3.8 Transitivity and intransivity in the dialects of South-West England.
One of the most important aspects of studying south-western English is dialect syntax. So, the article by Jean-Marc Gachelin can give us much information about transitivity and intransitivity in the dialects of South-West England.
“Wakelin has pointed out that ‘syntax is an unwieldy subject which dialectologists have fought shy of’. This brushing aside of dialect syntax is regrettable because the study of grammatical variation can shed light on the workings of any language, and thereby enrich general linguistics. The present chapter deals with an area of dialect syntax - transitivity in south-west of England dialects - and attempts to characterize and explain, synchronically and diachronically, its salient features.
We prefer the moderation of Kilby, who simply admits that the notion of direct object (DO) ‘is not at all transparent in its usage’. The problem, therefore, should be not so much to discard but rather to improve our notions of transitivity and intransitivity. In this regard, the dialects of South-west England are important and interesting.
1. A description of transitivity and intransitivity in the dialects of South-west England.
When compared with the corresponding standard language, any geographical variety may be characterized by three possibilities:
(a) identity; (b) archaism (due to slower evolution); and (c) innovation. Interestingly enough, it is not uncommon in syntax for (b) and (c) to combine if a given dialect draws extensively on a secondary aspect of an older usage. This is true of two features which are highly characteristic of the South-west and completely absent in contemporary Standard English.
1.1 Infinitive + y
One of these characteristics is mentioned by Wakelin, the optional addition of the -y ending to the infinitive of any real intransitive verb or any transitive verb not followed by a DO, namely object-deleting verbs (ODVs) and ergatives. The use of this ending is not highlighted in the Survey of English Dialects (SED, Orton and Wakelin). It is only indirectly, when reading about relative pronouns, that we come upon There iddn (= isn’t) many (who) can sheary now, recorded in Devon (Orton and Wakelin). However, Widen gives the following examples heard in Dorset: farmy, flickery, hoopy (‘to call’), hidy, milky, panky (‘to pant’), rooty (talking of a pig), whiny. Three of these verbs are strictly intransitive (ftickery, panky, whiny), the others being ODVs. Wright also mentions this characteristic, chiefly in connection with Devon, Somerset and Dorset.
In the last century, Barnes made use of the -y ending in his Dorset poems, both when the infinitive appears after to:
reäky = ‘rake’
skimmy
drashy = ‘thresh’
reely
and after a modal (as in the example from the SED):
Mid (= may) happy housen smoky round/The church.
The cat veil zick an’ woulden mousy.
But infin.+y can also be found after do (auxiliary), which in South-west dialects is more than a more ‘signal of verbality’, serving as a tense-marker as well as a person-marker (do everywhere except for dost, 2nd pers. sing.). Instead of being emphatic, this do can express the progressive aspect or more often the durative-habitual (= imperfective) aspect, exactly like the imperfect of Romance languages. Here are a few examples culled from Barnes’s poems:
Our merry sheäpes did jumpy.
When I do pitchy, ‘tis my pride (meaning of the verb, cf pitch-fork).
How gaÿ the paths be where we do strolly.
Besides ODVs and intransitive verbs, there is also an ergative:
doors did slammy.
In the imperative, infin. -y only appears with a negative:
don’t sobby!
The optional use of the -y ending is an advantage in dialect poetry for metre or rhyme:
Vor thine wull peck, an’ mine wull grubby (rhyming with snubby)
And this ending probably accounts for a phonetic peculiarity of South-west dialects, namely the apocope of to arguy (the former dialect pronunciation of to argue), to carry and to empty, reduced to to arg, to car and to empt.
In the grammatical part of his Glossary of the Dorset Dialect, Barnes insists on the aspectual connection between do and infin.+y:
“Belonging to this use of the free infinitive y-ended verbs, is another kindred one, the showing of a repetition or habit of doing as ‘How the dog do jumpy’, i-e keep jumping. ‘The child do like to whippy’, amuse himself with whipping. ‘Idle chap, he’ll do nothen but vishy, (spend his time in fishing), if you do leâve en alwone’. ‘He do markety’, he usually attends market.”
Barnes also quotes a work by Jennings in which this South-west feature was also described:
“Another peculiarity is that of attaching to many of the common verbs in the infinitive mode as well as to some other parts of different conjugations, the letter -y. Thus it is very common to say ‘I can’t sewy’, I can’t nursy’, ‘he can’t reapy’, ‘he can’t sawy’, as well as ‘to sewy, to nursy, to reapy, to sawy’, etc; but never, I think, without an auxiliary verb, or the sign of the infinitive to.”
Barnes claimed, too, that the collocation of infin. +y and the DO was unthinkable: ‘We may say, “Can ye zewy?” but never “Wull ye zewy up theäse zêam?” “Wull ye zew up theäse zêam” would be good Dorset.”
Elworthy also mentions the opposition heard in Somerset between I do dig the garden and Every day, I do diggy for three hours (quoted by Jespersen and by Rogers). Concerning the so-called ‘free infinitive’, Wiltshire-born Rogers comments that ‘it is little heard now, but was common in the last century’, which tallies with the lack of examples in the SED. (This point is also confirmed by Itialainen) Rogers is quite surprised to read of a science-fiction play (BBC, 15 March 1978) entitled ‘Stargazy in Zummerland’, describing a future world in which the population was divided between industrial and agricultural workers, the latter probably using some form of south-western speech, following a time-honoured stage tradition already perceptible in King Lear (disguised as a rustic, Edgar speaks broad Somerset).
To sum up, after to, do (auxiliary), or a modal, the formula of the ‘free infinitive’ is
intr. V → infin. + -y/0
where ‘intr.’ implies genuine intransitives, ODVs and even ergatives. As a dialect-marker, -y is now on the wane, being gradually replaced by 0 due to contact with Standard English.
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