dropping -ed in adjectives

[Laurence Horn]

Might this not be phonological in origin, simplifying -[st] clusters to -[s], rather than applying to (participial) adjectives across the board?  If the same people say "he pass' me on the street las' week" or "in times pas'", it's not really a fact about adjectives as such.  Of course, if people are *writing" "He ain't prejudice", that's a further step, recalling our old threads on "ice tea/coffee"--and of course "ice cream", where the -ed dropping has become universal.

LH


On May 16, 2012, at 2:49 PM, Paul Johnston wrote:

> My students, whether hip hop or country fans or not, from Michigan, do this all the time.
>
> Paul Johnston
> On May 16, 2012, at 1:55 PM, Amy West wrote:
>
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       Amy West <medievalist at W-STS.COM>
>> Subject:      dropping -ed in adjectives
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> A follow-up . . .
>>
>> One of my students who consistently uses "bias" for "biased" is a young
>> female white Massachusetts native and a country music fan. In checking
>> out one of her sources here are lyrics from a Toby Keith song wherein he
>> uses "prejudice" where SE would use "prejudiced":
>>
>> Breaks his heart seein' foreign cars
>>
>> filled with fuel that isn't ours
>>
>> and wearin' cotton we didn't grow....
>>
>> He ain't prejudice.
>>
>> He's just -- made in America.
>>
>> Downes, Lawrence. "Toby Keith's American Dream." /New York Times/ 10
>> Oct. 2011: A22(L). /Gale Biography In Context/. Web. 16 May 2012.
>>
>> So . . . I'm beginning to think that I'm just noticing a dialectal
>> variant wherein the -ed is being dropped from adjectives. Maybe it's
>> being picked up from Southern and AAVE dialects via country music and
>> hip-hop?
>>
>> Sorry if this is a) basic and b) obvious.
>>
>> ---Amy West
>>
>> (And the irony is that she wrote her paper on Southern dialect in
>> country music. . .) (And the idea of New England country music fans is
>> just a difficult one for me to wrap my preconceptions around.)
>>
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