LL-L "Morphology" 2003.08.11 (03) [E]

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From: Gavin.Falconer at gmx.net <Gavin.Falconer at gmx.net>
Subject: LL-L "Morphology" 2003.08.10 (07) [E]

Ron,

In Glasgow, the construction "You've took my book" would be prefectly
normal.  There are two tendencies to simplification in Scots.  In the first,
any
monosyllabic past-participle form can be used as a preterite, e.g. "A gaen
hame" or "He taen the beuk".  If the past-participle form has an -en ending,
it
is dropped, e.g. "She (haes) sheuk(en) the bairn".

The second tendency is to use the preterite as the past-participle form, as
in the first example above.  In general, I would say that this is frowned
upon rather more than the use of past-participle forms as preterites, and
seems
to be associated with urban, Scots-influenced English.  In Belfast, it would
be common to hear a sentence beginning "If I hadda went", where "went" is
used as the preterite and "I hadda" is the result of false analysis of "I'd
have" ("I would have").

Literary Scots has a large number of -en forms in the past participle (more
than in contemporary English), but in Ulster Scots, a contact variety where
the tradition of writing has been a good deal more disjunctive, they seem to
be of very limited currency, the conflation of past-participle and preterite
forms seeming fairly complete.

Of course, the tendency to simplification is not limited to Scots, and
recently I've noted the use of "sunk" and "shrunk" as preterites in
broadsheet
British newspapers.

--
All the best,

Gavin

Gavin Falconer

Belfast: 02890 657935
Dublin: 00353 (0)1 831 9089
Work: 00353 (0)1 618 3386
Mobile: 0779 173 0627
Fax:  001 954 301 7991

"Wovon man nicht reden kann, darüber muss man schweigen."

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From: Allison Turner-Hansen <hallison at gte.net>
Subject: LL-L "Morphology" 2003.08.10 (07) [E]

R. F. Hahn wrote:

 So, plain past participial expression comes with "done {"preterite"}"
 instead of standard "have/has {past.part.}"

Dear Lowlanders, Ron,
    Ron, you were talking about African-American speech here, but this is
common generally in non-standard English, at least in the upper and lower
south, and I expect in the southwest as well.  'Done' is the perfective
auxilliary: "I done ate all my dinner, so can I get some ice cream?".
    However, college students and other young people who consider themselves
speakers of Standard English seem to be losing the perfect and pluperfect,
and just using the simple past (e.g. "Where is he now?"  "He went to a
party," not "*He has gone to a party") except for subjunctive 'should've /
would've'.  The supposition that these speakers are unaware of the rule for
the formation of the perfect with 'have' is supported by the common spelling
< should of / would of >.

Allison Turner-Hansen

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From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Morphology

Thanks, Gavin and Allison!  This was very informative.

Allison, I suspected that the said constructions apply in other Southern
dialects as well, but I am more familiar with (Southern-derived) African
American speech and didn't have immediate access to other speakers.  So
thanks for clarifying this.

I wrote:
> "You've taken my book."
> > "You've took my book"
> "You done too my book."

This should have been:
"You done took my book."

Ah, "should have been" ...!  Surely it's not *"should have was" in those
dialects, is it?

Thanks again!
Reinhard/Ron

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