The relationship of white Southern speech to Vernacular Black English

Data from rural Southern white speech are compared with Vernacular Black English (VBE) in order to determine the relationship of these varieties. Copula absence and invariant be, the two features most often cited in arguments about black–white speech relations, are described from a viewpoint which admits structured variability as part of linguistic competence. Some lects of Southern white speech and VBE may use zero copula quite similarly, but there is considerable difference in the uses of invariant be; the ‘distributive’ function of be appears to be unique to VBE in this setting. There is evidence that certain aspects of copula absence in white Southern speech may have been taken from a decreolizing form of Black English.