Research on African American English: Origins, Description, Theory, and Practice

Research on African American English (AAE) since 1998 has covered topics ranging from origins of the variety to formal semantic computations used to explain the different readings of ambiguous sentences. Much of the work on AAE during this period, especially that related to the origins debate, is in the variation theory framework. The focus of the descriptive research has been on syntactic and semantic patterns in AAE used by speakers in the adolescent to adult age group. While research on phonological patterns and formal semantics of constructions has lagged behind other areas, some noteworthy studies in these areas have appeared since 1998. As the discussion of AAE has broadened, it has been possible to compare data and approaches in different studies and raise questions that provide more insight into the linguistic variety. It is also possible to extend descriptive analyses of different constructions to use in illustrations of the systematic nature of language in introductory linguistics courses and in linguistics and education courses