ABSTRACT:
African-American English, also known as Ebonics and Black English Vernacular, has evolved from Standard English into dialects, including a dialect spoken by teenagers in the Boston towns of Roxbury, Hyde Park, Mattapan, and Dorchester. Lexical items include dog "friend, buddy", which can also be used as a tag "I'm working after school, dog", derived from the expression on dead dogs "truthfully" as in "On dead dogs I didn't take your pen."
Phonological features include limited -s excrescence in surnames, for example mis bevanz "Ms. Bevan" but *mis marshalz "Ms. Marshall" and *mista berbecoz "Mr. Berbeco" (but mista
berbecs after apocope). This paper includes an inventory of lexical items, including a sociolinguistic analysis of several, and a discussion of ‚s excrescence.
