Paper Topic:

Language change - The development of African American Vernacular English (possibly with focus on lexical/semantic change and/or syntactic change)

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23 May , 2008

The development of African American Vernacular English

Introduction

Over the past forty years , African American Vernacular English (AAVE has undergone a number of name changes . Some of the names given to this language were Substandard Negro English , Black English , Vernacular Black English , Spoken Soul and Afro-American English . Outside the academic community it was commonly called Ebonics . In this we stress our focus on AAVE as a notable variety of U .S . English (Standard American English , also known as SAE . Cultural differences , oppositional identities , social

factors between Blacks and Whites seem to have created linguistic differences between these groups long before the dawn of the twentieth century

The structure of AAVE shows many commonalties with a number of standard and nonstandard English varieties spoken in the US and the Caribbean The pronunciation of the AAVE in some respects is common to that of Southern American English . Despite this fact , some features of AAVE are apparently unique to this variety

Development of AAVE

Ancient trans-Atlantic African slave trade had a great impact on AAVE 's development . There are some commonalities between AAVE and English spoken in the British Isles during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries . Many scholars feel that AAVE developed as a result of contact between speakers of West African languages and speakers of vernacular English varieties . Varied patterns of language usage arose among African slaves (captives ) to communicate with their captors and also among themselves . These captives developed pidgins during the middle ages This simplified language , over time became fully developed creoles

Comparison with Standard American English

Some of the factors separate AAVE from Standard American English . One of factor is the grammatical structures similar to West African languages Next is the change in pronunciation whose patterns are found in creoles and dialects of other West African languages . Distinctive vocabulary is also a major factor that distinguishes AAVE from SAE . Another major factor is the difference in the use of tense . A number of words used in SAE may also have their origin in AAVE (John 233

AAVE has been at the heart of many public debates and the detailed study of this variety has also ignited and sustained debates among sociolinguists . Grammatical features of AAVE have notable variability compared to SAE . Such variability in the speech reflects the complex social attitudes surrounding AAVE

Hypotheses of AAVE 's development

Development of AAVE through second language acquisition

A number of hypotheses have been proposed for the development of AAVE According to one of the hypotheses , AAVE might have developed through processes of second language acquisition . It says that the West Africans newly arrived on colonies might have had less exposure to English grammatical models as the number of native speakers was limited . This is because there were only a few servants on each colony . In such a situation these people might have inserted few grammatical patterns which are common to the languages of West Africa into English vocabulary . This might have led to the gradual...

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