This study examined changes in the complex syntax production of 85 African American preschoolers and the role of child (gender, age, African American English) and family (home environment) factors. Age, gender, and home environment effects were found for the amount of complex language used. African American English was not related to amount of…

Report of research findings on productive language differences in beginning fifth grade Black children living in Philadelphia, as evidenced by their use of nonstandard syntactic forms in both speech and writing. (RB)

This study examined nonstandard syntactic and morphological forms used by 45 poor, urban, 4- to 5.5-year-old African American children. Distributional analyses revealed three subgroups distinguished by the percentage frequencies of occurrence of utterances containing specific forms and by the predominant types used by each group. (Author)

Interrelationships between productive oral proficiency in black dialect and in standard English and reading comprehension of passages differing in dialect and content were investigated in a sample of 98 sixth-grade black students. Results indicated that students were better readers as their oral patterns of speech were more representative of…

This study examined the complex syntax production of 45 pre-school-aged African American boys and girls from urban, low income homes. Results provide quantitative descriptions of amounts of complex syntax and suggest a potential positive relationship between amounts of complex syntax and amounts of nonstandard English form usage in the children's…

This investigation reports average length of communication units (C-units) in words and in morphemes for 95 African-American boys and girls (ages 4-6) from lower-income, urban homes. Mean C-units increased across the age span and syntactic complexity of the children's language samples correlated positively with increases in C-unit length.…

This report is an overview of the most frequently recurring grammatical structures in the speech of ten-year-old to twelve-year-old black children from lower socioeconomic neighborhoods in Baltimore. The speech sample consists of three types of speech situations: playing games with peers, talking with an older white interviewer, and telling…

Representative research studies of the interference of Vernacular Black English (VBE) on beginning reading of VBE speakers at the phonological, grammatical, and lexical and content levels are examined. The following conclusions emerge: (1) phonological interference in learning to read has not been established; (2) VBE does not clearly interfere…

Renewed interest in the connection between black English and reading difficulty warrants a summary of the groundwork laid in the 1960s and 1970s. Linguists have established the fact that black English is a legitimate language, that its speakers are not language deficient, and that the basic difference in black and standard English pertains to…

A detailed study is reported of the linguistic adaptation of a white girl in a predominantly black school in Camden, New Jersey. The girl is a cultural heroine in the area, having earned the admiration of both blacks, and Puerto Ricans by her ability in fighting, dancing, talking, and dealing with the opposite sex. Subjective reaction tests show…