demonstratives and indefinites came into partial conflict with the three-
way distinction in pronominals”. (¹18, 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 /?/. (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| | | |
| |/ði:z/ |/ðat/ |/ði-ki:/ |
|Simple |/ðs/ | | |
|First compound |/ði:z/ ji:r/ |/ðat ð?r/ |/ði-ki: ð?r/ |
| |/ðis ji:r/ | | |
|Singular pronoun | | | |
|Simple |/ðis/ |/ðat/ |/ ði-ki:/ |
| |/ði:z/ | | |
|First compound |/ðis ji:r/ |/ðat ð?r/ | |
|Second compound |/ðis ji:r ji:r/ |/ðat ð?r ð?r/ | |
|Plural adjective | | | |
|Simple |/ðejz/ |/ðej/ |/ði-ki:/ |
| |/ði:z/ | | |
|First compound |/ðejz ji:r/ |/ðej ð?r/ |/ði-ki: ð?r/ |
|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 ð?r/ |3 |/ðej ð?r/ |2 |
|/ði-ki:/ |43 |/ði-ki:/ |10 |
|/ði-ki: ð?r/ |4 |/ði-ki: ð?r/ |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 ð?r/ |2 | | |
|/ðat ð?r ð?r/ |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
Ñòðàíèöû: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16
