Unit 11

11. Dialect Grammar -- the Old and New

(Trudgill, Dialects: 1994, pp. 51-54)

Many grammatical differences between English dialects are due to the fact that changes that have taken place in some dialects have not taken place in others. In some respects Standard English is more innovative than other dialects, in others more conservative.

Some British English verb forms
burnt dreamt learnt leant
smelt spilt spoilt knelt

Some American English verb forms
burned dreamed learned leaned
smelled spilled spoiled kneeled

Linguistic change:

(Trudgill, Dialects: 1994, pp. 51-52)
How do different dialects get to have different grammatical structures? The short answer to this is that, just as with accent differences, differences are the result of LINGUISTIC CHANGE. We have to admit that we don't really know why languages change, but we know that all human languages do change, and that they change in different ways in different places and at different times. If Standard English has grammatical differences from the other, nonstandard dialects of English, this must be either because Standard English has gone through changes that the other dialects haven't gone through, or vice versa.

It would not be true to say that Standard English is more conservative than the nonstandard dialects. At some points it is clearly innovative. Most dialects of English, for example, continue to allow multiple negation ('double negatives') to occur in sentences, like earlier stages of the English language. Standard English, on the other hand, has lost the ability to do this, so that:
I couldn't see none nowhere.
is grammatical in most dialects of English, but isn't grammatical in Standard English, which would have instead the newer form
I couldn't see any anywhere.

Regularisation

Regular verb:
(Trudgill, Dialects: 1994, p. 52)
In other cases, though, it is easy to see that it is the nonstandard dialects that are leading the way in linguistic change and that it is Standard English which is conservative. For example, one of the most important ways in which grammar can change is REGULARISATION. This means getting rid of irregularities in favour of patterns that are more regular and more common in the language. For instance, most verbs in the English language are RECULAR VERBS which have a pattern of present- and past-tense forms which, in Standard English is like this:
   Present tense   Past tense   Past participle
   I love          I loved      I have loved
   I walk          I walked     I have walked
The pattern in nonstandard dialects is the same or very similar. To form the past tense from the present tense, -ed or -d is added to the stem of the verb. The past participle -- the part of the verb which goes together with have to produce perfect verb forms -- is identical to the past-tense forms.

Irregular verb:

(Trudgill, Dialects: 1994, pp. 52-53)
Many very common verbs in English, however, are so-called IRREGULAR VERBS which differ from this regular pattern in a number of ways. First, the -ed ending isn't used; often, a change of vowel is used instead. Second, the past-tense form is often not identical to the past participle, so most of these verbs have three main forms rather than two. For example:
    Present tense   Past tense   Past participle
    ring	    rang         rung
    see	            saw	         seen
    come	    came	 come
    write	    wrote	 written
    know            knew	 known
Some are even more irregular than this:
    Present tense   Past tense	 Past participle
    go	            went	 gone
    am	            was	         been
Over the centuries, a number of originally irregular verbs in English have become regular. It often happens during linguistic change that irregularities are levelled out in this way. After all, as you may know from learning a foreign language, irregular forms are much harder to learn and remember than regular ones. For instance, the forms of the verb to help used to be:
    Present tense   Past tense	 Past participle
    help            holp	 holpen
Now they are:
    Present tense   Past tense	 Past participle
    help	    helped	 helped
This process of regularisation has often gone further in nonstandard dialects than in Standard English. Regularisation can take two forms. First, the number of forms involved can be reduced from three to two. We've already seen one example of this in Unit 10, in the case of the full lexical verb to do:
Standard English:	do	did	have done
Nonstandard English:	do	done	have done
Second, irregular verbs may become completely,regular:
Standard English:       draw    drew     have drawn
Nonstandard English:    draw    drawed   have drawed
One day, Standard English may catch up with the other dialects in changing at least some verb forms in the same sort of way.

EXERCISES
(Trudgill, Dialects: 1994, pp. 53-54)
11.1 The following are irregular verbs with three major forms in Standard English. What are their past-tense and past-participle forms in the nonstandard dialect of your own area or the nonstandard dialect you are otherwise most familiar with? [ANSWER]
to see      to write    to fly    to take     
to drive    to draw     to give   to swim     
to sing     to bite                           
11.2 In what way can the nonstandard dialect pronouns shown below be said to be more regular than their Standard English counterparts? [ANSWER]
Nonstandard	        Standard
I hurt myself.	        I hurt myself.
You hurt yourself.	You hurt yourself.
He hurt himself.	He hurt himself.
She hurt herself.	She hurt herself.
We hurt ourselves.	We hurt ourselves.
You hurt yourselves.	You hurt yourselves.
They hurt theirselves.	They hurt themselves.
11.3 In what respect can the dialects of East Anglia and Berkshire be said to be more regular than Standard English (see Unit 9)? [ANSWER]

11.4 If these past-tense verb forms were to be regularised, what would the new regular forms be? [ANSWER]
went, saw, knew, left, rode, wrote, told, gave, bought, brought

11.5 List some grammatical points where the local dialect of your region or regions is more regular than Standard English. You might like to consider the same grammatical points mentioned in connection with Exercise 10.7.

11.6 We have seen in this unit that grammatical differences between dialects are the results of changes in the language. Consider these examples from the English of Sir Thomas Malory (d.1471), convert them into Modern English, and attempt an analysis of the grammatical changes that have taken place to give the Modern English forms.
In his dream him seemed that he saw a chair.
He knew not where he was.
I am come to mine end.
What sawest thou there?
Doubt ye not ye must be slain.
All these been ladies for whom I have foughten.
I give you warning that in no wise ye do battle.
God hath sent me.
And who that were not dead, they slew them for their riches.
Him thought sin to throw away that sword.
Do as well as thou mayest.