Research has suggested that children who speak African American English (AAE) have difficulty using features produced in Mainstream American English (MAE) but not AAE, to comprehend sentences in MAE. However, past studies mainly examined dialect features, such as verbal -s, that are produced as final consonants with shorter durations when produced in conversation which impacts their phonetic saliency. Therefore, it is unclear if previous results are due to the phonetic saliency of the feature or how AAE speakers process MAE dialect features more generally. This study evaluated if there were group differences in how AAE- and MAE-speaking children used the auxiliary verbs was and were, a dialect feature with increased phonetic saliency but produced differently between the dialects, to interpret sentences in MAE. Participants aged 6, 5–10, and 0 years, who spoke MAE or AAE, completed the DELV-ST, a vocabulary measure (PVT), and a sentence comprehension task. In the sentence comprehension task, participants heard sentences in MAE that had either unambiguous or ambiguous subjects. Sentences with ambiguous subjects were used to evaluate group differences in sentence comprehension. AAE-speaking children were less likely than MAE-speaking children to use the auxiliary verbs was and were to interpret sentences in MAE. Furthermore, dialect density was predictive of Black participant’s sensitivity to the auxiliary verb. This finding is consistent with how the auxiliary verb is produced between the two dialects: was is used to mark both singular and plural subjects in AAE, while MAE uses was for singular and were for plural subjects. This study demonstrated that even when the dialect feature is more phonetically salient, differences between how verb morphology is produced in AAE and MAE impact how AAE-speaking children comprehend MAE sentences.

This paper investigates use of ain't in a corpus of naturalistic speech from forty-two African-American Philadelphians. Use of ain't in past/perfective contexts where it varies with didn't is considered a unique feature of AAE. This use is compared in apparent time to uses of ain't in tense-aspect environments shared with other English varieties. Results show that past/perfective uses of ain't increased during the twentieth century while use in other contexts remained stable, supporting the hypothesis that past/perfective uses resulted from recent change. Generalized linear models for ain't in past/perfective and other contexts show that sociostylistic and linguistic constraints are otherwise the same across contexts. Finally, evidence that a past/perfective use of ain't resulted from either the phonetic reduction of didn't or a shift in meaning from uses of ain't in anterior contexts is examined.

This study presents the first US-wide survey of the pin-pen merger since Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006). Production and perception data were collected from 277 speakers from across the country, with perception-only data from an additional 94 speakers; these data largely replicated previous findings about the social and geographic distribution of the merger. An examination of production and perception data together showed that near merger—in which speakers cannot hear the difference between pin and pen words, yet pronounce them differently—was relatively common, although this phenomenon has received little attention in the literature on the merger. Additionally, an investigation of how merged speakers phonetically realized their merged pin-pen vowel revealed that, in contrast to previous findings, speakers were equally as likely to merge to [ɛ] (tw[ɛ]n for twin) as they were to [i] (h[i]n for hen). However, there was no apparent social or geographic patterning to this phonetic realization.

Contrary to previous “sociolinguistic folklore” that African American (Vernacular) English has a uniform structure across different parts of the US, recent studies have shown that it varies regionally, especially phonologically (Wolfram, 2007; Thomas & Wassink, 2010). However, there is little research on how Americans perceive AAE variation. Based on a map-labeling task, we investigate the folk perception of AAE variation by 55 participants, primarily African Americans in Columbus, Ohio. The analysis focuses on the dialect regions recognized by the participants, the linguistic features associated with different regions, and the attitudes associated with these beliefs. While the perceived regional boundaries mostly align with those identified by speakers in previous perceptual dialectology studies on American English, the participants consistently identified linguistic features that were specific to AAE. The participants recognized substantial phonological and lexical variation and identified “proper” dialects that do not necessarily sound “white”. This study demonstrates the value of considering African Americans’ perspectives in describing African American varieties of English.

Numerous discourse markers have been examined in conversation and lecture contexts, but research is sparse on markers in the sermon genre and on the religious discourse communities in which sermons occur. This article examines discourse marker functions of sermonic expressions frequent in performed African American sermons (e.g. Amen, Hallelujah, Praise God). Functions identified include those of textual boundary marker, spiritual maintenance filler, rhythmic marker, and the infrequent call-response marker. Results support the importance of the role that culture (here, African oral tradition) plays in sermon performance.