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Functionalist and Usage-based Approaches to the Study of Language: In honor of Joan L. Bybee
Edited by K. Aaron Smith and Dawn Nordquist
[Studies in Language Companion Series 192] 2018
► pp. 155–173

A usage-based account for the historical reflexes of ain’t in AAE

| Illinois State University
This paper is a comparative and historical study of the grammatical status of auxiliary ain‘t in African-American English (AAE). Drawing on the representation of AAE speakers in works of fiction from the 19th century and present-day, the paper confirms that the broad range of uses of auxiliary ain‘t are nearly all available in historical AAE. The study also presents data that certain of the uses (specifically those not documented or only infrequently documented for non-AAE varieties) have increased in fictive representations of AAE. The analysis shows that the increase is led by a specific verb type (and even a specific verb) and thus suggests an exemplar-based increase and extension of ain‘t. Moreover, the paper also shows a formal morphosyntactic convergence of several uses of auxiliary ain‘t and motivates that convergence through exemplar merging, suggesting an association of that merged morphosyntactic form with sociolinguistic identity.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Linguistic status of ain’t in English overall
    • 2.1Distribution of ain’t in AAE
  • 3.Method and sources
  • 4.Data
  • 5.Discussion
    • 5.1General
  • 6.Analysis
    • 6.1Present-tense ain’t
    • 6.2Underdetermined ain’t
    • 6.3Undetermination and linguistic complexity
  • 7.The divergence hypothesis and usage-based grammar: A conclusion
  • Notes
  • Primary resourses
Published online: 1 March 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.192.07smi
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