The Role of Successive Bilingualism in Dialect Variation: The Case of AAVE.
Summary
A traditional assumption, widespread among linguists and non-linguists alike, is
that non-standard dialects are subject to much more individual variation than standard
varieties. This thesis is concerned with a non-standard dialect of American English
called the African-American Vernacular of English (i.e. AAVE) and investigates
the amount of individual variation in this particular variety. The following discussion is
based on the findings of a theoretical study on the use of two grammatical properties,
aspectual-Be and the null copula, by speakers of AAVE in the state of Mississippi and
demonstrates how successive bilingualism can explain the high degree of individual
variation typically found in non-standard linguistic varieties.