The History and Construction of African American English

The debate about African American English has continued to gain a lot of scholarly attention; this fact has led to many studies concerning the history and the construction of this language to be conducted. Moreover, the African American English has gained popularity during the 21st century and has continued to be used in creating music lyrics for rap and r’n’b. On the other hand, throughout the history of African American Vernacular English it has had many different names including Negro English, Ebonics, Negro American dialect and Black English among others. Besides the language having many names, it has also been associated with many different cultures and people. This essay paper will examine and outline the origin and the development of the African American Vernacular.

It is apparent that African American Vernacular English is a variety of speech that was adopted from the working class descendants of the United States slaves in the colloquial contexts. Apparently, the distinctiveness of the AAVE has invited much speculation about its origins, for instance, for many years, the central question of whether the language evolved from a prior creole has remained debatable. On the other hand, the question of whether the language has its roots in English has not been fully dealt with. In order to resolve these questions, researchers have sought to understand the origin and the development of AAVE language by examining the historical attestations and the synchronic transplanted varieties. The most important historical attestations are from the recordings of the former slaves who learned the language in the middle of the nineteenth century. Researchers have used the African American Diaspora as the source of their finding of the or...

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...e used in a single sentence.

(xiii) Ain’t nothing you can’t do. (‘There isn’t anything that you can’t do.’)

There is, also, the use of ain’t in AAE to negate a sentence with copula deletion or to negate a sentence in the past tense.

(xiv) They ain’t going to the show. I ain’t know the girl. (‘They aren’t going to the show. I didn’t know the girl.’)

Questions

Questions can be formed without using auxiliaries at the beginning of sentences.

(xv) You know his name? (‘Do you know his name?’)

However, DO can be used in a sentence initial position but then it denotes habitual action.

(xvi) Do it be dark? (‘Is it usually dark?’)

Relative clauses

Relative clauses are not obligatory to introduce with a relative pronoun such as ‘that’ or ‘who’ like in Standard English.

(xvii) We got one girl be here every night. (‘There is one girl who is here every night.’)