Gone with the wind? Evidence for 19th century

Abstract

For decades the variety of English spoken by African Americans in the United States has been a major focus of research in linguistics. Despite that, there is still considerable controversy over its past, and specifically whether there had formerly been a plantation creole which shaped the modern African American Vernacular English (AAVE) linguistic system as it emerged. Increasingly abundant evidence has now been assembled on the 19th century in the form of recordings of speakers born in the antebellum period, backed up by data from works of fiction. Taken together, this evidence strongly suggests that a variety of creole was indeed spoken alongside English, perhaps without clear separation, at least until the time of the Civil War.