3. The relationship between African American Vernacular English and White Vernaculars in the American South

The status of Gullah and Bahamian Creole English (BahCE) within the Atlantic English creoles and their historical relationship with African American Vernacular English (AAVE) have long been a matter of discussion. It was assumed that Gullah and BahCE are ‘sister’ varieties sharing an immediate ancestor in the eighteenth-century creole English spoken on plantations in the American South. We present historical and linguistic data, including a statistical analysis of 253 phonological, lexical, and grammatical features found in eight Atlantic English creoles, to show that Gullah and BahCE are indeed closely related — so closely in fact that BahCE must be considered a ‘diaspora variety’ not of AAVE but of Gullah.

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From African American Vernacular English to African American Language: Rethinking the Study of Race and Language in African Americans’ Speech

Annual Review of Linguistics ◽

10.1146/annurev-linguistics-011619-030556 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 6 (1) ◽

pp. 285-300 ◽

Cited By ~ 6

Author(s):

Sharese King

Keyword(s):

African American ◽

Critical Race Theory ◽

Linguistic Anthropology ◽

African American Vernacular English ◽

Language Variation And Change ◽

Vernacular English ◽

African American Language ◽

American Vernacular ◽

Advance Theory ◽

The Relationship

African American Vernacular English (AAVE), one of the most studied dialects in American English, has undergone several changes in its label across the years. Its most recent designation, African American Language (AAL), reflects a change in approaches to studying race and language in the field. Drawing on observations from related fields like linguistic anthropology and critical race theory, I discuss different conceptualizations of the relationship between race and language and argue in favor of an approach that both recognizes and prioritizes the study of variation within the dialect. This approach will enable researchers to advance theory in language variation and change while also contributing to larger sociopolitical objectives to diversify narratives of blackness.

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Defining the envelope of linguistic variation: The case of “don't count” forms in the copula analysis of African American Vernacular English

Language Variation and Change ◽

10.1017/s0954394500001794 ◽

1997 ◽

Vol 9 (1) ◽

pp. 57-79 ◽

Cited By ~ 30

Author(s):

Renée Blake

Keyword(s):

African American ◽

African American Vernacular English ◽

Linguistic Variation ◽

Final Position ◽

Vernacular English ◽

Quantitative Analyses ◽

American Vernacular ◽

Variable Analysis

ABSTRACTEver since Labov, Cohen, Robbins, and Lewis's (1968) pioneering study, it has been commonplace to set aside certain tokens in analyzing variability in the English copula as “don't count” (DC) forms. These cases are most often occurrences of the copula that exhibit categorical behavior (as with the full copula in clause-final position), as well as those that are ambiguous or indeterminate. In this article, I propose a set of copula forms that should be set aside from variable analysis as instances of DC forms to allow for systematic comparisons among studies. I review the major alternative descriptions of DC copula cases in the literature and analyze the behavior of the traditional DC categories. New data are presented to support the exclusion of particular DC cases from analyses of copula variability. Among the conclusions are that [was], [thas], and [is] should be excluded from quantitative analyses of variation in the copula because of their invariant status, and that a number of tokens commonly included (e.g., questions) should be excluded on various grounds.

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