BAEV and Ebonics:American English in black and white
The popular concept: (Ill.: Jive talk scenes from Airplane1:41)
+ Hooked on Ebonics: Leroy is a 9th grader. This is Leroy’s homework assignment. He must use each vocabulary word in a sentence.
Disappointment -- My parole officer tol me if I miss disappointment they send me back to da big house.
Catacomb -- Don King was at da fight da other nite, man somebody oughta give dat catacomb.
Stain --My mother-in-law stopped by and I axed her do you plan on stain for dinner?
Denominations: Negro Dialect, Non-Standard Negro English, Black English, Vernacular Black English, Afro-American English, Ebonics, African American (Vernacular) English, African American Language (some w/ emotional/racist overtones)
McWhorter, John. “Black English: Is You Is or Is You Ain’t a Language?” The Word on the Street: Fact and Fable about American English. Plenum Trade: New York and London, 1998.
“J.L. Dillard’s Black English (1972) and Geneva Smitherman’s Talkin and Testifyin (1977) carefully outline the systematicity of Black English… Television documentaries like the ‘Black on White’ segment of the well-received The Story of English have brought this information to life even more vividly. Many undergraduate students who take a linguistics class are taught at some point that Black English is a system, not a plague.
Yet the response to the Oakland Resolution, The New Republic’s treatment of John Rickford, and any number of conversations in which Black English comes up show that the American public continues to see only comedy in the notion that Black English is more than gutter talk—a clumsy yelp from the fringes of Afrocentrism at best, a cynical grab at bilingual education funds at worst. One suspects that the public has either missed the message or that they have not been convinced by the argument.”(127-8)
(Ill.: Black and White from TSOE5 58 min)
Origins:
earlier: colonial masters » slaves (as second lg) » black children (regional BE » BAE)
(The Dialectologist/Anglicist Hypothesis, prevailing in the 1940s, concentrating on the English origins of AAVE, to the exclusion of African influence)
more recently: West African Pidgin E » Caribbean Creole » Gullah (Creole) » “plantation talk”(phases: abolition » segregation » civil rights » BAE recognized as Ebonics)
(The Creole Hypothesis, maintaining that modern AAVE is the result of a Creole derived from English and various West African Languages.)
Reminder: A creole is a lg derived from other lg-es that becomes the primary lg of the people who speak it. A pidgin is lg composed of two or more lg-es created for the purpose of communication, usually around trade centers, between people who do not speak a common lg. It is never a person's primary lg.
+ for Neo-Anglicist and Substrate Hypotheses: see
(Ill.: Creole History from DYSA141:00-44:20)
Characteristics
Phonological properties:
1/ /r/ delition (floor=flow);
2/ /l/ deletion (help » hep);
3/ consonant cluster simplification (lif’ up for lift up; skreet for street);
4/ syllabic /n/ replaces /ng/ in -ing forms;
5/ th- » [t/f/d/v] (fought for thought); -th » [f/v](tooffor tooth; smoov for smooth)
6/ no difference `tween pen/pin;
7/ no distinction `tween [ai] and [a:] (You can run but you can’t haad);
8/ [oi] » [o] (boil=boy=[bo])
Syntactic properties:
1/ double negatives;
2/ existential there replaced by it (It ain`t no food in the house);
3/ omission of plural, possessive, singular present `s; (a lot of time; Jack_ car; she walk)
4/ delition of be; (She nice; You ugly; They acting all strange)
5/ “habitual be” and aspectual steady (We be steady rapping);
6/ “invariant be” (I [he, she we, they, etc.] always be playing basketball)
7/ auxiliary do replacing be in the negative (She don’t usually be there)
8/ been stressed to refer to long-standing events long past (I `been seen that movie);
9/ a for the expression of intention (I`m a shoot you)
AAE dialect in schooling
(Ill.: Ann Arbor from DYSA144:20-50:15)
Vocabulary: a major source of Am. slang + contributor to SAE:
jazz, blues, ragtime, boogie woogie, rhythm and blues, jive
West African » BEV (yam=sweet potato; tote=to carry, etc)
Hip-hop
(Ill.: Athletic Mike League from DYSA150:15-54:15)
Similarity of BAE to White Southern AE (J.L. Dillard)
Whose E influenced whose?
--BAE was learned from white Southerners (outdated)
--BAE influenced southern white talk (kids growing up together w black kids outnumbering white ones; most white babies and kids having been nursed by black women)
Is AAE an ethnic dialect that is supra-regional and cuts across social boundaries?
AAE in California:
(Ill.: Steve Harvey from DYSA39:15-11:25)
Home language > Mainstream American English
(Ill.: Language Jeopardy from DYSA311:25-15:05)
Mary Camelon and Jennifer Wilson, “The Teacher’s Guide to Ebonics”
1. One verb form for all subjects: I love, you love, she love, he love, we love, they love
2. Use of singular noun form: one dollar, fifty dollar
3. Tense is not obligatory: He go yesterday. He go today.
4. Negation: ain , don, and ditn
Some Restrictions: ain is used to negate on going actions: He ain sick. (He isn't sick.)
don is used with verbs that use the word 'be' to be formed, i.e. He don be goin. (He is not going.)
5. Prepositions at and to are often omitted, the verb implies the meaning
We go grandma house. We live home.
6. In can be used instead of at or to: We were in home.
7. The preposition from is rarely used and is often replaced by out or off:
I bought it off this store. I ranned out the house.
A mathematical example would be that 'subtract from' is a phrase rarely used in BE. Grammatical examples would be subtract by, subtract into, subtract for, or subtract to. In this case neither out or off is used to replace from.
8. The adverbs twice and half are often used interchangeably, or sometimes exactly the opposite of the use in standard English: 'twice as small' instead of half the size
9. Into is used instead of in or where no preposition would be required in standard English:
I need assistance into getting home. (I need assistance getting home.)
10. No inflectional /s/ for possession: That John toy (That's John's toy.)
11. The standard English /ing/ is pronounced two different ways. If the sound is part of a word (morpheme) as in thing or sing, it will be pronounced as /ang/ as in thang, or sang.
If the sound in a suffix like it is in thinking or waiting, it will be pronounced as /in/--thinkin, waitin.
12. The standard English sound /th/ is pronounced three different ways. If it is word final, it is pronounced /f/--mouf, breaf, souf (mouth, breath, south)
If it starts a word, it will often be pronounced /d/--dem, dis, de (them, this, the)
Occasionally it will be pronounced as /th/--as in thinkin and thang even though it starts a word. This exception is probably because of the voicing level of the sound /th/.
13. Frequently meaning is conveyed through the tonal quality of the language. How the speaker says it or the musical quality of the words will tell the listener much more about the meaning.
The Ebonics Debate(samples from media reactions + websites)
Newsweek (January 13, 1997): 50-51
--“’Ebonics,’ first coined in 1973, refers to a grammatically consistent and rich African-American speech pattern with roots in West Africa. Key components include not conjugating the verb ‘to be’ (‘I be joking’) and dropping final consonants from words (‘hand’ becomes ‘han’). Linguists have long debated whether it constitutes a distinct language or a dialect, often dividing along ideological lines.”
--“Since Dec. 18, when the [ParkerElementary School in] Okland, Calif., school boardpassed a (…) resolution to treat Ebonics as a second language, the quiet experiments of classrooms (…) have been lost under a swell of rhetoric. By unanimous decision, the board voted to recognize Ebonics as the ‘primary language’ of many of its students, and to teach students in their primary language in order both to maintain the ‘legitimacy and richness’ of the language and to help students master standard English.”
--“An America Online poll about Ebonics drew more responses than the one asking people whether O.J. Simpson was guilty.”
--“When the backlash came, the board hired a publicist and clarified—or hedged—its position. It did not intend to teach kids how to speak black English. Instead, it called for teachers to accept Ebonics as a native language and teach students to translate into standard English, rather than correct them for speaking wrongly.”
--“The board has some evidence on its side. Since the 1980s a small body of research has suggested that black students learn better when schools use Ebonics to teach Standard English. A 1989 study of inner-city college students, for example, found that those who used texts contrasting Ebonics with standard English included fewer Ebonics constructions in their own writing than those who just studied standard English.”
USA Today (1/24/97)
“Ebonics debated in Senate hearing”
--“The Oakland district`s decision on ebonics—a compound of the words ‘ebony’ and ‘phonics’—sparked a national controversy in December. In addition to its original recognition of ebonics as a separate language, the district decided to train teachers to translate black English into standard English, as they do for Hispanic pupils and others whose first language is not English.”
--“Last week, the board tried to quell the raging national debate by revising its resolution to make clear that students will be taught no language or dialect except standard English.”
-- “At Thursday`s hearing before a Senate subcommittee that oversees spending, Sen. Lauch Faircloth (R-N.C) said ebonics is ‘absurd’ and Oakland`s actions were ‘political correctness gone out of control.’”
--“The American Speech, Language and Hearing Association classifies black English as a social dialect.”
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