What negation can tell us about the origin of African American Vernacular English

Abstract

In this paper, two main hypotheses on the origin of African American Vernacular English (AAVE), the Neo-Anglicist Hypothesis and the Substrate Hypothesis, are evaluated against the way negation is expressed in several varieties of old and modern English, including older and newer varieties of AAVE. The data indicate that early African American English (AAE) must have already had both English and creole sources / language contact: some expressions of negation clearly have a dialectical source, whereas others clearly do not. This paper concludes that the Substrate Hypothesis provides the best account for the available data. Moreover, fully in line with the Substrate Hypothesis, AAVE underwent a number of subsequent changes with respect to the expression of negation in the late 19th and 20th centuries. These recent developments resulted from various sociolinguistic factors.