Fwd: "AAVE" (the abbrev. itself)

[Laurence Horn]

At 9:48 AM -0700 10/6/04, Arnold M. Zwicky wrote:
>an appeal to people who ought to know; i'll post anything further i get
>on this...
>
>Begin forwarded message:
>
>>From: "John R. Rickford" <rickford at stanford.edu>
>>Date: October 6, 2004 9:33:07 AM PDT
>>To: "Arnold M. Zwicky" <zwicky at csli.stanford.edu>
>>Cc: Geneva Smitherman <smither4 at pilot.msu.edu>
>>Subject: Re: Fwd: "AAVE" (the abbrev. itself)
>>
>>I'm sure there are earlier attestations than 1993, but probably not
>>much earlier, since the term African American itself was only formally
>>introduced by Jesse Jackson in 1988.  (It had begun to be used, as a
>>replacement for Afro-American and Black, before then.)

But this leaves open the possibility that AAVE might have been used
earlier, and interpreted as "Afro-American Vernacular English".
(Sorta the way NELS started out as the New England Linguistic Society
and turned into the North East Linguistic Society, after Montreal was
chosen as a meeting site.)

larry