African-American Vernacular English

• African American Vowel Shift: AAVE accents have traditionally resisted the cot-caught merger spreading nationwide, with LOT pronounced [ɑ̈] and THOUGHT traditionally pronounced [ɒɔ], though now often [ɒ~ɔə]. Early 2000s research has shown that this resistance may continue to be reinforced by the fronting of LOT, linked through a chain shift of vowels to the raising of the TRAP, DRESS, and perhaps KIT vowels. This chain shift is called the "African American Shift".[29] However, there is still evidence of AAVE speakers picking up the cot-caught merger in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,[30] in Charleston, South Carolina,[31] Florida and Georgia,[32] and in parts of California.[32]

• Reduction of certain diphthong[33] forms to monophthongs, in particular, the PRICE vowel /aɪ/ is monophthongized to [aː] except before voiceless consonants (this is also found in most White Southern dialects). The vowel sound in CHOICE (/ɔɪ/ in General American) is also monophthongized, especially before /l/, making boil indistinguishable from ball.[34]
• Pin–pen merger: Before nasal consonants (/m/, /n/, and /ŋ/), DRESS /ɛ/ and KIT /ɪ/ are both pronounced like [ɪ~ɪə], making pen and pin homophones.[34] 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.[35][36][37]
• The distinction between the KIT /ɪ/ and FLEECE /i/ vowels before liquid consonants is frequently reduced or absent, making feel and fill homophones (fill–feel merger). /ʊər/ and /ɔːr/ also merge, making poor and pour homophones (cure–force merger).[34]

• Word-final devoicing of /b/, /d/, and /ɡ/, whereby, for example, cub sounds similar to cup,[38] though these words may retain the longer vowel pronunciations that typically precede voiced consonants, and devoicing may be realized with debuccalization (where /d/ is realized as [.], for instance)[39][40]
• AAVE speakers may not use the fricatives [θ] (the th in "thin") and [ð] (the th of "then") that are present in other varieties of English. The phoneme's position in a word determines its exact sound.[41]
  • Word-initially, /θ/ is normally the same as in other English dialects (so thin is [θɪn]); in other situations, it may move forward in the mouth to /f/ (Th-fronting).
  • Word-initially, /ð/ is [ð~d] (so this may be [dɪs]). In other situations, /ð/ may move forward to /v/.
• Realization of final ng /ŋ/, the velar nasal, as the alveolar nasal [n] (assibilation, alveolarization) in function morphemes and content morphemes with two or more syllables like -ing, e.g. tripping /ˈtrɪpɪŋ/ is pronounced as [ˈtɹɪpɨn] (trippin) instead of the standard [ˈtɹɪpɪŋ]. This change does not occur in one-syllable content morphemes such as sing, which is [sɪŋ] and not *[sɪn]. However, singing is [ˈsɪŋɨn]. Other examples include wedding → [ˈwɛɾɨn], morning → [ˈmɔɹnɨn], nothing → [ˈnʌfɨn]. Realization of /ŋ/ as [n] in these contexts is commonly found in many other English dialects.[42]
• A marked feature of AAVE is final consonant cluster reduction.[43] 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.[44] There are several phenomena that are similar but are 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.[45][44]
  • Final consonant clusters that are homorganic (have the same place of articulation) and share the same voicing are reduced.[45][46] E.g. test is pronounced [tɛs] since /t/ and /s/ are both voiceless; hand is pronounced [hæn] (alternatively [hæ̃] or [hɛən]), since /n/ and /d/ are both voiced; but pant is unchanged, as it contains both a voiced and a voiceless consonant in the cluster.[47] It is the plosive (/t/ and /d/) in these examples that is lost rather than the fricative; the nasal is also either preserved completely or lost with preservation of nasality on the preceding consonant.[48] Speakers may carry this declustered pronunciation when pluralizing so that the plural of test is [ˈtɛsɨs] rather than [tɛsts].[49] The clusters /ft/, /md/ are also affected.[50]
  • More often, word-final /sp/, /st/, and /sk/ are reduced, again with the final element being deleted rather than the former.[51]
  • For younger speakers, /skr/ also occurs in words that other varieties of English have /str/ so that, for example, street is pronounced [skɹit].[33]
  • Clusters ending in /s/ or /z/ exhibit variation in whether the first or second element is deleted.[52]
• Similarly, final consonants may be deleted (although there is a great deal of variation between speakers in this regard). Most often, /t/ and /d/ are deleted. As with other dialects of English, final /t/ and /k/ may reduce to a glottal stop. Nasal consonants may be lost while nasalization of the vowel is retained (e.g., find may be pronounced [fãː]). More rarely, /s/ and /z/ may also be deleted.[53]
• Use of metathesized forms like aks for "ask"[54] or graps for "grasp".
• General non-rhotic behavior, in which the rhotic consonant /r/ is typically dropped when not followed by a vowel; it may also manifest as an unstressed [ə] or the lengthening of the preceding vowel.[55] Intervocalic /r/ may also be dropped, e.g. General American story ([ˈstɔɹi]) can be pronounced [ˈstɔ.i], though this doesn't occur across morpheme boundaries.[56] /r/ may also be deleted between a consonant and a back rounded vowel, especially in words like throw, throat, and through.[57]
  • The level of AAVE rhoticity is likely somewhat correlated with the rhoticity of White speakers in a given region; in 1960s research, AAVE accents tended to be mostly non-rhotic in Detroit, whose White speakers are rhotic, but completely non-rhotic in New York City, whose White speakers are also often non-rhotic.[58]
• /l/ is often vocalized in patterns similar to that of /r/ (though never between vowels)[59] and, in combination with cluster simplification (see above), can make homophones of toll and toe, fault and fought, and tool and too. Homonymy may be reduced by vowel lengthening and by an off-glide [ɤ].[60]

McWhorter discusses an accent continuum from "a 'deep' Black English through a 'light' Black English to standard English," saying the sounds on this continuum may vary from one African American speaker to the next or even in a single speaker from one situational context to the next.[61] McWhorter regards the following as rarer features, characteristic only of a deep Black English but which speakers of light Black English may occasionally "dip into for humorous or emotive effect":[26]

• Lowering of /ɪ/ before /ŋ/, causing pronunciations such as [θɛŋ~θæŋ] for thing (sounding something like thang).[33]
• Word-medially and word-finally, pronouncing /θ/ as [f] (so [mʌmf] for month and [mæɔf] for mouth), and /ð/ as [v] (so [smuv] for smooth and [ˈɹævə(ɹ)] for rather.[62] This is called th-fronting. Word-initially, /ð/ is [d] (so those and doze sound nearly identical). This is called th-stopping. In other words, the tongue fully touches the top teeth.
• Glide deletion (monophthongization) of all instances of /aɪ/, universally, resulting in [aː~äː] (so that, for example, even rice may sound like rahss.)
• Full gliding (diphthongization) of /ɪ/, resulting in [iə] (so that win may sound like wee-un).
• Raising and fronting of the vowel /ʌ/ of words like strut, mud, tough, etc. to something like [ɜ~ə].

Although AAVE does not necessarily have the simple past-tense marker of other English varieties (that is, the -ed of "worked"), it does have an optional tense system with at least four aspects of the past tense and two aspects of the future tense.[63] The term TMA marker is used for forms that are an integral part of the AAL predicate phrase.[64] The markers gon, done, be, and been were defined as markers of future tense, completive aspect, habitual aspect, and durative aspect.[64]

^a Syntactically, I bought it is grammatical, but done (always unstressed, pronounced as /dən/) is used to emphasize the completed nature of the action.[66]

As phase auxiliary verbs, been and done must occur as the first auxiliary; when they occur as the second, they carry additional aspects:[65]

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".

The latter example shows one of the most distinctive features of AAVE: the use of be to indicate that performance of the verb is of a habitual nature. In most other American English dialects, this can only be expressed unambiguously by using adverbs such as usually.[67]

This aspect-marking form of been or BIN[68] 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').[69][70] This aspect has been given several names, including perfect phase, remote past, and remote phase (this article uses the third).[71] 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 (1999) 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.[71]

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".

• ^a Finna corresponds to "fixing to" in other varieties.[74] it is also written fixina, fixna, fitna, and finta[75]

In addition to these, come (which may or may not be an auxiliary[76]) 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').[77]

Negatives are formed differently from most other varieties of English:[78]

• Use of ain't as a general negative indicator. As in other dialects, it can be used where most other dialects would use am not, isn't, aren't, haven't, and hasn't. However, in marked contrast to other varieties of English in the US, some speakers of AAVE also use ain't instead of don't, doesn't, or didn't (e.g., I ain't know that).[79] Ain't had its origins in common English but became increasingly stigmatized since the 19th century. See also amn't.
• 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 written English conventions, which have traditionally prescribed that a double negative is considered incorrect to mean anything other than a positive (although this was not always so; see double negative).
• 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 AAVE shares these with Creole languages,[80] Howe & Walker (2000) 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.[78]

• The copula be in the present tense 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)?"). This has been sometimes considered a Southern U.S. regionalism, though it is most frequent in Black speech.[81] On the other hand, a stressed is cannot be dropped: Yes, 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; am, was, and were are not deleted.
  • These forms cannot be omitted when they would be pronounced with stress in General American (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 forms 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.[82]
• Verbs are uninflected for number and person: there is no -s ending in the present-tense third-person singular. Example: She write poetry ("She writes poetry"). AAVE don't for standard English doesn't comes from this, unlike in some other dialects which use don't for standard English doesn't but does when not in the negative. Similarly, was is used for what in standard English are contexts for both was and were.[83]
• The genitive -'s ending may or may not be used.[84] 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")
• The words it and they denote the existence of something, equivalent to standard English's there is or there are.[85]
• Word order 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 most other forms of English. Because of this, there is also no need for the "auxiliary do".[86]
• Relative clauses which modify a noun in the object or predicate nominative position are not obligatorily introduced by a relative pronoun.[87]

The first studies on the African American English (AAE) took place in cities such as New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, to name a few.[23] These studies concluded that the African American Language (AAL) was homogeneous, which means that AAE was spoken the same way everywhere around the country.[23] Later, sociolinguists would realize that these cities lacked the influence of the rural south; the early studies had not considered the representation of the south of America, which caused the AAE studies to change.[23] To make those changes, the newer studies used the diversity of the country and took into consideration the rural south.[23]

African-American Vernacular English began as mostly rural and Southern, yet today is mostly urban and nationally widespread, and its more recent urban features are now even diffusing into rural areas.[109] Urban AAVE alone is intensifying with the grammatical features exemplified in these sentences: "He be the best" (intensified equative be), "She be done had her baby" (resultative be done), and "They come hollerin" (indignant come). On the other hand, rural AAVE alone shows certain features too, such as: "I was a-huntin" (a-prefixing); "It riz above us" (different irregular forms); and "I want for to eat it" (for to complement).[110] Using the word bees even in place of be to mean is or are in standard English, as in the sentence "That's the way it bees" is also one of the rarest of all deep AAVE features today, and most middle-class AAVE speakers would recognize the verb bees as part of only a deep "Southern" or "country" speaker's vocabulary.[26]

There are at least 10 distinct regional accents in AAVE,[111] and regional patterns of pronunciation and word choice appear on Twitter and other social media.[112][113][114]

Regional variation in AAVE does not pattern with other regional variation in North American English,[115] which broadly follows East-to-West migration patterns,[116] but instead patterns with the population movements during the Great Migration,[117] resulting in a broadly South-to-North pattern, albeit with founder effects in cities that already had existing African American populations at the beginning of the Great Migration.[118][119] There is no vowel for which the geographic variation in AAVE patterns with that of White American English.[120]

New York City AAVE incorporates some local features of the New York accent, including its high THOUGHT vowel; meanwhile, conversely, Pittsburgh AAVE may merge this same vowel with the LOT vowel, matching the cot-caught merger of White Pittsburgh accents, though AAVE accents traditionally do not have the cot-caught merger. Memphis, Atlanta, and Research Triangle AAVE incorporates the DRESS vowel raising and FACE vowel lowering associated with White Southern accents. Memphis and St. Louis AAVE are developing, since the mid-twentieth century, an iconic merger of the vowels in SQUARE and NURSE, making there sound like thurr.[121] Californian AAVE often lacks a cot-caught merger, especially before nasals.[115]

The United States courts are divided over how to admit statements of ambiguous tense made in AAVE under evidence. In United States v. Arnold, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit held that "he finna shoot me" was a statement made in the present tense, so it was admissible hearsay under the excited utterance exception; however, the dissent held that past or present tense could not be determined by the statement, so the statement should not have been admitted into evidence.[137] Similarly, in Louisiana v. Demesme, the Louisiana Supreme Court ruled that the defendant's statement "why don’t you give me a lawyer, dog" was too ambiguous to be considered a Miranda request for a lawyer.[138]

In US courts, an interpreter is only routinely available for speakers of "a language other than English". Rickford & King (2016) argue that a lack of familiarity with AAVE (and other minority dialects of English) on the part of jurors, stenographers, and others can lead to misunderstandings in court. They especially focus on the Trayvon Martin case and how the testimony of Rachel Jeantel was perceived as incomprehensible and not credible by the jury due to her dialect.[139]

A 2019 experimental study by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, NYU, and Philadelphia Lawyers for Social Equity, found that court stenographers in Philadelphia regularly fail to transcribe AAVE accurately, with about 40 percent of sentences being inaccurate, and only 83% accuracy at the word level, despite court stenographers being certified at or above 95% accuracy.[36][140][141] Their study suggests that there is evidence that court reporters may potentially introduce incorrect transcriptions into the official court record, with ramifications in cross-examination, jury deliberations, and appeals. A 2016 qualitative study by researchers at Stanford University also suggests that testimony in AAE — and other nonstandard varieties — is not necessarily always understood in a judicial setting.[142]

Spirituals, blues, jazz, R&B, and most recently, hip-hop are all genres associated with African American music; as such, AAVE usually appears, through singing, speaking, or rapping, in these musical forms. Examples of morphosyntactic features of AAVE in genres other than hip-hop are given below:

More recently, AAVE has been used heavily in hip-hop to show "street cred".[143] Examples of morphosyntactic AAVE features used by Black hip-hop artists are given below:

In addition to grammatical features, lexical items specific to AAVE are often used in hip-hop:

^a Lexical items taken from Smitherman (2000)

Because hip-hop is so intimately related to the African American oral tradition, non-Black hip-hop artists also use certain features of AAVE; for example, in an MC battle, Eyedea said, "What that mean, yo?"[144][145] displaying a lack of subject-verb inversion and also the "auxiliary do". However, they tend to avoid the term nigga, even as a marker of solidarity.[144] White hip-hop artists such as Eyedea can choose to accentuate their whiteness by hyper-articulating postvocalic r sounds (i.e. the retroflex approximant).[144][146]

AAVE is also used by non-Black artists in genres other than hip-hop, if less frequently. For instance, in "Tonight, Tonight", Hot Chelle Rae uses the term dime to mean "an attractive woman".[147] Jewel's "Sometimes It Be That Way" employs habitual be in the title to indicate habitual aspect. If they do not employ similar features of AAVE in their speech, then it can be argued that they are modeling their musical performance to evoke aspects of particular musical genres such as R&B or the blues (as British pop musicians of the 1960s and beyond did to evoke rock, pop, and the blues).[148] Some research suggests that non-African American young adults learn AAVE vocabulary by listening to hip-hop music.[143]

On Twitter, AAVE is used as a framework from which sentences and words are constructed, in order to accurately express oneself.[149] Grammatical features and word pronunciations stemming from AAVE are preserved.[149] Spellings based on AAVE have become increasingly common, to the point where it has become a normalized practice. Some examples include, "you" (you're), "they" (their/they're), "gon/gone" (going to), and "yo" (your).[149]

Educators traditionally have attempted to eliminate AAVE usage through the public education system, perceiving the dialect as grammatically defective.[150] In 1974, the teacher-led Conference on College Composition and Communication issued a position statement affirming students' rights to their own dialects and the validity of all dialects.[151] Mainstream linguistics has long agreed with this view about dialects.[152] In 1979, a judge ordered the Ann Arbor School District to find a way to identify AAVE speakers in the schools and to "use that knowledge in teaching such students how to read standard English."[153] In 1996, Oakland Unified School District made a controversial resolution for AAVE, which was later called "Ebonics." The Oakland School board approved that Ebonics be recognized as a language independent from English (though this particular view is not endorsed by linguists), that teachers would participate in recognizing this language, and that it would be used in theory to support the transition from Ebonics to Standard American English in schools. This program lasted three years and then died off.[154]