Cover not available
Part of
The Evolution of Englishes: The Dynamic Model and beyond
Edited by Sarah Buschfeld, Thomas Hoffmann, Magnus Huber and Alexander Kautzsch
[Varieties of English Around the World G49] 2014
► pp. 365–385

Innovation in pre-World War II AAVE?

Evidence from BLUR

This article tests the “divergence hypothesis”, which holds that in the 20th century African American Vernacular English (AAVE) underwent significant structural changes and consequently diverged from white varieties. To this end five “innovative” features of AAVE are scrutinized in BLUR, an electronic corpus of blues lyrics recorded in the first half of the 20th century: habitual be + V-ing, resultative be done, semi-auxiliary come, intensifying steady and counterfactual call oneself. Evidence from BLUR suggests that these features already were part of AAVE grammar in the (late) 19th century. Thus they started to be restructured earlier than the divergence hypothesis suggests. A close look at the semantics of these features also reveals two core meanings: “habituality” (be) and “emotional intensity” (V-ing).

Keywords: corpus linguistics, divergence hypothesis, earlier African American Vernacular English, historic data, innovative features, Modern African American Vernacular English, representativeness, validity
Published online: 12 September 2014
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/veaw.g49.21mie
References
Bailey, G
1993 A perspective on African-American English. In American Dialect Research, D.R. Preston (ed.), 287–318. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2001 The relationship between African American Vernacular English and White vernaculars in the American South: A sociocultural history and some phonological evidence. In S.L. Lanehart (ed.), 53–92.
Bailey, G. & Maynor, N
1987 Decreolization? Language in Society 16(4): 449–473. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1989 The divergence controversy. American Speech 64(1): 12–39. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bailey, G., Maynor, N. & Cukor-Avila, P.
(eds) 1991 The Emergence of Black English: Text and Commentary [Creole Language Library 8]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Baugh, J
1980 A reexamination of the Black English copula. In Locating Language in Space and Time, W. Labov (ed.), 83–106. New York NY: Academic Press.Google Scholar
1983 Black Street Speech: Its History, Structure and Survival. Austin TX: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
1984  Steady: Progressive aspect in the Black English Vernacular. American Speech 59(1): 3–12. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Butters, R.R
1989 The Death of Black English: Divergence and Convergence in Black and White Vernaculars. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Cassidy, F.G. & Hall, J.H.
(eds) 1985–2013 Dictionary of American Regional English, 6 vols. Cambridge: Belknap.Google Scholar
Chambers, J.K., Trudgill, P. & Schilling-Estes, N.
(eds) 2013 The Handbook of Language Variation and Change. Malden, Oxford: Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cukor-Avila, P
1995 The Evolution of AAVE in a Rural Texas Community: An Ethnolinguistic Study. PhD dissertation, University of Michigan.Google Scholar
2001 Coexisting grammars: The relationship between the evolution of African American and Southern White Vernacular English in the South. In S.L. Lanehart (ed.), 93–127.
Cukor-Avila, P. & Bailey, G
2013 Real time and apparent time. In J.K. Chambers et al. (eds), 239–262.Google Scholar
Dayton, E
1996 Grammatical Categories of the Verb in African American English. PhD dissertation, University of Pennsylvania.Google Scholar
Fasold, R.W.
(ed.) 1987 Are black and white vernaculars diverging? American Speech 62. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fought, C
2013 Ethnicity. In J.K. Chambers et al. (eds), 388–406.Google Scholar
Hyatt, H.M.
(ed.) 1970–1978 Hoodoo – Conjuration – Witchcraft – RootWork, 5 vols. Washington DC: The Alma Egan Hyatt Foundation.Google Scholar
Kautzsch, A
2002 The Historical Evolution of Earlier African American English: An Empirical Comparison of Early Sources. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2012 Earlier African American English. In The Mouton World Atlas of Variation in English, B. Kortmann & K. Lunkenheimer (eds), 126–140. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Labov, W
1966 The Social Stratification of English in New York City. Washington DC: Center for Applied Linguistics.Google Scholar
1982 Objectivity and commitment in linguistic science: The case of the Black English trial in Ann Arbor. Language in Society 11(2): 165–201. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1998 Co-existent systems in African-American Vernacular English. In African American English: Structure, History and Use, S.S. Mufwene, J.R. Rickford, G. Bailey & J. Baugh (eds), 110–153. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Labov, W. & Harris, W.A
1986 De facto segregation of black and white vernaculars. In Diversity and Synchrony[Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 53], D. Sankoff (ed.), 45–58. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lanehart, S.L.
(ed.) 2001 Sociocultural and Historical Contexts of African American English [Varieties of English Around the World G27]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Miethaner, U
2000 Orthographic transcription of nonstandard varieties: The case of Earlier African American English. Journal of Sociolinguistics 4(4): 534–560. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2005 I Can Look Through Muddy Water – Analyzing Earlier African American English in Blues Lyrics (BLUR). Frankfurt: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Myhill, J
1995 The use of present-day AAVE in the Ex-Slave Recordings. American Speech 70(2): 115–147. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Poplack, S.
(ed.) 2000 The English History of African American English. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Poplack, S. & Tagliamonte, S
2001 African American English in the Diaspora. Malden MA: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Rickford, J.R
1992 Grammatical variation and divergence in Vernacular Black English. In Internal and External Factors in Language Change, M. Gerritsen & D. Stein (eds), 175–200. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Schneider, E.W
1981 Morphologische und syntaktische Variablen im American Earlier Black English. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
1989 American Earlier Black English: Morphological and Syntactic Variables. Tuscaloosa AL: University of Alabama Press.Google Scholar
2012 Tracking the evolution of vernaculars: Corpus linguistics and Earlier Southern US Englishes. In Corpus Linguistics and Variation in English: Theory and Description, J. Mukherjee & M. Huber (eds), 185–212. Amsterdam: Rodopi.Google Scholar
2013 Investigating variation and change in written documents: New perspectives. In J.K. Chambers et al. (eds), 57–82.Google Scholar
Schneider, E.W. & Miethaner, U
2006 When I started to using BLUR: Accounting for unusual verb phrase patterns in an electronic corpus of Earlier African American English. Journal of English Linguistics 34(3): 233–256. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Singler, J.V
1998 What’s not new in AAVE. American Speech 73(3): 227–256. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Spears, A.K
1982 The Black English semi-auxiliary come . Language 58(4): 850–872. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wolfram, W
1994 On the sociolinguistic significance of obscure dialect structures: The [NPi call NPi] construction in African-American Vernacular English. American Speech 69(4): 339–360. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1997 Resolving dialect status: Levels of evidence in assessing African-American Vernacular English. In Language Variety in the South Revisited, C. Bernstein, T. Nunnally & R. Sabino (eds), 490–507. Tuscaloosa AL: University of Alabama Press.Google Scholar
2004 Urban African American Vernacular English: Morphology and syntax. In A Handbook of Varieties of English. Vol. 2: Morphology and Syntax. A Multimedia Reference Tool, B. Kortmann, K. Burridge, R. Mesthrie, E.W. Schneider & C. Upton (eds), 319–340. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
2007 Sociolinguistic folklore in the study of African American English. Language and Linguistics Compass 1(4): 292–313. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wolfram, W. & Schilling-Estes, N
1998 American English: Dialects and Variation. Malden MA: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Wolfram, W. & Thomas, E.R
2002 The Development of African American English. Oxford: Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar