Dialectal Division of American English

1. Dialectal Division of American English

2. 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.

3. 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]

4. 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.

5. 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

6. 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 /θ/ to f • Thus, Ruth is pronounced /ruf/ and death /dɛf/

7. 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

8. Black English: Some SYNTACTIC features • To be: wherever the standard can use a contraction (he + is  he’s), BE can delete the form. In BE however, and inflected form of ‘be’ is required if the speaker is referring to habitual action

9. 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:

10. 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 John+house. Possession word order is different in the asterisked sentences house+John).

11. Other features double negatives (he ain’t 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)