63-508: Lithonia ( / l ɪ ˈ θ oʊ n i ə / lih- THOH -nee-ə , AAVE : / l aɪ -/ ly- ) is a city in eastern DeKalb County , Georgia , United States. The city's population was 2,662 at the 2020 census . Lithonia is in the Atlanta metropolitan area . "Lithonia" means "city/town of stone". Lithonia is in the heart of the Georgian granite -quarrying and viewing region, hence
126-445: A dialect , ethnolect or sociolect . While it is clear that there is a strong historical relationship between AAVE and earlier Southern U.S. dialects , the origins of AAVE are still a matter of debate. The presiding theory among linguists is that AAVE has always been a dialect of English, meaning that it originated from earlier English dialects rather than from English-based creole languages that "decreolized" back into English. In
189-503: A megachurch which is known for many high-profile funerals, is located in Stonecrest, GA, near Lithonia. The Lithonia Historic District consists of a commercial core surrounded by residential areas, with a period of significance spanning from 1845 to 1964. Stylistic influences in the district include Second Empire, Queen Anne, Folk Victorian, Neoclassical Revival, English Vernacular Revival, Craftsman, and Colonial Revival. The district
252-501: A standard dialect , leading to widespread and long-standing misconceptions that it is a grammatically inferior form of English, which linguistics research of the twentieth century has debunked. However, educators and social commentators traditionally have advocated for eliminating AAVE usage through the public-education system for a variety of reasons, ranging from a continued belief that AAVE is intrinsically deficient to arguments that its use, by being stigmatized in certain social contexts,
315-436: A community park and ride lot. The city was the title subject of the 2024 Childish Gambino song of the same name, Lithonia . AAVE African-American Vernacular English ( AAVE ) is the variety of English natively spoken, particularly in urban communities, by most working - and middle-class African Americans and some Black Canadians . Having its own unique grammatical, vocabulary and accent features, AAVE
378-472: A hip roof. The first floor has 12 foot ceilings and the second floor has 16 foot ceilings. By 1906 a public school system had been established in Lithonia, so the school was closed and the building sold to John Keay Davidson Sr. He was a Scottish immigrant who founded a quarrying company in Lithonia in 1901. Davidson brought in skilled stonemasons from Scotland as workers, and converted the building into
441-549: A large portion of its grammar and phonology with the regional dialects of the Southern United States , and especially older Southern American English , due to the historical enslavement of African Americans primarily in that region. Mainstream linguists see only minor parallels between AAVE, West African languages , and English-based creole languages , instead most directly tracing back AAVE to diverse non-standard dialects of English as spoken by
504-475: A new way to communicate among themselves and with their captors. According to this theory, these captives first developed what are called pidgins : simplified mixtures of languages. Since pidgins form from close contact between speakers of different languages, the slave trade would have been exactly such a situation. Creolist John Dillard quotes, for example, slave ship captain William Smith describing
567-474: A recollection of "slave language" toward the latter part of the 18th century: "Kay, massa, you just leave me, me sit here, great fish jump up into da canoe, here he be, massa, fine fish, massa; me den very grad; den me sit very still, until another great fish jump into de canoe; but me fall asleep, massa, and no wake 'til you come...." Not until the time of the American Civil War did the language of
630-650: Is a historic building at 6886 Main Street in Lithonia, Georgia . Originally constructed as a school in 1895, over the years it has also served as a hotel and a private home. It is currently used as a multi-tenant office building. It was entered into the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) on November 15, 1978. The Seminary was constructed in 1895. Benjamin Franklin George had donated land for
693-562: Is a uniquely wide-ranging intonation pattern or "melody", which characterizes even the most "neutral" or light African-American accent. A handful of multisyllabic words in AAVE differ from General American in their stress placement so that, for example, police , guitar , and Detroit are pronounced with initial stress instead of ultimate stress. The following are phonological differences in AAVE vowel and consonant sounds. Final consonant groups or clusters in AAVE have been examined as evidence of
SECTION 10
#1732776841479756-523: Is bisected by the Georgia/CSX Railroad, which runs perpendicular to the historic commercial core's primary thoroughfare, Main Street. The commercial area extends south from the intersection of Main Street and the railroad, covering a two-block area. The commercial buildings are primarily brick and local granite masonry, with little decorative detailing. Commercial styles include single retail, multiple retail, and retail and office types. Within
819-619: Is employed by middle-class Black Americans as the more informal and casual end of a sociolinguistic continuum. However, in formal speaking contexts, speakers tend to switch to more standard English grammar and vocabulary, usually while retaining elements of the non-standard accent . AAVE is widespread throughout the United States, but is not the native dialect of all African Americans, nor are all of its speakers African American. As with most English varieties spoken by African Americans , African-American Vernacular English shares
882-505: Is general uniformity of AAVE grammar, despite its vast geographic spread across the whole country. This may be due in part to relatively recent migrations of some African Americans out of the American South (see Great Migration and Second Great Migration ) as well as to long-term racial segregation that kept these speakers living together in largely homogeneous communities. The Seminary (Lithonia, Georgia) The Seminary
945-431: Is intensifying with the grammatical features exemplified in these sentences: "He be the best" (intensified equative be ), "She be done had her baby" (resultative be done ), and "They come hollerin" (indignant come ). On the other hand, rural AAVE alone shows certain features too, such as: "I was a-huntin" ( a -prefixing); "It riz above us" (different irregular forms); and "I want for to eat it" ( for to complement). Using
1008-445: Is more common in speech than it is in writing. AAVE also has words that either are not part of most other American English dialects or have strikingly different meanings. For example, there are several words in AAVE referring to White people that are not part of mainstream American English; these include gray as an adjective for Whites (as in gray dude ), possibly from the color of Confederate uniforms; and paddy , an extension of
1071-402: Is socially limiting. Some of the harshest criticism of AAVE or its use has come from African Americans themselves. A conspicuous example was the " Pound Cake speech ", in which Bill Cosby criticized some African Americans for various social behaviors, including the way they talked. Educators traditionally have attempted to eliminate AAVE usage through the public education system, perceiving
1134-454: Is stressed and semantically distinct from the unstressed form: She BIN running ('She has been running for a long time') and She been running ('She has been running'). This aspect has been given several names, including perfect phase , remote past , and remote phase (this article uses the third). As shown above, been places action in the distant past. However, when been is used with stative verbs or gerund forms, been shows that
1197-477: Is the noun–noun combination. There is also the adjective–noun combination, which is the second most commonly occurring type of combination found in AAE slang. AAE also combines adjectives with other adjectives, less frequently, but more so than in standard American English. AAVE has also contributed slang expressions such as cool and hip . In many cases, the postulated etymologies are not recognized by linguists or
1260-497: Is unknown. Kitchen refers to the particularly curly or kinky hair at the nape of the neck, and siditty or seddity means "snobbish" or "bourgeois". AAVE has also contributed many words and phrases to other varieties of English, including chill out , main squeeze , soul , funky , and threads . African-American Vernacular English has influenced the development of other dialects of English. The AAVE accent, New York accent , and Spanish-language accents have together yielded
1323-500: Is used to emphasize the completed nature of the action. ^b I'ma , also commonly spelled Imma , is pronounced as / ˈ aɪ m ə / . Harvard professor Sunn m'Cheaux claims I'ma originated in the Gullah language (an English creole), which uses "a-" instead of "-ing" for this type of verb inflection. Other sources suggest it is a further shortening of I'm gonna . As phase auxiliary verbs, been and done must occur as
SECTION 20
#17327768414791386-624: The Lithonia-Davidson Library the main library source in Lithonia, which was once privately owned until being incorporated into the DeKalb County Public Library system in 1947. Other libraries in the Lithonia area include: Lithonia's main post office is located on Stone Mountain Street in the heart of Lithonia. Many drop boxes and postal services storefronts are located throughout the communities of Lithonia. Redan post office located directly outside
1449-643: The New York accent , including its high THOUGHT vowel; meanwhile, conversely, Pittsburgh AAVE may merge this same vowel with the LOT vowel, matching the cot-caught merger of White Pittsburgh accents , though AAVE accents traditionally do not have the cot-caught merger. Memphis , Atlanta , and Research Triangle AAVE incorporates the DRESS vowel raising and FACE vowel lowering associated with White Southern accents . Memphis and St. Louis AAVE are developing, since
1512-493: The Oxford English Dictionary , such as to dig , jazz , tote , and bad-mouth , a calque from Mandinka . African American slang is formed by words and phrases that are regarded as informal. It involves combining, shifting, shortening, blending, borrowing, and creating new words. African American slang possess all of the same lexical qualities and linguistic mechanisms as any other language. AAVE slang
1575-562: The African American English (AAE) took place in cities such as New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, to name a few. These studies concluded that the African American Language (AAL) was homogeneous, which means that AAE was spoken the same way everywhere around the country. Later, sociolinguists would realize that these cities lacked the influence of the rural south; the early studies had not considered
1638-489: The Auto Rest Hotel to house them. It was at this time that the double veranda at the front of the structure was added. The hotel continued in operation until 1917. In 1917 the building was sold to J.H. Malone, who added interior plumbing and electricity to use the building as a private home. It was around this time a two-story bathroom addition was made at the rear center of the house. A second bathroom addition
1701-567: The Bruce Street School for African-Americans (1938). The district is significant under National Register criterion A (association with historic events) and C (architecture), with areas of significance in Architecture, Black and European Ethnic Heritage, Community Planning and Development, Industry, and Transportation. As of the 2020 United States census , there were 2,662 people, 938 households, and 524 families residing in
1764-711: The English-speaking settlers in the Southern Colonies and later the Southern United States . However, a minority of linguists argue that the vernacular shares so many characteristics with African creole languages spoken around the world that it could have originated as a creole or semi-creole language, distinct from the English language, before undergoing decreolization . African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) may be considered
1827-624: The Masonic Lodge (1916), The Lithonia Women's Club (1928), the Lithonia First United Methodist Church (1910), Antioch Baptist Church (1911), Lithonia Presbyterian Church, The Union Missionary Church (1911), the Bruce Street equalization school (c.1953), and The Seminary (1895). Contributing sites in the district include two cemeteries, two parks, the former Georgia Railroad Quarry, and the ruins of
1890-404: The action began in the distant past and that it is continuing now. Rickford (1999) suggests that a better translation when used with stative verbs is "for a long time". For instance, in response to "I like your new dress", one might hear Oh, I been had this dress , meaning that the speaker has had the dress for a long time and that it isn't new. To see the difference between the simple past and
1953-407: The city limits of Lithonia provides an alternative to postal drop off and pickup service. United Parcel Service (UPS) and FedEx also provide alternative postal service to Lithonia. MARTA (Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority) provides connecting bus service to and from Lithonia, and GRTA Xpress (Georgia Rapid Transit Authority) provides commuter bus service to downtown Atlanta from
Lithonia, Georgia - Misplaced Pages Continue
2016-457: The city limits of Lithonia. The schools that serve the city limits of Lithonia are: Stoneview Elementary School in Stonecrest , Lithonia Middle School, and Lithonia High School in Stonecrest (formerly Redan CDP ). Elementary schools in the wider surrounding area: Middle schools in the surrounding area: High schools in the surrounding area: DeKalb County Public Library operates
2079-538: The city. Lithonia is near to a super-regional shopping center, the Mall at Stonecrest (also known as Stonecrest Mall), and serves as the northernmost point on the Arabia Mountain Path . Much of the mall's available property has yet to be developed. The three main health facilities in Lithonia are: DeKalb County Public Schools operates public schools. Lithonia Middle School is the only school located in
2142-572: The coming of the Atlanta Augusta Railroad in 1845, which allowed the granite quarrying industry in the area to flourish. Lithonia is the birthplace of the Lithonia Lighting company, one of North America's largest manufacturers of commercial, institutional, industrial and residential light fixtures , which was founded in the city in 1946 but moved to nearby Conyers in the 1950s. New Birth Missionary Baptist Church ,
2205-506: The community, with access from Exits 74 and 75. Lithonia is 18 miles (29 km) east of the center of Atlanta . Some areas in extreme southern Gwinnett County use a Lithonia postal address near the county line. According to the United States Census Bureau , the city has a total area of 0.89 square miles (2.3 km), all land. In 1805, Lithonia began as a small crossroads settlement of farmers. The town grew with
2268-449: The creation of a school for Lithonia, in part to educate his own children. Lithonia had no public school system at the time; The Seminary was one of three schools which were privately owned and supported by tuition. The building was constructed of granite , using stone quarried locally. The town derived its name and much of its economy from granite at this time. The building is two stories with walls made of 19 to 24 inch granite and has
2331-479: The dialect as grammatically defective. In 1974, the teacher-led Conference on College Composition and Communication issued a position statement affirming students' rights to their own dialects and the validity of all dialects. Mainstream linguistics has long agreed with this view about dialects. In 1979, a judge ordered the Ann Arbor School District to find a way to identify AAVE speakers in
2394-470: The early 2000s, Shana Poplack provided corpus -based evidence (evidence from a body of writing) from isolated enclaves in Samaná and Nova Scotia peopled by descendants of migrations of early AAVE-speaking groups (see Samaná English ) that suggests that the grammar of early AAVE was closer to that of contemporary British dialects than modern urban AAVE is to other current American dialects, suggesting that
2457-403: The first auxiliary; when they occur as the second, they carry additional aspects : The latter example shows one of the most distinctive features of AAVE: the use of be to indicate that performance of the verb is of a habitual nature. In most other American English dialects, this can only be expressed unambiguously by using adverbs such as usually . This aspect-marking form of been or BIN
2520-523: The gerund when used with been , consider the following expressions: Auxiliaries in African American Vernacular English are related in a typical pattern. They can be grouped into negative forms and affirmative forms for each of the words. For example, "had" is an affirmative form, while "hatn" is the corresponding negative form. These same auxiliaries can be used to mark sentences for the anterior aspect. As another example,
2583-525: The historic district, there is some non-historic infill construction such as the 1968 Lithonia Plaza shopping center. The residential areas consist architecture typical of late 19th- to mid 20th-century types and styles. Residential neighborhoods also feature locally quarried granite and gneiss. House types and styles include the central hall Georgian cottage, gabled-wing cottage, Queen Anne cottage, New South cottage, pyramid cottage, bungalow, Ranch house, I-House and Queen Anne house. Landmark properties include
Lithonia, Georgia - Misplaced Pages Continue
2646-578: The indentured servants who spoke those dialects..." According to McWhorter, virtually all linguists who have carefully studied the origins of AAVE "agree that the West African connection is quite minor." However, a creole theory, less accepted among linguists, posits that AAVE arose from one or more creole languages used by African captives of the Atlantic slave trade , due to the captives speaking many different native languages and therefore needing
2709-438: The language. For example, the word "tes" in AAVE originates from "test", with the final "t" of the "st" consonant cluster being deleted in word-final position. McWhorter discusses an accent continuum from "a 'deep' Black English through a 'light' Black English to standard English," saying the sounds on this continuum may vary from one African American speaker to the next or even in a single speaker from one situational context to
2772-522: The mid-twentieth century, an iconic merger of the vowels in SQUARE and NURSE , making there sound like thurr . Californian AAVE often lacks a cot-caught merger , especially before nasals. African-American Vernacular suffers from persistent stigma and negative social evaluation in American culture. By definition, as a vernacular dialect of English, AAVE has not received the social prestige of
2835-585: The modern language is a result of divergence from mainstream varieties, rather than the result of decreolization from a widespread American creole. Linguist John McWhorter maintains that the contribution of West African languages to AAVE is minimal. In an interview on National Public Radio 's Talk of the Nation , McWhorter characterized AAVE as a "hybrid of regional dialects of Great Britain that slaves in America were exposed to because they often worked alongside
2898-536: The name of the town, from the Greek lithos , for “stone”. The huge nearby Stone Mountain is composed of granite, while the Lithonia gneiss is a form of metamorphic rock . The Stone Mountain granite is younger than, and has intruded the Lithonia gneiss. The area has a history of rock quarries. The mines were served by the Georgia Railroad and Atlanta, Stone Mountain & Lithonia Railway . Some of
2961-412: The next. McWhorter regards the following as rarer features, characteristic only of a deep Black English but which speakers of light Black English may occasionally "dip into for humorous or emotive effect": Although AAVE does not necessarily have the simple past-tense marker of other English varieties (that is, the -ed of "work ed "), it does have an optional tense system with at least four aspects of
3024-456: The past tense and two aspects of the future tense. The dialect uses several Tense-Aspect-Mood markers integrated into the predicate phrase, including gon or gonna (future tense), done (completive aspect), be (habitual aspect, state of being), and been (durative aspect). These can function separately or in conjunction. ^a Syntactically, I bought it is grammatical, but done (always unstressed, pronounced as / d ən / )
3087-466: The population movements during the Great Migration, resulting in a broadly South-to-North pattern, albeit with founder effects in cities that already had existing African American populations at the beginning of the Great Migration. There is no vowel for which the geographic variation in AAVE patterns with that of White American English. New York City AAVE incorporates some local features of
3150-485: The recordings of former slaves to demonstrate that negation was inherited from nonstandard colonial English. AAVE shares most of its lexicon with other varieties of English, particularly that of informal and Southern dialects; for example, the relatively recent use of y'all . As statistically shown by Algeo (1991: 3–14), the main sources for new words are combining, shifting, shortening, blending, borrowing, and creating. However, it has also been suggested that some of
3213-426: The representation of the south of America, which caused the AAE studies to change. To make those changes, the newer studies used the diversity of the country and took into consideration the rural south. African-American Vernacular English began as mostly rural and Southern, yet today is mostly urban and nationally widespread, and its more recent urban features are now even diffusing into rural areas. Urban AAVE alone
SECTION 50
#17327768414793276-549: The rock quarries have been converted to parkland, and the rail lines to rail-trail. Lithonia is one of the gateways to the Arabia Mountain National Heritage Area , which is largely contained inside Stonecrest, Georgia . Lithonia is located in southeastern DeKalb County at 33°42′46″N 84°6′21″W / 33.71278°N 84.10583°W / 33.71278; -84.10583 (33.712658, -84.105897). Interstate 20 passes just south of
3339-486: The schools and to "use that knowledge in teaching such students how to read standard English." In 1996, Oakland Unified School District made a controversial resolution for AAVE, which was later called "Ebonics". The Oakland School board approved that Ebonics be recognized as a language independent from English (though this particular view is not endorsed by linguists), that teachers would participate in recognizing this language, and that it would be used in theory to support
3402-605: The sheer diversity of mutually unintelligible languages just in The Gambia . By 1715, an African pidgin was reproduced in novels by Daniel Defoe , in particular, The Life of Colonel Jacque . In 1721, Cotton Mather conducted the first attempt at recording the speech of slaves in his interviews regarding the practice of smallpox inoculation. By the time of the American Revolution, varieties among slave creoles were not quite mutually intelligible . Dillard quotes
3465-509: The slang use for "Irish". "Red bone" is another example of this, usually referring to light skinned African Americans. " Ofay ", which is pejorative , is another general term for a White person ; it might derive from the Ibibio word afia , which means "light-colored", from the Yoruba word ofe , spoken in hopes of disappearing from danger. However, most dictionaries simply say its etymology
3528-616: The slaves become familiar to a large number of educated Whites. The abolitionist papers before the war form a rich corpus of examples of plantation creole. In Army Life in a Black Regiment (1870), Thomas Wentworth Higginson detailed many features of his Black soldiers' language. Opponents of the creole theory suggest that such pidgins or creoles existed but simply died out without directly contributing to modern AAVE. Many pronunciation features distinctly set AAVE apart from other forms of American English (particularly, General American ). McWhorter argues that what truly unites all AAVE accents
3591-663: The sound of New York Latino English , some of whose speakers use an accent indistinguishable from an AAVE one. AAVE has also influenced certain Chicano accents and Liberian Settler English , directly derived from the AAVE of the original 16,000 African Americans who migrated to Liberia in the 1800s. In the United States, urban youth participating in hip-hop culture or marginalized as ethnic minorities are also well-studied in adopting African-American Vernacular English, or prominent elements of it: for example, Southeast-Asian Americans embracing hip-hop identities. The first studies on
3654-491: The systematic nature of this language variety, governed by specific rules. Additionally, such analyses have been utilized to bolster arguments concerning the historical origins of AAVE. Consonant cluster reduction is a phonological process where a final consonant group or cluster, consisting of two consonant sounds, is simplified or reduced to a single consonant sound. The analysis of consonant cluster reduction in AAVE assumes that, initially, final clusters are present and intact in
3717-439: The transition from Ebonics to Standard American English in schools. This program lasted three years and then died off. Although the distinction between AAVE and General American dialects is clear to most English speakers, some characteristics, notably double negatives and the omission of certain auxiliaries (see below) such as the has in has been are also characteristic of many colloquial dialects of American English. There
3780-542: The vocabulary unique to AAVE has its origin in West African languages, but etymology is often difficult to trace, and without a trail of recorded usage, the suggestions below cannot be considered proven. Early AAVE and Gullah contributed a number of words of African origin to the American English mainstream, including gumbo , goober , yam , and banjo . Compounding in AAVE is a very common method in creating new vocabulary. The most common type of compounding
3843-597: The whole thing ("Don't try to act as if you don't know what happened, because you started the whole thing"). The irrealis mood marker be , having no intrinsic tense refers to a current or future event that may be less than real. Modals The dialect uses double modals, such as might could , which can function in various ways, including as adverbs. Negatives are formed differently from most other varieties of English: While AAVE shares these with Creole languages, Howe & Walker (2000) use data from early recordings of African Nova Scotian English, Samaná English, and
SECTION 60
#17327768414793906-724: The word bees even in place of be to mean is or are in standard English, as in the sentence "That's the way it bees" is also one of the rarest of all deep AAVE features today, and most middle-class AAVE speakers would recognize the verb bees as part of only a deep "Southern" or "country" speaker's vocabulary. There are at least 10 distinct regional accents in AAVE, and regional patterns of pronunciation and word choice appear on social media. Regional variation in AAVE does not pattern with other regional variation in North American English, which broadly follows East-to-West migration patterns, but instead patterns with
3969-669: Was marks type 1 sentences, which by default are present tense, and transforms them to a time before the present. Take, for instance, "She at home": the word was can be inserted to mark this sentence, making the marked equivalent "She was at home". Auxiliaries such as these also have opposing negative and affirmative forms. In its negative form the auxiliary verb "wadn" is used to convey the opposing affirmative form. In addition to these, come (which may or may not be an auxiliary ) may be used to indicate speaker indignation, such as in Don't come acting like you don't know what happened and you started
#478521