Regional variation of pronunciation in the south-west of England

sae - ‘so’

c) The adverbs of degree:

much

e.g. How are you today? - Not much, thank you.

‘much’ is also used in the meaning of ‘wonderfully’

e.g. It is much you boys can’t let alone they there ducks.

It was much he hadn’t a been a killed.

rising

‘rising’ is often used in the meaning of ‘nearly’

e.g. How old is the boy? - He’s rising five.

- ‘fell’, ‘unco’, ‘gey’, ‘huge’, ‘fu’, ‘rael’ are used in the meaning of

‘very’.

- ower, owre [aur] - ‘too’

- maist - ‘nearly’

- clean - ‘at all’

- that - ‘so’

- feckly - ‘in many cases’

- freely - ‘fully’

- naarhan, nighhan - ‘nearly’

- han, fair - ‘at all’

d) Adverbs of time:

whan, fan - ‘when’

belive, belyve - ‘now’

yinst - ‘at once’

neist - ‘then’

fernyear - ‘last year’

afore (= before)

e.g. Us can wait avore you be ready, sir.

next - ‘in some time’

e.g. next day = the day after tomorrow

while = till, if

e.g. You’ll never make any progress while you listen to me.

You have to wait while Saturday.

3.8 Transitivity and intransivity in the dialects of South-West

England.

One of the most important aspects of studying south-western English is

dialect syntax. So, the article by Jean-Marc Gachelin can give us much

information about transitivity and intransitivity in the dialects of South-

West England.

“Wakelin has pointed out that ‘syntax is an unwieldy subject which

dialectologists have fought shy of’. This brushing aside of dialect syntax

is regrettable because the study of grammatical variation can shed light on

the workings of any language, and thereby enrich general linguistics. The

present chapter deals with an area of dialect syntax - transitivity in

south-west of England dialects - and attempts to characterize and explain,

synchronically and diachronically, its salient features.

We prefer the moderation of Kilby, who simply admits that the notion

of direct object (DO) ‘is not at all transparent in its usage’. The

problem, therefore, should be not so much to discard but rather to improve

our notions of transitivity and intransitivity. In this regard, the

dialects of South-west England are important and interesting.

1. A description of transitivity and intransitivity in the dialects of

South-west England.

When compared with the corresponding standard language, any

geographical variety may be characterized by three possibilities:

(a) identity; (b) archaism (due to slower evolution); and (c)

innovation. Interestingly enough, it is not uncommon in syntax for (b) and

(c) to combine if a given dialect draws extensively on a secondary aspect

of an older usage. This is true of two features which are highly

characteristic of the South-west and completely absent in contemporary

Standard English.

1.1 Infinitive + y

One of these characteristics is mentioned by Wakelin, the optional

addition of the -y ending to the infinitive of any real intransitive verb

or any transitive verb not followed by a DO, namely object-deleting verbs

(ODVs) and ergatives. The use of this ending is not highlighted in the

Survey of English Dialects (SED, Orton and Wakelin). It is only indirectly,

when reading about relative pronouns, that we come upon There iddn (=

isn’t) many (who) can sheary now, recorded in Devon (Orton and Wakelin).

However, Widen gives the following examples heard in Dorset: farmy,

flickery, hoopy (‘to call’), hidy, milky, panky (‘to pant’), rooty (talking

of a pig), whiny. Three of these verbs are strictly intransitive (ftickery,

panky, whiny), the others being ODVs. Wright also mentions this

characteristic, chiefly in connection with Devon, Somerset and Dorset.

In the last century, Barnes made use of the -y ending in his Dorset

poems, both when the infinitive appears after to:

reдky = ‘rake’

skimmy

drashy = ‘thresh’

reely

and after a modal (as in the example from the SED):

Mid (= may) happy housen smoky round/The church.

The cat veil zick an’ woulden mousy.

But infin.+y can also be found after do (auxiliary), which in South-

west dialects is more than a more ‘signal of verbality’, serving as a tense-

marker as well as a person-marker (do everywhere except for dost, 2nd pers.

sing.). Instead of being emphatic, this do can express the progressive

aspect or more often the durative-habitual (= imperfective) aspect, exactly

like the imperfect of Romance languages. Here are a few examples culled

from Barnes’s poems:

Our merry sheдpes did jumpy.

When I do pitchy, ‘tis my pride (meaning of the verb, cf pitch-fork).

How gaя the paths be where we do strolly.

Besides ODVs and intransitive verbs, there is also an ergative:

doors did slammy.

In the imperative, infin. -y only appears with a negative:

don’t sobby!

The optional use of the -y ending is an advantage in dialect poetry

for metre or rhyme:

Vor thine wull peck, an’ mine wull grubby (rhyming with snubby)

And this ending probably accounts for a phonetic peculiarity of South-west

dialects, namely the apocope of to arguy (the former dialect pronunciation

of to argue), to carry and to empty, reduced to to arg, to car and to empt.

In the grammatical part of his Glossary of the Dorset Dialect, Barnes

insists on the aspectual connection between do and infin.+y:

“Belonging to this use of the free infinitive y-ended verbs, is

another kindred one, the showing of a repetition or habit of doing as ‘How

the dog do jumpy’, i-e keep jumping. ‘The child do like to whippy’, amuse

himself with whipping. ‘Idle chap, he’ll do nothen but vishy, (spend his

time in fishing), if you do leвve en alwone’. ‘He do markety’, he usually

attends market.”

Barnes also quotes a work by Jennings in which this South-west feature

was also described:

“Another peculiarity is that of attaching to many of the common verbs

in the infinitive mode as well as to some other parts of different

conjugations, the letter -y. Thus it is very common to say ‘I can’t sewy’,

I can’t nursy’, ‘he can’t reapy’, ‘he can’t sawy’, as well as ‘to sewy, to

nursy, to reapy, to sawy’, etc; but never, I think, without an auxiliary

verb, or the sign of the infinitive to.”

Barnes claimed, too, that the collocation of infin. +y and the DO was

unthinkable: ‘We may say, “Can ye zewy?” but never “Wull ye zewy up theдse

zкam?” “Wull ye zew up theдse zкam” would be good Dorset.”

Elworthy also mentions the opposition heard in Somerset between I do

dig the garden and Every day, I do diggy for three hours (quoted by

Jespersen and by Rogers). Concerning the so-called ‘free infinitive’,

Wiltshire-born Rogers comments that ‘it is little heard now, but was common

in the last century’, which tallies with the lack of examples in the SED.

(This point is also confirmed by Itialainen) Rogers is quite surprised to

read of a science-fiction play (BBC, 15 March 1978) entitled ‘Stargazy in

Zummerland’, describing a future world in which the population was divided

between industrial and agricultural workers, the latter probably using some

form of south-western speech, following a time-honoured stage tradition

already perceptible in King Lear (disguised as a rustic, Edgar speaks broad

Somerset).

To sum up, after to, do (auxiliary), or a modal, the formula of the

‘free infinitive’ is

intr. V > infin. + -y/0

where ‘intr.’ implies genuine intransitives, ODVs and even ergatives. As a

dialect-marker, -y is now on the wane, being gradually replaced by 0 due to

contact with Standard English.

1.2 Of + DO

The other typical feature of south-western dialects is not mentioned

by Wakelin, although it stands out much more clearly in the SED data. This

is the optional use of o’/ov (occasionally on) between a transitive verb

and its DO. Here are some of the many examples. Stripping the feathers off

a dead chicken (Orton and Wakelin) is called:

pickin/pluckin ov it (Brk-loc. 3);

trippin o’ en (= it) (D-loc. 6);

pickin o’ en (Do-loc. 3);

pluckin(g) on en - (W-loc. 9; Sx-loc. 2).

Catching fish, especially trout, with one’s hand (Orton and Wakelin)

is called:

ticklin o’/ov em (= them) (So-loc. 13; W-loc. 2, 8; D-loc. 2, 7, 8; Do-

loc. 2-5; Ha-loc. 4);

gropin o’/ov em (D-loc. 4, 6);

ticklin on em (W-loc. 3, 4; Ha-loc. 6; Sx-loc. 3);

tickle o’ em (Do-loc. l) (note the absence of -in(g)).

The confusion between of and on is frequent in dialects, but although

on may occur where of is expected, the reverse is impossible. The

occasional use of on instead of of is therefore unimportant. What really

matters is the occurrence of of, o’ or ov between a transitive verb and the

DO. The presence of the -in(g) ending should also attract our attention: it

occurs in all the examples except tickle o’ em, which is exceptional since,

when the SED informants used an infinitive in their answers, their syntax

was usually identical with that of Standard English, ie without of

occurring before the DO: glad to see you, (he wants to) hide it (Orton and

Wakelin).

Following Jespersen, Lyons makes a distinction between real

transitives (/ hit you: action > goal) and verbs which are only

syntactically transitives (/ hear you: goal < action). It is a pity that

the way informants were asked questions for the SED (‘What do we do with

them? - Our eyes/ears’) does not enable us to treat the transitive verbs

see Orton and Wakelin and hear (Orton and Wakelin) other than as ODVs.

The use of of as an operator between a transitive verb and its DO was

strangely enough never described by Barnes, and is casually dismissed as an

‘otiose of’ by the authors of the SED, even though nothing can really be

‘otiose’ in any language system. Rogers points out that ‘Much more widely

found formerly, it is now confined to sentences where the pronouns en, it

and em are the objects.’ This is obvious in the SED materials, as,

incidentally, it is in these lines by Barnes:

To work all day a-meдken haя/Or pitchen o’t.

Nevertheless, even if his usage is in conformity with present syntax,

it is important to add that, when Barnes was alive, o/ov could precede any

DO (a-meдken ov haя would equally have been possible). What should also be

noted in his poetry is the extremely rare occurrence of o’/ov after a

transitive verb with no -en (= -ing) ending, which, as we just saw, is

still very rare in modern speech:

Zoo I don’t mind o’ leдven it to-morrow.

Zoo I don’t mind o’ leдven o’t to-morrow.

The second line shows a twofold occurrence of o’ after two transitive

verbs, one with and one without -en.

This -en ending can be a marker of a verbal noun, a gerund or a

present participle (as part of a progressive aspect form or on its own),

and o’ may follow in each case.

VERBAL NOUN

My own a-decken ov my own (‘my own way of dressing my darling’).

This is the same usage as in Standard English he doesn’t like my

driving of his car.

GERUND

That wer vor hetten o’n (‘that was for hitting him’).

. . . little chance/O’ catchen o’n.

I be never the better vor zee-en o’ you.

The addition of o’ to a gerund is optional: Vor grinden any corn vor

bread is similar to Standard English.

PROGRESSIVE ASPECT

As I wer readen ov a stwone (about a headstone).

Rogers gives two examples of the progressive aspect:

I be stackin’ on ‘em up.

I were a-peeling of the potatoes (with a different spelling).

PRESENT PARTICIPLE ON ITS OWN

To vind me stannen in the cwold, / A-keepen up o’ Chris’mas.

After any present participle, the use of o’ is also optional:

Where vo’k be out a-meдken haя.

The general formula is thus:

trans. V > V + o’/0

which can also be read as

MV (main verb) > trans. V + o’/0 + DO.

Here, o’ stands for o’ (the most common form), ov and even on. In modem

usage, the DO, which could be a noun or noun phrase in Barnes’s day and

age, appears from the SED materials to be restricted to personal pronouns.

For modern dialects, the formula thus reads:

MV > trans. V + o’/0 + pers. pron.

The o’ is here a transitivity operator which, exactly like an

accusative ending in a language with case declensions, disappears in the

passive. Consequently, the phenomenon under discussion here has to be

distinguished from that of prepositional verbs, which require the retention

of the preposition in the passive:

We have thought of all the possible snags. >

All the possible snags have been thought of.

The use of o’ as a transitivity operator in active declaratives is also

optional, which represents another basic difference from prepositional

verbs.

Exactly the same opposition, interestingly enough, applies in south-

western dialects also:

[1] He is (a-) eдten o’ ceдkes > What is he (a-) eдten?

[2] He is (a-) dreдmen o’ceдkes > What is he (a-) dreдmen ov?

What remains a preposition in [1] and [2] works as the link between a

transitive verb and its DO. The compulsory deletion of the operator o’ in

questions relating to the DO demonstrates the importance here of the word

order (V + o’ + DO), as does also the similar triggering of deletion by

passives.

Though now used in a more restricted way, ie before personal pronouns

only, this syntactic feature is better preserved in the modern dialects

than the

-y ending of intransitive verbs, but, in so far as it is only optional, it

is easy to detect the growing influence of Standard English.

2. Diachrony as an explanation of these features.

Although the above description has not been purely synchronic, since

it cites differences in usage between the nineteenth and twentieth

centuries, it is actually only by looking back at even earlier stages of

the language that we can gain any clear insights into why the dialects have

developed in this way.

Both Widen and Wakelin remind us that the originally strictly

morphological -y ending has since developed into a syntactic feature. It is

a survival of the Middle English infinitive ending -ie(n), traceable to the

-ian suffix of the second class of Old English weak verbs (OE milcian > ME

milkie(n) > south-west dial. milky). Subsequently, -y has been analogically

extended to other types of verbs in south-west dialects under certain

syntactic conditions: in the absence of any DO, through sheer impossibility

(intransitive verb) or due to the speaker’s choice (ODV or ergative). The

only survival of medieval usage is the impossibility of a verb form like

milky being anything other than an infinitive. Note that this cannot be

labelled an archaism, since the standard language has never demonstrated

this particular syntactic specialization.

So far no explanation seems to have been advanced for the origin of

‘otiose of’, and yet it is fairly easy to resort to diachrony in order to

explain this syntactic feature. Let us start, however, with contemporary

Standard English:

[3] They sat, singing a shanty. (present participle on its own)

[4] They are singing a shanty. (progressive aspect)

[5] I like them/their singing a shanty. (gerund)

[6] I like their singing of a shanty. (verbal noun)

Here [5] and [6] are considered nominalizations from a synchronic point of

view. As far as [4] is concerned, Barnes reminds his readers that the OE

nominalization ic waes on hunlunge (‘I was in the process of hunting’, cf

Aelfric’s Colloquim: fui in. venatione) is the source of modern / was

hunting, via an older structure I was (a-) hunting which is preserved in

many dialects, the optional verbal prefix a- being what remains of the

preposition on.

The nominal nature of V-ing is still well established in the verbal

noun (with the use of of in particular), and it is here that the starting-

point of a chain reaction lies. Hybrid structures (verbal nouns/gerunds)

appeared as early as Middle English, as in

bi puttyng forth of whom so it were (1386 Petition of Mercers)

and similar gerunds followed by of were still a possibility in Elizabethan

English:

Rend not my heart for naming of my Christ (Marlowe, Doctor Faustus)

together with verbal nouns not followed by any of:

... as the putting him clean out of his humour (B. Jonson, Every Man

out of his Humour).

Having been extended from the verbal noun to the gerund, of also

eventually spread to the progressive aspect in the sixteenth and

seventeenth centuries, at a time when the V-ing + of sequence became very

widespread in Standard English:

Are you crossing of yourself? (Marlowe, Doctor Faustus).

He is hearing of a cause (Shakespeare, Measure for Measure).

She is taking of her last farewell (Bunyan, The Pilgim’s Progress).

However, what is definitely an archaism in Standard English has been

preserved in south-western dialects, which have gone even further and also

added an optional o’ to the present participle used on its own (ie other

than in the progressive aspect). Moreover, there is even a tendency, as we

have seen, to use o’ after a transitive verb without the -en (= -ing)

ending. This tendency, which remains slight, represents the ultimate point

of a chain reaction that can be portrayed as follows:

Use of o’ in the environment following:

(A) (B) (C)

(D)

verbal noun > gerund > be + V-ing > pres. part. > V

V-ing

(A) evolution from Middle English to the Renaissance;

(B) evolution typical of English in the sixteenth and seventeenth

centuries;

(C) evolution typical of south-western dialects;

(D) marginal tendency in south-western dialects.

The dialect usage is more than a mere syntactic archaism: not only

have the south-western dialects preserved stages (A) and (B); they are also

highly innovative in stages (C) and (D).” (№18, p.218)

4. Vocabulary.

Devonshire (Dev)

Somersetshire (Som)

Wiltshire (Wil)

Cornwall (Cor)

A

Abroad - adj растерянный, незнающий, как поступить; попавший впросак,

совершивший ошибку; разваренный, расплавленный (о пище): The potatoes are

abroad. The sugar is gone abroad.

Addle, Udall, Odal (Dev) - v зарабатывать, сберегать, откладывать,

экономить; (о растениях) расти, расцветать [gu. oрla, возвр. oрlask -

приобретать (имущество), oрal - имущество]

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