English_with_an_Accent_-_Rosina_Lippi-Green_UserUpload.Net

not lend themselves to the quantitative analysis of traditional
sociolinguistics.

Table 10.1 Some features of African American English

Feature *SAE written form AAVE

Voiced stops /b/ /d/ and /g/ are

often devoiced or dropped at the

end of words

cab, hand talked cap, han talk

Final consonant cluster reduction,

for example, in word-final position

/sp/, /st/, and /sk/ are reduced

test, list tes, lis

Postvocalic /r/ sounds are deleted store, fourth sto, foth

/l/ is often vocalized in word final

position, resulting in homonyms

tool: too too: too

/ai/ > /a/ monophthongization,

(found in all Southern varieties of

English)

I think I’ve got something

in my eye.

Ah think ah’ve got

somethin in ma ah.

(cited in Rickford and

Rickford 2000: 99)

Merging of simple and past

participle forms.

So what we’ve done is,

we have come together

So what we have done is

we’ve came together

(Weldon 2004)

Existential it There’s some coffee in

the kitchen

It’s some coffee in the

kitchen

Sometimes there wasn’t

any chalk, any book or

any teacher

Sometimes it didn’t have

no chalk, no book, no

teacher (Green 2002:

81)

Copula deletion (primarily where

other varieties of English can

contract is or are

People’re going to look at

you like you’re funny.

She’s my sister

People gon’ look at you

like you funny (Weldon

2004) She my sister

Verb marker for perpetual action The coffee is cold The

coffee is always cold

The coffee cold The

coffee bees cold

(Smitherman 1988

[1999]: 83)

Perfect particle “done” before a

verb referring to something

completed in the recent past

I have had enough. I done had enough.

(Rickford and Rickford

2000: 120)