Grammatical mistakes

[Paul B. Gallagher]

anne marie devlin wrote:

> As a linguist and someone working in the area of
> sociolinguistics/pragmatics, I take offence at naming linguistic
> variation as 'atrocious grammar'.  The terms mentioned are variables.
> The variables you mentioned are also common in Hiberno-English and
> esp northern Hiberno-English.  The variables are often systematic and
> can be found in certain linguistic or social environments. Language
> is dynamic and has always undergone (or should I say underwent?)
> change.  I recommend Walker's book on variation as a guide to how and
> why this happens. As for 'mistakes' in Russian, what about poyekhu as
> an imperative or utterances such as 'kak t'ya zvat'?' or 'ya eto ne
> slikhal'?

As a pragmatist, you are surely aware that some forms enjoy higher or 
lower status, and a particular speaker's use of low-status forms tells 
the listener that the speaker is either low-class or speaking casually. 
Educated speakers like ourselves are perfectly capable of using forms 
like "I seen dat" or "Как тья звать?" in appropriate contexts. I've been 
there, done that many times, and I consider myself a better speaker of 
both languages for having those things in my repertoire.

But it's perfectly natural and normal for speakers of these languages to 
deprecate the deprecated forms. To me, the feigned serenity of 
linguistic researchers is necessary to avoid biasing the subjects, but 
outside of that context it strikes me as artificial. I've also heard 
psychologists say some pretty critical things about their (anonymous) 
patients that they would never say to their faces.

Cathy Ratcliff wrote:

> Actually, "I seen it" and "I done it" are Scots language, and I think
> "we wis here" is too. I'm not sure about "he has came", but it might
> be. Perhaps some people in the Columbus area are of Scottish origin?
>
> See this if you're interested: <http://www.scotslanguage.com/>

There's a strong Scots/Irish substratum through much of American 
English, especially in Appalachia, and Columbus is near the western edge 
of that region. When I was at OSU, I learned that the locals are fond of 
mocking the substandard speech patterns of "hill-jacks," people from 
south and east of there, esp. WV and KY. But when they weren't paying 
attention, they slipped into most of those patterns themselves. The one 
grammatical form that really struck me as an expat New Yorker was 
"[something] needs done," where "done" stands for any transitive verb: 
"the floor needs swept"; "my car needs warshed," etc.

-- 
War doesn't determine who's right, just who's left.
--
Paul B. Gallagher
pbg translations, inc.
"Russian Translations That Read Like Originals"
http://pbg-translations.com

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