The Status of ain't in Philadelphia African American English. (March 2022)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Fisher, Sabriya
• Is Part Of: Language variation and change. Volume 34:Number 1(2022)
• Page Start: 1
• Page End: 28
• Publication Date: 2022-03
• Subjects: African American English -- tense -- aspect -- morphosyntactic change; Linguistic change -- Periodicals; Sociolinguistics -- Periodicals; 410.05
• DOI: 10.1017/S0954394522000060
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0954-3945

Abstract

Abstract: This paper investigates use of ain't in a corpus of naturalistic speech from forty-two African-American Philadelphians. Use of ain't in past/perfective contexts where it varies with didn't is considered a unique feature of AAE. This use is compared in apparent time to uses of ain't in tense-aspect environments shared with other English varieties. Results show that past/perfective uses of ain't increased during the twentieth century while use in other contexts remained stable, supporting the hypothesis that past/perfective uses resulted from recent change. Generalized linear models for ain't in past/perfective and other contexts show that sociostylistic and linguistic constraints are otherwise the same across contexts. Finally, evidence that a past/perfective use of ain't resulted from either the phonetic reduction of didn't or a shift in meaning from uses of ain't in anterior contexts is examined.