I’m Knowing: AAE and the Verb ‘‘Know’’ in the Progressive

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School of Arts & Sciences::Department of Linguistics::University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics
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Linguistics
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linguistics
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2025-11-14
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Kortenhoven, Gideon
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In this paper, I address an under-examined use of the stative verb “know” (e.g., “I’m knowing”) in African American English (AAE). In AAE grammar, “know”, a stative verb, has been reported to only be possible in the progressive form when following preverbal tense-aspect-mood (TAM) markers such as BIN, invariant be and steady. Green (1998, 2000) regards progressive “know” without a TAM marker as ungrammatical (e.g. *“She knowing how to drive”). Scott (2016), however, provides an example of “know” in the progressive with no TAM marker (e.g. “I'm knowing more about it each day”), which appears to contradict Green’s argument. As a native AAE English speaker, and a productive user of “I’m knowing”, I hypothesize that this construction may grammatical for younger AAE speakers, representing a change-in-progress. To test this hypothesis, I examine the Corpus of Regional African American Language (CORAAL) and data from Twitter. I assess contemporary usage of “know” in the progressive form with and without TAM markers in terms of age distribution. The rate of usage of the innovation “I’m knowing” is compared to long established constructions in AAE, “I be knowing” and “I been/BIN knowing”. The results indicate that TAM-less “knowing” may be in the early stages of a change-in-progress in AAE across regions, with young people being the leaders in this change.

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2025-11-14
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Penn Working Papers in Linguistics
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Department of Linguistics
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