African American Vernacular | Encyclopedia MDPI

African American Vernacular: History

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African American Vernacular English (AAVE) is a systematic variety of English associated historically with African American communities in the United States, characterized by distinctive phonological, grammatical, and lexical patterns ^[1]^[2]. Its grammatical features include specific patterns of copula absence, habitual be, and tense and aspect marking, which follow rule-governed constraints rather than representing random departures from standardized English ^[1]^[2]. AAVE exhibits internal variation across speakers and contexts and is studied as a linguistic variety shaped by historical development, language contact, and the social dynamics of African American speech communities ^[1]^[2].

African American English
Language variation
Sociolinguistics
Grammatical variation

References

Green, L. J. African American English: A Linguistic Introduction. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, UK, 2002. https://semantics.uchicago.edu/kennedy/classes/sum08/myths/green02.pdf
Wolfram, W. The Grammar of Urban African American Vernacular English. In The Handbook of Varieties of English; Kortmann, B., Schneider, E. W., Burridge, K., Mesthrie, R., Upton, C., Eds.; Mouton de Gruyter: Berlin, Germany, 2004; pp. 111–132. https://api.pageplace.de/preview/DT0400.9783110197181_A19971649/preview-9783110197181_A19971649.pdf

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