In this age of compulsory education how does black ghetto grammar survive?

[Hellestal]

@Spectre of Pithecanthropus

In short, I don’t think we can summarily say that double negatives are permitted in Standard French.

Not only can we conclude that negative concord is permitted in French, we can further conclude that negative concord is mandatory in certain constructions, and we can conclude this based on your very post. You provided an example of double negatives, and so I can summarily declare that they’re permitted, with your post as my cite.

We don’t need to rely on your post, though. I can also cite the Wikipedia entry on “double negatives”, or I can refer you to the Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, page 847, where it explains (talking about nonstandard English dialects): “The pattern in the non-standard dialect is similar to the one found in the standard dialect of Italian, French, Spanish, Polish, Russian, and many other languages.”

[even_sven]

@lexi

Part way through grade 10 a few of the Black kids adopted a Jamacian accent, although very few were of Cariabean decent. I realize the need to feel a part of a culture, and that racial identity is an important part of both social development and identity, but some of these kids were of African American decent, some were part Native North American, and the Jamacian accent seemed like pretense to me.

Never heard a pretentious white kid tlaking in a fake British accent. Gotta say I was guilty of that myself for a while as a young teenager. It’s natural for kids to adopt exaggerated speech patterns to match someone they identify as “cooler” than themselves.

@lexi

I had a strong feeling that AAE was being propigated by the media, instead of being a natural dialect.

Media propegation of language has been around since the King James Bible standardized spelling. Is our English less “natural” because Shakespeare influenced it? And how is our English not perpetuted by the media?

[WhyNot]

@even sven

Never heard a pretentious white kid tlaking in a fake British accent. Gotta say I was guilty of that myself for a while as a young teenager. It’s natural for kids to adopt exaggerated speech patterns to match someone they identify as “cooler” than themselves.

Heck, that behavior’s popular enough to have a whole song written about it. (“Manchester”, from Hair.)

[Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus]

@Kendall Jackson

Not only can we conclude that negative concord is permitted in French, we can further conclude that negative concord is mandatory in certain constructions, and we can conclude this based on your very post. You provided an example of double negatives, and so I can summarily declare that they’re permitted, with your post as my cite.

IMO the question really generalizes to whether the standard allows the speaker flexibility in the number of negations. I don’t think French does; instead it calls for one or two negations depending on the circumstance. Nonstandard English generally, and I’m not sure whether this includes AAE, allows for additional negation for the purpose of emphasis, as in, “Don’t you never let me see you do nothing like that again.”