The Morphology of African American English in African American rap lyrics

Seminar paper from the year 2009 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics grade: 17 University of Cologne (Englisches Seminar) course: B-Seminar: Morphology language: English abstract: This term paper will mainly focus on the morphological studies of Lisa J. Green who is a Professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Texas and who published a linguistic introduction to African American English which focuses on the phonological morphological syntactical and semantic properties of this variety of American English. In this paper we will firstly have a closer look at the well researched areas of African American English like origins and (social)history. Subsequently certain morphological features like verbal -s past morphology genetive marking and copula absence will be illustrated. To bring evidence for the linguistic theses concerning morphology that will have been made in the first part rap texts by two well-known African American rap artists will be taken into account. This is due to the fact that authentic texts with sufficient morphological features of African American English are not easy to find. However rap lyrics offer a wide range of morphological features that can provide evidence for many linguistic theses illustrated in this paper. On account of this this paper will analyze 60 rap texts by the African American artists Kanye West and Talib Kweli. The aim hereby is to see whether African American English consequently pursues a morphological pattern or if the features occur optionally. Is the widespread prejudice among many non-linguists true? Namley that African American English is a non-rule-based variety of English?