Editing African-American English (section)

==History==
African-American English began as early as the 17th century, when the [[Atlantic slave trade]] brought enslaved West Africans into [[Southern Colonies|Southern colonies]] (which eventually became the [[Southern United States]] in the late 18th century).{{sfnp|Kautzsch|2004|p=341}} During the development of [[Plantation complexes in the Southern United States|plantation culture]] in this region, [[nonstandard dialect]]s of English were widely spoken by British settlers,{{sfnp|McWhorter|2001|pp=162, 182}} which probably resulted in both first- and second-language English varieties being developed by African Americans.{{sfnp|Kautzsch|2004|p=341}} The 19th century's evolving cotton-plantation industry, and eventually the 20th century's [[Great Migration (African American)|Great Migration]], certainly contributed greatly to the spread of the first of these varieties as stable dialects of English among African Americans.

The most widespread modern dialect is known as [[African-American Vernacular English]].{{sfnp|Edwards|2004|p=383}} Despite more than a century of scholarship, the historical relationship between AAVE and the vernacular speech of whites in the United States is still not very well understood; in part, this is because of a lack of data from comparable groups, but also because of the tendency to compare AAVE to northern vernaculars or even standard varieties of English while conflating regional and ethnic differences, as well as disregarding the sociohistorical context of AAVE origins.{{sfnp|Bailey|2001|p=55}} For example, features of AAVE grammar such as complex verb tenses and zero copula (omitting forms of the verb 'be') may have been inherited from African languages such as [[Hausa_Language|Hausa]]. AAVE shares several linguistic features with [[Southern American English|Southern White Vernacular English]] (and even more with [[Older Southern American English|older Southern dialects]]), many of which either emerged or became widespread during the last quarter of the 19th century.{{sfnp|Bailey|2001|p=80}} The farm tenancy system that replaced slavery in the American South drew in [[White Southerners|Southern Whites]], leading to a context for an interracial speech relationship dynamic among socioeconomic equals throughout the South and leading to many shared features until the start of WWII;{{sfnp|Bailey|2001|p=65,66}} leading to the situation wherein changes that became robust after the 1930s most strongly mark ethnic distinctions in speech.{{sfnp|Bailey|2001|p=82}}