ABSTRACT
Research on African American children who were presumed to be speakers of African American English (AAE) began in the 1960s. A number of studies in the area of AAE and language development have included children with and without language impairments for the purpose of distinguishing dialect from disorder in language assessment activities. The 1980s and 1990s also saw a surge in studies conducted on AAE-speaking children's performance on standardized tests of speech and language. A recurring theme in early research on AAE, especially in the context of school-age children, was distinguishing systematic AAE from disordered language. A language disorder refers to "persistent difficulties in the acquisition and use of language across modalities due to deficits in comprehension or production" that include reduced vocabulary, limited sentence structure, and impairments in discourse. To be informative, language sample analyses should reflect consideration of patterns of language use in linguistic environments, developmental properties, and possible variation.
