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Alice Walker used African American Vernacular English (AAVE) to create Celie's voice in the novel.

AAVE contains features such as

1) Use of the object pronoun 'us' instead of the subject pronoun 'we'.

"where us going"

2) Double Negative - "Us don't say nothing to each other"

3) Lexis associated with the Southern States of America - "Aint","Hot diggidy dog"

4) Verb uninflected for tens - used for those irregular verbs that remain in present tense. - "he say"

5) Present tense verbs uninflected for person or number. "shug write...', 'Harpo want to know"

6) Altered syntax in question. "how old she is?", "How her hair is".

7)Phonetic Spelling. "Two berkulosis", "pu that town", "ast", "ole"

8) Past tense inflection omitted - this phrase should be used when the past tense affix - 'ed' is missing. "he pick up a rock and laid my head open"

9) The unmarked possessive. - "Harpo girl daddy"

10) The ommission of the verb 'to be'. "who this?", "what you doing here"

11) Use of the infinitive form of the verb 'to be'. "He be looking at Nettie"

12) Ommission of the copula verb - a copula verb is a verb that links the subject to a complement.

Example: It feels cold

It = subject

feels = copula verb

cold = complement (A complement is a description of the subject)

Generally in AAVE, when the copula verb is omitted, the copula verb is 'to be':

"Shug Avery sick"

"he weak"

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14y ago

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