非洲裔美国人白话英语(African American Vernacular English,简写作AAVE),也常称美国黑人英语(African American English);非正式的叫法还包括黑人英语(Black English)、黑人白话(Black Vernacular)、黑人英语白话(Black English Vernacular,简写作BEV)或者黑人白话英语(Black Vernacular English,简写作BVE),是美国英语中非洲裔美国人使用的一种語言變體(方言、民族语言及族群语言)。非专业人士有时会称其为“Ebonics”(来自单词“ebony”和“phonics”的组合)、“jive”或是“jive-talk”。
其读音在某些方面类似于美国南部英语(英语:Southern American English),但在使用者中也存在一些区域性口音差别。部分克里奧爾語学家,如威廉·斯图尔特(William Stewart)、约翰·迪拉德(John Dillard)、约翰·瑞克佛德(John Rickford)认为,非洲裔美国人白话英语与世界上大部分地区黑人使用的克里奧爾語方言有很多相同特征,因此非洲裔美国人白话英语应当是克里奧爾語的一支,[1]而其他学者则坚持认为两者并没有太大联系。[2][3][4][5][6]
Kay, massa, you just leave me, me sit here, great fish jump up into da canoe, here he be, massa, fine fish, massa; me den very grad; den me sit very still, until another great fish jump into de canoe; but me fall asleep, massa, and no wake 'til you come…
直到美国内战期间,奴隶们使用的语言才被大量受过教育的白人所知晓。在内战前,废奴主义者的报纸建立了内容丰富的种植园克里奧爾语语料库。在1870年出版的《黑人团的军旅生活》(Army Life in a Black Regiment)中,托马斯·温特沃斯·希金斯(英语:Thomas Wentworth Higginson)详细描述了他的士兵们使用的语言的众多特点。
这种“been”(记作“BIN”[43])的语体用法需要重读,且与非重读的形式有着明显的区别:“She BIN running”( 即“She has been running for a long time”,她已经持续跑了很长时间了),以及“She been running”(即“She has been running”,她一直在跑)。[44]对这种语体的称呼不一,包括“完成时态”、“远期过去时”(remote past)、“远期时态”(remote phase)。[45]如上例所示,“been”所示动作开始于较远的过去。但是,当“been”和静态动词或动名词形式在一起时,“been”表示动作开始于较远的过去,并且持续到现在。Rickford (1999)中认为,当同静态动词使用时,最好的翻译方式是“很长时间”。例如,当听到“I like your new dress”(我喜欢你的新裙子)时,可能的回答是“Oh, I been had this dress”,即说话者这件裙子已经买了很久了,并不是新的。[45]
除此之外,“come”(可能是也可能不是助动词[50])可用来表达说话者的愤怒,例如“Don't come acting like you don't know what happened and you started the whole thing”(标准英语:“Don't try to act as if you don't know what happened, because you started the whole thing”,意为“不要试图假装你不知道发生了什么,因为一切都是因你而起”)。[51]
双重否定仍然表示否定:例如句子“I didn't go nowhere”的意思是“我哪儿也没有去”;“I didn't know nothing”的意思是“我什么也不知道”。这同标准英语中“双重否定视为肯定”的规则正好相反。还存在有三重或多重否定,例如“I don't know nothing about no one no more”(标准英语:“I don't know anything about anyone anymore”)。
在否定结构中,“nobody”、“nothing”等不定代词可以同否定动词小品词倒置,表示强调(例如“Don't nobody know the answer”、“Ain't nothin' goin' on”)。
同俄语、希伯来语、阿拉伯语以及其他语言类似,繫动词“be”常被省略(称为無繫詞(英语:Zero copula))。例如:“You crazy”(标准英语:“You are crazy”),或是“She my sister”(标准英语:“She's my sister”)。此种语法现象也可见于疑问句:“Who you?”(标准英语:“Who're you?”),以及“Where you at?”(标准英语:“Where are you (at)?”)。另一方面,重读的“is”不可省略:“She is my sister”。基本规则如下:
只有以“is”和“are”的形式出现(后者也常用“is”替代)时才可以省略。
如果上述形式在标准英语中重读时,不可省略(无论该重读是否是要用来强调该动词的意思)。
如果上述形式在标准英语中不可缩写(或相反的情况),不可省略。例如,“I don't know where he is”不可简略作“I don't know where he”,因为在标准英语中,缩写为“I don't know where he's”是不正确的。(不过“'I don't know where he at”是适当的表述。)
在疑问句中的语法不同:“Why they ain't growin'?”(标准英语:“Why aren't they growing?”),“Who the hell she think she is?”(标准英语:“Who the hell does she think she is?”),缺少标准英语中的倒装,因此也不需要使用助动词“do”。[59]
在电影和电视中对于黑人角色刻画的准确性不尽相同。[96]在1934年的电影《春风秋雨(英语:Imitation of Life (1934 film))》中,黛莉拉(Delilah,一个非裔美国人角色)的讲话和行为模式更让人觉得像是吟游诗人的表演,机理夸大了刻板印象,而并没有准确地反映黑人口语。[97]影视作品中对非裔美国人白话英语更准确的展现,出现一些特定的场景(例如说唱)、特定的词汇、特定的句法中,例如:[98]
对于非洲裔美国人白话英语更为正式的转变出现在1979年的“安娜堡裁决”(Ann Arbor Decision,小马丁路德金小学儿童等诉安娜堡学区案,Martin Luther King Junior Elementary School Children et al., v. Ann Arbor School District)。在该裁决中,联邦法官要求在教授黑人儿童阅读方面,教育局必须适应儿童的方言,而不是让儿童适应学校,[108]由于没有考虑到学生的语言问题,教师对于学生缺乏阅读和使用主流英语的能力应当负责。[113]
1996年12月18日,加利福尼亚州奥克兰教育局具有争议的解决方案,使得全美重新审视对非洲裔美国人白话英语的态度。奥克兰教育局将其称之为“Ebonics”,并视其为非洲裔美国人的一种语言。[114]该提案是希望效仿洛杉矶始于1988年的非洲裔美国学生语言发展计划(Language Development Program for African American Students,LPDAAS),该计划使用了上面所述的“将标准英语作为第二方言”方案。[115]
^William A. Stewart, Non-standard Speech and the Teaching of English (Washington, D.C.: Center for Applied Linguistics), 1964; William A. Stewart, "On the use of Negro dialect in the teaching of reading", in Joan Baratz, ed., Teaching Black Children to Read (Washington, D.C.: Center for Applied Linguistics, 1969) pp. 156-219; J. L. Dillard, Black English: Its History and Usage in the United States (New York: Random House, 1972); John R. Rickford, "Prior creolization of AAVE? Sociohistorical and textual evidence from the 17th and 18th centuries", Journal of Sociolinguistics 1 (1997): 315-336; all as cited in
Salikoko Mufwene, "What is African American English?", and Guy Bailey, "The relationship between African American Vernacular English and White Vernaculars in the American South: A sociocultural history and some phonological evidence", both in Sonja Lanehart, ed., Sociocultural and Historical Contexts of African American English, Varieties of English around the World (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2001).
^The Oakland school board's resolution "was about a perfectly ordinary variety of English spoken by a large and diverse population of Americans of African descent. . . . [E]ssentially all linguists agree that what the Oakland board was dealing with is a dialect of English." Pullum (1997)
^原文:As for the languages of Gambia, they are so many and so different, that the Natives, on either Side of the River, cannot understand each other.… [T]he safest Way is to trade with the different Nations, on either Side of the River, and having some of every Sort on board, there will be no more Likelihood of their succeeding in a Plot, than of finishing the Tower of Babel.
^William Labov, in the Foreword to Poplack & Tagliamonte (2001), says "I would like to think that this clear demonstration of the similarities among the three diaspora dialects and the White benchmark dialects, combined with their differences from creole grammars, would close at least one chapter in the history of the creole controversies."
^See Baugh (2000:92–94頁) on "aks" and metathesis, on the frequency with which "aks" is brought up by those who ridicule AAVE (e.g.Cosby (1997)), and on the linguistic or cognitive abilities of a speaker of standard English who would take "aks" to mean "axe" in a context that in standard English calls for "ask".
^Why Ebonics Is No Joke.. Lingua Franca [transcript of interview with grammarian Geoff Pullum]. Australian Broadcasting Corporation. 17 October 1998 [03-04-2010]. (原始内容存档于2010年2月9日).请检查|access-date=中的日期值 (帮助).
^"Black critics [of Black English] use all the different arguments of the white critics, and spare us the more or less open embarrassment that all white Americans feel when publicly criticizing anything or anyone Black. So, of course, they can be even more wrong-headed and self-righteously wrong-headed than anyone else . . ." Quinn (1982:150–51頁) harv error: no target: CITEREFQuinn1982 (help).
^原文:“We affirm the students' right to their own patterns and varieties of language—the dialects of their nurture or whatever dialects in which they find their own identity and style. Language scholars long ago denied that the myth of a standard American dialect has any validity. The claim that any one dialect is unacceptable amounts to an attempt of one social group to exert its dominance over another. Such a claim leads to false advice for speakers and writers and immoral advice for humans. A nation proud of its diverse heritage and its cultural and racial variety will preserve its heritage of dialects. We affirm strongly that teachers must have the experiences and training that will enable them to respect diversity and uphold the right of students to their own language.”
^Nonstandard language is not the same as substandard, as explained for example by the cognitive scientist Steven Pinker in The Language Instinct (pp. 28 et seq. (Pinker's comments on dialects in general and AAVE in particular go unmentioned by Geoffrey Sampson in Educating Eve, a book-length attempted debunking of The Language Instinct.) The same point is made in various introductions to language and sociolinguistics, e.g. Radford et al. (1999:17頁) and Schilling-Estes (2006:312頁) et seq.; and also in surveys of the English language, e.g. Crystal (2003), sec. 20, "Linguistic Variation".
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外部链接与延伸阅读
Delpit, Lisa; Dowdy, Joanne Kilgour, The Skin that We Speak: Thoughts on Language and Culture in the Classroom., New York: New Press, 2002, ISBN 1-56584-544-7