a dialect using just participle?

[Michael H Covarrubias]

It looks like copula deletion.  Labov claimed this feature was an important
community marker of Black English Vernacular.

Quoting Amy West <medievalist at W-STS.COM>:
> Folks,
>
> I read this list to make myself more informed and knowledgeable.
>
> Last semester I had a student in my EN 101 class who consistently
> wrote what I thought were fragments -- using the present participle
> by itself as the verb for a sentence.
>
> Now, finally, I'm reading the handbook (Longman Writer's Companion)
> and in their discussion of the progressive & perfect tenses they
> identify as a dialect example this:
>
> The interview starting five minutes late.
> (They analyze it as omitting _is_ in _is starting_.)
>
> I've never run across this dialectical variant. Now I feel really
> stupid for thinking that my student was stupid.
>
> Have other folks seen this construction?
>
> ---Amy West
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>


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   English Language & Linguistics
   Purdue University
   mcovarru at purdue.edu

   web.ics.purdue.edu/~mcovarru
  <http://wishydig.blogspot.com>

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org