The definite article.
- There isn’t the definite article before “same”: ’Tis same’s I always told ’ee”.
- The of-phrase “the… of” is of ten used instead of the possessive pronoun (e.g. “the head of him “instead of” his head”)
The plural form of a noun.
- In many cases -s (es) can be added for several times:
e.g. steps [’steps∂z] (South Som.)
- in some cases [n] is heard at the end of the word:
e.g. keys [ki:n] (Wil.)
cows [kain] (Dev.)
bottles [botln] (South-W. Dev.)
primroses [prımr zn] (Dev.)
- but sometimes [s] is heard in the words ended with “-n”
e.g. oxen [ ksnz] (Western Som.)
rushes [rıksnz] (Dev.)
- some nouns have the same form in the singular and in the plural:
e.g. chicken - chickens [t∫ık] (Som.)
pipe - pipes [paıp] (Som.)
- sometimes the plural form of the noun is used insted of the singular form:
a house [auzn] (Southern Wil.)
3.2 Gender.
The full characteristic of Gender in South-Western English I’d like to base on the part of the article by Paddock. Paddock uses the historical lebel “Wessex” to describe the countries of South-Western England.
3.2.1 Gender making in Wessex-type English.
“It is usually claimed that English nouns lost their grammatical gender during the historical period called Middle English, roughly 1100-1500. But this claim needs some qualification. What actually happened during the Middle English period was that more overt gender marking of English nouns gave way to more covert marking. As in Lyons (1968:281-8), the term ‘gender’ is used here to refer to morphosyntactic classes of nouns. It is true that the loss of adjective concord in Middle English made gender marking less overt; but Modern English still retains some determiner concord which allows us to classify nouns (Christophersen and Sandved 1969). In addition, Modern English (ModE), like Old English (OE) and Middle English (ME), possesses pronominal distinctions which enable us to classify nouns.
We can distinguish at least three distinctly different types of gender marking along the continuum from most overt to most covert. The most overt involves the marking of gender in the morphology of the noun itself, as in Swahili (Lyons 1968:284-6). Near the middle of the overt-covert continuum we could place the marking of gender in adnominals such as adjectives and determiners. At or near the covert end of the scale we find the marking of gender in pronominal systems.
During all three main historical stages of the English language (OE, ME, ModE) one has been able to assign nouns to three syntactic classes called MASCULINE, FEMININE and NEUTER. However, throughout the recorded history of English this three-way gender marking has become less and less overt. In OE all three types of gender marking were present. But even in OE the intrinsic marking (by noun inflections) was often ambiguous in that it gave more information about noun declension (ie paradigm class) than about gender (ie concord class). The least ambiguous marking of gender in OE was provided by the adnominals traditionally called demonstratives and definite articles. In addition, gender ‘discord’ sometimes occurred in OE, in that the intrinsic gender marking (if any) and the adnominal marking, on the one hand, did not always agree with the gender of the pronominal, on the other hand. Standard ME underwent the loss of a three-way gender distinction in the morphology of both the nominals and the adnominals. This meant that Standard ModE nouns were left with only the most covert type of three-way gender marking, that of the pronominals. Hence we can assign a Standard ModE noun to the gender class MASCULINE, FEMININE or NEUTER by depending only on whether it selects he, she or it respectively as its proform.
During the ME and Early ModE periods the south-western (here called Wessex-type) dialects of England diverged from Standard English in their developments of adnominal and pronominal subsystems. In particular, the demonstratives of Standard English lost all trace of gender marking, whereas in south-western dialects their OE three-way distinction of MASCULINE/FEMININE/NEUTER developed into a two-way MASS/COUNT distinction which has survived in some Wessex-type dialects of Late ModE. The result in Wessex was that the two-way distinction in adnominals such as demonstratives and indefinites came into partial conflict with the three-way distinction in pronominals”. (№18, p.31-32)
- Nowadays in the south-western dialects the pronouns ‘he’ / ‘she’ are used instead of a noun:
e.g. My ooman put her bonnet there last year, and the birds laid their eggs in him. (= it)
Wurs my shovel? I aa got’im; him’s her. (= Where is my shovel? I’ve got it. That’s it.)
- In the south-western dialects objects are divided into two categories:
1) countable nouns (a tool, a tree), and the pronouns ‘he’ / ‘she’ are used with them
2) uncountable nouns (water, dust), and the pronoun ‘it’ is used with them.
The pronoun ‘he’ is used towards women.
3.3 Numerals.
In south-western dialects the compound numerals (21-99) are pronounced as: five and fifty, six and thirty.
In Devonshire instead of ‘the second’ ‘twoth’ is used (the twenty-twoth of April).
3.4 Adjectives.
In all dialects of the south-west -er, -est are used in the comparative and superative degrees with one-, two- and more syllabic adjectives:
e.g. the naturaler
the seasonablest
delightfuller (-est)
worser - worsest (Dw.)
- The words: ‘gin’, ‘an’, ‘as’, ‘nor’, ‘till’, ‘by’, ‘to’, ‘in’, ‘on’ are used instead of ‘than’ in the comparative forms:
e.g. When the lad there wasn’t scarce the height of that stool, and a less size on (= than) his brother…;
That’s better gin naething;
More brass inney (= than you) hadd’n;
It’s moor in bargain (= more than a bargain).
- The word ‘many’ is used with uncountable nouns
e.g. many water / milk
- The word ‘first’ is often used in the meaning of ‘the next’:
e.g. The first time I gang to the smiddie I’ll give it to him.
Will you come Monday first or Monday eight days?
3.5 Pronouns.
- The forms of the nominative case are often used instead of the forms of the objective case and vice versa:
e.g. Oi don’t think much o’ they (= of them).
Oi went out a-walkin wi’ she (= with her).
Oi giv ut t’ he (= it) back again.
Us (= we) don’t want t’ play wi’ he (= him).
Har (= she) oon’t speak t’ th’ loikes o’ we (= us).
When us (= we) is busy, him (= he) comes and does a day’s work for we (= us).
- The pronoun ‘mun’ (‘min’) is used in those cases, when in the literary language ‘them’ is used:
e.g. put mun in the house
gie mun to me
I mind (= remember) the first time I seed mun.
- ‘Mun’ is also used instead of ‘him’, ‘it’
e.g. let min alone
it would sarve un right if I telled the parson of mun
- Instead of ‘those’, ‘them’ is used:
e.g. I mind none of them things.
Give us them apples.
Fetch them plaates off o’ th’ pantry shelf.
- In the south-western dialects at the beginning of the sentenu the personal and impersonal pronouns are often dropped.
- “Whom” is never used in the south-western dialects. Instead of it ‘as’ / ‘at’ is used:
e.g. That’s the chap as (or what) his uncle was hanged.
The man’ at his coat’s torn.
- The nominative case of the personal pronouns is also used before ‘selves’:
e.g. we selves (Somerseshire, Devonshire)
- The standard demonstrative pronoun ‘this’ is used in the south-western dialects as: ‘this’, ‘this here’, ‘thease’, ‘thisn’, ‘thisna’.
- The standard demonstrative pronoun ‘that’ is used in the south-western dialects as: ‘thatn’, ‘thickumy’, ‘thilk’:
e.g. I suppose I could have told thee thilk.
- ‘Those’ is never used in the south-western dialects.
“thir’ ans” is used instead of it.
3.5.1 Demonstrative adjectives and pronouns in a Devonshire dialect.
I’d like to give not only the grammatical description of adjectives and pronouns in the south-western part of England, but the pronunciation of demonstrative adjectives and pronouns found in the dialect of south zeal, a village on the northern edge of Dartmoor. Martin Harris made his research work in this field:
“The analysis is based on a corpus of some twenty hours of tape-recorded conversation, collected in the course of work for a Ph.D. thesis, either in the form of a dialogue between two informants or of a monologue on the part of a single informant. The principal informant, Mr George Cooper, has lived for some eighty-five years in the parish, and has only spent one night in his life outside the county of Devon.
For the purposes of this chapter, only one phonological point needs to be made. The /r/ phoneme is retroflex in final position, and induces a preceding weak central vowel [∂] when occurring in the environment /Vr/, (thus [V∂r]), when the /V/ in question is /i:/ or /ε/. (These are the only two vowels relevant within this work.). The transcription used for the actual forms should not give rise to any further problems. In the case of the illustrative examples, 1 have decided to use a quasi-orthographical representation, since the actual phonetic/phonemic realization is not directly relevant to the point under discussion. The prominent syllable(s) in each example are illustrated thus: “.
We may now proceed to look at the actual forms found in the dialect (Table 1):
| Singular adjective Simple | /ði:z/ /ðs/ | /ðat/ | /ði-ki:/ |
| First compound | /ði:z/ ji:r/ /ðis ji:r/ | /ðat ðεr/ | /ði-ki: ðεr/ |
| Singular pronoun Simple | /ðis/ /ði:z/ | /ðat/ | / ði-ki:/ |
| First compound | /ðis ji:r/ | /ðat ðεr/ | |
| Second compound | /ðis ji:r ji:r/ | /ðat ðεr ðεr/ | |
| Plural adjective Simple | /ðejz/ /ði:z/ | /ðej/ | /ði-ki:/ |
| First compound | /ðejz ji:r/ | /ðej ðεr/ | /ði-ki: ðεr/ |
| Plural pronoun Simple (only) | /ðej/ |
The relative frequency of these forms is shown in Table 2.
| Adjectives | |||
| Singular | % | Plural | % |
| /ði:z/ | 13 | /ðejz/ | 23 |
| /ðis/ | 11 | /ði:z/ | 2 |
| /ði:z ji:r/ | 9 | /ðejz ji:r/ | 7 |
| /ðis ji:r/ | 2 | /ði:z ji:r/ | 4 |
| /ðat/ | 15 | /ðej/ | 49 |
| /ðat ðεr/ | 3 | /ðej ðεr/ | 2 |
| /ði-ki:/ | 43 | /ði-ki:/ | 10 |
| /ði-ki: ðεr/ | 4 | /ði-ki: ðεr/ | 3 |
| 100 | 100 | ||
| Pronouns | |||
| Singular | % | Plural | % |
| /ðis/ | 10 | ||
| /ði:z/ | 4 | ||
| /ðis ji:r/ | 2 | ||
| /ðis ji:r ji:r/ | 25 | /ðej/ | 100 |
| /ðat/ | 22 | ||
| /ðat ðεr/ | 2 | ||
| /ðat ðεr ðεr/ | 34 | ||
| /ði-ki:/ | 1 | ||
| 100 | |||
The paradigm as outlined in Tables 1, 2 presents few morphological problems. The two pairs of forms /ði:z/ and /ðis/ and /ðejz/ and /ði:z/ do, however, need examination. In the singular of the adjective, the two forms /ði:z/ and /ðis/ are both frequent, being used mostly in unstressed and stressed position respectively. However, some 30 per cent of the occurrences of each form do not follow this tendency, so it does not seem profitable to set up a stressed: unstressed opposition, particularly since such a division would serve no purpose in the case of /ðat/ and /ði-ki:/. With the ‘first compounds’, the form /ði:z ji:r/ outnumbers /ðis ji:r/ in the ratio 1 in the adjective position.
When functioning as a pronoun, /ði:z/ is rare as a simple form and never occurs at all either within a first compound (although ‘first compounds’ are so rare as pronouns that no generalization can usefully be made, see Table 2) or within a ‘second compound’, where only /ðis ji:r ji:r/, never /ði:z ji:r ji:r/, is found. Thus /ðis/ seems to be more favoured as a pronoun, and /ði:z/ as an adjective; this, of course, is only a tendency.
In the plural, the position is more clear-cut. The normal adjective plurals are /ðejz/ and /ðejz ji:r/, which outnumber /ði:z/ and /ði:z ji:r/ by a large margin (see Table 2). Such cases of the latter as do occur may perhaps be ascribed to Standard English influence, since /ði:z/ is clearly used normally as a singular rather than a plural form. The absence of any reflex of /ðejz/ as a plural pronoun is discussed below.
The other forms present little morphological difficulty. There is only one occurrence of /ði-ki:/ as a pronoun, although as an adjective it almost outnumbers /ði:z/ and /ðat/ together, so it seems to belong primarily to the adjectival system. The normal singular pronouns are either the simple forms or the ‘second compounds’, the ‘first compounds’ being most unusual.