"Gwine"

[Beverly Flanigan]

And don't forget "roil" --> "rile," which is in fact the more common
pronunciation for most of us today (except for the NY Times, which insists
on spelling it "roil").

At 12:57 PM 2/28/2005, you wrote:
>"Gwine" (or phonemically spelled "gwain", but pronunced [gwaIn] in many
>dialects) is common in the Ellis (1889) and Survey of English Dialects
>(1962-69) data, with a Southwestern English distribution.  Not only did many
>English Southwesterners come to settle in the American South (esp. South
>Carolina and the Caribbean), but a lot of slave ships operated out of
>Southwestern-speaking ports (Bristol, Southampton, Portsmouth, Plymouth).
>Either way--and whether you buy the Anglicist or Creolist hypotheses for the
>genesis of AAVE, and "gwine" is usual in Gullah and Caribbean Creoles (if
>not in African ones)--it could have been part of the English lexifier
>dialect of Creoles, AND a part of early (White) Settler English quite
>easily.
>Same with the merger of LOIN/LINE under the latter, which is not only well
>attested in 17c/18c Standard varieties, but is found in a wide variety of
>English dialects, including some Southwestern ones (and Scots also).  In
>fact, quite a few AAVE and Southern features are found in SW English
>generally--and this is coming from someone who mostly buys the Creolist
>hypothesis, so I tend to see SW English as a lexifier/donor dialect, later
>reinforcing these features on these shores.
>
>Yours,
>Paul Johnston
>Western Michigan University