Unbiased assessment of first language acquisition in English : distinguishing development and dialect from disorder

In the United States, as in all countries of the world in which English is widely spoken, there exist different dialects or variants of the language. These dialects are often defined by regional or cultural groups and may vary from each other in one or more of several aspects of the language - phonology, morphology, syntax, lexical semantics, or pragmatics (ASHA 2003, Wolfram 1991). Thus, we can distinguish between Cajun English, spoken in much of Louisiana, Appalachian English, spoken in the states along the Appalachian mountains, especially Kentucky and West Virginia, or the broader Southern American English spoken across the southeastern states. All of these dialects reflect coherent rule-governed varieties of the English language. Many, though not all, African Americans speak a distinctive variety of English called "African American English" (AAE) (Labov 1972, Mufwene 1998, Rickford 1999). AAE is far less geographically defined than the other dialects of American English mentioned above, although there is some regional variation. Rather, AAE emerged from the social separation of racial segregation (and before that of slavery) as the form of English spoken by a culturally defined group of people. Children or adults of other races who have strong cultural identification or primary social interaction with African Americans may also speak AAE. Thus, AAE may be defined by a set of characteristic linguistic features that distinguish it from mainstream forms of American English (Green 2002).