Jeannine Carpenter
 

Contemporary studies of African American English (AAE) have been quite polarized – either looking at non-Southern urban centers or at rural Southern areas. In particular, the early urban centers of African American life in the South that followed the abolition of slavery and disintegration of plantation life have seldom been investigated with respect to AAE development. This study examines those sites looking at a single linguistic feature commonly attributed to AAE, plural –s absence, in three Southern urban centers during the time of institutionalized segregation: Birmingham, Memphis, and New Orleans.
            Plural –s absence, as in two piece_ of bread for two pieces of bread or eat banana_ for eat bananas, has been documented in diverse communities including ex-slave recordings from the American South, African American expatriate communities, northern, urban AAE studies, and contemporary rural AAE studies (Poplack et al. 2000; Singler 1989; Rickford 2004; Wolfram 1969; Labov et. al 1968; Rowe 2005). A preliminary study of plural –s absence in early Birmingham AAE possibly underscored a difference in the development of AAE in southern urban contexts as compared to contemporary northern urban contexts with respect to this variable. This study examines plural –s absence in closer detail across three southern urban communities, 100 total speakers, and over 50 years in apparent time.
            These data contribute to the continuing study and scholarship on the historical development of AAE, providing the first multi-community overview of a core African American English linguistic variable from the early urban south. The varying levels of presence and patterns of change over time for plural –s absence according to community raise questions about the uniformity of AAE and the role of regional urban AAE varieties.