dropping -ed in adjectives

[Laurence Horn]

On May 16, 2012, at 4:06 PM, Lisa Galvin wrote:

> It's not just [st] clusters though. I have noticed it in Hawaii all over the place, in writing, and always with -ed adjectives; e.g. "shave ice".
>                                                   Lisa GalvinSeattle USA
>

Right, I was over-hastily conflating two shifts, one a phonological simplification (the -[st] one, that doesn't apply just to participial adjectives) and the other a morphological reanalysis ("shave ice", since it occurs before a vowel, doesn't participate in that phonological cluster simplification or even an extension of it).  I assume that a lot of the "shave ice" speakers/writers wouldn't say/write "I shave a week ago" or "…when I've shave or showered", with a true past tense or past participle.  Presumably, as Amy et al. were suggesting, the adjectival forms (whether "ice tea" or "not prejudice/not bias against other races" or "shave ice") simply don't include the -ed morpheme for the relevant speakers.  Mea culpa.

LH

>> Date: Wed, 16 May 2012 15:57:53 -0400
>> From: laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
>> Subject: Re: dropping -ed in adjectives
>> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>>
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
>> Subject:      Re: dropping -ed in adjectives
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> Might this not be phonological in origin, simplifying -[st] clusters to -[s], rather than applying to (participial) adjectives across the board?  If the same people say "he pass' me on the street las' week" or "in times pas'", it's not really a fact about adjectives as such.  Of course, if people are *writing" "He ain't prejudice", that's a further step, recalling our old threads on "ice tea/coffee"--and of course "ice cream", where the -ed dropping has become universal.
>>
>> LH
>>
>>
>> On May 16, 2012, at 2:49 PM, Paul Johnston wrote:
>>
>>> My students, whether hip hop or country fans or not, from Michigan, do this all the time.
>>>
>>> Paul Johnston
>>> On May 16, 2012, at 1:55 PM, Amy West wrote:
>>>
>>>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
>>>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>>> Poster:       Amy West <medievalist at W-STS.COM>
>>>> Subject:      dropping -ed in adjectives
>>>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>>
>>>> A follow-up . . .
>>>>
>>>> One of my students who consistently uses "bias" for "biased" is a young
>>>> female white Massachusetts native and a country music fan. In checking
>>>> out one of her sources here are lyrics from a Toby Keith song wherein he
>>>> uses "prejudice" where SE would use "prejudiced":
>>>>
>>>> Breaks his heart seein' foreign cars
>>>>
>>>> filled with fuel that isn't ours
>>>>
>>>> and wearin' cotton we didn't grow....
>>>>
>>>> He ain't prejudice.
>>>>
>>>> He's just -- made in America.
>>>>
>>>> Downes, Lawrence. "Toby Keith's American Dream." /New York Times/ 10
>>>> Oct. 2011: A22(L). /Gale Biography In Context/. Web. 16 May 2012.
>>>>
>>>> So . . . I'm beginning to think that I'm just noticing a dialectal
>>>> variant wherein the -ed is being dropped from adjectives. Maybe it's
>>>> being picked up from Southern and AAVE dialects via country music and
>>>> hip-hop?
>>>>
>>>> Sorry if this is a) basic and b) obvious.
>>>>
>>>> ---Amy West
>>>>
>>>> (And the irony is that she wrote her paper on Southern dialect in
>>>> country music. . .) (And the idea of New England country music fans is
>>>> just a difficult one for me to wrap my preconceptions around.)
>>>>
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