An Updated List Of African American English Grammatical Features Tense-Aspect-Mood Markers

CHAPTER 10
RICKFORD’S LIST OF AFRICAN AMERICAN ENGLISH GRAMMATICAL
FEATURES: AN UPDATE
Arthur K. Spears
The City University of New York
[IN Blake, Renée and Isabelle Buchstaller, eds. 2020. The Routledge Companion to the Work of
John R. Rickford. New York: Routledge.]
ABSTRACT. This chapter updates and expands Rickford’s (1999a), Chapter 1, list of African
American Vernacular English grammatical features, dealing solely with preverbal markers (also
called auxiliaries) of tense, mood, and aspect. One of these forms, approximative habitual
durative copula invariant be, has not been discussed previously in the literature. In all, four
different markers having the invariant form of be are treated. Additional grammatical elements
treated are unstressed bin, stressed BIN, resultative disapproval marker be done, future perfect be
done, habitual perfect be done, the habitual frequentative marker stressed STAY, and the three
additional disapproval markers—the come of indignation, gone, and gone-come. The last concern
is what these markers tell us about the history of AAE with respect to creole languages and its
relationship to other US varieties of English.
INTRODUCTION
In this chapter, I will revisit and expand upon Rickford’s (1999a) highly useful compilation of
grammatical features of African American Vernacular English (AAVE). Strictly speaking,
“highly useful” is something of an understatement. Sometimes we researchers underestimate the
value of having stores of information in one handy place. This applies to John’s grammatical

UPDATE OF AAE GRAMMATICAL FEATURES (#18), Spears
2
feature list and the entire book, a landmark in the study of African American English (or, AAE,
the term most used nowadays) that has served as an essential reference in the AAE section of my
bookshelves and, I am sure, those of others in the field. Landmark works continue to inspire long
after they appear. As will be seen in reading this chapter, my own thinking on the AAE verb
phrase, has been pushed into a new area as a result of rereading John’s work.
The first chapter of Rickford 1999a is entitled “Phonological and Grammatical Features of
African American Venacular English (AAVE)”; and, it is the one that I will be referring to. I
should note first off that I will be using grammar in the sense, unlike that of Rickford 1999a, that
encompasses phonetics through semantics and pragmatics,1
in keeping with the most common
usage today. Additionally, I will not deal with phonetics and phonology, though they both
certainly deserve close attention. Space limitations prevent me from doing so; and, I believe they
would be best handled from a quantitative, variationist perspective in their own chapter. This
leads to another point, which is that below I discuss features qualitatively, with some few
comments on variation.
Extending the list has been no simple task. We have learned much about AAE since the list was
published; and, as the discussion below will make clear, we still have much to figure out about
the grammatical forms of AAE. Simply to review in a coherent fashion the forms discussed in
this chapter has required significant analysis and reanalysis.
Any discussion of African American English (AAE) requires a clarification of terms. When
Rickford’s book was published in 1999, AAVE was commonly used to refer to what is today

3
usually referred to as AAE or African American Language (AAL). In using these two terms
today, AAE and AAL, the vernacular nature of most AAE varieties that have received the
most scholarly attention is de-emphasized. No doubt, underlying these two more recent
terms is a wish to further destigmatize AAE/AAL—to the extent that “vernacular” may
attach stigma to it. Additionally, there is currently more widespread recognition that there
are varieties of AAE that we may characterize as “standard,” or “mainstream,” on the same
basis that we characterize as standard non-African American English varieties (Spears
2015). The term AAE conveniently embraces to both standard and vernacular (i.e.,
nonstandard, the term used before vernacular came to be preferred).
AAE, now usually written without a hyphen between African and American, is also
sometimes called Ebonics and Black English. The term African American Language,
however, requires a few comments since it is nowadays being used more frequently. The
great bulk of studies of AAE have focused on a particular type, the vernacular or
nonstandard type (see below), usually spoken by those of lower incomes and less formal
education, whose use is often frowned upon in educational settings. I continue to use AAE
rather than AAL since AAL should refer to any African American language, not simply the
variety of English that has been vastly more studied than any other African American
language variety—AAE.
More specifically, AAL should cover, not only AAE, but also non-English varieties that
have been spoken by African American communities since well before Emancipation from

4
slavery, e.g., those speaking Cape Verdean Creole, Louisiana Creole, Louisiana French,
Gullah, Afro-Seminole, and possibly others.
AN UPDATE OF THE FEATURES
INTRODUCTION
In a number of cases, research subsequent to the appearance of Rickford 1999a has extended
what we know about their grammar, often revealing more grammatical complexity. I will begin
with an elaboration of the features on his list and then go on to the addition of features not
appearing on his list. These features have sometimes been little discussed in the published
literature on AAE.
FEATURE ELABORATION
Rickford’s (1999a: 6) sketch of the morphological-syntactic-semantic features, which I will
elaborate on, begins in his Table 1.2: Distinctive grammatical (morphological and syntactic)
features of AAVE.2
In this section on invariant be (invariantly uninflected, sometimes called
be2), I unify and hopefully clarify my treatment of the features by including uses and/or
important information that Rickford’s list did not discuss. The numbering of features below
continues from the presentation of phonological features in Rickford’s Table 1.1, thus beginning
with section number 19, “Preverbal markers3
of tense, mood, and aspect.” The first feature
treated in this section is 19a, copula absence, followed in the same table by items 19b and 19c.
Where advisable, when I introduce a feature, I place in brackets a label of it providing sufficient
identification to avoid confusion. The labels in brackets are my own:

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19b [HABITUAL ITERATIVE AUXILIARY INVARIANT be, my term] Use of
invariant be “(sometimes bees) for habitual aspect, as in “He be walkin” (usually,
regularly, versus “He Ø walkin” right now) for SE [Standard English] “He is usually
walking/usually walks.” Used with auxiliary do in questions, negatives, and tag
questions, as in “Do he be walking every day?” or “She don’t be sick, do she?” (Fasold
1972: 150-84, Dayton 1996, Green 1998).
19c Use of invariant be for future “will be,” as in “He be here tomorrow.” This is
essentially a result of the phonological rule deleting the contracted “’ll of will…
(Rickford 1999a: 6).
I will elaborate these remarks on invariant be by noting explicitly additional uses of invariant be,
that need to be singled out:
19c.1 [HABITUAL ITERATIVE COPULA INVARIANT be] Use of invariant be also as a
copula, as in “He be sick”4
‘He is (sometimes/ usually/ frequently, etc.) sick’. (See the example
in 19b, with a tag question.) A more nuanced discussion of meaning is necessary at this point.
Rickford and other AAE scholars usually refer to invariant be as being habitual in aspect.
However, it needs to be clarified, as many do, that according to most discussions of invariant be,
the aspectual meaning is more specifically habitual and iterative aspect. To elaborate, the form
expresses an event5
that is ongoing for a significantly lengthy, i.e., nonfleeting, rather permanent,
time interval, “significantly lengthy” being determined by context). This invariant be is also
interrupted, i.e., iterative. Stated differently, it is not the case that, at every moment during the
time interval of the event, the action or state is in effect. Thus, with a sentence such as “He be

6
walkin to work,” he may not actually be walking to work when the sentence is uttered. In other
words, the overall event, so to speak, is composed of repeated subevents of walking to work.
19c.2 [EQUATIVE HABITUAL DURATIVE COPULA INVARIANT be] First brought to the
attention of scholars by Alim (2001; and see also Alim 2004), who termed it an “equative
copula,” or “be3,” this use involves constructions of the type [NP be NP] and is shown in the
following (Alim 2006: 76ff):
1. I be the truth.
2. Dr. Dre be the name.
3. We be them Bay boys.
4. It (marijuana) be that good stuff.
5. You know we be some baaad brothas.
Baugh (1983, cited in Alim 2006) also provides examples from his corpus:
6. They be the real troublemakers.
7. Leo be the one to tell it like it is.
Most notable about this use is that the copula is not habitual iterative aspect but habitual and
durative in aspect (see Comrie 1976). That is, the state of being continues uninterrupted
(durative); and, it is a relatively permanent state (habitual) (Comrie 1976: 26ff). Alim is the first
to have zeroed in on this use, making the community of AAE researchers fully aware of it.
Alim’s first two examples are from well-known rappers; but, the second two occurred during
ordinary conversations, not involving performance and poetic language. These examples (the

7
second two—3 and 4) of Alim’s along with Baugh’s examples from data collected earlier and
also examples culled from the writings of Black Arts Movement poets of the 1960s and 1970s,
suggest that this use has been around for at least almost sixty years. “It is possible that members
of the HHN [Hip Hop Nation], with their extraordinary linguistic consciousness and their
emphasis on stretching the limits of language, have made this form much more acceptable by
using it frequently” (Alim 2006: 77).
Alim and others have sometimes referred to this form as hyperrealis; it’s highly emphatic, often
used in boasting (by rappers and others in ordinary conversation). Worth stressing, however, is
that there are examples that certainly do not involve boasting, for example,
8. They be some weak-minded muthafuckas! (Alim 2015: 857)
but that certainly are emphatic. If anything, equative be appears to be semantically emphatic,
and, pragmatically, connotes boastfulness in many, not all, contexts of utterance.
19c.3 [APPROXIMATIVE HABITUAL DURATIVE COPULA INVARIANT be] I have not
encountered discussions of this use in the literature. In the late 1980s or early 1990s, I was
reminded of this use by a student in my Black English course during a discussion of invariant be.
I had heard it many times before (and still hear it occasionally) and was struck that it had never
come to mind during my many encounters with linguists’ discussions of invariant be.

8
What I am calling approximative invariant be actually includes a range of “guestimates” and the
information they are based on. The approximative under discussion is exemplified in the
following:
9. He be bout 6 feet tall. 'He's about 6 feet tall.’ ‘Oh, I’d say he’s (about) 6 feet tall.’ ‘He
would be probably 6 feet tall.’
This example could be analyzed as the result of would (or for some speakers, should) deletion:
10. He be about 6 feet tall < He would/’d be about 6 feet (tall).
Note, however, that ex. 9 can be glossed with is (finite be) or would, which are not equivalent in
meaning, as shown in examples 11 and 12: (semantic) anomaly is produced differentially with
these two forms. Consider the following examples showing the effects of perception and
evidence, where anomaly is indicated with a crosshatch:
RECENT DIRECT PERCEPTUAL EVIDENCE
(Allows finite be but disallows would/’d be, allows approximative be)
11. a. Yea, I see her every day. She’s about 6 feet.
b. #Yea, I see her every day. She would/’d be about 6 feet.
c. Yea, I see her every day. She be about 6 feet.
NONRECENT DIRECT PERCEPTUAL EVIDENCE
(Disallows finite be, allows would/’d be, allows approximative be )
12. a. #I haven’t seen or heard of her since she was little, but she’s about 6 feet (based on her
mom and dad’s height).
b. I haven’t seen or heard of her since she was little, but she would/’d be about 6 feet
(based on her mom and dad’s height).

9
c. . I haven’t seen or heard of her since she was little, but she be about 6 feet (based on
her mom and dad’s height).
INDIRECT EVIDENCE ONLY
(As NONRECENT DIRECT EVIDENCE, Disallows finite be, allows would/’d be,
allows approximative be )
d. #I haven’t ever/ain’t never seen her, but she’s about 6 feet (based on her mom and
dad’s height).
e. I haven’t ever/ain’t never seen her, but she would/’d be about 6 feet (based on her mom
and dad’s height).
f. I haven’t ever/ain’t never seen her, but she be about 6 feet (based on her mom and
dad’s height).
Finite be, unlike would, can be used without producing anomaly in the case of recent direct
perceptual evidence. Would, unlike finite be, can be used without producing anomaly in the case
of nonrecent direct evidence and indirect evidence only. Approximative be can be used in all
three cases. Thus, in regard to the three pragmatic contexts looked at, approximative be has the
broadest range of meaning, which includes that of the other two forms. Approximative be cannot
be taken without reservations as resulting from would deletion.
For example, one might claim that just in those cases in which approximative be and would can
both occur, approximative be is the result of would deletion. To this claim one might object that
it reflects an assumption of what I will term INTERLINGUAL GRAMMATICAL SUPREMACY,
whereby, if a form in one (often stigmatized) language variety, L1, can be analyzed as having its
source (in some or all instances of its occurrence) in another “superior” (e.g., spoken by or

10
associated with a more powerful or prestigious group) L2, then one must assume that indeed the
form in L1 does have its source in L2 (rather than being, e.g., an independent development or
even having given rise to L2 forms). These interlingual assumptions are artifacts of linguistic
ideologies that are inextricable from political, racial, and other ones.
Not assuming any type of interlingual (here interdialectical) grammatical supremacy, one could
simply state that approximative be is a form in AAE grammar with a semantic range that
includes the ranges of two forms in Standard American English6
; and, its historical relationship
to the relevant Standard English forms cannot be demonstrated at the present time.
In terms of aspectual meaning, this approximative use of invariant be expresses habitual and, of
course, durative (i.e., an uninterrupted state of affairs) aspect, as does the equative copula. This
approximative use does not occur with NPs (unless they express a measurement, e.g. a foot, 15
inches), thus the ungrammaticality of the following examples:
13. *She be a doctor. ‘She’s probably a doctor’ ‘ She’s a doctor more or less’
14. *She be a big one. ‘She’s probably a big one’ ‘She’s a big one more or less’
It does not appear either with other kinds of copular complements, unless they express a
measurement, with an adjective understood, for example, about 6 feet [tall]. The approximatives
typically take adjective phrases; and, they, as other complements, directly or indirectly involve
measurement (age, height, distance, etc.). Much more analysis is required on this invariant be,
and it is hoped that this discussion will stimulate it.

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Rickford’s feature 19e is unstressed “been or bin” (Rickford 1999a: 6). In an article-length
treatment of it (Spears 2017), it is called “unstressed bin.”
19e Use of unstressed been or bin for SE “has/have been” (present perfects), as in “He
been sick” for “He has been sick.” Unlike stressed BIN9
…, unstressed been can co-occur
with time adverbials (e.g., “since last week”), and does not connote10
remoteness…
(Rickford 1999a: 6).
Spears (2017) demonstrates that the grammar of bin is quite complex and intimately tied to that
of stressed BIN. The basics are as follows:
Unstressed bin is the African American English (AAE) verbal form occurring in
sentences such as I bin paid that bill last week ‘I paid that bill last week’. Contrary to
what has been claimed in much of the literature, unstressed bin’s existence figures in the
grammars of some contemporary AAE varieties. The literature discusses unstressed bin
but often misrecognizes it. Unstressed bin occurs in many clausal environments where it
can be mistaken for stressed BIN, which is not always stressed, and the past participle
been, which in many English varieties, AAE and other, may occur with the preceding
form of the auxiliary have deleted, as in I Ø been at their house many times ‘I’ve been at
their house many times’. Complicating matters is unstressed bin’s occurrence in the
homophonous I bin at their house many times ‘I was at their house many times’ and ‘I’ve
been at their house many times’ [Regarding the second preceding gloss, it was not
understood until recently that bin may occur in perfect (present and past) contexts.] The
concept MERGING labels this process, whereby AAE forms such as bin occur in identical

12
syntactic environments with homophonous but grammatically distinct forms, creating a
type of grammatical camouflage. More important, merging is part of a larger process of
MAINSTREAMING, whereby one language variety, AAE in this case, converges
qualitatively and quantitatively over time toward a sociopolitically dominant language
variety or cluster thereof, by expanding a speaker’s repertoire of forms (Spears 2017:
151).
Feature 19h is be done.
19h Use of be done for resultative or the future/conditional perfect, as in “She be done
had her baby” for SE “She will have had her baby” (Baugh 1983: 77-80, Dayton 1996,
Green 1998).
We can actually single out three uses of be done, as follows:
19h.1. Resultative be done1 (Baugh 1983). I use the term disapproval be done (Spears 1985 inter
alia). This form is to be distinguished from the other two be done’s, examined below). It is a
disapproval (mood) marker, a member of the set of such markers that are among the grammatical
features distinguishing AAE from other dialects of American (i.e., U.S.) English (OAD). There
are four disapproval markers, but I should emphasize that be done is polysemous and expresses
disapproval in only one of its meanings. (I will not enter into a lengthy discussion as to whether
the meanings of be done are all contiguous within a semantic field, which is considered a key
factor for claiming polysemy.) This form as a disapproval marker also expresses a rapid reaction,
or desired rapid reaction, of the clause subject to the disapproved of event—so egregious is that

13
event—and is often followed by the phrase so fast or so fast you won’t know what happened (to
you). The numbers in brackets indicate the order of events referred to in the sentence.
15. You do that again [1], I be done whip your little behind[2] (so fast you won’t know what
happened to you). ‘If you do that again, I will whip your behind so fast you won’t know
what happened.’
16. If the police shoot anybody again [1], we be done had a riot up in here [2].‘If the police
shoot anybody again, we’ll have a riot around here (so fast)’
19h.2. Future perfect be done2 (Baugh 1983). Observe, as noted by Rickford (above), be done
may also contextually express the conditional perfect. I will offer no comments on these uses of
the form for lack of space. Note the following examples:
17. They be done finished [1] by the time you get there tomorrow [2]. ‘They’ll have finished
by the time you get there tomorrow’
18. When you get home tomorrow [2], they be done already left[1]. ‘When you get home
tomorrow, they’ll have already left
Be done1 and be done2 obviously have to be distinguished on syntactic and semantic, and
pragmatic grounds. Observe notably the difference in real time clause sequencing,
which does not necessarily reflect linear sequencing.
19h.3 Habitual perfect be done3 (Spears 1990, 2006, inter alia). It should be noted that this form
is tenseless. Consequently, it may contextually be past, present, or future tense, as noted in
these examples:

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19. …they was all raggedy, and they buttons be done fell off…(PAST)
‘…they were all raggedly, and their buttons (habitually) had fallen off…’, said by a
minister speaking of not wanting to be a minister in his youth because the ministers he
saw looked poor
20. Every time I see him [dog], he be done dug up something (PRESENT).
‘Every time I see him, he’s dug up something.’
21. After you get there and get all settled in next week, you’ll see—every time you run into
him he be done spent all his money again. ‘…he’ll have spent…’
Before leaving be done, a point should be made. As noted, be done3 is tenseless. (See Dayton
1996 for additional discussion of tenselessness in AAE.) This fact is important in determining to
what extent the AAE auxiliary system—indeed AAE grammar—is different from that of OAD.
A question that arises in regard to (future perfect) be done2 and (habitual perfect) be done3 is
whether the two forms, which I have treated separately, are actually one and the same form. If
they are one and the same form, then that one form can (1) contextually express perfectivity, as
in for instance ex. 18, which does not take an habitual11
perfect (be done2) interpretation or (2)
contextually express habitual perfect, as in the be done3 examples. Unfortunately, this issue
cannot be pursued due to space limitations.
19j [Semi-auxiliary come of indignation; disapproval marker come] Use of come to express the
speaker’s indignation about an event, as in “He come walkin in here like he owned the damn
place” (Spears 1982: 852).

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This form is labeled as a mood marker due to its signaling of speaker attitude (disapproval, more
specifically, indignation) regarding the event expressed by the clause in which come occurs. This
come is distinct from the motion verb come and is one in the set of disapproval markers in AAE,
distinguishing it from OAD (Spears 1982, 1990, 2006, 2009) and was the first form used to
illustrate grammatical camouflage, the result of language contact processes whereby an AAE
form erroneously appears to be the same as what is actually a distinct, homophonous form. Thus,
the motion verb come is misrecognized as the disapproval marker come. In the case of all
camouflaged forms, there are grammatical environments in which the distinctness of the AAE
form is clear to the grammatical analyst. Observe the following examples, showing contexts in
which the motion verb come cannot occur, those with be and those with the opposing orientation
go:
22. Fool12
come (DISAPPROVAL MARKER) being all stuck-up with everybody just cause
he was driving a Ferrari.
23. He come (DISAPPROVAL MARKER) going in my room, didn’t knock or nothing.
Also, come occurs alongside the motion verb:
24. He come coming in here raising all kind of hell.
This form occurs infrequently in the simple past form, came, typically in the speech in more
formal situations with mostly college educated speakers. It always refers to a past event, with the
exception of when it serves as an admonition or warning, referencing an event that has not
occurred:
25. … and don’t come going over to Alfonso n them house. ‘…and don’t you dare go over to
Alfonso and his siblings’ house’

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FORMS NOT ON RICKFORD’S LIST13
Rickford’s (1999a) last feature in his Table 1.2 is 19m, so I start below with 19n, which begins a
new group (19n – 19p) of additions to Rickford’s list.
19n Use of disapproval marking auxiliary gone (or go) (Spears 1982, 1990, 2006, 2009 inter
alia). This is the third, in addition to be done1 and come, disapproval form in AAE.
26. Now why he gone act like that? [PAST TENSE] ‘Now why the hell did he act like that?’
27. And he gone raise the damn window! ‘And he had the nerve to raise the damn window!’
Said by a teenager on a bus that really stank because of the smell of a passenger who had
just raised and closed the open window.
19o Use of the disapproval marking “double” auxiliary gone-come (Spears 1982, 1990, 2006,
2009 inter alia). I call it a double auxiliary, and write it with a hyphen, because its grammar is
not fully predictable from its two morphemes. (See the references for more discussion.)
28. He gone-come telling me I had to change my whole transmission [instead of just doing a
simple repair]. ‘He had the nerve to tell me had to change my whole transmission’
29. Jane said he gone-come asking her if I could steal one for him [I can’t believe he had the
nerve]. ‘Jane said he had the nerve to ask her…’

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Note from the gloss for the last example above, that it is the speaker, the “I,” who is expressing
disapproval, not Jane. The three disapproval markers, come, gone, and gone-come, are speaker
bound, in the sense that they always express speaker disapproval, no matter how far down in a
sentence that they are embedded. Additionally, these disapproval markers cannot be used to
express another speaker’s disapproval; they invariably reflect back to the speaker, whether or not
another subject in the sentence disapproves also. In other words, these disapproval markers
cannot be “quoted” without the speaker’s emotive and evaluative commitment to the
disapprobation. Thus, note the infelicity, indicated with a crosshatch, of
30. #It didn’t seem that bad to me, but Jane said he come/gone/gone-come asking her to steal
one for him.
19p Use of the auxiliary stressed STAY (Spears 2000, 2017) Habitual iterative frequentative
in aspect: it expresses an event comprising subevents that recur frequently, as in
31. She STAY talkin on the phone. ‘She is always talking on the phone (frequently and
repeatedly, not nonstop)’
32. He STAYS at Gramma house. ‘He’s always at Gramma’s house (frequently and
repeatedly, not continuously)’
Observe that stressed STAY is variably inflected for 3sg (as in the preceding example) and that it
can occur without stress (as in the following example), as can stressed BIN. It may also be
inflected for past tense (as in the following example), thus expressing an habitual event in the
past:

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33. I’m glad he left town; he stayed [WITHOUT STRESS] over here. ‘I’m glad he left town;
he was always (repeatedly and frequently) over here’
CONCLUSION
Perhaps the most intriguing questions in regard to the forms treated in this chapter are whether
they are unique to AAE among US Englishes and whether we find counterparts in at least one
creole language of the Western Hemisphere.14
Table 1 pulls this kind of information together,
showing that nine of the forms do or probably do occur solely in AAE among US Englishes. This
suggests that, as more qualitative research is done on AAE, we will find that it is more different
grammatically from OAD than we realized.
What these results clearly tell us is that AAE scholars need to do more qualitative research, to
complement the much more extensive quantitative research conducted on AAE and also to take
into account fully all of the forms distinctive to AAE in discussions of AAE’s grammatical status
and history. It is noteworthy that four of the forms in AAE occur also in creoles. Moreover, there
are strong hypotheses that 19b and 19c.1 are derived from creole source items (via phonological
reduction; see Spears 2008)—and also Hiberno English (Rickford 1999a, Chap. 8). If these two
were added to the list of creolisms (Spears 2008) in AAE, we would have six verbal forms in
AAE that have creole counterparts--not to mention other types of forms such as bare nouns
(Spears 2004, 2007). One verbal auxiliary, unstressed bin, is more robust in AAE than in OAD.
We should not be too hasty in assuming that AAE forms that are much more robust in AAE than
in OAD were not diffused from AAE to OAD, or that their presence in OAD may have
reinforced, to varying extents, their presence in AAE. This is especially relevant in assessing the

19
status of unstressed bin (Spears 2017). In sum, these observations argue that the time is upon us
to consider a new creolist hypothesis on AAE origins.
TABLE 1: A Comparison of AAE to Other Language Varieties Based on Features Presented in
This Chapter. (“?” indicates uncertainty. (See Spears 2008 for discussions supporting the
information presented in this table.)
Grammatical
Feature
Occurs in one
or more
Western
Hemisphere
creoles
Occurs
also in
OAD
Occurs in
OAD but is
significantly
rarer than in
AAE
19b. Habitual
iterative
auxiliary
invariant be
+
(if we accept
creole does be
as the source of
this form,
following
Rickford 1999a,
Ch. 8)
+ +
19c. Invariant be
resulting from
will/would
deletion
? + + ?
19c.1. Habitual
iterative copula
invariant be
+
(if we accept
creole does be
as the source of
19b, following
Rickford 1999a,
Ch. 8)
+ +
19c.2.Equative
habitual durative
copula invariant
be
- - N/A
19c.3.
Approximate
habitual durative
copula invariant
be
- -? N/A

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19e. Unstressed
bin
Stressed BIN
+
-
+
+
+
+ (there is no
reason to
believe it was
not diffused
from AAE to
OAD)
19h.1.
Resultative,
disapproval
marker be done
- - N/A
19h.2. Future
perfect be done
- -? N/A
19h.3. Habitual
perfect be done
- - N/A
19j.Come of
indignation
(disapproval
marking [semi-]
auxiliary)
+ - N/A
19n. Disapproval
marking
auxiliary gone
+ - N/A
19o. Disapproval
marking
“double”
auxiliary gone-
come
+ - N/A
19p. Auxiliary
stressed STAY
-? - N/A
I cannot leave the topics treated in this chapter without spotlighting John’s foundational work on
stressed BIN (Rickford 1975). As a result of my research for Spears 2017, on unstressed bin, I
discovered that many of the earlier works, often discussing the stressed and unstressed forms, did
not distinguish between them; thus, I had to separate out the forms that could only be unstressed
bin, to serve as examples in my article. This is to say that, whenever we carry our research

21
forward, we appreciate anew the importance of classic writings in the field, among which are
found the writings of John Rickford.

22
NOTES
1
To wit: phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics—and including
the lexicon.
2
Since he includes comments on meaning, earlier in this chapter, I refer to some of his
descriptions as including semantics and pragmatics, the latter focused on meaning expressed
only in some contexts of utterance.
3
Preverbal marker is the term often used for these items in creole studies. In AAE studies, they
are typically referred to as AUX, auxiliaries verbs, or simply auxiliaries.
4
Rickford is aware of the copula use of invariant be, as is clear from example in 19b with the
copula, “She don’t be sick, do she?; however, he does not single out this use for comment.
5
Or “situation,” the term used by Comrie (1976) in his book on apect and also seen in some
subsequent work on tense, mood, and aspect.
6
Keep in mind African American Standard English (Spears 2015).
9
See Chapter 2 of Rickford 1999a on stressed BIN.
REFERENCES
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youth. Special issue of the Black Arts Quarterly. Stanford, California: Committee on
Black Performing Arts, Stanford University.
Alim, H. Samy. 2004. You Know My Steez: An Ethnographic and Sociolinguistic Study of a
Black American Speech Community. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press.

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Alim, H. Samy. 2006. Roc the Mic Right: The Language of Hip Hop Culture. New York:
Routledge.
Alim, H. Samy. 2015. Hip hop nation language: Localization and globalization. In Sonja
Lanehart (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of African American Language. New York: Oxford
University Press. 850-862.
Baugh, John. 1983. Black Street Speech: Its History, Structure and Survival. Austin: University
of Texas Press.
Comrie, Bernard. 1976. Aspect: An Introduction to the Study of Verbal Aspect and Related
Problems. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.
Dayton, Elizabeth. 1996. Grammatical categories of the verb in African American English be
done. Ph.D. dissertation. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania.
Fasold, Ralph. 1972. Tense Marking in Black English: A Linguistic and Social Analysis.
Arlington, Virginia: Center for Applied Linguistics.
Green, Lisa A. 1998. Aspect and predicate phrases in African American Vernacular English. In
Salikoko S. Mufwene, John R. Rickford, Guy Bailey, and John Baugh (eds.) African
American English: Structure, History and Use. London and New York: Routledge. 37-
68.
Spears, Arthur K. 1982. The Black English semi-auxiliary come. Language 58: 850-72.
Spears, Arthur K. 1985. Review of John Baugh, Black Street Speech: Its History, Origin, and
Structure. Language in Society 14: 101-108.
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CUNYForum: Papers in Linguistics, No. 15.1 & 2. Robert Rieber, ed. New York: The
Graduate Center of the City University of New York. 30-44.

24
Spears, Arthur K. 2000. Stressed stay: A new African-American English aspect marker. Paper
presented to the American Dialect Society, Chicago, Illinois.
Spears, Arthur K. 2004. Los sustantivos sin determinantes en el palenquero y en el inglés
afroestadounidense. In Mauro Fernández, Manuel Fernández-Ferreiro, and Nancy
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Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 421-434.
Spears, Arthur K. 2008. Pidgins/creoles and African-American English. In Silvia Kouwenberg
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Handbook of African American Language. New York: Oxford University Press. 786-799.

25
Spears, Arthur K. 2017. Unstressed been: Past and present in African American English.
American Speech 92: 151-75.
Spears, Arthur K., and Leanne Hinton. 2010. Language and speakers: An introduction to African
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