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Negation in African American Vernacular English : Darin Howe
Negation in African American Vernacular English : Darin Howe
English *
Darin Howe
University of Calgary
It’s like can’t nobody never get confused and think I’m like a Mike Tyson ...
(Tupac Shakur, transcribed interview accessed July 27, 2004 at
<http://www.2pac2k.de/bigob.html>)
It ain’t never been another fighter like me. Ain’t never been no nothing like me.
(Muhammad Ali, Playboy 9/64)
You don’t know nobody what don’t want to hire nobody to do nothin’ does you?
(Henry Garry, ex-slave, b. 1863, Sumter Co., AL)
1. Introduction
2. AAVE
* I am grateful to Yoko Iyeiri for inviting me to write this chapter, and to Jeff Long for his
assistance in collecting examples of negation from rap music. For their help with my previous
work on earlier African American English, I am thankful especially to Shana Poplack, and to
Sali Tagliamonte, James Walker, Tracey Weldon, Don Winford, John McWhorter, and John
Rickford.
172 Darin Howe
is of special interest to linguists because it diverges not only in degree but also
often in kind from standard American English as well as (more revealingly)
from other nonstandard and regional varieties (Mufwene et al. 1998, Green
2002).
The distinctiveness of AAVE has invited much speculation about its origins.
The central question has been whether AAVE evolved from a prior creole (e.g.,
Winford 1992), or whether its roots are to be found only in English (e.g.,
Poplack 2000). In trying to resolve this question, researchers have sought
information on the diachronic status of AAVE from two kinds of sources:
historical attestations, and synchronic transplanted varieties. The most important
diachronic attestations are recordings made with former slaves (Bailey et al.
1991) and transcripts of interviews with former slaves from Virginia (Kautzsch
2000) and from across the American South more generally (Schneider 1989).
Speakers in these corpora relay African American English as they learned it in
the middle of the nineteenth century.
The second source of information is the African American diaspora.
Between the mid 1700s and early 1800s, thousands of African Americans
emigrated to diverse locations, including Nova Scotia in Canada, Samaná in the
Dominican Republic, and Liberia in West Africa (Poplack & Tagliamonte 2001,
Singler 1998). Crucially, the social isolation and geographic remoteness of these
transplanted communities make them linguistic enclaves —environments where
language typically resists (socially motivated) change. This has led most
researchers to consider the varieties spoken in these communities to be
representative of “old-line” early nineteenth century African American English.
Some isolated communities within the US have also been argued to constitute
enclaves, and as such, to represent earlier African American English (e.g., Davis
& Huang 1995, Wolfram 2003).
These various sources of information suggest (with remarkable uniformity)
that early African Americans spoke a variety of English that was rather similar
to contemporary nonstandard Southern European American English (e.g.,
Feagin 1979). A few unique aspects of African American English, such as
substantive consonant cluster reduction, point to persistent substrate influence
from an earlier contact situation, perhaps with an English-based creole like
Gullah, but as Wolfram (2003:311) remarks, this influence does not necessarily
imply that Earlier African American English was ever a creole itself.
AAVE is divergent today because African Americans have not only
faithfully preserved and proliferated their ancestors’ linguistic structures, but
also avoided participation in many ongoing linguistic changes in their
surrounding communities. Indeed, interest in AAVE was first spiked in the late
Negation in African American Vernacular English 173
[O]ne of the most noteworthy aspects of AAVE is the common core of features shared
across different regions. ... [W]e recognize regional variation in AAVE while concluding, at
the same time, that the regional differences do not come close to the magnitude of regional
differences that exist across Anglo varieties.
[T]he regional dialects used in the white community are developing in the pattern described
in these volumes, and ... blacks do not participate in this process in any large city. [This] is
a major factor in the steady and growing separation of black and white speech patterns. ...
[T]he nonparticipation of African Americans in the sound changes ... [are] the result of ...
the perception that their own use of local dialect forms will not lead to full membership in
local society. It can also be accounted for as the result of decreasing frequency of face-to-
face interaction with speakers of the mainstream local dialect during their formative years.
3. ain’t
This section focuses on ain’t. I consider the use of this negative form in the
environment of have + not, be + not, and do + not, in both present and past
temporal contexts.
1 All figures in Table 1 exclude the context of ___ got, which never shows variation between
ain’t and have + not in African American English: use of ain’t is categorical in this context
(see §3.5 below).
Negation in African American Vernacular English 175
slave narratives, and concluded that this was the most common function of ain’t
in Earlier AAE: “Most frequently, [ain’t] replaces a negative form of have”.
Table 3. Distribution of ain’t in past tense be+not contexts in African Nova Scotian
English (Howe 1995), Samaná English (ib.), the ex-slave recordings (ib.), the
Virginian narratives (Kautzsch 2000:42), the ex-slave narratives (Schneider
1989:200) and AAVE (Weldon 1994:371)
ANSE SE ESR VN ESN AAVE
N 188 56 56 18 ? 36
ain’t 6% (N=11) 2% (N=1) 2% (N=1) 0% N=11 0%
Table 4. Two patterns of be leveling in Hyde County, North Carolina (adapted from
Wolfram 2003:293)
Table 5. Distribution of ain’t vs. have + not or do + not in environment before got in
AAVE (Weldon 1994: 382), in African Nova Scotian English (Howe 1995), Samaná
English (ib.), the ex-slave recordings (ib.), the Virginian narratives (Kautzsch 2000: 42),
and in Southern European American Vernacular (Feagin 1979:226–227)
ain’t / ain’t / ? ain’t /
don’t have+
not
AAVE ANSE SE ESR VN SWN
E
N 63 24 45 10 9 29
ain’t 65% 100% 100% 100% 100% 72%
Negation in African American Vernacular English 181
The most reasonable explanation for the distribution in Table 5 is that the use of
ain’t for have + not (§3.1) was favored categorically before got, and that
another alternation developed in AAVE, not between the auxiliaries ain’t and
don’t, but rather between the main verbs have and got. This possibility is
supported by the presence of such variation in Earlier AAE, for example:
(9) I never had a strapping. I never got a strapping. (ANSE/039/350)
Beyond this special context (before got), use of ain’t for present tense do +
not in AAVE is either unreported (e.g., Labov et al. 1968) or else denied
(Weldon 1994:382–383, Howe & Walker 2000:121, Kautzsch 2000:42). And
yet, examples of this usage are relatively easy to find, especially with the verbs
want, have, and know, for example:
(10) Ain’t as do + not (present) in modern AAVE
I ain’t want some more.
(Harlem AAVE; Labov et al. 1968: ex. 334)
All I gets is pounds, you ain’t want none of this.
(DMX, Nowhere To Run)
ay, ay Hobb, you ain’t, you ain’t have no uh, you ain’t have no mu-
fuckin’ seat on your b… on your bicycle.
(Jay Z, My First Song, 3:28)
you ain’t have to tell V nuttin’
(MF Doom, Lactose & Lecithin, 1:10)
leave em hangin’ like if I ain’t know where his hands been…
(MF Doom, Saliva, 0:53)
I ain’t stack no paper, I don’t walk around wearin’ gators.
(Big Pooh, Groupie Pt. 2, 0:26)
whoever ain’t get it ain’t supposed to.
(MF Doom, A Dead Mouse, 1:09)
Ain’t also replaced present tense do + not in earlier African American
English, though only very rarely. In fact, little more than a dozen examples have
been found across all corpora representing earlier African American English.
For example, in the African Nova Scotian English corpus, ain’t is never used
for don’t, despite 347 potential environments. By contrast, recall that in this
182 Darin Howe
same corpus use of ain’t is categorical for have + not and near-categorical for
be + not (see §3.1, §3.3). Similarly, in the Virginian narratives, ain’t occurs
only twice for do + not while its usage is almost categorical for have + not and
be + not. Following are some examples from the Ex-slave Recordings (11a), the
Virginian narratives (11b), Samaná English (11c), and the ex-slave narratives
(11d). These examples indicate that the verbs want, have, and know were
favored contexts, as in modern AAVE.
(11) Ain’t as do + not (present) in Earlier African American English
a. If they whip you half a day, you ain’t want to eat. (ESR/013/181)
b. I hop’ ya ain’t wanna kno’ much mo’ ‘cause I ‘bout through.
(Ishrael Massie, Perdue et al. 1976:210, Kautzsch 2000:42)
c. They gots many a things they ain’t have to operate. (SE/002/1250)
I ain’t know nothing ‘bout that. These the only thing what I know
about. (SE/007/1674)
d. I ain’t gwine to tell no mo’ ‘cause I ain’t to make statement and
testify ‘bout sumpin’ I ain’ know ‘bout. (Tex 10:170)
Note, finally, that don’t rather than doesn’t is the normal form in third-
person singular environments. Labov et al. (1968:247–248) find 83% (N = 90)
use of don’t in NYC (96% among male teenage gang members), Fasold (1972:
124) finds 87.5% (N = 24) use of don’t, and Weldon (1994:367) finds 86% (N =
94). Leveling to don’t is by no means restricted to African American English,
since Wolfram & Christian (1975:116) found 85% in their West Virginia study,
and Feagin (1979:198) reports 99% (N = 147) use of don’t among urban
working class European Americans from Anniston, Alabama. Incidentally,
don’t is regularly pronounced without initial d in all nonstandard dialects,
including AAVE (Labov et al. 1968; see also Feagin 1979:212).
Table 6. Distribution of ain’t in contexts of didn’t in AAVE as spoken in New York City
(Labov et al. 1968:255–257), Philadelphia (Ash & Myhill 1986:37) and
Columbus (N = 162; Weldon 1994:384).
Harlem, NYC Philadephia, PA Columbus, OH
1960s 1980s 1990s
ain’t 32–50% 20–60% 38%
didn’t 68–50% 80–40% 62%
184 Darin Howe
Some researchers have suggested that ain’t can be used in this past tense
context not because it is a variant of didn’t but rather because it is a creole-like
tense-neutral negator in AAVE (Debose & Faraclas 1993:370; DeBose 1994).
Others, such as Weldon (1994), argue more convincingly that “the (NEG past)
variation is most likely part of a single system such that ain’t and didn’t are
alternative surface realizations of the same underlying category” (p. 388). The
latter category is evidently an English auxiliary, rather than a creole-like generic
negator. For example, ain’t and didn’t are used as the same auxiliary for the
same verb in the same sentence in (13a), from Philadelphian AAVE. Ain’t also
participates regularly in other auxiliary functions, such as interrogative
inversion (13b) and verb ellipsis (13c). ((13b,c) are NYC AAVE.)
(13) ain’t as didn’t in modern AAVE
a. I ain’t know y’all didn’t know each other.
(Ash and Myhill 1986:35)
b. ain’t you know I had the recipe? (J-Live, always will be, 0:41)
c. Well, he didn’t do nothin’ much, and I ain’t neither.
(Labov et al. 1968:255)
Focusing on the origin of the use of ain’t for didn’t, the following table
shows that this use was almost, but not completely, absent in earlier African
American English. Following are examples from each of African Nova Scotian
English (14a), Samaná English (14b), the Ex-Slave Recordings (14c) and the
Virginia Narratives (14d). 2
Table 7. Distribution of ain’t in contexts of didn’t in African Nova Scotian English (Howe
1995), Samaná English (ib.), the ex-slave recordings (ib.), the Virginian
narratives (Kautzsch 2000:41)
ANSE SE ESR VN
N 258 189 144 123
ain’t 2% 6% 3% 5%
didn’t 98% 94% 97% 95%
2 Past tense morphology in preterit forms is variably doubled in preterit forms, for example:
my mother always did taught us. (SE/002/243)
they didn’t have nothing ... they didn’t had nothing (SE/001/862–863)
I ain’t saw it (SE/002/200)
Negation in African American Vernacular English 185
Alabama (e.g., I ain’t notice that). It is equally possible, then, that early African
Americans simply inherited this variation from (colonial) Southern European
American English to which they were exposed, and later exploited this variation
in ways that Southern European Americans never did. 3
AAVE shows two types of negative concord: to indefinites, and to verbs. This
section examines these two negative constructions, as well as two other related
ones: negative postposing, and negative inversion.
3 Alternatively, John Rickford (personal communication, 1994) suggests that Feagin’s Alabama
speakers may have been influenced by AAVE. Indeed, Labov et al. (1968) as well as Ash &
Myhill (1986) report that white adolescents who associate with African Americans tend to
adopt the use of ain’t for didn’t.
Negation in African American Vernacular English 187
Table 8. Rates of negative concord with indefinites within the same clause in New York
City (N = 654; Labov et al. 1968:255–257), West Philadelphia (N = 150;
Marjorie Goodwin, p.c., cited in Labov 1972:809), Detroit (lower working class;
Wolfram 1969:159), Maryland (Whiteman 1976:46), and Washington DC (Light
1969:125)
Harlem Philly Detroit Maryland Washington
NYC PA MI WA DC
97–100% 4 97% 79–85% 5 91–97% 6 83%
Extremely high rates of negative concord are also found in the corpora
representing earlier African American English, as shown in Table 9 below. The
relatively lower rates given for African Nova Scotian English, Samaná English
and the ex-slave recordings are due to the variable context assumed by Howe
(1995) for these corpora: his calculations included plural and noncount nouns
which are not preceded by no or any (49 in ANSE, 58 in SE, and 17 in ESR).
Schneider (1989) did not include such tokens in his calculations such that, for
instance, according to him negative concord has an application rate of 93% in
the ex-slave recordings (p. 196). By contrast, Howe (1995) calculated a rate of
only 80% for the same corpus (see Table 9). Furthermore, in his study of the
Virginian narratives Kautzsch (2000) calculated only the use of ‘no’ forms (no
one, nobody, nothing, etc.) relative to ‘any’ forms (anyone, anybody, anything,
etc.). Howe (1995:77) reports analogous frequencies of no replacing any in
African Nova Scotian English (92%, N = 285), Samaná English (94%, N = 143),
and in the ex-slave recordings (92%, N = 75).
Table 9. Rates of negative concord with indefinites within the same clause in African Nova
Scotian English, Samaná English, the ex-slave recordings (Howe 1995), the
Virginian narratives (Kautzsch 2000:45) and the ex-slave narratives (Schneider
1989:196).
ANSE SE ESR VN ESN
N 492 222 153 138 847
% 89% 66% 80% 94% 94%
Most linguists believe that singular indefinite count nouns do not participate
in negative concord. Thus in her description of negative concord in Reading
English, Cheshire (1982:65–66) reports: “With singular countable nouns the
form a is used ... Negative concord does not occur with a”. Similarly, regarding
negative concord in AAVE, Labov (1972:806) states: “The indefinite article a ...
is not involved in NEGCONCORD ... the underlying form of no is NEG + any, not
NEG + a, which is realized as not a: ‘I’m not a baby’”. But this claim (which is
also adopted by Feagin 1979 and Schneider 1989:192 among others) is too
strong, since in the following AAVE examples, no seems best interpreted as
NEG + a, rather than as NEG + any.
Table 10. Rates of negative concord to verbs within the same clause in African Nova
Scotian English, Samaná English, ex-slave recordings (Howe 1995), Virginian
narratives (Kautzsch 2000:46), and ex-slave narratives (Scheider 1989:194)
ANSE SE ESR VN ESN
N 22 25 5 20 34
% 55 60 0 5 21
8 Alabama vernacular, with negative concord, reveals that the indefinite subject needn’t
undergo concord negated under inversion: And couldn’t anybody do it but Charlotte. (Feagin
1979:242).
194 Darin Howe
(35) You don’t know nobody what don’t want to hire nobody to do
nothin’ does you? (Ala 4: 143)
Well isn’t nobody wouldn’t go out. (ANSE/030/812)
196 Darin Howe
if he ain’t the right man what not to suffer with people, he don’t do
nothing with the people. (SE/011/1016)
Comparable examples from more contemporary AAVE are difficult to find,
but exist nonetheless, for example:
(36) It ain’t no way no girl can’t wear no platforms to no amusement park.
(Baugh 1983:83)
(There isn’t any way a girl can wear (any) platforms to (any)
amusement park.)
It ain’t no brother of mine can’t help us in hard times.
(Baugh 1983:83)
(There isn’t any brother of mine (who) can help us in hard times.)
It ain’t no cat can’t get in no coop. (Labov 1972:773)
(There isn’t any cat (that) can get in any coop.)
it wasn’t no girls couldn’t go with us. (Wolfram 1969:155)
(There weren’t any girls (that) could go with us.)
The neg-raising cases such as (34) may well have developed by analogy to
the (standard) English pattern, They’re not going to change, I don’t think.
Feagin (1979:229) recorded several examples of the latter pattern in her study of
Southern European American English. The other cases (35, 36) may also
represent an elaboration of existing patterns in (standard) English. For instance,
Nolan (1991:176–177) gives the following two examples from “almost standard
English” (Mencken 19:567):
(37) It never occurred to me to doubt that your work ... would not advance
our common object in the highest degree.
(Charles Darwin, Jespersen 1962:75)
I wouldn’t be surprised if it didn’t rain. [= I wouldn’t be surprised if it
did rain.]
Note, finally, that negative concord to verbs (and indefinites) across clauses
is also found in nonstandard varieties of European American English. As in
Negation in African American Vernacular English 197
5. Conclusion
This chapter has described the use of various negative structures in African
American English: use of ain’t for be+not, have+not, and do+not; negative
concord to indefinites and to verbs, both within and between clauses; negative
postposing; and negative inversion. Examples were mostly drawn from rap, a
form of music that now gives millions (including linguists) unparalleled access
to African American English in its most vernacular form.
This chapter has also described the diachronic trajectory of each negative
structure over the last century and a half by comparing modern AAVE with
corpora representing earlier African American English. We have seen that
several patterns have remained remarkably stable during this period:
- the almost categorical use of ain’t for present tense have + not and
be+not, and of negative concord to indefinites;
- the variable use of negative concord to verbs;
- the rare use of negative inversion;
- the very rare use of ain’t for present tense do + not, and of negative
concord to verbs across clauses.
By contrast, other patterns have intensified, notably the use of ain’t for past
tense do + not, which has multiplied almost tenfold (from 2–6% to 40–60%).
Still other patterns have disappeared, for instance, the restricted use ain’t for
past tense have + not and be + not.
Several of these patterns require new research. For example, the use of ain’t
for present tense do + not merits further investigation because it is unparalleled
in other varieties of English (though it is common in English-based creoles). Its
origins are therefore obscure, and its status in modern AAVE is undocumented
and even denied (§3.5). There is also much need for updated research on
negative concord in modern AAVE; apparently no quantitative studies of this
198 Darin Howe
phenomenon have been carried out since the 1970s. It is hoped that this new
research will pay special attention to issues raised by the present study, such as
negative concord to ‘a (singular count noun)’ and the interaction of negative
concord and negative transportation (neg-raising).
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Negation in African American Vernacular English 201