Our Findings:
32.91% of the speakers we surveyed from the Black Boston community reported that they use ain’t instead of didn’t in sentences like ‘Why ain’t he do that?’. However, 67.09% of speakers said that they do not use ain’t in sentences like this. Our findings from African American and Caribbean American speakers in Boston support recent studies in Columbus, Ohio and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where speakers used didn’t more often than ain’t in past tense sentences.
References:
- Ash & Myhill (1986:37)
- Fisher (2018)
- Fisher (2022)
- Howe (2005)
- Labov, et al. (1968:206)
- Weldon (1994)
- Wolfram (2004)
