{"id":343,"date":"2010-04-07T10:00:36","date_gmt":"2010-04-07T08:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/elanguage.net\/blogs\/booknotices\/?p=343"},"modified":"2010-02-11T11:30:11","modified_gmt":"2010-02-11T09:30:11","slug":"the-morphology-of-english-dialects","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/?p=343","title":{"rendered":"The morphology of English dialects"},"content":{"rendered":"
The morphology of English dialects:<\/strong> Verb-formation in non-standard English. By Lieselotte Anderwald<\/strong>. (Studies in English language.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Pp. xviii, 221. ISBN 9780521884976<\/a>. $115 (Hb).<\/div>\n

Reviewed by Mark J. Elson<\/strong><\/a>, University of Virginia<\/em><\/p>\n

This book is a study of the past tense system in nonstandard British English; specifically, the simple past and the past participle of so-called strong verbs (i.e. verbs characterized by ablaut; e.g. drink\/drank\/drunk<\/em>) and weak verbs (i.e. verbs characterized by -ed<\/em> in the past tense system; e.g. talk\/talked\/talked<\/em>) that have become strong.<\/p>\n

This book is comprised of seven chapters: an introduction (1\u201316), \u2018Past tense theories\u2019 (17\u201348), \u2018Naturalness and the English past tense system\u2019 (49\u201365), \u2018Sellt<\/em> and knowed<\/em>: Non-standard weak verbs\u2019 (66\u201397), \u2018Drunk<\/em>, seen<\/em>, done<\/em> and eat<\/em>: Two-part paradigms instead of three-part paradigms\u2019 (98\u2013148), \u2018Come<\/em> and run<\/em>: Non-standard strong verbs with a one-part paradigm\u2019 (149\u201382), and the \u2018Conclusion: Supralocalization and morphological theories\u2019 (183\u201397). Additionally, there are two appendices (198\u2013206), a bibliography (207\u201315), and an index (216\u201321). The database the author used is the Freiburg English dialect corpus<\/em> (FRED). The exposition is clear and well organized, providing extensive data and an informative discussion of the competing models of morphology.<\/p>\n

After introducing and defining relevant terminology (e.g. regular vs. irregular, strong vs. weak, standard vs. nonstandard), enumerating her sources, and establishing the classification of strong verbs in the first chapter, Lieselotte Anderwald \u00a0turns\u2014in Ch. 2\u2014to a brief survey of theoretical frameworks (e.g. lexical morphology, optimality theory, connectionist theory, network theory, natural morphology) in anticipation of the dialectal data.<\/p>\n

In Ch. 3, still by way of background, A proceeds, on the basis of the concept of congruity in the theory of natural morphology, to outline the system-defining structural attributes of each class of strong verbs as they are attested in Standard British English. The following chapters then present dialectal deviations (e.g. Ch. 4 discusses formerly strong verbs that are now weak, such as sell<\/em> and know<\/em>).<\/p>\n

By way of conclusion, A offers several generalizations, which include that: (i) nonstandard verbal systems are characterized by a high degree of nonstandardness (i.e. they do not conform with any frequency to standard forms), (ii) standard strong verbs have not frequently yielded to weakification (i.e. regularization), and (iii) the strong two-part pattern with past tense u<\/em> (e.g. string<\/em>\/strung<\/em>\/strung<\/em>) has expanded, even beyond verbs with i<\/em> in the present; thus, cling<\/em>\/clung<\/em> from cling<\/em>\/clang<\/em>\/clung<\/em>; and come<\/em>\/come<\/em>\/come<\/em> from come<\/em>\/came<\/em>\/come<\/em>. A also considers the question of supralocalization (i.e. the emergence of a supraregional dialect), for which there seems to be little support, and returns finally to issues of theory.<\/p>\n

With regard to theory and explanation, A takes a combinatory, or integrated, approach (47\u201349), which she labels cognitive<\/strong>, and about which she comments: \u2018if we extend natural morphology with the psycholinguistically plausible network model, we can link a model employing sophisticated linguistic terminology with possible low-level neural mechanisms, resulting in a highly empirical framework that has been extensively tested and which makes interesting predictions for inflectional systems\u2019 (48). However, A notes that the processes predicted by natural morphology have played a very small role (e.g. weakification has been relatively infrequent). She notes that strong verbs have been remarkably resilient and turns to network theory, which, in its assumption of the relevance of lexical relatedness in morphological change (as well as its refinement of the role of frequency due to natural morphology) permits her to justify the stability of strong verbs. Additionally, network theory accounts for the fact that, among a well-defined subgroup of strong verbs, u<\/em> became prototypical for the past tense and on that basis was extended (183\u201384). A ends by noting the importance of dialectal information in its ability to enrich the discussion, not only of the data, but also of the positions taken by theoretical frameworks in their attempts to accommodate change (197).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The morphology of English dialects: Verb-formation in non-standard English. By Lieselotte Anderwald. (Studies in English language.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Pp. xviii, 221. ISBN 9780521884976. $115 (Hb). Reviewed by Mark J. Elson, University of Virginia This book is a study of the past tense system in nonstandard British English; specifically, the simple past and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=343"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":355,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343\/revisions\/355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}