Dialectal Division of American English

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• Dialectal Division of American English

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Black English

• Black English, also referred as Negro English,
  Non-Standard Negro English and most recently as
  Inner-City English, is spoken by a large section
  of non-middle-class blacks.
• The term Inner City English ICE) refers to an
  informal style of language used by residents of
  low income ghettos in large urban areas of the US
  andis stereotypically associated with African
  American resident of the ghettos. Black English
  is a misleading term in that is suggest that all
  African Americans speak the same dialect and that
  they use it all the time.
• Whereas the majority of United States dialects
  are, to a great extent, free from stigma,
  especially the many regional dialects, Black
  English BE has been a victim of prejudicial
  ignorance.
• The historical discrimination against black
  Americans has created ghetto living and
  segregated schools, an overt discrimination which
  has also been passed on to the language.

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Black English Some phonological features

• Consonant Cluster Simplification
• a regular phonological rule in BE and not in SAE
  simplifies consonant clusters at the end of words
  when one of the two consonants is an alveolar
  /t/, /d/, /s/, /z/. The application of this rule
  may delete the past-tense morpheme so past
  /st/and passed /sd/ are both pronounced like pass
  pas. Thus,
• (1) I pass the test yesterday
• BE pass passed past are pronounced alike
  pæs

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Black English Some phonological features

• Consonant Cluster Simplification
• When speakers of BE said a sentence such as this,
  they are not showing ignorance of past and
  present, but pronouncing the past tense according
  to the rule present in their grammars. Similar to
  SAE
• (2) I hit the ball
  yesterday.
• Because of this deletion rule,
• meant and mend are both pronounced as men.

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Black English Some phonological features

• Deletion of /r/
• A number of dialects of British and American
  English delete /r/ except before a vowel. BE has
  the same rule. Thus, pairs of words like guard
  and god are pronounced identically. Others
  include
• sore saw poor pa fort fought
  
• Some words that do not rhyme in SAE do rhyme in
  BE
• yeah fair idea fear Paris
  pass
• Some speakers delete /l/ creating homophones
  like
• toll toe all awe help hep

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Black English Some phonological features

• Reduction of vowels
• In BE, the phonemic distinction between /aj/ and
  /wa/ has been lost, both having become /a/. Thus,
  why and wow are pronounced wa.
• Change of final voiceless th /?/ to f
• Thus, Ruth is pronounced /ruf/ and death /d?f/

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Black English Some SYNTACTIC features

• Differences between SAE and BE
• It is the syntactic differences that reveal the
  complexity of Black English. The following are
  some characteristics
• SAE
  BE

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Black English Some SYNTACTIC features

• To be wherever the standard can use a
  contraction (he is ? hes), BE can delete the
  form. In BE however, and inflected form of be
  is required if the speaker is referring to
  habitual action

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Black English Some SYNTACTIC features

• John is happy Can be interpreted to mean John
  is happy at the moment and may be constantly
  happy. To make the distinction clearly SAE need
  to say John is always happy. In BE the
  distinction is syntactic

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Black English Some SYNTACTIC features

• Another regular rule in BE deletes the possessive
  morpheme -s whenever possession is redundantly
  specified by word order
• (note the difference in word order Johnhouse.
  Possession word order is different in the
  asterisked sentences houseJohn).

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Other features

• double negatives (he aint got none)
• double comparatives and superlatives (more
  bigger, most biggest, gooder, bestest)
• over-regularize the past tense (stoled or
  stealed)
• over-regularize plurals (mouses, sheeps,
  childrens)