Nonstandard Periphrastic DO and Verbal -s in the South West of England
Fiona C. M. de Both
3814300
BA Thesis
27 January 2015
Supervisor: Marcelle Cole
Second Reader: Nynke de Haas
Department of Languages, literature and Communication
English Language and Culture
Utrecht University
1
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
3
2. Empirical Background
5
2.1 Nonstandard Periphrastic DO
5
2.2 Nonstandard Verbal -s
9
2.3 Complementary Distribution of Periphrastic DO and Nonstandard Verbal -s 14
3. Methodology
18
4. Results
23
5. Discussion
31
6. Conclusion
35
References
37
2
Figure 1. Counties in the south west of England (England Admin Counties 1965-1974, 2010).
3
1. Introduction
Nonstandard periphrastic DO, in other words the unstressed use of the auxiliary in affirmative
sentences, in I do go to the pub and nonstandard verbal -s in I goes to the pub are two features
specifically associated with the south-western varieties of British English.1 The distribution of
these nonstandard features has been shown to be constrained by subject type and lexical item
(Godfrey and Tagliamonte, 1999; Jones and Tagliamonte, 2004; Peitsara, 2002). Studies also
indicate that Nonstandard periphrastic DO and verbal -s function as markers of verbal aspect
(Godfrey and Tagliamonte, 1999; Kortman, 2004, Godfrey and Tagliamonte, 1999). Klemola
(1996) and Ihalainen (1991) discuss an interesting phenomenon relating to these two features.
They both observe that in general, in the south-western counties where speakers use
periphrastic DO they do not use nonstandard verbal –s, whereas in other south-western
counties, speakers use nonstandard verbal -s, but not periphrastic DO. Klemola (1996) argues
that the two features are in complementary distribution2. However, both scholars also observe
that there is a small area where speakers do use both features. Ihalainen (1991) refers to this
area as a transitory belt. One possible hypothesis that they discuss is that there is a slow
ongoing change, where speakers slowly drop the use of periphrastic DO and adopt
nonstandard verbal -s.
The present study aims to look further into the possible correlation between the use of
periphrastic DO and the occurrence of verbal -s by analysing interviews taken from the
FRED-s corpus. These interviews were conducted in the 1970s and 1980s with elderly rural
speakers from Cornwall, Devon, Oxfordshire, Somerset, and Wiltshire. The main question
therefore is to what extent the FRED-s corpus supports the hypothesis that periphrastic DO
1
To clarify, periphrastic DO will be used throughout this paper to refer to the nonstandard unstressed use of
periphrastic DO in affirmative sentences, unless otherwise noted. In addition, nonstandard verbal -s in this paper
specifically refers to the use of verbal -s in non-third-person singular contexts.
2
Following Ihalainen (1991) and Klemola (1996), complementary distribution here means that periphrastic DO
and nonstandard verbal -s are not used by the same speaker and does not relate to the grammatical context in
which these two features are used. This specific meaning of the term complementary distribution will be used
throughout this paper unless otherwise noted.
4
and nonstandard verbal -s are in complementary distribution. As Ihalainen (1991) and
Klemola (1996) both found that the features are more or less in complementary distribution,
this study will first of all explore whether speakers that use one of the features do not use the
other and vice versa. Furthermore, this study will analyse the effect of other factors such as
subject type, verbal aspect, and lexical item to investigate whether these play any role in the
use of either periphrastic DO and/or the verbal -s ending.
First, section 2 discusses some of the characteristics of periphrastic DO and
nonstandard verbal -s found in previous studies. Section 3 gives information on the FRED-s
corpus and explains the methodology used in the present study. The results of several
statistical analyses are presented in section 4 and finally, section 5 discusses these results in
relation to previous studies.
5
2. Empirical Background
2.1 Nonstandard Periphrastic DO
Nonstandard periphrastic DO refers to the use of the verb do as an auxiliary in unstressed
affirmative sentences. It differs from the use of DO in affirmative clauses in Standard English,
which is used emphatically and usually stresses the fact that the sentence is affirmative rather
than negative. Examples of nonstandard periphrastic DO, taken from the FRED-s corpus, are
given in (1).
(1)
a.
Wallace, my son, do live down there. (CON_005)
b.
We do buy a lot of stuff. (CON_005)
c.
We do breed our own. (SOM_005)
This particular use is seen as a distinct feature of the south west of England. Klemola (1996)
refers to periphrastic DO as “one of the most salient grammatical features of the traditional
dialects spoken in the south west of England” (p. 1) and it was already reported as a southwestern feature in very early studies on English regional dialects (Ihalainen, 1994).
Unstressed periphrastic DO is different from emphatic DO in Standard English,
because emphatic DO carries sentence stress, whereas periphrastic DO is always unstressed.
In the present tense periphrastic do is realised with the reduced vowel /ə/ (Klemola, 1996, p.
4). Furthermore, periphrastic do is never inflected in the present tense, i.e. does never occurs
(Ihalainen, 1994). This is confirmed by Klemola’s (1996) data, as he found periphrastic uses
of do were “always uninflected, even in the 3rd person singular” (p. 5). In addition there is a
difference between periphrastic DO and emphatic DO in their relative position to frequency
adverbs. Adverbs precede DO in emphatic uses, but follow DO in periphrastic uses (Klemola,
1996). However, Jones and Tagliamonte (2004) point out that this has not yet been tested
6
empirically. An important distinction between south-western dialects and other nonstandard
varieties, such as Irish English or English-based creoles, is that periphrastic DO in southwestern dialects never occurs with the verb BE, whereas in Irish English and most of the
English-based creoles this constraint does not hold (Kortmann, 2004; Jones and Tagliamonte,
2004).
There has been some discussion in earlier studies as to whether periphrastic DO in
south-western dialects is actually a marker of aspect or not. Klemola (1996) points out that
“[d]uring recent decades it has generally been assumed in the literature that unstressed
periphrastic DO is used to express habitual aspect in the south-western dialects of [British]
English” (p.75), e.g. I do go to the pub every Monday. However, he argues that most of these
claims are based on a tendency by scholars to misinterpret Elworthy’s (1877) terminology. He
explains that when Elworthy’s (1877) own definitions of the terminology are considered, it is
clear that he does not make any claims about habitual aspect with regards to the use of
periphrastic DO. According to Elworthy (1877), periphrastic DO is used in what he refers to
as Present Habitual but not in Present Actual. Klemola (1996) points out that these two terms
correspond to what we nowadays refer to as present simple and present progresseive,
respectively, and have nothing to do with verbal aspect. As Klemola (1996) found instances
of periphrastic do in the present tense in both habitual and non-habitual contexts, he
concludes that there is no aspectual distinction between periphrastic do in present tense and
the simple present form, where “do is restricted to the habitual present, with the simple
present being used for the event present” (Klemola, 1996, p. 100-101). For example, both I go
and I do go can be used in either habitual or non-habitual contexts. He supports his argument
by explaining that a grammaticalised habitual marker in the present tense is assumed to be
very rare cross linguistically (p. 106). Klemola (1996) found that periphrastic did in the past
tense had the tendency to occur in habitual contexts rather than non-habitual contexts, but still
7
found occurrences of periphrastic did in both of these contexts. In an overview of different
uses of DO as a tense, aspect, or modality (TAM) marker in various dialects of English in the
world, Kortmann (2004) reports that south-western periphrastic DO is sometimes used as an
“unstressed tense carrier in affirmatives” (p. 251). Klemola’s findings would also appear to
suggest that DO in both the present and past functions as a tense, rather than aspect, marker.
However, in his overview, Kortmann (2004) also refers to south-western uses of DO as a
marker of habitual aspect and argues that for both present tense and past tense the majority of
instances with periphrastic DO express habituality. One critical comment on some of these
studies is made by Jones and Tagliamonte (2004), as they point out that most studies only
investigate whether instances of periphrastic DO occur in habitual context or not, but do not
include all the habitual contexts where periphrastic DO could potentially have been used.
In addition to the role played by aspect, Jones and Tagliamonte (2004) point out that
earlier studies found that lexical item is an important factor in the use of periphrastic DO. For
example, it was concluded that periphrastic DO tends to occur with “strong emotional content
verbs” (Jones and Tagliamonte, 2004, p. 102), but is not restricted to these verbs. Samuels
(1972, as cited in Jones and Tagliamonte, 2004) has suggested that periphrastic DO tends to
occur with “Latinate verbs and neologisms that had not been fully assimilated into the
grammatical system” (p. 102). Furthermore, (Ellegård, 1953) noticed that irregular verbs
showed a tendency to occur with periphrastic DO more than regular verbs, especially those
that have the same form in the past and present tense, but found that this preference is not
strong enough to draw any definitive conclusions about this. In their own data, however,
Jones and Tagliamonte (2004) did not find a significant effect for verb class in the Somerset
dialect. Nevertheless, they argue that lexical item should be taken into account when looking
at periphrastic DO.
8
The historical development of periphrastic DO is explored by Ellegård (1953), who
suggests that the use of periphrastic DO in affirmative contexts first appeared around 1400.
However, there are several theories as to how this use of DO came into existence. Jones and
Tagliamonte (2004) give an overview of some of the explanations proposed in earlier studies.
First of all, some argue that periphrastic DO arose due to semantic change. Ellegård (1953),
for example, suggests that periphrastic DO was the result of the reinterpretation of the
causative use of DO in Middle English. However, Filppula and Klemola (2010) refute this
idea as these causative uses of DO were not present in the south-west of England, where they
say periphrastic DO originated. A second suggestion for the rise of periphrastic DO is a
syntactic reanalysis of “an extant Old English construction” (Jones and Tagliamonte, 2004, p.
98). Klemola (1996), for example, suggests that the rise of periphrastic DO in Middle English
from the ‘DO + infinitive’ construction in Old English relates to verb movement syntax rules
in the southern varieties of Middle English. Other explanations involve Celtic influence, such
as the suggestion that periphrastic DO is a literal translation of Welsh gweneuthur or that
periphrastic DO developed due to influence from the Celtic tense and aspect system. Filppula
and Klemola (2010) mention that “periphrastic uses of gweneuthur ‘do’ are attested in Middle
Welsh and provide the following example in (2):
(2)
ath
gyrucha a wna
and.your attack
PT will.do
‘and he will attack you’
(Lewis and Pedersen, 1961, p. 316, as cited in Filppula and Klemola, 2010, p. 215)
Though the origin of periphrastic DO is still debatable, Klemola (1996) and Jones and
Tagliamonte (2004) argue that this feature clearly originated in the south west of England.
9
Klemola (1996) suggests that periphrastic DO spread from the south west to other parts of
England, including London. In the Early Modern English period this construction was
standardised. However, the use of periphrastic DO in affirmative contexts never reached the
northern parts of England, possibly due to a difference between northern and southern
varieties of Middle English with regards to verb movement in syntax (Klemola, 1996).
Ellegård (1953) explains that previous studies (Engblom, 1938; Brunner, 1951, as
cited in Ellegård, 1953) suggested that periphrastic DO first developed in only affirmative
sentences and slowly spread to negative sentences and questions. However, his own data
shows that the relative frequency of DO in negative sentences is never lower than in
affirmative sentences. According to Ellegård (1953), the use of affirmative periphrastic DO
reached its peak between 1550 and 1575. After that periphrastic DO declined in affirmative
sentences. Klemola (1996) attributes this decline to the massive migration of speakers of
northern English to London. However, periphrastic DO was retained in questions and
negative sentences and the construction in these contexts was also introduced into northern
dialects of English. Though periphrastic DO in affirmative sentences was lost in Standard
English, it remained present in south-western dialects. According to Klemola (1996), this is
probably because there were no major demographic changes and the south west always
remained a conservative rural area. Filppula and Klemola (1996), however, explain that
according to Preusler (1938, as cited in Filppula and Klemola, 2010), periphrastic DO
remained stable in the south west area, because of Celtic influences.
2.2 Nonstandard Verbal -s
Nonstandard verbal -s refers to verbs that receive the -s ending in contexts other than the
third-person singular, as shown in (3).
10
(3)
a.
I remembers looking out when we was kiddies. (OXF_001)
b.
They goes up from floor to ceiling. (WIL_005)
c.
They comes in October. (DEV_008)
Although nonstandard verbal -s is a feature of many nonstandard varieties of English, the
constraints and rules that govern this feature may vary geographically. The south west of
England, and especially Devon, is said to be the area where this feature is still very prominent
and where verbal -s is used throughout the paradigm (Godfrey and Tagliamonte, 1999).
Previous literature on verbal -s explains that -s replaced the Old English -th ending
(Godfrey and Tagliamonte, 1999; Ihalainen 1994; Wagner, 2007).Godfrey and Tagliamonte
(1999) point out that this change from -th to -s started in the tenth century in the northern
regions of Britain. From there it spread southwards, and in the fifteenth century -s had
reached London (Godfrey and Tagliamonte, 1999). The south-western dialects retained -th for
much longer. Ihalainen (1994) suggests that -th in the south west areas was replaced during
the nineteenth century, either by the use of periphrastic DO or verbal -s. Interestingly, he
points out that the change from -th to -s took place earlier in Somerset than in Devon, because
in the SED corpus he still found some instances of verbal -th in Devon but not in Somerset.
Wakelin (1977) also mentions some instances of the -th ending in the SED corpus in singular
person contexts that were found in Cornwall and Devon, but points out that the use of this
ending is very limited.
Godfrey and Tagliamonte (1999) discuss different hypotheses with regards to the
development from -th to -s. The -th ending originally marked the third-person singular and all
plural forms (Holmqvist, 1922, p. 2). As -s replaced -th its distribution was conditioned by
person and number. Sound change as an explanation is refuted because it does not explain the
differences in the distribution of -s according to person and number. If change from -th to -s
11
was purely phonological, -s would have been used equally across the paradigm (Stein 1986,
as cited in Godfrey and Tagliamonte, 1999). Another reason to refute phonological change as
an explanation is that this change was not present in other categories, for example nouns or
prepositions (Holmqvist, 1922, p. 3). Other hypotheses suggest that the -s ending developed
through the analogical influence of the second-person singular -s ending, where it was first
extended to second-person plural and later on to other plural forms (Holmqvist, 1922). Some
suggest that this analogical levelling was influenced by Scandinavian languages, because in
Old Norse second-person and third-person singular verbs often received the same ending -r
(Godfrey and Tagliamonte, 1999). However, Cole (2014) points out that the Scandinavian
influence on this analogical levelling is rather unlikely. Cole’s (2014) findings also refute the
idea “that -s spread into the second-person plural and other persons of the plural before the
third-person singular” (p. 31), and argues that Holmqvist’s (1992) claims result from the fact
that he did not take subject type into account, which plays a crucial role in the use of verbal -s
(p. 112). In conclusion, there is no absolute consensus on the precise origins of verbal -s.
One problem with regards to previous studies on verbal -s, as Godfrey and
Tagliamonte (1999) and Wagner (2007) point out, is that most of these studies are descriptive
overviews of dialectal features. There are very few quantitative studies that take into account
the frequency with which the features occur. For example, Wagner (2007) argues that the
generalisation of Klemola’s (1996) findings on the distribution of periphrastic DO and
nonstandard verbal -s is problematic. She points out that “an occurrence of three examples of
generalized -s [in the SED unpublished fieldworkers’ notebooks] could still mean that a
speaker uses the form in only 10% of all possible cases” (Wagner, 2007, p. 263).
Recent quantitative studies by Godfrey and Tagliamonte (1999) and Peitsara (2002)
lend support to Wagner’s concerns. Godfrey and Tagliamonte’s (1999) data were collected
from interviews with elderly rural speakers of Devon English conducted in the late 1990s;
12
Peitsara (2002) used interviews from the Devon sub-corpus of the Helsinki Dialect Corpus,
conducted in the early 1970s. Godfrey and Tagliamonte (1999) found verbal -s with all
grammatical persons, but the majority of tokens still showed standard verb inflection. Peitsara
(2002) found that in the Helsinki Dialect Corpus for Devon, 80% of the tokens have standard
verb endings. She concludes that the use of verbal -s throughout the paradigm might have
been consistently used in earlier times, but is now disappearing and occurs only occasionally.
Both Godfrey and Tagliamonte (1999) and Peitsara (2002) investigate what factors
influence the use of nonstandard verbal -s (and the use of the nonstandard verb stem, e.g. He
go) in Devon. Godfrey and Tagliamonte (1999) noticed that the verb say occurred most
frequently with -s compared to other verbs, whereas Peitsara (2002) found only a few
instances of -s with say. Peitsara (2002) remarks that nonstandard verbal -s is mainly used
with monosyllabic words with Anglo-Saxon origins. Long and Latinate verbs, on the other
hand, never occur with this ending. She therefore suggests that “non-standard uses are not
productive and tend to occur where they have been traditionally found” (Peitsara, 2002, p.
221). This would be in line with her suggestion that nonstandard verbal -s is disappearing.
The instances of nonstandard -s that were found seem to be remnants of a feature that was
once used consistently.
In addition to the role played by lexical verb, Godfrey and Tagliamonte (1999) point
out that according to previous studies, verbal -s is a marker of aspect. Godfrey and
Tagliamonte (1999) noticed that in all grammatical persons the habitual aspect tended to
favour verbal -s (e.g. I goes to the pub every Monday). However, this effect was only
significant for third-person singular and first-person singular contexts. Peitsara (2002),
however, did not find any support for the theory that verbal -s is a marker of habitual aspect.
Subject type and person/number have been shown to influence the distribution of -s. In
northern dialects the use of -s was traditionally governed by the Northern Subject Rule.
13
Ihalainen (1994) explains that “according to the northern subject rule, plural present-tense
verbs take -s, unless they are immediately preceded by a personal pronoun subject, as in They
peel them and boils them and Birds sings” (p. 221). Both Klemola (1996) and Ihalainen
(1994) argue that the Northern Subject Rule does not apply in south-western dialects, but that
-s is used across the paradigm, regardless of subject type. If indeed this rule does not apply in
south-western dialects, it would mean that subject type and adjacency do not govern the use
of verbal -s. Godfrey and Tagliamonte (1999), however, found a significant effect for subject
type in third-person plural contexts. Their results showed that “NPs favoured -s, and
nonadjacent NPs favoured -s more than did adjacent NPs, while pronouns (whether adjacent
or not) disfavoured [-s]” (Godfrey and Tagliamonte, 1999, p. 112). Peitsara’s (2002) results
showed a slight tendency for the -s ending to occur with noun phrases more so than pronouns,
especially complex noun phrases, noun phrases without overtly plural markers, or noun
phrases with elements that attract the -s ending, e.g. the apples that come off of, of a clay farm
makes better cider, where farm attracts -s (Peitsara, 2002, p. 217). However, she argued that
there was not enough data to draw any definitive conclusions. Furthermore, she did not find
an adjacency effect. Cole (2014) also explains the importance of subject type in conditioning
the occurrence of the south-western verbal -s, and suggests that subject type plays an
important role in processes of regularisation and deregularisation, where two competing
variants co-exist and tend to be conditioned by subject type. With regard to person/number,
Godfrey and Tagliamonte’s (1999) results show a higher percentage of nonstandard verbal -s
in the third-person plural context than other grammatical persons, but Peitsara’s (2002) results
did not show this tendency.
14
2.3 Complementary Distribution of Periphrastic DO and Nonstandard Verbal -s
Earlier studies on south-western dialects discuss an interesting development with regards to
periphrastic DO and nonstandard verbal -s. First of all, Wakelin (1977) suggests that the area
in which periphrastic DO is a feature used to be much larger, and that the feature is slowly
being lost. Klemola (1996) explains the following finding by Elworthy (1886, as cited in
Klemola, 1996):
Elworthy made the observation that when speakers change their grammar and drop the
rule which allows the use of unstressed periphrastic DO in affirmative declarative
sentences, they do not switch directly to the standard English rule, where only 3rd
person singular forms receive the inflectional ending -s. Rather, they seem to
generalise the agreement marker -s to all persons, both in singular and in plural.
(Klemola, 1996, p. 49)
Ihalainen (1991) observed that, generally, speakers that use the nonstandard verbal -s
inflection do not use the auxiliary DO, and vice versa. However, there are some speakers that
use both features, but one feature is always dominant. He suggests that there is a transitory
area where speakers slowly change from one system to the other. Based on such earlier
studies, Wagner (2007) proposes a model of two major changes in south-western dialects. The
first is that the -th ending is replaced by the -s ending, which is used consistently throughout
the paradigm. The second change she describes is that speakers who use periphrastic DO
slowly drop this feature and also adopt the nonstandard verbal -s ending. Klemola’s (1996)
study into the geographical distribution of periphrastic DO and nonstandard verbal -s in the
SED corpus looks further into these hypotheses.
15
Klemola’s (1996) data on the geographical distribution of periphrastic DO and
nonstandard verbal -s are taken from both the SED questionnaire data and the unpublished
SED fieldworkers’ notebooks. He mentions that the fieldworker’s notebooks are more
suitable, because they contain information on spontaneous speech as opposed to the elicited
responses in the questionnaires. Klemola (1996) uses a map to present his data, shown here as
Figure 2. The map in Figure 2 illustrates how periphrastic do (in the present tense) occurs
mostly in Somerset, Wiltshire, Dorset, and Gloucestershire. It does not occur in East Cornwall
and Devon. However, periphrastic do does occur in West Cornwall. Therefore East Cornwall
and Devon form a gap in the area where periphrastic DO is used. Klemola (1996) suggests a
possible explanation that periphrastic DO originated in West Wiltshire or East Somerset, but
that it never spread westward due to natural barriers such as rivers, hills, marshlands and
moors. The reappearance of periphrastic do in West Cornwall can be explained by the fact
that Cornish was the dominant language there, and periphrastic DO was used in the standard
English language by the time Cornish gradually died out. Klemola (1996) suggests that
“periphrastic DO form in West Cornwall is most probably introduced through education (p.
42).
16
Figure 2. Core and peripheral areas of periphrastic DO (Klemola, 1996, p. 45).
Secondly, Klemola (1996) makes a distinction between core areas of periphrastic do,
where five or more instances were recorded in the notebooks, and peripheral areas of
periphrastic do, where fewer than five instances were recorded. Klemola’s (1996)
investigation of the distribution of periphrastic did found no instances of periphrastic did in
the areas that were marked as peripheral for present-tense periphrastic DO. He did find
periphrastic did in the core areas, however. He therefore suggests that speakers who slowly
drop the use of periphrastic DO might first start dropping the use of periphrastic did in past
tense contexts, before dropping periphrastic do in the present tense.
In order to look into the possible change where the use of periphrastic DO is lost in
favour of the use of verbal -s, Klemola (1996) also investigated the geographical distribution
of verbal -s in relation to periphrastic DO, as shown in Figure 3. The map shows that the two
features are almost in complementary distribution and that the overlap between the two
features is only present in the peripheral areas. This is in line with Ihalainen’s (1991)
suggestion that there is a transitory belt. Klemola (1996) points out that this data cannot
actually prove whether a change has taken place, where speakers drop the use of periphrastic
17
DO and adopt nonstandard verbal -s, but it provides evidence for the possibility of this
change. One point that can be reiterated, however, is that Wagner (2007, p. 263) is quite right
in stressing that the SED questionnaire and fieldworkers’ notebooks are not suitable for
quantitative studies (see Section 2.2).
Figure 3. Generalised -s vs. periphrastic DO (Klemola, 1996, p. 53).
18
3. Methodology
For the present study data was collected from the FRED-s corpus, which is a subset of the
Freiburg Corpus of English Dialects. The FRED corpus is a collection of sound recordings
and orthographic transcripts of interviews with monolingual native speakers from England,
Scotland, Wales, the Hebrides, and the Isle of Man (Szmrecsanyi and Hernández, 2007). The
corpus was compiled at the University of Freiburg. Originally, the interviews were conducted
for oral history projects and kept in archives, libraries and museums. The informants were
asked to talk about their lives, their work and the places they lived. As the interviewers were
mainly focused on the actual content of the conversations, it can be assumed that the
informants were distracted from their linguistic behaviour. The majority of the interviews in
the FRED corpus were recorded between 1970 and 1980. Many of the informants were males,
born between 1890 and 1919. Most informants were males, and can be considered NORMs,
non-mobile old rural males, “who typically left school at age fourteen or younger”
(Szmrecsanyi and Hernández, 2007, p. 8). The corpus was especially designed so that it
would allow comparison to other studies on dialect corpora such as the SED corpus. The SED
corpus questionnaires were conducted between 1948 and 1961 with informants who were also
considered NORMs. As the present study is focuses on dialects in the south west of England,
only the interviews from this area were used. The FRED-s corpus contains 38 interviews
(264,863 words) for Cornwall, Devon, Oxfordshire, Somerset, and Wiltshire.
One problem with the FRED-s corpus that was found is that as the interviews were
originally set up for oral history projects, the focus is on stories about the past, resulting in a
predominance of the past tense. This problem was also reported by Peitsara (2002) who
analysed interviews from the Helsinki Devon corpus. Although the corpus provided a
substantial number of instances with present tense verbs, the predominance of the past tense
in the interviews is something that needs to be taken into account when evaluating the results
19
discussed later on. Quite a few of the present tense verbs occur as what is known as praesens
historicum or historical present. In addition, the locations of the speakers in the FRED-s
corpus are not distributed evenly across the counties, which problematises the generalisation
of the results.
In order to carry out a quantitative analysis of the distribution of periphrastic DO and
verbal -s, all instances containing simple present tense verbs in affirmative sentences were
collected from the interviews. Following in Godfrey and Tagliamonte (1999), modal
auxiliaries were not included, as they were not expected to show any verbal endings or to
occur together with periphrastic DO. Furthermore, no instances of the verb BE were included,
as it is an irregular verb and because all previous literature on periphrastic DO reports that
periphrastic DO never occurs with BE in south-western dialects (see Section 2.1). Based on
Godfrey and Tagliamonte (1999), conversational interjections, which they referred to as
“sequence fillers” (p. 99), such as you see, I know or I mean, were not included in the data
collection, except those instances where such phrases “retained their full lexical meaning” (p.
100).
A total of 2409 tokens were collected from the 38 interviews. In order to look into
some of the characteristics or constraints of both periphrastic DO and verbal -s in the south
west of England, several other variables were recorded for each token. First of all, the
counties in which the speakers lived were included in the data collection, to allow comparison
between the FRED-s corpus and Klemola’s (1996) geographical distribution.
Grammatical person and number were recorded and for third-person singular subjects
a further distinction was made with regards to gender: feminine, masculine or neuter.
Furthermore, subject types were included and were divided into full noun phrases, pronouns,
or null subjects. Pronouns were further divided into personal pronouns, demonstrative
pronouns, indefinite pronouns and relative pronouns. One instance of an interrogative
20
pronoun was found, but it was left out because there would be an insufficient number of
tokens for this category to be included in a multivariate analysis. Subject adjacency was also
taken into account for every token, so for both noun phrases and pronouns, allowing a
comparison to Godfrey and Tagliamonte (1999). Tokens with subjects that were directly
adjacent to the tense-carrying verb would be marked as adjacent; other tokens would be
marked as nonadjacent.
Finally, verbal aspect was included to investigate whether FRED-s supports any
previous claims about aspect or not. This study follows Godfrey and Tagliamonte (1999) in
coding for punctual, habitual and continuous aspect. Godfrey and Tagliamonte’s (1999)
definitions of these three verbal aspects are as follows: “[V]erbs were coded as punctual when
they referred to an event (hypothetical or otherwise) understood to have occurred once, […]
as habitual when they referred to an event that takes place repeatedly […] and as continuous
when they referred to an event or process that extends in time or a state that exists
continuously” (Godfrey and Tagliamonte, 1999, p. 105). Examples of tokens from the FREDs corpus with punctual, habitual and continuous contexts are given in (4), (5) and (6),
respectively.
(4)
(5)
(6)
a.
I goes up and says to Roger. (WIL_001)
b.
If you go up through the field. (CON_005)
a.
I always get mi invitation sent to me from Dartington Hall. (DEV_010)
b.
I get mi Christmas present every year. (DEV_010)
a.
I know him very well. (CON_003)
b.
We live in different worlds. (WÍL_005)
21
The main purpose of this study is to investigate whether the FRED-s corpus supports
the hypothesis that periphrastic DO and nonstandard verbal -s exist in complementary
distribution, where speakers that use one of these two features, do not use the other and vice
versa. Therefore, individual speakers were looked at separately and for each speaker the
relative frequencies of tokens with DO and verbal -s were calculated separately
In order to get more insight into the constraints of periphrastic DO and verbal -s, three
multivariate analyses were carried out with county, person and number of the subject, subject
type, subject adjacency, and verbal aspect as independent variables. In the first analysis,
periphrastic DO served as the dependent variable. In the other two analyses, verbal -s (versus
verbal stem) served as the dependent variable. The first of these two analyses of verbal -s
included all 2409 tokens, including third-person singular contexts where -s is expected to
occur. Therefore, not only factors that influence nonstandard verbal -s, but also those that
influence the occurrence of the nonstandard verbal stem in the third-person singular (e.g. He
go) contribute to the model. However, including the third-person singular in an analysis of
verbal-s might skew the results. Hence, another analysis of verbal -s was carried out in which
third-person singular contexts were left out, so that it only shows a model for the constraints
of nonstandard -s.
Several adjustments had to be made to the data in order to carry out these multivariate
analyses. Dividing the tokens into the categories as explained above sometimes posed a
problem for the analyses, because some categories did not show a sufficient number of tokens
with either periphrastic DO or verbal -s. Therefore, categories needed to be redefined.
Categories that showed this problem were grouped together with other categories that also
showed low relative frequencies with either periphrastic DO or verbal -s. In all analyses
second-person singular and second-person plural were grouped together. For the analyses of
periphrastic DO, Oxfordshire was recoded with Devon. Furthermore, demonstrative
22
pronouns, indefinite pronouns and null subjects were grouped together. Finally, for the
analyses of nonstandard verbal -s in non-third-person singular contexts, Devon and Cornwall
were grouped together, as were demonstrative pronouns, null subjects, and personal pronouns.
Finally, lexical verb was not suitable as a factor for a multivariate analysis as there
were too many different verbs, many of which did not occur with periphrastic DO or verbal s. Nevertheless, given the effect of lexical item on nonstandard -s reported by Peitsara (2002)
would be interesting to investigate which verbs occurred with either periphrastic DO or
nonstandard verbal -s. Jones and Tagliamonte (2004) also point out that any analysis of
periphrastic DO should take lexical item into account. Therefore, two cross-tabulations were
made to show which verbs occurred with these features and how frequently.
23
4. Results
Before the multivariate analyses are discussed, this section will first consider the frequencies
with which periphrastic DO and nonstandard verbal -s occur in the FRED-s corpus. 99 tokens
out of 2409 show the use of periphrastic DO, with a relative frequency of 4.1%. Out of 2048
tokens in non-third-person singular contexts, 65 tokens show the use of nonstandard verbal -s
with a relative frequency of 3.2%. In addition, out of the 361 tokens in third-person singular
context, 251 tokens showed standard verbal -s. 110 tokens, therefore, showed nonstandard
verbal stems with a relative frequency of 30%. Based on the frequencies with which the
features occur, periphrastic DO and verbal -s seem to be relatively rare. However, there is
much variation between speakers, which will be discussed next.
The frequencies of periphrastic DO and nonstandard verbal -s for individual speakers
are shown in Table 1. These proportions are only for speakers who use one of the two features
(or both). Speakers who use neither of the two features were left out from the table for
clarity’s sake. The same results are represented in Figure 4, which clearly suggests there is
variation between speakers in their use of periphrastic DO and nonstandard -s. Out of 49
speakers, 26 speakers use at least one of the two features. Out of these 26, only eight speakers
use both features. As can be seen in Figure 4, two of these eight cases, speakers SLRM_CK
and TrbrGR, do not show a clear dominance of one feature over the other. The eight speakers
that use both features are either from Somerset or Wiltshire. It seems, therefore, that overall
periphrastic DO and nonstandard verbal -s are almost in complementary distribution, and that
there is a transitory area in Somerset and Wiltshire.
In order to look at some of the constraints that govern the use of periphrastic DO and
verbal -s, three multivariate analyses were carried out. The results of these analyses are shown
in Table 2. The factor weights presented in Table 2 are a measure to indicate to what extent a
category favours the feature in question. Categories with factor weights over 0.5 are favouring
24
environments. Furthermore, categories with a higher factor weight have a stronger effect than
those with a lower factor weight.
Table 1.
Relative frequencies of periphrastic DO and
nonstandard verbal -s ending per speaker.
periphrastic
nonstandard
speaker
DO (%)
verbal -s (%)
BF
21
CAVA_PV
22
CAVA_WJB
17
CAVA_WW
2.2
FP
19
GW
23
SRLM_AW
6.4
SRLM_CA
3.8
SRLM_CK
1.0
2.6
SRLM_EW
5.0
1.1
SRLM_GG
16
SRLM_HR
5.3
SRLM_PG
2.9
7.4
SRLM_RF
15
2.5
SRLM_RM
2.7
17
SRLM_SH
13
TCA_FK
1.3
TCA_FP
1.7
TCA_WC
1.4
TrbrBJ
2.2
TrbrCS
1.9
5.3
TrbrDP
2.3
TrbrGR
8.5
11
TrbrJS
11
1.2
TrbrRCC
2.9
WflsWGP
22
-
25
Figure 4. Relative frequencies of periphrastic DO and nonstandard verbal -s ending per speaker (%).
aspect
subject adjacency
subject type
person number
county
N tokens
relative
frequency (%)
factor weight
Verbal -s (N =2409)
N tokens
Nonstandard verbal -s (N =2048)
category
relative
frequency (%)
factor weight
0.910
0.493
0.492
0.096
factor weight
20.4
2.8
3.3
0.3
relative
frequency (%)
113
616
691
628
N tokens
p<0.0001
Oxfordshire
Wiltshire
Somerset
Cornwall / Devon
category
0.885
0.501
0.408
0.408
0.214
p<0.0001
30.8
13.3
11.7
12.4
8.5
p<0.0001
133
557
812
731
176
Oxfordshire
Devon
Somerset
Wiltshire
Cornwall
0.677
0.602
0.571
0.191
0.774
0.683
0.682
0.060
3.7
2.3
4.8
0.7
7.4
5.3
5.7
0.1
1043
129
418
458
176
731
812
690
P<0.001
1st sg
1st pl
3rd pl
2nd pl/sg
Cornwall
Wiltshire
Somerset
Oxfordshire / Devon
0.966
0.955
0.900
0.202
0.144
0.144
0.025
p<0.0001
78.6
74.3
61.5
4.8
2.3
3.7
0.7
p<0.001
42
171
148
418
129
1043
458
0.937
0.378
0.361
0.164
3rd sg feminine
3rd sg neuter
3rd sg masculine
3rd pl
1st pl
1st sg
2nd pl/sg
55.6
8.3
8.3
2.8
0.718
0.595
0.541
0.541
0.497
0.433
0.203
p<0.0001
9
48
12
1979
11.5
8.2
7.7
7.0
4.8
1.8
1.3
-
148
171
418
129
42
1043
458
-
indefinite pronoun
noun phrase
relative pronoun
demonstrative pronoun /
personal pronoun / null
subject
3rd sg masculine
3rd sg neuter
3rd pl
1st pl
3rd sg feminine
1st sg
2nd pl/sg
-
-
-
-
-
0.731
0.472
0.291
-
6.8
3.0
2.0
-
382
571
1095
-
p<0.0001
punctual
habitual
continuous
-
0.670
0.430
0.395
-
18.3
15.2
10.0
-
464
710
1235
-
p<0.05
-
-
-
p<0.0001
punctual
habitual
continuous
0.712
0.615
0.439
0.244
-
0.706
0.402
0.383
18.8
14.4
3.3
2.4
-
9.2
2.4
1.9
32
139
2155
83
p<0.0001
habitual
punctual
continuous
710
464
1235
relative pronoun
noun phrase
personal pronoun
indefinite pronoun /
demonstrative pronoun /
null subject
category
Multivariate Analyses of Periphrastic DO, verbal -s ending, and nonstandard verbal -s ending.
Factor
Periphrastic DO (N =2409)
Table 2.
26
27
The first variable that has a significant effect on both features was the county in which
the informants lived. Cornwall, Wiltshire and Somerset favour periphrastic DO, whereas
Oxfordshire and to a lesser degree Devon favour verbal -s in all contexts and only
Oxfordshire favours nonstandard verbal -s in non-third-person singular contexts. It may
therefore be said that those counties that favour periphrastic DO, do not favour verbal -s and
those that favour verbal -s, do not favour periphrastic DO, which again suggests that the two
features are in complementary distribution. However, although Wiltshire and Somerset do not
favour nonstandard verbal -s, they both have relatively high factor weights of 0.492 and 0.493
and it seems that nonstandard verbal -s is not altogether absent from these two counties.
Interestingly, although Devon favours verbal -s in the second analysis, together with Cornwall
it has a very low factor weight of 0.096 for nonstandard verbal -s in the third analysis. It
seems that Devon favours neither periphrastic DO nor nonstandard verbal -s.
With regards to the effect of grammatical person and number, third-person singular
masculine (he) and neuter (it) favour periphrastic DO, whereas feminine (she) does not.
Furthermore, the first- and third-person plural also favour periphrastic DO. First-person
singular and second-person contexts do not favour this feature. The analysis of verbal -s
shows that all third-person singular contexts favour -s, which is not surprising, because this is
the standard form. However, nonstandard verbal -s is favoured by all remaining values except
second-person subjects. It seems that second-person contexts generally do not favour these
dialectal features, whereas first- and third-person plural contexts do.
Subject adjacency does not have a significant effect on the distribution of either
periphrastic DO or verbal -s. In the raw data, there are only five instances of nonstandard
verbal -s occurring with a nonadjacent subject. These five subjects consist of one noun phrase,
one relative pronoun and three personal pronouns (out of 114 nonadjacent personal
pronouns). The number of tokens with adjacent pronouns and nonstandard -s was 52 out of
28
1847. Therefore, the relative frequencies of tokens with nonstandard -s for nonadjacent and
adjacent personal pronouns are 2.6% and 2.8%, respectively.
The effect of subject type is more complex. Subject types that favour periphrastic DO
are relative pronouns and noun phrases. Similarity between these two may be explained by
the fact that relative pronouns are generally part of a complement within a noun phrase.
Subject type does not have a significant effect on verbal -s in the second analysis, containing
all grammatical persons. In the third analysis, on the other hand, subject type did have an
effect on nonstandard verbal -s. Nonstandard verbal -s is favoured by indefinite pronouns
only. However, there were only nine tokens with indefinite pronouns in these contexts. Out of
these nine tokens, four contained some as indefinite pronoun, and two contained something
and someone. Cole (2014) also remarks that indefinite pronouns seem to behave similarly to
nominal subjects in that they attract -s in Subject Rule systems (p. 106). Although in
comparison to indefinite pronouns, noun phrases and relative pronouns disfavour nonstandard
verbal -s with factor weights of 0.378 and 0.361, respectively, they show higher relative
frequencies of nonstandard -s and higher factor weights than demonstrative pronouns,
personal pronouns and null subjects with a factor weight of 0.164. The relative frequencies for
noun phrases and relative pronouns are both 8.3%, whereas the relative frequency for
demonstrative pronouns, personal pronouns and null subjects is 2.8%. This suggests that there
may still be a slight similarity between periphrastic DO and nonstandard -s in their preference
for subject type, although no definitive conclusions can be drawn based on this data set.
Interestingly, the model for periphrastic DO shows that this feature is favoured by
habitual aspect. Both analyses for verbal -s, on the other hand, show that punctual aspect
favours verbal -s. These analyses suggest that the two features may have a different
grammatical function.
29
The results for lexical item are shown in Table 3 and 4. For Table 3 all tokens were
used, but for Table 4 third-person singular subject tokens were left out. As verbal -s in the
third-person singular context is standard in English, most verbs in this context were expected
to show -s, whereas Table 4 gives particular information on which verbs tend to occur with
nonstandard -s. The 99 tokens with periphrastic DO occurred with 47 different verbs, whereas
the 65 tokens with nonstandard -s occurred with 20 different verbs. This may suggest that
nonstandard -s is slightly less productive than periphrastic DO. Interestingly, both features
seem to occur with short lexical verbs, as the majority of the verbs are monosyllabic. In
addition, there is another similarity between the two sets of lexical verbs, because most of the
verbs have Germanic origins. The only word in the list for nonstandard -s that originates from
a Romance language is remember. However, this verb is used 12 times with nonstandard -s.
The high frequency verbs occurring with periphrastic DO are all Germanic, but the list with
verbs that occur only once with this feature contain several words originating from a
Romance language, for example notice, pay, purify, and respect. Still, it seems that in general,
both features tend to prefer short verbs of Germanic origin. These findings are in line with
Peitsara’s (2002) results relating to lexical verb occurring with nonstandard verbal -s, as she
also found that nonstandard -s occurred mostly with monosyllabic Germanic verbs.
Furthermore, some of the high frequency verbs presented in Table 3 and 4 are stative
cognitive verbs (remember, know, and think) and intransitive verbs (go and come). Cole
(2014) also notices an interesting behaviour of cognitive and intransitive verbs with regards to
reduced verbal morphology in late Old Northumbrian and points out that cognitive verbs have
also played an important role in the development of other grammatical constructions in Old
English and Romance languages (p. 191). Finally, out of the 20 tokens with nonstandard -s in
combination with say, 14 of these tokens consist of the phrase I says. Peitsara (2002) remarks
that I says is formulaic in narrative contexts and is not uncommon in other dialects either.
30
Therefore, the high frequency of the verb say occurring with nonstandard -s should not be
given too much weight.
Table 3.
Lexical verbs occurring with periphrastic DO.
1 token
2 tokens 3 tokens 4 tokens
bathe
pay
belong
do
come
buy
play
breed
grow
get
call
purify
make
put
catch
read
milk
collect
respect
rise
die
run
say
drop
sleep
see
feed
sound
want
give
speak
work
hear
steer
keep
stop
laugh
take
lead
think
notice
try
own
5 tokens
have
know
live
19 tokens
go
Table 4.
Lexical verbs occurring with nonstandard verbal -s.
1 token
2 tokens 4 tokens 11 tokens
bring
know
come
go
call
think
flick
get
grow
have
keep
look
reckon
start
stick
understand
want
wear
12 tokens
remember
20 tokens
say
31
5. Discussion
This study primarily aimed to investigate whether periphrastic DO and nonstandard verbal -s
are in complementary distribution in the south-western data of FRED-s corpus. When
speakers are regarded individually, periphrastic DO and nonstandard verbal -s seem to be in
complementary distribution, to some extent. There are only a few speakers who used both
features. Secondly, when regarding the counties that favour periphrastic DO or verbal -s, the
FRED-s corpus seems to be in line with Klemola’s (1996) results, and also show a
complementary distribution. Klemola’s (1996) study also included data from Shropshire,
Herefordshire, Worcestershire, Warwickshire, Monmouthshire, Gloucestershire, Berkshire,
Dorset, and Hampshire. Dorset, Gloucestershire lie (partly) within Klemola’s (1996) core area
for periphrastic DO. Unfortunately, the FRED-s corpus does not contain data from these
counties. However, the counties where periphrastic DO is found in the FRED-s corpus are in
line with Klemola’s (1966) findings. Somerset, Wiltshire and Cornwall favoured DO in the
FRED-s corpus and lie within the area where Klemola (1996) reported instances of
periphrastic DO in the SED fieldworker’s notebooks. In the present study nonstandard verbal
-s is favoured by Oxfordshire only. Klemola (1996) also found many instances of nonstandard
verbal -s in this county. However, he also found some instances nonstandard verbal -s in
Devon, whereas in the FRED-s corpus no instances were found in this county. All in all, the
FRED-s corpus shows that those counties that favour periphrastic DO, do not favour
nonstandard -s and vice versa.
Although periphrastic DO and nonstandard verbal -s seem to be almost in
complementary distribution, there are some speakers from the FRED-s corpus who use both
features. In addition, although nonstandard verbal -s is not favoured by Wiltshire and
Somerset, nonstandard -s is not altogether absent in these counties. These two findings give
support for Ihalainen’s (1991) idea of a transitory belt. Whether this transitory belt is indeed
32
an area of change, where speakers drop their use of periphrastic DO and nonstandard verbal -s
is difficult to test on the basis of Klemola’s (1996) study and the present results. Although the
SED questionnaires were conducted a few decades before the FRED-s corpus, diachronic
comparison between the two corpora is problematic, because they provide different types of
data. Klemola’s (1996) study provided detailed information on the geographical distribution
of both features, but not on the frequency with which they are used, whereas the present study
provides information on these frequencies, but less on the geographical distribution, as most
of the informants’ locations are clustered together in each county.
One very interesting result from the multivariate analyses is that periphrastic DO and
verbal -s show a different preference with regards to aspect. Both features have been reported
as a marker of habituality (Kortmann, 2004; Godfrey and Tagliamonte, 1999; Jones and
Tagliamonte, 2004). The multivariate analyses show that periphrastic DO is indeed favoured
by habitual aspect, which is not entirely in line with Klemola’s (1996) conclusion that DO
was not a marker of habituality. The present results show that both -s in general and
nonstandard -s are favoured by punctual aspect, which is neither in line with Godfrey and
Tagliamonte (1999), who suggested verbal -s conveys with habitual aspect, or with Peitsara
(2002), who concluded that aspect did not show a significant effect. Linking both these
features to habitual aspect could also provide a logical explanation as to why they were
previously found to be in complementary distribution: they serve the same grammatical
purpose. However, the present findings give a different view, as periphrastic DO and
nonstandard -s may have different grammatical functions. If this is indeed the case, there may
be no grammatical reason for them to be in complementary distribution. Given this fact, more
speakers may perhaps adopt both features in future. Instead of an area where speakers slowly
33
replace periphrastic DO with nonstandard -s, the transitory area may also be an area where
speakers will adopt both features and continue to use both in different contexts3.
Although the previous findings on periphrastic DO and verbal -s give interesting
information on the characteristics of the two features, it must also be noted that the rather low
frequencies with which both periphrastic DO and nonstandard verbal -s occur suggest that
both features are rare and may be slowly disappearing. Peitsara (2002) also reported a low
percentage of nonstandard verbal -s. Another reason to suggest that the two features are
slowly declining relates to the lexical verbs with which both features occurred. In the FRED-s
corpus, both features seem to prefer short Germanic verbs. Peitsara (2002) found a similar
pattern relating to lexical verb for nonstandard verbal -s. Based on her findings on lexical
verb, she suggests that nonstandard -s is not a very productive feature and that the occurrences
she found are remnants of a feature that is slowly dying out. This idea may perhaps also be
extended to periphrastic DO, as in the present study, instances of periphrastic DO show a
similar preference for lexical verbs, and may also be remnants of a feature that is no longer
productive. In addition, the fact that almost no instances of nonstandard verbal -s were found
in Devon may also give reason to suggest that this feature is disappearing. Klemola (1996) did
find some instances of nonstandard verbal -s in Devon and Godfrey and Tagliamonte (1999)
and Peitsara (2002) focused only on Devon in their study on verbal -s, because, as they point
out, this feature is reported to be used consistently in this county.
Finally, the multivariate analyses in this study show effects of grammatical
person/number and subject type. Similarly to Peitsara’s (2002) results, there is no evidence
from the FRED-s corpus that the third-person plural favours nonstandard verbal -s more so
than other grammatical persons, which was suggested by Godfrey and Tagliamonte (1999).
3
The two features may then still be in complementary distribution, but instead of not being used by the same
speaker, they will not be used in the same contexts.
34
However, in the present study third-person plural subjects, as well as first-person singular
subjects, were found to favour both periphrastic DO and nonstandard verbal -s.
Although the results show that subject adjacency does not have a significant effect on
either periphrastic DO or nonstandard verbal -s, subject type does have an effect on both
features. Klemola (1996) and Ihalainen (1994) both suggested that subject type did not play a
role for nonstandard verbal -s in the south west of England, but this is not supported by the
FRED-s corpus. At first sight, the results pertaining to subject type and verbal -s are not
entirely in line with Godfrey and Tagliamonte (1999) who found that noun phrases favour -s
more than pronouns4, because in the FRED-s corpus only indefinite pronouns favour
nonstandard -s. However, noun phrases and relative pronouns favoured nonstandard -s more
than demonstrative pronouns, personal pronouns and null subjects together. Interestingly,
periphrastic DO is favoured by noun phrases and relative pronouns, which may suggest that
periphrastic DO shows the same preference for subject type as is often reported for verbal -s.
4
Godfrey and Tagliamonte (1999) treat noun phrases with a relative pronoun as nonadjacent noun phrases,
whereas this study treated relative pronouns as a separate category.
35
6. Conclusion
The present study mainly aimed to investigate whether there is any correlation between the
two south-western English features periphrastic DO and nonstandard verbal -s in the FRED-s
corpus. Klemola (1996) and Ihalainen (1991) observed that speakers who use one of the two
features generally do not use the other and vice versa. However, they both found one area, or
transitory belt, where speakers sometimes used both features. The data for the present study
was collected from 38 interviews from the FRED-s corpus that were conducted in
Oxfordshire, Wiltshire, Somerset, Devon, and Cornwall. First, speakers were regarded
individually and later the effect of the counties as a factor was investigated. Both analyses
support the idea that the two features are almost in complementary distribution. There is also
evidence to suggest that there is indeed a transitory belt where both features are used.
However, the relative frequencies and the lexical verbs, with which periphrastic DO and
nonstandard -s occur, seem to suggest that the two features are disappearing.
In addition, this study uses several multivariate analyses to explore a number of other
factors that might play a role in the use of periphrastic DO and nonstandard verbal -s. Overall,
first and third person plural tend to favour both features. Subject type also has a significant
effect on the two features. Interestingly, periphrastic DO seems to prefer the same subject
types that is often reported for nonstandard verbal -s, namely noun phrases and relative
pronouns. However, this effect was not found for nonstandard verbal -s. Most interestingly,
however, is the dissimilarity that was found between periphrastic DO and nonstandard verbal
-s with regard to verbal aspect. Both features are often reported as markers of the habitual
aspect. The analyses show that periphrastic DO is indeed favoured by habitual aspect.
Nonstandard verbal -s, on the other hand, is favoured by punctual aspect. This gives reason to
suggest that the two features may have different grammatical functions.
36
Further quantitative research is needed to look into the possible change where speakers
drop the use of periphrastic DO in favour of nonstandard verbal -s from a diachronic
perspective. Both geographically detailed and quantitative data from later generations are
necessary to examine whether the area of periphrastic DO is diminishing and the area of
nonstandard -s is expanding, or whether speakers use both features alternately. Another likely
possibility is that both features are becoming very rare. In addition, further studies could also
investigate whether other data support the idea that periphrastic DO and verbal -s show
different tendencies with regards to verbal aspect, as found in the present study.
37
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