Linguist William Labov carried out and published the first thorough grammatical study of African American Vernacular English in 1965.

• Perhaps most strikingly, the copula is often dropped, as in Russian, Hungarian, Hebrew, and Arabic. For example: You crazy! ("You are crazy") or She my sister ("She is my sister"). The phenomenon is also observed in questions: Who you? ("Who are you?") and Where you at? ("Where are you?"). As in Russian, the copula is omitted only in the present tense, and must be specified in the past tense.