Key Points:
There are two schools of thought regarding the origins of Black Dialect, the Anglian-based tradition and the African-based tradition.
The Anglian tradition of scholars (Krapp,1925; Kurath,1949) believe that Black English is traceable to British dialects of Old and Middle English, which the slave picked up from white immigrants whom settled in the South during the colonial era. As a result they asserted that Black speech is just archaic white speech that has been sustained by linguistic isolation. This view argues that all traces of African heritage and culture where stripped from the slaves.
The African-based tradition asserts that Black English is really Africanized English, which can be traced to the formation of English pidgins and Creoles during the slave trade. From this perspective Black English developed as a result of a language combining various European languages (depending on the region of the country and the immigrants settled there).
I tend to see the development of Black Dialect as a combination of both the Anglian and African-based traditions.
The vocabulary of the new language is fairly easy to master, but the syntactical structure and idiomatic rules require considerable time and practice to master
While all languages change over time the structure of a language remains relatively rigid and fixed.
It is important to note that the greatest differences between black and white English are on the level of grammatical structure
"He be hollering at us", "I like the way he be psyching people out"
2. Indicating remote past through verb structure, notably using "been" with stress.
"She been gone"
3. Predication with optional copula The sense of complete predication conveyed by a noun followed by an adjective, adverb, verb, noun, or prepositional phrase. This is common in many West African languages, (e.g., in Kimbundu, Ene macamba, literally "They friends")
"He real little", "They in the house", "My momma name Joyce"
4. Semantic Inversion, turning a word into its opposite. This feature is familiar in Mandingo, a ka nyi ko-jugu, literally, "It is good badly", or it is so good that it's bad.
5. Appropriating and secularizing church terms. Some terms are derived from the Traditional Black Church.
"On T", "Testify"
6. Pronominal apposition, repeating the subject for emphasis. This feature is common in Yoruba, Eya me, ot cu, literally, "My mother, she has died"
7. Use of speech acts, that are either not in White English at all or are not used according to the same set of social rules of speaking.
Signifyin'- the verbal art of insult
Dozens- a form of signification where one signifies on anothers kinfolk.
Use of Proverbs- "What goes around, comes around", "A hard head makes a soft behind"
8. Signaling of possession by context and/or juxtaposition. No use of inflectional -z (written as apostrophe s)
"My daddy name John"
9. Tonal Semantics The use of voice and rhythm and vocal inflection to convey meaning. This gives Black speech its songified or musical quality. Both Black rappers and preachers use word sound to communicate at deeper levels to which words alone cannot convey. Examples include shouting, intonational contouring, use of rhyme, repetition and alliterative word-play.
Specific Examples of Grammar and Structure Rule in West African Languages
repetition of noun subject with pronoun - My father, he work hard
question patterns without do - what it come to
same form of noun for singular and plural - one boy ; five boy
No tense indicated in verb: emphasis on manner or character of action - I know it good when he ask me
Same verb for for all subjects - I know ; you know; he know; we know; they know
Examples of Sound Rule in West African Languages
No consonant pairs - jus ( just) tes (test)
Few long vowels or two-part vowels - rat or raht ( right), tahm (time)
No /r/ sound - mow (more), dough (door), flow (floor)
No /th/ sound - substitutes d or f for th (souf - south, mouf-mouth, norf-north--dis (this) dat (that) dem (them)
Vowel plus /ng/ rendered as /ang/ - thang, sang, rang
Contraction of going rendered as gon - he was gon tell but changed he mind
Useful Links
Center for Applied Linguistics
Dialect Education
Ebonics: A Failure to Communicate
Black English: Lecture Notes by Joycelyn Landrum-Brown, Ph.D.
Ebonics Dictionary