Invariant innit, isn ´t it

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On Sep 7, 2006, at 9:00 AM, David Barnhart wrote:

> Unless I've missed the point, there's an entry in DARE at _isn't
> it_ in
> which evidence from their files cites _innit?_ (1993. 1994, 1995).
> The
> first evidence I've found in dialect dictionaries on the side of
> the pond
> is in Wentworth's American Dialect Dictionary (c. 1944) from
> Michigan and
> Ohio (date: 1940) with the suggestion that it comes from Dutch.  DARE
> appears to cite the same evidence.

my guess is that this is a separate development from the U.K. tag.,
quite possibly from dutch influence.

the pennsylvania dutch (= german) english of my childhood used
"ain't?" (or its more emphatic variant "ai not?", i.e., [e nat]) for
these fixed-tag questions: You're goin' nah, ain't?/ai not?  probably
a truncation of  something like "ain't that so?"  i don't know the
history in pa. dutch itself, but the pa. dutch english tag is just a
straight-out borrowing from pa. dutch (which is surely a calque on a
german dialect tag).

the michigan/ohio cites, if from dutch, would probably also have been
calques.

meanwhile, the U.K. tags are surely descended from a fixed tag "isn't
it?", presumably a reduction of something like "isn't it so?"

variable tags, like those in standard english "You're going now,
aren't you?", are very rare indeed in the world's languages.
everybody loves fixed tags, like standard german "nicht wahr".

colloquial english uses "right?" as a fixed question tag, and some
dialects can use "no?" this way as well.  "hunh?" is also possible in
some contexts.  like i said, everybody loves fixed tags.

arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)

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