Lancashire dialect grammar:

a corpus-based approach

A thesis submitted to Lancaster University

for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.

Claire Dembry, BA, MA

Department of Linguistics and English Language

Lancaster University

March 2011
ABBREVIATIONS..................................................................................................... 7
ABSTRACT………………………………………..………………………………... 8
DECLARATION………………………………..…………………………………... 9
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS........................................................................................ 10

CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION
1.1 Preliminaries………………………...……………………………………....... 11
1.2 Rationale…………………………...………………………………………….. 13
1.2.1 Lancashire area…………………….…………………………………. 15
1.2.2 Lancashire identity……………………………………………………. 17
1.3 Methodological approaches………..……………………………………….... 20
1.3.1 Corpora in sociolinguistics...………………………………………….. 22
1.3.2 Sound Archive corpus….……………………………………………... 23
1.3.3 Dialect literature in sociolinguistics...……………………………….. 25
1.3.4 Litcorp and Lancashire Fairytales…………………………………….. 27
1.3.5 Questionnaires and other methods………………………………......... 31
1.3.6 Choosing grammatical features……………………………………….. 32
1.4 Theoretical approach…………………………………………………………. 33
1.5 Overview and aims…………………………………………………………… 34

CHAPTER 2. RELATIVATION
2.1 Overview………………………………….…………………………………… 35
2.2 Analysis of relative clauses................................................................................ 35
2.2.1 Defining relativization constructions………………..………………... 35
2.2.2 Relativization types……………..…………………………………….. 37
2.2.2.1 Zero relatives………………………………………………... 38
2.2.2.2 Relativization in varieties of English……………………….. 40
2.2.3 Factors influencing relativizer choice………………………………… 41
2.2.3.1 Syntax: dependencies between RV and antecedent…………. 41
2.2.3.2 Semantic category of antecedent……………………………. 42
2.2.3.3 Restrictiveness (semantic scope) of the RC………………… 43
2.2.3.4 Other factors………………………………………………… 45
2.2.4 Diachronic change in relativization…………………………………... 46
2.2.5 Summary and research questions……………………………………... 46
2.3 Methodology....................................................................................................... 47
2.3.1 Rationale for methodology……………………………………………. 48
2.3.2 Corpora: Litcorp and Sound Archive…………………………………. 49
2.3.3 Questionnaires……………………………………………………….... 52
2.3.4 Classification and division of respondents……………………………. 54
2.4 Results and discussion....................................................................................... 55
2.4.1 Overview of corpus results…………………………………………… 55
2.4.2 Corpus results – restrictiveness of relative clause…….……………… 61
2.4.3 Corpus results – semantic category of antecedent …………………... 62
2.4.4 Questionnaire findings - distribution of relativizers ………………… 62
2.5 Concluding remarks………………………………………………………….. 65

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CHAPTER 3. HAVEN’T TO
3.1 Introduction………………………………………………….………………... 68
3.2 Literature review............................................................................................... 69
3.2.1 Modality in Standard English………………………….……………... 69
3.2.2 Modals vs. semi-modals……………………………….…………….... 72
3.2.3 Recent changes to modal verbs in Standard English….……………… 73
3.2.4 HAVE to and HAVEn’t to in current Standard English ...……………..... 75
3.2.5 History of the HAVEn’t to construction…………………………….…. 77
3.2.6 The rise of periphrastic do……….…………………………………… 79
3.2.7 Related constructions………...……………………………………...... 80
3.2.8 Modals in varieties of English……………………………………....... 82
3.2.9 Summary……………………………………………………………… 83
3.2.10 Research hypotheses………………………………………………….. 84
3.3 Methodology…………………………………………………………………... 85
3.3.1 Introduction…………………………………………………………… 85
3.3.2 Corpus searches………………………………………………………. 85
3.4 Results and discussion....................................................................................... 86
3.4.1 Semi-modals and the BNC………………………………………….... 86
3.4.2 Corpus comparison of HAVEn’t to …………………………………… 87
3.4.3 Syntactic analysis of HAVEn’t to in Lancashire data …………………. 89
3.4.4 Semantic analysis of HAVEn’t to in the Lancashire data……………… 90
3.4.5 Explanations for semantic differences – constructional polysemy…… 93
3.5 Analysing the necessity/obligation construction family................................. 94
3.5.1 Introduction…………………………………………….……………... 94
3.5.2 Corpus results………………………………………………………… 94
3.5.3 Diachronic change – testing the Frequency Hypotheses.…………….. 95
3.5.4 Considerations and contradictions……….…………………………… 97
3.5.5 Semantic evidence……………………….…………………………… 98
3.5.6 Syntactic evidence……………………….…………………………… 100
3.6 Concluding remarks......................................................................................... 101

CHAPTER 4. VERBAL AGREEMENT AND THE NORTHERN SUBJECT

RULE
4.1 Introduction………………..………………………………………………….. 105
4.1.1 Overview…………….………………………………………………... 106
4.1.2 A focus on the NSR….……………………………………………….. 109
4.1.3 Variation with BE….………………………………………………... 112
4.2 History of the NSR……………………...……………………………………. 115
4.2.1 Origins of the NSR……………….………………………………….... 115
4.2.2 Constructional competition……….…………………………………... 118
4.2.3 Salience…………………………….…………………………………. 123
4.2.4 Frequency of usage…………………...………………………………. 125
4.2.5 Summary and research questions…….……………………………….. 126
4.3 Methodology....................................................................................................... 127
4.3.1 Rationale for methodology………………….………………………... 127
4.3.2 Corpora…………………………………….…………………………. 129
4.3.3 Standard and nonstandard verb forms…….………………………….. 130
4.3.4 Questionnaires………………………………………………………... 132

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 4.3.5 Classification and division of respondents.…………………………... 134
4.4 Results and analysis.......................................................................................... 135
4.4.1 NSR results…………………………….……………………………... 135
4.4.2 Other constructions with 3sg agreement …………………………….. 142
4.4.3 Other nonstandard agreement patterns……………………………….. 149
4.4.4 Was/were variation…………………………………………………… 150
4.4.5 Other variation with was/were...……………………………………… 153
4.4.6 Questionnaire results…………………………………………………. 154
4.5 Concluding remarks…………………………………………………..……... 158

CHAPTER 5. SALIENCE
5.1 Introduction........................................................................................................ 161
5.1.1 What is salience?...………………………………………………….... 162
5.1.2 Salience, markedness and enregisterment…………………………….. 163
5.1.3 Accommodation – problems and solutions…………………………… 165
5.1.4 Aims…………………………………………………………………... 167
5.2 Rationale............................................................................................................. 169
5.2.1 Using dialect literature..…………………………............................... 170
5.2.2 Choosing constructions……………………………………………….. 170
5.2.3 Summary, research questions and hypotheses ………………………. 172
5.3 Methodology....................................................................................................... 172
5.3.1 Corpus methods………………………………………………………. 173
5.3.2 New corpus data – Lancashire Fairytales……………………............. 176
5.3.3 Interpreting corpus result……………………………………………... 179
5.4 Results and discussion....................................................................................... 180
5.4.1 Features found across all corpora….…………………………………. 181
5.4.2 Features found in dialect literature………………………………….. 184
5.4.3 Features found in the most recent corpora...………………………….. 188
5.4.4 Other features…………………………………………………………. 188
5.4.5 Lancashire Fairytales – comparing Lancs and non-Lancs...………….. 191
5.5 Concluding remarks.......................................................................................... 194

CHAPTER 6. CONCLUDING REMARKS………………………………………. 198

REFERENCES……………………………………………………………………... 206

APPENDICES
A Appendix A: Map of the old County of Lancashire…………………………… 222
B Appendix B: Texts comprising Litcorp………………………………………... 223
C Appendix C: Questionnaire – sociolinguistic information..………………….... 224
D Appendix D: Questionnaire – content testing the NSR ………………….......... 225
E Appendix E: Ellipsis test sentences……………………………..……………... 227
F Appendix F: Questionnaires – content testing zero relatives ………...……… 228
G Appendix G: Sample text from Lancashire Fairytales………………………… 230

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 List of tables

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION
Table 1 Overview of data sources and variables……………………………….. 21

CHAPTER 2 RELATIVIZATION
Table 1 Frequency of relativizer in Sound Archive and Litcorp……………….. 55
Table 2 Frequency of zero relatives in a 45,000 word sample from each
corpus…………………………………………………………………... 58
Table 3 Variant spellings of what and that relativizers in Litcorp……………... 58
Table 4 Analysis of ut results in Litcorp……………………………………….. 60
Table 5 Frequency of restrictive and non-restrictive relative clauses by
relativizer………………………………………………………………. 60
Table 6 Frequency of relative clauses by animacy type………………………... 62
Table 7 Questionnaire results for zero relatives………………………………... 63
Table 8 Choice of relativizer by questionnaire participants……………………. 64

CHAPTER 3 HAVEN’T TO
Table 1 NICE Qualities of semi-modals as compared to ‘core’ modals in
Standard English (Quirk et al., 1985:140)…………………………… 72
Table 2 Negative forms of semi-modals in the BNC, with and without DO, raw
frequency results……………………………………………………….. 87
Table 3 Instances of forms of the HAVEn’t to construction in the Lancashire
data……………………………………………………………………... 88
Table 4 Difference in obligation type in HAVEn’t to constructions in
Lancashire dialect data (raw frequency results)……………………..… 91
Table 5 HAVEn’t to family of constructions (normalized frequency results)…… 95
Table 6 Obligation construction family and the NICE properties……………… 100

CHAPTER 4 VERBAL AGREEMENT AND THE NSR

Table 1 Paradigm of BE in Old High German, Old English and Modern
English..……………...…………………………………….................... 106
Table 2 Late Middle English present indicative agreement with FIND…………. 107
Table 3 Diachronic changes in the verbal agreement system in Northern
English…………………………………………………………………. 116
Table 4 Instances of the NSR in the Lancashire corpora……………………….. 137
Table 5 Agreement patterns with thou in the Lancashire corpora……………… 138
Table 6 Testing pronoun adjacency…………………………………………….. 143
Table 7 Testing non-pronominal subject adjacency……………………………. 144
Table 8 Frequency of nonstandard 3sg constructions analysed as either
habitual or historical present…………………………………………… 146
Table 9 Overlap between the NSR, habitual and the historical present
constructions…………………………………………………………… 148
Table 10 Was/were variation in the Sound Archive and Litcorp………………… 151
Table 11 Negated vs. non-negated nonstandard was/were results………………. 152
Table 12 Geographical region and dialect type of informant……………………. 155
Table 13 Median and mean acceptability score by all respondents, grouped
results…………………………………………………………………... 156
Table 14 Testing adjacent personal pronouns…………………………………… 157
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CHAPTER 5 SALIENCE
Table 1 Definite article reduction/deletion...…………………………………… 181
Table 2 Was/were variation…….......................................................................... 182
Table 3 Past tense negator never...............……………………………………... 183
Table 4 Distribution of adverbial right + adjective…………………………….. 185
Table 5 Features predominately found in Litcorp..…………………………….. 186
Table 6 Other nonstandard features found predominately in Litcorp…………... 187
Table 7 Features found predominately in recent corpora...…………………….. 188
Table 8 Distribution of owt and nowt………………...………………………… 189
Table 9 A sample of nonstandard phonological features frequent in dialect
literature…………………………………………..…………………… 190
Table 10 Raw frequencies of nonstandard features in the Lancs and Non-Lancs
parts of Lancashire Fairytales…..……………………………………… 192

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 List of figures
CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION
Figure 1 Map of Lancashire ………………………………………………….. 15
Figure 2 Overview of data sources used in this thesis..………………………. 21
Figure 3 Geographical location of informants in the Sound Archive corpus… 24
Figure 4 Excerpt from Lancashire Pride (Thompson, 1945)………………… 29

CHAPTER 2 RELATIVIZATION
Figure 1 Most frequent relativizers in the Lancashire corpora……………….. 56

CHAPTER 3 HAVEN’T TO
Figure 1 The auxiliary verb-main verb scale (adapted from Quirk et al.,
1995:137)……………………………………………………………. 73
Figure 2 S-curve model of language change (reproduced from Kroch
1989:22)............................................................................................... 81
Figure 3 Possible diachronic change in the Lancashire corpus data………….. 96
Figure 4 Distribution of constructions displaying weak and strong obligation. 98

CHAPTER 5 SALIENCE
Figure 1 Nonstandard features examined in Chapter 5…..…………………… 161
Figure 2 Mapping salient constructions………………………………………. 168
Figure 3 Semi-phonetic respellings in Tummus and Mearey (Bobbin, 1846)... 170
Figure 4 Dialect literature task – Lancashire Fairytales……………………… 177
Figure 5 Interpreting corpus comparisons……………………………………. 180

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 Abbreviations
1 First Person
2 Second Person
3 Third Person
Neg Negative
sg Singular
pl Plural
Ø Zero (missing element)
Adj Adjective
AdvP Adverb phrase
NP Noun phrase
RC Relative clause
RRC Restrictive relative clause
RV Finite relative clause verb
NRRC Non-restrictive relative clause
ZR Zero relative
to-inf to infinitive

Litcorp Lancashire Literature Corpus

Sound Archive North West Sound Archive Corpus

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 Abstract
This thesis investigates a number of key grammatical features found in the previously
under-studied Lancashire dialect. While the primary aims of the study are without
doubt descriptive, a strong theoretical and methodological component to the
investigation is also present. Theoretically, this study is couched within the usage-
based approach to language (see e.g. Croft and Cruse, 2004: 291-327). It employs
innovative uses of new methodologies relating not only to a substantial spoken corpus,
but also to a newly collated corpus compiled from historical dialect literature texts.
Corpus resources are also supported by acceptability judgements and tasks which are
gathered from a large number of respondents using new techniques in order to
maximise the extent and significance of the data presented here.
This thesis details variation that is already well documented in other varieties
of English (e.g. relativization, verbal agreement), but differentiates itself by
highlighting nuances and complexities not previously considered before, such as
semantic differences in the HAVEn’t to construction; constructional competition in the
Northern Subject Rule and approaches to using corpora in measuring sociolinguistic
salience.
Underpinning the thesis is the idea that the interplay between non-standard
data and theoretical linguistics can be bidirectional, where theory can inform the
analysis of dialect data, and such analysis of dialect data can inform the formulation or
further refinement of new or existing linguistic theory (see also Hollmann and
Siewierska, 2011, Hollmann, to appear, and references cited therein).
The methods used here and the research presented by employing these
methods in the subsequent chapters emphasize the need for a broad range of resource
types in order to strengthen claims made in sociolinguistic research.

8
 Declaration
I declare that this thesis is my own work has not been submitted in substantially the
same form for the award of a higher degree elsewhere.

9
 Acknowledgements
This thesis would never have got going, much less be completed, without the financial
support I received from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, for which I am
extremely grateful.

My utmost gratitude must be expressed to my supervisors, Professor Anna Siewierska

and Dr.Willem Hollmann, for their help and support during my doctoral studies, and
also before this during my time as an undergraduate in Lancaster. It is with great
sadness that Anna did not get to see the finished thesis.

I am grateful to many other people in the Department of Linguistics and English

Language at Lancaster University, in particular to Dr. Andrew Hardie and Dr.
Jonathan Culpeper for giving me so many opportunities to gain really valuable (and
very enjoyable) teaching experience throughout the duration of my PhD.

My gratitude goes also to the SCR at Fylde College, Lancaster University who gave
me the opportunity to remain engaged in college life within my role as Assistant
Dean. In particular, my thanks go to Dr. Matt Storey for his ever practical advice, and
especially to my fellow Assistant Dean and PhD student, Dr. Krishna Morker.

I am grateful to my new employer, Cambridge University Press, and in particular to

Ann Fiddes and Dr. Julia Harrison for their support, encouragement and patience in
the final stages of my work. My appointment in Cambridge has been a great incentive
to finish my research.

I am also grateful to all of my friends, and in particular to Toshi, Chris, Mags, Clairey
and Katie; Chris-M and Rachel, Nicola and Jenny; and to my new friends in
Cambridge, Liz and Laura. It goes without saying that I am incredibly grateful also to
Matt, for his love, support, suggestions, advice and help on a day-to-day basis
throughout my project.

Last but not least, I am indebted to all of my family for all of their continued
encouragement and belief in me. My biggest thank you must go to my Dad and Tracey
who have always supported me in ways too numerous to list. They both are a real
inspiration to me in my education and, more importantly, in my life more generally.

10
 Chapter 1. Introduction

1.1 Preliminaries

This study investigates several key grammatical features of Lancashire dialect. While

the primary aims of the study are descriptive, there is also a strong theoretical and

methodical component to the investigation. Theoretically, the study is couched within

the usage-based approach to language (see e.g. Bybee, 1985; Langacker, 1987; Croft

and Cruse, 2004: 291-327). With respect to methodology, it is innovative in that it

uses not only a substantial spoken corpus but also a corpus compiled from historical

dialect literature texts. These corpus resources are also supported by acceptability

judgement tasks in order to maximise the extent and significance of the data presented

here.

The grammatical features investigated are among those well known as

exhibiting dialectal variation in the British Isles (outlined in general by e.g. Kortmann

et al., 2004; Trudgill, 1999), and are therefore of prime interest for experts in dialect

grammar be it of English (e.g. Kortmann et al., 2000-2005, Freiburg English Dialect

Corpus) or in general (e.g. Barbiers et al, 2006, Syntactic Atlas of Dutch Dialects;

Vangsnes et al., 2005-2010, Scandinavian Dialect Syntax Project).

Chapter 2 examines the structure and use of relative clauses and explores the

extent to which the wh-relativization strategy typical of Standard English (e.g. as

outlined by Quirk et al., 1985:1252) has made inroads into Lancashire dialect. This

chapter also provides an interesting account of the potential diachronic changes that

have occurred in Lancashire dialect with respect to the use of zero relatives; an issue

notoriously difficult to investigate with standard methodology.

Chapter 3 provides an analysis of the HAVEn’t to construction, a polysemous

construction found in Lancashire with modal meanings that can be similar to both

11
DOn’t HAVE to and mustn’t depending on context of use. The analysis examines how

these modal meanings interact with other semantically related constructions (e.g.

SHOULDn’t, MUSTn’t, NEEDn’t) and evolve in the process of language change.

Chapter 4 considers verbal agreement in Lancashire, focussing on the so-called

Northern Subject Rule. Few in-depth analyses of the NSR have been conducted in any

one region, and currently no such analysis for Lancashire exists. Most studies do not

address variables such as the possible interplay between the NSR and other similar

constructions (e.g. habitual or historical present). Cognitive-perceptual factors such as

salience or frequency of usage as potential explanations for this agreement variation

are also frequently overlooked in the current literature. This chapter analyses corpus

data from spoken and written sources and is supported by acceptability judgements

from questionnaire results in order to explore both the possible instances of the NSR

and its acceptability in Lancashire. A broader question relating to synchronic theories

of language variation is also investigated; i.e. to what extent is variation in syntactic

and morphological phenomena (such as the NSR) the result of rules or constraints,

and to what extent is this variation more idiosyncratic, unpredictable and region or

community-specific?

Chapter 5 proposes an entirely new and innovative methodology to test

sociolinguistic salience by contrasting corpus data of different types. The

methodology proposed here asserts that grammatical features which can be considered

as salient in Lancashire can be identified by comparing the differences between the

language that is produced by Lancashire dialect speakers (found in the spoken Sound

Archive corpus) and that which is perceived by them to be dialectal (found in the

written dialect literature). The methodological difficulties posed by the investigation

12
of salience (and indeed in outlining and working with the concept of salience more

generally) are also addressed.

Overall, the thesis explores the idea that the interplay between non-standard

data and theoretical linguistics can be bidirectional: theory can inform the study of

dialect data, and dialect data can inform the formulation or further refinement of

linguistic theory (see also Hollmann and Siewierska, 2011; Hollmann, to appear and

references therein). Many approaches to grammar e.g. Functional Grammar (see e.g.

Dik and Hengeveld, 1997), Construction Grammar (see e.g. Croft, 2001; Goldberg,

2002) and Cognitive Grammar (see e.g. Langacker 1991; Croft and Cruse, 2004), have

developed theories of language variation and change based on the analysis of data,

although rarely is any of this data drawn from so called ‘non-standard’ sources. Other

considerations relating to sociolinguistic and regional differences such as salience

(Kerswill & Williams, 2002) and enregisterment (Agha, 2003) may add to existing

linguistic theory and so are explored with respect to the Lancashire data considered in

this thesis.

1.2 Rationale

Lancashire dialect is a good choice for studying grammatical variation in non-standard

data, not least for reasons of locality. Lancaster University currently holds recordings

from the North West Sound Archive (outlined further in §1.3.1) and also provides

easy access to Lancashire dialect speakers in the local area.

Until recently, the Lancashire dialect remained relatively uninvestigated (aside

from local interest groups and dialect societies which continue to be popular and well

supported in the local area). 1 Although a number of Lancashire informants are

1
See e.g. http://www.thelancashiresociety.org.uk and http://www.edwinwaughdialectsociety.com

13
included in the Survey of English Dialects (Orton et al., 1962-71), this source does not

provide enough instances of a wide enough range of grammatical features to warrant

any region-specific conclusions to be made. This is in part due to data collection

techniques, (as outlined in e.g. Chambers and Trudgill, 1998). Lancashire results from

the SED are included in a number of cross-regional studies (e.g. Bresnan, Deo and

Sharma, 2007; Pietsch, 2005; Herrmann, 2005), but further data is required in order to

provide a fuller analysis of variation in this region. Recently, studies into the

Lancashire dialect have been conducted, such as those by Hollmann and Siewierska

(2006, 2007, 2011); Siewierska and Hollmann (2005). Related local varieties have

also recently been paid some attention, e.g. Bolton (Shorrocks, 1999; Moore, 2004).

While the analysis of grammatical variation in Lancashire is still relatively rare,

phonological variation has been discussed in more detail, e.g. by Vivian (2000),

Barras (2006) and more generally by e.g. Watson (2006); a trend that appears to be

typically found in sociolinguistics more generally. As outlined in Hollmann and

Siewierska (2006:22), grammatical variation has by and large been overlooked due to

a number of factors, such as the dominance of a non-variationist approach to grammar

(namely, the Generative paradigm) and the unavailability of (sufficient quantities of)

suitable data.

This thesis builds upon previous research both in this region and in varieties of

English more widely in order to consider how dialect data can provide new insights

into cognitive and theoretical linguistics whilst also giving a descriptive account of the

language used by speakers in the Lancashire area.

14
1.2.1 Lancashire area

Lancashire is situated in the Northwest of England, and bordered to the north by the

county of Cumbria; to the east by the counties of North and West Yorkshire; and to

the south by the metropolitan counties of Greater Manchester and Merseyside. The

current county boundaries for Lancashire are shown in Figure 1.

FIGURE 1. MAP OF LANCASHIRE

Before the 1974 local government reform, the County of Lancashire also encompassed

towns now situated in other surrounding counties (see Appendix A for a map of the

old County of Lancashire). The towns of Bury, Bolton, Oldham, Rochdale, Salford,

and Wigan are now part of Greater Manchester but were once at the heart of

Lancashire’s cotton and milling trade (along with other towns such as, Burnley and

15
Chorley which remain in the county of Lancashire today). Other towns in the old

County of Lancashire also became parts of neighbouring counties as a consequence of

boundary reform, e.g. Knowsley, St Helens and Sefton now form part of Merseyside;

Warrington and Widnes are now part of Cheshire and the Furness Peninsula;

Westmoreland and Cartmel are now part of Cumbria. As a result, both linguistic and

cultural influences in modern-day Lancashire can be expected from these surrounding

towns and counties. Lancashire’s largest border is with Yorkshire, and parallels

between the language used in these two locations have been noted in a number of

studies (e.g. Tagliamonte, 1998; Tagliamonte and Lawrence, 2000).

The landscape, industry and population size of towns in the County of

Lancashire vary significantly. While the north of Lancashire is largely rural and in

some parts very sparsely populated (e.g. Carnforth, Silverdale), the south and east are

more densely populated and contain primarily industrial or formerly industrial towns

(e.g. Burnley, Chorley) which perhaps are influenced (both linguistically and

culturally) by their neighbours in Manchester and Liverpool. Although grammatical

variation has yet to be extensively investigated in Lancashire (although some inroads

have been made by Shorrocks, 1999), phonological variation has been identified. A

phonological difference that has been noted is rhoticity. Although sometimes

considered as a typical feature of ‘Lancashire’ (e.g. by Wells, 1970), rhoticity shows

phonemic variation within the county boundary, as outlined by Beal (2004:130). It is

found in south and east Lancashire, e.g. in the towns of Burnley, Blackburn, and

Accrington (Barras, 2006), but is absent in many other places within the County of

Lancashire, e.g. Lancaster, Preston, Blackpool. It is likely that grammatical variation

may also display sub-regional differences. Phonetic and perhaps grammatical

variation within county boundaries such as this is far from uncommon (compare e.g.

16
considerable variation found in the new county of Tyne and Wear, e.g. by Burbano-

Elizondo, 2008). Although an intra-regional grammatical study may uncover

interesting variation and possible levelling and diffusion of nonstandard features from

area to area, this variable is not considered within the realms of this study. Spoken

corpus data used in this study is taken from a selection of informants living in various

towns in modern-day Lancashire (see §1.5.2 for further details) and all results from

the corpus data are considered to represent Lancashire. In this thesis Lancashire refers

to the cultural-linguistic area rather than being fixed immovably to any county

boundary.

1.2.2 Lancashire identity

The link between language and identity is well attested in the literature (e.g. Bucholtz

and Hall, 2003; Holmes, 1997; Schiffrin, 1996). The concept of enregisterment

describes the definition and identification of a regional variety as ‘a linguistic

repertoire differentiable within a language as a socially recognised register’ (Agha

2003: 231). As found by Beal (2006) in Sheffield and Newcastle, the Lancashire

dialect is the subject of a number of humorous books, guides and glossaries such as

Completely Lanky (Dutton, 2006) and Lanky Twang (Freethy and Scollins, 2002).

Dialect writing is also frequently found in the region in collections of ‘traditional’

dialect poetry, stories and songs (some of which are utilized in this study, see §1.3.2

for further details). Many other volumes exist detailing cultural and historical

traditions, e.g. Traditions of Lancashire (Roby 2005); Favourite Lancashire recipes

(Baldock and Wood, 1995) and The spirit of Lancashire (Sparks 2009). Lancashire

merchandise is also found in gift shops and tourist information centres across the

region, often with “I love Lancashire” slogans emblazoned on various mugs and tea

17
towels (along with the more imaginative car stickers “Lancashire. There Will Be

Blood….pudding” referring both to the 2007 film by Paul Thomas Anderson and the

local delicacy, black pudding). This suggests that Lancashire has a defined set of

cultural and linguistic norms, certainly for the speakers of this variety, and that an

awareness of these norms may impact on language use in this region (see Hollmann

and Siewierska, 2011 for a concrete albeit very tentative suggestion in this direction,

concerning definite article reduction in the region).

In order to explore how the Lancashire dialect is perceived by Lancashire

speakers, attitudinal data was collected from all informants who completed either the

acceptability questionnaires and/or tasks that were used later in this study (see §1.5.3

for more details on this approach). These questionnaires elicited sociolinguistic

information such as age, location and also attitudinal information from the informants

(alongside, of course, the specific test questions in the main part of the questionnaire).

The inclusion of attitudinal questions aimed to test how the informants perceive the

Lancashire dialect and to uncover more about Lancashire identity and how this might

fit with the language use reflected in the questionnaires themselves. No specific

questions were asked about neighbouring regions (so as not to influence any response)

but instead informants were invited to respond to the open question “how do you feel

about your accent/dialect?” More than 100 people who identified themselves as

Lancashire dialect speakers left a response to this question (a comparison is drawn

here with those informants also living in Lancashire who considered themselves not to

speak with any regional dialect, see §1.3.3 for more on this distinction). Around 65

gave positive responses, 20 gave more negative replies with around 15 giving neither

a positive nor negative answer. A selection of the positive responses is presented in

(1-5).

18
 (1) “Positive. I think it sounds friendly. It's part of my identity and people like it
or think it is funny. People instantly know where I'm from. It never sounds
pretentious.” (Lancs015)

(2) “Gives a sense of individuality from other regions. It’s different to Geordies
or Scousers or Mancs - and much nicer!” (Lancs029)

(3) “Positive, I like the fact its not cockney, or brummie, and you can get away
with murder (not literally of course!!) down south because they think we're
simple country folk, little do they know!” (Lancs004)

(4) “If I meet someone new then they know straight away where I'm from when I
begin to talk, for me this is a positive thing because I am very proud of being
a Lancashire Lass.” (Lancs083)

(5) “I love my Lancashire accent, far better than any other. The only problem I
have with it living down South is getting people to understand what I am
asking for when I order a c-o-a-k-e (coke!)” (Lancs011)

Around 15 speakers categorise themselves as a ‘Lancashire lass’ or a ‘Lancashire lad’

in their responses and many more highlight the separation of Lancashire from other

neighbouring regions, as demonstrated in (2) and (3). This formulation of an ‘us’ and

‘them’ idea in the minds of speakers shows that speakers are aware of both geographic

and linguistic differences between Lancashire and other local varieties. Interestingly,

15 informants who identified themselves as Lancashire dialect speakers came from

regions now considered outside the County boundaries, typically from towns now

belonging to the northern part of Greater Manchester such as Bolton and Rochdale.

These results are not extensive enough to make generalizations about the status of

Lancashire dialect with respect to language contact and change, but indicate that

Lancashire dialect speakers themselves appear at least in some part unconstrained by

County boundaries.

There were of course other less positive views, mainly relating to speakers’

feelings of being portrayed as ‘common’ or ‘stupid’ or ‘poor’; these are shown in (6-

10). References to Lancashire speech sounding ‘gutteral’ or ‘flat’ as typified by the

comments in (7) and (10) were also found.

19
 (6) “I don't really like it when people say I have a strong Lancashire accent (it's
usually people from the south of England) because I don't want to sound
'common'.”(Lancs005)

(7) It sounds very bland, in comparison to scouse. Although the fact i've been
brought up in the chav capital of Lancashire, i managed to speak rather 'posh'
for a blackpudlian anyway.” (Lancs079)

(8) “I particularly dislike that I may be perceived by others to be stupid because

of my northern accent, even by other northern people with less broad or no
accent.” (Lancs012)

(9) “I feel that in some ways northern accents (including Lancashire) are still
judged to be inferior or to indicate lesser intelligence or class standing, no
matter how many trendy regional people they put on the telly.” (Lancs050)

(10) “when growing up: to speak with a broad Lancashire accent was considered
'common' and restricted your position in the job market. I think it sounds
guttural and boring too.” (Lancs054)

It is evident form the above that the Lancashire dialect is a clear and distinct entity in

the minds of many Lancashire dialect speakers (both those contacted in this thesis and

beyond) and that Lancashire speakers are aware of social implications associated with

this regional dialect, be they positive or negative.

1.3 Methodological approaches

The data drawn upon in this thesis is outlined in the diagram in Figure 2 and expanded

upon in subsequent sections.

20
 Contemporary dialect Acceptability tasks and
literature
questionnaires
(Lancashire Fairytales)

Historical dialect Ad-hoc

literature writing acceptability
(Litcorp) judgement tasks
Analysis of
grammatical
Oral history variation in Standard English
interviews Lancashire reference corpus
(Sound Archive) (BNC)

FIGURE 2. OVERVIEW OF DATA SOURCES USED IN THIS THESIS

Further details on the size, collection dates and informants that contribute to the

various sources used in this thesis (as outlined in Figure 2) are shown in Table 1.

Collection approximate size Number of

Informant origin (number)
date (if applicable) informants
Lancashire
Sound Archive 1970 -1990 325,000 32
(See Figure 3)
Litcorp 1880 - 1945 500,000 6 Lancashire
Lancashire Lancashire (52)
2009 60,000 95
Fairytales Non-Lancashire (43)
Lancashire (123)
Acceptability
2009 - 243 Other north (84)
judgements
South (36)
Ad-hoc test
2009 - 10 Lancashire
group
Reference
1990s 100m unknown Mixed
corpus (BNC)
TABLE 1. OVERVIEW OF DATA SOURCES AND VARIABLES

21
1.3.1 Corpora in sociolinguistics

The analysis of nonstandard regional dialects goes back at least to the nineteenth

century; see e.g. Chambers and Trudgill (1998) or Ihalainen (1994) for an overview.

Prior to the advent of large rapidly accessible, annotatable and searchable electronic

corpora in the 1960s, dialectology relied on the notes of fieldworkers. Most of the

analyses were restricted to lexical variation, often producing isoglosses and word

maps (such as those found in the original SED results, see Orton et al., 1962-71). The

advent of corpora in particular allowed new studies in grammatical variation to be

possible. As grammatical features typically show much less variation as compared to

phonological features, often an extensive amount of data is needed in order to even

find only a few instances of variation in one particular construction.

Currently a number of large spoken English dialect corpora exist, e.g. the

Freiburg English Dialect corpus (FRED) (Kortmann et al, 2002-2005) 2 which draws

on data from a number of regions in the UK; the Newcastle Electronic Corpus of

Tyneside English (NECTE) (Allen et al. 2006) 3 ; the Scottish Corpus of Texts and

Speech (SCOTS) (Corbett et al, 2004) 4 ; and the Limerick Corpus of Irish English (L-

CIE) Farr, Murphy and O’Keefe, 2004) 5 . This thesis uses over 800,000 words of

spoken and written corpus data, falling broadly into two parts - spoken data taken

from the North West Sound Archive (see e.g. Hollmann and Siewierska, 2006), and

dialect literature taken from (primarily) stories written by Lancashire speakers. The

first of these sources is now described in more detail.

2
http://www2.anglistik.uni-freiburg.de/institut/lskortmann/FRED/
3
http://research.ncl.ac.uk/necte/
4
http://www.scottishcorpus.ac.uk/
5
http://www.ul.ie/~lcie/

22
1.3.2 Sound Archive corpus

The Sound Archive corpus is a 325,000 word corpus held at Lancaster University

transcribed from oral history interviews held at the North West Sound Archive. 6 Of

the thirty-two Sound Archive recordings used in this thesis, seventeen were

transcribed entirely by me. The remainder were transcribed by an audio typist and

carefully checked and corrected by me. The Sound Archive recordings themselves (as

opposed to the transcriptions alone) were also used throughout this research in order

to double check any points that were found initially to be unclear. The recordings

were transcribed orthographically in standard British English; phonological variants

were typically not represented. When variants found in the recordings were

morphologically (or morpho-phonemically) determined, a consistent variant spelling

was used. This particularly applied to the use of /mI/ for the Standard English my

which was represented as me in the transcriptions, and definite article reductions

which were represented as t’, as shown in example (11).

(11) […] and me feet went from under me and t' axe went in me leg and there I were laid
on t' floor with axe in me leg (Sound Archive).

Local dialect lexis that did not appear in dictionaries is recorded consistently (e.g.

nobbut (meaning no more than, nothing but) and gradely (meaning fine or excellent).

The Sound Archive interviews were conducted from 1970-1990 as part of a

local history project and involve speakers between the ages of approximately 55 to 80,

all native to Lancashire. The corpus is comprised of thirty-two speakers, originating

from both northern parts of Lancashire, e.g. Morecambe, Lancaster, Fleetwood (15

speakers) and more southern parts of Lancashire, e.g. Accrington, Chorley and

6
For further information on the North West Sound Archive, see
http://www.lancashire.gov.uk/corporate/web/view.asp?siteid=2856&pageid=4970&e=e

23
Burnley (17 speakers). As the recordings made for the Sound Archive were intended

as past of an oral history project rather than for linguistic research, unfortunately little

sociolinguistic information about the speakers’ background is available. The

distribution of Sound Archive informants is shown in Figure 2 where each green dot

represents one informant.

FIGURE 3. GEOGRAPHICAL LOCATION OF INFORMANTS IN THE SOUND ARCHIVE CORPUS

Interviews range between 3,000 and 17,000 words in length. Speakers in the Sound

Archive corpus typically cover topics such as agriculture, wartime, farming and

fishing. An extract from the Sound Archive corpus is shown in example (12)

24
 (12) No it were ni-- it were nice because they had them big pipes ‘cos we had them
big pipes in t’ greenhouses up smallholdings you know, them big, must have
been coal mustn’t it, anthracite coal yeah. And teachers had er, their room it
were in top of a buil-- at er Burnley Wood School, it were at top of one of er
buildings. And if I were wet through we used to have a change of clothes. See
we hadn’t to sit in them. And I used to have to stay at er er dining room on
erm Oxford Road to er have dinner. And then when it were winter time and it
were right dark we used to get out about three o’clock or four or well before
four o’clock. (Sound Archive)

While oral history interviews are a good source of relatively unrestricted speech, this

corpus data is strongly biased towards past tense constructions. Attempts have been

made to compensate and counteract for this bias by employing additional analytical

perspectives (to be described in §1.3.3-5). The Sound Archive gives a snapshot of

Lancashire dialect as used by its speakers towards the end of the last century. If

analysed alone, in isolation from other data, it would allow only synchronic

descriptive observations to be made. However, by combining the data from the Sound

Archive corpus with that drawn from elicitation (as advocated by e.g. Hollmann and

Siewierska, 2006 and described with respect to this thesis in §1.3.5) and dialect

literature, a more comprehensive picture of variation in Lancashire emerges.

1.3.3 Dialect literature in sociolinguistics

Broadly speaking, dialect literature is here intended to mean stories and narratives

written with the intention of representing dialectal speech of that region, by writers

from that region. This is different from the orthographic representation of dialect

speakers in literature more generally (e.g. Charles Dickens’ representation of

Lancashire in Hard Times or Irvine Welsh’s representation of Scottish spoken in

Edinburgh in Trainspotting). These two are termed by Shorrocks (1996) as ‘dialect

literature’ and ‘literary dialect’ respectively; this study concerns only dialect literature.

The history of writing in dialect is extensive, but despite this, its use in linguistic

25
research is relatively recent. A number of studies have considered historical dialect

texts, (and a number those texts are from Lancashire) although none of these are in the

context of measuring language change (e.g. Shorrocks 2002; Ruano García 2007). It is

somewhat unsurprising also that most dialect literature investigations concentrate on

phonology (e.g. by Beal 2000; Honeybone and Watson, forthcoming). An important

aspect of dialect literature lies in the conscious respelling of words by the writers. If

semi-phonetic respellings can be considered as indications of a meaningful decision

by the author (as suggested by Sebba, 2009), then these features give an extra layer of

significance to the grammar and lexis chosen by the writer. While of course

respellings naturally lend themselves to a phonological analysis, I argue that they are

also interesting in terms of whether or not the distribution of these respellings may

interact with instances of nonstandard grammatical variation with reference e.g. to

salience (this is discussed further in Chapter 5).

More recently, as reported by Beal (2000, 2009) and Honeybone and Watson

(forthcoming), contemporary humorous dialect literature data in the form of glossaries

and books about regional dialects are now relatively common, e.g. for Scots - Wha’s

Like Us? (Say it in Scots) (Robinson, 2008); Geordie - Larn Yersel’ Geordie (Dobson,

1969), Cornish - Oall Rite Me Ansum!: A Salute to the Cornish Dialect (Merton and

Scollins, 2003). Resources such as these can provide insights into language choices

made by these writers, but are not the focus of this study. It is interesting to note that

more recently still, even newer sources of dialect literature have begun to emerge via

the Internet. Spoof encyclopaedia pages and discussion forums are prevalent, with

many contributors not only sharing regional words and phrases, but also writing in

26
their regional dialect. 7 Alongside this, the social networking site Twitter has recently

provided instances of dialect writing that could merit further study. Shown in (13) is a

parody of the popular Newcastle-born singer/songwriter Cheryl Cole taken from

Twitter.

(13) Cheryl Kerl: Oh aye pet Ah embrace Europe me man, an Ah’m propah
multilingwill an aall. Ah speak English, Esperanteaur an uv coase Jawdee az
well (18th March 2011)

While there are, as yet, no examples of the Lancashire dialect being represented via

this medium, this nonetheless remains an interesting possibility for future research.

Currently, much of the research into dialect literature has been small scale,

confined to one or two texts per study. There has been no extensive corpus-based

analysis of a collection of dialect literature and it has not been used to measure

language change. It is hoped that this may change, both due to the approaches

advocated in this thesis and to the newly available Salamanca Corpus, a digital archive

of English dialect text released in February 2011. 8

1.3.4 Litcorp and Lancashire Fairytales

The dialect literature found in stories and narratives in this region cannot be

regarded as a record or transcription of Lancashire dialect speakers, but rather as a

record of the writers’ perception and representation of speakers at the time of writing.

Because of this, analyses of dialect literature can uncover the most salient or important

dialectal features as judged by these writers.

7
See the spoof Wikipedia page for the Lancashire dialect (i.e. Lanky Twang):
http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Lanky_Twang and forum threads discussing Lancashire dialect
such as this: http://www.redvee.net/forums/showthread.php?11439-lanky-twang
8
See http://salamancacorpus.usal.es/SC/index.html for further information.

27
 The Lancashire dialect literature corpus (Litcorp) used in this study is larger

than the Sound Archive at approximately 500,000 words in length. It is compiled from

six books written in the Lancashire dialect by a variety of authors, sourced from

Lancaster University Library. By electronically scanning the books and then

converting the files to plain text format using conversion software, the data can then

be searched electronically – something not possible by using the books themselves.

The dialect literature books are written in the period 1855 – 1945, and are narratives,

monologues and plays. Songs and poems were avoided due to possible interfering

factors such as rhyme. A full list of titles included in the Litcorp can be found in

Appendix B. As an example of the types of texts found in Litcorp, a short excerpt

from Lancashire Pride (Thompson, 1945) is included in Figure 4.

28
 LANCASHIRE PRIDE
I 
SPRING CLEANING 
 
TOMMY GREENHALGH walked moodily into the bar of the 
“Hark to Dandler.” His pal Jimmy Dearden was just “taking 
the top off” his drink as Tommy arrived. “How do Jimmy,” 
said Tommy. Jimmy wiped the froth from his exuberant 
moustache and said “How do Tommy. Tha looks a bit 
powfagged. Owt up?” 
  “Ah don’t know as there is,” said Tommy. “Ah’ve 
come out o’ th’ road.” 
  “Out o’ th’ road o’ what?” said Jimmy? 
  “Out o’ th’ road o’ battle, murder an’ sudden death,” 
said Tommy vindictively. “Ah’ve come out o’ th’ road of an 
earthquake.” 
  “Well,” said Jimmy, “Tha’s reached the harbour o’ 
refuge.” 
  “For th’ time being,” said Tommy. “Just for th’ time 
being.” 
  “Ha’ one wi’ me?” said Jimmy? 
  “Tha’s took th’ words out o’ me mouth,” said Tommy. 

FIGURE 4. EXCERPT FROM LANCASHIRE PRIDE (THOMPSON, 1945)

In order to both capture additional data from Lancashire respondents and to

provide a counterbalance to the historical Litcorp, a new collection of dialect literature

has been collected. Respondents were asked to write in what they considered to be

Lancashire dialect. This means that this corpus captures the current perception of the

grammatical repertoire of a Lancashire dialect speaker as considered by the

respondents (along of course with any possibly phonetic representation they choose to

include). This fusion of elicitation and dialect writing is new and will provide a useful

contrast with other data sources.

29
 In order to end up with stories of suitable length, the participants were asked

to reproduce a story that was familiar to them – a fairy tale. In building this new

corpus, Lancashire Fairytales, no restrictions were placed on the length, style or

number of stories a participant could write, or on what type of variation it should

contain (e.g. grammatical variation, lexical choices, and semi-phonetic spellings). The

task was completed by 53 Lancashire respondents and 42 non-Lancashire respondents,

with most contributors writing between 350-500 words each. Around 40 of

respondents were undergraduate students at Lancaster University (split between both

Lancashire and non-Lancashire speakers), typically aged 18-21. Others were of a

mixed age range and were contacted through social networking websites. An example

of the texts produced by the informants is given in (14) (further instances are found in

Appendix F.

(14) […] the prince, he were broken hearted, and he says, “i’m gonna find me
lovely lass, im gonna search all round kingdom!” And off he went down
t’road, holdin onto the clog that she’d left ont ground […] (Lancashire
Fairytales)

In addition to the corpus resources described in previous sections, this thesis

also employs, from time to time, the British National Corpus (BNC). The BNC is a

100 million word corpus drawn from both written and spoken language from a wide

range of sources collected during the 1990s. The BNC was designed to represent a

cross-section of British English. 9 Use of the BNC does not form a considerable part of

this study, but instead is used as a reference corpus at various points with which to

compare the Lancashire data to Standard English.

9
For further information on the BNC, please see http://www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk

30
1.3.5 Questionnaires and other methods

Questionnaires are used in this study in order to both include the perceptions of

more modern speakers, and to allow a (tentative) further time depth comparison with

the corpus data. The questionnaires that I have devised tested variables such as the

possible morphosyntactic limitations (or constraints) to the NSR and acceptability of

relative clauses. The questionnaire is also useful in exploring present tense

constructions further, in order to compensate for the dominance of the past tense

constructions in the corpora. The questionnaires also targeted different groups often

contrasting, for instance, Lancashire and non-Lancashire speakers. A copy of the

questionnaires used in this thesis can be found in Appendices B and D.

The questionnaire employs quantitative questions where participants are asked

to judge sentences on a five point scale, with 1 being the least acceptable to them and

5 being the most acceptable e.g. (15).

(15) ‘They have a shop of their own and is very well off.’
(least acceptable) 1 2 3 4 5 (most acceptable)

The questionnaire data is compared to the results from both corpora. Since all

three data sources were gathered by different means and cover different time periods,

a combination of these results should substantiate any claims made, but also shows

how the combination of methods is a useful approach in sociolinguistics.

As mentioned previously, sociolinguistic information about the questionnaire

respondents was also gathered. This information is used in order to divide the

respondents into different categories throughout this work, depending on the various

aims of each chapter. For example, in Chapter 4 both Lancashire and non-Lancashire

respondents are compared. Respondents who identified themselves as having a

31
Lancashire dialect in answer to the question ‘do you have a particular dialect? If yes,

how would you describe it?’ are classified as ‘Lancashire, dialect speakers’. Other

speakers who identify themselves as living (or having lived) in a Lancashire town or

village for a majority of their life, but suggested that they did not have a Lancashire

dialect. These speakers are classified as ‘Lancashire, non-dialect speakers’ in the

results in order to determine whether or not there is a tangible difference between

these two groups.

1.3.6 Choosing grammatical features

Based on the attitudinal data presented in (1-10) it seems that modern Lancashire

dialect speakers appear to be aware of phonological or lexical/vocabulary-related

features of their language use. It is also clear that grammatical variation exists within

this region, some of which is relatively well known (such as definite article reduction,

including deletion (see Hollmann and Siewierska, 2011 for discussion). Variation and

change is not characteristic of one language area to the exclusion of other areas–

phonological, lexical and discourse variation are also associated with regional

variation and are linked together. Phonological features (as represented through

nonstandard spelling) and lexical choice are not considered at length in this thesis but

are discussed in places throughout this work, mainly in §5.4.7.

This thesis avoids grammatical features that have been the focus of previous

studies in Lancashire e.g. definite article reduction/deletion (Hollmann and

Siewierska, 2006; 2011); ditransitives (Siewierska and Hollmann, 2005); and

possessive me (Hollmann and Siewierska, 2007). (This is except for Chapter 5 where

variation in Lancashire is considered widely, with respect to salience.) Initial fine-

32
grained analyses of the corpus data revealed numerous grammatical and spelling

variants. Many of these are utilized in later chapters.

1.4 Theoretical approach

Many approaches to dialectology and sociolinguistics examine language variation and

change with respect to factors such as language communities, prestige, and language

contact (see e.g. Milroy and Milroy, 1992; Labov, 2006; Trudgill, 2008). More

recently however, the usage-based model has received some consideration within the

field of sociolinguistics (see Hollmann and Siewierska, 2011, for a discussion of this).

The usage-based model suggests that the relationship between grammatical

knowledge and language use is sensitive to frequency of usage. This means that token

frequency is crucial in the organisation of linguistic knowledge (Bybee, 1985;

Langacker, 1987; Croft and Cruse, 2004: 291-327). It therefore follows, for example,

that language structures that are used more often (and therefore have a high token

frequency) may become more reinforced in the minds of speakers. This entrenchment

of particular constructions may therefore, in turn, impact upon processes such as

language change (i.e. it is possible that entrenched constructions may resist language

change).

While the usage-based model has been applied to ‘standard’ language

varieties (e.g. Tomasello, 2003; Mukherjee, 2005), studies such as these rarely

consider any possible standard vs. nonstandard variation that may be present in their

data. Along with this, the usage-based model has been often disregarded by

sociolinguists working with nonstandard data. Recently a number of studies have

moved towards integrating the usage-based model with sociolinguistic theory by

suggesting that token frequency plays a role in aspects of variation in non-standard

33
varieties found in their data (e.g. Hollmann and Siewierska, 2007; Clarke and

Trousdale, 2009).

This thesis builds upon this approach by considering corpus frequencies as a

possible explanatory factor themselves, while also taking into account the more

‘traditional’ elements of sociolinguistic theory (social values, language communities,

prestige, language contact etc.) In doing so, this study contributes further to the

description of the interplay between corpus linguistics, nonstandard data and linguistic

theory.

1.5 Overview and aims

The present study links with and contributes to previous research in a number of ways,

combining empirical aspects of corpus research with the descriptive approach in order

to provide an account of this under-studied regional variety. The presented analysis of

grammatical features of the Lancashire dialect draws on extensive corpus data, as

outlined earlier, along with a large number of acceptability judgement tasks. The

examined features of Lancashire dialect provide a fruitful testing ground for theories

of language change particularly for stages of grammaticalization, and the relevance of

salience as interpreted within the usage-based framework (see e.g. Croft and Cruse,

2004: 291-327).

Overall, the thesis explores the idea that the interplay between non-standard

data and theoretical linguistics can be bidirectional and that a successful description of

a nonstandard dialect requires the application of several methodologies. In particular

corpora of different types in combination with elicitation and acceptability tasks can

give the most constructive results when examining nonstandard varieties such as this.

34
 Chapter 2. Relativization

2. 1 Overview

Relative clauses (RCs) have been the subject of much research into varieties of British

English (e.g. D’Arcy and Tagliamonte, 2010; Kearns, 2007; Tagliamonte, Smith and

Lawrence, 2005; Beal and Corrigan, 2002; Herrmann, 2002; Fox and Thompson,

1990; Ihalainen, 1980). Although the Lancashire dialect region has been (briefly)

studied as part of wider investigation into British English (e.g. by Herrmann, 2005),

and certain claims have been made about the behaviour of particular RCs in this

region (e.g. by Shorrocks, 1999), currently no thorough investigation of this region is

available. This chapter tests whether or not claims made by other researchers are

supported by the Lancashire data examined in this thesis. More generally, this chapter

aims to set out the relativization patterns that are frequently found in Lancashire. As

part of this, the assertion that regional dialects deviate from Standard English with

respect to relativizer choice in particular contexts is tested (see e.g. Quirk et al, 1985;

Huddleston and Pullum, 2002:183). In order to consider these factors, data is

examined from Litcorp, Sound Archive, and an acceptability questionnaire. The

grammatical features which will be tested include types of relativizer (namely, the

distribution of ‘standard relatives’, zero relativizers and nonstandard relativizers) and

factors influencing relativizer choice (namely, syntactic function; semantic category of

the antecedent and restrictiveness). These concepts are discussed further in §2.2.

2.2 Analysis of RCs

2.2.1 Defining relativization constructions

Relative clauses consist of a finite relative clause verb (henceforth RV), and (usually)

a pronoun (henceforth called the relativizer); the RC requires a noun phrase or

35
pronoun (called the antecedent), to which it is syntactically linked. An example of

such is the sentence the man who wasn’t there, where was is the RV, who is the

relativizer, and the man is the antecedent. Henceforth in examples, RCs are shown in

square brackets, antecedents in boldface, the RV is italicised and relativizers are

underlined, as shown in example (1).

(1) I used to go in a little toffee shop in Bridge Street and it was my wife [who
owned it] and I used to get my cigarettes there various times of the day
(Sound Archive)

The purpose of the RC is to provide (further) information about the antecedent,

which narrows the antecedent’s frame of reference. It is worth noting that the

relativizer takes on, or repeats, the semantic target of the antecedent, and as such, is in

itself “redundant”, and does not (normally) convey any new information, unless the

antecedent is extremely ambiguous. It is worth delineating more precisely the form of

RCs. RCs differ from main clauses, in that they may (a) begin with a relativizer; or, in

the absence of a relativizer, (b) bring about a different word order from that of a main

clause; for example, in the sentence someone I know knows him, there are two

adjacent subject nouns and two adjacent finite verbs, neither typically acceptable main

clause word orders. The syntactic relation between the antecedent and the RV may

vary, as do other noun-verb relationships (e.g. subject, object, etc); this is described in

more detail in §2.2.1.3). Standard English has the following relativizers: which

(implying that the antecedent is not a person), who, whom, whose (implying that the

antecedent is a person), that (the most frequent and not implying anything about the

antecedent), and finally, a null relativizer zero or Ø, permissible with both person and

non-person antecedents. In Standard English, the antecedent usually precedes the RC,

but may follow it, though such types of relativization are not considered in this

investigation.
36
 Relativization is not the only method of conveying additional information

about a noun whilst including a verb phrase: this can also be done with a noun-verb

participle, as in “a biscuit [covered in chocolate]”, and noun-gerund patterns, as in

“someone [earning a living]”; in both these cases, it is possible to insert a relativizer

and a finite auxiliary verb to convert the structure into a relative clause, e.g. making “a

biscuit [that is covered in chocolate]”. This can also be achieved with noun-adjective

patterns, e.g. “a problem [solvable by hard work]” where the relativizer and the

auxiliary BE can be used in the relative clause, i.e. “a problem [that is solvable by

hard work]”. Another option, not always available in SE, is to use a preposition phrase

e.g. “a man [in need of help]”, and its relativization “a man [who is in need of help]”.

Although these semantically related constructions are not considered in the data

examined in this chapter, it is worth noting that this choice of conveying similar

semantic information with differing syntactic patterns may impact upon distributional

frequencies found later in the results, in this thesis as a whole, and of course in the

study of grammatical constructions in general.

2.2.2 Relativization types

Relativization strategies can vary according to the particular relativizer employed by

the speaker or writer. Certain relativizers are typically linked to certain conditions (as

discussed later in e.g. restrictiveness in §2.2.3). Aside from the wh-relatives and that-

relatives which are commonly described in the literature, further types of relativizers

are found, namely zero relatives (Ø) and non-standard relativizers. These are

discussed in subsequent sections.

37
2.2.2.1 Zero relatives

Zero relatives (ZRs) are RCs that are not introduced by an overt relativizer. In many

accounts of Standard English, ZRs are considered as ungrammatical, e.g. by Quirk et

al. (1985:865) due to this “deletion” of the relativizer for subject relatives as shown in

e.g. (2).

(2) No love, he wasn’t someone [Ø I really knew], no. (Sound Archive).

ZRs are referred to in the literature as the non-introduced relative (Mustanoja

1960), Presentational Amalgam Construction (Lambrecht, 1988) and contact clauses

(Erdmann, 1980; Auwera, 1984), but here I follow Fischer (1992) in using zero

relative. Most accounts of Standard English do not clearly outline the semantic and

syntactic circumstances where ZRs are acceptable (and indeed are frequently used);

there does not appear to be a consensus on the range of environments that ZRs are

able to occur in. Much of the literature describes a number of core examples, namely,

existential there, existential have, it clefts, and clauses in which the main verb

introduces an individual into the discourse. These are exemplified in (3-6)

respectively, with examples taken from the Lancashire data.

(3) Well everything had a season , I can't remember when it was , we used to play
topping whip, er marbles in the channel, er skipping, lots of skipping where
you dash in and there's a line [Ø 'd be waiting to jump in and out of the rope].
(Sound Archive)

(4) 1: Have your relations worked in the slaughterhouse, it just seems an unusual
pastime for a 10 year old?
2: I'd two brothers [Ø worked there]. (Sound Archive)

(5) It were ‘is father [Ø made toil of his holiday] in the hope of benefitting his
boy (Litcorp)

(6) I have heard of a schoolmaster [Ø taught his pupils to say it the same way].
(Litcorp)

38
Certain other less widely attested ZRs are also described, e.g. by Doherty (2000: 87), a

number of which are found in the Lancashire data, e.g. NPs headed by free choice any

and ZRs as a modifier of that-phrase, these are shown in (7-8) respectively.

(7) An ee weret nobu’ trouble, that mon [Ø lived overt’ road from Mearey].
Alwus upter summat. (Litcorp)

(8) More than any place [Ø I 've ever been in in my life], it was full of plovers '
nests, plovers, tewits as we called them (sound Archive)

It should be noted that there is a distinction between sentences in which the relativizer

has a subject vs. non-subject antecedent. This can be seen in examples (7) and (8)

respectively. In Standard English, zero relatives found with non-subject antecedents

(such as that shown in 8) are often perfectly acceptable, as suggested by e.g. Olofsson

(1981:94). These relative constructions therefore may not be a notable feature of the

Lancashire dialect in particular, but rather a construction often found in English more

generally.

In most of the research in varieties of English that covers ZRs, these

distinctions are not made. Herrmann (2005:35) discussed have and be existentials and

Anderwald (2004:189) examines only instances of existential there clauses. All of the

ZRs exemplified here are tested with respect to the Lancashire data, both in the

corpora and via an acceptability questionnaire completed by Lancashire dialect

speakers, (see §2.2 for further information) in order to both outline the distributions

and acceptability of these types of ZRs in Lancashire.

Many standard accounts of grammar (e.g. Huddleston and Pullum, 2002:1056)

describe ZRs as being nonstandard and primarily found in regional and/or informal

varieties of English (although as Tottie (1995) points out, zero relatives are persistent

in written English too). Such relativization has indeed been identified in regions of the

39
UK (e.g. by Tagliamonte, Smith and Lawrence, 2005; Beal and Corrigan, 2002). This

chapter explores ZRs in order to provide a descriptive account of their behaviour and

acceptability in Lancashire, and also to test if they have undergone any diachronic

change.

2.2.2.2 Relativization in varieties of English

Recent research has documented a number of ways in which varieties of English differ

from Standard English (and from each other) in their relativization strategies (e.g.

Ihalainen, 1980; Bailey, 1999; Beal and Corrigan, 2002; Herrmann 2002;

Tagliamonte, Smith and Lawrence, 2005; Kearns, 2007; D’Arcy and Tagliamonte,

2010). Many report that wh- RCs (namely those found with the relativizers who,

whom, which and whose) are most frequently associated with Standard English, while

other relativizers (such as that, ø, and the less frequent as) are linked more often to

dialectal speech (e.g. Quirk et al. 1985:1252; Herrmann 2002:94;). In many recent

regional studies, a levelling towards these more standard wh-relative clauses in

regional dialects is described. This is, perhaps, expected due to dialect levelling and

possible weakening of regional varieties. In cross-dialectal studies of relativization

(such as Herrmann, (2005) based on data from the Survey of English Dialects (Orton

et al. 1969-72)), non-standard relativizer at was found to be used in varieties of British

English. In studies that consider Lancashire data to some degree (e.g. Shorrocks,

1999), instances of what and of at relativization are pointed to as typical for this

region. Use of what relativization could be considered as relatively unusual in

northern English; Beal and Corrigan (2002) found this to be one of the least preferred

patterns in their study of the Northern towns of Sheffield and Newcastle.

40
 These nonstandard relativization patterns are accompanied by nonstandard

relativizers. A number of the cross-linguistic studies mentioned include data taken

from the Lancashire region. Herrmann (2002:33), for example, considers at, ut and t’

as phonemic/phonetic variants of that. Whether this in fact holds for Lancashire is to

be determined (see §2.3.) There is also disagreement among authors about whether at

is a separate particle of Scandinavian origin, or if alongside ut and ‘t it’s part of that.

Romaine (1982a:70) suggests that even if at was different, it has become mentally

merged with that over time. The distribution of these nonstandard relativizer forms

and patterns is explored in this chapter.

2.2.3 Factors influencing relativizer choice

A survey of the literature reveals that, most typically, forms of relativization are

influenced by various factors (both syntactic and semantic). Firstly, with respect to

syntactic function: what is the syntactic relation between the relativizer and the RV? Is

the RV subject of the relative clause verb, the object, etc? Secondly, with respect to

the semantic category of the antecedent: is it human or not? Finally, with respect to

restrictiveness: is the RC restrictive (RRC), or non-restrictive (NRRC)? A RRC

narrows the meaning of the antecedent, to avoid confusion with other possible

meanings, whereas an NRRC is merely supplying more information about the

antecedent, and is not intended to narrow the meaning. These factors are now outlined

in subsequent sections.

§2.2.3.1 Syntax: Dependencies between RV and antecedent

Relative clauses can be distinguished from each other according to the syntactic

relationship between the relative clause finite verb and the relativizer (or antecedent, if

41
there is no relativizer); these constructional differences are known as subordination

types. Much of the literature describes three basic types: nominal, adnominal and

sentential. Nominal RCs are those that function as a noun, e.g. can be subject or object

of a verb, and they have no antecedent, as shown in (9); adnominal RCs modify

nouns, and are perhaps the most common example of RCs, shown in (10); finally,

sentential RCs act like a separate sentence, and their antecedent is a preceding

sentence (11).

(9) [...] and er you went home and got [what was left for you] and you had that.
(Sound Archive).

(10) [...] then this letter arrived saying you 'd got a place at the secondary school
[which was in Preston] (Sound Archive)

(11) And slowly but surely, thankfully I gained their trust, [which is very very
important]. (Sound Archive)

Adnominal RCs are the prototypical RC, and will be the main focus of this chapter.

From this point, unless otherwise stated, RC refers only to adnominal RCs.

2.2.3.2 Semantic category of antecedent

Another important factor in relativizer choice is the semantic category of the

antecedent. Semantic categories are ways of grouping words according to the

attributes which describe what the word means; categories may be as general or

specific as is needed for a particular task. A noun referring to a human being can be

described as having the semantic category “person”, and this entails the attributes of

animacy or being alive, as well as more human specific attributes such as having

intentions and emotions. “Personality” is the state of having semantic category

“person”. Personality, or humanness, is a binary distinction, i.e. is the antecedent’s

head noun a person, or not? Antecedents having semantic category person often occur

in English with the relativizer who, and who only occurs in SE with a person

42
antecedent, so it would not be grammatical Standard English to say “*There’s a dog

[who goes for walks here].” On the other hand, the relativizer which can only occur in

Standard English with non-person antecedents.

2.2.3.3 Restrictiveness of the RC

Restrictiveness is an important aspect of relative clauses, and is a causal factor in

relativizer choice. As stated above, the restrictive/non-restrictive distinction (also

referred to as defining/non-defining, e.g. Carter and McCarthy 2006:566) concerns the

action of the RC on the frame of reference of the NP. If an RC is restrictive, it

contrasts the head noun from any other nouns with which it may have been confused;

if an RC is non-restrictive, it gives additional information that is not required for

identification. This is demonstrated below with invented examples, where (12) is

restrictive and (13) is unrestrictive.

(12) My friend [who lives in Manchester] phoned me yesterday.

(13) My brother, [who wasn’t feeling well], didn’t go to work today.

In (12) the friend is being contrasted with the speaker’s other friends who do not live

in Manchester, whereas in (13), the fact that the brother is not feeling well is not used

in order to define which brother is being referred to, but is just adding incidental

information about that brother. Often, NRRCs are preceded by a pause in speech, or a

comma in writing, which is not the case for RRCs; this perhaps reflects the nature of

these RC types: RRCs are adding information needed for disambiguation of the

antecedent, so the information should be said sooner; on the other hand, NRRCs are

adding information not needed for identification, so that information can afford to

wait for a pause.

43
 RCs are often distributed in patterns, e.g. certain relativizers prefer certain RC

types. Conventionally, NRRCs are said to require a wh-relativizer (Huddleston and

Pullum, 2002:1056). However, it is possible that both that and Ø may be used in non-

restrictive contexts. While this may be less frequent in Standard English, it is reported

as being possible in dialectal varieties such as in (14-15) taken from Herrmann

(2002:104).

(14) [...] I seen Eric Adams [that lived there], he said it come one Sunday
Dinnertime

(15) […] there was Mr McNaughton and Ben Weir from Kendal [Ø came round
buying horses]

Researchers often link NRRCs with the wh- relativizers, rather than with that

or zero (Huddleston and Pullum 2002:183). With regard to zero relatives, Quirk et al

(1985:1985) suggest that ‘non-restrictive zero cannot occur’ (see §2.2.1 for a further

discussion of zero relatives). Such conclusions are most typically based on Standard

English alone and so are tested on the nonstandard data presented in this chapter.

It is important to note that there is a blurred boundary between restrictive and

non-restrictive relativization - it is not always clear in what way or to what extent the

noun phrase is being restricted. Indeed, unless all relevant facts are known about the

antecedent (and its candidates), it is impossible to tell for certain what patterns the

speaker is using. One kind of restrictiveness ambiguity is that where more than one

(an unlimited number) of antecedent candidates are being described; a number of such

sentences were found in the corpus data, an example of which is (16).

(16) Then I had another brother [what went to er America, nineteen twenty
three]. (Sound Archive)

44
From this example, it is unclear if the speaker is using the restrictive meaning, which

implies the speaker has other brothers who went to America, or if the speaker is using

the unrestrictive meaning, which is not explicit about other brothers, but may be used

to imply that the brothers did not go to America. In cases like this, a look at the wider

context often reveals the intended meaning (which in this instance is non-restrictive,

i.e. does not imply any other brothers went to America), as shown in (17).

(17) There were, he were a poultry farmer. He were a loomer at first. Then he were
a poultry farmer, you see they were all allotments and poultry farms and pig
farms and er. I had another brother what er were dairyman at er Townley.
Then I had another brother [what went to er America, nineteen twenty
three]. (Sound Archive)

There were 27 results where ambiguity resolution was not possible, even by looking at

the wider text, and all of these were excluded from the results presented in this

chapter.

2.2.3.4 Other factors

A number of other factors (aside from those outlined above) have been found to affect

relativizer choice; these include: proximity of the relativizer and antecedent (Quirk

1957); length of the RC (Quirk 1957; Tagliamonte, Smith and Lawrence 2005); clause

complexity (Tagliamonte, Smith and Lawrence 2005); and discourse features (e.g.

information flow, Fox and Thompson 1990). It is also likely that social values ascribed

to particular constructions may impact upon their use within a speech community (as

outlined by Hollmann and Siewierska, forthcoming). These factors are not considered

under the remit of this analysis but are future research possibilities.

45
2.2.4 Diachronic change in relativization

There seems to be a general consensus that, in English, wh- pronouns gradually

replaced an earlier system where that was the primary relative marker (e.g. Mustanoja

1960; Romaine 1982; Montgomery 1989). By the late seventeenth century, the three

relative markers which, who, and that were used in much the same way as they are

today (as outlined in e.g. Quirk et al. 1985). While this may be the current situation for

Standard English, many regional varieties appear not to have implemented wh-

relativization to the same degree, or at the same pace, and many display a preference

for the older that-relativization strategy. That-relativization is also reported as being

favoured in spoken rather than written language (e.g. Quirk 1957; Romaine 1982), and

so we would therefore expect this pattern to play out in the Lancashire data.

2.2.5 Summary and research questions

This chapter examines how syntactic and semantic conditions may influence RC use

in Lancashire. Where possible, comparisons are drawn with previous research on

relativization in a number of related areas (e.g. Herrmann’s 2002 study which includes

a number of results from Lancashire and nearby Westmorland, and Tagliamonte,

Smith and Lawrence’s (2005) study which includes results from Maryport in

Cumbria). By examining corpus results both from the older Litcorp and the more

recent Sound Archive, it is possible to outline dialect specific trends in relativization.

The corpus results are supported by questionnaire data, and this aims to identify usage

of zero relatives (ZRs); a feature often difficult to uncover from corpus-based

approaches alone, as there is no relativizer form to search for. The combination of

corpus and questionnaire data (as also demonstrated elsewhere in this thesis) allows a

46
more descriptive account of how RCs are used in Lancashire, (see Hollmann and

Siewierska (2006), for a further discussion of using multiple methods.)

Studies into RCs have outlined significant variation from that typically found

in Standard English. By examining Lancashire data of different types, relativization

strategies in Lancashire can be uncovered. The following research questions are

addressed:

(a) How does Lancashire differ from Standard English (and from other dialects of

English) with respect to relativization?

(b) What types of ZRs are found in Lancashire? How frequent are ZRs and how

acceptable are they to Lancashire dialect speakers?

(c) What types of non-standard relativizers are found in Lancashire? This includes

instances of semi-phonetic spellings as a possible marker of salience. (See

§2.4.1 and also Chapter 5 for a discussion of salience).

(d) Are any of the factors which can influence relativizer choice at work in the

Lancashire dialect? These factors, as stated above, are syntactic relation

between relativizer/antecedent and RV; semantic category of the antecedent;

and restrictiveness or non-restrictiveness of the relative clause regarding the

antecedent.

(e) Has there been any change in relativization strategies over time? This includes

both standard and non-standard features.

(f) Can questionnaire data tell us anything more about the acceptability of ZRs?

2.3 Methodology

As with all other chapters in this thesis, spoken transcribed data from the Sound

Archive corpus is analysed along with written data from Litcorp (please see §1.5 for

47
more details on these sources). In order to support the Sound Archive and Litcorp

analyses, a questionnaire exploring ZRs such as there’s a man down the street Ø goes

there too is targeted at Lancashire dialect speakers in order to test the acceptability of

different types of zero relativization (as outlined in §2.2.1). More specifically, this

questionnaire has two aims: to examine whether or not zero relativizers are

distinguished from one another as being more or less acceptable by Lancashire

speakers, and to test a number of ZRs that are less frequently included in discussions

on ZRs yet can be found in the Lancashire data (namely NPs headed by free choice

any and ZRs as a modifier of that-phrase). Results from these questionnaires are

presented in §2.3.5; a full copy of the questionnaire can be found in Appendix D.

2.3.1 Rationale for methodology

Studies of RCs have been completed in a number of other regions of the UK, e.g. in

Sheffield and Newcastle (Beal and Corrigan, 2002); in Scotland (Romaine, 1980); in

Somerset (Ihalainen and Harris, 1980) and in Dorset (Van den Eynden, 1992).

Currently no such analysis exists for the Lancashire region. Lancashire data has

however been included in a number of cross-linguistic studies (e.g. Herrmann, 2005),

and also mentioned briefly in other more general studies of Lancashire (e.g.

Shorrocks, 1999). Tagliamonte, Smith and Lawrence (2005) include information from

nearby Maryport in Cumbria and it might be the case that similarities between

relativization in these two neighbouring regions exist. Although the methodological

approach employed by Tagliamonte, Smith and Lawrence differs slightly from that

proposed here (their analysis includes RRCs only), it will nonetheless be interesting to

consider similarities and differences in these results.

48
 Historically, studies of regional grammatical variation were based on elicited

data only, with the aim of compiling distributional maps and isoglosses (as found in,

e.g. the Survey of English Dialects project (Orton, 1969-71)). More recently, corpus-

based approaches have been employed in the study of dialect grammar, with many of

these considering relativization in their analyses. For example, Beal and Corrigan

(2002) draw on the Newcastle Electronic Corpus of Tyneside English (NECTE) and

the Survey of Sheffield Usage (SSU) in their study of these regions and Tagliamonte,

Smith and Lawrence (2005) use the 1 million word ROOTS corpus (Tagliamonte,

2001-2003) in their analysis of a number of UK regions clustered around the Irish Sea.

The use of corpora in these studies allows the retrieval of a large number of instances

of relative clause use, thus permitting distributional and frequency information to be

obtained.

The nature of RCs (and in particular, ZRs) mean that often they can be

difficult to extract from corpus data (for a further discussion of this, see §2.2.2). It is

in instances like this where acceptability judgements and elicitation tasks can help to

corroborate existing corpus results and target forms absent in the data, thus providing

rationale for their inclusion in this chapter.

2.3.2 Corpora: Litcorp and Sound Archive

As just mentioned , extracting RCs from corpus data is not an easy task, in part due to

relativizers fulfilling other grammatical functions in addition to being relativizers (e.g.

demonstrative pronouns, interrogative pronouns, demonstrative adjectives,

complementizers), but also due to the wide range of semantic interpretations involved

with related concepts such as e.g. restrictiveness. While overt relativizers can be

searched for individually (i.e. a search for the individual form which or whose etc.),

49
results obtained in this way of course include non–RC uses, as shown with what in

(18); (here what is not used as a relativizer, but as an interrogative pronoun).

(18) If you take the lads you grew up with that were fishing then, what were they
doing during the war? (Sound Archive)

Although automatic parsing techniques can denote grammatical relations such

as RCs, software such as this is most typically trained on Standard English only. A

preliminary test using the Stanford Parser 10 indicated that the nonstandard variation

found within the Lancashire corpus data (and particular the considerable grammatical

and spelling variation found in Litcorp) led to inaccurate parsing and unreliable

results. Because of this, all overt relativizer forms are searched for in the corpora

individually. From these results each sentence is then manually sorted and either

included or discarded depending on whether or not it constitutes an instance of RC use

based on semantic and syntactic analysis. Those sentences containing RCs are then

subject to further analyses (e.g. for syntactic function, semantic category of the

antecedent, restrictiveness, etc.) in order to arrive at the frequency results presented

later in §2.3. The restrictive/non-restrictive definition outlined in §2.1.3 is a good

motivation to carry out this manual search. As here I propose that restrictiveness in

Lancashire may not be solely linked to relativizer type (i.e. syntactic factors), this

means that primarily semantic interpretation is needed. This qualitative approach can

then form the basis of further quantitative study.

Searching for relativizers in Litcorp presents further problems. As writers in

Litcorp aim to represent their dialect using semi-phonetic spellings, it is not possible

for example, to search for ‘who’, and find every instance of what the writer may

10
For more information, see: http://nlp.stanford.edu/software/lex-parser.shtml

50
intend as who, due to the numerous variant spellings. A small sample of the variant

forms of relativizers found in Litcorp is shown in (19-21).

(19) In a bit two farmers [wot lived at Marton] coom in, and they’d a collie dug
wi’ urn. They’d bin takkin’ cattle to Poulton (Litcorp)

(20) To this mon ([whooa I soon percciv ‘t wur th’ Clark]) th’ Cunstable tow’d it,
an he began o whackering as if id stowd is Geese (Litcorp)

(21) Well, I fairly chinked wi’ lowfin’ at that, for Jim were cleeon shaven, an’
what Bess had tan for a mustache were thoose three hairs on Jim’s wart [ut
had tickled her face!] (Litcorp)

Variant spellings were uncovered by means of a close examination of a sample

of the Litcorp text. Variant spellings found in Litcorp include whoa, (who); whooa

(who I); whoos (whose), whot, wha, wot, ot (what); tha’ (that) and the slightly less

transparent ut, although not all of these spellings were consistently used to signal

relativizers; this is discussed further in §2.4.1 with particular reference to what, that

and ut.

ZRs cannot be retrieved from the corpus using the same methodology as their

overt counterparts since there is no search term to input (it is not possible to search for

an omission without it already having been annotated as such). While computational

methods have been used to automatically uncover ZRs from parsed corpus data with

some success (e.g. in the Penn Treebank project, (see e.g. Marcus, Santorini and

Marcinkeiwicz, 1993)), data that is POS-tagged only, as is the case for the Lancashire

data, is more problematic. Lehman (1997:187-191) describes a methodology for using

POS tags to retrieve possible instances of ZRs from corpus data. Lehman is able to

narrow down the results by formulating a POS tag search for the construction: finite

verb + NP + finite verb (e.g. I have a home help [Ø does my shopping]). Although

this approach may not capture every instance of ZRs in the corpora (e.g. those with

51
more complex NPs with extensive pre and postmodification) searching the corpora

manually was not a feasible option, given their size. Instead, a smaller in-depth study

of 5 speakers from the Sound Archive corpus (a subcorpus of approximately 45,000

words) aims to capture how zero relatives are used in more detail. A sample of a

similar size from Litcorp is also examined. These limitations on corpus-based searches

for ZRs also lend weight to the inclusion of questionnaire data to support the corpus

findings.

2.3.3 Questionnaire

The questionnaire is used in this chapter primarily to gather data on ZRs. The

questionnaire contains two parts. The first part tests the acceptability of particular RCs

and examines possible morphosyntactic influences on RC choice for current

Lancashire speakers. More specifically, the questions on ZRs examine four main

types: existential there as shown in (22), existential have (23), it clefts (24) and main

verb introducing (25).

(22) There’s a young girl I know [Ø has got that one too].

(23) I’ve something [Ø might help you sort out the problem].

(24) I think it was Laura [Ø told me you were going home].

(25) I met a lady the other day [Ø could do the same sort of thing].

Along with the examples in (22-25), the less well-known ZRs as outlined in

§2.2.1 are also tested, namely NPs headed by free choice any and ZRs as a modifier of

a that-phrase. These are exemplified in (26-27).

(26) I haven’t got any work [Ø needs doing].

(27) I didn’t really know her, that girl [Ø lived round by the market].

52
In the first part of the questionnaire participants were asked to judge sentences, such

as those detailed above, on a five point scale, with 1 being the least acceptable to them

and 5 being the most acceptable, as shown in (28).

(28) ‘There’s a man down the street goes there every week too’
(least acceptable) 1 2 3 4 5 (most acceptable)

The second part of the test required respondents to link together two clauses with a

relativizer in order to produce one complete sentence. The wording of the question is

shown in (29).

(29) Below are two statements. Combine these statements together into one
sentence. Two examples are given below:

STATEMENT: There’s a girl in the kitchen. She ate the last cake.
RESPONSE: There’s a girl in the kitchen who ate the last cake.

STATEMENT: I had a raincoat. It was blue with grey stripes

RESPONSE: I had a raincoat that was blue with grey stripes.

This second part of the test aimed to uncover which relativizers respondents would

choose in relatively free production. This part of the test contained (18) sentences that

tested features such as syntactic function; semantic category of the antecedent,

restrictiveness of the relative. A full copy of the questionnaire is presented in

Appendix B. Results from the questionnaire are outlined in §2.4.2.

53
2.3.4 Classification and division of respondents

The questionnaire (as described in §2.2.3) was prefaced by a number of sociolinguistic

questions about the age, location and background of the respondent. Unlike later

questionnaires (see e.g. Chapter 4, §4.4.6), in this instance only Lancashire dialect

speakers were targeted.

The questionnaire was completed in its entirety by 158 respondents, 43 of

which were students in undergraduate classes at Lancaster University, typically aged

18-22. The remaining 115 informants were reached via social networking websites

(primarily Facebook 11 ) and were asked to fill in an online version of the

questionnaire. Most online participants were of a mixed age range, with the average

age being 36. Online informants were then encouraged to pass on the questionnaire to

their colleagues, family or friends if they thought it was likely that they would also

complete the questionnaire. While possible social network effects of language

variation could very likely be a factor that influences results presented in this chapter

(i.e. as described by Milroy, 1980), this area is too broad to be discussed under the

remit of this thesis. However, to test the possibility of using social media to

crowdsource for sociolinguistic research such as that carried out in this chapter, an

additional question was inserted into the online version of the questionnaire. This

question was: where did you find the link to this survey? The results for each response

are shown in brackets - a. directly from a Facebook group (48); b. via Twitter (22); c.

from someone I know (25); d. from the researcher directly (20). This suggests that

using social media is a viable direction for further research into both reaching a wider

number of survey participants and investigating possible social network effects.

11
For further information, see http://www.facebook.com

54
2.4 Results and discussion

2.4.1 Overview of corpus results

The overall frequency of all RCs in the Sound Archive and Litcorp is shown in

Table 1 listed by relativizer (these results are show at this stage with no differentiation

between e.g. antecedent type, restrictiveness, etc). The tables display raw frequency

results as some values are too low to normalise, e.g. to frequencies per 100,000. The

percentage values in Table 1 show the distribution of RC across each corpus.

Litcorp Sound Archive

that 560
(57.2%) 671 (35.4%)
who 129
(13.2%) 339 (17.9%)
which 141
(14.4%) 443 (23.4%)
what 29(3.0%) 325 (17.2%)
whose 3(0.3%) 4 (0.2%)
whom 12(1.2%) 7 (0.4%)
Ø 98
(10.0%) 103 (5.4%)
as 5(0.5%) 2 (0.1%)
at 2(0.2%) 0 (0.0%)
TOTAL 979 (100.0%) 1894 (100.0%)
TABLE 1. FREQUENCY OF RELATIVIZER IN SOUND ARCHIVE AND LITCORP

Results from the corpora show that the relativizer that is the most frequent in

both corpora. This supports findings that suggest that in spoken discourse that-

relativization is favoured by speakers (although Litcorp is not spoken language as

such, the Dialect Literature is considered to reflect spoken style in text). The results

for that found in the Litcorp make up a larger proportion of the total relativization

strategies than in Sound Archive, and therefore also agree with the assertion that older

texts may display a higher frequency of the older that-relativization pattern (e.g.

Mustanoja 1960). This therefore suggests that there has been an element of diachronic

55
change with respect to that relativization, although conclusive results are not possible

at this stage.

From the results shown in Table 1, the preference for RCs in Lancashire is as

shown below along with arrows depicting any change (relativizers with a share of less

than 3% are not represented).

Litcorp that > which > who > Ø> what

Sound Archive that > which > what > who > Ø
FIGURE 1. MOST FREQUENT RELATIVIZERS IN THE LANCASHIRE CORPORA

Previous dialect studies have suggested that wh-relativization has made inroads

into regional dialects (e.g. Herrmann 2005:28). This does not seem to be the case in

Lancashire where in fact the only change in relativization overall seems to be the

increase of what. This increase in what relativization has been outlined (e.g. by

Cheshire, Edwards and Whittle 1993:68) as an overall trend in English more

generally. It could well be the case that this reported trend in general English has

indeed influenced the frequency of this variable in Lancashire, thus explaining the

distribution found in Table 1. An alternative conclusion may be drawn from evidence

elsewhere in the literature suggesting that the relativizer what is associated with the

Lancashire region to some degree (e.g. Shorrocks 1999:101). This would mean that

perhaps this distribution does not represent a change, but instead corroborates the

assertion of Shorrocks that what is a feature often found in Lancashire. Overall, the

results shown in Table 1 suggest that, in very general terms, relativization in

Lancashire appears to have remained relatively stable. It is interesting to note that

relativization is less frequent in Litcorp as compared to the Sound Archive overall.

Alongside this, there are of course differences between the two corpora to consider;

this is explored further in §2.5.

56
 A number of the results displayed a very low frequency. In the Sound Archive

only 6 instances of whom were found. Only 4 out of 32 speakers produced this

relativizer, 2 results being found within the same sentence, as shown in (30).

(30) Incidentally, speaking about Hortner, there was a boy staying there in those
days [whom I met with] and with whom [I spent some considerable time] and
we became great friends. (Sound Archive)

Along with the infrequent whom, instances of as were also very infrequent in both

corpora, shown in (31).

(31) At th’ Sunday Skoo [as I went to] th’ dobby [as cleond th’ skoo an’ kept us
i’ order wi’ a cane while th’ skoo oppent] were named Skinner, Ham Skinner.
He were a lung, thin chap, an’ hi wife, wot helped him, were very fat, an’
puffed a lot when hoo were warkin. (Litcorp)

Although this variant was ascribed to Lancashire by Herrmann, it may be that it is

now archaic, as it does not feature in the Sound Archive.

ZRs appear with perhaps a lower frequency than expected in the corpus data;

this may be due to a number of factors. In Litcorp it may be the case that writers

choose to use an overt nonstandard form, rather than an omission in their

representation of the dialect. This hypothesis is untested, but follows if we consider

dialect writing to be a representation of the dialect in written form, and therefore aims

to have salient features; a zero form is perhaps less noticeable, or salient, than a non-

standard form. A similar trend, which could also be accounted for by this hypothesis,

is found in definite article reduction later in this thesis (see §5.4.7).

It was necessary to estimate the extent to which low frequencies of ZRs might

be due to the retrieval method employed here, and the extent to which this is a true

representation of this relativization strategy in Lancashire. A more fine-grained

analysis of 5 speakers from Sound Archive and an equal portion of Litcorp data is

57
employed here, in order to test this assertion. Results from this close analysis of ZRs

found in the two sample texts can then be compared against the results obtained by

corpus retrieval methods in order to extrapolate to a margin of error. Results from this

analysis are shown in Table 2.

number of Ø ratio of ratio of Maximum estimate of total

relatives found Ø:words in Ø :words in number of Ø possibly
manually sample whole corpus missed by corpus search
5 speaker
subcorpus 19 4.2/ 10,000 3.5 / 10,000 21

Litcorp
13 2.8/ 10,000 2.0 / 10,000 40
sample
TABLE 2. FREQUENCY OF ZERO RELATIVES IN A 45,000 WORD SAMPLE FROM EACH
CORPUS

In the case study, a total of 32 ZRs were found. By working out the maximum number

of ZRs that may have been missed by using corpus methods, we can see that, although

a significant number of ZRs may have been omitted, this does not change the order of

the most frequent relativizers as shown in Figure 1 above.

A closer look at the results shown in Table 1 is needed, in order to determine

the role of the factors influencing relativizer choice (set out in §2.2.3) in the

Lancashire data. Before this, the relativizer results from Litcorp can be explored

further, as the nonstandard spellings in particular uncovered some very interesting

variation. Some of the results for Litcorp shown in Table 1 are reproduced in Table 3,

this time with the distribution across variant spellings with that and what.

Litcorp
what 4 (13.8%)
what 29
wot 25 (86.2%)
that 163 (29.1%)
that 560
ut 397 (70.9%)
TABLE 3. VARIANT SPELLINGS OF WHAT AND THAT RELATIVIZERS IN LITCORP

58
There are 29 instances of what used as a relativizer in Litcorp. Interestingly, the

standard spelling of what is only used as a relativizer 4 times, e.g. (32), with each of

these 4 examples occurring in the same source text.

(32) There were only six heauses in a row in th’ Grove, an’ everywheer else there
were twenty or moor. An’ th’ folk [what lived in Hosburn Grove] thowt
summat o’ theirsels, th’ women specially. (Litcorp)

The remaining 25 results were found with the spelling wot, where each of the 25

results was a relativizer, as shown in (33) below. 12

(33) In a bit two farmers [wot lived at Marton] coom in, and they’d a collie dug
wi’ urn. They’d bin takkin’ cattle to Poulton, an wur on th’ road whoam
again.

Here, Litcorp writers use wot to mark the nonstandardness of this relativization

strategy, this respelling was not used to indicate any other function.

The instances of nonstandard ut were more complicated. Herrmann states ‘at,

ut, and t are rated as phonemic/phonetic variants of that by me’ (2002:70). This

assertion appears to be less categorical in the Litcorp data where instances are found

that are ambiguous, or at least difficult to resolve. This is in part due to ut being used

not exclusively for that as shown in (34).

(34) He geet in to be a soart ov an under sweepereaut ut a wareheause, an’ gan his

mesther sich satisfaction ut he’re soon promoted to th’ top end o’th’ brush, at
an extry shillin’ a week. He wurno’ ut this job lung, for onybody [ut had a bit
o’ inseet into things] could see ut he didno’ sweep like a common mon.
(Litcorp)

Within the same example here, ut is used to mean at (as in, he became an

undersweeper at a warehouse...), subordinating that, (as in he could see that he did

not sweep and relativizing that (as in, “anybody [that had a bit of insight]”). This is

12
The only exception to this was the use of wot as a semi-phonetic spelling for hot, e.g. he fotcht a red-
wot fire-potter eaut o’ th’ heause an’ flourished it like a sword (Litcorp), of which there are 8 instances.

59
problematic when looking at the data, where relativization with at is also found (albeit

infrequently) as in (35).

(35) It’ll be hard wi’ folk ut areno prepared for it. A blazin’ wot summer, an’ neaw
ice an’ snow, an’ a wynt [at shakes th’ heause]. Han th’ coals come?”
(Litcorp)

Examples of ut also occur directly adjacent to that, such as in (36).

(36) “An’ win yo’ give us that pictur’ o’ yo’rs for Walmsley Fowt Bonfire” th’ lad
said. “Jim Thuston says it’s fit for nowt else.” “Does theau meean my
portrait?” “Aye, that [ut Jim Thuston says wur painted for a aleheause sign].”
That wur enoof for me. “Here,” aw said, “if theau artno’ away fro’ this dur in
abeaut five seconds, aw’ll send thee flyin’ o’er that garden, an’ witheaut
wings, too, theau yung jackanapes.” (Litcorp)

It could be suggested that that is indeed the intended relativizer in example

(36). It is also possible that this could be an instance of at or what relativization. In

order to resolve this problem an analysis of all instances of ut is necessary, both as a

relative and as other parts of speech. Because ut occurs significantly more frequently

as that, it is likely that when speakers write ut, they are more likely to mean that than

any other possible meaning. Only instances that were possible to disambiguate were

included. These results can be seen in Table 4.

Raw Percentage of
frequency all uses of ut
relative that 397 (41.5%)
demonstrative that 46 (4.8%)
that
conjunction that 465 (48.6%)
adverb that 19 (2.0%)
at at 6 (0.6%)
it pronoun it 24 (2.5%)
TOTAL 957
TABLE 4. ANALYSIS OF UT RESULTS IN LITCORP

60
Due to the predominance of ut used to mean both relativizer and non-relativizer that,

any possible ambiguous examples of ut in Litcorp are here counted as belonging to

that.

2.4.2 Corpus results: restrictiveness of relative clause

The restrictive and non-restrictive results for each relativizer in both corpora are

shown in Table 5. The relative percentage distribution between restrictive and non-

restrictive results is also displayed.

Litcorp Sound Archive

restrictive non-restrictive restrictive non-restrictive
that 515 (92.0%) 45 (8.0%) 658 (98.1%) 13 (1.9%)
who 120 (93.0%) 9 (7.0%) 281 (82.9%) 58 (17.1%)
which 2 (1.4%) 139 (98.6%) 256 (57.8%) 187 (42.2%)
what 13 (44.8%) 16 (55.2%) 101 (31.1%) 224 (68.9%)
whose 2 (66.7%) 1 (33.3%) 2 (50.0%) 2 (50.0%)
whom 2 (16.7%) 10 (83.3%) 7 (100.0%) 0 (0.0%)
Ø 98 (100.0%) 0 (0.0%) 103 (100.0%) 0 (0.0%)
as 2 (40.0%) 3 (60.0%) 2 (100.0%) 0 (0.0%)
at 2 (100.0%) 0 (0.0%) 0 (0.0%) 0 (0.0%)
TOTAL 756 (77.2%) 223 (22.8%) 1410 (74.4%) 484 (25.6%)
TABLE 5. FREQUENCY OF RESTRICTIVE AND NON-RESTRICTIVE RESTRICTIVE RELATIVE
CLAUSE BY RELATIVIZER

Non-restrictive relatives are infrequent in the Lancashire data. Huddleston and Pullum

(2002:183) suggest that non restrictive uses of that are rare, but 58 examples of this

are found in the corpora, as shown below in (37).

(37) I asked our James that worked there, and he said it were never reported or
anything (Sound Archive)

61
2.4.3 Corpus results: semantic category of antecedent

The results for relativizer type with respect to the personality/non-personality

distinction are shown in Table 6.

Litcorp Sound Archive

personality non-personality personality non-personality
who 129 (100.0%) 0 (0.0%) 339 (100.0%) 0 (0.0%)
whose 3 (100.0%) 0 (0.0%) 4 (100.0%) 0 (0.0%)
whom 12 (100.0%) 0 (0.0%) 7 (100.0%) 0 (0.0%)
that 489 (87.3%) 71 (12.7%) 474 (70.6%) 197 (29.4%)
which 88 (62.4%) 53 (37.6%) 191 (43.1%) 252 (56.9%)
what 16 (55.2%) 13 (44.8%) 173 (53.2%) 152 (46.8%)
Ø 94 (95.9%) 4 (4.1%) 101 (98.1%) 2 (1.9%)
as 5 (100.0%) 0 (0.0%) 2 (100.0%) 0 (0.0%)
at 2 (100.0%) 0 (0.0%) 0 (0.0%) 0 (0.0%)
TABLE 6. FREQUENCY OF RELATIVE CLAUSE BY ANIMACY TYPE

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the relativizers who, whose and whom are exclusively

found referring to person. The relativizer that prefers antecedents with personality but

is also found with antecedents such as the house that I lived in. In both corpora which

appears with both personality and non-personality antecedents. ZRs also prefer

personality rather than non-personality with what found the most evenly with all

antecedent types. Overall, aside from whom, whose and who, relativization in

Lancashire appears to be fairly unrestricted by personality.

2.4.4 Questionnaire findings: distribution of relativizers

The questionnaire completed by Lancashire dialect speakers targeted ZRs in

particular. Participants were asked to assign scores from 1 to 5 to each test sentence,

with 1 being judged by them as the least acceptable and 5 as the most acceptable. A

full copy of the questionnaire can be found in Appendix B. A five point scale was

62
used in this test and the overall median results for all respondent groups are shown in

Table 7. The mean score is shown alongside this, in brackets

Context
existential existential main verb NPs headed by Modifier of
it cleft that-phrase
there have introducing free choice any
Score 4 (3.8) 3 (2.1) 3 (2.6) 3 (2.7) 3(3.0) 2(2.9)
TABLE 7. QUESTIONNAIRE RESULTS FOR ZERO RELATIVES

Existential there sentences such as “there’s a man down the street [Ø goes there

too]” were the most acceptable to Lancashire speakers. All test sentences were judged

to be acceptable to Lancashire speakers, with only 10 speakers giving scores of 1.

The use of a questionnaire methodology is not without its limitations; an

analysis of the results suggests that often informants are reluctant to choose 1 or 5.

Conversely, there were also participants who only gave scores of 1 or 5, i.e. a yes/no-

type response. This aside, combined with the substantial corpus data, these results

give a good picture of relativization in Lancashire.

The second part of the questionnaire required the participants to joint two

sentences together with a relativizer of their choice. Both the raw frequency and the

percentage distribution for each sentence type are shown in Table 8. There were three

test sentences of each type, one of which is given in the table, for reference.

63
 Relativizer
Example that what who which Ø whose
There’s a girl in the kitchen. 61 8 87 0 2 0
human
She ate the last cake. (38.6%) (5.1%) (55.1%) (0.0%) (1.3%) (0.0%)
I went to the Council. They 0 0 126 32 0 0
collective
took my claim seriously. (0.0%) (0.0%) (79.7%) (20.3%) (0.0%) (0.0%)
I had a raincoat. It was blue 136 15 0 7 0 0
thing
with grey stripes (86.1%) (9.5%) (0.0%) (4.4%) (0.0%) (0.0%)
I saw a horse. It looked very 80 20 31 23 4 0
animal
cold. (50.6%) (12.7%) (19.6%) (14.6%) (2.5%) (0.0%)
There is a woman. She went
52 2 102 0 2 0
subject to the bank. She is “a
(32.9%) (1.3%) (64.4%) (0.0%) (1.3%) (0.0%)
woman...
There is a woman. I saw her
0 1 0 0 0 157
Object husband at the bank. She is
(0.0%) (0.6%) (0.0%) (0.0%) (0.0%) (99.4%)
“a woman...
TABLE 8. CHOICE OF RELATIVIZER BY QUESTIONNAIRE PARTICIPANTS.

The questionnaire returned a number of surprising results. Although

comparatively infrequent, a number of speakers used ZRs productively, in particular

with human and animal subjects, producing sentences like there was a dog went to the

vet. This suggests that (at least certain types of) ZRs are not unacceptable to

Lancashire speakers. No speakers produced at or ut. This absence, in addition to the

lack of corpus findings, suggests that these non-standard relativizers, which perhaps

were once found in Lancashire (as suggested by e.g. Herrmann, 2005), are now rare

for Lancashire speakers. Use of what appeared in the data, although relatively

infrequently. One participant completed the sentence “she is a woman [what’s

husband I saw at the bank],” with what’s used instead of the Standard English choice

whose. It could perhaps be suggested that some results such as this may perhaps be

unreliable due to the social values ascribed to it in this context i.e. it may have been a

tongue-in-cheek response (issues such as this are considered further in Chapter 5).

This appears to be the case here, where this particular speaker did not use what in any

other sentence in the task. This would suggests that further tests may be needed in

order to determine other factors (e.g. possible social values) associated with the
64
acceptability of sentences such as a woman what’s husband, as opposed to e.g. a

woman whose husband.

2.5 Concluding remarks

This analysis of RCs in Lancashire has revealed that relativization strategies in this

region differ from those found in Standard English. Herrmann (2005) suggested that,

very generally, relativization strategies in regional dialects appear to be less

constrained, and this seems to be the case in Lancashire. The corpus and questionnaire

results show that significant variation is found with relativization type, syntactic

function of the relativizer, semantic category of the antecedent, and restrictiveness of

the relativizer over antecedent. In particular, what relativization is both found in the

corpus data and is produced in the sentence linking task by respondents.

Significant variation was found in the use of nonstandard relativizers in

Litcorp. Much of this variation involved semi-phonetic respelling. As outlined in

§1.3.3 if we reason that semi-phonetic spellings indicate a conscious choice by the

speaker to represent the nonstandardness of their dialect, (be it phonological or

grammatical or both) then these respellings are considered significant. Litcorp results

showed that, in particular, the exclusive use of wot to indicate relativization and what

used in all other contexts indicates that this construction is recognisable to these

Lancashire Dialect writers as a salient feature of relativization in Lancashire region.

The concept of salience as put forward here is further outlined both at various points

in subsequent chapters, but primarily in Chapter 5.

The overall frequency of relativizers largely fit in with the Lancashire findings

of Herrmann (2002) suggesting perhaps that relativization in Lancashire has not

undergone any significant change during the period that both Herrmann’s study and

65
this present investigation cover (1960s – 1990s). Despite this, there are a number of

key differences. In the second part of the survey, with animate human subject,

speakers in Lancashire most typically used subject wh- relatives e.g. there’s a girl in

the kitchen [who ate the last cake], but prefer that with non-human animate subjects

e.g. the sheep in the field [that jumped over the fence].

A number of dialect speakers (23 out of 158) used the perhaps more

nonstandard what e.g. the sheep in the field [what jumped over the fence]. This was

found, in particular, with restrictive clauses with animate (both human and non-

human) – although no comparison with SE speakers was made here, even to find what

used productively here contrasts with, e.g. Beal and Corrigan’s (2002) findings in

Newcastle and Sheffield. Modern speakers produced what in the sentence linking

exercise more frequently than perhaps would be expected. It is unclear if this is part of

a relatively recent increase in this relativization reported throughout the UK (e.g. by

Cheshire, Edwards and Whittle 1993:68) or a feature particular to Lancashire.

Non restrictive relatives are infrequent in the data. Quirk et al. (1985:1252)

suggest that that is rare as a non-restrictive relativizer and that zero is impossible. This

is not the case with the results outlined here, where a number of non-restrictive uses

were found.

With regard to the status of the typically “Lancashire” features (namely, as and

at), as outlined by Shorrocks (1999) and Herrmann (2002), this was not corroborated

by corpus data. No speakers produced as or at and although some instances were

found these were restricted to Litcorp only and even then were very infrequent.

Combined with the results from the corpora, this suggests that this variable is rare for

Lancashire speakers. The questionnaire results indicated that ZRs are most acceptable

in existential there sentences, but also that Lancashire speakers found all types of zero

66
relatives to be acceptable. A better approach may be to start from semantic position,

e.g. giving additional information (loosely linked here to restrictively). As most

accounts of grammar start from a syntactic point of view this was a rational position to

take. Contrast e.g. I’ve got a lawn wants cutting with I’ve got a lawn wanting cutting.

An analysis with the emphasis placed more clearly on semantic proposition rather than

the more syntactic starting point taken here may give more a clearer picture about the

interplay between related constructions and therefore allow us to draw more precise

conclusions about language variation and change. Building from this assertion, this

approach is adopted with respect to the HAVEn’t to construction in Chapter 3.

67
 Chapter 3. HAVEn’t to

3.1 Introduction

This chapter focuses on the syntax, semantics and frequency of the HAVEn’t to

construction (and later, a group of semantically similar constructions) in order to both

describe its use and outline the way in which grammaticalization may have played a

role in the development of this construction in Lancashire.

It is widely accepted that in Standard English, HAVE to requires DO-support

when forming the negative (Quirk et al, 1985:138; Ellegård 1953:154). However, data

from the Sound Archive and Litcorp used in this study suggests that this is not

necessarily the case for Lancashire dialect speakers, see e.g. (1) compared to (2) (see

Chapter 1 for a detailed discussion of the corpora used here). 13

(1) No no you haven’t to change or anything, come just as you are’ (Sound
Archive)

(2) You know, like you get first class stamps, you don't have to lick ’em do you,
you just stick em on, that's progress in't it? (Sound Archive)

While core modal verbs such as COULD and MIGHT do not need DO-support,

newer semi-modals such as DARE to and USED to, and indeed HAVE to, generally do,

although as shown above, for the latter this is not always the case amongst Lancashire

dialect speakers. The comparison of this construction in the Sound Archive and

Litcorp allows tentative assumptions to be made about how the Lancashire dialect

may have changed over time. In addition, this study considers other semantically

related negative modal constructions, i.e. (3-5).

13
It should be noted that while often HAVEn’t to is written throughout this chapter, the intended
meaning is HAVE Neg to Inf (i.e. all negated forms.

68
 (3) It was very popular at one time, it mustn’t have been popular enough.
(Sound Archive)

(4) A properly trained salesman shouldn’t tak’ no for a answer. (Litcorp)

(5) Platt, my lad, tha needn’t goo a step further’ this is the lass for thee. (Litcorp)

By analysing these constructions, I will provide a descriptive analysis of how

they are used within both the Litcorp and Sound Archive data. It may also be possible

to suggest reasons why changes in frequency may have occurred, and relate this to

linguistic theory more generally. The Lancashire data for these constructions will be

compared, in places, with data from the BNC, and also with other studies of changes

to modal verbs in English, such as Leech (2003) and Biber et al. (1999). It is also

possible to draw tentative conclusions about the representation of dialect in the

literature by means of a considered analysis of the frequency results.

3.2 Literature review

3.2.1 Modality in Standard English

Biber et al. (1999:485) state that English has nine modal verbs: can, could, may,

might, shall, should, will, would, and must. Semantically, they suggest that modality

can be grouped into three broad categories – permission/possibility/ability;

obligation/necessity, and volition/prediction. While many other studies break this

distinction down further (e.g. Van der Auwera & Plungian (1998:52) distinguish

between uncertainty, dynamic possibility, ability, capacity, need, obligation, necessity,

permission, and probability), this is not necessary for the remit of this study, and so

further analyses will concentrate mainly on the category of obligation/necessity of

which HAVEn’t to is a member.

69
 Morphosyntactically, in Standard English modal constructions have no non-

finite forms - most have present and past with no person-number marking in the third

person singular present, and most have irregularity in the past form, e.g. can/could,

may/might. Modals are complemented by a bare infinitive and follow the NICE

properties as set out by Quirk et al (1985:140), discussed later in this section.

In addition to the core modals, as described above, English has a number of

semi-modals. Semi-modals include constructions such as DARE to, NEED to, OUGHT to,

HAVE to, and USED to. These constructions fulfil a similar semantic function to modals

(i.e. one of possibility/ability, obligation/necessity, or volition/prediction), but differ

from core modal verbs in terms of syntax. Semi-modal constructions conform to the

NICE properties to differing degrees. This syntactic difference is used later in this

study as a measure of grammaticalization.

It should be noted that semi-modals have been labelled in various different

ways in the literature, including marginal modals (Denison, 1993:315), semi-auxiliary

(Quirk et al., 1985: 137, Krug, 1996:43), non-modal auxiliaries (Warner, 1993:3) and

quasi-modal (Coates, 1983: 52; Perkins, 1983: 65; Leech, 1987: 73). While the choice

of name is debated, the existence of such a category is not, and in this study I follow

Biber et al. (1999:483) by using semi-modal.

Quirk et al., similar to Biber et al., describe modal verbs (and semi-modals) as

representing concepts such as volition, probability and obligation. While also

describing the semantics, Quirk et al. take a more formal approach, concentrating

much of their analysis on the syntactic properties of modal verbs – the so called NICE

properties: negation, inversion, contraction and ellipsis. These properties are

demonstrated in (7-9), with core modal verbs (a) and lexical verbs (b).

70
Negation - The test for negation suggests that modal constructions are able to form

negative constructions by using the particle not or the contracted form –n’t. This is not

possible for lexical verbs, as can be seen in the following examples.

(6a) It may not be ready in time. (BNC – A08 2589)

(6b) *He kicked not a ball.

Inversion - Inversion of the subject and operator is typical for modal verbs in a range

of contexts, including interrogative sentences as shown here.

(7a) Should he go back? (BNC – CDE 2474) He should go back.

(7b) *Jumps he on the bed? He jumps on the bed.

Contractions/clitics - The tests for clitics/contractions show that modal constructions

can be reduced. As demonstrated by the examples below, this is not possible for

lexical verbs.

(8a) You'll see for yourself. (BNC – A0D 2587) You will see for yourself.

(8b) *We’te it on Saturday. We ate it on Saturday.

Ellipsis - Modals may also appear in elliptical constructions without a complement.

(9a) If anyone can do it, she can [do it].

(9b) *If anyone keeps spoiling the dinner, John keeps [spoiling it].

When forming negative (10), interrogative (11) or elliptical sentences (12),

both lexical verbs and many semi-modals require DO-support as shown in the

examples below.

71
 (10) He ran away. He didn’t run away.

(11) He jumps on the bed. Does he jump on the bed?

(12) If anyone keeps spoiling the dinner, John does.

This comparison shows that these criteria may be used to determine whether or

not a verb can be considered syntactically modal or not (or to what degree), and

therefore are a useful set of tests that will be utilized later in this study.

3.2.2 Modals vs. semi-modals

Much of the literature suggests that the difference between modals and semi-modals is

predominately one of syntax, with both modals and semi-modals sharing a similar

semantic space, i.e. one of ‘obligation, permission, probability, futurity, uncertainty,

lack of definiteness’ (Warner, 1993:13). In order to show how these semi-modals are

syntactically different to the core modals, it is useful to look again at the NICE

properties as set out earlier in (6–9).

Semi-modal Core modals

Negation daren’t, ?oughtn’t to, *usedn’t to can’t, shouldn’t, won’t
Inversion He needs to / *needs to he? He will / will he?
*I’sed to (used to), *he’ren’t go
Contraction He’ll, you’d,
(he daren’t go)
?If anyone needs to do it, he needs to [do If anyone will do it, he will [do
Ellipsis
it] it].
TABLE 1 – NICE QUALITIES OF SEMI-MODALS AS COMPARED TO ‘CORE’ MODALS IN
STANDARD ENGLISH (QUIRK ET AL., 1985:140)

This table shows that, on the whole, semi-modals tend not to conform to all of

the NICE properties. However, it should also be noted that the class definition

between semi- and core modals is not binary. In fact, from the table it is clear that the

boundaries are instead blurred, and can be said to form a continuum of modality with

some semi-modals being closer to or further away from the core modals. For example,

72
not all semi-modals are unable to take negation (a focus of this study), e.g. ?DAREn’t,

?OUGHTn’t to, *USEDn’t to. This idea is also put forward by Quirk et al. (1985: 137)

who suggest that there is a auxiliary verb > main verb scale; this is represented in

Figure 1.

(one verb phrase) (a) central modals: can, could, may, might, shall,
should, will

(b) marginal modals: dare, need, ought to, used to

(c) modal idioms: had better, would rather, be to,

have got to

(d) semi-auxiliaries: have to, be about to, be able to,

be bound to, be going to,
be obliged to,

(e) caternatives: appear to, happen to, seem to

(two verb phrases) (f) main verb + hope to + Inf, begin + -ing participle
nonfinite clause:

FIGURE 1. THE AUXILIARY VERB/MAIN VERB SCALE (ADAPTED FROM QUIRK ET AL.
1995:137)

By looking at the Lancashire data for HAVEn’t to, (shown in Figure 1 only in

the positive form (HAVE to) as a semi-auxiliary), this study aims to find out how close

or far away HAVEn’t to is to a modal function for Lancashire speakers (such as that of

central modals represented in Figure. 1), and how this compares to its use in Standard

English. This study also goes some way to considering if, and perhaps why modal

verbs may have moved along this scale by using diachronic data (see §3.4.4).

3.2.3 Recent changes to modal verbs in Standard English

A number of studies have analysed recent changes to modal verbs in Standard

English, with much of the research (e.g. Leech, 2003; Biber, 1999), looking at

73
changes in British English in contrast with American English. Only Krug (1996) pays

significant attention to the HAVEn’t to construction as examined in this study. Krug

looks specifically at HAVEn’t to (1996:103) using a mixture of corpora including

ARCHER, BNC, Frown, Brown, FLOB and LOB. Results for this study suggest that

both HAVEn’t to and HAVEn’t got to are very rare in current Standard English, with all

corpora returning very low frequencies for these constructions. Krug suggests that the

absence of not negation in present day English points to a diachronic development

from unproductive auxiliary negation (HAVEn’t to) to DO negation (DOn’t have to).

Krug suggests that the occurrences of HAVEn’t to within the data are found in the

language of older speakers who exhibit the retention of an obsolescent structure, and

that there is a regional tendency for these speakers to come from the north of England.

Interestingly, Krug also suggests that HAVEn’t to expresses mainly prohibition

synonymous with the core modal MUSTn’t, meaning not supposed to / not allowed to,

whereas DOn’t HAVE to contrasts with this, meaning ‘not obliged to’. This contrast,

and the semantics of both HAVEn’t to, DOn’t have to, and other related constructions is

investigated in the Lancashire data in §3.5.5.

Leech suggests that changes to modal verbs are related to more general

changes in language style, politeness and genre such as informalization,

generalization, and colloquialization (Leech, 2003:236). Corpus data from the Brown

family of corpora indicates that modals marking necessity are more frequent in British

English, as compared to American English. It is also suggested that semi-modals, in

particular those with periphrastic DO, are becoming more frequent in British English.

However, it is unclear strictly how this rise in frequency of modals marking necessity,

and also semi-modals, is linked to informality, generalness or colloquialization.

74
Nonetheless, this trend in Standard English is tested against the Lancashire data in

§3.4.4.

Biber et al. (1999:498), similar to Leech, compare British with American

English, drawing largely the same conclusions about general change amongst the two

varieties. Different to Leech, Biber et al. take a closer look at genres, suggesting that

have to is the only semi-modal that is common in written discourse as well as

conversation in Standard English, with the other semi-modals being mainly restricted

to spoken and informal contexts.

3.2.4 HAVE to and HAVEn’t to in current Standard English

The most common semantic categorisation of HAVE to suggests that its meaning is

close to that of MUST (see e.g. Quirk et. al., 1985:145; Perkins, 1983:65; Coates,

1983:52), although morphosyntactic differences between the two are recognized by

the classification of HAVE to as a semi-modal and MUST as a core modal. Along with

this, semantic differences are also present. One of these is objectivity; HAVE to

suggests obligations to external entities, while MUST refers to obligations to the

speaker. For example, as shown in the invented examples below, (13) involves an

obligation to the speaker, and (14) represents some kind of outside authority or

internal drive.

(13) He must bring me my lunch [or I’ll be angry]

(14) He has to bring me my lunch [it’s his job]

However, the exact semantic role of HAVEn’t to with respect to other modal

and semi-modal verbs is disputed. Going back to Figure 1, the exact placement of

HAVE to (and also HAVEn’t to) on a scale such as this is contested. Visser (1969:1478)

suggests that to all intents and purposes HAVE to is a modal auxiliary, Krug (1996)
75
suggests that it is located at around the mid-point between full auxiliary and full verb,

and Coates (1983) suggests that it fulfils none of the defining characteristics of modal

auxiliaries. While this study considers HAVEn’t to rather than HAVE to, it goes some

way to providing semantic, syntactic and diachronic evidence for where on a scale

such as that in Figure 1 HAVEn’t to is located for Lancashire dialect speakers.

Importantly, HAVEn’t to may be considered as a separate construction from

HAVE TO as it is clear in the data that the HAVEn’t to construction displays two distinct

meanings and that the difference is related to obligation. It is not simply a negated

form of HAVE to (see also §3.4.6). I follow Bybee et al. (1994:186) in distinguishing

between constructions that express obligation as strong or weak. The distinction

between weak and strong constructions can be seen in the examples (15) and (16),

respectively.

(15) No no you haven’t to change or anything, come just as you are. (Sound
Archive)

(16) Even what happened, you hadn’t to talk, you had to lie still and be quiet.
(Sound Archive)

For Lancashire speakers, HAVEn’t to does not always semantically correspond to the

Standard English negative of HAVE to, i.e. DOn’t HAVE to, which displays only

obligation in the weaker sense. This would therefore suggest that, for Lancashire

speakers, HAVE to and HAVEn’t to are distinct (but related) constructions and they are

therefore treated as such in this study.

While many studies of modal verbs do not include elaborate discussions of

negated semi-modals as such, studies such as Quirk et al (1985:141), Bauer

(1989:112), and Hundt (1997:143) unanimously agree that under negation and in

questions HAVE to requires DO-support. Although examples of HAVEn’t to can be

found in Standard English corpora such as the BNC, these instances are comparatively
76
rare (see §4.2), here, this construction is widely regarded as belonging to ‘a formal

literary style’ (Carter & McCarthy, 2006:244), or an ‘archaic and largely obsolete

form’ (Krug, 1996:45).

3.2.5 History of the haven’t to construction

One of the main focuses of this study is how the HAVEn’t to construction in Lancashire

dialect may have changed over time. In relation to this, it is useful to look first at how

the HAVEn’t to construction has emerged.

There is no full account of the negative HAVE to in the literature, with many

discussions featuring the negative construction only very briefly. For this reason this

section examines scholarship on the HAVE to construction, but pays special attention to

how the negative may be formed. A further section deals with the rise of periphrastic

DO.

One of the best accounts of the development of HAVE to is given as a case

study by Fischer et al. (2000:293). Here it is suggested that the HAVE to construction,

in Standard English, represents a case of ‘regular’ grammaticalization. The theory of

grammaticalization suggests that over time constructions may undergo a functional

change, moving from a more lexical to a grammatical function (Hopper & Traugott,

2003). As a result of high frequency, these constructions move away from their lexical

meaning and become independently ‘entrenched’ in this new grammatical function

(Bybee 2006). In this case, the full lexical Old English verb HABBAN indicating

possession changes over time to the auxiliary or semi-modal HAVE to expressing duty

or obligation (the original lexical use continues to co-exist with the now

grammaticalized HAVE to).

77
 Fischer et al. suggest that HAVE to changes from a full lexical verb to a semi-

modal because of a more general change in English word order (of OV to VO) from

HAVE + object + Inf (17), to HAVE + Inf + object (18), inviting the ‘bracketing’ of

HAVE to Inf as a single construction.

(17) I [have] somebody [to love]. (possession)

(18) I [have to love] somebody. (duty / obligation)

Lehmann (1995:34) suggests that this gradual word order change over time

resulted in the reanalysis of HAVE to as the semi-modal HAVE to by speakers of

English. The exact route of grammaticalization of HAVE to, and the number of distinct

stages that are involved in this change are contested in the literature, (see. e.g. Visser,

1963-73:1477; Brinton, 1991:12; Fischer et al., 2000:301). However, all sources agree

on the change from lexical to auxiliary / semi-modal.

Denison (1993:317) does explicitly mention HAVEn’t to and provides a similar

analysis of the origin of HAVEn’t to as outlined for HAVE to. Denison suggests that the

HAVE to of obligation (the focus of this study) rarely conforms to the NICE properties,

thus demonstrating that in current Standard English, HAVEn’t to does not syntactically

behave like a modal verb. Denison states that HAVEn’t to is present in some northern

dialects. Alongside this is the suggestion that HAVEn’t to is also a newer development

in standard southern English, although no supporting data is cited.

The grammaticalization of HAVE to has been shown in the literature to move

from a lexical verb in Old English to a semi-modal in current Standard English. While

the negative HAVE to was considered only minimally in Denison’s study, this study

focuses on its change in the Lancashire dialect data, with respect to that of a possible

functional change towards the category of core modal verbs.

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3.2.6 The rise of periphrastic DO

As suggested previously, one of the main syntactic differences between semi-modal

constructions and core modal verbs is the requirement of DO-support in order to fulfil

three of the four NICE properties, those of negation (19), inversion (20) and ellipsis

(21).

(19) *dare not to vs. do not dare to

(20) He needs to vs. does he need to?

(21) If anyone used to go, he did.

Here it is shown that DO-support is usually needed by semi-modals, but not by core

modals. As the NICE properties are used later in this study as a measure of degree of

modal auxiliaryhood (§3.5.6), it is necessary to examine the history of DO, and the rise

of periphrastic DO in English, with particular reference to modal constructions.

In Standard English, along with negation, inversion and ellipsis, DO may also

be used in a number of other ways, e.g. as a verbal noun, or for pragmatic emphasis.

However, these constructions are not found in the syntax of modal constructions

discussed in this study, and so no further analyses of these are necessary.

According to Denison (1993), the role of DO as an operator is one of the most

striking features of Present Day English when compared to older stages of English,

and indeed to many other European languages. It is suggested that operator (or

auxiliary) DO changed from the Old English DON to the modern English operator due

to reasons of dialect, register and style (although Denison discusses the suggestion

made by Ellegård (1953) that this change took place initially in poetic language with

some caution.) Ellegård (1953) suggests that the lexical verb DO in early intransitive

use meant something like act. The typical transitive use was something more like

perform or accomplish or also put or place. Until Middle English, DO could also be

79
causative, displaying both VOSI and V+I patterns. Fischer and Nänny (2001) state

that the constructional polysemy of DO was already present at this stage, with DO

being used in positive declaratives, negatives, interrogatives, inversion, emphasis, and

imperatives – many uses that DO still displays today. Ellegård (1953) suggests that

periphrastic DO came from changes to the causative VOSI word order. Similar to the

changes in the HAVE to construction, changes in the word order have led to the

reanalysis of periphrastic DO. The construction (DO + NP + Inf) is lost over time,

leaving DO + Inf isolated. Kroch’s (1989) modelling of this change in DO as compared

to the decline of finite lexical verbs is discussed in §3.2.9). DO was then later re-

analysed as an auxiliary.

3.2.7 Related constructions

§3.5 of this study looks at a number of other constructions found in the data that fulfil

a similar semantic role to HAVEn’t to e.g. (22-25).

(22) And I said, “you know Vera you shouldn't go with him, you know what he's
after, you know, you shouldn't go with him.” (Sound Archive)

(23) And then she'd get out of bed and go to the toilet and I said, “Margaret, you
mustn't,” I thought she'd collapse. (Sound Archive)

(24) And then er one fella said “you don't need to come on yer bike now love
we've got a van a van coming”. (Sound Archive)

(25) They're much easier this way round because you haven't got to go through
the minor at all to reach them. (BNC)

Due to the similarities between the constructions in examples (22-25), it is

appropriate to suggest that they belong to a construction family. That is, they have a

similar meaning, are used in similar circumstances and so are likely to be related to

one another cognitively. I follow work by Goldberg and Jackendoff (2004), which

suggests that a number of constructions can form a closely related group or family. In

80
this study, the term construction family is therefore used to refer to those constructions

that show a similar semantic and syntactic distribution, but may be different in some

other way, which can be detailed by means of data analysis.

Many approaches in language change do not take into consideration this

concept of construction families and rarely examine more than one or two linguistic

variables. Kroch (1989) tends to focus on cases involving only two competing

constructions such as the diachronic decrease in lexical verbs and the simultaneous

increase of DO-support. I would suggest that this viewpoint is somewhat idealized, and

the neat replacement of one construction with another is often unlikely. Approaches

such as Krug’s can be plotted graphically showing the increase in one constructions

correlating with the simultaneous decrease in another; the so-called S-curve as shown

below for language change relating to DO-support.

FIGURE 2. S-CURVE MODEL OF LANGUAGE CHANGE (REPRODUCED FROM KROCH

1989:22)

I would suggest that a distribution such as that shown in Figure 2 is rare. Often it is

not the case that one construction has only one direct correlate, and it is unlikely that

factors such as frequency, differences in meaning and both prosodic and

81
sociolinguistic salience are precisely the same for each opposing construction, thus

producing a distribution similar to that shown in Figure 2. (See Chapter 5 for a further

discussion on the problems associated with matching constructions in this way.)

Instead, often one construction can have many possible matching constructions that

convey a similar meaning, and so any analysis of language change should consider

this concept more broadly. This is the approach adopted here, where corpus results for

modal constructions of obligation more generally are outlined alongside results for

HAVEn’t to

3.2.8 Modals in varieties of English

Variation from Standard English found in modal verbs has been the subject of a

number of studies into regional varieties both in the UK (see e.g. Beal, 1993; Miller,

1993; Trousdale, 2003; Brown, 1991) and elsewhere (see e.g. D’Arcy and

Tagliamonte, 2010; Mishoe, 1994; Labov et al., 1972). This indicates that this

grammatical feature shows a high level of variability; it is therefore unsurprising that

this feature shows variation in Lancashire. These studies report on differences in both

meaning and form including simplification (e.g. Trousdale 2003), and double modal

constructions (e.g. Labov et al. 1968, Mishoe 1994). Tagliamonte and Smith (2006)

detail changes to deontic MUST, HAVE to and HAVE got to in the UK and Northern

Ireland. They conclude that MUST is obsolescent and that HAVE to is being used in

contexts traditionally encoded by MUST, with HAVE got to specializing for indefinite

reference. No discussion is found relating to variation with HAVEn’t to of the type

found here and no difference is made between the obligation types with the same one

construction as is found in the Lancashire data.

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3.2.9 Summary

The literature suggests that modal verbs have meanings pertaining to

permission/possibility/ability, obligation/necessity, and volition/prediction, and that

syntactically they conform to the NICE properties, as set out in §3.2.2. The HAVEn’t to

construction is described as being one of obligation / necessity (e.g. by Biber et al.

1999:486) and this category of constructions is examined in this study.

Semi-modals differ from core modal verbs most strongly in syntax, by taking

periphrastic DO in sentences expressing negation, inversion and ellipsis. Figure 1

showed that the distinction between modals and semi-modals is not binary, with

different constructions being judged as more or less ‘modal’. This study examines

where HAVEn’t to and related constructions occur on this scale by analysing their

semantic and syntactic properties.

Many studies that model diachronic change examine only two competing

variants, e.g. Kroch (1989). The advantage of this approach is that results can be

plotted showing the increase in one pattern correlating to the simultaneous decrease in

another; the so-called S-curve as seen earlier in Figure 2. It is suggested here that for

many cases, this approach neglects to take into account all of the variants, and as a

result returns much idealized results. In contrast to this narrow approach, all

constructions related to HAVEn’t to are searched for in the corpus data. Results are

shown in §3.5.2.

Alongside this, most studies on modals and semi-modals do not take into

account any nonstandard British dialect data (although studies such as those by Beal,

1993; Miller, 1993; and Trousdale, 2003 have examined aspects of modality in

various regional dialects). This widespread neglect of dialect data combined with the

brevity of analyses relating to negative forms of semi-modals and the narrow focus of

83
diachronic studies of competing variants leaves a number of research questions that I

aim to resolve in this chapter.

3.2.10 Research hypotheses

There are a number of research hypotheses which arise from the issues discussed in

the literature review (and from the preliminary examination of the data). The

following are the research hypotheses tested in this study:

(a) Grammaticalization Hypothesis: The HAVEn’t to construction in

current Lancashire dialect, compared to Standard English, displays
properties closer to that of a core modal verb.

This change is contrary to developments in Standard English. As stated previously,

grammaticalization refers to the process in which a word (or multiword construction)

undergoes a change in form and function (in this case, for example, the adoption of

some of the NICE properties mentioned earlier). Because HAVEn’t to shows a NICE

property (namely resistance to negation with periphrastic DO), it seems likely that this

construction has undergone grammaticalization.

(b) Constructional Competition Hypothesis: Constructions showing a

rise in frequency may coincide with other semantically similar
constructions showing a fall.

This arises from the assumption that the increase in frequency of one word or

construction can bring about the fall of another nearly synonymous word/construction.

Kroch (1989) shows how competing constructions may interact in this way.

Concretely, this hypothesis predicts that if HAVEn’t to shows a rise in

frequency, some other construction(s) having the same or similar meanings will show

84
a fall in frequency when the (relatively recent) Sound Archive and (older) Litcorp data

are compared.

3.3 Methodology

3.3.1 Introduction

This section details the procedures used in order to gather the data from which my

conclusions are drawn. Data is taken, initially, from the Sound Archive corpus. This

corpus is compared to Litcorp, a dialect literature corpus taken from an earlier time

period in order to establish a diachronic perspective within the data (see §1.3 for

further information on these sources). By comparing both syntactic and semantic

results from these corpora, conclusions may be drawn about the nature of the HAVEn’t

to construction for Lancashire dialect speakers. In §3.4.4, again these corpora are used

in order to look at semantically related constructions. The BNC is also used, in places,

as a control, for frequency comparisons between Standard English and the Lancashire

data. Limitations of this corpus-based approach are discussed in §3.6.

3.3.2 Corpus searches

In the initial searches for the HAVE to construction, all forms of the verb were searched

for, e.g. haven’t to, hasn’t to, hadn’t to. Also, both the contracted negative form –n’t

and the full negative not were looked for, along with constructions with DO, e.g. did

not have to, don’t have to etc. Further searches were carried out in order to find

similar constructions in the HAVEn’t to construction family referring to obligation or

permission. Biber et al. (1999:486) suggest that this group includes MUST, SHOULD

better, HAD better, HAVE to, HAVE got to, NEED to, OUGHT to, and BE supposed to. As

these constructions are compared to the data for HAVEn’t to, the negative forms,

85
mustn’t, shouldn’t etc, are searched for in the Lancashire corpus data. A number of

other constructions additional to those from Biber et al. (namely BEn’t to + Inf; BEn’t

obliged to + Inf; BEn’t allowed to + Inf) are taken from the literature (Quirk et al,

1985:139; Huddleston and Pullum, 2002:361) and are searched for alongside the list

from Biber et al. As with all previous searches, all verb forms and contractions are

included e.g. don’t need to includes don’t need to, do not need to, did not need to,

does not need to etc. In all data, patterns that look similar on the surface but actually

exemplify other constructions, such as (26), are discounted from any results.

(26) Erm but it hasn't to the best of my knowledge, it has not resulted in a rash of
of developments and motorway intersections. (BNC - KM7 562)

3.4 Results and Discussion

3.4.1 Semi-modals in the BNC

Before examining the Lancashire data, and also for purposes of a comparative

analysis, it is useful to examine semi–modal data from Standard English. For this

purpose, an analysis of a selection of semi-modals from the BNC is presented here.

These constructions were searched for both with and without DO, in order to show

which of these constructions are most frequent in Standard English. As with all data

presented in this study, while only one form is used in the table headings, all possible

verb forms, along with both the contracted and full forms of the negative particle, are

included in the results. These results are presented together for reasons of clarity.

As we have already seen, the literature suggests that modal verbs occur in a

range of syntactic positions. Negation is possible without DO-support for modal verbs,

while semi-modals, on the whole, require DO in order to form the negative.

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 The data in Table 2 shows the raw frequency results for a selection of modals

found in the whole of the BNC (both written and spoken). This data is included here

in order to provide a Standard English context.

with DO without DO
DOn’t HAVE to 2106 (99%) HAVEn’t to 28 (1%)
DOn’t NEED to 839 (98%) NEEDn’t to 14 (2%)
DOn’t DARE to 8 (100%) DAREn’t to 0 (0%)
DOn’t USED to 24 (73%) USEDn’t to 9 (27%)
TABLE 2. NEGATIVE FORMS OF SEMI-MODALS IN THE BNC WITH AND WITHOUT DO (RAW
FREQUENCY RESULTS)

The results show that in Standard English DO-support is usually required by

semi-modals when forming the negative. The data suggests that in Standard English,

while it is possible for HAVE to to occur in the negative without DO, this is extremely

rare, compared with the number of occurrences with DO (28 vs. 2106 cases). The

HAVEn’t to results in the BNC are discussed further in §3.4.2. These data for HAVEn’t

to may now be compared and contrasted to the results from the Lancashire corpora.

3.4.2 Corpus comparison of HAVEn’t to

As discussed in the methodology, in order to uncover any possible diachronic change

in the HAVEn’t to construction, it is useful to look closely at the Lancashire corpora in

comparison with each other.

As the corpora are of different sizes (Litcorp is approximately 500,000 words,

Sound Archive is approximately 300,000), their results have been normalized to show

frequencies per 100,000 words - this is shown in Table 3. For reasons of comparison,

normalized data from the BNC is also shown.

87
 HAVEn’t to DOn’t HAVE to
raw raw
(per 100,000 words) (per 100,000 words)
frequency frequency
Litcorp 4 0.80 (80.0%) 1 0.02 (20.0%)
Sound Archive 14 4.67 (42.4%) 19 6.34 (57.6%)
BNC 18 0.02 (0.7%) 2,578 2.2 (99.3%)
TABLE 3. INSTANCES OF FORMS OF THE HAVEN’T TO CONSTRUCTION IN LANCASHIRE
DIALECT DATA.

The data show that both HAVEn’t to and DOn’t have to are more frequent in the more

modern Sound Archive than in the older Litcorp. In some respects these frequency

results do go against the expected results indicating grammaticalization, where these

more frequent constructions undergo grammaticalization. This demonstrates that care

must be taken when comparing such different corpora - Sound Archive is a spoken

corpus, Litcorp is written and the BNC is mixed. This difference in genre and the

relatively low frequency of this construction overall, means that only tentative

conclusions can be drawn at this stage.

An increase in semi-modals in English over time more generally, could

possibly explain the increase in both HAVEn’t to and DOn’t have to in the data.

However, the Standard English data from the BNC shows that this is not the case for

the HAVEn’t to construction; in fact, the BNC displays a frequency of only 0.02

occurrences per 100,000 words. It could be suggested that, like speakers of Standard

English, Lancashire speakers have undergone a change in usage of certain modal

constructions, although the specific constructions that undergo change in Lancashire

are not the same constructions that undergo change in Standard English. This point is

further investigated in §3.5 where a number of modal and semi-modal constructions

relating to obligation are compared in the data.

Another possible reason for the perceived difference in the two corpora could

be salience. Kerswill & Williams (2002) suggest that salient constructions are those

88
which are recognised by speakers as a feature of a certain dialect, speaker or region.

As Litcorp is not a record or transcription of speakers at that time, but rather of the

writer’s perception and representation of these speakers, it could be considered a

corpus of the most salient or important dialectal features as judged by the writer (see

Chapter 5 for a further discussion of this). This means that the low frequency of both

HAVEn’t to and DOn’t have to within the Litcorp data could be because these are not

judged to be the most important or noticeable features of dialect speakers by these

writers (i.e. HAVEn’t to may not be salient). It may also be that some other

construction is used in Litcorp to indicate obligation, e.g. weren’t to, or aren’t to. This

possibility is explored in §3.5.5.

The grammaticalization hypothesis put forward in §3.2.10 suggests that the

HAVEn’t to construction in current Lancashire dialect, compared to Standard English,

displays properties closer to that of a core modal verb. A more detailed analysis of the

semantic and syntactic features of these results is discussed in the following sections,

in order to test out theories put forward here.

3.4.3 Syntactic analysis of HAVEn’t to in Lancashire data

In the data, every occurrence of the HAVEn’t to construction occurs in the same

syntactic pattern. Each is preceded by a personal pronoun and followed by a verb

phrase (27 – 29).

(27) See we hadn’t to sit in them. (Sound Archive)

(28) Int’ neet he went, an’ th’ aggravation uv it were he hadn’t to feight for her.
But I towd her he could feight, for her un win. (Litcorp)

(29) Even what happened, you hadn’t to talk, you had to lie still and be quiet.
(Sound Archive)

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As shown in the examples above, hadn’t to occurs with dynamic verbs such as hit,

talk and go. The literature (e.g. Fischer et al., 2000:301) suggested that HAVEn’t to

(and HAVE to) first occurred with the word order hadn’t + obj + Inf, changing later,

after reanalysis, to hadn’t to + Inf. The whole of the Lancashire data provides only

one example of the older form (30).

(30) He hadn’t mich to do as we never played fro music. We did at first […]
(Litcorp)

This suggests that this older form is now largely obsolete for Lancashire speakers.

Further syntactic analyses comparing HAVEn’t to with other related constructions are

offered in §3.5.6.

3.4.4 Semantic analysis of HAVEn’t to in the Lancashire data

A closer analysis of the data suggests that HAVEn’t to displays two different meanings

for Lancashire speakers, and that the difference is related to obligation. In terms of

Bybee et al.’s distinction between strong or weak obligation (1994:186), example (31)

displays the weak type.

(31) No no you haven’t to change or anything, come just as you are (Sound
Archive)

Here, the referent of you is not very strongly obligated to do something. The

meaning of HAVEn’t to, when used in this way, is more semantically similar to other

semi-modals such as NEEDn’t, DOn’t need to or DOn’t have to. This suggestion is

analysed with respect to the data in §3.5.5.

An example of HAVEn’t to classified as having strong obligation is shown in

(32). Here, the meaning of HAVEn’t to is closer to the core modal must.

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 (32) Even what happened, you hadn’t to talk, you had to lie still and be quiet.
(Sound Archive )

The difference in meaning between the strong and weak constructions can be

further demonstrated by looking at DO. The Standard English DOn’t have to is similar

to the meaning of HAVEn’t to displaying weak obligation in the Lancashire data. This

can be seen in example (33). Negative HAVE to constructions with DO are not

compatible with a meaning that displays strong obligation (34).

(33) It’s easy here, I hadn’t to / don’t have to get me car out on a Sunday, it’s
lovely to walk down the path (Sound Archive)

(34) You had to move your arms as well, but you hadn’t to / *didn’t have to
move your head, you’d to keep laid flat. (Sound Archive)

This difference can also be shown by providing further contextualization, as in (35)

and (36).

(35) You haven’t to go to the shop (because it’s dangerous)

(36) You haven’t to go to the shop (I’ve got enough food in the cupboard)

In order to examine distribution of weak and strong meanings, the frequency of these

constructions in the Lancashire corpus data is displayed in Table 4.

Obligation type
Weak Strong
Litcorp 2 (50%) 2 (50%)
Sound Archive 3 (21%) 11 (79%)
TABLE 4. DIFFERENCE IN OBLIGATION TYPE IN HAVEN’T TO CONSTRUCTIONS IN
LANCASHIRE DIALECT (RAW FREQUENCY RESULTS)

This data shows that the two different meanings, as outlined in (37 – 38) are

possible in Lancashire, with both corpora returning results for both variants. While the

Litcorp data is certainly not significant enough to be considered and the Sound

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Archive also does not return a huge number of results, a closer look at the Sound

Archive data shows that the three instances of weak HAVEn’t to are produced by three

different speakers. This shows that this difference cannot be explained simply as part

of a particular speaker’s own language use. Out of these three speakers, two use both

the strong and weak varieties within their interview, suggesting that HAVEn’t to has

two different meanings, at least for these speakers. The examples below show the

weak (37) and strong (38) examples for speaker E.D.

(37) Well I don’t know who it were what must have been Mayor what came up or
something you know. ‘Cos you hadn’t to pay or anything you know there
were always plenty of collections you know if you wanted to collect or give
anything. (Sound Archive)

(38) Erm well you hadn’t to have any dirty shoes on. Well they were very poor
and people hadn’t er clogs or anything, you had to have a clog fund to buy
these clogs. (Sound Archive)

This constructional difference was also tested on results for HAVEn’t to in the

BNC in order to see if this difference in meaning is also present in the Standard

English data. As shown in Table 3 earlier, the results for the same search returned

only 18 instances of this construction, of which the majority were found in the

demographically sampled spoken section of the corpus (indicating speakers of

regional varieties). Most of these instances are recorded as ‘north’ but no further

details are given and so the exact location of these speakers cannot be ascertained. The

BNC results suggest that this feature is not frequent in Standard English, (compare the

18 results for HAVEn’t to with e.g. the 2,578 results for the semantically similar DOn’t

have to). This aside, differences in obligation types can also be found in the BNC data

for HAVEn’t to, as shown in examples (39-40).

(39) She said I can't tell you, I haven't to tell you! (BNC - KB8 5178)

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 (40) Oh well er I asked Joyce and she said erm, he hasn't to go in, he's not bad
enough (BNC – KB2 2435)

However, we can conclude that this construction is not frequent in Standard English

and so any differences in obligation type shown here can not be attributed.

3.4.5 Explanations for semantic differences – constructional polysemy

Goldberg (1995:65) suggests that constructions, like words, can be polysemous; this

means that a single form has two or more meanings that are semantically related.

Often, one meaning is a historical extension of the other meaning(s). This fits in well

with many suggestions about the development of the HAVEn’t to constructions, and in

particular, with the variation in meaning within the same construction that is found in

the Lancashire data. For example, Krug (1996:56) suggests that the virtual absence of

not negation (for HAVEn’t to) in Present Day English points to a diachronic

development from an unproductive auxiliary negation (HAVEn’t to), to a DO negation.

It could be suggested that this diachronic change has directly led on to the polysemous

meanings that the HAVEn’t to construction displays within the data.

While the data has shown that HAVEn’t to and the Standard English DOn’t have

to can be near synonyms (as in 41 and 42), HAVEn’t to can also be semantically similar

to must (43 and 44), as demonstrated in the invented examples below.

(41) You haven’t to sit over there [there’s plenty of room here]

(42) You don’t have to sit over there [there’s plenty of room here]

(43) You mustn’t sit over there [or you’ll get into trouble]

(44) You haven’t to sit over there [or you’ll get into trouble]

In order to get a fuller picture of how other modal constructions in the

semantic category of obligation behave and to examine whether or not the data

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suggests that related constructions have undergone a diachronic change, §3.5

examines related constructions as an extension of the analyses carried out here.

3.5 Analysing the necessity/obligation construction family

3.5.1 Introduction

So far, this study has provided an analysis of the HAVEn’t to construction in

Lancashire dialect. This analysis now examines how the possible change in HAVEn’t to

may relate to changes in the frequency of other modal and semi-modal constructions

fulfilling a similar semantic role.

As previously suggested, semantically similar constructions may form a

construction family. In this particular case, the function of this family is one of

necessity or obligation. With that in mind, the focus of this study now turns to

constructions that share a similar meaning, but differ in terms of structure. This multi-

constructional approach aims to provide a broader picture of diachronic change for the

whole construction family. For methodological considerations relating to this section,

see §3.3.2.

3.5.2 Corpus results

Although many search terms were included in this data analysis, for reasons of clarity,

only those search terms that returned results from the corpus data are included in the

tables of results. The data in Table 5 shows the normalized frequency results for the

obligation and permission family of constructions in both the Sound Archive and

Litcorp data.

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 Frequency per 100,000 words
Litcorp Sound Archive
SHOULDn’t 12.8 6.4
MUSTn’t 1.0 2.4
NEEDn’t 1.8 0.0
DOn’tneed to 0.2 1.0
HAVEn’t to 0.8 4.7
HAVEn’t got to 0 0.1
DOn’t have to 0.4 6.3
TABLE 5. HAVEN’T TO FAMILY OF CONSTRUCTIONS (NORMALIZED FREQUENCY RESULTS)

The semantic and syntactic differences represented in this data, along with the

possible diachronic change, are discussed in the subsequent sections.

3.5.3 Diachronic Change – testing the frequency hypotheses

The comparison between the Litcorp and the Sound Archive is most clearly

represented in Figure 3.The graph shows the members of the obligation family as they

(may) vary over time between the older Litcorp and the more recent Sound Archive;

results from the BNC are included here as a control.

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 Relative frequencies of the obligation family of constructions

14

Litcorp
12
Sound Archive
BNC
Frequency per 100,000 words

10

0
SHOULDn’t MUST n’t NEEDn’t DOn’t NEED HAVEn’t to HAVEn’t got DOn’t have to
to to

FIGURE 3. POSSIBLE DIACHRONIC CHANGE IN THE LANCASHIRE CORPUS DATA

This data shows that most constructions are more frequent in the more modern Sound

Archive than in the older Litcorp. As mentioned previously, grammaticalization refers

to the process in which a word (or multiword construction) undergoes a change in

form and function as a result of high frequency (Hopper & Traugott 2003:44). These

results are insufficient as to cite high frequency as having any involvement in possible

grammaticalization. Instead, syntactic and semantic evidence for this suggestion of

grammaticalization are examined further in §3.5.5 and §3.5.6.

The Constructional Competition Hypothesis suggested that constructions

showing a rise in frequency may be accompanied by other semantically similar

constructions displaying a fall. The data suggests that NEEDn’t displays a decrease in

frequency as compared with a possible increase in DOn’t need to, thus possibly

proving this hypothesis to some degree. The increase in both HAVEn’t to and DOn’t

have to contrasts well with this change in NEEDn’t vs. DOn’t need to. Quirk et al.

96
(1985:146) suggest that in both British and American English constructions formed

with periphrastic DO (DOn’t have to, DOn’t need to etc.) have increased over time,

while their counterparts (e.g. HAVEn’t to, NEEDn’t) have decreased. The data for both

forms of negative NEED supports this theory, while the HAVEn’t to data goes against

this trend. Unlike Standard English, HAVEn’t to remains frequent in the Lancashire

data.

3.5.4 Considerations and contradictions

One of the most striking results shown by the data is the decrease in frequency of

SHOULDn’t. This change is contrary to data found in studies of change in Standard

English (e.g. Quirk et al, 1985:141). It may be the case that this trend also fulfils the

Competing Constructions Hypothesis as set out earlier, and that Lancashire speakers

choose to use semantically similar constructions, such as MUSTn’t or HAVEn’t to,

instead of using SHOULDn’t. This theory is expanded upon in §3.5.5, with a closer look

at meaning within the data.

However, the decrease in SHOULDn’t may have another explanation relating to

Litcorp. As can be seen on the graph in Figure 3, many of the Litcorp results (other

than SHOULDn’t) display low frequencies. All constructions other than SHOULDn’t have

frequencies between only 0-2 per 100,000 words. It could therefore be suggested that

obligation, as a concept, simply is not very important in these kinds of stories that

make up Litcorp. This same explanation may account for all increases in the data,

(DOn’t have to, SHOULDn’t, HAVEn’t to, MUSTn’t and don’t NEED to) as the starting

values for these constructions in the Litcorp are so low. Because of this, more

syntactic and semantic data is needed in order to support the claims put forward here.

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3.5.5 Semantic evidence

In order to examine possible semantic reasons for change over time, the data can be

analysed based on the semantically strong / weak distinction as described earlier when

analysing the constructional polysemy of haven’t to (§3.4.7). Constructions displaying

strong obligation are those in which an implied source of authority exerts more force

over the people or entities involved; on the other hand, constructions displaying weak

obligation are those in which there is less force from the implied authority source, and

hence, although the force is implied, it is not binding on the people or entities; for

example compare we must not go home (strong) with we don’t have to go home

(weak). All results were analysed into the categories weak, strong, or both.

Constructions that were classified as both were those that displayed at least a 1:3 ratio

of both obligation types, (e.g. 5 weak uses and 15 strong uses, or vice versa). The

results can be seen in Figure 4.

DOn’t have to
MUSTn’t HAVEn’t to NEEDn’t
SHOULDn’t HAVEn’t got to DOn’t need to

STRONG WEAK

FIGURE 4. DISTRIBUTION OF CONSTRUCTIONS DISPLAYING WEAK AND STRONG

OBLIGATION

The diagram in Figure 4 shows those constructions having meanings relating

to weak and strong obligation and those which have both. Here it is suggested that

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both HAVEn’t to and HAVEn’t got to display constructional polysemy, where both

strong and weak meanings are possible. Harris and Campbell (1995:26) suggest that

grammaticalization is gradual, and that the maintenance of multiple meanings of a

construction by the speaker suggests an on-going change.

Further to this, as both HAVEn’t to and HAVEn’t got to appear with both weak

and strong meanings (unlike other constructions that only display weak obligation), I

would suggest that these constructions are more semantically similar to the strong core

modal verbs MUSTn’t and SHOULDn’t. This reinforces the Grammaticalization

Hypothesis as already indicated by the frequency data. The grammatical difference

between HAVEn’t to and HAVEn’t got to is compared in §3.5.6 in order to uncover

which construction may be more grammaticalized.

The Competing Constructions Hypothesis suggests that if HAVEn’t to shows a

rise in frequency (possible grammaticalization), other constructions having a similar

meaning may show a fall in frequency when the Sound Archive and Litcorp are

compared, due to their function being ‘taken over’ by other constructions. Decrease in

both SHOULDn’t and NEEDn’t (underlined in Figure 4) may be related to the observed

increase in HAVEn’t to and DOn’t have to in this way. It has been shown earlier that in

the Lancashire data HAVEn’t to occurs with the strong meaning 79% of the time. This

suggests that in Lancashire the increase in HAVEn’t to (in this strong sense) and the

decrease in the semantically similar SHOULDn’t may be linked, thus suggesting that the

Competing Constructions Hypothesis may be true. The increase in MUST also could be

attributed to the decrease in SHOULDn’t.

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3.5.6 Syntactic evidence

In order to further support the suggestion that the HAVEn’t to construction in current

Lancashire dialect displays syntactic properties closer to that of a core modal verb, it

is useful to look back to the NICE properties, as detailed by Quirk et al. (1985:147).

As many of the syntactic constructions are relatively rare (e.g. ellipsis), in

instances where no examples were present in the data, a group of ten informants who

identified themselves as Lancashire dialect speakers were asked to make judgements

on their acceptability by using test sentences such as (45). (See Chapter 1 for more

information about informants). 14

(45) Oh no, I’ven’t to go there, it’s too far away.

As much as possible, data from the Lancashire corpora is used to determine

whether or not each of the NICE properties is possible.

Syntactic properties of modals (NICE properties)

Negation
Inversion Contractions Ellipsis
(without do)
SHOULDn’t    
MUSTn’t    
HAVEn’t to   ? ?
NEEDn’t    
HAVEn’t got to    ?
DOn’t need to    
DOn’t have to    ?
TABLE 6. OBLIGATION CONSTRUCTION FAMILY AND THE NICE PROPERTIES

This data supports the hypothesis that HAVEn’t to is relatively highly

grammaticalized in the Lancashire dialect data. HAVEn’t to (along with NEEDn’t) is

14
The full list of test sentences can be found in Appendix C

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more syntactically similar to the core modals SHOULDn’t and MUSTn’t suggesting that

it is more grammaticalized than other semi-modals in this construction family. Other

semi-modals such as those formed with periphrastic DO behave much less like modal

verbs. HAVEn’t to is the only construction in this family that may be able to have a

contracted form. As a non-Lancashire speaker myself, it was necessary to check the

acceptability of this contraction with a small group of Lancashire dialect speakers, as

mentioned previously, (please see §1.3.5 for further details on these informants). This

mini-experiment involved the presentation of a number of sentences displaying

contracted HAVEn’t to to the speakers and asking if they found it to be acceptable or

not, and if they had heard it in use. While this test was too small-scale to give any

significant results, it is perhaps interesting to note that around than half of the

informants reported that either they have heard it from a Lancashire dialect speaker, or

would use it themselves.

3.6 Concluding remarks

Given the results presented earlier in the chapter, it is possible to conclude that the

Grammaticalization Hypothesis, i.e. that the semi-modal HAVEn’t to has changed

towards a more modal function, has been proven correct. The results from the

diachronic data suggest that semi-modal HAVEn’t to now behaves more like a core

modal verb for Lancashire speakers than is the case in Standard English. The semantic

analysis supports this assertion, showing that HAVEn’t to displays constructional

polysemy for Lancashire speakers and this differentiation is present in both the

Litcorp and Sound Archive data. It seems that in a majority of cases (in the Sound

Archive data), its meaning is semantically closer to the stronger modal verbs MUSTn’t

or SHOULDn’t rather than to the weaker DOn’t have to. The syntactic analysis also

101
suggests that HAVEn’t to has become more grammaticalized. The comparison of the

NICE properties clearly shows that HAVEn’t to is syntactically closer to a core modal

like SHOULDn’t or MUSTn’t, as it conforms more closely to the NICE properties.

The results are not without question; although the semantic and syntactic

arguments clearly show that, synchronically, the HAVEn’t to construction has become

grammaticalized in the Lancashire dialect data, the diachronic data does not

conclusively show the process of grammaticalization taking place from the Litcorp

period to the Sound Archive period. This may be due to the somewhat problematic

nature of the comparison between the written Litcorp and the spoken Sound Archive

data: the former is written ‘consciously’ by the author, while the latter is spoken

‘naturally’. The construction family analysis seems to show polarised results for

Litcorp, with SHOULDn’t returning more than three times as many results as all other

constructions combined; it may be that the authors have no obvious, salient, or

‘dialectal’ way to represent negative obligation, and so instead use SHOULDn’t as

perhaps a neutral or default choice.

While the argument for the grammaticalization of HAVEn’t to is persuasive,

though diachronically not conclusive, the verdict on construction competition is not as

clear. The constructional polysemy of HAVEn’t to, along with that of the similar

HAVEn’t got to, could also be used to support the Construction Competition

Hypothesis, i.e. that constructions showing a rise in frequency may be accompanied

by a fall in other semantically similar constructions. The possible decrease in both

SHOULDn’t and NEEDn’t may be explained by the rise in frequency of other

constructions that are able to fulfil a similar semantic role. However, as discussed

previously, the Litcorp data is not completely reliable in this respect, and so no firm

conclusions can be drawn. It may be that the authors of Litcorp overuse certain

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modals, or, on the other hand, it may be that this is indeed representative, in which

case the Construction Competition Hypothesis would be validated.

This analysis of a number of competing variants has implications for studies of

language change such as that of Kroch (1989). The S-curve model of language change

examines two variants and suggests that as one competing variant increases, the other

decreases, thus producing the S-curve as shown in §3.2.7. However, this approach

will, in many cases, be too narrow. This study suggests that often there may be a

number of similar constructions which are able to fulfil a particular semantic role, thus

meaning that speakers are not limited to a choice of only two variants in opposition.

The interaction between these variants is complex, and cannot easily be accounted for

by Kroch’s S-curve model. The results of this study suggest that a wider scope of

focus will often be necessary when looking at diachronic change.

While this investigation has yielded interesting results, there are a number of

limitations involved with both the methodology used here, and with the scope of this

thesis in general. One of the main limitations, as mentioned previously, is data

sparseness. Although the results for HAVEn’t to returned low frequencies, there were

enough to prove both that the construction certainly exists, and also enough to carry

out an analysis of aspects of its syntax and its semantics. While enlarging the corpora

may provide further evidence, Biber et al. suggest that the obligation/necessity

modals, such as those examined here, are less common overall than other modal

categories (Biber et al., 1999:493).

Further elicitation or acceptability judgement tests have proven useful in other

studies (see e.g. Cowart, 1997; Schütze, 1996) and would be a good option in order to

further this study. A combination of these approaches (as put forward by Hollmann &

Siewierska, 2006) should give a good overall picture of how this construction family

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is used, and account for the limitations encountered in this study. This approach is

adopted in other chapters in this thesis (e.g. in Chapter 4 when testing habitual

constructions).

It was suggested earlier that sociolinguistic salience may have been a motivating

factor for the low frequency of the construction in question in Litcorp, which

somewhat undermines the frequency results presented here. This variable is analysed

in more detail in Chapter 5.

Previous work on semi-modal HAVEn’t to focussed mainly on the positive

construction HAVE to (see e.g. Brinton, 1991; Quirk, 1985; Biber et al., 1999; Fischer

et al., 2000). This project could be furthered by more analysis of the positive

construction, and a comparison of the Lancashire results to other findings from

Standard English. There is also the potential to take a wider view of these

constructions; some of the generalizations suggested here could be used as a basis for

looking at all modal verbs in Lancashire dialect data. Looking at further modals and

semi-modals would help towards examining possible competition within the

obligation family of constructions.

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Chapter 4. Verbal agreement and the Northern Subject Rule

4.1 Introduction

The Northern Subject Rule (NSR) is a phenomenon of nonstandard subject-verb

agreement that is reported to be commonly found in varieties of English. According to

the NSR any present indicative verb in any person may take the suffix –s (normally of

course only associated with 3sg) except for when found directly adjacent to any non-

3sg personal pronoun, thus giving the distinction they go home, but the children goes

home.

It is suggested that the NSR is prevalent throughout Northern England,

(Pietsch, 2005; Ihalainen, 1994; Murray, 1873) and also in a number of areas beyond

this (Rupp and Britain, 2008; McCafferty, 2003; Godfrey and Tagliamonte, 1999).

However, few in-depth region-specific analyses of the NSR have been conducted,

with some studies (e.g. Börjars and Chapman, 1998; Henry, 1995) including little or

no data in their research. Alongside this, most studies do not address variables such as

the possible interplay between the NSR and other similar constructions, nor examine

cognitive-perceptual factors such as salience or frequency of usage, as potential

explanations for this agreement variation.

These issues are considered in this chapter, where data from spoken and

written sources, along with acceptability judgements from questionnaires, is used in

order to explore both the possible instances and acceptability of the NSR in

Lancashire. A broader question relating to synchronic theories of language variation is

also explored; i.e. to what extent is variation in syntactic and morphological

phenomena (such as the NSR) the result of relatively clear rules or constraints, and to

what extent is this variation more idiosyncratic, unpredictable and region or

community-specific? Resolving this question for a particular phenomenon is difficult.

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It is even possible that agreement variation (such as that proposed to be demonstrated

by the NSR) is determined both by rules and also by idiosyncratic region-specific

variation. This possibility is discussed further with respect to the results from

Lancashire in §4.5.

4.1.1 Overview

Standard English resembles many other world languages in that it displays agreement

between the verb and subject (see e.g. Siewierska, 2004), whilst also differing in a

number of other ways; with lexical verbs, agreement is confined to the present

indicative only, with no marking on verbs in the subjunctive or imperative mood. BE

has a more elaborate agreement paradigm (although this is not uncommon cross-

linguistically in European languages, e.g. German, Dutch), a remnant of the older

Germanic agreement system, as shown below.

Present Past
Old High German English Old English English
1sg bim, bin am wæs was
2sg bist are wǽre were
3sg ist is wæs was
1pl birum are wǽron were
2pl bir(e)n are wǽron were
3pl birut, bir(e)t are wǽron were
TABLE 1. PARADIGM OF BE IN OLD HIGH GERMAN, OLD ENGLISH AND ENGLISH

Agreement in Present Day English displays a considerable amount of

syncretism, where a single form serves two or more morphosyntactic functions (see

e.g. Corbett (2006) for a discussion of this). In the case of regular lexical verbs, there

is only one overt marker of person agreement, namely –s, used to indicate 3sg in the

present indicative – all other forms are zero, as shown in (1-2) respectively.

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 (1) He / she / it likes chocolate.

(2) I / you / we / they like chocolate.

This Present Day English agreement system is thought to have arisen due to changes

in word order that initially left person and number marked on the verb by both

pronouns and by verb endings as shown in Table 2, (modified from Van Gelderen,

2006).

Present indicative
1 ic find(e)
2 thou findes(t)
3 he findeþ/ he findes
Pl we, ye(e), thei, findeþ/en
TABLE 2. LATE MIDDLE ENGLISH PRESENT INDICATIVE AGREEMENT WITH FIND

This “double marking” of the verb meant that verbal endings eventually became

weakened and to an extent, redundant in many Germanic languages. Compare, in this

connection, many Romance languages, where the subject pronoun is normally omitted

and person/number is therefore frequently only signalled by verbal morphology.

Despite this change, 3sg verbal agreement distinctions were kept in English, and today

substantial variation with the 3sg form is present in many regional varieties (see

§4.2.1 for a further discussion of the history of variation associated with the NSR in

particular). More generally, departures from standard verbal agreement in both British

and worldwide varieties of English are common and have been widely studied (e.g.

Cheshire, 1982; Kortmann and Schneider, 2004; Labov et al., 1968; Trudgill, 1999).

Many occurrences of verbal agreement variation in British English are often

subsumed under the Northern Subject Rule. This phenomenon is also referred to as

nonstandard agreement (Cheshire, 1982), singular concord (Henry, 2005), northern

present-tense rule (Montgomery, 2004) and is also outlined by others (e.g. Rupp,

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2005; Hudson, 1999). Despite apparent differences in terminology, all suggest that, as

discussed earlier, in varieties of English any present indicative verb in any person may

take the verbal suffix -s except when directly adjacent to non-3sg personal pronouns,

as shown in (3-5), (modified from Pietsch, 2005:1).

(3) They sing

(4) The birds sings

(5) They always sings

The examples given above by no means encompass a definitive description of the

NSR; much of the literature suggests that the type and position of the subject may also

influence the application of this pattern (e.g. by Pietsch, 2005; Godfrey and

Tagliamonte, 1999). This is discussed further in § 4.1.2.

Nonstandard use of 3sg verbal agreement is found in many regions of the

British Isles, and while it has been suggested to be prevalent in the North (e.g. by

Pietsch 2005; Klemola 2000), it is not exclusively located in these areas. The idea of

the Northern Subject Rule being exclusively “northern” is somewhat misleading;

alongside Northern England (and Scotland), NSR agreement has been identified in

Ulster (McCafferty, 2003), and in the Southwest (Godfrey & Tagliamonte, 1999).

Interestingly, many dialects of English also have differing agreement patterns related

to 3sg variation. Varieties found in East Anglia (e.g. by Britain & Rupp, 2005) and in

Buckie Scots (by Smith & Tagliamonte, 1998) display agreement patterns in direct

opposition to the NSR where 3sg forms are more commonly found with adjacent 3sg

pronominal subjects than with an NP subject, e.g. the cat purr, it purrs (taken from

Britain and Rupp, 2005).

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 Pietsch (2005:22) suggests that NSR agreement can be found in the Lancashire

part of the Freiburg English Dialect corpus (henceforth, FRED) and the Survey of

English Dialects (henceforth, SED). However, the Lancashire part of the FRED and

SED data contains relatively few speakers (when compared to this study); a more

thorough investigation is required in order to determine the extent to which the NSR

may be present in Lancashire more widely rather than being limited to a small group

of speakers as tested by the FRED and SED data. The present analysis of a corpus of

19th and 20th century Lancashire dialect literature also allows tentative claims to be

made about possible changes to verbal agreement in this region whilst also providing

insights into the use of the NSR in historical written texts.

4.1.2 A focus on the NSR

As shown in examples (3-5), the traditional definition of the NSR suggests that

present indicative verbs may take -s verbal agreement in all circumstances, except

when directly adjacent to a non-3sg personal pronoun subject. This specific influence

of the pronoun on the verb is discussed by Pietsch (2005) as subject type, by

McCafferty (2003) as NP/PRO constraint, by Godfrey and Tagliamonte (1999) as

type-of-subject constraint, and by many others in less explicit terms (e.g. Montgomery

1994b; Cheshire and Fox, 2006). Alongside this subject type restriction, many also

suggest that the position of the subject in relation to the verb determines the

application of the NSR, where non-3sg personal pronoun subjects which are separated

from the verb by a clause or phrase may also take 3sg verbal agreement, as shown

earlier, e.g. (3) vs. (5).

It can be argued that pronominal adjacency may override the possible use of

nonstandard verbal agreement forms ensuring that, instead, standard agreement

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occurs, thus avoiding a conflict with the person and/or number features of the pronoun

and the verb. These subject type (i.e. pronoun vs. non-pronoun subject) and subject

position (i.e. adjacent vs. non-adjacent subject) restrictions are the main constraints

associated with the NSR and are largely agreed upon in the literature. These

constraints are tested with respect to the Lancashire data in §4.4.

Alongside subject type and subject position restrictions, a number of other

constraints have also been suggested to affect the application of the NSR. Both

Godfrey & Tagliamonte (1999:97) and Bailey et al. (1989) suggest a heaviness

constraint, where the phonological size of the subject may affect agreement. This

would imply that longer and more phonologically dense (or heavy) noun phrases are

more likely to occur with NSR agreement. However, Godfrey & Tagliamonte (1999)

provide no exemplification of what exactly they mean by heavy. It is unclear if

heaviness refers to subjects with pre/postmodification, as in (6), coordinated NPs, as

in (7), or both (both of these examples are invented to exemplify this). Godfrey &

Tagliamonte also report that no examples of this constraint are found in their results.

(6) The children who are always with the dog likes going outside.

(7) The man and the dog likes going outside.

Although we know that heaviness can affect word order (see e.g. Hawkins,

1994) there is no clear reason as to why heaviness should affect agreement. Instead, I

would suggest that Godfrey and Tagliamonte’s heaviness constraint may be part of (or

indeed encompass) a wider pattern of agreement that is not specifically regional, nor

part of the NSR. This involves the most verb-adjacent part of a long or complex

subject, (rather than the whole subject NP), agreeing with the verb, (in (6-7) this is the

dog.) This can be further demonstrated in (8) taken from the British National Corpus

(BNC)
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 (8) His writing-room on the first floor contains an unprepossessing table and a
sideboard, on which sit his word-processor and printer. A small chair and
bookcase completes the picture. (BNC AOP12)

In this example, a small chair and bookcase could be considered as 3sg or as 3pl but it

is found with 3sg agreement, perhaps due to the adjacent 3sg bookcase. This

phenomenon is described by Quirk et al. (1985:35) as proximity agreement, or number

attraction, and by Pietsch as processing-induced non-agreement (2005:12). Pietsch

also suggests that it is “not part of NSR agreement proper”, and this is the stance I will

also take. Nonetheless, examples of such agreement in the Lancashire data are

presented in §4.4.2. As this number attraction construction does share structural

similarities with the NSR (namely, non-3sg subjects can occur with 3sg agreement), it

therefore may compete with it or overlap with its use in some way. The concept of

constructional competition is discussed further in §4.4.2.

Variations on the ‘traditional’ definition of the NSR have led to further

refinement and significant weakening of the NSR, one of the most inclusive

definitions being from Pietsch (2005:30) as shown below.

- All 3sg subjects (and, where found, thou) always take –s

- All other subjects, except personal pronouns, take –s variably
- Non-adjacency of subject and verb favours –s

Pietsch’s inclusion of thou within the definitions of the NSR is perhaps doubtful here.

Thou normally takes –s in most dialects where it occurs, i.e. its agreement is identical

to 3sg subjects (see e.g. Shorrocks, 1999:93; Smith and Tagliamonte, 1998), and so it

is unclear on exactly why this should be part of the NSR. This aside, instances of thou

are retained in the analysis for descriptive clarity nonetheless. The generalized

definition presented above encompasses the possible variability of subject type and

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position with respect to the verb as outlined earlier – all of which are explored within

the Lancashire corpus data in §4.4.

4.1.3 Variation with BE

Alongside 3sg agreement variation with present indicative lexical verbs, many studies

also include analyses of nonstandard verbal agreement associated with 3sg forms of

BE as shown in example (9).

(9) The eggs is cracked. (Henry. 1995:12)

Although definitions of the NSR do not typically account for past tense variation (as

of course lexical verbs have no 3sg distinction in the past), the more complex

paradigm of BE allows this possibility to be explored. It is suggested that in dialects

displaying NSR variation, nonstandard 3sg BE in all tenses is able to occur in non-3sg

contexts due to analogical levelling with the NSR (or put simply, due to the spread

and influence of a dominant pattern, see e.g. Henry, 2005; McCafferty, 2003; Godfrey

& Tagliamonte, 1999). Subject type and subject position constraints (associated with

the NSR) are suggested to apply to verbal agreement patterns with BE. This means that

verb-adjacent personal pronouns occur with standard agreement (in this case with

were) as in (10), while adjacent subjects which are not personal pronouns may allow

nonstandard agreement, (in this case with was), as in (11), (taken from Britain and

Rupp, 2005:3).

(10) They were purring.

(11) The cats was purring.

Another factor that has been suggested as affecting the use of was/were is the

polarity of the clause. Nonstandard were (i.e. in the 1sg and 3sg form) is said to occur
112
more frequently with negative polarity subjects, (Cheshire & Fox, 2006:3; Anderwald,

2001:3; Henry, 1995: 22) as shown in (12-13) modified from Tagliamonte (1998:22).

(12) You weren't a long way away though.

(13) *You wasn't a long way away though.

This negative polarity variable is also considered by Henry to be ‘parametrically

linked to the NSR’ (1995:20), although this hypothesis has not been addressed in other

studies. Any possible links between negation and the NSR will be explored,

particularly in relation to BE in §4.4.4.

Variation with past tense BE is found in Northern England – the region most

typically associated with NSR agreement (see e.g. Hollmann and Siewierska, 2006;

Tagliamonte, 1998). Alongside this, variation with BE is also present in many areas

that are not suggested to display NSR agreement, e.g. in London (Cheshire & Fox,

2006) in the English Fens (Britain, 2002), and in certain worldwide varieties of

English (see e.g. Schilling-Estes, 2000; Wolfram and Sellers, 1999). This would

suggest that while there may be a link between the NSR and nonstandard 3sg variation

with BE in regions where NSR variation is prevalent, was/were variation may also

occur independently of this rule. This means that this ‘independent’ was/were

variation, in particular, may not be restricted by the subject type and subject position

constraints of the NSR as outlined in (12-13). Greater variability with was/were is

often ascribed to regions of the UK such as Lancashire and Yorkshire (Pietsch, 2005).

Tagliamonte (1998:160) suggests that amongst present day speakers from the city of

York the was/were alternation is found “in the speech of the same individual, in the

same sentence, and in all grammatical persons”. A preliminary examination of past

tense BE variation in Lancashire was undertaken by Hollmann & Siewierska (2006:25)

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using a subsection of the data used in this study. As with Tagliamonte’s findings from

York, the Lancashire data showed both inter- and intraspeaker variation with

was/were. In Lancashire, the past tense BE paradigm showed levelling towards was,

but more interestingly also towards were. In the study of a community of high school

speakers from nearby by Bolton, Moore (2003:386) also found that the overwhelming

tendency was towards levelling to were. In both studies were levelling appears to be

frequent in all sentence types; this differs from other regional varieties, where

levelling to were is suggested to occur mainly in negative polarity contexts (e.g.

Cheshire & Fox, 2006:3). These was/were findings for Lancashire (and to some

extent, York) appear to conflict with the earlier hypotheses which suggested that in

regions where NSR agreement is present, it is analogically extended to was/were

variation. In Lancashire the non-3sg pattern can be extended to all contexts – this

opposes the NSR agreement pattern where 3sg patterns are extended to non-3sg

contexts. NSR agreement is suggested to be found both in Lancashire and Yorkshire

(Pietsch 2005, Ramisch 2009) although in these regions was/were agreement appears

to be less restricted (or in fact even completely unrestricted) by the proposed analogy

with the NSR. This may suggest that other variables, such as constructional frequency,

may affect was/were variation in these regions.

It is also acknowledged that a number of other non-3sg nonstandard agreement

patterns aside from levelling to were exist within the Lancashire data, e.g. (14-15).

Variation such as this is discussed further in §4.3.

(14) “If he’re poorly he ‘ad betther have a cab, an’ go whoam.” “Poorly?” Bob
said, lookin as if he could like t’ ha’ put th’ waiter i th’ doctor’s honds.
“Dustno know good singin when theau yers it, theau donned-up mopstail?”
(Litcorp)

(15) Well we told the skipper he says "oh he's not blind" he says "he just wants to
go back, he don't want to go to sea for Christmas." (Sound Archive)

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4.2 History of the NSR

4.2.1 Origins of the NSR

NSR agreement can be found in Northern English texts as early as the late Middle

English period (Filppula et al., 2002:49); the exact origins and development of this

agreement pattern before this time is largely unknown due to a lack of written data.

Typologically, NSR-type agreement is quite rare. Pronoun adjacency constraints such

as those found with NSR agreement do appear in a handful of languages, namely

Arabic, Tagalog, Hebrew and some other Semitic languages (see e.g. Filppula et al.,

2002:47), although these languages typically display a full agreement paradigm, rather

than the limited agreement paradigm found in English. This means that the presence

of such a selective agreement pattern in a language that typically displays

comparatively little verbal agreement is highly unusual.

Klemola (2002) suggests that the reflexes of the NSR agreement pattern found

in Northern varieties are not an innovation, but instead are a retention of an older

agreement pattern that underwent changes due to factors such as language contact and

language-internal variation. The loss of the more complex agreement system found in

Old English is part of a more general loss of affixation that may be found in all

Germanic languages, although reasons why only part of this pattern remains are

difficult to ascertain. Two independent developments from two different English

dialects, one northern variety and one southern, may have contributed to the

development of the NSR. Firstly, in the North vowels in the common Germanic

singular forms –u, and –ið underwent a process of weakening, becoming -e, -eð during

Old English. The -ð forms were then replaced with –s in both the plural and in the

third singular sometime later, and the vowels in the plural and 3sg endings (–að and

eð) also lost their contrast. The -e ending in the first singular eventually became zero.

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Secondly, the innovation of affixless (or zero) forms at first occurred only in a certain

restricted set of syntactic environments, namely adjacent to pronouns. This

development was apparently initiated by the southern dialects and only began to reach

the North at some time during late Old English. These zero forms were then

reinterpreted as markers of agreement (Barlow and Ferguson, 1998:183). These

changes meant that by the end of the ME the present tense paradigm of lexical verbs

contained only two distinct forms, the 3sg -(e)s and –Ø for all other forms (although

previous to this, further distinctions were retained). The –Ø verbal endings now

occurred when adjacent to pronouns (except in 3sg contexts), and –(e)s occurred

variably in all other contexts. This pattern of agreement forms the basis of the NSR.

These changes are summarised in Table 3.

Late Northern Middle

Germanic Old English
Old English English
1sg -u -e -Ø -Ø
ðs
2sg -is -is -s -Ø
að/ eð contrast
3sg -ið vowels -eð -(e)s -(e)s
lost
1pl -að weakened -að -s -Ø
-e becomes Ø
2pl -að -að -s -Ø
3pl -að -að -s -Ø
TABLE 3. DIACHRONIC CHANGES IN THE VERBAL AGREEMENT SYSTEM IN NORTHERN
ENGLISH.

Corbett (2006) suggests that the reduction and syncretism of the agreement

affixes may be due to the rise of subject pronouns. As subject pronouns became the

routine way of expressing person reference, person marking on the verb became

functionally redundant. When the verb and subject were not adjacent, the verbal –s

agreement was kept, (although later lost in Standard English) thus resulting in the

NSR agreement paradigm (see Siewierska, 2004:277-81 for a further discussion of the

decline in verbal agreement in English).

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 Reasons for these changes in English leading up to the development of the

NSR are often attributed to language contact with Celtic (e.g. by Isaac, 2003) or

Scandinavian (e.g. by White, 2002). While no direct link between Scandinavian and

the NSR is described in the literature, the sound change resulting in –s verbal endings

in Northern England which later enabled NSR changes to occur, is often attributed to

influence from Old Norse. This is because Old Norse had syncretised the 2sg and 3sg

agreement marking, with both forms ending in the uvular trill /R/. In a language

contact situation, this variant may have been perceived by English speakers as

something similar to /s/ or /z/. This parallel may have allowed the spread of -s from

the 2sg to the 3sg in Northern English at that time by analogy with Old Norse.

However, this does not explain the spread of verbal -s also to the plural forms, as Old

Norse had three distinct forms in the plural. Old Norse also had no alternation of the

agreement paradigm according to adjacency of subject and verb, and so could not

have influenced the NSR in this respect. This aside, if it is accepted that the

development of verbal –s in varieties of Northern English may be attributed to Old

Norse, then Old Norse may be considered as playing a role in the appearance of the

NSR, albeit not directly.

Celtic is also suggested as an influence on the NSR due to agreement patterns

in Brythonic languages (and in particular in Welsh) displaying restrictions which

resemble those of the NSR (Venneman, 2000). Specifically, the Brythonic agreement

system has person and number inflections whenever the clause has no overt subject

NP, or only a weak personal pronoun. With plural subject NPs, an unmarked third

person verb form is used as shown in (16-17) below taken from King (1993:137).

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 (16) Maen nhw ’n dysgu Cymraeg.
be.PRES.3P they PROG learn.INF Welsh
‘They’re learning Welsh.’

(17) Mae Kev a Gina yn dysgu Cymraeg.

be.PRES.3S Kev and Gina PROG learn.INF Welsh
‘Kev and Gina are learning Welsh.’

.Although this agreement pattern is similar to the NSR, it has been suggested that

possible influence of Brythonic on the NSR, observable in Middle English, does not

fit with respect to the timeline of settlement and language contact (see e.g. Klemola,

2000 for more details on this). While language contact with Scandinavian or Celtic

languages may arguably have had some role in NSR developments, dialect contact

between the Northern and Southern varieties of English appears to have been the most

important factor. The combination of language-internal change and dialect contact can

be considered as the cause of nonstandard verbal agreement patterns (such as the

proposed NSR) found in modern varieties.

4.2.2 Constructional competition

It has been suggested (e.g. by Kroch, 1989; Culicover, 2008) that constructions that

share a similar syntactic form or semantic interpretation may compete and overlap in

the minds of speakers, often over time resulting in one form being reanalysed as

another (as we have seen earlier in this chapter with both Ø and /R/ as markers of

agreement). This competition may apply to the NSR, as of course not every example

of nonstandard 3sg verbal agreement without an adjacent personal pronoun is

automatically an instance of the NSR. A number of constructions which are

superficially similar to the NSR can be found in this data. For example, initially, it

appears as if the NSR may be found in historical present constructions e.g. (18).

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 (18) The folk there says, “get off ‘ome Thurson.” O’ th’ evils o’ drinkin! So I
went back to our house, th’ missus was fast asleep, good job too. (Litcorp)

Historical present constructions bear some resemblance to the NSR in that they are

able to have 3sg verbal agreement in persons other than 3sg, as shown in (18).

However, the historical present construction does not display variation in agreement

based on subject type and subject position constraints. This means that the historical

present construction allows adjacency of any personal pronoun and the 3sg verbal

agreement form. This construction is also semantically different from the NSR in that

it uses present tense verb forms to narrate events that are in the past (Huddleston &

Pullum, 2002:129-131). This semantic difference between the NSR construction and

the historical present can be resolved by examining other verb forms in the utterance

or sentence. For example, in (18) use of the past tense went suggests that this utterance

refers to events in the past; the same can be said for used to, sold and was in example

(19).

(19) He used to make home-made toffee and er he sold milk and bacon and cheese
and all that, and there was a crowd in there, and I goes charging to the
counter. “A gill of milk Mr Jackson please”, which was about a penny or
something like that. (Sound Archive)

Habitual constructions also display similarities to both the NSR and the

historical present by allowing 3sg agreement with non-3sg subjects. Habitual

constructions refer to actions that occur repeatedly e.g. (20-21).

(20) Most days, men fro’ town goes down dock 9.30 sharp. They always walked
past window, right shoutin n all. (Litcorp)

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Like the historical present, this construction does not conform to the adjacency

constraints characteristic of the NSR, and therefore, like the historical present, it may

be found with verb adjacent pronouns in any person, e.g. (21).

(21) Every Wednesday, Ah comes th’ same time. (Litcorp)

Habitual constructions often include temporal adverb phrases such as most days or

every Wednesday as shown in (20-21) respectively. However, these constructions do

not always require these adverb phrases in order to represent habitual semantics. This

makes habitual constructions more problematic than the historical present ones with

respect to disambiguation. For example, (22-23) are taken from Godfrey and

Tagliamonte (1999:108) and are presented there as clear examples of NSR agreement.

(22) There’s a few jackdaws comes out the back. (1/362)

(23) Me legs aches a bit. I got it in me knee joints now. (7/303)

While the assertion that (22-23) display NSR agreement can be considered true in the

sense that the non-3sg NPs jackdaws and me legs occur with the 3sg –s ending, it is

difficult to state, categorically, that neither of these examples displays any vestige of

habitual semantics. It is plausible to argue that (22) could mean something similar to

there’s a few jackdaws that often come out the back and (23) my legs often ache a

bit. 15 Equally, (23) could be instances of the present indicative meaning something

more similar to my legs ache at the moment (and so be a good case for NSR

agreement.) It is quite possible that Godfrey and Tagliamonte have carefully

considered constructions that display habitual semantics in their analysis but no

indication is given on this either way. Presentation of a wider sentence context may

15
Often is used here as an arbitrary illustration of an adverb phrase. Equally, any adverb phrase (e.g.
often, frequently, every day, on a Tuesday etc) could be intended by the speaker. This neatly
demonstrates the point – you simply cannot second-guess what any speaker may have meant.

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also go some way to resolving this issue. This same problem occurs with data from

Pietsch (2005) as shown below in (24-27). All of the following utterances are cited as

being good examples of the NSR.

(24) burglars steals ’em

(25) great snows comes

(26) sheep bleats

(27) some goes that way

The ambiguity as discussed earlier is problematic. If it is possible to argue that

all of these examples may express habitual semantics (or at least, may be judged to by

some speakers) then should they be considered as examples of the NSR proper? This

issue has not been adequately addressed in the literature. Shorrocks (1999:112) makes

a distinction between habitual constructions and the NSR suggesting that examples

from Bolton such as I often tells him may be due to habitual semantics and not the

NSR. However, no further elaboration on this point is made and no suggestion as to

how to deal with such variation within quantitative analyses is put forward.

Pietsch (2005:10) certainly suggests that the habitual construction and the NSR

are two distinct constructions, but also does not adequately deal with the implications

of their similarity. Pietsch indicates that they may possibly be causally/historically

related, with the –s that occurs with intervening adverb phrases between subject and

verb being re-analysed as a marker of habitual semantics and extended into pronoun-

adjacent contexts. This fits in with theories on constructional polysemy (e.g.

Goldberg, 1995) which suggest that over time, one construction can develop out of

another, where the same form is paired with different but related senses. No other

explanations for the origins of this habitual construction have been put forward, and

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there are currently no other studies of –s as a marker of habitual constructions in

dialects of English.

The problem of habitual/NSR disambiguation may undermine the validity of

some previous NSR claims made by researchers, particularly if habitual constructions

have not been overtly addressed in their analysis (i.e. McCafferty, 2003; Hudson,

1999; Godfrey and Tagliamonte, 1999; Börjars and Chapman, 1998; Henry, 1995). It

may be the case that in regions where –s can indicate habitual aspect when found with

intervening adverbs, the 3sg marker –s may be re-analysed as a marker of habitual

semantics alone, and extended into pronoun-adjacent contexts without the need for

any adverb phrase. Therefore, it is not implausible that an utterance such as burglars

steals ‘em could mean something like burglars always steal ‘em in the minds of

certain speakers. This utterance would then therefore not be a good instance of the

NSR. If habitual constructions are frequent in Lancashire, then the frequency of the

NSR may be affected by crossover and interference with this pattern. This will be

examined with respect to the Lancashire data in §4.4.2.

When examining possible instances of NSR, often a wider context is needed.

Most NSR studies, such as the examples from Pietsch (2005) discussed in (24-27),

give only sentence fragments, making it difficult to distinguish whether or not the

habitual or the historical present constructions have really been considered as a

possibility. Certainly, this is rarely addressed clearly in the discussion. The problems

associated with a narrow-scope approach are exemplified using an invented example

in (28).

(28) the children comes to the fair

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Many would consider this to be a good example of NSR, with the 3pl NP occurring

with the nonstandard –s. However, the addition of hypothetical contextual information

shows without doubt how this could also easily be either habitual (29), or historical

present (30). Only examples with adjacent non-3sg personal pronouns with standard

agreement (-Ø) really show that this constraint may be a clear example of the NSR, as

in (31).

(29) Every Friday at 5.30 the children comes to the fair, after school. (Habitual)

(30) So, the children comes to the fair, and says “look at that!” So we went over to
the stall. (Historical present)

(31) The children comes to the fair and they enjoy the rides. (NSR)

However, a wider scope may not always make the speaker’s or writer’s intended

meaning clearer – it is impossible to know whether or not they are using the NSR

proper or instead are using –s in a more idiosyncratic way, and I would suggest that

these similar constructions may influence, compete, overlap and mix with each other

in the minds of speakers in a way that is difficult to distinguish and test, thus perhaps

pointing to my earlier hypothesis that NSR-type agreement may be more idiosyncratic

and region-specific.

4.2.3 Salience

Sociolinguistic salience may also have a bearing on the occurrences of the NSR in the

corpora. Kerswill & Williams (2002) suggest that salient constructions are those

which are overt in the speaker’s mind (see also markers, stereotypes and indicators,

Labov 2001; markedness Greenberg 1966). While previous accounts of the NSR have

not dealt with salience explicitly, the social implication of the usage of nonstandard

forms by the speaker must be considered as a variable.

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 As Litcorp is not a record or transcription of Lancashire dialect speakers, but

instead a record of the writers’ perception and representation of these speakers, it may

be considered as a corpus of the most salient or important dialectal features as judged

by these writers. This approach is expanded upon and discussed more explicitly in

Chapter 5. This use of a dialect literature corpus in order to quantify salience is

original – no other attempts to examine and compare data such as this can be found in

previous studies. Similarly, although the Sound Archive data is a transcription of real

speakers, it may be that a number of nonstandard forms are recognized by (or are

salient to) the speaker as being more dialectal. It is therefore plausible that the

informants in the Sound Archive may actively down-play or emphasize particular

constructions, depending on both their own knowledge of their local dialect and the

way in which they wish themselves to be portrayed (i.e. as more or less dialectal, see

e.g. Hollmann and Siewierska, 2006). It could also be suggested that certain

constructions may be more salient than others and that this in turn would have a

bearing on their frequency in the corpus. For example, it may be the case that the use

of nonstandard verbal agreement forms such as (32) stand out more (or are more

salient) when compared to other nonstandard features, such as definite article

reduction/deletion (33), certainly when spoken.

(32) Ah always does what Ah con for her, an Ah will say this, she’s allus thankful
for a bit o’ help. (Litcorp)

(33) And she says “I’ll get you some butties for t’train”. (Sound Archive)

This may mean that the (arguably) more salient nonstandard verbal agreement,

including that of the NSR, may be found less frequently in speakers who wish to

adhere to overt prestige forms, and possibly is more frequent in speakers wishing to

adhere to potential covert prestige forms, i.e. dialect forms. By examining the

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frequency of NSR agreement in the Litcorp compared to the Sound Archive, not only

will potential language change be investigated, but the status of NSR agreement as a

possible salient feature of the Lancashire dialect may be uncovered.16 Specifically, if

NSR agreement is not a salient feature of the dialect, it would be less likely to appear

in the Litcorp data as the writers would not necessarily perceive it as an obvious

feature of dialect speakers from this region. This ‘perception frequency’ can then be

compared to the actual ‘production frequency’ of NSR agreement by speakers in the

Sound Archive, giving an interesting contrast. These issues will be tested in this study,

and are discussed in more detail in § 4.4.1 and also in Chapter 5.

Alongside these corpus methods, acceptability questionnaires are employed in

order to test constraints such as subject type and position. These questionnaires are

used not only to target those informants who identify themselves as dialect and non-

dialect speakers, but also cast the net more widely and attempt to see if any

differences exist between Lancashire and other regions of the UK. Further details on

this method are outlined in §4.3.4.

4.2.4 Frequency of usage

Both salience and constructional competition, and indeed, the development of the

NSR construction itself, are underpinned by the role of frequency. Building on the

ideas of Bybee (1985), approaches in Cognitive Linguistics (e.g. Croft & Cruse, 2004;

Croft; 2001; Langacker, 2000; Goldberg, 2006) suggest that the relationship between

grammatical knowledge and language use is sensitive to frequency of usage. It is

suggested that language use influences the structure of representation in the mind, and

that grammatical structures that are used more often (and therefore have a high token

16
Conclusions such as these are tentative, for a full discussion of the merits and problems associated
with comparisons of this nature, see Chapter 5.

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frequency) become more reinforced (or entrenched). This may suggest that verbs

which have a higher frequency, as compared to other verbs, may be more entrenched

and therefore more resistant to language change, thus preserving older agreement

patterns. This will be investigated with respect to the corpus data in §4.4.1 where the

frequency of agreement patterns in the corpus data is explored.

4.2.5 Summary and research questions

Studies into the NSR have produced diverse and often conflicting results. As Clarke

(1997:3) points out, ‘differing methods of analysis, number of tokens used, lack of

comparable corpora, and the range of linguistic data examined all play a part in the

lack of consensus over the development and function of verbal -s.’ This chapter takes

a quantitative approach, and by examining a large amount of corpus and questionnaire

data, provides a robust description of the NSR in Lancashire. More specifically, the

following questions are addressed:

(a) To what extent is the NSR a feature of the Lancashire dialect data examined
in this study?

(b) What, if any, factors may motivate an informant’s decision to use NSR
features, such as the constraints detailed in §4.2, and concepts such as
salience and frequency?

(c) Is there any evidence that was/were variation is influenced by the NSR in
Lancashire?

(d) What effect, if any, does the frequency of the superficially similar
constructions (the historical present and the habitual) have on the distribution
of the NSR in Lancashire?

(e) What changes in the frequency of the NSR have occurred over time?

Exploring suitable methodologies for dialect grammar research is a parallel focus of

this study and indeed in this thesis. The Sound Archive data consists of oral history

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interviews, and therefore contains relatively few examples of constructions in the

present tense (except for, of course, those in the historical present which, as outlined

earlier, are not considered as part of the NSR). This makes investigations into the NSR

a good opportunity to combine results from additional sources in order to compensate

for biases such as these. By using both corpora and sociolinguistic questionnaires, the

usage of and possible limitations to the NSR in Lancashire may be uncovered.

4.3 Methodology

As with other studies in this project, spoken transcribed data from the Sound Archive

corpus is analysed along with data from Litcorp. For further information on the

speakers, locations and overall sampling of the corpora please see Chapter 1. The

analyses of Sound Archive and Litcorp data are then compared to a questionnaire

exploring 3sg agreement (and in particular, the NSR) targeted at Lancashire dialect

speakers and also speakers from other regions (see § 3.4.3). A full copy of this can be

found in Appendix D.

4.3.1 Rationale for methodology

Many previous analyses of 3sg agreement variation do not base their claims on a

suitable amount of data. Both Börjars and Chapman (1998) and Hudson (1999)

conduct no empirical tests, but instead base their arguments on intuition alone. Börjars

and Chapman suggest that nonstandard 3sg agreement, specifically with lexical verbs,

is triggered by inverted pronouns. While this may be the case, this proposition remains

an untested hypothesis only; it is impossible to prove without examining any data.

Henry’s (1995) study of Belfast English gathers data from elicited grammaticality

judgements in order to suggest quite the opposite, that the application of verbal –s is

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prohibited under inversion in this variety of English. However, no information is

included on the number, age or sex of the informants, or about the nature or structure

of the grammaticality experiment. In fact, Henry provides no methodological details

whatsoever. Due to this omission, it is impossible to determine whether or not the

reported differences between agreement in Belfast English and the NSR are true

differences, or whether they differ due to incomparable methodological approaches.

Godfrey and Tagliamonte (1999) gather their data using sociolinguistic

interview techniques (see e.g. Labov, 1972 for further information on this) from eight

elderly rural speakers in Devon. No information is given about the topic or length of

these interviews, but they report 628 instances of verbal –s used in a nonstandard way,

and attribute a number of these to the NSR. The use of interview data is a good

approach (and indeed, is one of the methods used in this study), although a larger

number of informants might have allowed Godfrey and Tagliamonte to make stronger

claims about 3sg variation in this region.

Pietsch (2005) provides some of the most robust results for the NSR by taking

a more quantitative approach. His study examines data from the Northern Ireland

Transcribed Corpus of Speech, the Survey of English Dialects, the Tape-Recorded

Survey of Hiberno-English Speech, and the Freiburg Corpus of English Dialects. This

provides a good account of the distribution of the NSR in the British Isles. While these

corpora are a good resource and studies such as this can make strong claims on the

distribution of this variable at the time that the corpora were collected, a focus on

more modern data would provide interesting information on the possible development

of verbal -s. While a number of studies into NSR development have included written

historical documents (e.g. Wright 2002; Montgomery et al, 1993; Bailey et al., 1989),

aside from the ‘one excerpt of short prose’ examined by McCafferty (2003:5) this

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inclusion of dialect literature in particular, alongside spoken corpus data is novel. A

combination of the spoken, written and questionnaire data should allow a

comprehensive picture of nonstandard 3sg agreement in Lancashire to be outlined.

4.3.2 Corpora

The corpus methodology falls into two main strands – retrieval and analysis of

nonstandard 3sg agreement in lexical verbs, and retrieval and analysis of nonstandard

agreement with auxiliary verbs (in particular, BE but also HAVE and DO) in both the

Sound Archive and Litcorp data.

As both corpora are part-of-speech tagged using the CLAWS-7 tagset, 17 all

lexical verbs that may exhibit NSR agreement (i.e. 3sg forms) can be retrieved by

searching for the tag _VVZ, which retrieves all -s forms of lexical verbs (e.g. gives,

works etc). BE, HAVE and DO (both lexical and auxiliary) are retrieved by searching for

their individual forms, e.g. am, is, have, and all possible contractions, e.g. ’m,’s,’ve

etc. Subsequent searches were also carried out in order to find adjacent personal

pronouns and verbs that displayed nonstandard agreement patterns. Along with

identifying possible NSR examples, these corpus searches also uncover historical

present constructions (34); habitual constructions 18 (35); other agreement patterns (36)

and of course constructions which show standard agreement (37).

(34) Anyway I said to her one day, I says “what's the matter?” I said “why won't
you mix with the other girls?” (Sound Archive)

(35) Ah always coughs before ah wakes. (Litcorp)

(36) And I said, “well I don't know, I'll have to go and ask her” so he give me
money for t'bus and I went up and asked me Mother if, me Grandad lived with

17
See http://ucrel.lancs.ac.uk/claws7tags.html for more details on the tagset.
18
Habitual constructions are here defined as those with occurring with relevant adverb phrases; habitual
constructions without adverb phrases will be captured by the search for _VVZ. See §4.4.2 for a further
discussion of this.

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 (37) So er I thought well when Alex goes I'll bow out and that’s it. (Sound
Archive)

While examples such as (35-37) are excluded from any possible NSR results,

frequency data for these constructions are presented in Table 7. A further discussion

of the relevance and implication of the historical present and habitual constructions is

discussed in §4.5. Any results that do not clearly fall into these four categories will be

excluded from all tables but discussed in §4.4.2.

4.3.3 Standard and nonstandard verb forms

Contractions are retrieved from the corpus data by searching for the individual

contracted form (e.g. ’s or ’ve) as all contractions are split and stored as separate

tokens in both corpora. All results are analysed for any possible ambiguity, e.g.

examples of ’s that may be genitives (38); the contracted form of BE (39); or the

contracted form of has (40). Any genitive results are excluded.

(38) I went into Mr Jackson's shop which was on Victoria Street (Sound Archive)

(39) Anyway, when I come back and he’s waiting at Wyredock Station for me
(Sound Archive)

(40) Yo’ seen, he’s known yo’ so long, an’ he’s warked wi’ yo for mony a
yer.”(Litcorp)

Alongside these standard uses of contractions, contractions used in a nonstandard way

are also found in both corpora, e.g. were (41-42); and has (43). These results are

discussed in §4.4.2.

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 (41) “You don’t suppose I’d sell it without the shell”, he said; an he looked as if he
thowt aw’re havin him on. (Litcorp)

(42) So we went into Fat Jack’s i’ th’ corner; an’ he co’ed for two twopenno’ths
wi’ as mich swagger as if he’re gooin’ to get change for a suvverin. (Litcorp)

(43) He said, “my tea doesn't taste right unless I’s had it in me black and when
I’ve had me tea I has a wash.” (Sound Archive)

The data searches also retrieved any nonstandard forms of the verbs BE (44), HAVE

(45) and DO (46) that are present in both corpora.

(44) “Here theau art”, hoo says, an pretended t’ offer me th’ paper (Litcorp)

(45) What hast Ø getten i’ thi basket, Bill? (Litcorp)

(46) Neaw, Jamie, what dost Ø think abeaut that? (Litcorp)

One problem often associated with these nonstandard verb forms is the

omission of the subject, as shown in the above examples (45-46). In most occurrences

of this, as with two of the examples above, the subject can be resolved from the

context by looking in the corpus – in (45) the subject you refers to Bill, and in (46) the

subject you refers to Jamie. Examples where the resolution of the subject from the

context is not possible are excluded from the final results. Similar to these

nonstandard verb forms, archaic 2sg pronouns tha, thee (47), and thou (48), are also

present in both corpora to varying degrees.

(47) “The smoke, tha'll have to give it up cop, it gives thee cancer, aye " (Sound
Archive)

(48) Where hast thou been? Thou art all in a sweat (Litcorp)

Alongside tha, thee and thou, the archaic pronoun hoo is present in the Litcorp data.

Wales (1996:19) states that hoo is the 3sg feminine subject pronoun from the Old

English heo and occurred mainly in the North West Midlands, while Beal (2004:119)

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suggests that this form is also commonly found in Lancashire. Hoo occurs frequently

in the dialect literature as a feminine 3sg pronoun, e.g. (49-50).

(49) He thowt, for a bit, hoo were playin’ a trick on him, but th’ choilt did it quite
innercent. (Litcorp)

(50) He geet so bad in a bit, an’ were vomitin’ so much, that Margit were freetend,
so hoo rushed off to Bill Olegg’s for summat to stop th’ gripin’ pain an’
ickness. (Litcorp)

Both verbs and personal pronouns (and of course other sentence elements)

present in Litcorp display variant spellings representing the writers’ desire to convey

the phonology of their accent through the written word e.g. (51-52).

(51) Yo’re as welcome here as yo are a-whoam. (Litcorp)

(52) Neaw theau couldno’ tell ‘em fro’ ladies, unless it wur by ther tongues.”
(Litcorp)

Both the nonstandard contractions and the variant spellings of pronouns and also verbs

were found by searching for their specific search term (i.e. results for you include yo

and y’). The variant forms were originally uncovered by close examination of a

sample of the dialect literature.

4.3.4 Questionnaires

Questionnaires are used in this study in order to both include the perceptions of more

modern speakers and to allow a (tentative) further time depth comparison with the

Sound Archive and Litcorp data. The questionnaire that I have devised aims to test the

possible morphosyntactic limitations (or constraints) to the NSR that are outlined in

§4.2.1, in order to uncover whether or not syntactic position and subject type exert an

effect on the application of the NSR for current Lancashire speakers. The

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questionnaire also explores present tense constructions further, in order to compensate

for the dominance of the past tense constructions in the corpora.

The questionnaire has been designed with a view to quantitative analysis;

participants were asked to judge sentences on a five point scale, with 1 being the least

acceptable to them and 5 being the most acceptable e.g. (53). Descriptors were not

assigned to the intervening values (i.e. 2, 3 and 4) so that interval variable status (as

opposed to ordinal variable status) can be approximated (see e.g. Cowart, 1997:71 for

further details).

(53) ‘They have a shop of their own and is very well off.’

(least acceptable) 1 2 3 4 5 (most acceptable)

The sentences chosen for the questionnaire relate to the constraints as detailed

in §4.1.2, and test nonstandard agreement with variables such as adjacency, type of

subject, and position of subject.

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4.3.5 Classification and division of respondents

Questionnaire respondents who identified themselves as being speakers of Lancashire

dialect in response to the question ‘do you have a particular dialect? If yes, how

would you describe it?’ are classified as ‘Lancashire, dialect speakers’ in the results in

§4.4.5. In addition to this, there were a number of speakers who identify themselves as

living in a Lancashire town or village (or having lived there for a majority of their

life), but did not proclaim to have a Lancashire dialect. These speakers are classified

as ‘Lancashire, non-dialect speakers’ in the results in order to explore whether or not

there is a tangible difference between these two groups.

Along with this distinction, the questionnaire respondents were also split into

north/south groups, to explore whether there are any differences between them. Again,

the speakers were categorized according to how they identified themselves in the

questionnaire. As is well known, the north/south divide is a contentious issue, being

only partly dependant upon the geographical origin of the speaker and partly on other

cultural factors (see e.g. Wales 2006: 9-24 for a discussion of this). Here I follow

Trudgill (1999) in defining the north/south divide as being delineated by the so called

Wash-Severn line.

The questionnaire data will be compared to the results from both corpora.

Since all three data sources were gathered by different means and cover different time

periods, a sensitive combination of these results should give a good picture of how the

NSR functions in Lancashire.

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4.4 Results and analysis

4.4.1 NSR results

Many discussions of the NSR (outlined initially in §4.1) demonstrate the reflexes of

this rule by including examples that show the effect of adjacent vs. non-adjacent

personal pronouns within the same sentence or utterance e.g. (54) and (55).

(54) We peel ‘em and boils ‘em. (Ihalainen 1994:221)

(55) They sing and dances. (Henry 1995)

No examples such as these are found in any of the Lancashire corpora. This is not due

to an absence of sentences of this type within these data; nineteen examples such as

those shown in (56) are found in the texts.

(56) Because when you’re passing in a car, on the bus, you just see a church, you
don’t know whether it’s in good condition or bad condition until you come
and say “how long since this was done?” (Sound Archive)

Sentences such as (56) are not significantly frequent enough to make strong claims

about the impossibility of NSR agreement in these contexts in Lancashire. As with

other infrequent results, the acceptability of this construction is tested by means of the

questionnaire, see §4.4.6.

The strong definition of the NSR suggests that every present indicative verb

takes the 3sg form, except when it is directly adjacent to a personal pronoun subject.

However, the reality is more complicated; some features of the NSR are also features

of Standard English (i.e. standard agreement with verb-adjacent pronouns) while

others (e.g. 3sg agreement with non-3sg subjects) are shared by other agreement

patterns known to exist. As outlined earlier, a broader version of the NSR offers more

scope for possible variability (as set out below) and is tested here with respect to the

Lancashire data:

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 a) 3sg subjects (and thou) always take –s (or related 3sg form)
b) Non-3sg subjects may have –s (or related 3sg form)
c) Non-adjacent subject and verb prefer –s (or related 3sg form)

It should be noted that not only results which may conform to the NSR are

relevant, but also the determination of the extent of the variability associated with this

rule (and with verbal agreement in Lancashire more generally).

Tables 4-9 deal with present tense variation only – was/were results (which are

suggested to be analogous to the NSR, see my earlier discussion in §4.1.3) are

analysed separately in §4.4.5. All results presented here are raw frequency results

only; although the corpora are not strictly comparable in terms of size, many values

are too small to normalise and still achieve usable results (to e.g. values per 100,000).

As set out in the methodology, adverb phrases relating to time (such as sometimes,

never, every Wednesday) intervening between subject and verb (e.g. I always goes

there) are not included as examples of the NSR and are instead analysed in Table 7 as

habitual constructions. Previously I have outlined the possibility that all instances of

the present indicative may contain an element of habitual semantics e.g. (57)

(57) He goes to the shops [every day/once a week/frequently/at 5 o’clock].

This is difficult to resolve in any satisfactory way and so, in line with previous studies,

I tentatively include instances such as ‘the men takes the pictures’ as good examples

of the NSR. Unlike other studies that display only part or single sentences, all

examples from the Lancashire corpora are detailed with a wider textual context for

clarity.

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 NSR RESULTS LITCORP SOUND ARCHIVE

Non-adjacent non-3sg pronominal subjects

9 (3.6%) 0 (0%)
(e.g. I _ goes; you _ takes; they _ gives.)
non-adjacent non-3sg NP subjects
8 (3.2%) 0 (0%)
(e.g. the children _ goes ; all the cats _ sleeps)
adjacent non-3sg NP subjects
31 (12.6%) 6 (86.7%)
(e.g. the dogs eats ; five of the men finds)
thou - adjacent 192 (77.7%) 1 (14.3%)
thou - non-adjacent 7 (2.8%) 0 (0%)
TOTAL 247 (100%) 7 (100%)
TABLE 4. INSTANCES OF THE NSR IN THE LANCASHIRE CORPORA

NSR agreement is infrequent in the Lancashire corpora; only 254 instances are found

in this data with 97% of these being attributed to the Litcorp. In the Litcorp, NSR

agreement is found most frequently with thou and a majority of these instances

(92.0%) occur with the variant spelling theau as can be seen in (58-59).

(58) “That shows aw’m no’ used to buyin’ owt o’ th sooart.” “If theau wants a bit
o’ gradely stuff thee goo deawn to Muirhead’s i’ Victoria Street,” Siah said.
“Dunno thee buy common stuff!” (Litcorp)

(59) “Oh, aw’ll agree to that,” Jim said. “Then go to wark,” Juddie said, “an’ mind
heaw theau raises th’ tub. Theau’re shakin neaw as ill as if theau’re gooin’ t’
be hanged.” (Litcorp)

This use of the variant spelling may suggest that thou is considered by the writers of

Litcorp as being particularly dialectal (or salient) and so is represented in an

orthographically nonstandard way. It is possible that the frequency of the nonstandard

form theau may be closely linked to the similarly salient or dialectal choice of non-

standard 3sg agreement. The possibility that instances of thou with 3sg agreement

may be more frequent than any other agreement pattern with thou overall (and

therefore entrenched in the mind of the writers as outlined in §4.2.4) is tested in Table

5. (Adjacent and non-adjacent subjects are not distinguished in this instance).

137
 USE OF THOU (AND VARIANT FORMS) LITCORP SOUND ARCHIVE

3sg agreement 183 1

(e.g. thou likes them) (95.3%) (16.7%)
2sg agreement 7 4
(e.g. thou like them) (3.6%) (33.3%)
archaic 2sg agreement 2 6
(e.g. thou art a good man) (1.0%) (50.0%)
192 12
TOTAL
(100%) (100%)
TABLE 5. AGREEMENT PATTERNS WITH THOU IN THE LANCASHIRE CORPORA

Results from Litcorp lend support to the assertion of Pietsch (2005:6) who suggests

that thou always occurs with NSR agreement. While in the Sound Archive thou shows

no real preference for 3sg agreement, the total number of instances of thou is very low

and no conclusions can be based on these data.

Aside from those occurrences with thou, the remaining NSR results in the

Litcorp are most frequently found with adjacent non-3sg NP subjects e.g. (60) and

(61).

(60) It’s bad news fur coffin makkers, an’ th’ timber trade generally! Neaw, when
those fashions changes, some trades are allbut owver. When women gan off
wearin’ crinolines, th’ wire trade went deawn, an so did th’ boot trade, an’ th’
stockin’ trade. (Litcorp)

(61) “Tha keeps suppin’ it,” said Jonty. “Abit,” said Jimmy. “Ah don’t like to hurt
its feelings. Not when it’s out on its feet.” “Ah’ll bet yo’re wives is glad to be
shut on yo,” said Jonty. There were that big a fog on when Ah left,” said
Tommy, “as Ah’ll bet hoo doesn’t know Ah’ve gone.”(Litcorp)

NSR agreement with non-adjacent subjects is rare in Lancashire, with only 17

instances found in the Litcorp data. This preference for NSR agreement with verb-

adjacent non-pronominal subjects is somewhat contrary to the NSR which suggests

that 3sg agreement is the ‘default’ agreement pattern, except for when standard

138
agreement is provoked by adjacent personal pronouns. If this is the case in Lancashire,

a higher number of non-adjacent subjects with 3sg agreement would be expected. A

closer look at the frequency of other similar agreement patterns in Table 8 explores

the possibility that constructional overlap or competition may affect the frequency of

the NSR in this region.

Very few examples of the NSR were found in the Sound Archive; two such

instances are shown in (62-63).

(62) Wherever she was going and she'd to stand all sorts of insults, “what are tha
doing down here, you don't belong down here, you get back back up yon
where tha belongs” and they used to pick sods up and throw sods at her.
(Sound Archive)

(63) Now, there was a deterrent there just by the name. Nowadays well , it just
seems anything goes. Now I know drugs has accelerated it because you
know, they want money, but I think that the punishments have gone down and
down and so like anything goes. (Sound Archive)

Sentence (62) is a good example of the NSR, again found with an archaic personal

pronoun form. Example (63) is more problematic; it is possible that drugs could be

considered by the speaker as either singular or plural (i.e. they has/it has accelerated

it), and there is no clear way to resolve this possible ambiguity. There are two further

examples such as this in the Sound Archive, (64) being one of them:

(64) No we used to gut them on the deck and then your deck used to be sectioned
up into certain, you know when you went to sea, once you start fishing you
have boards and then really your decks looks like a criss cross of different
pounds here there and everywhere (Sound Archive)

Again here it is not completely clear in (64) if the speaker is referring to your decks in

the singular or plural. Tentatively both examples are included in the totals in Table 4,

although this further weakens the already insubstantial evidence for the NSR in

present day Lancashire speakers. Further to this singular/plural ambiguity problem,

139
there are a number of other NSR ‘near misses’ in the Sound Archive; one such

example is shown in (65).

(65) The form was, the reason was, you may not know this, that if there wasn't at
that time a bishop of Blackburn in residence, there was an inter waiting for a
new bishop and after a certain time, if there isn't a bishop then either [his
assistant or one of the suffrages, in this case people of Burnley], acts on his
behalf and after a certain period of time the gift of that job lapses to either the
Archbishop of York who's the next one up from being a bishop or the crown
and it had lapsed to the crown. (Sound Archive)

This initially appears to be a good example of the NSR, with the subject the people of

Burnley (or they) taking the 3sg –s ending. However, on closer inspection it is clear

that the subject of this sentence is actually the 3sg his assistant or one of the suffrages

(the NP is shown here in square brackets.) In this example, agreement has been

maintained despite the distance between subject and verb; something that often does

not happen (see my earlier discussion on proximity agreement in §4.1.2).

Reasons for such a low frequency of NSR agreement in both the Sound

Archive and Litcorp data may be due to language change, with present day speakers

moving away from older agreement patterns that are perceived as nonstandard, such

as the NSR. Certainly, the presence of the NSR in the Litcorp and near absence in the

Sound Archive lends weight to this argument for diachronic change, although the low

frequency of the NSR in the Litcorp overall (and of course other differences between

the corpora) makes this difficult to conclusively determine.

Tables 4 and 5 have shown that NSR agreement in Lancashire appears to be

most closely linked to thou. It is therefore possible that a decrease in this personal

pronoun form may have resulted in a decrease in NSR agreement if speakers and/or

writers perceive thou + verb –s as a semi-independent construction rather than as part

of an overall schema of verbal agreement.

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 Differences in frequency may also be due to differences in the purpose of the

texts in the two corpora - speakers in the Sound Archive may have actively avoided

using NSR agreement (as opposed to writers in the Litcorp who were aiming to

represent the dialect) due to its sociolinguistic salience. As suggested previously,

salient constructions are those which are overt in the speakers’ mind (Kerswill &

Williams 2002). It is not unreasonable to suggest that salience is gradient (as

discussed further in Chapter 5) and it could be argued that, for example, nonstandard

agreement in lexical verbs is perhaps more obvious or noticeable to speakers (i.e.

more salient and therefore possibly more actively avoided) when compared to other

nonstandard features found in the corpora (for example, definite article

reduction/deletion). This argument implies that speakers wishing to accommodate

towards a more standard variety would be more likely to avoid the possibly more

stereotyped NSR verbal agreement form. However, without further data it is not

possible to know whether Lancashire (or indeed any other) speakers are

accommodating towards or away from what they perceive as a more standard variety.

Smith et al. (2007) found verbal –s to be used frequently in their study of children and

caregivers in Scotland, despite so-called ‘social-constraints’ associated with the

construction. It may be that the variation found in Lancashire is perhaps a result of the

purpose and aims of the data analysed here, rather than as a result of its conscious

avoidance by Lancashire speakers (although I would suggest that this conclusion is

perhaps less likely due to very low frequencies of the NSR found in the relatively

large corpora examined here).

It may also be the case that the NSR is not considered as a particularly

‘Lancashire’ feature for the Litcorp writers (other than, arguably, with thou). While,

for example, lexical choice may be perceived as being more obviously regional,

141
certain aspects of grammar may not be. Moreover, as the NSR has already been

reported as being present in a relatively wide geographical area (see e.g. Pietsch

2005), Litcorp writers may not have included this feature in their writing as it was not

specific to the Lancashire region that they wished to represent.

4.4.2 Other constructions with 3sg agreement

As outlined in §4.2.2, it is also possible that constructional competition or overlap

plays a role in the distribution of NSR in Lancashire. It is impossible to provide firm

evidence for this, or any other hypotheses put forward here by looking only at the data

presented so far. With this in mind, this analysis now turns to the comparative

frequency results in order to outline the role of other agreement patterns in Lancashire.

Table 6 shows all agreement patterns with adjacent and non-adjacent pronominal

subjects in both corpora. Non-pronominal subjects are shown in Table 7. The

comparative frequency distribution between 3sg agreement forms (e.g. –s) and non-

3sg agreement forms (e.g. –Ø) are given for each variable tested.

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 LITCORP
LEXICAL VERBS AUX VERBS
SUBJECT POSITION SUBJECT TYPE -s -Ø 3sg ag Non 3sg ag
203 397 61 414
non-3sg pronoun
(33.8%) (66.2%) (12.8%) (87.2%)
Adjacent
330 12 339 2
3sg pronoun
(96.5%) (3.5%) (99.4%) (0.6%)
non-3sg 549 381 43 291
pronoun (59.0%) (41.0%) (12.9%) (87.1%)
Non-adjacent
382 25 256 36
3sg pronoun
(93.9%) (6.1%) (87.7%) (12.3%)

SOUND ARCHIVE
LEXICAL VERBS AUX VERBS
SUBJECT POSITION SUBJECT TYPE -s -Ø 3sg ag Non 3sg ag
154 4035 4 864
non-3sg pronoun
(3.7%) (96.3%) (0.5%) (99.5%)
Adjacent
245 46 808 0
3sg pronoun
(94.2%) (15.8%) (100%) (0%)
197 2036 16 681
non-3sg pronoun
(8.8%) (91.2%) (2.3%) (97.7%)
Non-adjacent
263 31 389 5
3sg pronoun
(89.5%) (10.5%) (98.7%) (1.3%)
TABLE 6. TESTING PRONOUN ADJACENCY

In Table 6, any possible NSR agreement with pronouns falls into the category of non-

adjacent non-3sg pronoun with 3sg agreement (shown in boldface.) While 592

examples of this agreement pattern were found in Litcorp and 213 in the Sound

Archive, as we know from Table 4 (which shows NSR results only), a majority of

these examples are not instances of the NSR. Instead, many of these results are

habitual or historical present constructions. Aside from those examples with archaic

personal pronouns, no examples of the NSR with pronominal subjects are found in the

Sound Archive and only 8 examples are present in Litcorp, e.g. (66)

(66) Jolly good feed this, guv’nor. Sweep like a machine if the sweeper kims
round. Hope it’ll kim before the ladies turns out; they sweeps it all up with
their togs they does. Hullo! there he goes! (Litcorp)

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 As was the case with the previous data, the sparseness of NSR results in this

data makes it is impossible to make strong claims about the possible effect of pronoun

adjacency on the NSR in Lancashire, but relatively easy to suggest that this pattern is

not frequent. The distribution of non-pronominal subjects is shown in Table 7.

LITCORP
LEXICAL VERBS AUX VERBS
SUBJECT POSITION SUBJECT TYPE -s -Ø 3sg ag Non 3sg ag
201 436 65 436
non-3sg
(31.6%) (68.4%) (13.0%) (87.0%)
Adjacent
134 29 360 10
3sg
(82.2%) (17.8%) (97.3%) (2.7%)
0 121 1 210
non-3sg
(0.0%) (100%) (0.5%) (99.5%)
Non-adjacent
102 2 68 5
3sg
(98.1%) (1.9%) (93.2%) (6.8%)

SOUND ARCHIVE
LEXICAL VERBS AUX VERBS
SUBJECT POSITION SUBJECT TYPE -s -Ø 3sg ag Non 3sg ag
164 4082 9 1745
non-3sg
(3.6%) (96.4%) (0.5%) (99.5%)
Adjacent
429 118 1212 3
3sg
(78.4%) (21.6%) (99.8%) (0.2%)
4 197 2 460
non-3sg
(2.0%) (98.0%) (0.4%) (99.6%)
Non-adjacent
429 118 1212 3
3sg
(78.4%) (21.6%) (99.8%) (0.2%)
TABLE 7. TESTING NON-PRONOMINAL SUBJECT ADJACENCY

Results with all subject types from both corpora show that standard agreement

with both lexical and auxiliary verbs (i.e. 3sg pronouns with 3sg agreement, non-3sg

pronouns with non-3sg agreement) is more frequent than other agreement patterns.

While this finding is somewhat unsurprising, there is nonetheless significant variation

from Standard English in the data that is worth mentioning.

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 The data in Table 7 suggests that nonstandard 3sg agreement is more frequent

in the Litcorp than in the Sound Archive data. This is particularly noticeable with

lexical verbs, as 31.6% of all lexical verbs in this corpus occur with this agreement

pattern. However, as we know from Table 4, not all of these instances of non-3sg

subjects with 3sgs are examples of the NSR; in fact most were instead categorised as

habitual or historical present constructions. Historical present and habitual

constructions show a superficial similarity to possible NSR constructions; they are

able to occur with 3sg agreement in non-3sg contexts yet are unaffected by the subject

type and subject position restrictions. In this study, nonstandard 3sg examples are

classified as being either habitual or historical present constructions by looking at the

wider context that they occur in. This methodology differentiates the current study

from other studies; a narrow scope to any investigation may lead to an inaccurate

analysis. More concretely, many of the results which at first appeared to display the

NSR were upon further analysis found not to, e.g. (67).

(67) We all stands outside the pub. (Sound Archive)

This example seems to be a good NSR example with 3sg stands occurring with the 1pl

we. However, a look at the wider context of this utterance reveals that this is in fact a

historical present construction, as shown in (68).

(68) We all stands outside the pub. Suddenly he comes running out shouting that
we’re late and we’ve missed the train. (Sound Archive)

Instances such as (67-68) clearly exemplify the need to look at the wider context and

again raise concerns with respect to the accuracy of previous claims made as to the

frequency and distribution of the NSR.

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 Constructional variation with 3sg agreement is explored further in Table 8.

The NSR results presented in Table 3 are included again here for comparison.

CORPUS construction RAW FREQ

historical present 397 (58.5%)

habitual (with AdvP) 26 (3.8%)
Litcorp
other 9 (1.3%)
NSR (with thou) 199 (29.3%)
NSR (with other subject) 48 (7.1%)
Total NS 3sg agreement 679 (100%)
historical present 164 (75.9%)
habitual (with AdvP) 33 (15.3%)
Sound Archive
other 12 (5.6%)
NSR 7 (3.2%)
Total NS 3sg agreement 216 (100%)

TABLE 8. FREQUENCY OF NONSTANDARD 3SG CONSTRUCTIONS ANALYSED AS EITHER

HABITUAL OR HISTORICAL PRESENT

The historical present is the most frequent of all of the nonstandard 3sg agreement

patterns; a total of 561 instances of historical present constructions are found in the

corpora e.g. (69).

(69) So I gets on the train and he says “you look tired” I says “aye I am” he says
“well you get your head down. So where do you want to get off?” I said
“Preston” He said “oh you get your head down and we’ll give you a shake
when we get to Preston. So I goes into a deep sleep and the next thing I felt
the train jerking, looked through t’window, Crewe! (Sound Archive)

As with example (69) above, many instances show tense variation with the use of the

historical present, often using past tense forms alongside present tense 3sg forms.

The frequency of the historical present construction may be explained (in part)

due to bias within the corpus; the oral history interviews in the Sound Archive feature

146
dialogues that concentrate very heavily on narrating past events using the historical

present as a stylistic feature, e.g. (70).

(70) Anyway, one day I said to her one day I says “what’s the matter?” I says
“Why won’t you mix with the other girls?” I said “they want to be friendly,
but” I says “you just won’t co-operate with them at all.” (Sound Archive)

This aside, this frequency remains significant. It may be the case that the

prevalence of this 3sg form used without subject type and subject position restrictions

has affected the frequency of the NSR. The high frequency of the historical present

may mean that Lancashire speakers/writers associate the 3sg –s (and related forms of

irregular verbs) more frequently with the historical present rather than as a marker of

agreement. This issue is complicated further by the presence of the structurally similar

habitual construction in the corpus data, e.g. (71).

(71) It’s a mystery of nature, said Young Winterburn. Like us bein’ here at
o’. Ah sometimes wonders why we are here. (Litcorp)

As shown above, only habitual examples that have a relevant adverb phrase are

included in the tabulated results. However, habitual semantics can be expressed

without an adverb phrase and this is problematic when identifying instances of the

NSR. While the distinction between the historical present and the NSR is more

obviously based on the tense as given in the context of the sentence, habituality is

more difficult to discern. This is exemplified in Table 9.

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 Habitual aspect Non-habitual aspect

The men always sings loudly, (it went on all

night.) [Habitual? NSR? Historical present?]
Past
reference The men ø sings loudly, (it went on all night).
[NSR? Habitual? Historical present?]
The men sings loudly (it went
on all night). [Historical
present? NSR?]

The men always sings loudly.

Present [NSR? Habitual?]
reference
The men ø sings loudly. The men sings loudly.
[NSR? Habitual?] [NSR]
TABLE 9. OVERLAP BETWEEN THE NSR, HABITUAL AND THE HISTORICAL PRESENT
CONSTRUCTIONS

Here it is clear that a sentence may only be described as a good example of the NSR

with any certainty if that sentence does not convey habitual aspect and refers only to

the present time. Interpreting aspect from corpus results can be difficult, as shown in

example (72) (previously included as example (66)).

(72) Jolly good feed this, guv’nor. Sweep like a machine if the sweeper kims
round. Hope it’ll kim before the ladies turns out; they sweeps it all up with
their togs they does. Hullo! there he goes! (Litcorp)

Here it is possible that the speaker intends something like the ladies always sweep it

all up but this is partly speculative. It is probable that this constructional competition

and overlap between constructions (shown in Table 9) combined with the high

frequency of the historical present and habitual constructions (which of course have

no subject type or subject position restriction) has resulted in such a low number of

instances of the NSR. Lancashire dialect speakers may not associate 3sg agreement

forms with the present indicative only, but instead use this construction to indicate

habituality or present tense in past tense contexts, thus giving the distribution found in

Table 8. However, this assertion is difficult to prove, and as mentioned previously, it

may also be the case that the frequent occurrence of the historical present construction
148
found in the Lancashire data does not affect instances of the NSR, and instead reflects

only the nature of the oral history discourse.

4.4.3 Other nonstandard agreement patterns

Aside from the constructions outlined in §4.4.1 and §4.4.2, other nonstandard

agreement patterns are found in the corpora. There are 102 examples of adjacent 3sg

pronouns with non-3sg agreement, e.g. (73-75).

(73) Well we told the skipper, he says “oh he's not blind” he says, “he just wants to
go back, he don't want to go to sea for Christmas”. (Sound Archive)

(74) I used to swing that round so your centrifugal force kept the milk in and you’d
twirl it round like that, it don't come out. (Sound Archive)

(75) They let him wed Joe Tinker’s widow, ut says hoos waitin for mi shoon,
becose if he is a bit of a foo’ sometimes, he are too good a mon to throw
away upo’ sich like as her. (Litcorp)

This pattern is more frequent than the NSR, and is also found in other regions of the

UK, e.g. in East Anglia (Britain and Rupp, 2005) and Buckie Scots (Smith and

Tagliamonte, 1998). Most frequently in Lancashire, variation of this type (3sg subjects

with non-3sg agreement) is found with come and to a lesser extent, give, as shown in

e.g. (76-77).

(76) So then we went in we got into Stornoway. The the lifeboat come out to us
and the er some of the fishing boats you know. And the old man says don't
take any any ropes or owt the lifeboat’s coming. (Sound Archive)

(77) And I said, “well I don't know, I'll have to go and ask her” so he give me
money for t'bus and I went up and asked me Mother if, me Grandad lived with
us so me brother was all right, me Grandad would look after him you see.
(Sound Archive)

These examples again demonstrate the cross-over from other constructions,

with both examples here using the historical present. Tagliamonte (2001:44) refers to

variation with come as Past Reference Come. Tagliamonte suggests that come/came
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variation is also present in York, and indeed is a well-known non-standard

characteristic of English dialect; it is therefore unsurprising to find it in this data.

The data also returned a number of constructions which were excluded from

subsequent tables. These included examples of indefinite pronominal subjects, such as

everybody in (78) which may be interpreted as a plural, and those instances that could

not be definitively resolved from their context as the subject of the sentence is unclear,

e.g. (79).

(78) He 'd just stand there would the butcher, newspaper in his hand, handful of
mince meat, couple of neck end chops, two sausages, a real Jacob 's joint and
he would hold it up in the air, who'll give me two bob for this, well
everybody shout out but we were fortunate again there because my dad was
an old mate of the butchers (Sound Archive)

(79) So they were all, and goes over to there and says “you don’t know me do
you?” (Sound Archive)

By now it should be evident that considerable variation in verbal agreement

exists within the Lancashire corpora. A corpus analysis of 3sg variation in present

tense verbs has shown that NSR agreement is infrequent in Lancashire, but where the

NSR does occur, no adherence to the subject type and subject position is found. This

analysis now examines similar 3sg variation with past tense forms of BE; a

construction that displays considerable variation in most dialects of English, e.g. in

Reading (Cheshire 1982); York (Tagliamonte 1998); the Fens (Britain 2002) and is

often linked to NSR-type constraints.

4.4.4 Was/were variation

Nonstandard was/were variation typically has three different distribution patterns. The

first, and most common, involves levelling to was across person, number and polarity

(see e.g. Chambers, 1995; Tagliamonte and Smith, 1999; Malcom, 1996). The second

150
involves levelling to were in negative polarity contexts and, to a lesser degree, was in

positive polarity contexts (see e.g. Trudgill, 1999; Cheshire, 1982; Tagliamonte,

1998). The third, and less frequent pattern, involves levelling to were in both positive

and negative polarity clauses (e.g. in nearby Bolton, Shorrocks, 1999; Moore, 2003).

A preliminary examination of past tense BE variation in Lancashire was undertaken by

Hollmann and Siewierska (2006:25) using a subsection of the data used in this study

and suggested that past tense BE paradigm showed levelling towards was, but more

interestingly also towards were. These results are now tested on both the Litcorp and

Sound Archive data; results can be seen in Table 10.

was were total

(Nonstandard) 17 (2.5%) 1459 (8.5%) 1476 (8.3%)
Litcorp
(Standard) 651 (97.5%) 15610 (91.5%) 16261 (91.7%)
Sound (Nonstandard) 436 (6.7%) 797 (20.9%) 1233 (12.0%)
Archive (Standard) 6025 (93.3%) 3010 (79.1%) 9035 (88.0%)
TABLE 10. WAS/WERE VARIATION IN THE SOUND ARCHIVE AND LITCORP

These results show that nonstandard use of was/were, e.g. (80), is more frequent in the

sound archive data than in Litcorp, but is prevalent in both corpora.

(80) When we were kids if there was anything wrong with us, boils or anything
like that, you never went to the doctor's, you were sent round to Grandma
Wheelers, and she were terrifying she were. (Sound Archive)

As with the preliminary results from Hollmann and Siewierska (2006:25), both

corpora show that variation is found in both directions (levelling towards was and

were). A further analysis of sentence polarity now tests whether or not this variable

affects was/were choice in Lancashire, as found in other studies (e.g. by Cheshire and

Fox, 2006:3).

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 negated non-negated
was 7 (41.2%) 10 (58.8%)
Litcorp
were 869 (59.6%) 590 (40.4%)
Sound was 188 (43.1%) 248 (56.9%)
Archive were 302 (50.6%) 295 (49.4%)
TABLE 11. NEGATED VS. NON-NEGATED NONSTANDARD WAS/WERE RESULTS.

Was levelling, and perhaps more interestingly, were levelling, is relatively frequent

both with and without negation in Lancashire, e.g. (81-82).

(81) Yeah, I carried on in this shop and I weren't making much money. When all
was paid out and everything I'd only about five bob left which wasn't enough.
Well there's, that shop was round the corner and come on t' front here and I
took one here and that was better by 10 pound a week. (Sound Archive)

(82) There were, he were a poultry farmer. He were a loomer at first. Then he
were a poultry farmer you see they were all allotments and poultry farms and
pig farms and er. I had another brother what er were dairyman at er Townley.
(Sound Archive)

This differs from other regional varieties where levelling to were is suggested to occur

mainly in negative polarity contexts. These was/were results for Lancashire conflict

with the earlier hypotheses which suggested that in regions where NSR agreement is

present, it is analogically extended to was/were variation. In Lancashire the non-3sg

pattern (i.e. was) can be extended to all contexts – this opposes the NSR agreement

pattern where 3sg patterns are extended to non-3sg contexts. These results are

unsurprising considering the absence of NSR agreement in this Lancashire data;

was/were variation appears to be unrestricted by any proposed analogy with the NSR.

This may suggest that other variables, such as e.g. constructional frequency, may

affect was/were variation in this region. Recently, the usage-based model has received

some attention in sociolinguistics (see Hollmann and Siewierska, 2011, for a

discussion of this). The usage-based model (see e.g. Croft and Cruse, 2004: 291-327)

152
suggests that constructions that are more frequent become more entrenched in the

mind over time. This means that if this nonstandard use of were is used frequently by

speakers then perhaps it is more resistant to language change.

Was/were levelling may also be more susceptible to variation, as in contrast

the two forms may often appear to be phonologically similar, e.g. (83-84).

(83) [a: wə bi:In dɹagd daƱn ðə pIt]

I were being dragged down the pit (Sound Archive)

(84) [a: wəzbi:In baθd In zInk baθ]

I was being bathed in zinc bath (Sound Archive)

4.4.5 Other variation with was/were

As in the case of Hollmann and Siewierska’s (2006) results, considerable intraspeaker

variation is found with was/were in the Lancashire data, e.g. (85-86).

(85) Yeah they were right big they was, two big strapping lads and er, and the
sister, she was called Lizzie, Elizabeth but we always called her Lizzie, Miss
Lizzie. (Sound Archive)

(86) No, no, I was going to shoe horses with Joe Littleun, I were going to shoe
horses. (Sound Archive)

Within the was/were analysis a number of constructions displaying dislocation

were found in the corpora, although these were most frequent in the Sound Archive

data. Clefted sentences were found with all combinations of was/were e.g. (87-88).

(87) Oh aye, Morecambe was a great place for entertainment during the war it
was. (Sound Archive)

(88) The price of coal was low, it were. (Litcorp)

Alongside the NP was/were X, it was/were pattern, there was also the NP

was/were X, was/were it pattern, e.g. (89-90).

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 (89) That were a sad job were that. (Litcorp)

(90) Yeah he were nice were Mr Kay. (Sound Archive).

An analysis of the corpus data has revealed that while variation in verbal

agreement is frequent in Lancashire; instances of the NSR are rare, existing almost

exclusively with the archaic personal pronoun thou. Perhaps unsurprisingly then,

was/were variation also shows no restriction with respect to subject type or position.

As mentioned previously, possible biases due to the nature of the corpus data (for

example, frequent use of the past tense in the Sound Archive, possible stylistic

motivations in Litcorp) may have skewed these results. As the instances of NSR in the

corpus were too infrequent to enable the testing of constraints such as subject type and

subject position, the questionnaire is used in order to explore possible variation such

as this.

4.4.6 Questionnaire results

The questionnaire reached 269 informants. Of these, 243 completed the questionnaire

in its entirety and are included in the results shown in §4.4.6. 103 informants were

students in undergraduate classes at Lancaster University, typically aged 18-22 and

from a mixture of English regions. The other 140 informants were targeted via social

networking websites, and were asked to fill in an online version of the questionnaire.

Online informants were then encouraged to pass on the questionnaire to any of their

colleagues, family or friends that they felt were also likely to respond. Most online

participants were of a mixed age range and from a number of different regions,

although the majority were from Lancashire or the North West, with the average age

being 36.

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 The tables in this section present the scores of the grouped participants (see

§4.3 for a discussion of groupings and participants). Participants were asked to assign

scores from 1 to 5 to test sentences, with 1 being judged by them as the least

acceptable and 5 as the most acceptable. A full copy of the questionnaire can be found

in Appendix D. The distribution of informants is shown in Table 12.

Informant group Number of informants

(dialect speakers) 98 (40.3%)
Lancashire
(non-dialect speakers 25 (10.3%)
(dialect speakers) 64 (26.3%)
Other north
(non-dialect speakers) 20 (8.2%)
(dialect speakers) 14 (5.8%)
South
(non-dialect speakers) 22 (9.1%)
total 243 (100%)

TABLE 12. GEOGRAPHICAL REGION AND DIALECT TYPE OF INFORMANT

As discussed in § 4.3, the dialect speaker vs. non-dialect speaker distinction between

informants groups was made by the informants themselves in response to the question

do you consider yourself to be a dialect speaker? If yes, which dialect? This

differentiation is made in order to test whether or not dialect speakers are more likely

to find NSR agreement acceptable, as compared to non-dialect speakers.

The five point scale used in this test allows statistical analyses and

comparability. Excluding explicit descriptors for 2, 3 and 4 allows interval variable

status to be approximated on the assumption that intervals between each of these five

values are the same. This allows mean scores to be calculated. The overall median

results for all respondent groups are shown in Table 13. The mean score is shown

alongside this, in brackets.

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 The questions posed in the survey can be grouped by the particular subject

type or position restriction being tested, e.g. adjacency, heaviness etc. These results

with respect to the respondent groups can be seen in Table 13.

constraint type
adjacent non-adjacent
respondent group heavy “normal”
personal personal
NPs agreement
pronouns pronouns
Lancashire (dialect speakers) 3 (2.4) 1 (1.7) 2 (2.3) 4 (4.0)
Lancashire (non-dialect speakers) 2 (1.7) 1 (1.6) 2 (2.0) 4 (4.3)
Other north (dialect speakers) 2 (2.0) 1 (1.5) 2 (2.1) 4 (4.3)
Other north (non-dialect speakers) 2 (1.8) 1 (1.5) 2 (2.0) 4 (4.4)
South (dialect speakers) 2 (1.8) 1 (1.2) 2 (1.9) 4 (4.2)
South (non-dialect speakers) 2 (1.8) 1 (1.1) 2 (1.9) 4 (4.2)

TABLE 13. MEDIAN AND MEAN ACCEPTABILITY SCORE BY ALL RESPONDANTS, GROUPED
RESULTS

Both the Mann-Whitney U-test for median values and the t-test were employed in

order to test the significance of this data. All respondent groups were compared to one

another for all constraint types. Many of the results showed no significance, thus

suggesting that speakers from different regions, in many cases, found certain

constraint types (e.g. non-adjacent personal pronouns, heavy noun phrases) to be

equally unacceptable, often giving the lowest possible score. This unacceptability ties

in with the low frequency of NSR agreement found in the Lancashire corpora. It may

be that in Lancashire, along with other regions, NSR agreement is unacceptable to

most speakers.

The most significant survey results come from the respondent group

Lancashire dialect speakers. Adjacent personal pronouns returned both mean and

median results that are statistically significant at a confidence level of 94%. This

suggests that Lancashire dialect speakers consider adjacent personal pronouns

156
occurring with nonstandard verbal agreement to be more acceptable than any other of

the tested constraints. Again, this further substantiates earlier findings from the corpus

results, which unlike definitions of the NSR in the literature, also showed that

nonstandard 3sg agreement occurs with adjacent personal pronouns very frequently. A

further breakdown of these results for adjacent personal pronouns with each individual

test sentence is presented in Table 14.

adjacent personal pronouns

respondent group I talks you needs we thinks they walks
Lancashire (dialect speakers) 3 (2.4) 1 (1.7) 2 (2.3) 1 (1.9)
Lancashire (non-dialect speakers) 2 (1.7) 1 (1.6) 2 (2.0) 1 (1.8)
Other north (dialect speakers) 2 (2.0) 1 (1.5) 2 (2.1) 1 (1.9)
Other north (non-dialect speakers) 2 (1.8) 1 (1.5) 2 (2.0) 1 (1.7)
South (dialect speakers) 2 (1.8) 1 (1.2) 2 (1.9) 1 (1.5)
South (non-dialect speakers) 2 (1.8) 1 (1.1) 2 (1.9) 1 (1.5)
TABLE 14. TESTING ADJACENT PERSONAL PRONOUNS

Here it can be seen that the test sentence containing I talks (I talks to the man for a

while) is the most acceptable of all test sentences in this category, with this being the

case particularly for Lancashire dialect speakers. The acceptability of sentences such

as this may be linked back to constructional overlap; this sentence could be considered

as an example of the historical present, or of the habitual (without an overt adverb

phrase) by the survey respondents. This would suggest that Lancashire dialect

speakers find adjacent non 3sg pronouns with 3sg agreement to be more acceptable

than other groups, perhaps due to the frequency of competing constructions, (see e.g.

Table 8).

The use of a questionnaire methodology is not without its limitations; an

analysis of the results suggests that often informants are reluctant to choose 1 or 5,

with sometimes even ‘normal’ sentences not being given the highest score.

Conversely, there were also participants who only gave scores of 1 or 5, i.e. a yes/no-

157
type response. This aside, combined with the substantial corpus data, these results

give a good picture of verbal agreement in Lancashire.

4.5 Concluding remarks

This analysis of possible instances of the NSR in Lancashire has revealed that while

3sg agreement in this region is subject to considerable variation, the situation is far too

complex to be accounted for by a single rule. Instances of present tense indicative

variation that conform to the NSR are extremely rare in the Lancashire data,

particularly in the more modern Sound Archive corpus. No examples of the

contrastive patterns frequently detailed in the literature, such as we peel ‘em and boils

‘em’ (Ihalainen 1994:221) were found, and aside from those instances with the archaic

pronoun thou, only fifty five clear and outright instances of the NSR were found in the

combined corpora of over 800,000 words. As the NSR is not a frequent construction

in the Lancashire data, no evidence-based hypotheses about possible diachronic

change can be put forward.

Linked to this lack of instances of the NSR, variation found with past tense BE

does not conform to subject type, position or polarity constraints and is found

frequently in all person/number/polarity contexts. Agreement of this type is

comparatively rare in most varieties of English. The lack of NSR results does not

suggest, however, that this chapter has presented no findings; over 4,000 instances of

nonstandard verbal agreement are identified in the corpus data. Most frequently,

instances of agreement variation in the Lancashire data involve a direct flouting of the

subject position and subject type restrictions specified by the NSR, e.g. (91) and (92).

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 (91) Ah likes a good hymn tune (Litcorp)

(92) I used to swing that round so your centrifugal force kept the milk in and you’d
twirl it round like that, it don’t come out. (Sound Archive)

The violation of position and type restrictions (namely, adjacent non-3sg pronouns

found with 3sg agreement) is further substantiated by results from Lancashire dialect

speakers in the questionnaire. Results from these respondents indicated a higher

acceptability score (as compared to other respondent groups) for non-3sg pronouns

with 3sg agreement. Possible reasons for this distribution may lie with the frequency

of both the historical present and habitual construction in the corpus data. While these

frequencies may be due in part to corpora biases, they do still provide a good basis to

suggest that these constructions are prevalent in the region and therefore interfere and

overlap.

One of the main difficulties in this analysis lies in delineating the NSR with

respect to other constructions, as outlined in Table 9. While the semantic difference in

the NSR as compared to the historical present is quite clearly a question of relative

time (and is usually easily resolved from the sentence context), this is trickier for

habitual constructions. The problem of habitual aspect disambiguation may undermine

the validity of some previous NSR claims, such as those outlined in §4.3.1. Certainly,

in regions such as Lancashire where 3sg forms can indicate the habitual aspect (with

or without adverb phrases) these 3sg forms may be re-analysed as a marker of habitual

semantics alone, and extended into pronoun-adjacent contexts rather than be a marker

of agreement as suggested by Pietsch (2005) in sentences such as the sheep bleats, and

burglars steals ‘em.

As outlined in §4.3.1, much of the previous research into the NSR has been

dominated by theories, rather than being informed by empirical data. This study goes

159
some way towards redressing that balance, although further research, particularly on

testing the boundaries between construction types and their effect of patterns of

agreement is needed.

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 Chapter 5. Salience

5.1 Introduction

Sociolinguistic salience is described as the property of a dialectal feature which makes

it cognitively or perceptually prominent, both for speakers of the dialect and speakers

of other dialects (Kerswill & Williams, 2002). This awareness of possible

sociolinguistic values associated with particular words and constructions has

implications for theories of language variation and change in regard to, for instance,

the distribution of sociolinguistic variables (e.g. Kerswill, 1985); language learning

(e.g. Bardovi-Harlig, 1987) and language contact (e.g. Trudgill, 1986). A number of

studies have discussed how variables become salient, but how saliency could be

investigated on the basis of corpus data, let alone quantified and evaluated, is quite a

new topic of research.

This chapter compares the similarities and differences found in a selection of

nonstandard grammatical constructions that are produced in spoken conversation and

Lancashire dialect literature. The main grammatical features that are considered in this

chapter are set out in Figure 1. The rationale for selecting these features in particular is

discussed in §5.3.1.

definite article reduction/deletion what relativization

was/were variation
past tense negator never
demonstrative them
past reference come
possessive me + noun
adverbial quick
archaic personal pronouns
archaic verb forms
nonstandard irregular lexical verbs
adverbial right + adjective
absence of plural marking
present participles sat and stood

FIGURE 1. NONSTANDARD FEATURES EXAMINED IN CHAPTER 5.

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A methodology for comparing spoken language to dialect literature is described and

tested in this chapter. Here dialect literature is considered as a collection of

constructions that the speakers believe encapsulates their variety – via its salient

constructions. An analysis of dialect literature alone will no doubt give interesting

results, but by comparing dialect literature to spoken language the difference between

production and perception of grammatical features can be examined. The application

of this methodology will allow us to arrive at some idea of which of the grammatical

features listed in Figure 1 emerge as salient in terms of their distribution across the

corpora and which may stand out as being primarily produced or primarily perceived.

5.1.1 What is salience?

Meyerhoff (2010:294) describes salience as “a maddeningly under-defined term when

used in sociolinguistics” and from a survey of the literature, it seems that salience is

indeed used to refer to a number of different concepts in slightly different ways. While

most definitions typically refer to some element of language that is noticeable or

prominent, sometimes salience describes awareness of the listener, i.e. how readily a

particular variant is perceived or heard (e.g. Mufwene, 1991) and on other occasions it

relates to awareness of the speaker, e.g. (Hickey 2000:57). Salience is also sometimes

used to refer to a non-linguistic factor that the context or participants may have

foregrounded in discourse, e.g. gender salience (e.g. Cheshire and Gardener-Chloros,

1998:10) and discourse salience (e.g. Prasad and Strube, 2000). Often, salience is seen

to be gradable, i.e. certain variables are considered as being more salient than others.

Thus for instance, as discussed further in §5.2.1, markers, are seen as less salient than

indicators and these less salient than stereotypes (Labov, 2001). Trudgill (1986)

describes extra strong salience as having more significance than (presumably)

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“ordinary” salience. A clear way of testing hypotheses such as these using corpus data

is yet to be established.

Views are divided on the degree to which salience might be conditioned by

language internal factors (e.g. structure, perception and cognition) or by

extralinguistic factors (e.g. sociolinguistic and social-psychological causes). Both

Kerswill and Williams (2002) and Hollmann and Siewierska (2006) agree that

independent factors underlie salience, and Hollmann and Siewierska suggest that

cognitive-perceptual factors are primary. In this chapter salience is used to refer to

both structural and external or extralinguistic factors. Although the factors affecting

and/or determining salience are of course relevant to this study, the focus here is not

specifically on the causes of salience or on the trajectory of a particular feature along

its journey towards becoming salient in one particular dialect. Instead, this chapter

aims to test a methodology for quantitatively examining salience and to describe how

this can be applied in order to outline the salient features within a particular dataset.

The outcomes of this analysis should then allow more concrete claims to be made

about the behaviour and distribution of particular constructions based on corpus data.

5.1.2 Salience, markedness and enregisterment

If salience is considered to be the property of a dialectal feature which makes it

cognitively or perceptually prominent, then it is also related to several other concepts

used in the literature to describe the status of linguistic features such as enregisterment

(Agha, 2003); markedness (Greenberg, 1966) and the stigmatization hierarchy

(Labov, 2001). While these concepts are not considered in this chapter at length, it is

useful to outline how they may relate to and interact with salience.

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 Enregisterment is the identification of a set of linguistic norms as ‘a linguistic

repertoire differentiable within a language as a socially recognised register’ (Agha

2003: 231). Enregisterment is often discussed in relation to the identification a set of

variables that mark out a specific scheme of cultural values by the speaker. It therefore

follows that dialect literature used in this thesis might be considered as the

enregisterment of those Lancashire features by the writers of such material, i.e. those

features that the writers consider to typify this regional variety (see e.g. Beal, 2000;

Honeybone and Watson, forthcoming, for analyses based on this approach).

Markedness is frequently concerned with oppositions in phonology, grammar

and semantics – often contrasting marked and unmarked counterparts. Markedness is

often related to complexity (e.g. Croft, 2002; Greenberg, 1966) where the marked

feature is a counterpart to a broader or more dominant unmarked pattern. If we

consider Standard English as “unmarked” and nonstandard varieties as “marked”, then

this comparison with salience appears to work to some degree. However, salience is

different to markedness in that a salient form has no real tendency towards being the

more complex as compared to its semantic counterpart (compare e.g. the “marked”

definite article deletion as compared to the “unmarked” the). Nor do such cases fall

straightforwardly under what is sometimes termed as ‘local markedness’ (e.g. by

Anderwald, 2003) where the expected pattern (i.e. complex = marked, simple =

unmarked) is reversed. Markedness is also frequently cited as being associated with

frequency, although this is rarely mentioned explicitly. For example, Radford

(1988:39) equates the term “unmarked” with ‘regular’, ‘normal’, ‘usual’; and

“marked” with ‘irregular’, ‘abnormal’, ‘exceptional’, or ‘unusual’. This

characterization does not fit with the concept of salience, where certain nonstandard

features (such as e.g. was/were variation) are far from ‘abnormal’ or ‘exceptional’ in

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the data. Along with this, salience is typically used in the literature to relate to

nonstandard forms – markedness can refer to two opposing but acceptable features.

Similar to the suggestion of gradable salience mentioned earlier, Labov

outlines a stigmatization hierarchy (2001), where features are divided into markers,

indicators and stereotypes depending on how closely linked they are to a particular

group in society. Indicators are described as not showing any change in style, but

instead vary with respect to social stratification. Markers show both social and

stylistic stratification and are linguistic variables to which social interpretation is

overtly attached. Stereotypes not only have well-known social meanings, but are

generally stigmatized and often actively avoided. It is hoped that a comparison of the

perceptions of the Lancashire dialect with what is actually produced by speakers

should enable the identification of these differences. The dialect literature corpora can

be considered as a collection of the stereotyped features. Features that occur in the

spoken corpus and also in dialect literature but are rare in Standard English may be

considered as indicators. Any features that occur across all corpora and perhaps are

also reported in other varieties of English, or perhaps even in Standard English, could

be considered as markers.

5.1.3 Accommodation – problems and solutions

As with other chapters in this thesis, the analysis in this chapter is based upon spoken

data from the Sound Archive corpus and written dialect data from Litcorp (please see

Chapter 1 for a further discussion of these sources). When exploring salience in these

two very different corpora a number of factors must be taken into account. Although

the Sound Archive data is a transcription of the speech of Lancashire dialect speakers,

it may be that certain nonstandard forms are recognized by these speakers as being

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dialectal. It is therefore plausible that the informants in the Sound Archive may

actively down-play or, equally, emphasize particular constructions, depending on both

their own knowledge of their local dialect and the way in which they wish themselves

to be portrayed (i.e. as more or less dialectal, see e.g. Hollmann and Siewierska 2006).

Indeed, often salient features are categorised as such by the speaker’s readiness to

accommodate away from them (see e.g. Kerswill and Williams, 2002; Hollmann and

Siewierska, 2006). Of course, looking at salience in spoken data brings an element of

circularity into this methodology – how can we know if features are salient by looking

at corpus data, if speakers who contribute to that corpus data also know that certain

features are salient too and so actively up/downplay them? Accommodation such as

this is difficult to factor into any analysis; it is difficult to know which speakers may

have accommodated their dialect, when this happens and also in which direction(s).

The inclusion of data from Litcorp does go some way to working around the

above problem. As Litcorp is not a transcription of real Lancashire dialect speech, but

instead a record of the writers’ perception and representation of Lancashire speakers,

it can be considered as a corpus of the most salient or important dialectal features as

judged by the writers in question. This use of an extensive dialect literature corpus in

order to quantify salience is original – no other attempts to examine and compare data

such as this can be found in previous studies. However, as (on average) around 100

years separate the data in Litcorp and Sound Archive it is possible that variation due

to diachronic change could influence results. To consolidate the results from Litcorp

and to broaden the diachronic span of the dialect literature, new corpus data has been

collected. In order to collect data of a suitable length participants were asked to

reproduce a story that was familiar to them – a fairy tale. This new corpus is named

Lancashire Fairytales, a sample of which is shown in (1); (further examples are given

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in Appendix G). More details on how this new corpus was collected are provided in

§5.3.2.

(1) An Cinderella were havin a gradely time at Ball wit Hansome Prince. Then,
she looked at time and said “oooh eck, I’ve gorra dash love, or I’ll turn into
some right nasty vegertable!” An off she dashed, right down road.
(Lancashire Fairytales)

5.1.4 Aims

The main aim behind the methodology employed here is to contrast production and

perception in the Lancashire corpus data. Concretely, this involves evaluating the

perceived features of Lancashire grammar as set out in dialect literature against the

features present in the Sound Archive corpus. In particular, it is interesting to uncover

if there are features that are perceived as part of the Lancashire dialect but occur rarely

in speech, and if there are features of the dialect that do occur in speech (and are

nonstandard) yet are not perceived as part of the Lancashire dialect.

It should be noted that if a particular nonstandard feature is found frequently

across the corpora, this does not automatically mean that this feature is a salient

feature of the Lancashire dialect (although naturally this is also possible). Lancashire

dialect and Standard English of course share a large number of grammatical

constructions, and so instances of grammatical features found across the corpus

sources could indicate a feature of Standard English, rather than a salient feature of

the Lancashire dialect. This can be better demonstrated using the diagram in Figure 2

which shows the possible intersect between standard, dialectal and salient features.

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 Constructions
salient to the
dialect

Constructions used Constructions used

by non-dialect
by dialect speakers
speakers

FIGURE 2. MAPPING SALIENT CONSTRUCTIONS

Although from the outset the grammatical variation examined here is intended

to be ‘nonstandard’ (i.e. those features set out in Figure 1) again, that does not entail

that a nonstandard construction found across all corpora in question is particularly

‘Lancashire’. Even writers who intend to write in Lancashire dialect use varying

degrees of ‘generic’ (or non-salient) nonstandardness. Alongside this, it is important

to note that the salience of grammatical features need not be uniquely tied to a specific

region. While some features may typify a particular region alone (regional words are a

good case in point), other features may occur in several areas (e.g. definite article

reduction found in both Lancashire and Yorkshire; variation with BE found in various

locations.)

It may also be the case that certain constructions are more salient than others

and this in turn may have implications for their corpus frequency. For example, the

use of nonstandard verbal agreement forms (such as those discussed in Chapter 4)

may stand out more than other nonstandard features, such as definite article deletion,

certainly when spoken. This can be appreciated perhaps on the basis of the examples

in (2) and (3).

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 (2) If you if you was fourteen you was ready for work.(Sound Archive)

(3) I don't know whether I, mind you must have had milk there because we
used to call for Ø milkman one of Ø lads did. (Sound Archive)

As a consequence of the above, one may speculate that instances of more salient

nonstandard verbal agreement as shown in (2) are likely to be found less frequently in

speakers who wish to adhere to overt prestige forms, and more frequently in speakers

wishing to adhere to potential covert prestige forms (i.e. dialect forms). As mentioned

previously, speaker attitudes are not consistent, and although the methods employed

by Hollmann and Siewierska (2006) may certainly go some way to measuring

accommodation, it is not feasible to employ such methods here alongside other aims

of the chapter. Consequently, accommodation is not treated as such in this chapter, but

this remains a possibility for further research.

5.2 Rationale

A number of researchers have outlined the factors which may influence and govern

the amount of salience that is associated with particular linguistic constructions, citing

a number of different factors as being influential. These include prosodic salience

(Yaeger-Dror; 1993); isomorphism (Mufwene, 1991; Chapman, 1995); frequency of

use (Bardovi-Harlig, 1987), and a combination of these along with social factors

(Hollmann and Siewierska, 2006; 2011). As demonstrated by these varying positions,

accounts of salience are complex and cannot be considered at length here. Instead, my

analysis now turns to how salience can be measured using corpus data of different

types.

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5.2.1 Using dialect literature

Perhaps the most obvious feature of dialect literature lies in the semi-phonetic

representation of the dialect by the writers which is best demonstrated using an

excerpt from one of the Litcorp texts, as shown in Figure 3.

M. – Why, whot’s bin th’ matter, hanney fawn eawt withur 
Measter ? 
T. – Whot ! there’s bin moort’ do in a Gonnart much, I’ll 
uphowd tey ! – For whot dust think ? bo’ th’ tother Day boh 
Yusterday, hus Lads moot’d ha’ o bit on o Hallidey, (becose 

FIGURE 3 SEMI-PHONETIC RESPELLINGS IN TUMMUS AND MEARY (TIM BOBBIN, 1846)

Here we can clearly see both grammatical variation but also significant semi-

phonetic respellings. If these semi-phonetic respellings can be considered as

indications of a meaningful decision by the author (as is suggested by Sebba, 2009),

then these features give an extra layer of significance to the grammar and lexis as

chosen by the writers of dialect literature. While of course respellings naturally lend

themselves to a phonological analysis, I argue that they are also interesting in terms of

whether or not the distribution of these respellings may interact with instances of

nonstandard grammatical variation.

5.2.2 Choosing constructions

Unlike previous chapters which focused on distinct areas of grammatical variation

(e.g. verbal agreement in Chapter 4 or relativization in Chapter 2), this chapter

explores grammatical variation in Lancashire more widely. So far this thesis has

avoided grammatical features that have been the focus of previous studies in

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Lancashire e.g. definite article reduction/deletion (Hollmann & Siewierska, 2006;

2011); ditransitives (Siewierska & Hollmann, 2005); and possessive me (Hollmann &

Siewierska, 2007). Instead, the approach here aims to uncover significant variation in

a larger selection of grammatical features, rather than analyse specific features only.

Along with features already identified as typical to Lancashire, a further selection of

features are tested. As outlined previously, the Sound Archive and Litcorp were

subject to a fine-grained analysis at the beginning of this project that highlighted both

the constructions that have been addressed in previous chapters along with a number

of those included in this analysis (e.g. what as a subject relative, was/were variation).

Other instances of variation are taken from an overview of existing literature on

nonstandard varieties of English (e.g. by Cheshire, Edwards and Whittle, 1989; Beal,

2004; Kortmann and Szmrecsanyi, 2004). By including not only typically

‘Lancashire’ variables, the scope to which these other nonstandard constructions (such

as lack of plural marking and never as a negator) are frequent in Lancashire can be

tested, along with whether or not they are perceived by Lancashire Dialect writers as

being salient enough to include in their writing.

While grammatical variation is the focus of this study, salience is not a

phenomenon that applies exclusively to one language area independently of others;

phonological, lexical and discourse variation are also associated with regional

variation and as such can also be variably salient. Phonological features (as

represented through nonstandard spelling) and lexical choice are discussed in brief in

§5.4.4.

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5.2.3 Summary, research questions and hypotheses

An analysis of the literature has shown that salience is often cited as a reason for

language variation and change. It is also clear that definitions of salience vary,

particularly in terms of emphasis (e.g. variation perceived by the speaker, the listener

or both) and factors that influence salience are complex and interrelated. While these

considerations undoubtedly impact upon any findings presented here, this thesis takes

a more methodological approach. The approach here is not to define what makes

something salient, but to be descriptive about salient features of the Lancashire

dialect. Currently there is a lack of suitable methodologies to test out and uncover

salience, and to describe which features may be considered as salient, based on a wide

range and large amount of corpus data. More specifically, this chapter addresses the

following themes:

a) How do grammatical features that are perceived as part of the Lancashire

dialect match to those features that are produced by Lancashire speakers?

b) According to the data used here, which features of the Lancashire dialect are

salient?

c) What is a suitable method for measuring salience?

d) If semi-phonetic respellings by the writers of dialect literature can be

considered as significant (as suggested by e.g. Sebba, 2009), then salient

constructions will be subject to respellings in the dialect literature.

5.3 Methodology

Measuring salience by comparing the presence and frequency of variables produced

by speakers in free speech to the frequency of these variables in dialect literature is a

new idea. It is hoped that such a measurement will provide new insights that go some

172
way towards finding out what speakers actually consider to be salient features of their

dialect. Alongside the distribution of the relevant features in the two corpora, their

distribution in a reference corpus of Standard English (in this case the BNC) will also

be taken into account in order to help adjudicate whether or not the features in

question are salient in Lancashire dialect or simply frequent in Standard English more

generally.

5.3.1 Corpus methods

As with previous chapters, corpus methods such as concordance searches, frequency

lists and keyword analyses are used to identify and explore grammatical variation.

Nonstandard features considered in this chapter were initially uncovered using a

number of methods: by looking at previously established variation in Lancashire (by

e.g. Shorrocks, 1999; Hollmann and Siewierska, 2006; 2007; Siewierska and

Hollmann, 2005); by a preliminary examination of samples from all corpora (as

outlined in Chapter 1) and by examining features of nonstandard grammatical

variation found in the UK more generally (e.g. by Cheshire, Edwards and Whittle,

1989; Beal, 2004; Kortmann and Szmrecsanyi, 2004). As not every possible

interesting result can be presented within the limits of this chapter (or even within this

thesis), only a selection, presented in Figure 1, are included here, with others

summarised in §5.4.

The overarching idea behind the methodology employed involves comparing the

frequency of standard and nonstandard uses of a particular grammatical feature used

in each corpus (for example, comparing the frequency of definite article

reduction/deletion to instances of the). To do this, it is necessary to calculate how

often all instances of each feature occur in total (used both in a standard and

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nonstandard way) so that the percentage of nonstandard uses can then be ascertained.

Percentages rather than raw or normalised frequency figures are used because these

are more informative when comparing a larger number of variables. In short, ten

nonstandard instances of a frequent feature are quite different to ten instances of a rare

one. However, in some cases this methodology requires sensitive application. Where

the alternation between standard and nonstandard constructions is fairly fixed and

restricted (e.g. use of was as opposed were) the methodology proposed here gives

useful results. Kerswill and Williams (2002:100) take the stance that the lack of full

semantic equivalence between variants means that these variants should be omitted

from the analysis. I instead agree with Hollmann and Siewierska’s assertion that this

stance is perhaps too strong (2006:28). Instances that do not have clear or obvious

standard/nonstandard matches are more problematic and indeed need to be considered

on their own merits but should not be excluded outright. By way of illustration

consider the nonstandard construction right + adjective found in Lancashire, as in it

was right big. What should this construction be compared to in Standard English? One

possibility is really + adjective, another is very + adjective, a third is a construction

without an adverbial but with a stronger adjective such as it was enormous, or it was

gigantic. This may also vary from speaker to speaker. In instances like this, ideally the

nonstandard construction (in this case right + adjective) must be compared against all

possible semantically similar constructions where it could be used. However, sensible

restrictions need to be placed on what might be considered as a ‘semantically similar

construction’ in order to avoid extensive searches for each grammatical feature under

investigation. In the case mentioned above, only other adverbs + adjective

combinations were retrieved from the corpus. This list of constructions (along with

examples) was then presented to the Lancashire dialect speakers test group (see §1.3

174
for further information) who identified the instances where they judged that right

could be used (e.g. very + adjective, extremely + adjective but not always + adjective).

Results for right + adjective were then compared against only these ‘acceptable’

forms, in order to give as accurate a score as possible. This method was used with all

other features that had multi-construction options for their standard form.

As a consequence of this method, grammatical features that have multiple

matching constructions may have lower scores than results that have a more restricted

nonstandard/standard match as they are perhaps compared to a wider range of

variants. This could have undesirable implications if the frequency of each feature

were to be compared against each other directly. Here, however, it is of little

importance since each individual feature is compared only to instances found across

the three corpora on a feature-by-feature basis.

The methodology outlined above is also problematic when applied to instances

where the feature is more discourse-based or encompasses whole clauses or sentences.

For example, should all of the instances of dislocation (such as he were nice, were Mr

Jones) and of the discourse marker see (e.g. I’ll put it away for you, see) be compared

against all other non-dislocated sentences or sentences without such discourse

markers? It seems obvious that comparing sentences that include features of this type

to all other sentences in the corpus is not appropriate. Both dislocation and discourse

markers are used in particular contexts and for particular purposes and can appear

idiosyncratically both within the same text and from speaker to speaker. In order to

avoid false comparisons, these constructions are discussed more descriptively, as

shown in §5.4.4.

Once the degree of nonstandard use for each feature is established using the

methods outlined above, the score for each feature is averaged across the three

175
corpora. Then, the positive or negative deviation from this average in each corpus can

be used to highlight how particular grammatical items may be over or underused in

one corpus as compared to another rather than comparing the raw standard-to-

nonstandard usage scores in each corpus. This gives a better indication of how the

corpora compare. The BNC data is not averaged in the same way, but instead the

frequency of nonstandard to standard forms (as detailed earlier) is used.

Much of the grammatical variation is retrievable by searching for individual

word forms (e.g. t’, or were etc). Other variation is found by searching for more

complicated patterns, e.g. possessive me + noun. The results from most searches

require some element of manual sorting, for example to disambiguate similar

meanings. Results that involved omission (such as zero relatives or definite article

deletion) were the most difficult to retrieve and were found by either using more

complex corpus search strings, by manual searching or by a mixture of the two.

As we have seen in previous chapters, often nonstandard grammatical

variation found in the dialect literature also involves some element of nonstandard

spelling e.g. theau (thou), coom (come) and wur (were). These variant spelling forms

were initially identified in the preliminary analysis of these data (as outlined in

Chapter 1) and so were also retrieved by searching for their individual word forms.

Words (and of course spelling variants) that appear in one corpus but not in

another (i.e. the lexical choices and dialect words) were retrieved by means of a

keyword analysis. These lexical results are outlined in §5.4.7.

5.3.2 New corpus data – Lancashire Fairytales

As mentioned earlier, any differences emerging from a comparison of Litcorp and

Sound Archive are potentially attributable to diachronic change due to difference in

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dates between these two corpora. Therefore to counterbalance this, a new corpus of

dialect literature was collected. Respondents were asked to write in what they

considered to be Lancashire dialect. This means that this corpus captures the

perception of the grammatical repertoire of a Lancashire dialect speaker as considered

by the respondents (along with any possible phonetic representation they might

choose to include). As with Litcorp, this corpus is a collection of the most salient

features of the Lancashire dialect as judged by these writers. In order to get the

participants to write a story of useful length, they were asked to reproduce a story that

was familiar to them – a fairy tale. In building this new corpus, Lancashire Fairytales,

the length, style and number of stories a participant could write was unrestricted,

along with the type of variation their story should contain (e.g. grammatical variation,

lexical choices, and semi-phonetic spellings). Two short examples in Lancashire

dialect were produced by the small test group (see Figure 2, Chapter 1) and included

in the questionnaire for demonstration purposes. The wording of the questionnaire is

shown in Figure 4.

For this task, please write a fairy story that is familiar to you, in Lancashire Dialect. 
Imagine that a speaker with a Lancashire accent and dialect is telling you this story, 
and write how you think they would say it.  
 
For example, you might choose to write the story of Little Red Riding Hood, 
Goldilocks and the Three Bears or The Three Little Pigs.  
 
Two examples are shown below: 
 
(a)    She turned, an’ said to Jack "Where’s money for cow?" Jack looked round,  
   an’ said, surprised‐like, "Why, I’ve getten these magic beans!" "Magic   
   beans?" she said, "My foot! They’re nobut rubbish are them!" 
 
(b)   An’ Cinderella were cryin’ and cryin’. Then, in corner of room appeared a    
   right nice lady, an' she says "Cinderella, you will go t’ball".

FIGURE 4. DIALECT LITERATURE TASK – LANCASHIRE FAIRYTALES.

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The task was completed by 53 Lancashire respondents and 42 non-Lancashire

respondents, with most contributors writing between 350-500 words each. As with

previous tasks, respondents were segregated based on their answer to the preliminary

question do you have a Lancashire dialect? Yes/no. Those who answered no were then

asked for their region. There were 12 participants from the North East, 8 from North

West (excluding Lancashire), 7 from South East, 4 from West Midlands, 3 from East

Anglia, 3 from Wales, 2 from the South West, and 3 from various other regions.

Around 40 of the total number of respondents were undergraduate students at

Lancaster University (split between both Lancashire and non-Lancashire speakers),

typically aged 18-22. Others were of a mixed age range and were contacted through

social networking websites and encouraged to pass the task on to anyone they thought

might also complete it. Cinderella was the most popular choice of story, with 16

instances in the corpus, closely followed by Three Little Pigs with 14. Lancashire

Fairytales totals 61,317 words which are roughly evenly distributed between

Lancashire and non-Lancashire speakers (32,344 and 28,973 respectively). Although

Lancashire Fairytales is a relatively small corpus when compared to the other corpora

used in this thesis, it nonetheless provides an important source for comparison with

the other corpora and also with itself by contrasting the Lancashire and non-

Lancashire responses. The comparison of non-Lancashire and Lancashire parts of the

Fairytale corpus is set out in §5.4.5. In order to compare it with the other corpora,

initially only the Lancashire section of the fairytale corpus is used in the analysis.

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5.3.3 Interpreting corpus results

The method outlined here describes both how corpus results are analysed in this

chapter and also how they could be analysed in corresponding corpora from other

varieties if this methodology was to be employed.

If a diachronically comparable corpus of dialect literature and spoken corpus

are compared, nonstandard grammatical variation found in the dialect literature corpus

will also be found in spoken corpus to some degree. 19 This is because it is logical to

suggest that grammatical variation used by dialect speakers when they talk also forms

part of what they conceptualize as part of the dialect. Perhaps more interestingly, if

nonstandard grammatical features are found in the dialect literature but not in the

spoken corpus nor in any reference corpus, then these features are either archaic

dialectal features that are no longer currently used, or, good examples of salient

features that are rarely found in the Spoken corpus, perhaps due to social values

ascribed to them by the speech community.

Also interesting are those nonstandard features that are found in the spoken

corpus but not in the reference corpus or the dialect literature. This distribution can be

best expressed in Figure 5. These features may well be nonstandard but do not (as yet)

have any social values attached.

19
Corpora collected at the same time from the same set of informants would probably give results that
withstand influence from variables such as diachronic change and intraspeaker variation. In the case of
the Lancashire data used here (namely Sound Archive and Litcorp) this was not possible, and in part
motivated the decision to compile a new collection of dialect literature.

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FIGURE 5. INTERPRETING CORPUS COMPARISONS

5.4 Results and discussion

Since a large number of variables are explored in this analysis, it is impossible to

represent the results from all three corpora together. Indeed, the methodology

employed here does not lend itself to comparing variables in this way. Instead, similar

results are clustered together depending on their distribution across the three corpora.

In some cases, particular words or parts of speech are discussed separately (e.g. was

and were variation are discussed as two separate variables, rather than as part of

variation with BE more generally). Other non-grammatical features (e.g. lexical choice

and semi-phonetic spelling) are discussed in §5.4.4.which considers (in brief) both

dialect words found frequently in the UK (e.g. owt and nowt) along with other

Lancashire specific dialect words, e.g. nobbut (no more than, nothing but) and gradely

(excellent) and the implications of semi-phonetic respellings.

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5.4.1 Features found across all corpora

Result presented in this section occurred in Litcorp, Lancashire Fairytales and the

Sound Archive corpora in a fairly even distribution. In this section only, results from

the BNC are also included as a reference corpus in order to check that possible salient

features are typical to Lancashire, rather than being part of nonstandard variation

found in Standard English more generally.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, definite article reduction/deletion occurred across all

corpora. This feature is perhaps typically associated with Lancashire; in the

contemporary humorous dialect literature written about this region, definite article

reduction/deletion is referred to as “the first basic rule of speaking Lanky” (Dutton,

2002:6). The corpus results are shown below in Table 1.

Litcorp Fairytale Sound Archive

definite article reduction
+0.08 +2.67 -2.75
mean score: 4.98
definite article deletion
-1.60 -1.01 +4.01
mean score: 2.99
TABLE 1. DEFINITE ARTICLE REDUCTION/DELETION

Definite article reduction is also found in the dialect literature corpora reduced to both

t’ as th’ as shown in (4), and also as a collocate of in or on, often expressed as ont and

int as shown in (5).

(4) Margit had lost a deol o’ wynt by th’ time hoo geet to th’ surgery, but as
luck ud have it, th’ doctor were in. (Litcorp)

(5) And off he went down t’road, holdin onto the clog that she’d left ont ground
[…] (Lancs_0017)

Both of these constructions appear to be rare in the BNC data, although reduced forms

are of course easier to quantify (121 instances of t’ are found compared to the

6,041,234 instances of the). The comparative distribution of the reduced and deleted
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forms of the is interesting to note. In both Litcorp and Lancashire Fairytales the

reduced form (t’ or th’) is used more frequently than the zero form. This is particularly

noticeable in Lancashire Fairytales suggesting perhaps that contemporary writers

consider this more salient than the zero form. It could also be the case that this

reduced form is more impactful than zero (a point raised in §2.3.1 with respect to zero

relatives) – if the writers are trying to represent their dialect, perhaps it is more

meaningful to included a reduced form that is noticeable on the page rather than a zero

form. Tied in with this, the Sound Archive shows the biggest variation between

definite article reduction and definite article deletion. This perhaps complementary

distribution could indicate that while speakers are aware of the reduced form (as it

also occurred frequently in the dialect literature) this may be a construction that they

accommodate away from (see Hollmann and Siewierska (2011) for a further

discussion of factors such as frequency and social identity).

Both nonstandard was and nonstandard were are frequent across all corpora

and are found more frequently in the Sound Archive than other corpora. The corpus

results are shown in Table 2.

Litcorp Fairytale Sound Archive

nonstandard were
-4.84 -2.72 +7.56
mean score: 13.34
nonstandard was
-1.61 -0.99 +2.59
mean score: 4.11
TABLE 2. WAS/WERE VARIATION

This distribution perhaps suggests that this variant, while still perceived as

nonstandard, is actually produced more than it is perceived. This would indicate this is

perhaps less strongly associated with this dialect variety than definite article

reduction/deletion. As found by Hollmann and Siewierska (2006), and also earlier in

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this thesis (see §4.4.4), levelling to were is found more frequently that levelling to

was, in both positive and negative sentences. An example of this is shown in (6-7)

(6) But er, I went to woodwork, I weren't very happy. I don't like the
smell of new wood actually but er that might be a throwback, I don't
know. (Sound Archive)

(7) It were awlus feightin’, an I were never eaut o’ trouble. (Litcorp)

Was/were variation is reported extensively in other dialects of English, e.g. in

London (Cheshire & Fox, 2006) in the English Fens (Britain, 2002). It may be the

case that although this variable is frequently produced by Lancashire dialect speakers,

it is not perceived by them as a salient part of their dialect, or at least not as salient as

compared to e.g. definite article reduction/deletion.

Never as a past tense negator is also found across all corpora, although most

frequently in Litcorp. Kortmann and Szmrecsanyi outline this nonstandard variation as

the second most frequently found pattern of nonstandard grammatical variation

present in varieties of English worldwide (2004:1154). It is therefore unsurprising that

it is found in the Lancashire corpora. Results for never are shown in Table 3, and

instances of it in the Lancashire data are shown in (8-9).

Litcorp Fairytale Sound Archive

past tense negator never
+9.78 -8.37 -1.4
mean score: 33.72
TABLE 3. PAST TENSE NEGATOR NEVER

(8) There were a peacock outside of Townley Hall. I never remember 'em being
two. No there were only one. (Sound Archive)

(9) When I geet here th’ chap hadn’t come to meet me, an’ he never turned up
aw day. (Litcorp)

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This pattern appears infrequently in the BNC. This suggests that, as Lancashire dialect

writers have included it and it is also found in the spoken corpus, it is likely to be a

salient feature of Lancashire. This is where it is important to note that here salient

features of Lancashire do not refer to those features found exclusively in this region

and no other(s).

A number of other nonstandard features were also found across all corpora,

and many of these also appear in the literature as nonstandard features that are

common across British varieties of English (e.g. Kortmann and Szmrecsanyi,

2004:1154-55). Of course, just because they are found in other varieties does not

mean that they are not salient in Lancashire. These included demonstrative them and

what relativization as shown in (10) and (11) respectively

(10) Them’s o’ reet,” said Young Winterburn, “for little lads” (Litcorp)

(11) An she wur a luverly lass wot lived wi all these dwarves. (Lancashire
Fairytales)

5.4.2 Features found in dialect literature

Results found in the Litcorp and Lancashire Fairytales comparatively display a very

different distribution. Of the nonstandard features examined in this chapter, no

features were present in Lancashire Fairytales that were not found in other corpora

too. This is perhaps unsurprising and means that writers in Lancashire Fairytales are

not using any of the grammatical variation tested here that does not feature also in the

spoken language present in the Sound Archive corpus or the written language of

Litcorp. While Lancashire Fairytales did not display nonstandard variation found with

any of the nonstandard forms exclusively, idiomatic constructions such as ey up me

duck and put wood int hole were frequent in this corpus but not found in the Sound

Archive or Litcorp. This suggests that these constructions are salient to Lancashire,

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but are perhaps in a different category to salient words that would typically be used in

everyday speech. It may be the case that these more idiomatic constructions are

enregistered as signifiers of this variety in much the same way that e.g. “why aye

man” is in the north east of England

Part of the restricted set of constructions found in Lancashire Fairytales may be

related to the task, and this is discussed in §5.5.

The distribution of right + adjective is more common in the Lancashire

Fairytales as compared to any other corpus. There are no occurrences of this

construction in Litcorp as shown in Table 4.

Sound
Litcorp Fairytale
Archive
adverbial right + adjective
-11.05 +20.00 -8.95
mean score:11.05
TABLE 4.DISTRIBUTION OF ADVERBIAL RIGHT + ADJECTIVE

This suggests that for current Lancashire speakers this construction is salient, and

perhaps its infrequent use in Sound Archive may be due to the social values that are

assigned to it. Adverbial right was often frequently found with nonstandard were, as

shown in example (12).

(12) […] and I had a uniform, oh it were right posh, I had a green uniform and it
buttoned all way up the side with er fancy buttons (Sound Archive)

This suggests that it is possible adverbial right may influence the use of

nonstandard were or vice versa, or indeed the larger construction ‘NP were right Adj’

may be a salient construction in itself. Further corpus investigations and perhaps

elicitation tests would be needed to verify this claim.

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 As found in previous chapters, nonstandard spellings were present throughout

Litcorp (and to some degree, Lancashire Fairytales) and are discussed in brief in

§5.4.4.

A number of results are found with a stronger distribution within the older

dialect literature (Litcorp) than in the other corpora. Most typically, variation found in

this category involves forms that are now archaic. These are nonstandard

constructions are represented below in Table 5.

Litcorp Fairytale Sound Archive

nd
archaic 2 person pronouns
+46.68 -22.37 -24.17
mean score: 24.42
archaic verb forms
+12.95 -6.45 -6.49
mean score: 6.7
nonstandard past
tense irregular verbs +45.69 -22.06 -23.02
mean score: 23.02
TABLE 5. ARCHAIC 2ND FEATURES FOUND PREDOMINATELY IN LITCORP

Archaic personal pronouns were not found in the Sound Archive at all, and

were also rare in Lancashire Fairytales. Archaic verb forms such as dost, art and hast

are also found significantly more frequently in Litcorp than in the other corpora.

Results for nonstandard spellings were included (e.g. dost also includes any results for

durst and verbal uses of dust). Contracted ’st and ’rt forms were found in the Litcorp

data, as shown in (13).

(13) “Theaw’rt some perculiar mannert Jackonapes I’ll uphowd” sed hoo;
“Ney, ney, I’st naw grope in the Breeches not I.” (Litcorp)

Irregular past tense verbs such as knowed, etten and forgetten were found in

Litcorp but very rarely in the other corpora. Here the difference is made between

nonstandard forms, i.e. getten instead of got rather than just nonstandard spelling, e.g.

alleawed instead of allowed. The distribution displayed by these archaic features

could indicate one of two things - these features were more ‘standard’ at the time of

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writing and so occur in the Litcorp in much the same way that features of Standard

English occur across all corpora now (indicating a diachronic change), or, these

features were considered to be a salient part of the dialect at that time, but now are

not. A closer look at the dialect literature reveals that these pronoun forms are found

more frequently with semi-phonetic spelling than with standard spelling. In particular,

theau occurred in Litcorp 951 times compared to the 135 instances of thou. This

would suggest that these pronouns are associated with Lancashire based on the earlier

hypothesis that nonstandard spellings may indicate salient features.

A number of other features were more frequently found in Litcorp as

compared to the other corpora, these are shown in Table 6.

Litcorp Fairytale Sound Archive

present participle sat
+13.52 0.00 -1.55
mean score:4.00
present participle stood
25.12 -9.05 -7.03
mean score: 9.05
Past reference come
+52.44 -14.00 -2.00
mean score: 34.84
TABLE 6. OTHER NONSTANDARD FEATURES FOUND PRODOMINATELY IN LITCORP

(14) And the princess come fleeing out of dancehall, just as clock were striking.
(Fairytale – Lancs)

(15) There were a lowf fro’ th’ lobby, an’ Ferret Eon said nowt, though some
colour coom in his face, as th’ farmer bid him Good-neet. (Litcorp)

The features presented in are found frequently in Litcorp but also are found in the

Sound Archive data, suggesting that unlike those in Table 5, these features are not

archaic, but perhaps feature in Litcorp due to reasons of style. This is discussed further

in §5.5.

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5.4.3 Features found in the most recent corpora

Results presented in Table 7 are found frequently within the newer corpora

(Fairytale and Sound Archive) but are not found in the older Litcorp.

Litcorp Fairytale Sound Archive

Possessive me + noun
-15.00 -12.19 +42.21
mean score :15.00
absence of plural marking
-9.24 -10.02 +19.26
mean score: 11.24
what as a subject relative
-5.85 -1.52 +7.37
mean score: 7.85
adverbial quick
-20.13 -17.54 +37.67
mean score: 23.13
TABLE 7. FEATURES FOUND PREDOMINATELY IN RECENT CORPORA

These results shown in Table 7 are those which are used by Lancashire

speakers but are not considered by them to be a salient part of their dialect. A number

of these are features which are perhaps found in varieties of English more widely,

such as adverbial quick and absence of plural marking. Others may typically be used

by speakers of this region in particular, such as me + noun or subject relative what.

Either way, most of the results included here are not represented significantly in the

dialect literature, which perhaps indicates that, as yet, they are relatively free from

social values. To use Labov’s terms (see e.g. 2001), these results are perhaps

indicators.

5.4.4 Other features

A number of features that did not fit easily into the methodology adopted here were

found in the corpora; many of these were more stylistic or discourse based. A majority

of these features were found in the Sound Archive, such as dislocation (16), this

here/that there (17) and discourse marker see (18).

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 (16) […] and in addition to that it was very prevalent was this, because Huncoat
was divided in two by imaginary line from where we’re sitting now (Sound
Archive)

(17) Well er as they said they were always thinking about this here ghost but we
never saw any ghost. (Sound Archive)

(18) So I, I said, I want it for Christmas, so I'll put it away for you, see.

Variation such as this may be indicative of a particular ‘spoken Lancashire style’ and

this is an area that would benefit from further research.

There were also many instances where particular nonstandard words (rather

than grammatical features) were used by the speakers or writers. One of the most

frequent was owt and nowt. The frequencies of each of these are shown in Table 8.

Litcorp Fairytale Sound Archive

owt
+47.38 -9.93 -37.45
mean score: 41.95
nowt
+39.59 +5.77 -46.35
mean score:
TABLE 8. DISTRIBUTION OF OWT AND NOWT

The owt results from Litcorp had to be sorted manually, due to results like (19).

(19) Heawsumever, little Emma were a favourite wi’ Ginger; he awlus breetened
up a lot when hoo went to his shop, an’ she very oft coom owt wi a cake or
some towfy as Ginger had trated her to. (Litcorp)

A dominance of owt and nowt in the written corpora perhaps means that these forms

have a particular social value ascribed to them that speakers do not wish to use in their

spoken language.

Alongside these nonstandard words, other more region-specific dialect words

were found across the corpora, although not hugely frequently. A number of examples

of these are given in (20-22).

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 (20) I know it's going to be a bit of a job because I were nobbut a lad when I left.
(Sound Archive)

(21) But th’ sun’s gradely hot; it make’s one sleepy, doesn’t it ? (Litcorp)

(22) Once upon u time, thur wur a littl’ chitty named Thumbelina. (Lancashire
Fairytales)

These features are perhaps similar to the more idiomatic constructions found earlier

(e.g. ey up) and so are strong sign of this regional variety.

As found in previous chapters (and of course discussed in more detail by e.g.

Honeybone and Watson, forthcoming), the variant spelling found in the dialect

literature corpus can be considered as a conscious decision by the writer to represent

the phonology of the language used. While phonology is not the focus of this chapter

(or indeed this thesis), variant spellings occurred so frequently in the data they most

certainly warrant at least an overview. Some of the most frequent respellings are

shown in Table 9.

phonological
Example
feature
He geet up then, an’ th’ clock struck eight, but when he went to
[əʊ]  [ɔ] oppen th’ dur for th’ milk. (Litcorp)
her wur a tinker wur Jack, an off ‘e went wit best ceaw deawn
[з:]  [ə]
t’market. (Lancashire Fairytales)
They’re bothered abeaut gerrin’ shoon to fit tint, an’ thine’s just th’
[t]  [ɹ] pattern. (Litcorp)
Awonder’t what wur up when th’ post-chap coome hommerin at th’
[a]  [ɔ] dur o Monday morning’(Litcorp)
But I mony a time wished I’d never seen it, for it caused me mony a
[e]  [ɔ] freet, an’ made me so narvous I’st never get o’er it. (Litcorp)
[u:l]  [u:] They said th’ skoo wur full, an’ a lul had had to goo away. (Litcorp)
TABLE 9. A SAMPLE OF THE NONSTANDARD PHONOLOGICAL FEATURES FREQUENT IN
DIALECT LITERATURE

There most frequent respelling spelling appears representations of the

phoneme [əu], which occur most frequently in Litcorp in theau (thou), abeaut (about)

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and deaun (down). These three instances alone totalled 1841 results in Litcorp, with

their standard counterparts totalling only 394. Reduction and deletion of word-final

consonants was also very frequently represented in the texts, either by the omission of

letters or with apostrophes as shown in the example (23).

(23) Well, tell thi’ mother to soak a piece o’ flannel i’th’ milk, an’ le th’ choilt
suck it. (Litcorp)

While only a few phonological features have been outlined here in order to

demonstrate how phonetic respellings can also be used to indicate the salient

phonological features in this region, the potential for further analysis (perhaps along

the lines of that conducted by Honeybone and Watson, forthcoming) is in no doubt.

5.4.5 Lancashire Fairytales - comparing Lancs and non-Lancs

While only the Lancashire part of Lancashire Fairytales has been used in the analyses

presented so far, interesting results can be found by contrasting the Lancashire and

non-Lancashire respondents. Much of this data showed a large element of crossover,

with features such as definite article reduction/deletion; levelling to were (and also to

was) and lexical choices such as owt, nowt use frequently in both sections of the

corpus, as we can see in the two extracts from Three Little Pigs shown in the non-

Lancashire and Lancashire examples respectively in (24-5).

(24) Once upon er time there were three little pigs who lived in a right nice ‘ouse.
T’house was made with straw. (Lancashire Fairytales – non-Lancs)

(25) Once upon a time theyre wur three lickle pigs. These here pigs lived thur
days int luvley ouse made uh straw an ‘ay. (Lancashire Fairytales – Lancs)

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Even in these two very short examples that are telling the same narrative we can see

differences between the two texts. On the whole, Lancashire writers often aimed to

represent their phonology via variant spellings, and tended to include a more selective

and sensitive application of nonstandard variables. Non-Lancashire writers on the

other hand often had a smaller selection of features that they seemed to consider as

‘Lancashire’ (namely definite article reduction/deletion, a number of idiomatic

constructions, dialect words) but often included them in a haphazard or arbitrary way.

In order to explore this further, a breakdown of nonstandard grammatical features

found in Lancashire Fairytales is shown below. While it is difficult to compare

features with each other due to their relative frequencies of occurrence, the table is

still useful in showing the difference between the two parts of the corpus.

Lancs non-Lancs
definite article reduction 900 976
nonstandard were 255 142
adverbial right + adjective 177 33
definite article deletion 144 80
dialect words 105 9
past reference come 99 27
possessive me + noun 86 18
archaic 2nd person pronouns 59 18
archaic verb form 49 0
dislocation 43 3
absence of plural marking 40 12
subject relative what 32 27
nonstandard was 23 12
nonstandard irregular lexical verb 18 0
TABLE 10. RAW FREQUENCIES OF NONSTANDARD FEATURES IN THE LANCS AND NON-
LANCS PARTS OF LANCASHIRE FAIRYTALES

Perhaps most surprising is the distribution of definite article reduction, with

more instances in the non-Lancashire section as compared to the Lancashire part of

the corpus. A closer look at the non-Lancashire texts reveals that often the reduced

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form is used in every single possible instance, even when barely any other

nonstandard variation is used, as shown in the example in (26).

(26) And t’girl was called Little Red Riding Hood. And one day when t’sun was
shinin’ she went in t’forest and was looking for t’house where her Grandma
lived. T’house was only small and it were hidden by t’trees. (Lancashire
Fairytales, non-Lancs_0006)

This suggests that this form is certainly strongly associated with Lancashire dialect,

both by Lancashire and non-Lancashire speakers, although Lancashire speakers are

more selective with their application of this nonstandard form, and have a

comparatively higher number of instances of the deletion in contrast.

One of the most interesting (and surprising) aspects of the Lancashire Fairytale

corpus was found not in the grammatical variation displayed by the writers or the

nonstandard spelling representing the phonology, but in the content of the stories

themselves. Many of the stories (predominately those in the Lancashire section)

involve some change or embellishment to the expected narrative despite this not being

mentioned in the instructions to participants. For example, 5 of the 16 Cinderella

stories involved glass clogs instead of slippers. Others stories mentioned the

surrounding area (e.g. two different writers describe Grandma from Little Red Riding

Hood as living in Grizedale forest). Others describe living conditions and scenery in

unexpected detail, often including cobbled streets, mills and local foods (including, on

one occasion, the Wicked Witch offering Snow White some tainted hotpot rather than

an apple). One example showing this local influence is given below in example (7),

where Jack has to sell the cow due to ‘trouble at mill’.

(27) “owdo Jack” she says, “Wossupwithi?” Jack ‘ad com in leukin like e’d seen
nobbut strife. “By eck, trouble at mill” says Jack. “I’ve been given t’shove”.
“Tha't backerts thee!” she said. “We’ll hav t’sell ceaw! Get thur self pulled
reaunt an mek sharp down t’market.” (Lancashire Fairytales, Lancs_0016)

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 The link between language and identity is clear here, with writers showing an

obvious connection between what they consider to be Lancashire themes (with

particular reference to times gone by) and the Lancashire dialect. Here Lancashire

writers seem to be perhaps influenced by the genre described by Contemporary

Humorous Localised dialect literature; a genre now well established for many dialects

of English (both in the UK and beyond). The contrast between the clearly stereotyped,

(and often archaic) written forms produced by the writers of the Lancashire Fairytale

corpus (such as that shown in (27)), as compared to their own speech, is interesting.

There are no instances in any of the spoken corpora displaying either the range or the

density of the nonstandard variation found in the dialect writing. It is therefore evident

that writers of the Lancashire dialect literature are consciously using a set of linguistic

forms and constructions that enact a socially recognised register (as outlined by Agha,

2003 and Johnstone et al., 2006), namely what they conceptualize as Lancashire.

5.5 Concluding remarks

This chapter has aimed to both uncover the salient grammatical features in Lancashire

as found in the Lancashire corpus data and to propose a suitable methodology to arrive

at this outcome.

Results from the analysis of the corpus data have revealed distinct differences

in the distribution of grammatical features across the corpus sources. This indicates

that not all nonstandard variation produced by Lancashire dialect speakers is indeed

perceived as being salient (and therefore included in the dialect literature). Figure 1

attempted to graphically represent this concept.

A number of the nonstandard features tested were frequent across all of the

Lancashire corpora. The most prevalent of these were nonstandard was and were,

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definite article reduction/deletion, and past reference come. It is therefore suggested

that these features are salient to Lancashire speakers but not so strongly associated

with Lancashire so that their frequency in the Sound Archive is diminished due to

possible accommodation.

Other features were apparent in the dialect literature corpora but not in the

Sound Archive. Two possibilities exist for these constructions, either they are archaic

(e.g. those found in Litcorp) or, they are perceived as very salient and so are perhaps

avoided by speakers when in conversation. Aside from those that were attested in the

literature as being archaic, this category contained the used of more idiomatic

constructions such as “ey up me duck” and dialect words and phrases such as “gradely

int it!”. As these constructions are perhaps enregistered as very clearly being part of

the Lancashire dialect; it is unlikely that they may be found in natural conversation,

unless perhaps in a humorous way.

A number of features were present in the Sound Archive but not in the dialect

literature. This suggests that while these features are used by Lancashire dialect

speakers, they are yet to acquire a social value. These variants are an interesting

category and may point to ‘ones to watch’ if conducting a longitudinal survey of

salience in one particular region.

Perhaps the most surprising results from Lancashire Fairytales emerged from

the rewriting of the narrative of the fairytale in order to include some element of the

Lancashire area, its customs or cuisine. This aspect was not overtly indicated in the

question, but clearly shows the link between the Lancashire dialect and identity for

many of these informants.

The methodology used in order to highlight the differences between produced

and perceived variables was useful but not without limitation. One problem is

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circularity. How can we know if features are salient by looking at corpus data, if

speakers who contribute to that corpus data also know that certain features are salient

too and so actively up/downplay them? - a point also outlined by Kerswill and

Williams (2002:104). A closer consideration (and perhaps measurement) of

accommodation could certainly add to the methodology outline here. Further, by

focusing on a larger number of constructions, we have undoubtedly overlooked

nuances, which could potentially be revealing. The influence of the task may also

have had an impact on the distribution of constructions. For example, it may be the

case that a lower frequency of me + noun was found in Lancashire Fairytales simply

because the writers did not have the opportunity to use possessive construction when

writing a fairy story. The corpora used for this analysis may also have impacted upon

the outcomes; a comparison of the perception and production (i.e. speech and writing)

of the same group of speakers would control variables such as accommodation, and

possible diachronic change. Additionally, further elicitation tests and attitudinal

studies, along with perceptual dialectology may allow a clearer picture to emerge of

the grammatical constructions that are salient in the Lancashire region. Nonetheless,

the data examined in this chapter and the conclusions put forward about the

production, perception and relative salience attributed to the various grammatical

features considered here are clearly consistent with previous research, e.g. Kerswill

and Williams (2002).

While only a handful of phonological features were explored very briefly in

§5.4.4, this demonstrated how phonetic respellings in the Lancashire dialect literature

could be analysed in order to uncover the salient phonological features in this region.

Analyses such as this would allow a broader picture of variation of all types in

196
Lancashire to be outlined, and would provide results that would complement the

grammatical variation as set out in this chapter.

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 Chapter 6. Concluding remarks

This thesis has provided a fine-grained description of a number of grammatical

features found in the previously under-explored Lancashire dialect data, whilst also

examining the implications of nonstandard data for wider theories of language

variation and change. The approach adopted here is new in that it combines a variety

of data types (see §1.3 for more details on this), and explores the contribution that a

large corpus of dialect literature, along with other methods, can make in uncovering

regional grammatical variation.

The contribution of this study lies not only in profiling both existing and

historical features of the Lancashire dialect, but also in the use of multiple methods of

quantitative analysis. While the empirical basis of dialectology is an obvious

necessity, the use of a considerable spoken corpus in conjunction with both historical

and current dialect literature as well as elicited information is unique. It is my

contention that this approach has provided valuable insight into how multiple methods

can improve the scope and validity of any possible conclusions.

The combination of new methodologies and data outlined here has shown that

oral history interviews can be a useful avenue for testing linguistic theories (provided

that these are handled with care) and that dialect literature can, to some extent, be used

to counterbalance a lack of both historical spoken resources and historical written

evidence about the dialect in question. Dialect literature, when treated as a collection

of the most salient features of a variety as judged by that writer, can offer insights into

sociolinguistic salience.

Possible biases in the corpus data provided a rationale for supplementary

methods also being employed in this thesis. Acceptability questionnaires enabled

specific constructions that were found to be infrequent in the corpus data to be

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targeted and explored in more detail. This was particularly effective when considering

rare phenomena such as zero relatives or the NSR. The online hosting of these

questionnaires and the sourcing of participants via social networking websites meant

that a large number of participants were reached, thus giving more robust and

representative results – an approach that could have implications for further

sociolinguistic data collection. Along with the traditional dialect literature, a new

corpus of dialect literature was compiled by inviting participants to write a story in

what they considered to be Lancashire dialect. This approach, which combined

aspects of both elicitation and dialect literature, is also unique to this study and

allowed further insights into differences between the perception and production of

nonstandard variables, in particular with reference to sociolinguistic salience. The

wide variety of sources utilized in this thesis created multiple opportunities for

analyzing the data in question from different perspectives and arriving at a much more

comprehensive understanding of what dialectal features actually are.

Chapter 2 used the Lancashire data to test a number of assertions that are

typically found in the literature on relativization in Standard English, such as the

correlation between relativizer type and restrictiveness. Results show that

relativization in Lancashire shows variation different to that described in Standard

English and is, on the whole, less constrained. This chapter also introduced new

information on the distribution of zero relative clauses in Lancashire; a construction

which is typically difficult to retrieve from corpus data alone. A sentence-linking task

where informants had a free choice of which relativizer to use in linking clauses

showed that, at least to some degree, the relativizer what is productive in this region,

contrasting perhaps with other results from northern regions of England.

199
 Chapter 3 provided a semantic and syntactic analysis of the previously

undocumented HAVEn’t to construction, a polysemous construction found in

Lancashire that displays meanings that can be similar to both DOn’t HAVE to, and

mustn’t depending on the context of use. The results show that the semi-modal

HAVEn’t to has changed over time, and now tends to behave more like a core modal

verb for Lancashire speakers. In a majority of cases in the Sound Archive data, it

displays a meaning that is closer to the stronger modal verbs MUSTn’t or SHOULDn’t

rather than to the weaker DOn’t have to.

Along with describing this construction, Chapter 3 tested how possible it was

to use different sources of dialect data in the analysis of diachronic change. The

results are open to several interpretations. The semantic and syntactic arguments

clearly show that, synchronically, the HAVEn’t to construction has become

grammaticalized in the Lancashire dialect data, but diachronic changes in the data are

more uncertain. This uncertainty may be due to either the relatively low frequency of

this construction overall, or, to the somewhat problematic nature of the comparison

between the written Litcorp (as opposed to a historical spoken source) and the spoken

Sound Archive data.

Leading on from the analysis of HAVEn’t to, Chapter 3 then turned to the wider

construction family, i.e. those constructions that have similar semantics and syntactic

properties (e.g. MUSTn’t, SHOULDn’t, NEEDn’t); an approach that has yet to be widely

adopted in sociolinguistics. The aim here was to explore the concept of constructional

competition in order to determine whether grammaticalization may have played a role

in the development of this construction (and its construction family) more widely in

Lancashire.

200
 The verdict on construction competition is not entirely clear but nonetheless

the point still remains that often a number of similar constructions, as opposed to just

two opposing variants, can fulfil a similar semantic function and that the interaction

between these variants is complex and cannot easily be accounted for by e.g. the S-

curve model of language change (Kroch, 1989). This analysis of a number of

competing variants no doubt has implications for studies of language change and

sociolinguistics, suggesting that a wider scope of focus will often be necessary when

looking at diachronic change.

Chapter 4 analysed verbal agreement in Lancashire, examining in particular

the (so-called) Northern Subject Rule. This chapter provided a new account of this

phenomenon in Lancashire based on both the analysis of corpus data, and

acceptability judgements from questionnaires.

Contrary to the analyses of previous researchers, this analysis revealed that

while variation with 3sg agreement in prevalent in Lancashire, the situation is far too

complex to be accounted for by a single rule such as that ascribed by the NSR. My

analysis finds that instances of present tense indicative variation that appear to be

instances of the NSR are extremely rare in the Lancashire data, particularly in the

more modern Sound Archive corpus.

Crucially, this chapter also analysed the semantics surrounding the NSR. It

attempted to uncover whether or not habitual constructions had been fully appreciated

by other researchers, and the extent to which such constructions (which, importantly,

are very frequent in Lancashire) impact upon the status of the NSR. In Lancashire

corpus data, often nonstandard verbal agreement involved a direct flout of the subject

position and subject type restrictions specified for by the NSR. Evidence from the

acceptability questionnaire corroborated these results; Lancashire respondents

201
indicated a higher acceptability score (versus other respondents) for adjacent non-3sg

pronouns with 3sg agreement. With this in mind, the analysis showed that there is

great difficulty in differentiating NSR from other similar constructions, and that this is

not something that should simply be passed over. While the semantic difference in the

NSR as compared to the historical present construction is a question of relative time

(and can usually be resolved by examining the wider context of the text or utterance),

this is trickier for habitual constructions. I argue that it is very possible that in regions,

such as Lancashire, where it can be proven that the usage of -s in the habitual aspect is

frequent (with or without adverb phrases), 3sg forms may have been re-analysed by

speakers as a habitual semantics marker and extended into pronoun-adjacent contexts

rather than be a marker of agreement. This assertion may undermine the validity of

some previous claims about NSR set out in the literature.

Chapter 4 also confirmed the position outlined in Hollmann and Siewierska

(2006) in finding that levelling to was but more frequently (and interestingly) to were

is possible in all person/number/polarity contexts – a distribution that is comparatively

rare in most varieties of English.

Chapter 5 proposed a contrastive corpus-based approach to salience – a

concept that was previously untested. The methodology involved comparing a large

corpus of produced variables (i.e. speech) to a large corpus of perceived variables (i.e.

dialect writing) in order to test sociolinguistic salience. The methodology proposed

here is original. Although examining only the dialect literature corpora would have no

doubt yielded considerable interesting results, what is perhaps more interesting is the

difference between the nonstandard constructions present in the written data and those

that are actually spoken in the Sound Archive.

202
 This chapter advocated the use of dialect literature as a key component in

unearthing grammatical (and other) patterns that are salient features of the Lancashire

dialect. This comparison not only allowed salient constructions in the data to be

described, but also revealed constructions that are salient but do not occur in speech

(perhaps in part due to their social value or status) and also constructions that are

nonstandard yet do not currently have ascribed social values. Some grammatical

patterns appeared in both texts, but the distribution displayed different weightings

indicating preferences for either written or spoken data. Results such as this can allow

finer distinctions to be made between constructions, rather than simply classifying

them as salient or not salient which is highly promising with respect to future corpus-

based research.

The corpus-based method used in Chapter 5 was not with out some limitations;

certain more discourse-based features were not able to have their nonstandardness

proportion calculated due to the lack of appropriate standard equivalents. Also,

perhaps even stronger results could be achieved if both written and spoken data was

collected from the same group of informants, and, if possible, aligned for

considerations such as tense and topic.

This aside, this method also pointed to extensive possibilities to undertake

research into semi-phonetic respellings and nonstandard vocabulary terms were found

which only occur in the “perceived” dialect literature which was only treated in brief

here due to the restrictions of this chapter. Considerations of these, and also of the

grammatical variation, as possible representations or indices of identity also merits

further attention

Overall, this thesis has not only described grammatical variation in Lancashire

but has set out to emphasize the importance of corpus-based dialect grammar for

203
linguistics in general (see also Hollmann and Siewierska, 2011, and Hollmann, to

appear, who focus specifically on the importance of frequency effects and schemas).

An important underlying theme of this study has been the testing of linguistic claims

using large corpus resources. It is clear that the method of achieving significance for a

claim depends on the nature of that claim. A simple claim, such as the existence of a

construction, requires only simple searches and statistics to show that it exists in the

data. Problems arise with evaluating assertions which are more complex, relating to a

number of conditions or features, often overlapping (as demonstrated by, for example,

the NSR). It seems clear that in order to confirm suggested trends and/or rule out

competing hypotheses, considerable empirical data of different types and from

different sources must be used. This will allow the corroboration of data from multiple

perspectives, strengthening the likelihood of the hypotheses, and enabling both

synchronic and diachronic study.

The methods used here were not without limitation. As frequently highlighted,

comparing grammatical variation as opposed to, e.g. phonological variation typically

requires large resources, and it may be the case that larger corpora may have been able

to substantiate some of the claims made in this thesis in a more convincing manner.

Naturally, there are obstacles to acquiring such a large amount of data, e.g. simply the

lack of the data in existence, time constraints and costs. In this study this limitation

was counteracted to some degree by elicitation methods (and this approach is strongly

advocated), but larger corpora and perhaps, for example, conversational data

structured around topic or e.g. grammatical tense to some degree might be of use in

supporting methods outlined here.

Aside from the data, I argue that order for an approach like this to progress yet

further a number of broader questions arising from this thesis need to be addressed.

204
One of these concerns the interplay between frequency, salience and perhaps other

social factors (as outlined also in Hollmann and Siewierska, 2011), along with the role

of construction families in language change. Questions raised by this study can

provide numerous opportunities for future research. In particular, attention to intra and

inter-regional variation could provide further interesting results. Furthermore, new

data collection methods described in relation to gathering participants for elicitation

tasks may also lend themselves well to studies of possible social network effects, a

very important aspect of sociolinguistic theory that was beyond the scope of the

present study.

205
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 Appendix A: Map of the old County of Lancashire
Below, I present a map of the old County of Lancashire before the 1974 boundary
changes (taken from Kain and Oliver, 2001).

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 Appendix B: Texts comprising Litcorp

Below, I present a list of the texts comprising the Lancashire dialect literature corpus
(Licorp) used throughout this thesis:

Baron, William. 1888. Bits o’ broad Lancashire. John Haywood: Manchester

Billington, William. 1883. Lancashire songs poems and sketches. Blackburn:

Toulmin.

Brierley, Benjamin. 1896. 'Aboth-Yate' Sketches and Other Short Stories, volume. 1.
Oldham: W.E. Clegg

Brierley, Benjamin. 1886. 'Ab o’th’-Yate' Sketches and Other Short Stories, volume 2.
Oldham: W.E. Clegg

Collier, John (also know as Tim Bobbin). 1846. Tummus and Meary. John Haywood:
Manchester

Saunders, Langford. 1911. Lancashire humour and pathos. Manchester: Fred Johnson
& Co.

Thompson, T. 1945. Lancashire Pride. London: George Allen.

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 Appendix C: Questionnaire – sociolinguistic information
Below, I present the sociolinguistic questionnaire used in conjunction with
acceptability questionnaires employed in this thesis:

Dialect Survey
Information about you...

1. Where were you born?

..........................................................................................................................................
If you have not always lived in the same town/city/village, please specify where
else you lived and for how many years.

..........................................................................................................................................
2. How old are you? (If you would prefer not to say, please leave blank)

.........................................................................................................................................
3. Would you consider yourself to be a speaker of a particular English
dialect?

..........................................................................................................................................
4. If so, which dialect?

..........................................................................................................................................
5. How do you feel about your dialect, e.g. positive or negative? Is there
anything you particularly like or dislike?

..........................................................................................................................................
..........................................................................................................................................
..........................................................................................................................................
..........................................................................................................................................
........................................................................................................................................

Thank you!
Please proceed to complete the survey...

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 Appendix D: Questionnaire – content testing the NSR
Below, I present the acceptability questionnaire used to test the NSR. The format of
the questions is shown below. A list of sentences used to populate the survey as also
given:

Please read the sentences and rate how acceptable they are to you.

Please give each sentence a score between 1 and 5, with 1 being the least acceptable
or most unlikely to be used by you, and 5 being the most acceptable or likely to be
used by you.

For example, if you judged sentence A (below) to be very acceptable, you should
give it a score of 5, and so circle the number 5, as shown below.

A. ‘The man with the red hat sometimes goes into the shop.’

(least 1 2 3 4 5 (most
acceptable) acceptable)

If you judge sentence B (below) to be very unacceptable, you should give it a score
of 1, and so circle the number 1.

B. ‘With sometimes red the hat into the shop goes the man.’

(least 1 2 3 4 5 (most
acceptable) acceptable)

Please proceed to start the survey!

Given below are a list of the sentences that were used to populate the survey:

1. All of you are confident and tries very hard.

2. On a Monday I talks to the man from the butchers for a few minutes.
3. She found a new house and is very happy.
4. They have a shop of their own and is very well off.
5. Everyone’s spent all of their money and has got nothing left.
6. We are waiting for the specialist to phone back.
7. You really has to try that new restaurant, its great!
8. These does wonders for my health.
9. Bob and John, when the go out for a walk, finds a man who had fallen over.
10. You does nothing but go on and on about recycling.
11. All of us from Flat Ten thinks the cleaner isn’t doing her job properly.

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12. You only very occasionally asks me for help.
13. I is sometimes not sure about what he will say about all of the mistakes I
make.
14. You have lots left to do but you’re making good progress.
15. My friends wife does a cookery class at the community centre.
16. The other day they walks for three miles before they came to a post-box.
17. You and your sister have got no manners and is very nasty to him sometimes.
18. We usually always do something nice at Christmas.

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 Appendix E: Ellipsis test sentences

Below, I present the list of list of elliptical sentences that was used to test the
acceptability of these construction to Lancashire speakers in Chapter 3:

1. I’ven’t got any money for the bus.

2. You’ren’t to go there or you’d be in real trouble.
3. I’sn’t to go to far, its not very nice outside
4. We’dn’t anything else to do.
5. You’ren’t ever going to understand this.
6. I’ven’t got to be anywhere tomorrow.
7. We’dn’t any left.
8. They’dn’t found the answer.
9. The girlsn’t got a clue what to do.
10. The workers’dn’t left yet.

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 Appendix F: Questionnaire – content testing zero relatives
Below, I present the acceptability questionnaire used to test zero relatives. The format
of the questions is shown below. A list of sentences used to populate the survey as
also given:

Please read the sentences and rate how acceptable they are to you.

Please give each sentence a score between 1 and 5, with 1 being the least acceptable
or most unlikely to be used by you, and 5 being the most acceptable or likely to be
used by you.

For example, if you judged sentence A (below) to be very acceptable, you should
give it a score of 5, and so circle the number 5, as shown below.

C. ‘The man with the red hat sometimes goes into the shop.’

(least 1 2 3 4 5 (most
acceptable) acceptable)

If you judge sentence B (below) to be very unacceptable, you should give it a score
of 1, and so circle the number 1.

D. ‘With sometimes red the hat into the shop goes the man.’

(least 1 2 3 4 5 (most
acceptable) acceptable)

Please proceed to start the survey!

Given below are a list of the sentences that were used to populate the survey:

1. I have something might help you understand it

2. It was Laura told me about that.
3. There’s a man down the street goes there too.
4. She’s the one took the money.
5. I met a man once could do that.
6. It was that one I wanted
7. I can’t quite remember, perhaps it was my son asked me to do that.
8. I know a lady from work has one of those things.
9. I haven’t got any work needs doing
10. I once had a dog could eat two tins of food in one morning.
11. Have you got any plants want watering?
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12. I think it might be John picked the wallpaper in here.
13. My nana’s got a squeaky gate wants oiling.
14. The girls are the ones messed it up for us all
15. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone has been so angry.
16. It were that place never closed, even in winter
17. Are there any drinks want making?
18. He’s the one gets the blame.

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 Appendix G: Sample text from Lancashire Fairytales
Below, I present the three excerpts from Lancashire dialect writing collected to form
Lancashire Fairytales and used in Chapter 5:

(1) (Lancs_ 0017)

[…] An Cinderella were havin a gradely time at Ball wit Hansome Prince.
Then, she looked at time and said “oooh eck, I’ve gorra dash love, or I’ll turn
into some right nasty vegertable!” An off she dashed, right down road. Well,
the prince, he were broken hearted, and he says, “i’m gonna find me lovely
lass, im gonna search all round kingdom!” And off he went down t’road,
holdin onto the clog that she’d left ont ground […]

(2) (non-Lancs_0023)
Once upon u time, there were a right pretty girl named Sleepin Beauty. Sleepin
Beauty had been put into sleep by Wicked Witch. One day, a Hansome Prince
come along, and gave her a smacker right ont lips! Sleepin beauty woke up
and lived happily ever after with prince int castle.

(3) (Lancs_0002)
Three little pigs. One day, three lickle pigs were flyin nest an meckin them
houses for't livin in. First lickle pig came across man wit' hay an says, "ay up
fettler, can thou gimme some hay for't house I'm meckin?" man says, "aye
lad", an lickle pig mecks house of hay. Second lickle pig saw't man wit sticks
an says, "ay up fettler, can thou gimme some sticks for't meckin me house?" an
man says, "aye lad" an lickle pig mecks house of sticks like. Third lickle pig
sees man wit great big stones an says, "ay up fettler, can thou gimme some
great big stones for't house I'm meckin?" an man says, "aye lad" an lickle pig
mecks house of stones. All of sudden, wolf comes t'village an starts chappin
doors. 'ee says t'first lickle pig, "Lickle pig! Lickle pig! Let me in! Let me in!"
an lickle pig says, "Not for't hair on me chin!" an wolf says, "Then i'll huff an
puff an blow yer house in!" an does it. Then 'ee cooks an ate lickle pig. 'ee says
t'necks lickle pig, "Lickle pig! Lickle pig! Let me in! Let me in!" an lickle pig
says, "Not for't hair on me chin!" an wolf says, "Then i'll huff an puff an blow
yer house in!" an does it gain. Then 'ee cooks an ate necks lickle pig. When 'ee
sees last lickle pig 'ee says, "Lickle pig! Lickle pig! Let me in! Let me in!" an
lickle pig laffs an says, "Not for't hair on me chin!" an wolf says, "Then i'll
huff an puff an blow yer house in!" but can't. So 'ee tries gain but still can't.
Then 'ee climbs up t'roof an jumps down chim-eny an right in't big pot o' hot
watter an lickle pig cooks an ate wolf.

230