African American English (AAE)

The African American English (AAE) is spoken by a large population of Americans of African descent. The AAE is generally used in casual and informal situations and is much more common among working class people. you can learn more about AAE here.

AAE video

 

Phonological Differences between African American English 

and SAE.

r-Delection

Like several dialects of both British and American English, AAE includes a rule that deletes /r/ everywhere except before a vowel. Pairs of words like guard and god, nor and gnaw, sore and saw, poor and Poe, fort and fought, and court and caught are pronounced identically in AAE because of this phonological rule. There is also an l-deletion rule for some speakers of AAE, creating identically pronounced pairs like toll and toe, all and awe, help and hep.  

A consonant cluster reduction rule in AAE simplifies consonant clusters, particularly at the ends of words and when one of the two consonants is an alveolar (/t/, /d/, /s/, /z/). The application of this rule may delete the past-tense morpheme so that meant, and mend are both pronounced as men, and past and passed (pass + ed) may both be pronounced like pass.
Example:                                      SAE                             AAE
                         Walked               /wɔːkt/                          /wɔk/

Neutralization of [ɪ] and [ɛ] before Nasal Consonants AAE shares with many regional dialects a lack of distinction between /ɪ/ and /ɛ/ before nasal consonants, producing identical pronunciations of pin and pen, bin and Ben, tin and ten, and so on. The vowel sound in these words is roughly between the [ɪ] of pit and the [ɛ] of pet.

Loss of Interdental Fricatives
A regular feature is the change of a /θ/ to /f/ and /ð/ to /v/ so that Ruth is pro- nounced [ruf] and brother is pronounced [brʌvər].

 Syntactic Differences between AAE and SAE

Multiple Negatives

The multiple negatives of  AAE are governed by rules of syntax and are not illogical.

Example:                     SAE                                 AAE

                          I don't have any cats.           I have no cats.

Deletion of the Verb “Be”

In most cases, if in Standard English the verb can be contracted, in African American English sentences it is deleted; where it can’t be contracted in SAE, it can’t be deleted in AAE.

Example:                    SAE                                 AAE

                              She is beautiful.             She beautiful.

Habitual “Be”
In AAE, this distinction is made syntactically; an uninflected form of be is used if the speaker is referring to habitual state.
Example:                    SAE                                 AAE
                     Sarah is always happy.          Sarah be happy.

“There” Replacement  
Some AAE dialects replace SAE there with it’s in positive sentences, and don’t or ain’t in negative sentences.
Example:                  SAE                                      AAE

               “There’s a fly messing with me.       It’s a fly messing with me.

         

 References

Fromkin, V. (2014). An introduction to langue. In V. Fromkin, An introduction to langue,Tenth edition. (p. 291). Boston: Wadsworth Cenage learning.

Rowe, B. M. (2016). A Concise Introduction to Linguistics Fourth edition. In B. M. Rowe, A Concise Introduction to Linguistics Fourth edition (p. 194). London: Routledge.