Wikibooks: African American Vernacular English/Introduction

• Format: Book
• Language: English
• Subjects: Newfoundland
• Online Access: https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/African_American_Vernacular_English/Introduction

What is AAVE? Is it a language is it a dialect or is it just English spoken badly. To linguists it s obviously not the last of those and the first distinction is not really important. It s a spoken system of communication with a clearly defined set of rules grammatical and phonological and a generally accepted vocabulary. = Terminology = This book uses a great deal of linguistic terminology. Though a linguistic background is thus helpful and we recommend reviewing the [[Linguistics]] Wikibook it is not required. We will try to provide explanations of the terms and also to illustrate the principles through examples. In discussing African American Vernacular English we will look at the language on its own terms and compare it both to common rules in most English dialects and to Mainstream American English. The following acronyms will thus be helpful to your understanding of the test. AAVE African American Vernacular English the subject of this book. MAE Mainstream American English the prestige variety of English also known as General American or Radio English spoken by most white Americans in the Northern and Eastern United states. GE General English features which are common across many or most varieties of English including both prestigious varieties such as MAE Estuary English and BBC English and low class and regional varieties including AAVE Cockney Newfoundland English and Southern (white) American English. = Origins = There are several hypotheses about the origins of AAVE. Of these the most important are reolization and decreolization frican development rish or Ulster Scots substratum = Creolization = Historically the most commonly accepted hypothesis for the origins of AAVE has been the creolization hypothesis. = African Substratum = A recent alternative is that AAVE borrowed features not common to MAE from African languages. = Irish or Ulster Scots substratum = Many have proposed that AAE which shares a large number of features with Irish English Ulster Scots and the southern Appalachian English which ...