Technical Issues.
A definition of a dialect. (from D. Crystal, The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language, 1987.)
"A language variety in which the use of grammar and vocabulary identifies the regional or social background of the user." All people speak a dialect, although when people speak the standard dialect, they consider that they speak "just like the dictionary" and usually do not recognize their status as "dialect speakers."A "variety" is also a "situationally distinctive system of linguistic expression (legal, formal, etc)." It is often used as a more neutral synonym of dialect.
The relationship between AAE and slang. (in process)
Grammatical similarities and differences with SAEFrom a technical perspective, it is important to understand that in most of their rules and structure, AAE and SAE are very similar, more similar to each other than some Scottish dialects, for example, are to Standard English. The rules of AAE exemplify the universal principles true of all natural languages, with the logical and semantic precision that is the crowning achievement of the human mind. In addition, speakers of AAE master the language-particular properties of AAE, so crudely caricatured in the press: the use of negative concord (NOT the same as "double and triple negation"), the use of the unique aspect marker BE (NOT "unconjugated use of be"), and subtle phonological constraints on morphology. One area where AAE is richer than SAE is in the array of syntactic devices to express the relative time dimensions of an action , what is called "aspect." In this respect, AAE is similar to many languages other than English. One language family with a rich aspectual system is Slavic. Like AAE, Slavic languages typically permit the omission of the copula (the verb "to be" ) in existential sentences , particularly in present tense ("It a hammer" versus "It IS a hammer."). People unaware of the special meaning of such expressions may wrongly interpret them as SAE mistakes. -bp
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