swang

[Dennis Preston]

Rule #1 - Nobody likes for their participles and pasts to be different.

Rule #2 - It's hard to predict whether the leveling will go in the
direction of the participle or the past (or in another).

A recent survey of well-educated (students at my university!)
twenty-some-odds shows much more extensive leveling (even in a
written test) than one might have expected. Here are the items we
tested, with their conservative participles:

run (has run)           walk (has walked)
eat (has eaten)         do (has done)
come (has come)         cut (has cut)
go (has gone)           broke (has broken)
see (has seen)          cook (has cooked)

41% of our respondents chose participial ran; 22% chose participial
came. We tested for but did not look at the preterites. We will.

The past swang reported here would pattern with the popular
drink-drank-dank (reported on many years ago by Harold Allen in AS),
but with leveling in the direction of the past. Therefore, although
the form swang may appear to be an innovation, there is precedent in
the vocalic pattern, a factor well-studied by Joan Bybee in recent
years in a number of publications.

Let's hope for the time when no pasts and participles will have a
different shape! Remember, the major complaint against "nonstandards"
is that they are "illogical."

dInIs (who hopes y'all haved a good day yesterday)

PS: Allen concluded that one driving force in the leveling of
drink-drank-drunk in the drank direction was the alcohol
interpretation of the form drunk.



>---------------------- Information from the mail header
>-----------------------
>Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>Poster:       James Harbeck <jharbeck at SYMPATICO.CA>
>Subject:      swang
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>Apropos of a recent topic: This morning, on the bus, I overheard some
>teens talking and one guy said "I would have just swang" -- the
>context made it clear that he was forming a past for the verb "swing"
>and referring to swinging his fist at someone. This was a white
>(Jewish, as I later learned) Canadian sixteen-year-old (he also
>mentioned his age at one point in their conversation). It's
>interesting to me in that even going with swing-swang-swung, you
>would expect "swung" in that position. I'm not used to hearing
>"swang" hereabouts (not that I hang with teens!), so I don't know if
>this is evidence of any sort of real trend or current usage. But toss
>it on the stack.
>
>James Harbeck.
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org


--
Dennis R. Preston
University Distinguished Professor
Department of English
Morrill Hall 15-C
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48864 USA

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