them? - Our eyes/ears’) does not enable us to treat the transitive verbs
see Orton and Wakelin and hear (Orton and Wakelin) other than as ODVs.
The use of of as an operator between a transitive verb and its DO was
strangely enough never described by Barnes, and is casually dismissed as an
‘otiose of’ by the authors of the SED, even though nothing can really be
‘otiose’ in any language system. Rogers points out that ‘Much more widely
found formerly, it is now confined to sentences where the pronouns en, it
and em are the objects.’ This is obvious in the SED materials, as,
incidentally, it is in these lines by Barnes:
To work all day a-meдken haя/Or pitchen o’t.
Nevertheless, even if his usage is in conformity with present syntax,
it is important to add that, when Barnes was alive, o/ov could precede any
DO (a-meдken ov haя would equally have been possible). What should also be
noted in his poetry is the extremely rare occurrence of o’/ov after a
transitive verb with no -en (= -ing) ending, which, as we just saw, is
still very rare in modern speech:
Zoo I don’t mind o’ leдven it to-morrow.
Zoo I don’t mind o’ leдven o’t to-morrow.
The second line shows a twofold occurrence of o’ after two transitive
verbs, one with and one without -en.
This -en ending can be a marker of a verbal noun, a gerund or a
present participle (as part of a progressive aspect form or on its own),
and o’ may follow in each case.
VERBAL NOUN
My own a-decken ov my own (‘my own way of dressing my darling’).
This is the same usage as in Standard English he doesn’t like my
driving of his car.
GERUND
That wer vor hetten o’n (‘that was for hitting him’).
. . . little chance/O’ catchen o’n.
I be never the better vor zee-en o’ you.
The addition of o’ to a gerund is optional: Vor grinden any corn vor
bread is similar to Standard English.
PROGRESSIVE ASPECT
As I wer readen ov a stwone (about a headstone).
Rogers gives two examples of the progressive aspect:
I be stackin’ on ‘em up.
I were a-peeling of the potatoes (with a different spelling).
PRESENT PARTICIPLE ON ITS OWN
To vind me stannen in the cwold, / A-keepen up o’ Chris’mas.
After any present participle, the use of o’ is also optional:
Where vo’k be out a-meдken haя.
The general formula is thus:
trans. V > V + o’/0
which can also be read as
MV (main verb) > trans. V + o’/0 + DO.
Here, o’ stands for o’ (the most common form), ov and even on. In modem
usage, the DO, which could be a noun or noun phrase in Barnes’s day and
age, appears from the SED materials to be restricted to personal pronouns.
For modern dialects, the formula thus reads:
MV > trans. V + o’/0 + pers. pron.
The o’ is here a transitivity operator which, exactly like an
accusative ending in a language with case declensions, disappears in the
passive. Consequently, the phenomenon under discussion here has to be
distinguished from that of prepositional verbs, which require the retention
of the preposition in the passive:
We have thought of all the possible snags. >
All the possible snags have been thought of.
The use of o’ as a transitivity operator in active declaratives is also
optional, which represents another basic difference from prepositional
verbs.
Exactly the same opposition, interestingly enough, applies in south-
western dialects also:
[1] He is (a-) eдten o’ ceдkes > What is he (a-) eдten?
[2] He is (a-) dreдmen o’ceдkes > What is he (a-) dreдmen ov?
What remains a preposition in [1] and [2] works as the link between a
transitive verb and its DO. The compulsory deletion of the operator o’ in
questions relating to the DO demonstrates the importance here of the word
order (V + o’ + DO), as does also the similar triggering of deletion by
passives.
Though now used in a more restricted way, ie before personal pronouns
only, this syntactic feature is better preserved in the modern dialects
than the
-y ending of intransitive verbs, but, in so far as it is only optional, it
is easy to detect the growing influence of Standard English.
2. Diachrony as an explanation of these features.
Although the above description has not been purely synchronic, since
it cites differences in usage between the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries, it is actually only by looking back at even earlier stages of
the language that we can gain any clear insights into why the dialects have
developed in this way.
Both Widen and Wakelin remind us that the originally strictly
morphological -y ending has since developed into a syntactic feature. It is
a survival of the Middle English infinitive ending -ie(n), traceable to the
-ian suffix of the second class of Old English weak verbs (OE milcian > ME
milkie(n) > south-west dial. milky). Subsequently, -y has been analogically
extended to other types of verbs in south-west dialects under certain
syntactic conditions: in the absence of any DO, through sheer impossibility
(intransitive verb) or due to the speaker’s choice (ODV or ergative). The
only survival of medieval usage is the impossibility of a verb form like
milky being anything other than an infinitive. Note that this cannot be
labelled an archaism, since the standard language has never demonstrated
this particular syntactic specialization.
So far no explanation seems to have been advanced for the origin of
‘otiose of’, and yet it is fairly easy to resort to diachrony in order to
explain this syntactic feature. Let us start, however, with contemporary
Standard English:
[3] They sat, singing a shanty. (present participle on its own)
[4] They are singing a shanty. (progressive aspect)
[5] I like them/their singing a shanty. (gerund)
[6] I like their singing of a shanty. (verbal noun)
Here [5] and [6] are considered nominalizations from a synchronic point of
view. As far as [4] is concerned, Barnes reminds his readers that the OE
nominalization ic waes on hunlunge (‘I was in the process of hunting’, cf
Aelfric’s Colloquim: fui in. venatione) is the source of modern / was
hunting, via an older structure I was (a-) hunting which is preserved in
many dialects, the optional verbal prefix a- being what remains of the
preposition on.
The nominal nature of V-ing is still well established in the verbal
noun (with the use of of in particular), and it is here that the starting-
point of a chain reaction lies. Hybrid structures (verbal nouns/gerunds)
appeared as early as Middle English, as in
bi puttyng forth of whom so it were (1386 Petition of Mercers)
and similar gerunds followed by of were still a possibility in Elizabethan
English:
Rend not my heart for naming of my Christ (Marlowe, Doctor Faustus)
together with verbal nouns not followed by any of:
... as the putting him clean out of his humour (B. Jonson, Every Man
out of his Humour).
Having been extended from the verbal noun to the gerund, of also
eventually spread to the progressive aspect in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, at a time when the V-ing + of sequence became very
widespread in Standard English:
Are you crossing of yourself? (Marlowe, Doctor Faustus).
He is hearing of a cause (Shakespeare, Measure for Measure).
She is taking of her last farewell (Bunyan, The Pilgim’s Progress).
However, what is definitely an archaism in Standard English has been
preserved in south-western dialects, which have gone even further and also
added an optional o’ to the present participle used on its own (ie other
than in the progressive aspect). Moreover, there is even a tendency, as we
have seen, to use o’ after a transitive verb without the -en (= -ing)
ending. This tendency, which remains slight, represents the ultimate point
of a chain reaction that can be portrayed as follows:
Use of o’ in the environment following:
(A) (B) (C)
(D)
verbal noun > gerund > be + V-ing > pres. part. > V
V-ing
(A) evolution from Middle English to the Renaissance;
(B) evolution typical of English in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries;
(C) evolution typical of south-western dialects;
(D) marginal tendency in south-western dialects.
The dialect usage is more than a mere syntactic archaism: not only
have the south-western dialects preserved stages (A) and (B); they are also
highly innovative in stages (C) and (D).” (№18, p.218)
4. Vocabulary.
Devonshire (Dev)
Somersetshire (Som)
Wiltshire (Wil)
Cornwall (Cor)
A
Abroad - adj растерянный, незнающий, как поступить; попавший впросак,
совершивший ошибку; разваренный, расплавленный (о пище): The potatoes are
abroad. The sugar is gone abroad.
Addle, Udall, Odal (Dev) - v зарабатывать, сберегать, откладывать,
экономить; (о растениях) расти, расцветать [gu. oрla, возвр. oрlask -
приобретать (имущество), oрal - имущество]
Ail (Wil, Dev) - n ость (колоса)
Aller (Dev) - n нарыв, карбункул; тяжелый ожог: Suke died acause her
aller wanted letting.
Answer (Som) - v выносить, переносить (те или иные условия,
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