African-American Vernacular English^[a] (AAVE)^[b] is the variety of English natively spoken, particularly in urban communities, by most working- and middle-class African Americans and some Black Canadians.^[4] 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 English grammar and vocabulary, usually while retaining elements of the non-standard accent.^[5][6] AAVE is widespread throughout the United States, but is not the native dialect of all African Americans, nor are all of its speakers African American.^[7][8][9]

As with most English varieties spoken by African Americans, African-American Vernacular English shares a large portion of its grammar and phonology with the rural dialects of the Southern United States,^[10] and especially older Southern American English,^[11] due to the historical enslavement of African Americans primarily in that region.

Mainstream linguists maintain that the parallels between AAVE, West African languages, and English-based creole languages are existent but minor,^{[12][13][14][15]} with African-American Vernacular English genealogically tracing back to diverse non-standard dialects of English^[16][17] as spoken by the English-speaking settlers in the Southern Colonies and, later, Southern United States.^[18] 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 its own English-based creole or semi-creole language, distinct from the English language, before undergoing a process of decreolization.^[19][20][21]

Origins

African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) may be considered a dialect, ethnolect or sociolect.^[22] 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^[13][14] (evidence from a body of writing) from isolated enclaves in Samaná and Nova Scotia peopled by descendants of migrations of early AAVE-speaking groups (see Samaná English) 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.^[23]

Linguist John McWhorter maintains that the contribution of West African languages to AAVE is minimal. In an interview on National Public Radio's Talk of the Nation, McWhorter 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."^[24]

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.^[25] According to this theory, these captives first developed what are called pidgins: simplified mixtures of languages.^[26] Since pidgins form from close contact between speakers of different languages, the slave trade would have been exactly such a situation.^[26] Creolist John Dillard quotes, for example, slave ship captain William Smith describing the sheer diversity of mutually unintelligible languages just in The Gambia.^[27] 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.^[28] 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:^[27] "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 Black 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

Speech example

An example of a man from northern Ohio with an AAVE accent (Bobby Womack).

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Speech example

An example of a man from New York City with an AAVE accent (Eric Adams).

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Speech example

An example of two men with AAVE accents, the interviewer from Georgia (D. J. Shockley) and the interviewee from Louisiana (Russell Gage).

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Many pronunciation features distinctly set AAVE apart from other forms of American English (particularly, General American). 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.^[29] 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.^[30] 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. Additionally, such analyses have been utilized to bolster arguments concerning the historical origins of AAVE.^{[citation needed]} Consonant cluster reduction is a phonological process where a final consonant group or cluster, consisting of two 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

• 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".^[32] However, there is still evidence of AAVE speakers picking up the cot-caught merger in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,^[33] in Charleston, South Carolina,^[34] Florida and Georgia,^[35] and in parts of California.^[35]
• Reduction of certain diphthong^[36] 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.^[37]
• 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.^[37] 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.^[38][39][40]
• 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).^[37]

Consonants

• Word-final devoicing of /b/, /d/, and /ɡ/, whereby, for example, cub sounds similar to cup,^[41] 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)^[42][43]
• 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.^[44]
  • 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 → ˈmo(ɹ)nɨn, nothing → ˈnʌfɨn. Realization of /ŋ/ as n in these contexts is commonly found in many other English dialects.^[45]
Zdroj:https://en.wikipedia.org?pojem=African_American_Vernacular_English
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