Syntactic Features of African American Vernacular English

Abstract

This paper examines the syntactic features of African American Vernacular English (AAVE), a significant social dialect in the United States with roots in West African Creole. The study aims to systematically describe the key grammatical characteristics that distinguish AAVE from Standard English, focusing on its unique syntactic patterns. Through linguistic analysis and examples from literature, the research highlights prominent features such as the habitual use of "be," plural formation exceptions, specialized tense markers like "been" and "done," double negation, and other grammatical particularities. The findings reveal that AAVE operates under consistent and rule-governed syntactic patterns rather than random variations. The conclusion emphasizes that while AAVE is evolving, especially among younger speakers influenced by education and social integration, it remains a robust and structurally distinct variety of English, reflecting both cultural identity and linguistic innovation.