Fwd: "AAVE" (the abbrev. itself)

[Salikoko S. Mufwene]

At 01:07 PM 10/6/2004 -0400, Larry Horn wrote:

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.)

     As, I remember, AAVE was adopted to replace BEV (Black English
Vernacular), which was the standard term among quantitative sociolinguists.
BEV was so established that it did not yield to "Ebonics" when it was first
used in print in 1975 by Robert L. Williams. (It was apparently introduced
earlier in 1973, at a conference that led to Williams' publication.) The
transition went straight from BEV to AAVE. A more recent event reintroduced
"Ebonics", with significant success, as it now competes well with "AAVE."
The term "Afro-American" was used in other context, such as in the title of
Mervyn Alleyne's book "Comparative Afro-American" in reference to language
varieties of European origin spoken by people of African descent in the New
World.

Sali.