Fwd: language attitudes

[Beverly Flanigan]

Since we're talking about British vs. American English again, I'd like to
return to the topic of grammar and DO-aux vs. 'got' in BritEng, raised by
Nancy Elliott and responded to by Aaron Drews.  I asked my graduate student
from London (raised very prescriptively and educated in private schools),
and here's part of our exchange (snipping out the school names issue, which
was resolved satisfactorily and confirmed by Lorraine).  In a nutshell, she
agrees that DO is used in BritEng (as we've known since Shakespeare) but is
(perhaps) less common than fronted HAVE; but HAVE GOT is also common and
not pejorative:

>Date: Thu, 27 Jan 2000 19:32:56 -0800 (PST)
>From: Lorraine Rice <ricelnm at yahoo.com>
>Subject: Re: Fwd: Re: public school; language attitudes
>To: Beverly Flanigan <flanigan at oak.cats.ohiou.edu>
>
>For my part, 'I haven't got any' is perfectly standard
>-- what was the problem with that? It's my dialect, at
>any rate! I would be more inclined to use that than
>the do-aux construction, as I mentioned before. (By
>the way, I don't like the dig at the 'colonialist'
>attitudes - slightly too aggressive perhaps?) OK,
>that's it for now. Ta, Lorraine.
>
>--- Beverly Flanigan <flanigan at oak.cats.ohiou.edu>
>wrote:
>> Lorraine,
>> Thanks for your [earlier] reply!  Aaron Drews seems to agree with
>> you [on school terms].  But I think he's wrong in implying that "I don't
got any"
>> is normal (if nonstandard) Am Eng; it's used by little kids but
>> not by adults (vs. "I don't got none" in AAVE).  And I doubt that "Have you
>> got any" would bother British speakers at all, do you?  "Got" is used in
Brit Eng
>> also, though "I've got" = present in AmEng but either present or present
perfect in BritEng
>> (vs. "I've gotten" in AmEng).
>>
>> >Date: Thu, 27 Jan 2000 16:20:55 +0000
>> >From: "Aaron E. Drews" <aaron at LING.ED.AC.UK>
>> >Subject: Re: public school; language attitudes
>> >Sender: American Dialect Society
>> <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> >X-Sender: aaron at babel
>> >To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>> >Reply-to: "Aaron E. Drews" <aaron at ling.ed.ac.uk>
>> >X-Authentication-warning: babel.ling.ed.ac.uk:
>> aaron owned process doing -bs
>> >
>> >On Thu, 27 Jan 2000, Nancy Elliott wrote:
>> >
>> >}2. What do British English speakers think when
>> they hear someone use
>> >}American syntax in "Do you have any....?" and "I
>> don't have any..."?
>> >
>> >I don't think this formation is specific to
>> American.  "Have you any" or
>> >"I haven't any" isn't all that common, although I'm
>> not sure what is
>> >prescribed at the public schools.  "I haven't any"
>> might have slightly
>> >more currency, but still isn't widely used any
>> more, at least in my
>> >interaction.  WRT negatives, a common alternative
>> is "he's not been able
>> >to do it" as opposed to "he hasn't been able to do
>> it", but I think that
>> >might be Scots influence on Scottish Standard
>> English.  But in the UK as a
>> >whole, DO-support is alive and well with lexical
>> "have" for negatives and
>> >interrogatives.
>> >
>> >Now, if the phrase were "do you got any" or "I
>> don't got any", then the
>> >attitude is a slightly disdainful "oh, the horrors
>> of colonial speech".
>> >This is due more to the choice of "got" (and the
>> subsequent flap) than the
>> >actual syntactic construction.  The disdain ranges
>> from very mild, noting
>> >that it is an Americanism, too strong for those
>> with prescriptivist
>> >tendencies that have no clue about linguistics or
>> language change, and
>> >they probably have a disrespect for all things that
>> aren't English (as in,
>> >from England, rather than the language).
>> >
> >--Aaron
______________________________________________________________________

Beverly Olson Flanigan
Department of Linguistics
Ohio University
Athens, OH  45701
Phone: (740) 593-4568
Fax: (740) 593-2967