Origin Accounts
This theory postulates that consonant clusters tend not to occur in AAE—e.g., resulting words such as tes (‘test’), kin (‘kind’) and contac (‘contact’)—because of the canonical form/shape of the syllable structure of the Niger-Congo African source languages, where consonant clusters tend not to occur.
What is the substrate/Africanist account?
This process changes or simplifies the final consonant group (composed of two consonant sounds) to a single consonant sound.
What is consonant cluster reduction?
AAE is spoken across domains of American life. In Chaka Khan's (1983) musical hit, she sings, "Ain't nobody love me better...than you," which exhibits these two AAE features.
What are (1) multiple negation / negative concord and (2) the zero/absent relative pronoun 'who'?
Phrases that describe ownership relationships, such as, "The dog coat got spots."
Genitive (possessive) contexts, where the 's morphosyntactic marker is optional in AAE because of word order
This term encompasses the vast umbrella of diasporic Black languages.
What is Ebonics?
The theory of genesis states that AAE was never a creole (i.e., didn’t undergo the process of creolization) that but it was created by African slaves.
What is the blended hypothesis?
Because of this process, when /r/ and /l/ follow vowels within words, they may be produced as an unstressed vowel (schwa [ə] or uh sound) or not produced at all.
What is liquid vocalization?
The phrase, "She so sweet," exhibits this AAE pattern.
What is zero copula (linking verb)?
This preverbal marker indicates that an activity or event is imminent and will happen in the immediate future.
What is finna?
This term refers to the mental word bank in a language system.
What is lexicon?
According to this theory, AAL is more related to English (earlier varieties and current Southern U.S. varieties) than to either creole or Niger Congo languages, that it developed from an English base and has “archaisms” that obsolesced in GAE.
What is the Dialectologist/Anglicist hypothesis?
/θiŋkiŋ/ or "thinking" is pronounced as /θiŋkin/ or "thinkin" in AAE because speakers dropped the /g/ consonant sound.
What is a false or a false statement? /ŋ/, which is one consonant sound, is realized as /[n] in disyllabic words.
"Now that daylight savings dən ended, it be dark when I get home from work." The elements dən and be can be described in this way.
What are as:
-preverbal markers?
-aspectual markers?
-indicating that (a) an event is already over or recently finished (resultant state) and (b) another activity is always, regularly, or usually occurring [habitual].
The phrase, "His momma name Pam," exhibits these AAE patterns.
What is either:
-No 's for genitive marking + zero copula (i.e., His momma-Ø name Ø Pam?
-No linking verb + final consonant cluster reduction (i.e., His momma Ø name-Ø Pam)? Note: Voicing generalization favors CCR, as the consonants forming the cluster in "named" have the same voicing value [+v].
This word refers to the meanings of elements in a language system?
What is semantics?
This theory states that AAL began as a (plantation) creole and/or has creole roots, with which it has current interconnections
What is the Creolist hypothesis?
This process renders pronunciations like "PO-lice" and "DE-troit."
What is front shifting, i.e., placing primary stress on the initial syllable of certain words or forestressing of bisyllabic words?
This preverbal marker indicates that an activity finished or began in the distant past.
What is stressed BIN?
This marker precedes a verb form in the progressive (verb+-ing) and is used to convey the meaning that an activity is carried out in an intense or consistent manner.
What is steady?
This concept refers to lexical items that are associated with a particular sector of a speech community, such as an age group or different geographical areas, which are often short-lived.
What is slang?
This theory states that AAL is structurally related to Niger Congo languages and that its distinctive patterns and features are shared with Niger Congo languages, with only superficial similarities with Englishes.
What is the Substrate/Africanist hypothesis?
This process changes /str/ to [skr] clusters (in syllable-initial position)
What is backing in /str/ clusters?
The preverbal marker "come" communicates speaker indignation about the activity or action, therefore between tense, mood, and aspect, it marks this.
What is mood or modality, i.e., the attitude of the speaker about the information expressed?
These aspectual meanings distinguish the phrases, "had dən wrote," and, "had BIN dən wrote."
What are past perfect resultant state (i.e., past event 1 had already or had just occurred before past event 2) and remote past perfect resultant state (i.e., past event 1 had already occurred a long time before past event 2)?
This change affects /θ/ vs. /ð/ in words like "bathe," "bath," "with," or "them."
What are:
-[t] or [f] sounds alternate with voiceless /θ/
-[d] or [v] sounds alternate with voiced /ð/