Earlier African American Vernacular English

For decades American sociolinguists have debated the origins of AAVE. While earlier views tended to believe in a prior creole stage, more recent scholarship increasingly accepts the assumption that many features of AAVE go back to English dialect roots. What is responsible for the extent to which slaves learned approximations of white dialects or restructured the English they used is likely to depend on the nature of the contact between the black and white population. Regional differences in and temporal change of settlement patterns, demographics, and economics of the US South suggest varying conditions for the slaves’ language acquisition within the former colonial area of the US South.

No. Feature Value