Ebonics, also known as African American Vernacular English (AAVE), is a dialect of American English primarily spoken by African Americans. It is distinct from Standard American English and is characterized by its unique phonology, syntax, and lexicon (Smitherman 1).
The phonological rule of AAVE is that the voiceless stops /p, t, k/ are typically pronounced as voiced stops /b, d, g/ in specific environments. This rule applies when these voiceless stops are followed by a vowel, such as “tap” and “gap”, which would be pronounced as “tab” and “gab” in AAVE (Martin et al. 14). Additionally, this rule applies when these voiceless stops are found after a nasal consonant, such as in the words “camp” and “tent”, which would be pronounced as “camb” and “dent” in AAVE, additionally, “breath” would be “breff.”
In addition, the syntactic rule of African American Vernacular English (AAVE) is that sentences may be constructed in various ways depending on the context. For example, in AAVE, the verb to be is often dropped, so phrases such as “It’s cold” or “He’s tall” are common. Additionally, the verb “to have” can indicate possession or ownership, such as “She got two cats”. Finally, double negatives can emphasize a point, such as “I ain’t never seen her before”.
The suffixal rule is that the suffix “-s” is often omitted from third-person singular present tense verbs; for example, “he goes” would be “he go”. An example of the voiced consonant rule is “breath”, which is regularly pronounced “breff” in AAVE (Martin et al. 17). Its Standard English Equivalent would be “breath”. An example of the auxiliary verb omission rule is “I wash”, which is regularly pronounced as “I wash” in AAVE. Its Standard English equivalent is “I do wash.” An illustration of the rule for omitting the third person singular present tense ending is “he goes,” which in AAVE is commonly pronounced as “he go.” The Standard English form of this is “he goes.”
Works Cited
Martin, Stefan, and Walt Wolfram. “The sentence in African-American vernacular English.” African-American English. Routledge, 2021. 11–40.
Smitherman, Geneva. Talkin That Talk: Language, Culture, and Education in African America. Abingdon, United Kingdom, Routledge, 2000.