The verb "be" Standard English uses a conjugated be verb (called a copula) in a number of different sentences. (This may occur as is, 's, are, 're, etc.) In AAVE this verb is often not included. The frequency of inclusion has been shown to depend on a variety of factors. Here are some examples:
In future sentences with gonna or gon (see below):
I don't care what he say, you __ gon laugh. ...as long as i's kids around he's gon play rough or however they're playing.
Before verbs with the -ing or -in ending(progressive):
I tell him to be quiet because he don't know what he __ talking about. I mean, he may say something's out of place but he __ cleaning up behind it and you can't get mad at him.
Before adjectives and expressions of location:
He __ all right. And Alvin, he __ kind of big, you know?
She __ at home. The club __ on one corner, the Bock is on the other.
Before nouns (or phrases with nouns)
He __ the one who had to go try to pick up the peacock. I say, you __ the one jumping up to leave, not me.
Agreement
Standard English varieties mark grammatical agreement between the subject and predicate in the present tense. If the subject is third person singular (he, she, it or the name of a person or object), an -s appears at the end of a regular verb. (e.g. John walks to the store). In AAVE the verb is rarely marked in this way. When regular verbs occur with such -s marking, they often carry special emphasis. Standard English also has agreement in a number of irregular and frequently used verbs such as has vs have and is vs are and was vs were. In AAVE these distinctions are not always made.
Tense and aspect
The verb in AAVE is often used without any ending. As is the case with the English creoles, there are some separate words that come before the verb which show when or how something happens. These are called "tense/aspect markers".
Past tense:
Past tense may be conveyed by the surrounding discourse (with the help of adverbials such as, for example, "last night", "three years ago", "back in them days", etc., or by the use of conjunctions which convey a sequence of actions (e.g. "then"), or by the use of an ending as in standard English. The frequency with which the -ed ending occurs depends on a number of factors including the sounds which follow it.
Some past events are conveyed by placing been before the verb. Speakers of standard English may mistake this for the standard English "present perfect" with the "have" or "has" deleted. However the AAVE sentence with been is in fact quite different from the standard English present perfect. This can be seen by comparing two sentences such as the following:
Standard English present perfect: He has been married. AAVE been: He been married.
In the standard English sentence the implication is that he is now no longer married. However, in the AAVE sentence the implication is quite the opposite: he is still married.
Sentences equivalent to standard English perfects such as discussed above may be conveyed by the use of done in AAVE. For example the standard sentence "He has eaten his dinner" can be expressed as He done eat his dinner.
Future:
Future events and those that have not yet occurred are marked by gon or gonna (see above).
Events in progress:
Besides using the verb with the ending -ing or -in to convey that an event is in progress, AAVE has a number of other words which add particular nuances. For instance, if the activity is vigorous and intentional, the sentence may include the word steady. The item steady can be used to mark actions that occur consistently or persistently, as in Ricky Bell be steady steppin in them number nines.
Events that occur habitually or repeatedly are often marked by be in AAVE as in She be working all the time.
Negatives
AAVE has a number of ways of marking negation. Like a number of other varieties of English, AAVE uses ain't to negate the verb in a simple sentence. In common with other nonstandard dialects of English, AAVE uses ain't in standard English sentences which use "haven't". For example standard "I haven't seen him." is equivalent to AAVE I ain't seen him. Unlike most other nonstandard varieties of English, AAVE speakers also sometimes use ain't for standard "didn't" as in the following examples
I ain't step on no line. I said, "I ain't run the stop sign," and he said, "you ran it!"
I ain't believe you that day, man.
As the first sentence above shows, AAVE also allows negation to be marked in more that one position in the sentence (so called double or multiple negation). In this respect, AAVE resembles French and a number of other Romance languages and also a number of English creoles. Certain kinds of nouns actually require negative marking in negative sentences. In so far as the negation must be expressed with indefinite nouns (e.g. "anything", "anyone" etc.), this is a form of agreement marking. (e.g. I ain't see nothing).
AAVE also has a special negative construction which linguists call "negative inversion". An example from Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon follows:
Pilate they remembered as a pretty woods-wild girl "that couldn't nobody put shoes on."
In this example (in the part in italics), a negative auxiliary (couldn't) is moved in front of the subject (nobody). Some other examples illustrate this:
Ain't nobody talkin' to you! Can't nobody beat 'em
Can't nobody say nothin' to dem peoples!
Don' nobody say nothing after that. (Ledbetter, born 1861)
Wasn't nobody in there but me an' him. (Isom Moseley, born 1856)
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