ABSTRACT
For years, clinicians and researchers on children’s language have faced the problem of distinguishing difference from disorder in children who speak African-American English (AAE; also referred to as Ebonics, African-American vernacular English, Black English, Black English vernacular, and African-American language). The difficulty in making this distinction is largely attributed to the fact that many of the linguistic features commonly associated with AAE (e.g., variable absence of auxiliary and copula be, past tense -ed, plural -s, and possessive -s) serve as indicators of language disorder in children acquiring Standard American English (SAE) as their primary language code (Wyatt, 1996). This problem is compounded by the fact that the majority of language analysis frameworks and assessment tools used by speech and language clinicians for evaluating the communication skills of children are based on SAE. This often results in the misdiagnosis and inappropriate placement of child speakers of AAE in speech therapy programs.
