Needs specimen

[Arnold Zwicky]

jane clark re NEED/WANT V-pastprt: "I spent some time in central
Illinois although I no longer live there, and I have never heard
this except by extremely low class people.  You really shouldn't
say it is common."

in central ohio, it is indeed frequent, and many locals do not use
NEED/WANT V-presprt.  for a while i was collecting examples from
headlines, captions, advertisements, etc. in the Columbus Dispatch.
IRIS BEDS NEED DRAINED (in the sunday gardening section), that
sort of thing.  locals know that some other people say something
different, but they often don't discover that their variant is
stigmatized until they travel away from the area

my partner, the son of a french teacher and a mathematics
professor, who grew up mostly around kenyon college, uses this
construction (and didn't discover that others thought it was
ridiculous until he went to haverford college).  for that matter,
my daughter, who has very few dialect characteristics from the
area where she spent the first 24 years of her life, uses the
construction too.  (presumably, she didn't learn that it *was*
a regional feature until so late that it was pretty much
automatic.)  i notice it every time, but if she's not going
to change after 11 years in northern california, she's
probably not going to change now.  it has not been an impediment
to success in life.

arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)