LL-L "Morphology" 2002.02.24 (03) [E]

[Lowlands-L]

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 L O W L A N D S - L * 24.FEB.2002 (03) * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
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From: "John M. Tait" <jmtait at wirhoose.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "Morphology" 2002.02.21 (07) [E]

Tom McRae wrote:

>'Getting catched' was used by some working people in Edinburgh when I
>grew
>up there. They would also say 'He catched a fish'. My guess is this
>originated in the City's large working class Irish population.

I don't think we need to blame the Irish for this. The weak form of the
verb 'to catch' - ie, with preterite and past participle 'catched'
instead of 'caught' - is common in many forms of Scots, including
Shetlandic. It's a traditional Scots form. Another similar form is the
weak form 'teached' for English 'taught', used by Lorimer in his
translation of the New Testament.

Curiously, CSD lists only _catchit_ (presumably an older form, the
orthography reflecting either an older syllabic pronunciation, or a
morphological spelling which assumed that readers of Scots could be
relied upon to know when the <-it> ending was pronounced as [It] and
when as [t], much as with e.g. _stopped_ and _ended_ in English)  and
_caucht_, pronounced e.g. [kAxt]. There is apparently also a past form
_cotch_ [kotS] on the pattern of _fotch_ from _fetch_ (also _fes(h)_,
pt: _fuish_).

John M. Tait.

----------

From: "John M. Tait" <jmtait at wirhoose.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "Morphology" 2002.02.22 (12) [E]

In English, I have noticed the scatalogical word with its -i-, -a-, -en
paradigm mostly in subtitles to foreign films! In spoken English, the
present form seems to be used for all tenses. When I moved from Shetland
to
the North East and used the -a- and -en forms, I found that no one
understood them, the present form being used instead in NE Scots as
well.

The Shetlandic form of 'Shetland', Shaetlan, is pronounced very like
[SItl at n], which some non-Shetlanders find funny. If the /SIt/ form
existed,
however, it would be pronounced not [SIt] but [S3t], the difference
between
[I] and [3] being phonological, as:

/I/ - bit [b3t], lid [lId]
/e/ -  baet [bIt] (Eng. beat), haed [hed]/[hEId]/hid] (Eng. head)

Thus the sound [I] represents /I/ before voiced consonants, and /e/
before
voiceless consonants.
In Shetland, however, as in other parts of the UK including the North of
England, the present form is not [SIt] but [S at It].

However, Shetlanders - not being familiar with a phonologically based
written form of their language - often confuse /I/ and /e/ in writing
(though they do not do so in speech), writing e.g. <lik> rather than
<laek>. I would conjecture that the increasing use of the English form
'Shetland' is owing to a feeling of embassassment at the correct
pronunciation of the form Shaetlan - in other words, an accommodation to
an
external Anglophone perception of the sound.

 In traditional forms of Scots, as Shetlandic, the verb _pit_ (put)
follows
the same pattern, _pit, pat, pitten_, but in the NE only _pit_ and
_pitten_
are heard, _pit_ being used as the preterite, and in other parts of
Scotland only _pit_ tends to be used. Perhaps this is part of the
general
deterioration of the forms of the verb in Mainland Scots, where the same
form is increasingly used for past participle and preterite, as 'I'v
gave
him' etc. Often such forms (mostly common to non-standard English in
parts
of England and America as well) are perceived as quintessentially Scots
by
writers because of their difference from standard English, even though
traditional Scots may not even possess the form which is so used (Scots
has
no form 'gave', the paradigm being _gie [gi:] gied, gien_.)

Parallel weak and strong forms of verbs seem to be common in these
unstandardised languages and dialects. There are many in Shetlandic. To
me,
the paradigm of the verb _jimp_ (jump) is: _jimp, jamp, jumpen_ [tSopm],
but in some areas it is _jimp, jimpit, jimpit_.

A parallel to 'snuck' is 'brung' which is often used instead of 'brocht'
or
'brought' in Scotland, not necessarily by Scots speakers. I'm not sure
whether this is characteristic of English in other parts of the world.
Because it's familiar to me in a way that 'snuck' isn't, it's possible
that
I wouldn't notice it particularly in an American film, or if pronounced
with an English regional accent (though it would be very obvious if
pronounced with a standard English accent. My ears did a double-take at
Alec Guiness saying 'gotten' in the first Star Wars film, just as they
did
when Anthony Stewart Head said 'some place' instead of 'somewhere' in
Buffy
the Vampire Slayer, presumably using a script written by an American. Or
are more Americanisms simply creeping into English English without my
noticing?)

 _got/gotten- is perhaps the best known British/American shibboleth of
this
type. But _gotten_ also occurs in Scots, though not in Scottish English.
I
noticed Sandy using it in one of his English postings in another thread,
and as I suppose he does not use this in his standard English, I took it
to
be some sort of (perhaps unconscious) recognition of this common feature
of
Scots and American English.

Richt, Sandy??

John M. Tait.

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