African-American Vernacular English (AAVE), sometimes controversially known as Ebonics,For the reasons that linguists avoid using the term Ebonics, see for example . is the variety of English natively spoken by most working-class and middle-class Black Americans. This variety is also spoken among some Black Canadians. Having its own unique grammatical, vocabulary, and accent features, AAVE is employed by middle-class Black Americans as the more informal and casual end of a sociolinguistic continuum. However, in formal speaking contexts, speakers tend to switch to more standard American English grammar and vocabulary, usually while retaining elements of the vernacular (non-standard) accent. AAVE is widespread throughout the United States, but it is not the native dialect of all Black Americans, and a small number of its speakers are not Black Americans.
Like most varieties of African-American English, African-American Vernacular English shares a large portion of its grammar and phonology with the regional dialects of the Southern United States, and especially older Southern American English, due to the historical enslavement of African Americans primarily in that region.
Mainstream linguists see only minor parallels between AAVE, West African languages, and English-based creole languages,See for more information instead most directly tracing back AAVE to diverse non-standard dialects of EnglishThe Oakland school board's resolution "was about a perfectly ordinary variety of English spoken by a large and diverse population of Americans of African descent. . . . [E]ssentially all linguists agree that what the Oakland board was dealing with is a dialect of English." as spoken by the English-speaking settlers in the Southern Colonies and later the Southern United States. However, a minority of linguists argue that the vernacular shares so many characteristics with African creole languages spoken around the world that it could have originated as a creole (or semi-creole) language, distinct from the English language, before re-converging with English. and , both citing , , , and .
Origins African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) may be considered a dialect, ethnolect, and sociolect. While it is clear that there is a strong historical relationship between AAVE and earlier Southern U.S. dialects, the origins of AAVE are still a matter of debate.
The presiding theory among linguists is that AAVE has always been a dialect of English, meaning that it originated from earlier English dialects rather than from English-based creole languages that "decreolized" back into English. In the early 2000s, Shana Poplack provided corpus-based evidence from isolated enclaves in Samaná and Nova Scotia populated by descendants of migrations of early AAVE-speaking groups that suggests that the grammar of early AAVE was closer to that of contemporary British dialects than modern urban AAVE is to other current American dialects, suggesting that the modern language is a result of divergence from mainstream varieties, rather than the result of decreolization from a widespread American creole.William Labov, in the Foreword to , says "I would like to think that this clear demonstration of the similarities among the three diaspora dialects and the White benchmark dialects, combined with their differences from creole grammars, would close at least one chapter in the history of the creole controversies."
Linguist John McWhorter maintains that the contribution of West African languages to AAVE is minimal. McWhorter has characterized AAVE as a "hybrid of regional dialects of Great Britain that slaves in America were exposed to because they often worked alongside the indentured servants who spoke those dialects..." According to McWhorter, virtually all linguists who have carefully studied the origins of AAVE "agree that the West African connection is quite minor."Ludden, Jennifer (September 6, 2010). "Op-Ed: DEA Call For Ebonics Experts Smart Move" . NPR.
However, a creole theory, less accepted among linguists, posits that AAVE arose from one or more creole languages used by African captives of the Atlantic slave trade, due to the captives speaking many different native languages and therefore needing a new way to communicate among themselves and with their captors. According to this theory, these captives first developed pidgins or simplified mixtures of languages. Because pidgins form from close contact between speakers of different languages, the slave trade would have been exactly such a situation. Creolist John Dillard quotes, for example, slave ship captain William Smith describing the sheer diversity of mutually unintelligible languages just in The Gambia.
By 1715, an African pidgin was reproduced in novels by Daniel Defoe, in particular, The Life of Colonel Jacque. In 1721, Cotton Mather conducted the first attempt at recording the speech of slaves in his interviews regarding the practice of smallpox inoculation. By the time of the American Revolution, varieties among slave creoles were not quite mutually intelligible. Dillard quotes a recollection of "slave language" toward the latter part of the 18th century: "Kay, massa, you just leave me, me sit here, great fish jump up into da canoe, here he be, massa, fine fish, massa; me den very grad; den me sit very still, until another great fish jump into de canoe; but me fall asleep, massa, and no wake 'til you come...." Not until the time of the American Civil War did the language of the slaves become familiar to a large number of educated Whites. The abolitionist papers before the war form a rich corpus of examples of plantation creole. In Army Life in a Black Regiment (1870), Thomas Wentworth Higginson detailed many features of his African-American soldiers' language. Opponents of the creole theory suggest that such pidgins or creoles existed but simply died out without directly contributing to modern AAVE.
Phonology
Many pronunciation features set AAVE apart from other forms of American English (particularly General American). John McWhorter argues that what truly unites all AAVE accents is a uniquely wide-ranging intonation pattern or "melody", which characterizes even the most "neutral" or light African-American accent. A handful of multisyllabic words in AAVE differ from General American in their stress placement so that, for example, police, guitar, and Detroit are pronounced with initial stress instead of ultimate stress. The following are phonological differences in AAVE vowel and consonant sounds.
Final consonant groups or clusters in AAVE have been examined as evidence of the systematic nature of this language variety, governed by specific rules. These analyses have been utilized to bolster arguments concerning the historical origins of AAVE. Consonant cluster reduction is a phonological process where a final consonant group or cluster, consisting of two adjacent consonant sounds, is simplified or reduced to a single consonant sound. The analysis of consonant cluster reduction in AAVE assumes that, initially, final clusters are present and intact in the language. For example, the word "tes" in AAVE originates from "test", with the final "t" of the "st" consonant cluster being deleted in word-final position.
Vowels All AAVE vowels Pure vowels (monophthongs) English diaphoneme AAVE phoneme See pronunciation for "Chicago AAVE" and "N.Carolina AAVE." Example words act, pal, trap (/æ/ raising) ham, land, yeah blah, bother, father, lot, top, wasp all, dog, bought, loss, saw, taught dress, met, bread about, syrup, arena hit, skim, tip beam, chic, fleet bus, flood, what book, put, should food, glue, new Diphthongs prize, slide, tie (Canadian raising) price, slice, tyke now, ouch, scout lake, paid, rein boy, choice, moist goat, oh, show R-colored vowels non-rhotic: rhotic: barn, car, heart non-rhotic: rhotic: bare, bear, there burn, first, herd non-rhotic: rhotic: better, martyr, doctor non-rhotic: rhotic: fear, peer, tier non-rhotic: rhotic: hoarse, horse, poor <br/ > score, tour, war non-rhotic: rhotic: cure, Europe, pure Cot–caught merger: AAVE accents have traditionally resisted the cot–caught merger spreading nationwide, with pronounced and traditionally pronounced , though now often or , with the latter pronunciation most prominent in the Northeastern U.S. However, there is evidence of AAVE speakers exhibiting the cot–caught merger in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Charleston, South Carolina; Florida and Georgia; and in parts of California. African American Vowel Shift: Early 2000s research has shown that the resistance to the cot–caught merger may continue to be reinforced by the fronting of , linked through a chain shift of vowels to the raising of the , , and perhaps vowels. This chain shift of vowels is called the "African American Shift". However, this shift is not universal to all AAVE speakers; it is mostly exhibited by speakers who live in all the states along the Mississippi River and in North Carolina. Reduction of certain diphthong forms to monophthongs, in particular, the vowel is monophthongized to except before voiceless consonants (this is also found in most White Southern dialects). The vowel sound in ( in General American) is also monophthongized, especially before , making boil indistinguishable from ball. Pin–pen merger: Before nasal consonants (, , and ), and are both pronounced like , making pen and pin homophones. This is also present in other dialects, particularly of the South. The pin–pen merger is not universal in AAVE, and there is evidence for unmerged speakers in California, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. The distinction between the and vowels before liquid consonants is frequently reduced or absent, making feel and fill homophones (fill–feel merger). and also merge, making poor and pour homophones (cure–force merger).
Consonants Word-final devoicing of , , and , whereby, for example, cub sounds similar to cup, though these words may retain the longer vowel pronunciations that typically precede voiced consonants, and devoicing may be realized with debuccalization (where is realized as , for instance)., citing AAVE speakers may not use the fricatives (the th in "thin") and (the th of "then") that are present in other varieties of English. The phoneme's position in a word determines its exact sound. Word-initially, is normally the same as in other English dialects (so thin is ); in other situations, it may move forward in the mouth to (Th-fronting). Word-initially, is (so this may be ). In other situations, may move forward to . Realization of final ng , the velar nasal, as the alveolar nasal (assibilation, alveolarization) in function morphemes and content morphemes with two or more syllables like -ing, e.g. tripping is pronounced as (trippin) instead of the standard . This change does not occur in one-syllable content morphemes such as sing, which is and not . However, singing is . Other examples include wedding → , morning → , nothing → . Realization of as in these contexts is commonly found in many other English dialects. although her examples are different. A marked feature of AAVE is final consonant cluster reduction. This is a process by which the pronunciations of consonant clusters at the end of certain words are reduced to pronouncing only the first consonant of that cluster. There are several phenomena that are similar but governed by different grammatical rules. This tendency has been used by creolists to compare AAVE to West African languages since such languages do not have final clusters.