Examples

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_American_Vernacular_English (Where the chart came from) [|More Examples]
 * Example || Name || [|SE] Meaning / Notes ||
 * He workin'. || Simple progressive || He is working [right now]. ||
 * He be workin'. || Habitual/continuative aspect || He works frequently or habitually. Better illustrated with "He be workin' Tuesdays all month." ||
 * He be steady workin'. || Intensified continuative || He is working steadily. ||
 * He been workin'. || Perfect progressive || He has been working. ||
 * He been had that job. || Remote phase ([|see below]) || He has had that job for a long time and still has it. ||
 * He done worked. || Emphasized perfective || He has worked. Syntactically, "He worked" is valid, but "done" is used to emphasize the completed nature of the action. ||
 * He finna [or "fittin' (fi-t&n) nuh"] go to work. || Immediate future || He's about to go to work. //Finna// is a contraction of "fixin' to"; though is also believed to show residual influence of late 16th century archaism "would fain (to)", that persisted until later in some rural dialects spoken in the Carolinas (near the [|Gullah] region). ||
 * I was walkin' home, and I **had** worked all day. || Preterite narration. || "Had" is used to //begin// a preterite narration. Usually it occurs in the first clause of the narration, and nowhere else. ||

back