A Comparative Grammar of British English Dialects: Modals, Pronouns and Complement Clauses

329 Pages·2011·2.78 MB·English

by  Nuria Hernández, Daniela Kolbe, Monika Edith Schulz

A Comparative Grammar of British English Dialects
Topics in English Linguistics
50.2
Editors
Bernd Kortmann
Elizabeth Closs Traugott
De Gruyter Mouton
A Comparative Grammar
of British English Dialects
Modals, Pronouns and Complement Clauses
by
Nuria Herna´ndez
Daniela Kolbe
Monika Edith Schulz
De Gruyter Mouton
ISBN 978-3-11-024028-3
e-ISBN 978-3-11-024029-0
ISSN 1434-3452
LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData
Herna´ndez,Nuria.
AcomparativegrammarofBritishEnglishdialects:modals,pro-
nouns and complement clauses / by Nuria Herna´ndez, Daniela
Kolbe,MonikaSchulz.
p.cm.(cid:2)(TopicsinEnglishlinguistics;50.2)
Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex.
ISBN978-3-11-024028-3(alk.paper)
1. English language (cid:2) Dialects (cid:2) Great Britain. 2. English
language (cid:2) Great Britain (cid:2) Grammar. 3. English language (cid:2)
Modality. 4.Englishlanguage(cid:2)Pronoun. 5.Englishlanguage(cid:2)
Clauses. I.Kolbe,Daniela. II.Schulz,MonikaEdith. III.Title.
PE1721.C663 2011
4271.941(cid:2)dc23
2011037895
BibliographicinformationpublishedbytheDeutscheNationalbibliothek
TheDeutscheNationalbibliothekliststhispublicationintheDeutscheNationalbibliografie;
detailedbibliographicdataareavailableintheInternetathttp://dnb.d-nb.de.
”2011WalterdeGruyterGmbH&Co.KG,10785Berlin/Boston
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Printing:Hubert&Co.GmbH&Co.KG,Göttingen
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Preface
In 2005, A Comparative Grammar of British English Dialects: Agreement,
Gender, Relative Clauses (Kortmann et al. 2005) appeared as the first publi-
cation in this series concerned with the study of English dialect grammar. It
consisted of three comprehensive studies on relative clauses (by Tanja Herr-
mann), verbal concord (by Lukas Pietsch), and gender in English pronouns
(by Susanne Wagner). The book was designed to fill a noticeable gap in
English dialectology, at a time when systematic comparisons of individual
grammaticalphenomenaacrossdifferentdialectswerevirtuallynon-existent.
Itsetanexampleastohowthisgapcouldbefilledbystudiestakingamixed
qualitativeandquantitativeapproachtovariationinmorphologyandsyntax.
The three studies presented in the first volume were informed by a func-
tional typological approach to dialect grammar and were all based on data
fromtheFreiburgCorpusofEnglishDialects.Theywereallwrittenbymem-
bers of the research group on English dialect syntax which was initiated by
Prof. Bernd Kortmann at the university of Freiburg, Germany, in the late
1990s.Followingthepublicationofthesestudies,theprojectcontinuedwith
a second generation of researchers passionate about the dialects of British
English, based on the same corpus. Three new studies are now presented
in this book: the study of past possession and obligation by Monika Edith
Schulz,thestudyofpersonalpronounsbyNuriaHernández,andthestudyof
complementclausesbyDanielaKolbe.
This second volume of A Comparative Grammar of British English Dia-
lects is designed to provide new insights into grammatical variation, and to
supportthegrowinginterestinthecorpus-basedstudyofdialects.
Essen,TrierandHamburg,November2011
NuriaHernándezySiebold,DanielaKolbe-HannaandMonikaEdithSchulz
Acknowledgements
AllauthorsmostgratefullyacknowledgethegeneroussupportoftheDeutsche
Forschungsgemeinschaft.ThefundingoftheprojectsKO1181/1-1,2,3overa
five-yearperiod(2000-2005)facilitatedthecompilationoftheFreiburgCor-
pus of English Dialects, FRED, on which all studies in the present volume
arebased.
ThisbookisdedicatedtoBerndKortmann,whoseresearchatthecrossroads
ofdialectologyandtypologyhasbeenagreatinspirationtoallofus.
Table of contents
Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v
Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vi
Generalintroduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
NuriaHernández,DanielaKolbe,MonikaEdithSchulz
1. Dialectsyntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
2. Dialectologyandcorpuslinguistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3. TheFreiburgCorpusofEnglishDialects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
4. AimsandOutline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Possessionandobligation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
MonikaEdithSchulz
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
2. Possessionandobligation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
3. Grammaticalization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
4. HADand GOT:Disambiguatingpastpossessionandpast
obligation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
5. PastpossessionandpastobligationintheMidlandsandthe
North . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
6. Pastpossessionandnegation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
7. Pastobligationandnegation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
8. Presenttenseobligationandthetrendtowardsmonosemy . . . . . 45
9. Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
Personalpronouns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
NuriaHernández
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
2. Twohierarchies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
3. Variationinnumberandperson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
4. Variationingender . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
viii Tableofcontents
5. Pronounexchange . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
6. Casevariationinprepositionalphrases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
7. Qualifiedpronouns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
8. Synopsisanddiscussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
Appendix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
Complementclauses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
DanielaKolbe
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
2. Dataandmethods. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
3. Embeddedinversion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221
4. Thecomplementizeras . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 244
5. Fortoclauses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255
6. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 288
Appendix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293
Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299
References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303
Index. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315
General introduction
Nuria Hernández, Daniela Kolbe, Monika Edith Schulz
1. Dialectsyntax
The study of dialect syntax in its present form is a relatively young field in
terms of the combination of variety type and linguistic phenomenon under
investigation. Non-standard, rural varieties of a language have been investi-
gated within the framework of dialect geography and dialectology since the
late 19th century, with work focusing mainly on phonology and the lexicon
(ChambersandTrudgill19982:13–44).
While traditional dialectology has often been associated with a lack of
theoretical foundation and a “butterfly collecting mentality” (Filppula et al.
2005: vii), input from microparametric syntax, variationist sociolinguistics
andtypologyhavetransformedthefieldoverthepastthirtyyears.
Microparametric syntax and typology provided a variety of theoretical
frameworksagainstwhichlinguisticvariationcouldbediscussedinaprinci-
pledway.Inaddition,typologicalexpertisefromthestudyofcross-linguistic
variationbroughtafreshperspectiveonlanguage-internalvariation.
Bothparadigmshaveshiftedthefocusofinvestigationfromphonological
andlexicaltomorphosyntacticvariation,whichhadbeenlargelyneglectedin
traditional dialectology. Variationist sociolinguistics, similar to dialectology
initsfocusonlanguage-internalvariation,providedasophisticatedmethod-
ological toolkit and the crucial link between synchronic variation and dia-
chronicchange.
Theutilizationandamalgamationofthestrengthsofdialectology,micro-
parametric syntax and typology have resulted in an impressive and ever-
growingbodyofresearchsincethelate1980s(cf.CorriganandCornips2005,
amongmanyothers).MicroparametricsyntacticdialectatlasesliketheASIS
(Syntactic Atlas of Northern Italy), SAND (Syntactic Atlas of Dutch Dia-
lects) or ScanDiaSyn (Sczandinavian Dialect Syntax) have been compiled.
Since2005theEdisyn(EuropeanDialectSyntax)projecthastakenaguiding