LL-L "Grammar" 2010.10.17 (04) [EN]

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L O W L A N D S - L - 17 October 2010 - Volume 04
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From: jmtait <jmtait at wirhoose.co.uk>

Subject: Language Simplification and Progression.



I wondered what other Lowlanders would think of the view of language
simplification and progression in this extract from 'Scotspeak - A Guide to
the Pronunciation of Modern Urban Scots' by Christine Robinson and Carol Ann
Crawford. (Published by the Scots Language Resource Centre.)

Scotspeak, P. 29

As anyone who has even learned a foreign language knows, strong verbs, the
ones that change their vowels to make past tense or past participle, are
very difficult to learn. English and Scots have both been making themselves
easier over the years. Some strong verbs have become weak like Old English
'smeocan' (to smoke). It used to have 'hit smeicth' (it smokes), 'hit smeac'
(it smoked), 'hie smucon' (they smoked) and the past participle was
'smocen'. Thank goodness English is getting easier!

If we compare the Scots past tense and past participle of 'gi(v)e', which
for many speakers are both gied, with the English gave and given, we can see
that, in this instance, Scots is just a but further down the road of
simplification.

'I gied him the ticket.' (Nan)

What Nan is doing in

'A never telt big John'

is making a weak verb out of tell. Occasionally Scots lags behind. For
example, many Scots still use 'gotten' as the past participle of get.

There is a similar process in operation when Charlie says:

'You done well there'

and

'I've actually did a little sales myself.'

He wants the past tense and the past participle to be the same - he just
hasn't quite settled on which form to choose. And this is how language
change often works. There may be a period of choice before one form becomes
dominant. It is probably better to think of these anomalies as 'changes in
progress' rather than bad grammar.



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