Black english

Sociolinguists have shown that the frequency of reduction can be expressed by a rule which takes account of a number of interacting facts. Crucially, the frequency of reduction depends on the environment in which the sound occurs. The following two factors, among others, have been found to affect the frequency of reduction in consonant clusters

If the next word starts with a consonant, it is more likely to reduce than if the next word starts with a vowel. For example, reduction is more likely to occur in west side (becoming Wes side) than in west end.

A final t or d is more likely to be deleted if it is not part of the past tense -ed than if it is. (The past tense -ed suffix is pronounced as t or d or Id in English depending on the preceding sound.) For example, reduction is more likely to occur in John ran fast (becoming John ran fas) than in John passed the teacher in his car.

The th sounds: The written symbol th can represent two different sounds in English: both an "unvoiced" sound as in thought, thin and think, and a "voiced" sound as in the, they and that. In AAVE the pronunciation of this sound depends on where in a word it is found.

At the beginning of a word, the voiced sound (e.g. in that) is regularly pronounced as d so 'the', 'they' and 'that' are pronounced as de, dey and dat. AAVE shares this feature with many other nonstandard dialects, including those of the East Coast of United States and Canada.

Less common in AAVE is the pronunciation of the unvoiced sound as t. Thus 'thin' can become tin but rarely does. This however is a very common feature of Caribbean creoles in which 'think' is regularly pronounced as tink, etc. When the th sound is followed by r, it is possible in AAVE to pronounce the th as f as in froat for 'throat'.

Within a word, the unvoiced sound as in nothing, author or ether is often pronounced as f. Thus AAVE speakers will sometimes say nufn 'nothing' and ahfuh 'author'. The voiced sound, within a word, may be pronounced v. So 'brother' becomes bruvah, etc.

At the end of a word, th is often pronounced f in AAVE. For instance 'Ruth' is pronounced Ruf; 'south' is pronounced souf. When the preceding sound is a nasal (e.g. n or m) the th is often pronounced as t as in tent for 'tenth'; mont for 'month' [10].

The sounds l and r:

When they do not occur at the beginning of a word l and r often undergoes a process known as "vocalization" and are pronounced as uh. This is most apparent in a post-vocalic position (after a vowel). For instance 'steal', 'sister', 'nickel' become steauh, sistuh, nickuh. In some varieties of AAVE (e.g. in the Southern US), r is not pronounced after the vowels o and u. The words door and doe, four and foe, and sure and show can be pronounced alike.

When a nasal (n or m) follows a vowel, AAVE speakers sometimes delete the nasal consonant and nasalize the vowel. This nasalization is written with a tilde (~) above the vowel. So 'man' becomes mã.

In many varieties of English, including standard varieties, the vowels i in pin and e in pen sound different in all words. In AAVE, these sounds are merged before a nasal (like n or m). So in AAVE pin and pen are pronounced with the same vowel. Most Southern US varieties of English merge these vowels too, so this is only a distinctive feature of AAVE in the northern United States.

 

2.2. Grammar peculiarities

Although AAVE doesn't necessarily feature the preterite marker of other English varieties (that is, the -ed of worked), it does feature an optional tense system with four past and two future tenses or (because they indicate tense in degrees) phases.

Phases/Tenses of AAVE
Phase		Example
Past	Pre-recent	I been flown it
	Recent	I done fly ita
	Pre-present	I did fly it
	Past Inceptive	I do fly it
Present		I be flyin it
Future	Immediate	I'm a-fly it
	Post-immediate	I'm a-gonna fly it
	Indefinite future	I gonna fly it

Syntactically, I flew it is grammatical, but done (always unstressed) 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".

This latter example highlights one of the most distinguishing features of AAVE, which is the use of be to indicate that performance of the verb is of a habitual nature. In SAE, 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. 

Rickford 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".

 

 

 

AAVE grammatical Aspects
Aspect	Example	SE Meaning
Habitual/continuative aspect	He be working Tuesdays.	He works frequently or habitually on Tuesdays.
Intensified continuative (habitual)	He stay working.	He is always working.
Intensified continuative (not habitual)	He steady working.	He keeps on working.
Perfect progressive	He been working.	He has been working.
Irrealis	He finna go to work.	He is about to go to work.

Finna corresponds to "fixing to" in other varieties;^] it is also written fixina, fixna, fitna, and fint.

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').

Let’s examine how negatives are formed in AAVE

Negatives are formed differently from standard American English:

• Use of ain't as a general negative indicator. As in other dialects, it can be used where Standard English would use am not, isn't, aren't, haven't and hasn't.  However, in marked contrast to other varieties of English in the U.S., 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.
• 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 English, where a double negative is considered incorrect to mean anything other than a positive (although this wasn't always so; see double negative). There is also "triple" or "multiple negation", as in the phrase I don't know nothing about no one no more (in Standard English "I don't know anything about anyone anymore").
• 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 these are features that AAVE has in common with Creole languages, Howe and Walker 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.

 

1. The copula be 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)?"). On the other hand, a stressed is cannot be dropped: 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.

• These forms cannot be omitted when they would be pronounced with stress in Standard English (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 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.

2. Present-tense verbs are uninflected for number/person: there is no -s ending in the present-tense third-person singular. Example: She write poetry ("She writes poetry"). Similarly, was is used for what in standard English are contexts for both was and were.

3. 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')

4. The words it and they denote the existence of something, equivalent to Standard English there is, or there are.
5. Altered syntax 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 standard English. Because of this, there is also no need for the auxiliary do.
6. Usage of personal pronoun them instead of definite article those.

2.3. Lexical features

AAVE shares much of its lexicon with other varieties of English, particularly that of informal and Southern dialects. There are some notable differences between the two, however. It has 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; in many cases, the postulated etymologies are not recognized by linguists or the Oxford English Dictionary.

• dig from Wolof dëgg or dëgga, meaning "to understand/appreciate" (It may instead come from Gaelic dtuig.)
• jazz
• tote
• bad-mouth, a calque from Mandinka

AAVE also has words that either are not part of Standard American English or have strikingly different meanings from their common usage in SAE. For example, there are several words in AAVE referring to white people which are not part of mainstream SAE; these include gray as an adjective for whites (as in gray dude), possibly from the color of Confederate uniforms; and paddy, an extension of the slang use for "Irish". "Ofay," which is pejorative, is another general term for a white person; it might derive from the Ibibio word afia, which means "light-colored," and may have referred to European traders; or from the Yoruba word ofe, spoken in hopes of disappearing from danger such as that posed by European traders; or via Pig Latin from "foe". However, most dictionaries simply refer to this word as having an unknown etymology. Kitchen refers to the particularly curly or kinky hair at the nape of the neck, and siditty or seddity means snobbish or bourgeois.

AAVE has also contributed various words and phrases to other varieties of English; including chill out, main squeeze, soul, funky, and threads.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CONCLUSION

 

In our course paper we have researched the linguistic aspects of Black English.

The Black English historic development and its linguistic characteristics make up the core content of work. This course paper has considered historical review and its linguistic aspects.

We have observed Black English as a social dialect of English language, reviewed the historical development of Black English - its origin and development in the framework of Pidgin and Creole. We have studied linguistic aspects of Black English, especially its phonetic, grammar, lexical peculiarities which have been formed in the process of language interaction.

This material can be used as teaching manual in the course of English Language, Lexicology, History of the English language, Area studies( UK/USA).

Black English is the communicative and social system, originally created at the intersection of three dimensions –  social class, ethnic and territorial. Black English has existed as a social dialect since XVII century, but the term goes back only to 1969. At present 80% of Black Americans speak Black English.

Black English is widely used in modern literature (fiction and non-fiction), music, mass media (news broadcasts, newspapers, commercial advertising) and in such daily routine matters as safety instructions, everyday conversations etc.

Black English also called African American English, or African American Vernacular English, Black Vernacular, Black English Vernacular, or controversially Ebonics - is an African American Variety (sociolect/social dialect, ethnolect).

Black English has been used in many parts of world: the USA (Hawaii), Great Britain, in Africa (Gambia, Sierra, Leone, Liberia, Ghana, Togo, Nigeria, Cameroon), West Indies, Vanuatu, Papua New, Guinea, in the northern part of Australia, in Vietnam etc.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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