This page intentionally left blank The Morphology of English Dialects Where dialects differ from Standard English, and why are they so remarkably resilient? This new study argues that commonly used verbs that deviate from Standard English for the most part have a long pedigree Analysing the language use of over 120 dialect speakers, Lieselotte Anderwald demonstrates that not only are speakers justified historically in using these verbs, systematically these non-standard forms actually make more sense By constituting a simpler system, they are generally more economical than their Standard English counterparts Drawing on data collected from the Freiburg English Dialect Corpus (FRED), this innovative and engaging study comes directly from the forefront of this field, and will be of great interest to students and researchers of English language and linguistics, morphology and syntax L I E S E L O T T E A N D E RWA L D University of Kiel, Germany is Professor of English Linguistics at the studies in english language General Editor Merja Kytö (Uppsala University) Editorial Board Bas Aarts (University College London), John Algeo (University of Georgia), Susan Fitzmaurice (Northern Arizona University), Charles F Meyer (University of Massachusetts) The aim of this series is to provide a framework for original studies of English, both present-day and past All books are based securely on empirical research, and represent theoretical and descriptive contributions to our knowledge of national and international varieties of English, both written and spoken The series covers a broad range of topics and approaches, including syntax, phonology, grammar, vocabulary, discourse, pragmatics and sociolinguistics, and is aimed at an international readership Already published in this series: Christian Mair Infi nitival Complement Clauses in English: A Study of Syntax in Discourse Charles F Meyer Apposition on Contemporary English Jan Firbas Functional Sentence Perspective in Written and Spoken Communication Izchak M Schlesinger Cognitive Space and Linguistic Case Katie Wales Personal Pronouns in Present-Day English Laura Wright The Development of Standard English, 1300–1800: Theories, Descriptions, Confl icts Charles F Meyer English Corpus Linguistics: Theory and Practice Stephen J Nagle and Sara L Sanders (eds.) English in the Southern United States Anne Curzan Gender Shifts in the History of English Kingsley Bolton Chinese Englishes Irma Taavitsainen and Päivi Pahta (eds.) Medical and Scientific Writing in Late Medieval English Elizabeth Gordon, Lyle Campbell, Jennifer Hay, Margaret Maclagan, Andrea Sudbury, and Peter Trudgill New Zealand English: Its Origins and Evolution Raymond Hickey (ed.) Legacies of Colonial English Merja Kytö, Mats Rydén, and Erik Smitterberg (eds.) Nineteenth Century English: Stability and Change John Algeo British or American English? A Handbook of Word and Grammar Patterns Christian Mair Twentieth-Century English: History, Variation and Standardization Evelien Keizer The English Noun Phrase: The Nature of Linguistic Categorization Raymond Hickey Irish English: History and Present-Day Forms Günter Rohdenburg and Julia Schlüter (eds.) One Language, Two Grammars?: Differences between British and American English Laurel J Brinton The Comment Clause in English The Morphology of English Dialects Verb Formation in Non-Standard English LI ESELOT TE A N DERWA LD CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521884976 © Lieselotte Anderwald 2009 This publication is in copyright Subject to statutory exception and to the provision of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press First published in print format 2009 ISBN-13 978-0-511-51793-8 eBook (NetLibrary) ISBN-13 978-0-521-88497-6 hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of urls for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate To Lucian, Eva, Julia, and Emma Contents List of figures List of maps List of tables Preface and thanks Acknowledgement of sources page xii xiv xv xvii xviii Introduction 1.1 The past tense – a descriptive approach 1.2 Terminology: strong–weak vs irregular–regular 1.3 Classification of strong verbs 1.3.1 Ablaut series, vowel gradation 1.3.2 Dental suffix 1.3.3 Abstract formal identity 1.4 Standard vs non-standard English 1.5 Materials employed 1 5 12 13 Past tense theories 2.1 Introduction 2.2 Chomsky and Halle (1968) 2.3 Lexical Phonology and Morphology 2.4 Optimality Theory 2.5 Stochastic Optimality Theory 2.6 Psycholinguistic theories 2.7 Connectionist approaches 2.8 Network model 2.9 Natural morphology 2.9.1 Universal morphological naturalness 2.9.2 Language-specific morphological naturalness 2.9.3 Criticism 2.9.4 Compatibility with other models 2.10 Conclusion 17 17 18 21 26 32 33 36 38 40 40 42 45 45 46 vii viii Contents Naturalness and the English past tense system 3.1 General features of the English verb system 3.2 Dominant features 3.3 Standard English verb classes 3.3.1 Verb class 1: PRES ≠ PAST ≠ PPL 3.3.1.1 VPRES ≠ VPAST ≠ VPPL 3.3.1.2 -participle 3.3.2 Verb class 2: PRES ≠ PAST = PPL 3.3.2.1 VPRES ≠ VPAST = VPPL 3.3.2.2 No vowel change 3.3.3 Verb class 3: PRES = PPL ≠ PAST 3.3.4 Verb class 4: PRES = PAST ≠ PPL 3.3.5 Verb class 5: PRES = PAST = PPL 3.3.6 Summary 3.4 The central characteristics 3.5 Non-standard verb paradigms as test cases 3.5.1 New non-standard weak verbs 3.5.2 New non-standard strong verbs 3.5.3 Different non-standard strong verbs 3.5.3.1 Two- instead of three-part paradigms 3.5.3.2 One- instead of two-part paradigms 3.5.4 Summary 49 49 51 51 52 53 53 55 55 57 58 58 59 59 61 61 62 62 63 63 65 65 Sellt and knowed: non-standard weak verbs 4.1 Introduction 4.2 Data from FRED: what to count? 4.3 Regional comparison 4.4 Individual verbs 4.4.1 Northern features 4.4.1.1 Past tense gaed and gi’ed 4.4.1.2 Past tense tellt and sellt 4.4.2 Southern features 4.4.2.1 Past tense runned 4.4.2.2 Past tense gived 4.4.2.3 Past tense knowed, growed, blowed and throwed 4.4.2.4 Historical dialect data 4.4.2.5 Past tense drawed 4.4.2.6 Relative frequencies 4.4.3 Western feature 4.4.3.1 Past tense seed 4.4.4 General features 4.4.4.1 Past tense knowed 4.4.4.2 Past tense catched 4.5 Verb classes 66 66 68 69 70 73 73 73 77 77 78 79 81 82 83 84 84 87 87 89 91