ABSTRACT
This contribution to the study of African-American vernacular English (AAVE) is an interpretation of the special linguistic features of this dialect in the light of its co-existence with other co-territorial dialects of English. It begins with a review of the idea that AAVE can be seen as a system in itself, analyzed without reference to other dialects, which has been a repeated theme of research in this area from the very beginnings to the present day. Although it must be admitted that this monolithic approach has often produced descriptions that are far removed from linguistic and social reality, it has also been a continued source of insights, bringing to our attention striking differences between AAVE and other dialects that would otherwise have been overlooked. In fact, the analysis I am presenting here is heavily indebted to two linguists who have attempted to extract an invariant core that is unique to AAVE, in the earliest and the most recent contribution to the study of this dialect. One source is the work of Beryl Bailey, who brought to AAVE the insights from her description of Jamaican Creole English, drawn from her internalized knowledge as a native speaker. The recognition of my indebtedness to her work was the original motivation for this chapter. The other source is the monumental study of the tense and aspect system of AAVE by Elizabeth Dayton, begun in the 1970s and only recently brought to completion. Dayton's meticulously transcribed observations are the product of many years of participation in the daily life of a Philadelphia African-American community. Her data on the tense and aspect particles of AAVE, carefully noted in the midst of the social interactions that produced it, is roughly ten times as extensive as all the combined observations of all other researchers. In the original version of this chapter, written five years ago, I drew upon a number of handouts from unpublished papers that Dayton had given throughout the years. In revising this chapter, I have not attempted to re-incorporate the massive amount of data and extensive analyses of her 1996 dissertation. I hope that the point of view developed here will continue to be useful in the years to come, when the linguistic community has begun to assimilate Dayton's data and her analysis of the AAVE system.
