In S. Mufwene , J. Rickford, J. Baugh and G. Bailey (ed.),

The Structure of African-American English,

London: Routledge.1998. Pp. 110-153.

Coexistent systems in African-American English

William Labov,

University of Pennsylvania

This contribution to the study of African American Vernacular English [AAVE] is an interpretation of the special linguistic features of this dialect in the light of its co-existence with other co-territorial dialects of English. It is far removed from the notion that AAVE can be seen as a system in itself, analyzed without reference to other dialects, which has been repeated theme of research in this area from the very beginnings to the present day. Although it must be admitted that this monolithic approach has often produced descriptions that are far removed from linguistic and social reality, it has also been a continued source of insights, bringing to our attention striking differences between AAVE and other dialects that would otherwise have been overlooked. In fact, this analysis I am presenting here is heavily indebted to two linguists who have attempted to extract an invariant core that is unique to AAVE, the earliest and the most recent contribution to the study of this dialect. One source is the work of Beryl Bailey, who brought to AAVE the insights from her description of Jamaican Creole English, drawn from her internalized knowledge as a native speaker. The recognition of my indebtedness to her work was the original motivation for this paper. The other source is the monumental study of the tense and aspect system of AAVE by Elizabeth Dayton, begun in the 1970's and only recently brought to completion. Dayton's meticulously transcribed observations are the product of many years of participation in the daily life of a Philadelphia African American community, Her data on the tense and aspect particles of AAVE, carefully noted in the midst of the social interactions that produced it, is roughly ten times as large as all the combined observations of all other researchers. In the original version of this paper, written five years ago, I drew upon a number of handouts form unpublished papers that Dayton had given throughout the years. In revising this paper, I have not attempted to re-incorporate the massive data and extensive analyses of her 1996 dissertation. I hope that the point of view developed here will continue to be useful in the years to come, when the linguistic community has begun to assimilate Dayton's data and her analysis of the AAVE system.

0. The heritage of Beryl Bailey

My first acquaintance with the issues raised in this paper came through my close association with Beryl Bailey, who was a fellow student with me at Columbia.[1] Both of our dissertations were directed by Uriel Weinreich, who encouraged us to apply the tools of linguistics to the language of every-day life, and to set aside the barriers between linguistic analysis and dialectology. Beryl came from a school teacher's family and a school teacher's world. For many Jamaicans, that means cleaving to the standards and norms of school teachers, and never looking back at the life and language of ordinary people. Beryl wrote in her introduction that she wanted to

explode once and for all the notion which persists among teachers of English in Jamaica, that the 'dialect' is not a language: and further that it has no bearing on the problem of the teaching of English.

She began work on Jamaican Creole English in 1956, made several return trips to Jamaica, and produced a language guide to Jamaica to help train Peace Corps volunteers. Her dissertation, Jamaican Creole Syntax, appeared in 1966; was the first comprehensive description of a Creole syntax. It is also an important point of reference for the structure of African-American Vernacular English [AAVE] in the U.S. To get some insight into Bailey's style, and the tradition she came from, one might simply cite her dedication:

to the memory of my

great-grandfather

Henry Loftman

whose passion for the

rudiments of English grammar

earned him the nickname

'syntax.'

Bailey's view of AAVE

Bailey's approach to AAVE is exemplified in her first paper on the topic, "Toward a new perspective in Negro English dialectology" (1965). Her insights into the nature of the dialect were motivated in part by her reaction against the dialectological view of AAVE as a collection of mistakes or deviations from Standard English. Outside of the school setting, Beryl was not a field worker, and her whole article was based on an examination of the speech of the narrator in one novel, The Cool World. She apologized for this fact in words that are worth citing:

(1) I was compelled to modify the orthodox procedures and even, at times, to adopt some completely unorthodox ones. The first problem that I had to face was that of abstracting a hypothetical dialect which could reasonably be regarded as featuring the main elements of the deep structure. This may sound like hocus-pocus, but indeed a good deal of linguistics is. A hocus-pocus procedure which yields the linguistic facts is surely preferable to a scientifically rigorous one which murders those facts.

Bailey's main theme is that AAVE must be understood as an independent structure in its own right. The most remarkable result of her analysis is the following set of three phrase structure rules for non-verbal predications:

[1](2) English predications

P Æ be +

(3) Jamaican Creole predications

P Æ

(4) Cool World predications

P Æ ÿ +

It should be clear that Bailey anticipated in this juxtaposition the long discussion of the AAVE copula to follow. The separation of the copula from the progressive auxiliary has since been recognized as a useful strategy (G. Bailey and N. Maynor 1989). Her abstraction from the Cool World data of a grammar with categorical absence of the copula did not prove to be characteristic of AAVE, but this type of structure has recently re-appeared in John Singler's description of the mesolect in Liberia (1991).[2] Most importantly, she identified a family resemblance between AAVE and JCE which was the basis of most of the research that followed.

1. The recognition of separate systems

Though Bailey did not study every-day speech in JCE or AAVE, she was well aware of variation that did not fit within the rules of her grammar. Following the logic of her basic methodology given in (1), she assigned the variation of every-day speech automatically to interference from another language (or dialect), which one might call Standard English or Jamaican Standard English. This approach to the resolution of variation has been put forward frequently from the very beginning of studies of variation and change. It has been suggested as a way of handling the variation of constricted and non-constricted /r/ in New York City, or the variation of fricatives, affricates and stops for the interdentals (dh) and (th). The resolution into separate dialects is in fact the limiting case of the general solution to the problem of variation. One begins with a surface variation, say between [kAˇd] and [kA:¥d], or between He's tired and He tired. The analytical task is to discover what this surface variation reflects in the organization of the grammar: mere phonetic variability, variation in a more abstract phonological rule, the variable insertion of a morpheme, the alternation of allomorphs, variation in the syntactic parsing or syntactic movements, or in many cases the combined effects of morphological and phonological variation (Guy 1981). The limiting possibility is that the surface variation is caused by the alternating use of two separate systems, each comprising in itself a complete and coherent grammar. The crucial question for the general study of variation is to decide what kind of evidence bears on the assignment of variation to what level, and what kind of evidence could justify the recognition of distinct systems, not simply competing rules.

The issue of where variability is located in the grammar has been given a new impetus by Mufwene (1992), in a general argument for the recognition of heterogeneity in linguistic systems. In discussing the AAVE copula, he attributes the variation found in the actual realization of Bailey's rule (4) not to phonological contraction or morphological insertion, but to a fundamental difference in the basic phrase structure rules of the grammar:

(5) Unlike Standard English, BE allows both S ã> NP VP and S ã> NP PredP as alternative surface combinatoric rules in its non-elliptical clauses. . . . Those speakers producing copula-less sentences more frequently may be assumed to subscribe predominantly to the S ã> NP PredP rules and the others to the S ã> NP VP rule. There is undoubtedly individual variation among BE speakers regarding whether the second rule is favored when the PredP is headed by an adjective or by a preposition.[3]

In arguing for such an assignment, and against contraction and deletion rules, Mufwene refers only to one set of constraints: the following grammatical environment. But the crucial evidence for the alignment of the AAVE auxiliary and copula with that of other dialects is found in parallel effects of the form of the subject. Both contraction and deletion are favored by subject pronouns as against full noun phrases, reflecting a long-standing pattern in the history of English (G. Bailey, Maynor and Cukor-Avila 1989). More importantly, contraction and deletion are inversely affected by the phonological form of the subject: vowel-final subjects favor contraction and consonant-final subjects favor deletion, as one would predict from the unmarked status of CVC syllables.[4] Phonological constraints of this type indicate that the object being acted on is in place at a higher level of abstraction, and that its alternation with zero is controlled by a phonological rule (Labov 1987). But even if Mufwene's concept ofa heterogeneous grammar should not apply to the variation of finite BE -- which I will view here as a part of the general English component of AAVE -- I will argue that the situation is fundamentally as he describes it: the grammar is characterized by two sets of non-overlapping and structurally inconsistent rules.

The major topic of this paper ã the tense and aspect systems of AAVE and OAD ã will show many differences that reflect a higher level variation comparable to that suggested by Mufwene. The questions to be addressed will concern contrasts like He be tired vs. He tired. There has never been any reason to believe that this is the result of a low level rule of phonological deletion of be. The issue is whether these two forms differ only by the optional choice of the aspect marker be, or whether the choice of invariant be vs. finite be reflects an alternation at a higher level that involving layered sets of rules.

The discussion to follow will pursue the suggestion of Labov 1971 that the recognition of a linguistic system as a separate entity depends upon the strict co-occurrence of sets of rules. In the simplest schema (6), a community may show variation involving two rules, A and B, which may apply or not apply in four different possible arrangements for various sub-groups:

{1} {2} {3} {4}

(6) Rule A applies yes yes no no

Rule B applies yes no yes no

If all four possibilities occur, then the choice of A is independent of the choice of B, and there is no evidence for a separate system. We can recognize two separate and independent variable rules. But if we find only possibilities {1} and {4} and never {2} and {3} then we can say that rules A and B are in some way dependent on each other or upon some more abstract choice. In this sense, they are linked systematically, and form part of a (possibly larger) separate system. It is just such linking or co-occurrence of properties that we will search for in re-opening the question of coexistent systems in AAVE.

2. The current consensus on AAVE.

Given the active state of research on AAVE, and the impeding impact of Dayton's work, any attempt to state a general consensus can only be momentarily successful; the following brief account is my own effort to update the effort of Labov 1982 in this respect.[5] For this purpose it will be useful to compare AAVE with all other dialects of English spoken in the continental U.S.: I will refer to these as Other American Dialects, or OAD. While there is considerable variation within this range of "other dialects", particularly within the Southern States, it can still be argued that they share many features in common and are differentiated as a whole from AAVE.[6] The term AAVE or African-American Vernacular English will be used to refer to what was earlier called the Black English Vernacular, as defined by Baugh (1983): the uniform grammar used by African-Americans who have minimal contact with other dialects in contexts where only speakers of that vernacular are present.

It is logical to group the findings that relate AAVE to OAD into three sets. One set shows a great area of similarity between AAVE and OAD; another set shows discrete and categorical absence in AAVE of certain elements of OAD; the third finds elements of AAVE that do not exist in OAD. In short, the common, the negative, and the positive.

The common area is by far the largest. The most striking features of AAVE syntax are shared by white Southern States dialects used by white speakers: negative concord, negative inversion, lack of inversion in embedded questions, double modals (Labov et al. 1968, Wolfram 1974, Feagin 1979, Boortien 1979, Di Paolo 1989). AAVE and OAD share most categorical rules, and for variable rules, differ only quantitatively, not qualitatively. In the noun phrase, there are no significant differences in the expression of person or number, and the category of possession is intact.[7] AAVE and OAD show no differences in the forms or semantics of the past tense, or the general present, and only small formal differences in the future. The past perfect is used regularly in AAVE, though its form is occasionally borrowed in preterit uses.

AAVE also uses the same basic set of aspects as OAD: the progressive be + ing and the present perfect, have + en. The only observable differences in the use of the progressive are some differentiation in the constraint on its use with stative verbs. In AAVE, the present perfect has an uncertain status in the positive, but is used consistently in negative sentences. The past perfect can be used in the same way as in OAD, but as it has appeared with increasing clarity, it is also extended to serve as a simple preterit (Labov et al. 1968:225 Rickford in press, Cukor-Avila 1995, Dayton 1996).

AAVE shares with OAD the basic categories of mood--indicative, imperative, subjunctive, the same modals, and voice--active, passive, middle, causative, with only slight differences in form.

The second set of findings are concentrated in morphology, and those areas of syntax that intersect with morphology. The possessive morpheme in attributive position is absent. There is no third singular /s/ in AAVE and no subject-verb agreement, except for the copula.[2][8]

The third set of findings concern a series of auxiliary particles found in AAVE but not in OAD: be, done, be done, been done, been, steady, come. The semantics and syntax of those particles show only small overlap with elements found in OAD.[9]

There are several recognized ways of bringing these three sets of observations to bear on the present-day relations of AAVE and OAD.

a. AAVE and OAD can be seen as separate languages or dialects, and variation as code-switching between them. This is the position of Beryl Bailey cited in (1) above.

b. AAVE and OAD can be seen as systems that are distinct but interdependent. This is the notion of coexistent systems introduced by Fries and Pike 1967, who used it to characterize a phonological sub-set that had entered the language with Spanish loan words. In this concept, one of the two systems may not be a complete or independent entity, capable of generating a complete range of utterances, but merely a sub-set that is used to supplement or combine with the other. This concept has been further refined by the various senses of ≥non-monolithic≤ developed in Mufwene 1992

c. AAVE can be seen as a mesolectal stage in the upper part of a Creole continuum, in which the standard variety of OAD is the acrolect(Bickerton 1975). In such a continuum, there may be an implicational scale that will rule out {3} in (6) above, but not {2}. Thus not all combinations of rules are permitted, but there is no strict co-occurrence rule that links rule A automatically to rule B.

d. AAVE can be viewed as a de-creolized dialect of English with the many persistent Creole-like features embedded in it. Descriptions of AAVE written from this perspective (Stewart 1971, Dillard 1972) did not as a rule consider variation, but follow implicitly the line of (a) above.[10]

One might argue for a more sophisticated combination of b, c and d, combining synchronic and diachronic perspectives (Rickford, p.c.). The hypothesis to be advanced here is focused directly on (b), the recognition of coexistent systems. It is proposed that AAVE consists of two distinct components. the General English [GE] component , which is similar to the grammar of OAD, and the African-American [AA] component . These two components are not tightly integrated with each other, but follow internal patterns of strict co-occurrence. On the other hand, they are not completely independent structures. On the one hand, GE is a fairly complete set of syntactic, morphological and phonological structures, which can function independently. Through the GE component, speakers of AAVE have access to the much the same grammatical and lexical machinery as speakers of OAD, and use it for the much the same range of grammatical functions. On the other hand, the AA component allows speakers of AAVE to construct sentence types that are not available in OAD. The AA component is not a complete grammar, but a subset of grammatical and lexical forms that are used in combination with much but not all of the grammatical inventory of GE in ways that to be explored below. In the end, we will see that the distinct positive features of AAVE in this AA component are free to develop a specialized semantics that is used primarily in highly affective, socially marked interactions.[11] Thus the AA component may be seen as an addition to the GE component, in some ways complementing the OAD elements that have been subtracted or were never present in AAVE. The GE component then serves as a set of default values for AAVE: when no AA element is supplied, the GE component is used. The AA component is concentrated largely in a set of aspectual particles and their semantic structures.

3. The African-American components of the tense-aspect system.

I will now examine briefly the development of the AA aspectual particles, following the work of recent scholars who have described with some precision their distributions, use and meanings within the social context of the vernacular African-American community. I will be drawing heavily on the long-term participant observation of John Baugh in Los Angeles and Elizabeth Dayton in Philadelphia. These grammatical particles cannot be studied in the same way as the closed sets of the GE component: [12] they are marked elements whose non-occurrence is not easily quantifiable, and their use is concentrated in the kind of face-to-face interaction which requires direct observation of the participant-observer.[13]

These particles -- be, been, done, come, steady -- are all invariant forms, which are placed before the main verb of the sentence in the positions reserved for modals or aspectual markers in OAD. They are clearly grammaticalized markers and distinct from the homonymous main verbs or adverbs in several respects that are typical results of grammaticalization.[14] In these respects, they are typologically similar to the tense and aspect particles of Caribbean Creoles: Jamaican a/de, (b)en, done; Haitian ap, pe, te. (Spears 1990, Lefebvre et al. 1982). As we will see, they do not participate in any of the syntactic operations associated with INFL: auxiliary inversion, neg-placement, tag questions, or cliticization on the subject. In these respects, the AA particles share properties with the Afro-Caribbean grammars of Creole languages, and it was only natural for linguists following the Beryl Bailey tradition to see them as the direct continuation or the inheritance of a similar Creole grammar spoken on the U.S. mainland in the 18th and 19th centuries (Dillard 1972, Stewart 1967, 1971). However, the relation of BEV to Creole grammars of the Caribbsean appears in a very different light as the result of a number of the findings of recent research (G. Bailey & N. Maynor 1987, 1989, Rickford & McNair-Knox 1993, Dunlap 1977, Poplack and Sankoff 1987, Poplack and Tagliamonte 1989, 1991, Myhill 1988, 1991, Edwards 1991, Montgomery, Fuller and Paparone 1993). These various sources give varying degrees of support to the main thesis of Bailey and Maynor 1991, which can be summed up in two statements:

a. The particular form/meaning combinations of the AAVE particles are quite different from those found in the Caribbean.

b. The grammar used by African-Americans in the South in the 19th century did not show these patterns, but rather a grammar much closer to that of OAD.

The general conclusion that is emerging from studies of the history of AAVE is that many important features of the modern dialect are creations of the 20th century and not an inheritance of the 19th. The Creole affinities of AAVE and the Creole-like structural properties that we do observe are not to be accounted for by direct transmission, but by the more subtle process of substrate influence and by parallel drift or development. This view of the situation is presented as the best working hypothesis to date, certainly not one that is established beyond challenge. If we accept for the moment that AAVE has diverged in many respects from OAD in recent decades, and is continuing to diverge, we tend to draw different conclusions about the structure of the dialect.

Non-finite BE.

The particle be is the most frequent and the most salient of the AA elements in AAVE. Its morphology is clear: it always appears as /biy/ (and occasionally with an /s/ suffix[15]). It shows three syntactic properties that distinguish it sharply from GE auxiliary elements:

a. It does not accept negative affixation (*ben't or *be not). Instead, the negative particle precedes be and requires do support(don't be...).

b. It does not form tag questions (*..., be he?).

c. It does not participate in auxiliary inversion (*Be he doing that?)

These three properties will be referred to as the non-finite syntax of be, a set of properties shared by all of the AA particles to be discussed below. This non-finite syntax of AA particles is the chief evidence to be advanced for the heterogeneous character of AAVE, since the central mechanisms of GE auxiliary syntax are missing, and with them much of the motivation for attributing the same structures to sentences with AA auxiliaries as GE auxiliaries.

Further evidence for the non-finite character of be and other AA particles is found in their semantic behavior. Dayton has demonstrated that the AA particles be, done, be done are free of any limitation to past, present or future time. It is well known that be occurs in future contexts; in early work, these were set aside as indicating possible deletion of contracted will:

(7) When June come, I be outta school and outta work.

[Dayton 1986].

Similarly, contexts with past habitual behavior were set aside as indicating a possible deletion of contracted would:

(8) When they used to tell us that the nipples be pink on pregnant women, we be laughin'; we were laughin' 'cause it don't be like that. [Dayton 1986]

However, Dayton gives many examples of such forms following noun phrases ending in consonants, where contraction is not possible, as in (9):

(9) When my son was young, the women be givin' him money.

[Dayton 1986]

These and many other sentences all lead to the conclusion that non-finite be carries no tense information. Most sentences with be do co-occur with verbs referring to present situations, since that follows from its aspectual characterization of 'habitual' behavior, but there is no bar to it appearing in any temporal context. The same argument will be repeated for all AA particles.

The non-finite syntax and semantics of AA auxiliaries might indicate continuity with or affinity with the Afro-Caribbean mesolectal grammars that share these properties. The evidence for discontinuity and divergence rests upon the particular combination of form and meaning involved. The central meaning of 'habitual' was recognized for non-finite be very early in studies of AAVE (Stewart 1967, Labov et al. 1968, Fasold 1972), and there is little disagreement about this. There has however never been any clear agreement on whether non-finite be is opposed to finite be as a privative opposition. If this were the case, "He talking about you" would mean 'at the moment' and could not mean 'habitually.' We often find a free alternation of non-finite be and finite is/am/are. For example, from the adolescent Jets in New York City:

(10) Like--...she be standin' with her hand in her pocket, and her friend is standin' there, and a man is messin' with her friend. [member of the Jets, 16; Labov et al. 1968]

When it was first realized that non-finite be had a habitual meaning, it was natural to connect this with the 'habitual' or 'iterative' aspect of Caribbean creoles.[16] However, comparatively few creoles have a specialized marker for habituals. Some use the same non-punctual marker to indicate both progressive and habitual, while others merge the habitual and the future (Taylor 1977, Holm 1988). Some English creoles show a specifically habitual marker doz in the present and useto in the pst: in Trinidad (Winford 1992), Guyana (Rickford 1980), Barbados (Burrowes and Allsop 1983), Mosquito Coast Creole English (Holm 1978). Invariant be is rare in the Caribbean, but is a common feature of Hiberno-English and other English dialects, sometimes in combination with do as do be or does be, but also alone. The 'habitual' meaning makes a direct link with the Irish habitual copula, or "consuetudinal be". Evidence on the origin of the invariant be form is not conclusive in either direction, and may indicate a convergence of several forms of contact. Rickford 1980 demonstrates a route by which Gullah doz be gave rise to a reduced be form, and Rickford 1986 sums up the evidence for early contact of black speakers with Irish laborers.

In any case, the historical origins of nonfinite be are not as relevant to the main theme of this paper, the current trajectory of AAVE, as the intricate semantic development of this particle in recent times. The semantic range reported by studies of the vernacular over the past twenty years is quite different from anything reported so far for Caribbean a or de. To begin with, it is now clear that the association of iterative and habitual, common in describing Caribbean Creole grammars, was mistaken. Dayton has conclusively demonstrated that there is complementary distribution in this respect between be and done. Adverbs that indicate indefinite, habitual behavior like always, all the time, every, sometimes, and steady co-occur regularly with non-finite be in AAVE.

(11) When you don't be talkin' about someone else all the time.

[member of the Jets, 16; Labov, Cohen, Robins and Lewis 1968]

On the other hand, adverbs that indicate iterated behavior like twice and five times co-occur with done (see below). The differences are almost absolute in Dayton's extensive data.

This specialization of the meaning of be is only one indication of the idiosyncratic semantic development found in AAVE. From the first observations of be, it was clear that there are some utterances that do not fit into the category of 'habitual.'

(12) So you know it all don't be on her; it be half on me and half on her.

[12-year-old girl, in Chicago, 1965]

While (12) might be interpreted as habitual behavior, it was not intended as such; rather, it dealt with the attribution of blame for a particular incident. Such utterances almost always indicate a durative state of affairs, usually accompanied by an intensive quality. This is particularly evident in (13), said by a woman in the University of Pennsylvania hospital to another woman in a conversation of an intensely religious character:

(13) Her Father be your Father.

The steady state character of (13) is also found in (14), called out by a man leaning out of a truck in West Philadelphia to a woman on the sidewalk:

(14) Hey baby, this be Heywood!

A fair number of such utterances collected over the years indicate that non-finite be has developed the capacity to refer to extended steady states, usually indicating a higher state of reality than normally predicated. This affective quality can be thought of as the super-real, or surrealis, as contrasted with the irrealis category that unites futures and modals as referring to a state of affairs that is less than real.[17] This surrealis feature is found in a number of AA elements, as will be evident in the discussion to follow. However, it should be noted that such highly affective utterances form only a part of the uses of invariant be that fail to show habitual or durative aspect. For this reason, Dayton argues that the semantic core of invariant be is stativity, opposed in this respect to done within the aspectual system.

Before these special semantic developments of the nonfinite be occurred, one might suppose that there was a simple habitual, perhaps a habitual/iterative category that was the modern continuation of an Anglo-Irish or Caribbean category. This supposition is difficult to maintain, however, in the light of the evidence presented by Bailey and Maynor that the habitual feature of nonfinite be is a development of recent times, following the great migration of southern rural blacks to urban centers (Bailey and Maynor 1985a,b, 1987, 1989, Bailey 1993). Their repeated studies show that "children and teen-agers, especially those with urban connections, generally use [nonfinite be] +V+ing to mark durative/habitual actions while the older adults never do" (Bailey 1993:303). In the earlier pattern, reflected in the narratives of ex-slaves as well, nonfinite be appears to have been an alternate of finite be, with similar syntactic and semantic distribution. The work of Rickford and his associates in East Palo Alto shows a similar recent increase in the frequency of nonfinite be and its habitual pattern (Rickford and McNair-Knox 1993). Rickford 1992 argues that the change is primarily a quantitative one: that the sentences cited from older rural speakers show evidence of the habitual feature. However, Bailey 1993 demonstrates that the growth of habitual be + ing is a qualitative break: that use of invariant be + ing to mark habitual aspect is found among all urban speakers born after 1944 and rural speakers strong urban ties born after 1944, while none of the speakers born before 1944 use this feature. The demonstration that habitual be is a creation of the second half of the 20th century is typical of the many findings of sociolinguistics which completely reverse previous expectations. Despite the many objections that have been raised by those who cling to the older conception, the evidence brought to bear in Bailey 1993 is overwhelming; seldom has the case for abrupt linguistic change been more decisively argued.[18]

Thus the recent history of the first of the AA particles, nonfinite be, provides a sharp challenge to our understanding of the nature of modern AAVE. The farther we come from a common origin with the Caribbean Creole populations, the more similarity we find to Creole grammars in the tense and aspect system. But this similarity is not the precise correlation of forms and meanings that forms the essential evidence for historical linguistics. Rather it is a typological similarity of the sort that provides relatively weak evidence for historical reconstruction. This puzzling situation recurs in the study of other AA elements of the dialect.

Perfect DONE

AAVE has always possessed the perfect particle, done, which is found in both in white Southern States English and in Caribbean Creoles. In AAVE, done precedes a verb that makes reference to an action completed in the recent past. If that is a telic verb, which implies a change of state, done will indicate that the action is completed. Thus in (15) and (16), the verb use must mean 'use up' in combination with done:

(15) You don't have it 'cause you done used it in your younger age. [Isolated individual, 15, South Harlem, 1966]

(16) It don't make no difference, 'cause they done used all the good ones by now. [Baugh 1983]

The second common semantic feature of the perfect ã relevance to the present ã is usually implicit. But in both (15) and (16) current relevance is foregrounded, since done is attached to subordinate clause of causation which explicitly states that this event is a cause of the event of the main clause. In (17), this connection is implicit: so might be inserted before le's run.

(17) We done got this far; le's run!

[member of the Oscar Brothers, 15, South Harlem, 1966]

When done modifies a punctual verb like tell, the sense of 'completion' is neutralized; one does not 'completely tell' someone something. It is then equivalent to 'occurrence in the recent past, with effects on the present', and can be translated as 'already.' Indeed, done commonly co-occurs with already. (18) and (19) were spoken by the same person on the same occasion.

(18) I done told you on that.

(19) I done told you already.

[member of the Jets, 13, South Harlem, 1966]

Among adults, one often finds done alternating with the GE present perfect have + en, showing that for some AAVE speakers this GE form can be an equivalent of the English present perfect. The meaning of 'effect on the present' characteristic of the present perfect then emerges, not only for tell in (20) but also for get wet in (21), which can accept the meaning of 'completive.'

(20) But you done tol' em, you don't realize you d--you have told 'em that. [South Harlem, 39, 1967]

(21) Buff, I done got wet twice goin' to the store. (What?) I have gotten wet twice; that's how hard it's rainin'. [Dayton 1984]

When done is used with iterative adverbs like twice , the 'completed' meaning can be suspended for each individual event; in (21), the speaker need not have gotten thoroughly wet and dried out each time. The 'completeness' of the action is translated into its iterative character; it is not so much the completeness of the action as the high degree of change of state that has an effect on the action.

This use of done with twice illustrates an important development which Dayton discovered in the semantics of this particle. As mentioned above, done co-occurs with iterative adverbs like twice, five times, but be does not. Thus it is reasonable to oppose AAVE done to be as [+definite] to [-definite].

In AAVE, as in many languages of the world, perfect aspect develops an 'intensive' meaning. In (22), done shows the stereotypical use of intensive done where the sense of 'completion' is pushed into the background.

(22) Well, we useta get into trouble and . . . y'know . . . like . . . if Pop'd catch us,, he say, "Boy--you done done it now.

[Baugh 1983]

Done is frequently used with other verbs that do not easily accept the notion of 'completed.' The verb win is such a punctual act; (23) does not gracefully accept a translation with completely.

(23) After I done won all that money.

[Member of the T-Birds, 12, South Harlem, 1965]

In (24) , the action of get the works is in itself completive, and done is best seen as carrying an 'intensive' meaning. From the speaker of (18) and (19):

(24) After you knock the guy down, he done got the works, you know he gon' try to sneak you.

[Member of the Jets, 13, South Harlem, 1966]

We find in addition that AAVE has developed new uses of done which cannot be characterized as either a 'completed' meaning or 'intensive'. Done can precede a verb that refers to a socially defined act that cannot be done completely or intensively:

(25) He done slept with Francine and he done slept with Darlene... and he supposed to be a good friend of Henry [Darlene's husband, from W. Philadelphia.]

Sleeping with someone is an action that is defined by society as either done or not done: it can't be done partially or completely, intensively or moderately, so the meaning of done is not transparent in this case. A similar problem is found in (26), which also concerns a man who was cheating on his wife. In this case, done is used as a modifier of the socially punctual action of going to work.

(26) So he went to where she was. . . and got the nerve to lie to me . . talking 'bout he done went to work. [Baugh 1983]

What is the meaning of done in (25) and (26)? Speakers of AAVE generally agree that done here resonates with the sense of moral indignation, and can be translated by the phrase 'had the nerve to', which appears explicitly in the matrix sentence in (26). This interpretation also applies directly to (25). But in (26), moral indignation is not directed to the act of going to work but to lying about going to work; we then have to assume that done is associated with the higher verb talk in the underlying form, and has been lowered to its present position before went.

Whenever we find such extended meanings of a grammatical particle, one must consider the possibility that they are "contextually pragmatic interpretations" (Winford 1993), and not meanings within the grammatical system. There is no general criterion for deciding when a particular interpretation has been grammaticalized and is now a part of the fundamental meaning of the particle. However, we must be prepared to describe, at least informally, the rules of interpretation that take us from 'completed' or 'intensive' to 'moral indignation.' I do not know of any pragmatic analysis that would carry the done of (25) from 'intensive' to 'morally undesirable' rather than to 'thoroughly', 'magnificently' or 'spectacularly'. One might say that the presence anywhere in the context of moral disapproval, no matter how generally derived, will select the 'moral indignation' sense of done. If such a rule operated generally on any particle meaning 'completed' or 'intensive' it would produce such an interpretation from "he told her he already went to the office" or "he told her he really went to the office." In the absence of any evidence for such a rule, we must assign 'moral indignation' as one of the selectable elements of the meaning of done in AAVE.

Since done is used in Caribbean English-based Creoles as well as in AAVE, we can benefit from the opportunity to contrast the syntax and semantics of the particle in AAVE and a particular Caribbean community. Edwards 1991 provides a penetrating and insightful review of the semantics of done in Guyana, based on his own recordings in 1974 and a review of the literature.[19] He recognizes the arguments of Feagin (1979) and Wolfram and Christian (1976) that AAVE done is related to the done of white Southern States English. But he maintains that the semantic similarities of the Guyanese and AAVE form lead to the conclusion that "preverbal done is a decreolized variant of Caribbean creole preverbal don." (p. 253). He provides a set of observed sentences that show Guyanese don translatable as 'already,' referring to a state of affairs in effect prior to the moment of speaking, and still in effect at the moment of speaking, as in (27):

(27) Bai taim mi lef de fu kom hee som a dem don marid.

'By the time I left there to come here some of them were already married.'

(28) Dem don gat di koolii-man rom.

'They already have the Indian man's rum.'

Another type can be glossed as 'be finished.'

(29) Somtaim wen you don wok yu go an bai a dringk.

'Sometimes when you [are] finished working you go and buy a drink.'

Edwards' over-all portrait of the semantics of Guyanese don shows a marker of perfect aspect that embodies location in the past, completion and current relevance. In these respects, it resembles AAVE done. But Edwards also points out many features of Guyanese don that are quite different.

ÄGuyanese don occurs with statives as well as non-statives; sentences of type (27-28) occur with statives, sentences of type (29) with non-statives. But AAVE done occurs only with non-stative verbs.

ÄGuyanese don also functions as a non-stative main verb with the meaning of 'finish'; though some of these sentences are equivalent to AAVE forms with deleted copula, others cannot be so translated.

(30) Yu kyan don baut trii, akaadin to hau yu plant.

'You can be finished around three, according to how you plant.'