Missing PREP differing by dialect

[Wilson Gray]

OTOH, I'd be willing to bet that 99.44% of BE speakers have never
heard or even heard of the forms without the prepositions. I'm not
sure when I first read these prepositionless forms - I read them
before I heard them; as you point out, the prepositional forms are not
restricted to BE speakers - or heard them, but it was fairly late in
life.

 If I had to guess ... Well, I don't have to, but I'm going to,
anyway. My WAG is that the farther north of the Mason-Dixon Line that
you get, the less likely you are to hear the prepositional forms.

FWIW, I've come across the form "beshat" in Britwrite, here and there.

-Wilson

On Wed, Apr 2, 2008 at 11:58 AM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
>  Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>  Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
>  Subject:      Re: Missing PREP differing by dialect
>  -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>  At 11:14 AM -0400 4/2/08, Wilson Gray wrote:
>  >WE:
>  >
>  >"He shit/shat himself"
>  >
>  >"He pissed himself"
>  >
>  >vs. BE:
>  >
>  >"He shitted _on_ himself"
>  >
>  >"He pissed _on_ himself."
>  >
>  >-Wilson
>  >--
>  Actually, the latter two forms are perfectly acceptable in varieties
>  of WE I'm familiar with, and there's a slight
>  semantic/pragmatic/register difference between the two versions.  If
>  I inadvertently allow a couple of drops to hit my shoe, I pissed on
>  myself, but I didn't piss myself.  This actually follows from the
>  general association with direct objects and "affectedness", as in the
>  difference between loading the hay onto the truck and loading the
>  truck with the hay.  I also suspect there may be another difference
>  here for many speakers besides that of degree-of-affectedness:
>
>  He intentionally shat/pissed on himself.
>  ??He intentionally shat/pissed himself.
>
>  Perhaps not all WE speakers share this latter intuition.
>
>  LH
>
>  ------------------------------------------------------------
>  The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



--
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
 -Sam'l Clemens

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org