Plural s and dem.
"AAVE speakers sometimes ditch the plural s, but not often or thing." ( Rickford, 2000, p. 110)
"AAVE has other ways of making plurality, as with dem." ( Rickford, 2000 p. 110)
"AAVE has other ways of making plurality, as with dem." ( Rickford, 2000 p. 110)
- "to use an dem after the name of a person, to refer to others associated with that person. ( as in John an dem, for "John and his friends.")" ( Rickford, 2000 p. 111)
- "to use dem to mark plurality is by putting this form before the noun. (as in dem books, "those books.")" ( Rickford, 2000, p. 111)
Existential it is.
"Instead of "there is" or "there are," AAVE speakers use the characteristic alternative , it's or i's." ( Rickford, 2000, p. 111)
- "i's a lot of girls (= there are a lot of girls)" ( Rickford, 2000, p. 111)
Absence of third-person singular present-tense s.
"The subject refers to a single person, place, or thing, neither the speaker in a conversation, nor a person being addressed." ( Rickford, 2000, p. 111)
Absence of possessive 's.
"S forms that get zapped in AAVE." ( Rickford, 2000, p. 112)
- "This one day, Nito came over to that girl house." ( Rickford, 2000, p. 112)
Invariant be.
"Be comes in two basic flavors:
- "Leaving out will or would ( more accurately, their contracted forms 'll and 'd)." ( Rickford, 2000, p. 113)
* "Wait awhile. She be [= 'll be] right around.(Johnny Guitar, forty-four, Philadelphia)" ( Rickford, 2000, p. 113)
- "The invariant habitual be." ( Rickford, 2000, p. 113)
* ""When I be driving...Teresa and them be like..." (Foxy's passage)" ( Rickford, 2000, p. 113)
- Conjugated, or inflected, which varies in form, depending on the subject and whether it refers to present or past.
- Invariant, which, as tis name suggests, doesn't vary ( although it occurs occasionally as be's or bees)." ( Rachel, 2000 p. 113)
- "Leaving out will or would ( more accurately, their contracted forms 'll and 'd)." ( Rickford, 2000, p. 113)
* "Wait awhile. She be [= 'll be] right around.(Johnny Guitar, forty-four, Philadelphia)" ( Rickford, 2000, p. 113)
- "The invariant habitual be." ( Rickford, 2000, p. 113)
* ""When I be driving...Teresa and them be like..." (Foxy's passage)" ( Rickford, 2000, p. 113)
Zero copula (absence of is or are)
"Absence of is or are." ( Rickford, 2000, p. 114)
- ""She ø in the same grade." (Foxy's quotation)" ( Rickford, 2000, p. 114)
Been, BEEN, and Toni Morrison's "five present tenses."
"Sometimes spelled bin and BIN, to indicate their pronunciation better." ( Rickford, 2000, p. 117)
"Been is an unstressed form, lacking in the stress that speakers put into BEEN. It's pretty much equivalent to "has been" or "have been" in mainstream English." ( Rickford, 2000, p. 117)
"Been is an unstressed form, lacking in the stress that speakers put into BEEN. It's pretty much equivalent to "has been" or "have been" in mainstream English." ( Rickford, 2000, p. 117)
- "I been playing cards since I was four." ( Rickford, 2000, p. 117)
Done, be done, finna, had, and other tense-aspect markers.
"Done, which emphasizes the completed nature of an action, and/ or its relevance to the present, is one of the best-known vernacular forms. It's often more or less equivalent to mainstream English forms with has or have and already." ( Rickford, 2000, p. 120)
- "I done had [ = have had] enough. (Renee Black, NewYorker in her thirties)" ( Rickford, 2000, p. 120)
Negative forms and constructions.
"The most common negative form in Spoken Soul is ain't. Ain't can be used as the equivalent of mainstream English am not, isn't, aren't, don't, hasn't, and haven't." ( Rickford, 2000, p. 122)
- "I ain't [ = am not] lyin'. ( Bomb Jones, Philadelphia)" ( Rickford, 2000, p. 122)
Questions, direct and indirect.
"In simple direct questions, AAVE speakers often do not invert the subject and the verb, as formal mainstream English requires, but use rising intonation to signal that they are asking a question instead of making a statement." ( Rickford, 2000, p. 124)
- "This is a microphone, too? ( Is this a microphone, too? - Arnold, ten, East Palo Alto, California)" ( Rickford, 2000, p. 124)
Pronouns.
"In this category is the feature double subject, sometimes referred to more technically as pleonastic or appositive pronoun." ( Rickford, 2000, p. 125)
- "My mother, she told me, "There 's a song I want you to learn."" ( Rickford, 2000, p. 125)
Verbs once more.
"The use of double and sometimes triple modals ( verbs such as can, could, might, and should that indicate ability, possibility, or obligation)" ( Rickford, 2000, p. 125)
- "He might could do the work." ( Rickford, 2000, p. 126)
- "She may can do the work." ( Rickford, 2000, p. 126)
- "They should oughta go." ( Rickford, 2000, p. 126)
- "They might should oughta do it." ( Rickford, 2000, p. 126)