Thank you. I was beginning to doubt my sanity. EDIT: Also, that's not even quite what I said: I said the rules of AAVE can produce sentences that can be parsed

Thank you. I was beginning to doubt my sanity. EDIT: Also, that's not even quite what I said: I said the rules of AAVE can produce sentences that can be parsed as simplified English. I didn't even say there are rules that are simplified. AFAICT and as far as the article goes, there aren't actually any rules that are simplified at all. I think it's very important to distinguish between the underlying rules and the product. A speaker knows the rules. A recipient only receives the product. As this comment thread unfortunately shows, meaning can be lost completely no matter how much care is put into the production if the recipient isn't able to properly extract it from the product.