Our research on old grammars taught us that the standard English requirement that subject and verb agree in the third-person singular is actually relatively recent. As far back as 1788, the grammarian James Beattie noted that a singular verb sometimes followed a plural noun — exactly as we find in African American vernacular English today.
Aspects of language transcend time and linger on todays vocabularies.
Our results show that many salient features of African American Vernacular English were not innovated, but are instead the legacy of an older stage of English.
A quote that really highlights what this article is about.
We also assembled nearly 100 grammars of English dating as far back as 1577. Such comparisons enable linguists to reconstruct linguistic ancestry; like evolutionary biologists, we seek shared retentions — features that have stayed the same despite changes elsewhere.
Diving into the history of this English is so helpful in understanding the way it is today, and the why/how of it all.
We compared our recordings with others made nearly a century earlier with elderly African Americans born in slavery in the American South.
The comparison here is intriguing to me to see how similar it is across time.
But historical evidence of an earlier stage is in short supply: recording technology is too recent, and written representations are both scarce and unreliable.
I am always curious about language and such before we were able to record things. The sounds of our past are so recent, and to really know what something sounded like before we had the ability to record is so unknown. Fascinating to me.
Our research shows that many of these stereotypical non-standard features are direct offshoots of an older stage of English — that of the British who colonized the United States.
This is an interesting bit of information to me, I think that it's quite fascinating that some of these 'improper uses of English' have a British/white source.
From the classroom to the courtroom, the place of African American Vernacular English is hotly debated.
This has been a common theme throughout many of the course readings in Section 2 of the English 1110.