988.
2 Tottie (2002), p. 218.
3
descended from a creole, which derived from an Englishbased pidgin
itself. 3
Those who support the creolist hypothesis maintain that the creole upon
which AAVE is based was fairly widespread in the antebellum South. They
observe that this creole was not unique to the mainland South but rather
shows a number of similarities to wellknown Englishbased creoles of the
African diaspora such as Krio, spoken today in Sierra Leone along the
coast of West Africa, as well as Englishbased creoles of the Caribbean
such as the creoles of Barbados and Jamaica. Its vestiges in the United
States are still found today in GULLAH, more popularly called "Geechee,"
the creole still spoken by a small number of African Americans in the Sea
Islands off the coast of South Carolina and Georgia. It is maintained that
this creole was fairly widespread among the descendants of Africans on
Southern plantations but was not spoken to any extent by whites.4
Judith Rodby (1992) outlines the possible development of AAVE as follows:
The roots of contemporary BEV5 are found in the seventeenthcentury
slave trade. Historically, slave owners had organized the slaves′ social
universe so that it was difficult for them to communicate. The Ibo, Hausa,
Yoruba, Mandingo, and Wolof tribes, for example, lived together even
though they spoke languages that were only minimally mutually
intelligible. These slaves who did not speak the same language and did not
have the opportunity to learn English developed a pidgin language to
communicate with each other and with whites. Gradually, the pidgin
became creolized; it was regularized, expanded, and passed from one
generation to another as a mother tongue. Slave creole was based largely
3 Tottie (2002), p. 227.
4 Wolfram & SchillingEstes (1998), p.175.
5 BEV, i.e. Black English Vernacular, meaning AAVE.
4
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