ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses variation in the occurrence of the grammatical variable ain't, using empirical data from a long-term study of the speech of three working-class adolescent peer groups in the town of Reading, England. It describes the syntactic and a semantic function that ain't fulfils in the speech of the peer groups and shows how these may be linked to the vernacular subculture to which the groups belong. The chapter considers the etymology of ain't and the linguistic changes that the feature has undergone and that may still be in progress. Ain't is a widespread feature of non-standard English dialects, both in Great Britain and in the United States. The non-standard form corresponds to several standard English verb forms. Non-standard dialects in Britain and in the United States typically have a simpler present tense system. In the English spoken in south-western Britain, the suffixed form is used throughout the paradigm.
