African American Vernacular English/Verbs/Aspect

Aspect in English is similar to tense. Linguistics use the term "Tense-Aspect-Modality" or TAM to describe the three rules which make up so-called verb "tenses." Generally:

1. Tense is used to say what point in time something happened.
2. Aspect is used to say how something happens: how often something happens, and whether it has been completed.
3. Modality is the truth value of how likely something happened: declarative, subjunctive, conditional, imperative. However questions and negation are generally not considered part of modality.

Aspect in General English

English, or at least most prestige varieties of English are generally understood to have four aspects: 1) simple, 2) continuous, 3) perfective, and 4) perfective continuous, as well as three tenses (past, present, future), and a wide variety of modalities formed by modal verbs, plus the subjunctive and imperative.

1. Done repeatedly up until the present: I walk (an hour) to work (every day).
2. In the process of being done in the present, or to be completed in the near future: I am walking to work (right now). I'm arriving in an hour.
3. Done at least once in the past: I have walked to work (a few times).
4. Done up until the present, possibly repeated, possibly finished: I have been walking for an hour (and I'm still walking). I have been walking to work (every day since my car broke down, but now it's fixed).

AAVE, by contrast, has different markers for each of these.

Aspect in AAVE

Done

"Done" in AAVE is a perfective marker, used to mean that an action has been completed.

• He done walked here. = He just walked here.

Been

"Been" is used in AAVE to indicate that an action has been going on or repeated for a while. In this, it is unlike the MAE auxiliary "has," which can mean it happened and continued to the present, or that it has happened frequently.

• He been walking. = He has been walking frequently.

Note that an adverb of time can only indicate how long something happens, and not how often. Sentences marked with strikethrough are ungrammatical and semantically nonsense.

• He been walking two hours. = He's been walking two hours, every day.
• He been walking every week.
• He walk every week. = He walks every week.

BIN

BIN, which is stressed, is used similarly to "been," however it indicates that the action was completed. Thus:

• He been walking. = He has been walking, often, for a while.
• He BIN walking. = He has been walking, but has stopped.

In this way, the stressed "BIN" is similar to the MAE example:

• He was walking (earlier).
• He WAS walking (but he has stopped).